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My song is love unknown,
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
And for His death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He
to suffering goes,
That He His foes
from thence might free.

In life no house, no home,
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb,
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was his home;
But mine the tomb
Wherein he lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

It was Gerard Manley Hopkins who described a way of looking at the world Christologically. To see Christ everywhere, to celebrate the ubiquitous presence of Christ round every corner we turn, to see in common things the uncommon grace of God, and to have the wit, or the wisdom, to see what is revealed.

Epiphanies are of two kinds; the ones we discover, and the ones we are given. The ones we discover may simply be those everyday moments which, once we have lived through them, we realise come only every thousand days. The ones we are given are when we know, we just know, we have glimpsed the trailing clouds of glory, briefly sighted a truth both dazzling and elusive, but confirming a depth and texture to life which sustains those deep heart realities of hope, trust, love and joy.

But sometimes it's impossible to say which moment of recognition is which; our discovery, or unlooked for gift. The photo was taken at the sea front in Aberdeen. The old breakwaters had been exposed by stormy seas and I was walking along close to the sea edge. Waves, the play of sky on water, blue on grey in a symphony of colour, sound and movement in rhythm and with a timing that was both regular and varied by water that was restless in motion and restful to watch and hear.The sea is its own orchestra, its motions and sounds and its endless variations in orchestration and composition a 24/7 performance of inexhaustible creativity.

At precisely one angle of looking the old broken timbers opened in a cruciform window, and I was transfixed. I stood and looked, astonished and my eyes watering with something other than the cold wind and a longing in my heart that came from God knows where; and I'm glad God knows where. The contrast of aged timber against sea and sky, the window of the Cross opening out towards the horizon, a moment in my life when whatever else I was thinking or feeling was eclipsed by this glimpse of glory, and I was summoned to pay attention, to wait, and watch, and without conscious decision, to know this moment is one where the heart kneels and "prayer is valid".

Hopkins' poem is a revelling in grace, seeing Christ everywhere and in everything. "Christ plays in ten thousand places"; and one of those places was Aberdeen beach, on a cold January morning when, unasked and unexpected, Christ played, and I cried, "What I do is me: for that I came."  

Tapestry is one of the things I do. Regular visitors to this blog will know this. Birds, houses, stain glass windows, flowers, Greek and Hebrew scripted words are amongst the subjects designed and sewn over the years.

In recent years I've become more theological in some of my designs, using tapestry to explore and express the colour and forms of religious texts and symbols. This started as an experiment when I was studying and teaching Trinitarian theology, and I was intrigued by the possibility of using colour and form to explore the mystery at the heart of the Christian understanding of God.

The most recently completed tapestry is called Eucharist and Pentecost, and the small central panel focuses on the Cross, in the colours of the passion. The scale of the detail shown is 3cm.

An hour or so after posting yesterday's entry on Images of the Cross, the news broke of the bomb attacks on Brussels. Throughout the day the horror and anguish that befell ordinary folk unfolded with a frightening predictability as figures of casualties rose, and the cruelty and range of the injuries were described. As I watched I recalled again the words that go to the dark heart of human evil and brokenness, and illumine from within with the determined purpose of Eternal Love, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…"

We live in a world where it is becoming increasingly easy, perhaps even attractive, to hate the enemy, to wish vengeance, to make retaliatory violence our preferred modus operandi. I for one need a theology of the Cross that feels the full force of the evil we humans inflict on each other, and does not despair. One of the most lethal strains of despair is to give up on reconciliation, to educate our hearts in hatred, to train our emotions away from mercy and justice and to seek the elimination and destruction of the enemy. If we despair of reconciliation, give up on peace, refuse to even try to understand and listen to the reasons why we have been attacked, then we surrender hope and settle for a mutual exchange of deaths and inflicted suffering, which in turn fuels hate, fear and fury, that unholy trinity worshipped best with weapons and strategies of terror.

The Cross of Christ stands as God's decisive No to that despair which implies our preference for death, our own or those we wish to kill. Despair is never more dangerous than when we decide, choose, conclude, that hope has ceased to be an option. Centuries before Jesus was crucified Isaiah spoke more than he knew: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."

I've spent the best part of 50 years gazing into the theological abyss which opens up beneath these words in Isaiah 53 – but it is not an abyss of despairing darkness or blank, bleak silence. The Cross is an abyss in which "we hear the plunge of lead into fathomless depths." And so today, at different times, I sit and will sit, before the Cross, and think of all that it means for Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God, to be crucified in a world like this.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

     I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

     Life that shall endless be.

