Living Wittily

Author: admin

  • This the power, of the cross

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    It was Dr Sheila Cassidy who made me start looking for the cross in unlikely places. While working at St Luke's Hospice she started noticing the cruciform image on windows, door panels, furniture joints. These were daily interruptions of her duties, bringing her mind back to the reason she was doing this kind of work, for love of Jesus who died for all humanity, and in whose resurrection is the hope of the world.

    Last night walking along Aberdeen beach, a long intentionally solitary walk beside the lapping waves of a receding tide, I stopped at one of the old encrusted wooden barriers. Just about my eye height, under 5 foot, I took this photo. The moment I saw the shape a whole set of connections started to flash alight. These rugged encrusted timbers are there to meet the waves of a sea that can be relentless, ferocious and destructive, as well as calm. This cross shaped barrier remains solidly there, as the tides come and go.

    This week I've walked alongside people who are suffering, and whose humanity and hopes are besieged by waves that come rolling in with relentless energy. Alongside a calm sea like this, Jesus walked after a busy and dangerous day when people wanted him to be a king, and didn't realise he already was a king, just not on their terms. And alongside such a sea he walked in early morning after his crucifixion, when he came looking for his friends, and found them becalmed and hungry. Even in my own life just now, this symbol of the love of God beyond telling, ruggedly made flesh in the gift of incarnate deity, tells a Gospel story encrusted with eternity and covered with the marks and realities of history, and reminds me, in all the encrusted realities of my own life, of a hymn about a cross towering o'er the wrecks of time, and another about the cross as refuge tried and sweet, and yet another about the place where sorrow and love flowed mingling down.

    It was dusk – and I took the picture with no thought of the camera setting, so this dark, wet, apparently immovable barrier against the dangers of a relentless sea, was for a fraction of a second, illuminated and bathed with light. I took time to pray for those going through their own experiences of what must at times feel like crucifixion….alzheimer's disease, cancer, depression, addiction, betrayal, rejection and that core deep loneliness that now and again we all feel and wonder why God has forsaken us….O cross, that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee….

     

  • Highlights of Last Week 2 – Graduations of Students and Prize Winning Animals

    Our students graduated last week, and I attended my last formal graduation on behalf of SBC. I have loved the way my story has woven together with so many other stories. The meta narrative of Christ and Church is itself textured by the stories of those who hear the call of Christ, who hear and heed, and who follow, even to College!

    My debt is unpayable to those who encouraged me to study, learn, think, pray, puzzle, proclaim, invest, commit, in other words give myself and my life to the service of Christ and the Gospel and the Church and the World. To have shared in the aspirations and dreams, struggles and successes, pains and gains of so many students has been privilege, pure and simple. Seeing them graduate each year brings such satisfaction, and a humble acknowledgement of God's grace, as these same students are transformed by the renewing of their minds, and will go on in that same grace to prove the perfect will of God. Or so we pray. And playing some small part in that inner reorientation of thought, passion and will is itself a gift more expensive than any of us could afford, and yet one more graced touch of God.

    So here are this year's Graduates

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     Was going to edit this one, but the two faces at the bottom look so surprised and delighted they add so much to the celebration!!

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    Oh, and here's Ian, the new Principal, resplendent in St Andrew's Doctoral robes and a bow tie that if it starts revolving fast will propel him upwards :))

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    Then on Saturday there was the Annual Agricultural Jamboree called the Echt Show. I know – Romeo and Juilet at PACE, prestigous lecture at UWS, Graduations in Coats Memorial – culture and education, but a balanced life needs to get its hands dirty. So, remembering many a visit to the Royal Highland Show at Ingleston, we took in the local display of tractors, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, baking, falconry, jam making, flower arranging – hey, I know, some of these are only borderline agricultural – anyway, it was a good way to spend a sunny Saturday in rural Aberdeenshire.

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    A wee Hielan coo!

     

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     My dad ploughed with one of these!

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    The wee one dropped in from Narnia.

