Living Wittily

Living Wittily is back after a month of unexplained absence – now explained.

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Blake-trinity2For the first time since starting blogging in January 2007 I decided to take a month off, or have a sabbatical, or have a rest. Or even, give it a rest! But I am still committed to this blog as personal space for exploring the world around me and within me, and doing so in writing and sharing for those who want to journey alongside. So, I'm back.

I can think of various reasons for not writing for a while.

To ease the pressure of producing, and instead allowing time to replenish

To preserve energy for other things happening in life which need attention, and which are non-negotiable obligations

To let the sediments settle so that the creative juices clarify and vision is thus sharpened

To evaluate what has been done and consider what might now be done better

To give in to writer fatigue, not by stopping altogether but by intentional time limited permission to not produce, to not feel obligatioon and expectation, to not be driven.

Each of these have been true for me this past month. One of my favourite quotations from Tao Te Ching makes my point far better than those excuses, reasons, rationales or justifications:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.

Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.

Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.

Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner,

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

I'm working out how best now to use this blog, and continue it as an expression of ministry and sharing with others. There's so much to explore and think through. Questions keep arising that need asking even if the answers are elusive. There are other minds to encounter in reading so that new thoughts, different ideas, the perspectives of others, the truth I need others to show me, the wisdom from faraway and unexpected places, these are sought and valued. Poetry and prayers, biography and history, sacred texts and novels, each creates for us an alternative way of looking at the world, and pushes us towards deeper ways of understanding and listening to ourselves. Early in the life of this blog my love of reading, writing and therefore of books was a regular feature – much of that will be coming back. I remain an unapologetic bibliophile.

T shirt librariesThis blog has always made books the largest room in the house. Rooms are also reserved for current affairs and a Christian perspective on what it's like to try to follow faithfully after Jesus in a world with altogether different agendas. And part of it too a celebration of this rich planet, the natural and the human world, the diversity of environment and human cultures. And then there's the Bible – I've spent my life since my late teens reading, studying, preaching, teaching and I hope trustfully listening to the sacred text of my Christian faith. 

In other words, what is being sought, and thought, in the posts which appear here, is hermeneutic competence, a disciplined ability to interpret, an alertness to the different ways of understanding all that come to us and at us in life.

To handle a sacred text like Christian Scripture as competently and honestly and humbly in prayer and disciplined scholarship.

To interpret with self-awareness and integrity before God our own inner lives, the changes of climate, of landscape and understand the plot and characters in our own life-narrative

To belong to and be active in a community and to interpret and work at understanding the dynamics and energies that create, sustain and impel a community outwards in love and service

To listen carefully and patiently to voices other than those familiar to us, in our surrounding culture – for these voices provide critique and rebuke, they offer alternative ways of being and of seeing the world, others and ourselves. 

So Living Wittily remains as the name of my blog, and the motto from Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons explains as much as I think I can what I'm trying to do and why.  

Living wittily is to live for God in all the tangled messiness of a world that is and remains God-loved. To serve God with wisdom and faithfulness, with wit and obedience, with humour and humanity, with love and patience, practically and when necessary sacrificially that is to live wittily. And to recognise how hard that is even to discover sometimes, and then to fulfil God's will once discerned, yes, that is to live wittily in the tangle of our minds.

The etching of the Trinity by William Blake is one of the most beautiful representations of the love of God that I know.

Comments

6 responses to “Living Wittily is back after a month of unexplained absence – now explained.”

  1. Hermina Janz avatar
    Hermina Janz

    “Questions keep arising that need asking even if the answers are elusive. There are other minds to encounter in reading so that new thoughts, different ideas, the perspectives of others, the truth I need others to show me, the wisdom from faraway and unexpected places, these are sought and valued. Poetry and prayers, biography and history, sacred texts and novels, each creates for us an alternative way of looking at the world, and pushes us towards deeper ways of understanding and listening to ourselves.”
    I admire, and can identify with, your open mindedness to encountering other minds, new perspectives and truths, wisdom from unexpected places, alternative ways of looking at the world. You put it well. I find myself slightly explained by your words.
    Do we read as a search for something? Perhaps for truth, or some insight into the nature of existence, and what may be beyond the visible, what may explain the visible. Who said that the Bible has been called the Word of God, and nature or the world around us has been called the original or first word of God? Maybe the collective work of the human mind wrestling with thoughts of reality and life and death and what lies behind it all, is another “word” or telling, of God. Because you’re right, I find myself making notes from the strangest of sources when reading: biography or fiction or poetry or science fiction or psychology or history, or even online articles (and blogs!), any reading experience can become a revelation.
    And thanks for the poetry quotation. I will definitely be making a note to remember that one.