 Amongst the anguish and debris of the Twin Towers, two broken girders stand in cruciform lament. This is the Cross emerging from the wreckage of human suffering, bearing witness to the destructive powers of a cosmos in chaos.

Holy Week is the time when sin can no longer be trivialised, when violence is confronted for what it is, and when hatred is seen to unleash the destructive anger whose end is death and whose means is the murder of the other. Christian theology sees in the Cross the mystery of iniquity and the greater mystery of an eternal love which renders all evil and all destructive powers penultimate. 

"In the cross of Christ I glory towr'ing oe'r the wrecks of time.." can never be a triumphalist escapism from the wreckage of human life and the wasting of Creation that are the realities of our global history and our economic, cultural, military and technological adventures. Instead, we glory in the Cross as those who know such evil, sin, iniquity, what Paul called the principalities and powers, to be defeated by the self-giving love and searing holiness in judgement of the God whose Creation is defaced and defiled by all our ancient hatreds, incurable covetousness, territorial and materialist empire building, and by the infused and cherished divisions and fears, hatreds and enmities of a grace-averse world.

We glory in the cross because "having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacke of them, triumphing over them by the cross." (Col 2.14) Earlier Paul explained, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things on earth or things in heaven,  by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." (Col 1.19-20)

Holy Week is the time to reflect on how violence spawns violence, hatred enacted provokes hatred as vengeance, in an upward spiral of destruction ever more creative in its lethal intent. The Cross is God's NO! The Cross is God's negation of all other negations of life. The Cross is, as Paul said elsewhere, the place where "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself."

The woodcut prints of Eric Gill are some of the most carefully crafted and imaginative pieces of religious art. The simplicity and contrast of black and white, dark and light make the image stark but then with a softness of line giving shape to the human body.

The presence of two young people walking behind is deeply resonant of discipleship and the wonder and curiosity that every disciple feels since those first words of Jesus to two earlier followers who asked Jesus "Where do you live?". And he said, "Come and see."

Gill made many different prints of the Passion, but this small early print has the kind of immediacy and uncomplicated appeal that is stripped down gospel. The Simon of Cyrene figure in the middle stands tallest but does not dominate; the bowed Christ under the heavy crossbeam, head radiated with cruciform light as cross is superimposed upon cross, seems nevertheless unbowed in purpose; the taller child with the staff is on a holy walk behind, and the smaller child obscures the hand of his friend; and at the exact centre of the image the hand of the Cyrenian lifting the weight from the back of Jesus. 

At the start of Holy Week, this picture is a contradiction of the tradition which has us sing in the first line of the great Passion hymn, Alone Thou goest forth O Lord. And yet. There is for Jesus, the Son of the Father, an encroaching loneliness that will eventually leave him alone and isolated, not only from the support and company of other people, but cut off from the source of life itself. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

The cry of dereliction is at times too painful to bear even the reading of it in the Gospel, too theologically devastating to be analysed or deconstructed. That great reverberating cry of the anguish of God will come later than the scene in Gill's print. To read Abelard's great hymn while contemplating Gill's more humane episode of the Passion, is to ponder what Paul meant; "He who knew no sin was made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God…."

1 Alone thou goest forth, O Lord,
in sacrifice to die;
is this thy sorrow naught to us
who pass unheeding by?

2 Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord;
make us thy sorrow feel,
till through our pity and our shame
love answers love's appeal.

3 This is earth's darkest hour,
but thou dost light and life restore;
then let all praise be given thee
who livest evermore!

4 Give us compassion for thee, Lord,
that, as we share this hour,
thy cross may bring us to thy joy
and resurrection power.

Yesterday the haar made Westhill and Aberdeen cold, grey and decidedly unspringlike. So we headed inland towards the Highlands, through Banchory, Aboyne, Ballater and out to Braemar. By 11.00 the sun was breaking through at Braemar and then the skies cleared and they were a deep blue, by which I mean the kind of blue you feel you could fly into forever. On the way we saw a red kite patrolling its borders, two swans reflected on the water along with the snow brushed hills and silver birch drapery, and high in the sky a long trailing skein of geese heading home.