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    An Indian Eagle Owl.

  • Pastoral Care, Dementia and the Memory of Love

    My friend is a great fan of Duke Ellington. Naturally, he is an amateur expert on Jazz, and all things Ellington. He first introduced me to the Sacred Concerts

    Visiting him now, this good old friend, over the last few years, has increasingly been affected by alzheimer's disease. Pastoral care and visiting are now important occasions of kenosis, of self-forgetful love. The fragility and uncertainty of communication, not knowing whether we are recognised at any level registering within the heart and mind  of my friend; then, our friend's overwhelming tiredness of body and mind, and the consequent and apparent vacancy of a face well lined with the wrinkles and muscle movement of tens of thousands of past smiles.

    There is conversation all around the day room; some of it is the banter of carer and cared for; some is the talk of those still able to build the scaffolding of meaning, to keep the conduits of communication alive with words and memories and shared experience.

    And then, some is the one way conversation of a lover with the beloved, a child with the parent, a friend with a lifelong friend, a husband or wife with the one who has shared decades of a life that had become symbiotic, a two way traffic journey of love, companionship and conscious commitment to see life together. It is this dynamic but complex relationship between human love and dementia that raise deep and searching questions about who we are in relation to those we love, and who they are in relation to us.

    Because now for the lover who comes to visit the beloved one, to care and to be with this so long loved person, all this shared life story seems to have become the responsibility of the one; and a life once shared is now constricted after all these years, to singleness of intent, when only one is left to sustain the two way covenant and having to do so alone. Shared imagination and hopefulness are now the responsibility of the one in whom those precious human gifts are still at the service of this uniquely crafted human relationship.

    And then there is the remembering of the one and the not remembering of the other. Memory is fading, memory, that precious essential component of personality and character. Memory is failing or failed, and previously vivid pictures are now gray, ambiguous, perhaps even blank for all we know. Memory, where resides the plot and purpose and repository of the unique story of all that has been for these two people, slips into confusion and eventual emptiness. Remembering too becomes the willingly borne burden of the one, in whose memory the other lives, and in whom their identity retains definite and cherished existence. These are burdens hard to bear, and requiring pastoral care that combines the delicacy of a neurosurgeon touching raw nerves, and the faithfulness and courage to be there in the anger, anguish and bereavement of a lover forgotten by the beloved.

    Visiting a unit which specialises in the care of people with dementia, therefore, requires a deep kenosis of the spirit. Our competence as communicators, and our training in saying the right thing, are stripped of much of their effectiveness, Our dependence on the usual ways of relating through touch, eye contact, sound of voice and particularly the currency of words, concepts, and ideas, has to be abandoned, because with this person, at this time and in this place, much more is required of us.

    Oh yes, words still matter; the speaking voice remains an essential reaching out to the other; and eye contact, touch and gesture retain their value as gifts of the self to the other. But without the comfort of knowing that the beloved other understands, will respond,  will reward us with recognition, acknowledgement, and those exchanges that enrich, enhance and confirm our relationship. This is loving with no thought of reward; this is casting the bread of our caring upon the waters with no promise whatsoever that they will return to us.

    The great prayer of Ignatius Loyola, wih minimal adjustments, can be a useful prayer which we say before going to visit in a unit dedicated to caring for people with dementia.

    Teach us, good Lord, to serve these your children, as they deserve;

    To give, and not to count the cost,

    to speak and not to heed the empty silences,

    to toil at being present, and not to seek for rest,

    to labour with tireless heart, and not to ask for any reward,

    save that of knowing that to these your children,

    we are conduits of your love, and bringers of your Presence.

    Amen  

  • Highlights of the Week. 1. The Lecture and the Love Story.

    It's been a rich and fun few days. Prestigious lecture, student graduations, Romeo and Juliet and a day in Aberdeenshire at the Echt Show. In this post, the lecture and the Love Story.