    Reply
  2. Hermina Janz avatar
    Hermina Janz

    “Questions keep arising that need asking even if the answers are elusive. There are other minds to encounter in reading so that new thoughts, different ideas, the perspectives of others, the truth I need others to show me, the wisdom from faraway and unexpected places, these are sought and valued. Poetry and prayers, biography and history, sacred texts and novels, each creates for us an alternative way of looking at the world, and pushes us towards deeper ways of understanding and listening to ourselves.”
    I admire, and can identify with, your open mindedness to encountering other minds, new perspectives and truths, wisdom from unexpected places, alternative ways of looking at the world. You put it well. I find myself slightly explained by your words.
    Do we read as a search for something? Perhaps for truth, or some insight into the nature of existence, and what may be beyond the visible, what may explain the visible. Who said that the Bible has been called the Word of God, and nature or the world around us has been called the original or first word of God? Maybe the collective work of the human mind wrestling with thoughts of reality and life and death and what lies behind it all, is another “word” or telling, of God. Because you’re right, I find myself making notes from the strangest of sources when reading: biography or fiction or poetry or science fiction or psychology or history, or even online articles (and blogs!), any reading experience can become a revelation.
    And thanks for the poetry quotation. I will definitely be making a note to remember that one.

    Reply
  3. Hermina Janz avatar
    Hermina Janz

    “Questions keep arising that need asking even if the answers are elusive. There are other minds to encounter in reading so that new thoughts, different ideas, the perspectives of others, the truth I need others to show me, the wisdom from faraway and unexpected places, these are sought and valued. Poetry and prayers, biography and history, sacred texts and novels, each creates for us an alternative way of looking at the world, and pushes us towards deeper ways of understanding and listening to ourselves.”
    I admire, and can identify with, your open mindedness to encountering other minds, new perspectives and truths, wisdom from unexpected places, alternative ways of looking at the world. You put it well. I find myself slightly explained by your words.
    Do we read as a search for something? Perhaps for truth, or some insight into the nature of existence, and what may be beyond the visible, what may explain the visible. Who said that the Bible has been called the Word of God, and nature or the world around us has been called the original or first word of God? Maybe the collective work of the human mind wrestling with thoughts of reality and life and death and what lies behind it all, is another “word” or telling, of God. Because you’re right, I find myself making notes from the strangest of sources when reading: biography or fiction or poetry or science fiction or psychology or history, or even online articles (and blogs!), any reading experience can become a revelation.
    And thanks for the poetry quotation. I will definitely be making a note to remember that one.

    Reply
  4. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Thanks for all of this Hermina. Like many others, some of my best thinking is done on paper, or keyboard, and only once launched into words does thought become free to grow in directions I often had not planned. On the other hand writing is also a way of taking what we already think and road testing it, or seeing if it will fly, and if it does will it carry our weight. Trust life is good Hermina, albeit always with awareness of life’s losses as well as gains, and either of these can be lifelong legacies of our love for our own and others. Shalom from a very sunny and even hot Aberdeen.

    Reply
  5. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Thanks for all of this Hermina. Like many others, some of my best thinking is done on paper, or keyboard, and only once launched into words does thought become free to grow in directions I often had not planned. On the other hand writing is also a way of taking what we already think and road testing it, or seeing if it will fly, and if it does will it carry our weight. Trust life is good Hermina, albeit always with awareness of life’s losses as well as gains, and either of these can be lifelong legacies of our love for our own and others. Shalom from a very sunny and even hot Aberdeen.

    Reply
  6. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Thanks for all of this Hermina. Like many others, some of my best thinking is done on paper, or keyboard, and only once launched into words does thought become free to grow in directions I often had not planned. On the other hand writing is also a way of taking what we already think and road testing it, or seeing if it will fly, and if it does will it carry our weight. Trust life is good Hermina, albeit always with awareness of life’s losses as well as gains, and either of these can be lifelong legacies of our love for our own and others. Shalom from a very sunny and even hot Aberdeen.

    Reply

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