A Condition of Complete Simplicity. Rowan Clare Williams

      Introduction

      If there is one symbol that can sum up contemporary Western culture, it is probably the mobile phone. Anyone who has ever sat next to a mobile user on a train has received the clear message that this is a symbol of status, busyness, maybe even of arrogance: ‘I’m important and I’m going to make sure you know I’m here.’ It’s also a reminder of our global perspective – practically nowhere now is unreachable – and the pressure on our time. No time, it seems, can be wasted in just being – doing and working are the main justifications for existing. The pace of modern life feels unstoppable. Life, we’re led to believe, has to be loud, fast, commercial, materialist and obsessed with achievement. Nothing else counts. The insistent beep of the mobile has become as much part of the fabric of our lives as the values it represents.

      Mobiles also speak powerfully of another aspect of contemporary life: our desperate need for recognition and connection, to be heard and seen for who we really are, if only we can work out who that is. Perhaps they actually speak of insecurity, rather than arrogance. ‘Please acknowledge me,’ they trill. ‘I matter. I’m here. Notice me!’ They speak across a hungry void, trying to communicate, filling the emptiness with sound. Perhaps each individual conversation signifies little except to those most immediately involved, but each one is a small symbol of the universal human drive to make some kind of impact on the world, to communicate something unique, and to be heard.

The events of Tuesday 11 September, 2001, burned themselves into our consciousness in an unprecedented way. That day, too, mobile phones acquired yet another significance. There were a number of stories of people who found themselves on the hijacked planes or in the World Trade Centre, using their mobiles to say to family and friends: ‘I want you to know I love you before I die.’ Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his book of reflections on the events of that day, rightly points out the dangers of making cheap theological points out of people’s suffering. Not everyone’s last thoughts would have been of love – there must also have been fear, hatred, anger.1 Yet, as he also acknowledges, there was a poignancy in the way many people needed to reach out to each other in those last moments, to communicate something of real and lasting importance, to reassert their sense of interconnection and belonging. When you are about to die, money and power lose all meaning. They cannot define who you are as a person. So the mobiles still said ‘I’m important, I’m here’, but we suddenly heard them in a new way.

      Any discussion of the nature of the modern world now has to take into account the reality of global terrorism. It has become increasingly clear that there is no immunity from the effects of terror: contrary to what the affluent West may once have wanted to imagine, it is no longer something which only happens to other people in inaccessible parts of the world. Recent rhetoric about a ‘war on terror’ highlights the larger-scale battle for moral and ideological supremacy which has shaped Western cultural identity in the global era. In a climate of general insecurity about what Western culture actually is, that identity has been easier to describe negatively than positively: we may not be too clear about who ‘we’ are, but we know that we are not ‘them’. This defensive mentality contributes largely to the continuing East–West standoff. Such an atmosphere breeds mutual suspicion, confusion and disinformation over core values. It does not encourage the possibility of finding an adequate response to terrorism or to the conditions which have caused it to flourish. Instead, what is desperately needed, if paranoia and hysteria are not to triumph, is a more sustained attempt to understand those it would be easier to demonize as ‘not like us’. Such attempts to understand the roots of terror need not be seen as condoning evil. A sensible and mature approach to the manifestation of evil is very necessary in every culture – perhaps even more so in a culture which has become uncomfortable with conventional religious language and the idea that it might have something to say to us.

      Franciscan spirituality is perhaps uniquely placed to grapple with these dominant issues for our culture. In particular, it presents an important challenge to the individualism which also characterizes contemporary culture, and which has contributed to the harmful separation between ‘them’ and ‘us’. The phenomenon of globalism, for example, is not necessarily a bad thing. It does not have to mean a characterless homogeneity, or the automatic subsuming of the small by the rich and powerful. A positive perspective on globalism does not shrink the world but opens it up. With access to more information about the world and its people comes more awareness of what life is like for those people; in that awareness is found the possibility of learning how to tolerate difference for the greater good.

      Underlying this increased sense of global citizenship is a sense of connectedness which simply was not available to us before. In this light, the Franciscan emphasis on community is more than a response to the need to be recognized and noticed; it is a living out of the universal worth of each person. Ironically, considering the anti-Islamic dogma which characterized Francis’ time as it does our own, this vision of universal and mutual concern for human welfare is oddly similar to the Muslim concept of the umma. Human beings drastically need a way of living faith with integrity which does not require the destruction of those who think differently. To be able to see another, however ostensibly different, as a fellow human being made in the image of God, is a significant step towards peace. The moment when ‘them’ becomes ‘us’ is a profound moment of conversion.

      As we shall explore in later chapters, the life of St Francis was a series of conversion moments, each one a staging post on a continuing journey deeper and deeper into union with Christ. In one typically dramatic and literal gesture, Francis publicly cast off everything his earthly father had ever given him – home, name, security, wealth, clothing – to become utterly dependent on God. Instead of an earthly family, Francis came to recognize all creatures as his brothers and sisters, seeing and revering in them something of the image of the Creator. Above all, he wanted to show the reality of his conversion by embracing a whole new way of living – and he did so to such effect that the world around him began to question its former values, and to explore afresh what it might mean to live for Christ alone.

      Francis is a joyful figure. His life was characterized by celebration, laughter and a deep love of the whole creation. The very attractiveness of the image can often encourage a distorted picture (‘St Francis of Assisi? Isn’t he the saint who liked animals?’). If that had been