    First, the Lecture. Former Lord Advocate and Chamncellor of the University of the West of Scotland, Dame Elish Angioli, delivered the Brough Lecture in the University of the West of Scotland. She spoke with expert familiarity about Women and Justice in Scotland: Three Perspectives. Even those who reckon they know a bit about the Scottish Justice system, and about women in relation to justice, crime and society, were left in no doubt, we don't know enough, think enough and at times seem not to care enough. I'll come back to some of her content in a later post; but there are few better spent hours in my life this past year than the two spent listening and learning to a woman who combines rapier intelligence,  authoritiative experience, accumulated wisdom, critical compassion and that important strand of the Scottish Enlightenment, common sense.

    Then there was the Love Story on Thursday evening. The picture is from Twitter. The contagious energy, unselfish commitment, up for it gutsiness, line learning discipline, musical know how and uninhibited belief in what they do makes the PACE performance therapeutic enough to want to bottle it and take some away. I loved it, and here's the thing – these young folk made me want to go and get my Arden copy out the back of the bookshelf and read it again through the exegetical lens of young passionate West of Scotland voices.

    After the show we went to a local good place for Italian ice cream (chocolate and vanilla) and cappuccino – hey, come on, it was Romeo and Juliet after all. Paying the bill I told our table service person where we'd been, and said the starring couple had died brilliantly. 'Oh that's the best bit", she enthused. She reckoned the better they died the better we cried! Love it, that universalisation of the human tragedy of all consuming love frustrated by adamantine circumstance and human misunderstanding!!

    Occasions like these, lecture and love story, help explain why I love the West of Scotland, its University and its folk. And why, living in the North East, I'll still be doon the road now and then to top up my accent!

    Tomorrow pics of Graduation and some of the main participants at the Echt (agricultural) Show.

  • Gaza again: what is a Christian perspective on the slaughter of the innocents on both sides of a concrete wall of hate?

    I am sick and tired of this. I did a search for Gaza on my previous blog posts since I started in 2007 and found several posts in which I tried to express outrage, sorrow, hunger for peace, perplexity, compassion. You try to be fair, to see both sides; you know that rockets into Israel will bring missiles and tanks intyo Gaza; you try to understand the mentality of a people whose own natioanl tragedies have been about overwhelming power harnessed to their destruction, about the ghettoisation of the enemy. And against this the recent background of three Israeli teenagers and the burning alive of a Palestinian teenager, allegedly as revenge.

    Once again what is happening to the people of Gaza befalls them because of who they are, where they are. There are few effective voices speaking on their behalf to their neighbour who behaves without proportionality, kills civilians with impunity, calls it a tragedy and continues more of the same. Criticism of Israeli military action is muted for fear it will be undetrstood as anti-Jewish; not anti-semitic, the Palestinian people are also Semite people. And that obscene concrete dividing wall of hostility stands as a negation of every Palestinian hope, and as an affirmation of every Israeli citizen's fears. 

    When I pray Kyrie Eleison, I havn't a clue what mercy would look like between militant haters. When I pray for peace, I realise it presupposes justice, but whose justice, and what has to happen first? And what do I do with my anger, the inward pull towards demonising the powerful and overlooking the power of a militant enemy to provoke disproportionate retaliation, and the death of the innocent in order to further the cause of, well, justice apparently. |The US now wants to broker a cease-fire – why wait till around 100 Palestinian fatalities are recorded, most of them civilians and many children?

    I'm sick and tired of this. No that isn't a loss of hope; but it is an honest description of the weariness and wariness I feel when once again the cycle of violence is given righteous status on both sides, and the cost is borne by the innocent.

  • Time for a Poem 1. Mindful, by Mary Oliver

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    Time for a poem, which speaks for itself.

    Have a good (mindful) day all you bloggers.