I have become very fond of my small Sony camera, now 5 years old, and a much used gift from Sheila for my 60th birthday. It doesn't do all the technically clever things more expensive and more up to date technology achieves. But I resist the latest camera, not as a luddite or technophobe, but because I enjoy capturing a good photograph with a good enough camera – and my wee sony is good enough. 

Yesterday I could have stopped the car and tried to get a photo of the red kite, the swan loch reflection, the geese against a blue sky. What I have is the memory of those moments of heart magic. To stop and take a photo would be to have merely the memory of losing the real gift of attentive joy in order to capture the digital image of those lost moments of true wonder, praise and gladness.

Yes – the swans on the loch, with snow draped mountains and elegantly drooping silver birch would have looked great on the computer screen, and on Facebook. But I would have chosen the self-congratulation of a good photo over the losing of the self in uncomplicated attentiveness and presence to the beauty that comes as gift that cannot be captured, and as summons which cannot be ignored; what C S Lewis called, surprised by joy. 

The last photo, of "swift rushing water cool and clear" was a reminder of the ever changing movement of God, reflecting light, refreshing the spirit and touching with the wound of grace those places within us crying out for renewal.

Our neighbour has a severely disabled son who suffers from a chronic degenerative condition and lives alone some distance away. She spends 10 hours 6 or 7 days a week caring for and being with her son, the kind of commitment that leaves little time in life for much else.  She doesn't complain, she does get very tired, but she is unremitting in her efforts to make sure her son's life is as comfortable and supported as possible, as humanly possible. And that of course is the only limit – what is humanly possible for one carer looking after someone who needs long term care for long periods of each day.

I mention this because cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people, in the name of austerity, remains a first line policy of the Conservative Governement. The latest cut is to the Employment and Support Allowance reducing by £30 the amount payable to support disabled people. The ESA was designed for two good reasons; to support disabled people who are unable to work, and to pay for personalised support so that those who can work are helped to do so. The reasons for the cuts are quite straightforward, and lack the imagination, compassion and social responsibility which ought to be evident in good government. In laying out the arguments for these cuts ESA is defined as a "passive" benefit which does not "incentivise" those who are unable to work to find work.

So the frontline argument is not reducing the deficit; the reason is not that austerity is an unfortunate but unavoidable necessity. No, the intention is to incentivise disabled people to work. One of the lasting legacies of this Government may be the invention of ugly words to screen out the moral dubiousness of its proposals and policies. "Incentivise" – how does that differ from compel, force, manipulate, bully, all of which are ways of incentivising people to do what the person who holds the power wants them to do? 

All of this was going through my mind as I was doing my neighbour's garden yesterday; well actually doing our gardens (plural) since I am now honorary looker after of her garden so that's one thing less she needs to bother about. I want to incentivise her to look after her son without feeling bad about the state of her garden. I want to incentivise her to go on doing what she does with a selflessness and determination this Government does nothing to recognise, reward or support. I am incentivised to prune apple trees, dig over the front garden and plant bedding plants and shrubs and apply mulch. I am incentivised to paint her fence. I am incentivised to scarify her lawn.

Now there's a word replete with ambiguity, "scarify". This Government is incentivised to scarify the vulnerable and to compel the disabled to find work by reducing their financial support. Or to use the word another way, there is a scarifying lack of moral imagination, human empathy and personal integrity in politicians who even tolerate such a proposal let alone dress it up in the rhetoric of board rooms where everyone is rich, powerful and blind to the ethical vacuity of their own euphemisms.

Incentivise indeed! Many, many disabled people could teach those same politicians, civil servants and accountants of the nations resources a thing or two about incentives, life achievements, overcoming obstacles, and living as independently as circumstances allow. Such remarkable people do not need incentivising, they simply need to be valued, encouraged and treated as full members of our society whose contribution to our community is not sommensurate with whatever money it takes for their support and care.

In the introductory description of a new series of Studies in Reformed Dogmatics comes this superb description of what Dogmatics is for, and why it is an important discipline within the ongoing life of the Christian Church.

"The source of dogmatics is Holy Scripture, its scope is the summing up of all things in Jesus Christ, its setting is the communion of the saints, and its end is the conversion, consolation, and instruction of creaturely wayfarers in the  knowledge and love of the triune God until that knowledge and love is consummated in the beatific vision."

I could happily write an entire post on this description, but I'm content to allow this rich, rhythmic sentence to make its own way into our minds and hearts. Loving God with the mind and the understanding is far too often dismissed, as if somehow the God who gave us minds might disapprove of the use of these same minds in the pursuit of God, truth and the wisdom to live an obedient, grateful and graced life.

