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When I listen to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony it does what it is supposed to do. It opens up my mind to the countryside, the noises, smells and sights, and the feel and touch of organic, growing living things. And if they are the right living things the taste as well. I've got tickets for the Choral 9th Symphony in November and looking forward to my first hearing of it live with the RSNO. The soundtrack of The King's Speech brilliantly captured the solemnity and occasion of a King making a speech to the nation at a pivotal point in history by playing the slow sonorous march of the 7th Symphony, which I listen to often in the car. The Fifth is for me in a class of its own; I guess it addresses directly the serious existentialist in all of us when we are confronted with some of life's unforeseen and least explicable tragedies.

But the 6th, the Pastoral has always been deeply evocative of my childhood,  and some of its happiest memories of the countryside and farm life which was my growing up environment for fourteen years.

Playing around in the hayshed aged about 9, discovering where Milky the cat had got to the past couple of weeks – in her den with 5 new kittens. By the way bales of hay, those square rectangles of tightly packed hay tied with two lengths of baler twine, were a recent innovation. I remember pitch forks and hay stooks, and helping rake the hay in the hayfield.

Building a grass and stone dam across the wee burn at the bottom of our garden and making a pond deep enough to get soaked in.

Finding a Yellow-hammer's nest and seeing for the first time the Scottish ornithological equivalent of a Faberge, tints of lilac with dark purple traces, the background colour fading to white at the bottom of the egg, three of them nestling in a feathered cup, contained in grass and moss, built into the centre of a hawthorn bush beside the River Nith.

Being chased by a newly calved cow protective of its calf, and showing why it's important for folk walking in fields in the country not to assume that the bull is the more dangerous animal.

Helping Jack Duncan the farmer catch sheep in the field so he could cut away parts of the foot affected by foot rot and put anti fungal powder on. While I chased the sheep he practiced using his wedge in the long grass, hitting the golf ball in fields where it sometimes landed in dung!

Climbing fir trees getting the sap on my hands and loving the smell of pine. I still do and every time I smell it I remember that wood where we climbed and not an H&E inspector in sight.

And for those of you who haven't heard this story – my brother and the farmer's son persuading me to go inside a tractor tyre (I was about 8 and wee at the time) which they proceeded to roll down the hill with me inside, – and people wonder why I see the world from such varied perspectives! It nearly ended in tragedy as a car coming along the road was on a collision course with my tractor tyre trajectory so they bounced me, still in the tyre, over the ditch and into a field where the momentum slowed enough for me to crawl out, wondering why someone was holding my ankles and spinning me face down to the grass.

When I play Beethoven's Pastoral there is as described, awakening of cheerful feelings in the country, as my own memories populate this 200 year old piece of music with images and reminiscences that at the time were formative for who I am. I love and respect animals, wild and domestic, I need to have time and space in the country, recognise most bird sounds and flights, and grieve at the ruining of land and the depredation of natural habitat for so many of the creatures who share our environment.

The strange thing is, I never heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony until I was in my 20's, but it has the power to take me in imagination and memory to some of my favourite places in my inner landscape, and in the places where I've lived.

The photo of me at the Echt Agricultural Show this year is a tribute to that summer evening I was rolled like an Orkney Cheese down an Ayrshire farm road!

The car radio is for me a sine qua non of travelling alone. Depending on my mood or the time of day it might be Radion 4 (serious and thoughtful), Radio Scotland ( local at times parochial though no worse for that), Classic FM (sometimes flipped to another channel when those ludicrously hyped up or condensed milk gelatinous adverts come on!), occasionally Northsound (even more parochial) and because a young friend set it on the pre-sets, Capital. Every now and then I hear a song, or some music I like and I go chasing a copy of it. Quite a number of CD's have been bought on the evidence of hearing one track on the radio – and some have been life enhancing and some were a waste of money to me and a source of money to the charity shops.

Sitting one day waiting for Sheila up a leafy suburban street in Aberdeen I sat watching a lesser spotted woodpecker doing its heid-baning thing on a tree trunk feet from the car. At the same time I was listening to Garrison Keillor, the Minnesota comedian talking about a new CD he had made with the American opera star Frederica Von Stade. The CD was a collection of songs about cats, all set to classic tunes from various genres, classical, country western, light opera. I loved it and bought it.  Here's the In and Out Song

I buy books. Anyone asked for a defining fact about JMG would be likely to mention books. After picking up a parcel from the post office I got into the car and sat for 5 minutes or more listening to the most haunting music I'd heard in a long time. It was Advent, and Classic FM were paying a then little known saxophonist, Christian Forshaw. The track was "Let all mortal flesh keep silence", and I have played that CD for 10 years and it still makes me stop, sit down, listen and get up amazed, and deeply satisfied that for those moments, I have worshipped, and heard again deep calling to deep. For me this ancient hymn, and this composition with saxophone, describe in sound the mystery and majesty of the Incarnation, and touch the deep chords of that miracle we call the Incarnation. Here's Forshaw's Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. 

