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Here's one of the things that make a Bible commentary the real thing. Scot McKnight has written a superb commentary on James – I hesitate to say the best because there are several other very good ones that do different things, or do what he does differently.

A big question is what kind of document is James? Calling it a letter or epistle or sermon or homily doesn't quite describe the tone, contents and assumed audience of this New Testament book – even the word book seems a misnomer. So McKnight asks the question, what is a letter intended to do, and he quotes some of the words of Seneca when he was accused of writing cafrelessly and informally:

"Now who talks carefully unless he also desires to talk affectedly? I prefer that my letters should be just what my conversation would be if you and I were sitting in one another's company or taking walks together – spontaneous and easy….If it were possible I should prefer to show, rather than speak, my feelings."

So, through Seneca, McKnight gives us the handle on this letter of James:

James is speaking, sometimes forthrightly and prophetically and other times more didactically, as if he were in the recipients' presence speaking to them. The letter is not an abstract "epistle" designed for posterity or intellectual reputation. It is a gritty in your face pastoral letter zippered up at times with some heated rhetoric" (61)

Reading James as a 21st Century Western middle aged white male kind of removes me from the immediacy of a relationship between James and those who would have heard his voice not only in the words but in the tone and the history of the relationship they shared. McKnight's suggestion is very helpful, especially as a caution when we try to over-exegete what at times is a Christian leader's exasperation or anxiety, or annoyance, or sadness or genuine anger. Students of James have always known the practical, in your face, this is what being a Christian sounds and looks like approach of James.

McKnight sees no compelling reason to deny that the author was, as tradition affirms, the brother of Jesus. And I wonder if there are memories and echoes of his brother's actions and words in his words, "Religion that is pure and undefiled is  this: care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." Compassion and purity, mercy and single-minded faithfulness to God. Not for James the world-rejecting ethic; he is more interested in followers of Jesus being themselves the evidence of God's faithful mercy.   

The photo is of a sparrow hawk which flew into our patio doors and knocked itself out. It flew away a minute or two later with a headache, but posed long enough for a selfie!

In Scotland this week a gamekeeper was convicted and jailed for trapping and killing a goshawk. Wildlife crime is a significant threat to a number of rare and protected species in Scotland, often committed by estate workers trying to protect stocks of game birds, or by those stealing eggs or young birds for the black market in hawks and falcons. Now it seems Dundee University have developed a forensic technique for recovering human fingerprints from flight feathers. One further weapon against those who persecute and threaten the viability of some of Scotland's finest and rarest wildlife.

In a separate news item the house sparrow, the starling and a cluster of field and garden birds are in serious decline across the country. I remember on the farms in childhood the common sight of starlings congregating on trees or under eaves to roost, preceded by the dusk starling flight ballet which is one of the wonders of bird watching. And the noise of a clutter of several dozen house sparrows in the hay shed was regular background music. But it seems modern houses are too green now; there aren't as many gaps and holes, fewer undisturbed outbuildings, there is much less noise free and menace free space and spaces.

In a piece of badly stretched eisegesis I hear the words of Jesus, "Consider the birds of the air", and wonder what we are doing to our world. There is an entire multi-million pound industry in wild bird food, evident enough at garden centres and supermarkets, so obviously some people consider the birds. We've just had the annual garden birdwatch and await statistics which help us understand what's happening to bird populations. The onward trend has been downwards year on year On the radio yesterday a Professor of Environmental Studies who specialises in the impact on the environment of wildlife populations and species extinction raised concerns that human beings seem oblivious to, or wilfully ignore the fact, that in destroying living space and pushing species to extinction we are permanently impoverishing the biosphere that is our planet.

So what would Scotland be like without starlings, sparrows, blackbirds, chaffinches, greenfinches, robins, blue, great, coal and long tailed tits, wrens, yellowhammers, thrushes, siskins? And in the fields curlews, lapwings, partridges, skylarks, snipes, wheatear? "Consider the birds of the air" – there's a sermon in those words that goes deeper than not worrying about clothes and food. Because here's the irony. In the Palestine of Jesus' time birds weren't threatened with extinction – otherwise Jesus wee illustration wouldn't have worked very well as an anxiety reducing image. "Consider the birds of the air, how the starlings have fallen by 90% in four decades….." No. Doesn't work as reassurance. 

