The footage from Spain is shocking. Violence against a State's own citizens holding an illegal, and therefore non binding Referendum, is not a defence of Democracy. It is an abuse of power to prevent an opinion poll.

If Spain is so confident of the outcome being the status quo, why the extreme measures against unarmed citizens?

The silence of the EU is deafening. Under Article 7 they can call Spain to account for breach of the values of Article 2, which reads in part, Article 2 "The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities."

What I saw on News footage bears no relation to these values.

Last night I watched "Denial", the film version of the trial of David Irving. A BBC production, it should have had all the characteristics of a well researched, cleverly scripted docu-drama powerfully portrayed by a superb cast. In fact it was a mixed experience, at times overacted, unnecessarily reducing Irving to more of a caricature than he really is, and the scriptwriter playing a number of emotional cards that were at odds with the ruthless rationality of the legal team acting as defence.

In 1998 Irving brought a libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, an American Professor of Holocaust Studies whom Irving accused of ruining his reputation as an historian. The defence case was based on exposing Irving's programmatic, ideological and deliberate revision of historical facts and evidence, and also proving that the Holocaust did in fact happen.The core of the film takes place in the courtroom, so that, having known and followed the real case twenty years ago, the outcome of the film is already known.

Timothy Spall as Irving came across as an intellectual chameleon, saying one thing in his writing, then defending it in court by revising it further and further away from what he had originally written. But what remained unchanged was his ideological commitment to revising the history of the Third Reich, Nazism, Hitler, and the Holocaust, in particular, Auschwitz. Spall's portrayal was a mixture of eccentric buffoon, sham academic, sinister supremacist, racist, and slightly perplexed citizen wondering why freedom of speech did not extend to his opinions, historical judgements and public statements. 

Rachel Weisz as Professor Lipstadt conveyed something of the intellectual energy and moral passion that drives scholars of events so pivotal in recent human history as Holocaust Studies. Yet sidelined for legal reasons, the script at key moments struggled to give her convincing opportunity to express that intellectual and moral energy. She wins no arguments about how the case is to be handled; when stressed she goes running unaccompanied in central London, at night, despite the hate speech and demonstrations aimed at her each time she enters the court; and her own inner life as a Jewish scholar is rarely evident.

The strongest link in the drama is her QC played by Tom Wilkinson. The exchanges with Irving in the film are psychologically convincing, and emotionally persuasive in the two voices, one cavalier and confidently convinced by his own ideology, the other patiently laying the charges outside the gates that will demolish the fundamental credibility and intellectual integrity of Irving's entire written corpus.

I have long had an interest in Holocaust Studies and remember the furore Irving created in the 1990's, and again when he was jailed for Holocaust denial in Austria. What this film does, despite the flaws, is show us the sinister underside of fake news, hate driven ideology, and revision of history as a programmatic exercise in persuasion. Yet more serious still than these grave dangers, the film comes as a warning of what happens when anti-semitism, racism, and white supremacism are confronted by mere law. The law can find against it; it cannot eradicate it, or persuade those who hold such beliefs that they are morally wrong or their views intellectually untenable, or legally disqualified, or politically toxic. That is a matter for much deeper reflection for a society like ours, now busy redefining the moral and social parameters within which we will all have to live.

Holocaust Studies is now an established area of historical research and reflection. The Holocaust itself remains a powerful generative event inspiring novels, poetry, art, films, music, documentaries, as well as academic study, writing and further reflection. The time is soon coming when there will be no survivors, therefore no witnesses, and there will remain those whose ideological goal is the elimination of the Holocaust from the historic record, or a diminishing of its significance, or reinterpreting of it as less evil than it was in fact and in reality. For those reasons one comment in the film, made by the QC played by Tom Wilkinson, standing in the delousing chamber at Auschwitz, and asking a question that should have been addressed decades ago, and is more urgent now: Why has there never been a proper internationally sponsored scientific, forensic and historically documented study of the very evidence Holocaust deniers deny exists? In our time, in the zeitgeist of a resurgent nationalistic Right in Europe, the securing of that scientific, forensic, historic, documented evidence is becoming increasingly urgent. Lest we forget; lest we fail to remember. Lest memory be erased.