The music of Keillor that evokes laughter and a love for the ridiculous, and the music of Forshaw that gives sound to profundity, longing and awe, accidentally heard, and now intentionally loved, listened to as two voices in the choir of my own experience. 

Julie offers a serious and important comment on the earlier post about the Nobel Peace Prize. My response is in the comment section, but there's more I wanted to think through – hence this post.

I think UKIP represents one of the most menacing political movements to emerge in the UK in the last century. Their taking of a Parliamentary seat gives them a credibility and status that will be persuasive to many who think as they do, whether covertly or openly. It would be a mistake to describe what is happening as mere protest voting. It is  far from that – some of the most toxic social attitudes to other people seen as "not us", are now being given political currency to spend in the marketplace of ideas. In my view the rise of UKIP requires from the Christian Church a prophetic response which does several things.

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the coming of God amongst all people, the visit of the Creator to creation as one in whose createdness all humanity is represented. Christian faith is founded upon the truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; that Christ died for all; that God is the Father after whom every family on earth has been named; that in heaven peoples from every tribe, tongue, people and nation will join in the worship of God. Racism, discrimination against those who are "not us", who are "other" and therefore to be feared, or excluded, or even hated – these are ways of being towards other people which simply inimical to Christian faith – and on clear theological and moral grounds.

Let me put this more starkly. I just received notification today of a new book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer about his time in Harlem. The title and sub title say most of what I want to point up.

Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus. Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance, R L Williams, Baylor University Press, 2014.

The title is I guess, deliberately provocative. Bonhoeffer grew into maturity in the years the Nazis were slowly and strategically co-opting support from the most disaffected, and by the time he was in New York anti-semitic, racist and power centralising measures were firmly in place in his homeland, Germany. Bonhoeffer knew about racism, and it can be argued that the extent of his surprise and pleasure at the spiritual authenticity and vitality he encountered amongst the black community in Harlem suggests he too had his own unexamined assumptions about the Christian experience, spiritual capacity and theological integrity of this black congregation he came to love, and they him. The impact of this time at Abyssinian Baptist Church on Bonhoeffer was far reaching, radical and by a lovely historical irony, has something to say to us about UKIP. First, here is part of the blurb that says what the book is about:

This Christianity included a Jesus who stands with the oppressed rather than joins the oppressors and a theology that challenges the way God can be used to underwrite a union of race and religion. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus argues that the black American narrative led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the truth that obedience to Jesus requires concrete historical action.

The rise of UKIP requires of the Christian church an ethic of resistance, a committed standing alongside the Christ who stands alongside those scapegoated and blamed, discriminated against and made the target of hostility. This Jesus Christ is unlikely to be wearing a suit, white shirt and tie, appealing to the lowest common political denominator, and cleverly attuned to disaffection, social anxiety and those latent racist attitudes that find scapegoats with the precision of laser guided ordinance. So. What would such an ethic of resistance look like? What do the followers of Jesus Christ do, say, think, and pray, in response to the rising popularity of a party whose foundation pillars are socially corrosive and ethically vacuous?

This is a start list – it can be added to. For me this is enough to be going on with as a check list of attitudes, actions and dispositions which are intentionally contrary to a UKIP agenda for our country and communities.

Hospitality and welcome as a way of life

Justice as solidarity with others blamed for 'the state we're in'

Compassion as caring enough to confront the name caller

Community as a place of inclusion rather than selection

Generosity and mutual sharing of cultural riches

Sacrifice as a willingness to bear the cost of protest and opposition

A clear and secure Christology – Jesus the friend of sinners, outcasts and "the other".

A Micah Mindset – acting justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with God.

It may be we are being forced back to biblical terminology – "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens." It's high time the Church started paying UKIP the compliment of taking it seriously.

There are mornings when the world seems to recover its sanity, its moral bearings, and a sense of proprtion and persepctive about what really matters.

The announcement that Malala Yousafzai and Khailish Satyarthi are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize makes this such a morning.