Evening

The archer with time

as his arrow–has he broken

his strings that the rainbow

is so quiet over our village?

Let us stand, then, in the interval

of our wounding, till the silence

turn golden and love is

a moment eternally overflowing.

I'm not sure what Thomas would have made of social media. But I am certain beyond all doubt he would hate and fume and foam at the ubiquitous postings of sunset photographs, often edited by software to exaggerate, highlight, select and effectively recreate and improve what is one of nature's most consistent perfections. Such a private mind and soul as Thomas would be appalled at the promiscuity and shamelessness of the selfie, the illustrated reports of food eaten, the accumulation of trivia over years of our online story. And chief amongst the things that would ignite his ire to a white phosphorescence would be reproduced sunsets, digital images which for all their photographic quality and technical wizardry he would dismiss as no better than painting by numbers while blindfolded.

Sunsets are for watching, waiting, and wanting. The sunset communicates, during those moments and minutes of the daily dying of the sun, deep things to ponder, and awakens long hidden longings that come out of human woundedness and the instinct to worship. This short poem expresses, better than the camera, the spirituality of nature in which Thomas lost himself, and found himself. The rainbow is the sign of the covenant, a promise of mercy, a bow without the string to propel the arrow. But time is the arrow, and it wounds humanity with mortality, so that the dying of the sun each day is a reminder that each day's  passing is a sign of our own daily dying.

"Let us stand then, in the interval of our wounding…" That is both an act of faith and an attitude of worship. Time watching the sunset, and pondering its meaning is not time wasted, but time redeemed, in the golden moment when eternity intersects with these units of time measured by colour, light and silence. The paradox of a moment eternally overflowing is already resolved; not any moment, but this moment. Why? Because it is love that is the overflow, and the superfluity of love the signal and symbol of an eternity in which love is not only the raison d'etre, but the source of Being itself. In this poem, as in several others in this series, Thomas imagines eternity suffusing time; but here sunlight is pouring over the horizon, overarched by the rainbow of mercy, a landscape painted in light and shadow, benevolence and woundedness, a masterpiece of the Creator's originality, every day.

The photo, with apologies to R S Thomas, was taken on Brimmond Hill, at 3.30pm in mid-December.

 Migrants

He is that great void
we must enter, calling
to one another on our way
in the direction from which
he blows. What matter
if we should never arrive
to breed or to winter
in the climate of our conception?

Enough we have been given wings
and a needle in the mind
to respond to his bleak north.
There are times even at the Pole
when he, too, pauses in his withdrawal,
so that it is light there all night long.

The image of migrating geese is one which, for myself, immediately resonates with images, memories and moments of joy. Ornithology becomes ornitheology in these lines which chart the journey of prayer and pilgrimage through life, in a rhythm of movement and return embedded in the instincts by which migrant birds survive. The impetus to go North, the risks and losses and dangers of such a long journey, wings that beat to exhaustion and the uncertainty of feeding on the way, and that unerring sense of direction and directedness – all of these are the experience of this poet who prays, and this pray-er who writes poems about how hard it is to pray.

The characteristic realism all but falling over into pessimism is signalled in the surrendering question, "What matter if we should never arrive….? " Indeed arrival may suggest a completion that robs the search of further meaning, renders the quest both complete and annihilating of that inner drive by which the person praying is compelled towards the bleak north of the One who calls. Was Thomas thinking of the famous confession of Augustine, "Thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."

But the One who calls, and to whom the praying person is drawn into a long migrant journey, is not to be thought bound by our quest, presumed to be present and there at journey's end. The rewards or blessings of all our praying are not the reason for the journey of prayer; "enough we have wings and a needle in the mind" and the energy and will for the journey. Though "will" may sound too definite, too suggestive that prayer is an impetus born in us rather than an instinct summoned by grace. But once again Thomas is content with ambiguity, and using a frequent metaphor for presence speaks of the mercy of the one who "pauses in his withdrawal, so that it is light there all night long." This image of night illumined by non-withdrawing presence is one of the loveliest and most comforting in all his poems on prayer. This God who awaits the arrival of the migrant heart, guided by the needle in the mind towards that bleak north out of which the wind of the Spirt of God blows.

The photo was taken in January, near Banchory – migrating geese feeding while they can.