Back in July Sheila and I came across this Ringlet butterfly on a walk near Drum Castle. A relative newcomer to the North East, it used to only come as far north as southern Scotland. Another moment of wonder at the extraordinary beauty of the apparently ordinary.

Then there is the Red Admiral, apparently doing well this summer despite the wet climate. The combination of resilience and fragility in these lovely creatures has the interesting effect of lifting the spirits towards the same carefree happenstance of enjoying whatever comes wherever we go.

There's a pivotal scene in Patch Adams where Robin Williams' character, facing expulsion from medical school flirts on the edge of a cliff wondering if he would, should, could jump. And a butterfly lands on his hand, triggering a conversation with whatever God does or doesn't work in or through or against the ins and outs of human experience. It's a telling reminder of how random loveliness subverts our cynicism and helps us re-engage with a world that has hurt us.

Amongst my favourite writers of English prose is John Ruskin. And amongst my favourite sights when out walking is lichen, in all its varieties of colour, location, texture and shape. Walking along from Findochty earlier this week I took time to notice, attend to, admire, wonder, at the intricacy and durability of those botanical miracles. I still remember coming across these sentences from Ruskin in an anthology, and feeling then, as now, his power of description and emotional impression, distilled essence of Victorian linguistic enthusiasm, only just restrained.

No words that I know of will say what mosses and lichens are. None are delicate enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green- the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass – the traceries  of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, aborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace…

 Yet as in one sense the humblest, in nother they are the most honoured of the earth children. Unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow fingered, constant hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of the cowslip god – far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest, starlike on the stone; and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years.

This past week I've been staying in the small Moray fishing village of Findochty. Once you come down the hill into the harbour area there are rocks and cliffs on both sides, a marina filled with yachts and some fishing boats, and the church on the hill. There are several places of worship still going here, though most are more or less declining. The usual narrative of church atrophy, younger people moving away, and the older generations for whom church mattered and faith gave life some anchorage, and God was a living reality in life, are slowly, and literally, dying out. 

And yet. Walking along the edge of the sea, away from the village, and looking back, there is the church, and it has been there a long time. This particular building at least from 1863. In the vestibule is a horn that was used to call people to worship from 1863 till 1893, when the bell tower was built. Also in the vestibule is a memorial to the remarkable minister of this parish who served for 38 years. The Rev John Wesley McKee clearly won the hearts and the love and respect of the congregation. He was well named and I'm left wondering about that unabashed Methodist brand name shop windowed in a presbyterian church.

Those who are in ministry will have some idea of what it meant in faithfulness, self-expenditure, frustration, investment in a community, and the daily struggle to hold on to his own faith, while fulfilling a calling to support and accompany others on their faith journey.The ministry of the Gospel, the calling of ministry, the life dedicated to Christ, the daily carrying of the cross – whatever phrase we use, we are describing something that invites respect, reflection, and gratitude. The congregation which had this stone erected were placing on permanent record, "This was our minister, our friend, and companion in grace, grief and gratitude."

In the 19th and 20th Century, a fishing town was a place familiar with hardship, risk, danger, and sometimes catastrophe. Along the fishing coasts of Scotland especially until recent years, boats were lost, lives were lost and many a family broken by tragedy at sea. The minister in such a place and at such a time was the primary spiritual resource, and the first recourse for support. What that took out of Rev McKee over 38 years only God knows. But God does know, and his people clearly had a good idea as well. 

So walking along the coast line tonight I took a photo of the church in which the good Rev John Wesley McKee served, and I gave thanks for a legacy of that stern piety and strong love that had bound minister and community for so long, through so much, at such cost, and such blessing. It was shining white against a darkened sky. In an age of selfie addiction, it is an act of corrective protest when a camera is used to celebrate selflessness. At a time when the church faces challenges and changes that will rock it to its foundations, more than ever, the image of this wee church is a sign of faith's defiance, built as it is on rock, perched above and beside the power and relentless restlessness of the sea.