My lifelong interest in birds goes back to earliest childhood, so my own perspective is now over 6 decades. I still thrill to the cry of a curlew, my favourite Scottish bird call, but it's a sound heard now only rarely, and in special places. In Ayrshire in the late 50's and 60's it was part of the usual accompaniment of a walk in a field. My inner life is still smiling from memories of roosting starlings, squabbling sparrows, diving lapwings by the score, soaring skylarks several to a field, and in every farm I lived on, 8 in 16 years, there were also pied wagtails, on several farms yellow wagtails, and in the burn, dippers.

It's hard to see the bird population ever recover from the human footprints trampled all over the countryside. So Jesus' words are increasingly difficult to take at face value in a world where we cheerfully or carelessly consider only ourselves. They need to be heard in a new context, as a reminder of creation care, stewardship of life, and human wisdom. Ornithology as natural theology, a theology of nature, ornitheology.

The word sentimental has variable currency value for most of us. Sentimentality is often portrayed as over-emotional responsiveness, the heart rules the head, and then our feelings get the better of us. The assumed better course is to be rational and cool, to look at things in the cold light of reality, to make decisions or responses based on evidence weighed. Most times that's fine. It works. Sentimentality has a lot to answer for. Much of what we hoard is kept not because it has inherent value or usefulness, but because of what it means to us. From pets to cars, from a favourite shirt to a crumpled photo, we value and hang on to stuff that nobody else would give house room. 

I've quite often caught myself out being sentimental. I have a shirt that is worn, frayed, is still just about wearable, but only about the house. On my computer is a photo of my mother when she was 21, it sits on my desktop and can be opened to full view with a click. In my desk drawer are assorted items of greater and lesser value if you mean what they cost, or what they could now be sold for. But their Ebay value isn't even irrelevant to me; it's a non question. These objets d'art are life-savers, gifts and fragments of kindness that have come my way over the years. They include a pewter dove, an olive wood cross, a cold chisel a century old that belonged to my great grandfather who was a miner, a letter opener and a beautifully lacquered and gold fountain pen. There are books on my shelves I won't read again, but I did once, and they were the right words at the right time. I could give them to a charity shop, a good few of them would sell for a good price, but I've not managed to be as ruthless and utilitarian with them during my periodic purges. See. Heart ruling head, feelings dictating, the emotional blackmail of the object!

There's a serious point to these meanderings. While sentimentality may be an undesirable trait, and may be a self-indulgent weakness for the emotional payload, it isn't always the cheap option of the immature. A much older word we might do well to recover is sensibility, and that word is about emotional intelligence, capacity for compassion, commitment to understanding and a predisposition to courtesy. Sentiment is about our inner sense of things, and is at its most significant precisely when it challenges the cool head, the decisions and actions that are dictated by rational thought in the cold light of day. Sentimentality is no worse and no better than rationality if either of them excludes the other as a way of knowing, of understanding the world and of encountering wisely and relating well to other human beings.

And here's the point of all this. The other day I realised my ring was loose on my right hand. It was an engagement gift from Sheila, and the carnelian stone had come out. No idea where it is, and unlikely to find it. So should it be repaired with a new stone, or not, or get another ring? Well another ring replaces a ring but the new ring will always be a mere reminder of the original, and will have none of the history, wear and tear and deep emotional connotations of the first. If I don't repair it or replace it I'm left with an unwearable piece of gold in the shape of a ring, with neither beauty nor usefulness.