    Mindful by Mary Oliver

    Everyday 
        I see or hear
           something
              that more or less

    kills me
        with delight,
           that leaves me
              like a needle

    in the haystack
        of light.
           It was what I was born for —
              to look, to listen,

    to lose myself
        inside this soft world —
           to instruct myself
              over and over

    in joy,
        and acclamation.
           Nor am I talking
              about the exceptional,

    the fearful, the dreadful,
        the very extravagant —
           but of the ordinary,
              the common, the very drab,

    the daily presentations.
        Oh, good scholar,
           I say to myself,
              how can you help

    but grow wise
        with such teachings
           as these —
              the untrimmable light

    of the world,
        the ocean’s shine,
           the prayers that are made
              out of grass?

    The photo was taken in Glen Dye, on a June day, when it was hard not to be mindful of the beauty, fragility and sheer isness of life.

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  • When the Preacher Takes his Stand and Falls Anyway

    I was preaching yesterday with some of the good Baptist folk up the Coast.

    After the service discovered talking, laughter and post service banter and not paying attention to direction comes at a cost to personal pride.

    Not having eyes in the back of my head didn't see the raised step behind me while walking backwards fully engaged in exchange of views on Dave Crowder's new CD Give us Rest.

    Preacher falls backwards, backside first, and his impetus enables him to almost complete a backward roll, with legs waving asymmetrically like an exercise class gone wrong.

    Great concern by the remaining congregation wondering if this is the Preacher demonstrating Dave Crowder's new CD Give us Rest!

    Preacher gets up quickly assuring the quick on the scene pastoral care team he is perfectly OK.

    Preacher explains he is quite used to this kind of thing as it happens to him nearly every Friday night.

    Detects puzzlement, laughter now combined with raised eyebrows and renewed pastoral concern for a fallen preacher.

    Quickly explains, plays five a side football on Friday nights and sometimes forgets he isn't Lionel Messi.

    Aaahhhh! That's all right then!

    Glad I wasn't preaching on "Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall…" 

     

  • The Things You Find in a Charity Shop 🙂

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    A multi-purpose floor standing tapestry frame. That's what it's called. And it ususally costs anything from  £70 up to the deluxe at £120 or more. This one is nearer the bottom of that range, but it does all I need it to do. It can hold any of my other four frames. It allows you to use both hands in stitching, one behind, one in front. Its adjustments make it fit any seat; it's portable, lightweight and made with good wood and substantial wing screws. What more could a man want, eh?

    I concede it looks like a wooden skeletal robot. And it could become a pretentious piece of interior design with a part worked tapestry on display to impress whoever. The good news is I bought it this morning in my favourite charity shop for £10, and it's virtually unused. I've a couple of larger pieces I want to work on so I'm hoping it will make the working easier and a little quicker. I don't mind the slow, time expensive work of creating something that has its own integrity. 

    Meantime one of my good friends has reminded me there's more to life than tapestry, and while my recent experiments in using colour, shape and image to express theology and explore textual and exegetical possibilities is all very well, it;s time I got writing again. As it says somewhere, or ought to, in the book of Proverbs, "Aye OK! Gie's peace!" But he's right – and part of my sabbatical time in July to August will be creating from a different kind of frame. I want to bring together much of my recent research, teaching and reflection into what I hope will be a publishable volume. So I will try to create a theological framework within which to work out a viable book proposal focusing on Trinitarian theology, kenosis, and the christian community as embodied pastoral care.     

  • Losing Ourselves because We’ve No Time or Space to Find Ourselves

    In 1968 in his book Faith and Violence, Thomas Merton wrote about the news as a stimulant,an indulgence bordering on addiction. What would he make of the News Channels and the pervasive news chatter of the cyber world?

    I have watched TV twice in my life. I am frankly not terribly interested in TV anyway. Certainly I do not pretend that by simply refusing to keep up with the latest news I am therefore unaffected by what goes on, or free of it all. Certainly events happen and they affect me as they do other people. It is important for me to know about them too: but I refrain from trying to know them in their fresh condition as “news.” When they reach me they have become slightly stale. I eat the same tragedies as others, but in the form of tasteless crusts. The news reaches me in the long run through books and magazines, and no longer as a stimulant. Living without news is like living without cigarettes (another peculiarity of the monastic life). The need for this habitual indulgence quickly disappears. So, when you hear news without the “need” to hear it, it treats you differently. And you treat it differently too.