T S Eliot wrote presciently of the church surrounded by a sea of secular pressures and forces hostile to the love, peace and hope of the Gospel. "The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without." (The Rock) Yes indeed, and whatever other "missional strategies" are imagined, dreamed up, entrusted as techniques of ecclesial survival, the church will always need ministries of unselfish service, sustained by long haul disciplines, embodied in lives filled with the performative energy of the Holy Spirit, lived towards the magnetic North of the risen Christ. Patience in peacemaking, persistence in hope-building, stubborn in loving and alert to every reason for gratitude in a grace-endowed world – perhaps funding every other "missional strategy", we could start with these.

, 

Today has been fitted wall to wall blue sky, bright but mellow autumn sunshine, and a pervasive sense of summer giving way, but reluctantly. A four mile walk along the coast confirms this, and reflecting on it now I'm aware that amongst other things, I have again been ambushed by beauty. How so?

For one thing, a four mile coastal walk is a good way of remembering that spirituality isn't merely about inner climate, emotional ecology and an environmentally friendly approach to our own needs and longings. Such a walk is an intentional refusal to allow inetriority to dictate our mood. Indeed a deliberate external focus is an act of faith in the capacity of the created world to reconfigure our feelings, and help us break out of those tightening circles of anxiety, self-criticism, introspection, and those occasional examinations of our own roots to see if we are growing. 

When our attention is forced away from the limited horizons of our own thoughts, there is a chance to escape the inner busyness and preoccupations of a life lived too near to our own centre. Beauty does that, draws our attention, invites us to an encounter with that which is not of our own making. Walking along Cullen beach, on a day when the waves were in stealth mode, only tipping over when nearly ashore, there is a rhythm and regularity that slowly resets my own inner rhythms. That the sea is bluer than the sky; that the waves are playfully sneaky; that those cliffs have been there for millenia; and that I am walking alongside such incidental beauty; these are the gifts of a creation so taken for granted that in rediscovering their gratuitous loveliness, I rediscover an inner equilibrium of renewed hope and returned joy.

How many waves did it take to create the keyhole in this cliff? The imperceptible erosion over hundreds of years, the tireless energy of millions of waves, the patient persevering friction of water on rock; until the imperceptible is perceived, the waves succeed, the rock yields to water. I look at this eye in the cliff, where seabirds shelter and am moved by the slow and mysterious processes that give shape to our landscape. The physics of kinesis and friction are easily enough described, but how do the elements of wind and water create and sculpt so that the end result makes me want to stand and look, and enjoy. The three words are important and so is their sequence. Stand, look, enjoy.

Joy is one of the intimations that we are in the presence of beauty. In my earlier post I mentioned the transformative, inspirational power of beauty. When beauty arrests us it carries with it "hints of transcendence, correctives to cynicism, reminders of our "responsibility to awe", tonics for jaded hopefulness, sources of energy to convert carelessness back to care, currents of thermal uplift that give vision beyond limited horizons". These posts are about that kind of beauty having that kind of effect; and about the connections I sense between the encounter with a beautiful world, a camera, and contemplative gratitude that is its own kind of prayer. 

Looking across to the cliffs, or looking through the keyhole in the rockface, and photographing them, are only possible if I stand, and look, and enjoy. All three are required if beauty is to be attended to, its invitation acknowledged, its gifts as gladly received as gratuitously given.

Here is the beacon which stands at the entrance to Findochty Harbour. It is known locally as The Bilken. Out of this and many other harbours along our coasts, for generations, fishing boats have gone and returned. Just in case there is a danger of sentimentalising the sea, and domesticating images as if the sea is always calm and kind, it's a reminder that there is fierceness in beauty, terrifying power in the waves, that currents which sculpt rocks can become hurricane built mountains, and that we trivialise such magnificence at our peril.

Beauty is one of the three transcendentals answering to what is deepest in our mind, utmost in our desire and most fulfilling in emotion. As such our spirituality will be shaped by our perceptions of beauty, sustained by attentiveness to the presence of beauty, tempered by reverence and patience when we encounter beauty. And then there is the theology of beauty, and how we are to understand creation as the expression in time and space of the eternal beauty of the Triune God of grace, love and communion. And how we are to understand ourselves as made in the image of God, our hearts restless till they rest in God, and that through Christ, in the creative power of the Holy Spirit.