If I get it repaired it will cost a fair amount of money. And you know what. The ring is worth it. Not in hard cash terms as gold. But for what it signifies; for its sentimental value. Economics don't come into it, so long as it can be afforded. Commonsense cutting of losses, or going for something more modern (Hah! I've had it long enough for it to be a very young antique!) – these thoughts, and others like them were dismissed by the jeweller who peered at the hallmark and at the stoneless ring and said, with what can only be described as a categorical imperatival tone, "You must get it repaired." And she wasn't talking about the gold value either. She was upholding deeper values, and implicating me the customer in what was really a conspiracy to outwit all the pragmatists, rationalists and economists. This ring isn't about anything else but two people's stories told as one story for over four decades. That ring fits my finger because it has worn itself into the slightly off-circular shape of a human finger impressing for years on soft gold.

Sentimentality at its best is the recognition that feelings are important indicators of truth. The fixing of my engagement ring is a statement to a culture where barcodes and bargains, best value and disposability are systemic. Some things are not disposable, best value doesn't always have to mean cheapest, and barcodes are for markets but not, ever, for those peopled events in our lives that are without price.     

It's now eight years since I wrote the first post in Living Wittily. I didn't know then I'd be doing it eight years later, and this would be post number 2,095! Over that time I've made friends with fellow bloggers, had thousands of comments and email exchanges, learned a lot, been welcome in other people's blog homes and overall have had a lot of fun. It has also provided a forum for learning and conversing, exploring ideas and sharing in a wider community of writers and thoughtful folk.

In the summer I dived into Facebook which is a very different form of social exchange and interchange. Occasionally I link this blog to Facebook if I think my friends will be interested, or the topic is important enough. By the way my friends on Facebook are just that – with only one or two exceptions I know all of them, have met nearly all of them, and quite a number of them are essential parts of my life's landscape. The word friend is too precise and precious to be discounted in the interests of impressing others or deluding myself with the vast number of "friends" I pretend to have. I refuse to devalue the word friend to the equivalent of a click on a button. And don't get me started on the relational oxymoron "unfriend"! 

Facebook has raised the practical point of whether to keep two platforms going though. It takes time, thought and energy to write regularly, in an open ended commitment, something worth reading. I refuse to have a blog that isn't updated and as current as it needs to be to connect with others, and be a genuine contribution to thinking carefully and living wittily. Would Living Wittily be missed if it quietly retired? Does there come a time when you've said enough, and sometimes more than enough? What does a Blog offer that Facebook doesn't? Why spend time writing stuff for what in the end is either a small audience? Or for those who come upon it by chance and by Google – I see these last two as equivalents if not synonymous!

All of this I've been pondering. Over the months when I've been active on Facebook and maintaining the presence of Living Wittily I've tried to keep the two as separate voices, but with consistency of tone and worldview. Yes, worldview! The way I see the world is through the wide angled lens of my Christian faith. Living Wittily is intentionally the voice of someone trying to faithfully follow Jesus and live under the rule of Christ. My take on current affairs, ethical tensions, human relationships, theological abseiling and philosophical snowboarding is self-consciously and joyfully Christian. Faith, friends, food, fun and filosophy isn't a bad life menu. My Facebook pagecomes out of the same worldview, the same voice, mostly touching on similar ways of seeing the world, and speaking out of the same community of faith, with ears, eyes, arms and heart open to this God-loved world of ours.

So Living Wittily will continue for a while yet. Until I start repeating myself. Until I start repeating myself.

Eight years ago I outlined what Living Wittily was about – a post that was really a manifesto. Having read it again, I still stick to it, and try to write out of it. You can read it here if you're interested.

The photos: Me at the Echt Agricultural Show; The fireworks at Aberdeen Beach; and the Colossian Tapestry, completed in 2014.

The Gossip Painting, Albert Edelfelt

If there's a tough discipline in listening well, there's an even more rigorous discipline in speaking well. No, not diction and articulation; not rhetorical power and verbal agility; not virtuoso semantics and linguistic improvisation. Speaking well is a different word game. I mean an ethic of speaking; the moral control and relational healthiness of our conversation; knowing when to speak and what to say, and when to be silent; and therefore a self-imposed quality control on our use of words.