    One of the marks of a prophet is prescience, knowing before it happens where events, trends and cultural habits will lead. Merton was deeply suspicious of media generated information, interpretation and opinions clothed with spurious authority. He worried about distortions of perspective by the sheer volume of news; he feared that historical consciousness was threatened with death by bloating; and he was never the naive monk cloistered in secluded ignorance of the world:

    " in addition to the sheer volume of information there is the even more portentous  fact of falsification and misinformation by which those in power are often completely intent not only on misleading others but even on convincing themselves that their own lies are 'historical truth'". 

    Monet-water-lily-pond-NG4240-fmAnd all that before the computer, the worldwide web, the mobile phone, Ipad, tablet and all other forms of connectivity which now contribute to the deluge of information that flows over and around us, denying time and space and unclaimed energy for analysis, critical distance, ethical and political reflection and considered thought and judgement.

    "Where is the life we have lost in living", Eliot asked. Another poet complained, "What is this life if full of care, we have not time to stand and stare"….. and wonder, and think, and dream, and remember, and be grateful, and begin to own the experience that is our life. When Jesus said, citing an older translation, "Come ye apart and rest awhile", he said it to people who were in danger of coming apart, to troubled spirits, torn apart by conflicting loyalties, minds and emotions over-stimulated and under nourished. 

    May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude has the important observation that one of the great frustrations of human contentment is 'unassimilated experience', when so much happens, and so quickly, we have no time to process it, understand it, adjust to it. So we spend our lives wrongfooted by the remorseless flow of a frantic world diluting our own experience, watering down the rich potential of an inner life that is responsive to and nourished by something other than external stimuli, mostly uninvited. 

    I got the Merton quotations from the smallest book in my library, my wee Pocket Merton, 7cmx11x1.5 cm of wisdom from a man who died 55 years ago.

  • The Cycle of Revenge in Jerusalem and the Murder of Our Young People

    "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem"

    "You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a youth for a youth…."

    Muhammad Abu Khdair 16,

    Naftali Frankel, 16,

    Gilad Shaer 16, 

    Eyal Yifrach, 19,

    I didn't know the names of these four young people until the last few days.Now I have seen photos of their faces, and of their anguished families, and however distant, they are the faces of my family and children of my Father, they are our young people. What happens in communities who begin to believe that a youth for a youth is a thinkable option, a solution to anything? The murder of these young men diminishes us all as human beings. I feel depleted, bereaved, personally cheated of the blessing of four young people who embody hope for a more human future.

    The waste of so much potential and goodness is a blasphemy against the God we confess, whether we are Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Alongside the atheism of such acts is another attitude which requires its own discourse, Ahumanism. I'm not sure the word exists, but I use it to describe attitudes and actions that require a stronger word that inhuman. I define Ahumanism as a view of the world and of others that denies to any person their humanity, destroys human community by the evil ingenuity of hate inspired and hate inspiring violence, and revels in the shedding of blood as the discourse of despair.

    In protest, and in prayer I name these four young people; as a follower of Jesus, I pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And while I believe, passionately believe, "Blessed are the peacemakers" and that such are to be "called the children of God", I pray that such faith will be given grace to persist in the face of such Ahumanity as the murder of our young people to secure any human goal, political, religious, tribal or personal.

    Of such murderers I try to pray, and struggle to pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do…"

    For these young people and their families, I pray sharing their tears, may their pain and rage, their anguish and despair, their wailing and tears, become streams in the desert and the hope of blossom in the wilderness.

    All three faiths honour Isaiah and his vision of light for the nations. May the loss of these for young men be impetus for peace in Jerusalem. 

    Muhammad Abu Khdair 16,

    Naftali Frankel, 16,

    Gilad Shaer 16, 

    Eyal Yifrach, 19,