Over the summer I've been intentional about beauty. What I mean is I have tried to remember to pay attention to what is there. But how do you become more attentive just because you want to, especially when there is so much else inward and outward that dissipates attention and energy and purpose? The decision to notice the beauty around me is only really made if I do, indeed, if I do in thought and deed, go looking for beauty; or if I at least learn to recognise the presence of beauty at the periphery of my vision, and take time to draw it towards the centre of my attention.

One way is to change my inner priorites of thought. I suspect that is at the heart of what Jesus meant when he said "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." If life is in focus, other things become clear. If one thing is made ultimate, everything else becomes penultimate. Seek means to pursue with determination and strategy; it means to desire and therefore to recognise the good that awakens such desire; it means to set a goal and harness energy, time and effort to reach it. Each of these is a way of describing what could be a fruitful expression of prayerfulness. Seeking, desiring,purposing that which is worth our attention and worthy of our affection.

Beauty is one of the inherent gifts of creation, when God's fingerprints are detected all over those moments of encounter with beauty that we all experience now and again. For some time now my camera has become a sort of prayer book, as image replaces word and a photo becomes a moment of wonder. In that moment of framing and analysis, something takes place which is contemplative and tugs at those surprisingly persistent longings that come from God knows where. And God does know where such longing originates, and at our best so do we.

"Seek you first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness…" is one of those words of Jesus that upsets our multi-tasking obsessions. You can't be singleminded and multitask, and in any case we all know that we are being short-changed when someone is talking to us and doing several other things at the same time.

"Seek first…" And yes, I realise this saying of Jesus is about ultimate commitment relativising all other commitments, and that Jesus had in mind more than a small and partial inner adjustment of focus. But the principle is the same, a realigning of priorities, a reorientation of our affections around that which is worth noticing and attending to.

So over the summer I have been seeking beauty that compensates for much that is ugly in our world, in our cultural environment, in our social ecology. I've been looking for hints of transcendence, correctives to cynicism, reminders of our "responsibility to awe", tonics for jaded hopefulness, sources of energy to convert carelessness back to care, currents of thermal uplift that give vision beyond limited horizons. Such responses are made possible by the simple and complex act of taking a photo. Above are three examples of such thermal uplifts, captured moments of hopefulness, the promise and return of playfulness in a life often taken far too seriously.

Misty morning above Braemar,
a softer light,
a deeper silence,
a sense of roots at home in peat and soil,
made moist by clouds that touch the earth,
with countless benedictions.

It’s an ancient humane and humanising custom. It’s an art form that takes practice, skill and interpersonal generosity. It’s a way of behaving that makes the world a safer place. It’s a gentle process of dismantling walls and building bridges. It’s an act of trust that engenders more trust, in a widening circle of friendship. It’s called hospitality.

There is a lovely Greek word which translates as hospitality. It is philoxenia. It means to love (philo) the stranger (xenia), and is used about open doors and prepared guest rooms. It is one of the identifiable practices of a Christian community. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb. 13.2)

At the University we have just finished a week long Summer School on the theme of “Living Faithfully in a World of Division and Despair.” We looked at Friendship, Belonging, Reconciliation, and Hospitality. These are four of the supporting pillars of a healthy society; and they are under threat in contemporary Britain.

When Theresa May was Home Secretary she boasted that her aim was, and I quote, “to create a hostile environment for migrants.” As Prime Minister she has continued to use such language, and wittingly or unwittingly, has given support and ammunition to tabloid racism and xenophobia. People who have made their homes in this country for years, in some cases decades, are increasingly feeling unwanted, threatened by a Home Office overseeing increasingly complex immigration processes, changing rules, and shifting goalposts.

Christian communities worship one who had nowhere to lay his head; Jesus was a child refugee; his ministry was amongst the dispossessed, vulnerable, marginalised and poor. Christians hold firmly to two central equalising truths; every person is made in the image of God, and has an inherent worth and dignity; and every person is one for whom Christ died, and is our neighbour, to be loved as ourselves.