Every year I choose a couple of Bible books to live with and engage with through the year, in the hope that deep and faithful engagement with the text will lead to a deep and faithful living of the text. This year it's the letter of James and the book of Ruth. More of Ruth later. But having just read James for the umpteenth time, it's hard to miss the fact that he has quite a lot to say about an ethical and spiritual underpinning of our use of words. In Chapter 3 James gets to the point, bluntly:         

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger (1.19)

No I can't claim to be never at fault in what I say. In fact most of the time, being realistic, I'd settle for being a bit less at fault in what I say. A major study of James is titled Speech Ethics in the Epistle of James, near 400 pages of careful and penetrating exegesis of a text which has 32 ethical imperatives, and 28 of them are to do with speech.

Probably just as well James didn't have to contend with Facebook, Twitter and Emails in first Century Palestine. It's a cultural commonplace that these three modern media formats give a freedom of speech that has enormous potential for good and for harm. An agreed and supported ethic of speaking, writing, and social communication is hard to achieve, and yet the audience for what we say is larger than ever, and more immediate across distance, than even we might have imagined twenty years ago. So it's an interesting piece of speculation, "What would the Wisdom writers of Proverbs and James have advised would be Tweeters and image constructing Facebook users, about the use and abuse of social media?" That I need to think about a bit more.

Which raised the idea that each Wednesday for a while I'll do a post on the wisdom of James. The letter that is, not yours truly.

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Listen. If someone says that one word to us it's a summons to pay attention. Listen. Whatever else you're thinking about stop it. Whatever you're doing drop it. And the way the word is said can often be a clue as well. Is it a conspiratorial, "Listen", with the promise of gossip. Is it in imperative mood because what is going to be said is important, significant, "Listen". Is it confidentiality, something sensitive and not to be said too loudly is about to be spoken.

There's a self- help and personal development industry out there training and teaching us to listen well, to listen carefully, to listen effectively by paying attention, silencing our inner chatter and stilling the instinctive urge to compete in the word games we  sometimes call conversation. Recently I've been thinking of the power implications of good listening, and of non listening. To listen to another is to be silent and to receive this other person;s presence rather than project my own. Not that listening is passive, far from it. It is an active form of being present, but in a self-effacing way. P T Forsyth says that in prayer "our egoism retires, and into the clearance there comes with our Father, our brother". I think that's also a good description of genuine listening, when our ego retires, leaves room, and into the space we invite our sister and brother, friend and colleague, enemy or stranger.

Listening is a disciplined and generous form of hospitality. To waste precious self-promoting time being silent, present and aware of this other person is one of the true gifts of the hospitable heart. By listening I affirm the reality, the significance and the sheer human thereness of this other person. I used the word 'waste' intentionally. To listen to another person is to relinquish my self-interest in this encounter, and to seek instead to spend time, to give attention and to offer care to this person who has, just this minute, walked into this time and this space in my life.

I read the Gospels not just to hear what Jesus says, but to hear what he doesn't say. Jesus listening is as impressive and redemptive as Jesus speaking. Time and time again, Jesus hears the heart, listens to the emotions, is attentive to the needs, is utterly and at times exhaustingly present to all kinds of folk; this woman at the well, that curiously pedantic Scribe Nicodemus, this heartbroken Roman soldier desperate to save his lassie, that woman flung like rubbish on the ground in front of him while they all picked up stones. And I want to be a better listener. Listening is a pre-requisite of compassion, understanding, love, kindness. Listening, paying attention, being present and available, requiring my ego to retire to make room for this other person, learning the key Christian discipline of shutting up – who would have thought Christian discipleship could soar or sink on the basis of intentional listening. But it does. To be Christlike is to listen, because through the Incarnation, the Passion and Death of Christ, God has listened to the profoundest depths and furthest reaches of our broken and beautiful humanity. When we listen, we love and give ourselves for the blessing, healing and wholeness of this person whose place in the world, right now, is beside me. 

I love Vermeer's Jesus in the Home of Martha and Mary. It's an interesting question who is speaking and who is listening; who is present to whom, paying attention to whom; whose inner voices are so loud they can't hear what's going on around them, or what's going on within the hearts of the others.