Malala has been at the forefront of the rights of children, and particularly gorlds and young women to be educated and enabled and empowered towards freedom. Khailish founded the movement Save the Childhood and has campaigned against the exploitation of children through slavery and trafficking. These are two remarkable people, whose humanity and commitment to peace and justice are inspirational in a culture where that word requires to be reclaimed on behalf of those who do extraordinary things. These two ordinary people are being honoured for their extraordinary achievements. They, and those like them, are the unanswerable riposte to the brutality and inhumanity of those whose pursuit of power, – economic, religious or military, is merely capable of degrading and diminishing their own humanity.

"The committee said it was important that a Muslim and a Hindu, a Pakistani and an Indian, had joined in what it called a common struggle for education and against extremism."

The world seems a brighter place today.

I spent three years immersed in the writings and life of James Denney. They were amonst the most rewarding and demanding years of my life. Not least because a part time PhD scheduled for 6 years was completed in three years, and eighteen months of that I was learning how to be Principal of the Scottish Baptist College. But the demanding and rewarding worked on another level too. I learned to recognise and read his neat absurdly confident prose – there are entire A4 sheets written in ink without a single scored out correction, even where the sentence is complex, the content powerfully argued and the clauses locked together with the precision of a gearbox engineer.

I enjoy reading all kinds of theology whether it's ancient or contemporary, paperback transient or hardback durable – I mean the theology not the binding. Denney's work in my view is hardback durable. One of the benefits of working at postgraduate level is you develop the confidence and construct the tools to disagree with the subject studied. Denney wasn't always right; like the rest of us he had his contextual bias and often unacknowledged presuppositions that obscured or skewed things a bit. But again and again Denney demonstrated then, and still does, an instinct for what lies at the centre of the Christian Gospel, and where therefore the Church's primary resources of wisdom, grace and inspiration lie.

Now and again I wonder about the likely conversations if we could collapse time and allow various theologians to talk to each other across the time barrier. What would denney make of Moltmann's The Crucified God with its radical proposals about the suffering of the Triune God? For that matter I'd like to be in the same room as P T Forsyth encountering the current explorations of a non violent atonement theology. Or listen to Augustine being allowed right of reply to Aquinas, Calvin, Warfield and Benedict xvi? And just to push things a bit more mischievously, what on earth would Jonathan Edwards make of John Piper's cherry picking of one of the most complex minds and impressive theological writings in Reformed Theology? 

But back to Denney. Here he is, not expounding a theory of atonement, but presenting an understanding of the death of Christ that answers to our deepest experiences of sin, redemption, forgiveness and grace.

"The love of Christ constrains us. He who has done so tremendous a thing as to take our death to Himself has established a claim upon our life. We are not ion the sphere of mystical union, of dying with Christ and living with Him; but in that of love transcendently shown, and of gratitude profoundly felt. But it will not be easy for any one to be grateful for Christ's death, especially with a gratitude which will acknowledge that his very life is Christ's, unless he reads the Cross in the sense that Christ there made the death of all men His own."  The Death of Christ. (Rev and Enlarged), 1911, pp. 102-3.

I did say Denney wasn't always right. His impatience with 'mystical union' and of participation in Christ arose from his suspicion of a claimed union that was not essentially ethical, and transformative. By temperament he was no mystic and had little time for a Christianity founded on the mystic way, rather than on the reckless gratitude of the forgiven sinner. But where the priority of the person and work of Christ is acknowledged, it needn't be either or; precisely that participation in Christ is the gift of a grace that saves in union with Christ and is expressed in the kind of gratitude which Paul describes as being "crucified with Christ and yet living by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. 

This post doesn't have a photo. At our local Westhill shopping centre the developers are in and the mature trees surrounding the shopping centre have been cut down, reduced to wood chip and the roots pulled out. For good measure the huge rocks that were part of the landscape have been hauled aside, so hundreds of square metres of woodcover and landscape garden are now a heap of roots, woodchip, piles of stripped soil. This eyesore will be replaced by some extra shops,and a slip road into the enlarged car park.

That's progress and in a growing town makes sense – but only a certain kind of sense. This is a community built around green areas, with generous provision of tree and shrub cover, and therefore a rich and diverse wildlife and flora. My inner feeling looking at this scarring of landscape reminded me of Hopkins' poem in response to the hacking down of a stand of poplars he thought of as creature companions. I guess I know a wee bit how he felt.

Yes I'll use the shopping centre. I may even come to appreciate the new shops. But at the moment mature sycamores felled in their autumn colours, some mountain ash with their rowan berries and a number of scotch pines all planted in the 19 60's seem like a heavy proce to pay – again. Becasuse this isn;t the only place such developments happen. I resent the word development being used for a policy that seems at least as retrogressive as progressive, and which undervalues the loss to a community of so much natural life sustaining landscape. 

Binsey Poplars, Gerard Manley Hopkins

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.