And yes, I know that the world of politics requires realism, rules and structures that enable peaceful co-existence and just processes. But here’s the thing. This country used to be known for its “philoxenia”, its welcome of the stranger. Now we are becoming known as a country gripped by "xenophobia". Hospitality creates a benevolent environment for the stranger. For the Home Office to embed the notion of "hostile environment" in its policies and public discourse is to institutionalise xenophobia. My prayer for our political leaders of all parties is for a return of philoxenia, hospitality, as our default position towards those who come to us as strangers, seeking friendship.  

My two previous posts about the Nectar Card provide the context for what follows. Very briefly, I previously explored the issues around the linkage of the Nectar Card with promotion of the Daily Mail, especially for those whose values, practices and lifestyle are shaped by a commitment to following Jesus Christ. In the absence of a clear course of action, or effective protest, and recognising that all of our economic relationships are compromised, interconnected, often anonymous and constantly changing, what can a Christian do? We can think Christianly, and pray faithfully and prophetically. We can insist on looking at the world as those whose ultimate loyalty is to God, not the market, not the powers and the powerful, and not the values that endorse the economic disparities and cultural imperatives of the way the world is today.

But is the more? I haven't found the answer to the dilemma of the Nectar Card and the Daily Mail. What started out as an exercise in clarification hasn't delivered the desired security of knowing what to do. But it has compelled me to ask, in the absence of a list of practical actions, what else does Christian faith bring to the way I look on, live in, and care for the world?

The following 8 Considerations are not exhaustive, but they are demanding, and arise out of the theological depths of the Christian gospel. Living as we do in the grey complexities of a culture of flux, fluidity and increasing polarisations, these 8 Considerations act as points of re-orientation, permanent markers for people of The Way. What matters most? What makes our lives count? Where are the resources to help with the journey? Where is hope to be found? Lacking clear answers to troubling questions, is there a wisdom on which we can stand, and that will bear our weight?

So the result of thinking about what makes me uncomfortable and sad about finding myself inadvertently promoting the Daily Mail,is a list of 8 Considerations. I place these over and against the broken complexity of globalised trade and economic inequality. I take them as first principles of a Christian mindset, and as a composite of correctives to the seductions of a culture in which everything is a commodity, everyone is a consumer, and everywhere part of the market. 

So here they are,

Eight Considerations foir Christian Disciples.

Consider the Kingdom of God: when it comes to power, disciples of Jesus believe in a Kingdom where the Lamb is on the throne. In the community of Christ's followers, as signs of the Kingdom of God, bread is broken and shared, wine is poured and sacrifice remembered.

Consider Reconciliation: The God revealed in Jesus reconciled all things to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross. He has given to his followers the ministry of reconciliation. We are therefore ambassadors of Christ in the service of the Cross.

Consider Resurrection: God raised Jesus from the dead and therefore death is defeated by life, hate is overcome by love, violence is outmaneouvred by peace, despair contradicted by hope, oppression conquered by freedom, and the status quo given notice of final transformation.

Consider Grace: The God of grace saves and regenerates human existence into the new creation. Saved by grace we are called to live by the grace of God, as people of the gift, as forgiven forgivers, as reconciled reconcilers, as generous beneficiaries, who love because God first loved us.

Consider the Holy Spirit: God is Light, Truth and Love, actively present in all of creation, in the Church, and in the people of God. The Spirit of Truth leads us into truth, to know Jesus deeply and to live as the Body of Christ faithfully; the Spirit produces the fruit of our renewed humanity in Christ, pouring the love of God into our hearts, gurgling up as living water irrigating the life we live.

Consider Love and Compassion: God is love, therefore those who love God are constrained by the love of Christ to love others. Love is a practice, a habit of the heart, expressed in redemptive gestures, determined in peacemaking patience, imagining just initiatives, and kenotic in spirit and sacrifice. 

Consider Prayer: God is personal, relational, and faithful. Prayer is the environment within which foundational trust grows and is tested. In a broken world prayer is prophetic practice and imaginative hope. Intercession is to join our prayers of longing, and tears of sadness, to the eternal longing love of the Triune God, self-given for the redeeming and renewing of creation.

Consider Worship: To worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to render all other claims relative, penultimate and provisional. Praise and thanksgiving subdue the urge to possess; confession and penitence are incompatible with power and dominance; intercession places others in the centre and is a voluntary displacing of the ego, the self, me. 

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. Philippians 4