Author: admin

Anatomy of a Disappearance, Hisham Matar. The Power of Story.

This is not review; it's more a meditation on the power of story in our lives. For a while I've found it hard to read a novel. It wasn't a deliberate evasion of fiction which I've always enjoyed, and just as importantly, learned from. Story is the way we think through our lives, encounter other possible selves, explore from both distance and nearness, the experience of others, and ask ourselves questions where it overlaps with our own, or diverges into territory we have never explored.

Anatomy of a Disappearance, by Hisham Matar, is a strange novel. I’m not sure what is to be assimilated as ‘lesson’ or ‘wisdom’; other than the recognition of complexity not only in our relationships with people, but in the mystery and experience of the people to whom we relate; and the puzzle all but insoluble, of our own selves, as that same complexity multiplied by our intermingled relatedness to all those others in our lives, for good or ill.

What is love? Does it change its forms as we grow and mature? Or is it us who change? How many kinds of human relationship are there in which we can still with confidence use the term ‘love’ as descriptor? Does love cause jealousy, or does the birth of jealousy kill love at source? As this story unfolded and the boy becomes a man, his mother dies, his father remarries the woman he wants for himself, then is discovered to have married her to secure her presence for his son, while he secretly loves and lives with the person he really wants to be with, but in the process his father then disappears as a kidnapped political dissident.

Emotional nuance, the dread and dream of desire, the embodiedness of love and yet the inadequacy of mere embodiedness to fully express it; the tension of father and son in this story; the ambivalence of stepmother and child growing into a man and the awakening of desire – all of these are beautifully portrayed in a story that describes the limitations which circumstance inevitably imposes on human love and experience, with resultant sadness, and inevitable if reluctant resignation, but which nevertheless, in the alchemy of human relatedness, enrich and change the protagonists.

And I guess in every human heart there is the intersection of these same fallibilities and possibilities. We love as we can. Occasionally we reach degrees of intimacy that truly satisfy, more often there is the restless attempt to understand, the yearing to build bridges, to reach out, but all the times the frustration of circumstance without and hesitations of confidence and trust within. I do wonder if Christian theology has often enough made allowances for the mismatch between love at its best and the human heart as it is; if our theology of love is adequate to the essential complexity of created being. And I wonder too if or when we might ever clearly understand and pay attention to the frightening precipice on which we all stand as we survey the world of people around us, with all of whom we share this mysterious potentiality that is our life from God, love as divine and human gift, divine grace and human longing, essential vocation and terrifying treasure which must not be wasted.

Psalm 51 with its profound anguish of guilt, shame and yet irrationally persistent hope of redemption, and 139 with its God hauntedness and its mixture of complaint and comfort in the omnipresence and omnisicience of God, are written from such a knowing heart. A heart familier with the confused complexity and inherent dignity in this bundle of longings and anxieties we call our humanity, and which nevertheless trust that God's mercy, grace and love can draw purpose and wsorth out of such a fankled existence.

This novel, with its tale of a son, a mother, a stepmother, a father, and the impact they have on each other at different stages of life, is a potent example of how story enables us to look with compassion on humanity, ours and others; and to be more patient and unjudging of human love in all its fallibility and mistakenness, because it is love in its mysterious reality that sounds the echo in our hearts that we are made in the image of God, and thus allows us to hear the footsteps of God in our lives.

9 March 2014
Renewing the Heart in Old Churches.

Just back from 4 days of a self-indulgent holiday break at Crieff Hydro, and feeling that life is good and God is to be thanked. Smudge was delighted to see us – she was at the feline equivalent of the Hydro, but happy to be back stomping around her own place.

Amongst the things to do in the rain – visit old churches. Fowlis Wester is as old as they come in Scotland. A church has been here since the 13th Century and this is one of my favourite quiet places, first discovered in 1972. Time has passed the village by, it used to be a thriving trade centre into the 19th century, and it's now hidden from the main road unless you go looking for it.

The leper squint is one of those generous concessions of a bygone age to those who were otherwise excluded. From this window, and this distance it was still possible for people with leprosy to see the Eucharist being performed, to hear the words, and thus to feel some kind of connectedness in a society where fear, ostracism and a primitive health and safety policy imposed a non-negotiable exclusion. I don't know how many other Scottish churches have a leper squint, this is the only one I've seen, sat beside and wondered about thos all but lost souls for whom this was a window into heaven and the hope that somewhere there was a love that would ransom, heal, restore and forgive.

Leaving the church the sun came out and a glance across the graveyard the snowdrops were astonishingly white against the greys and greens of granite, grass, moss, lichen, the juxtaposition of mortality and eternity, life's promise contradicting death's certainty.

Good places old churches, and old graveyards where the saints of yesterday rest in peace, while encouraging people like me to, as Jesus says, '"work while there is still daylight"!

Spring is here :))

7 March 2014
A Week of Prayer and Photos (5)

This photo was taken during a holiday in Alnwick and while visiting one of the big National Trust houses. In a week when Twelve Years a Slave won at the Oscars, it is a powerful representation of the beauty of a human being, and the ugly brutality of which human beings are capable in their pursuit of commercial prosperity and political dominance. I stood for a while here, feeling a deep shame for a history which includes the realities which underlie this work of art. What I find so moving about this bronze is that slavery is not condemned by portraying its cruelties and brutalities and disfigurements of the image of God – it is condemned because it puts chains on the freedom of this glorious human being to live with dignity, purpose and the fulfilments of love and life. The loveliness of the form contrasts with the sadness of the face, and those hellish chains. It is a morally irrefutable condemnation of oppression.

The prayer below gives expression to a powerful ecclesiology – by which I mean, Teresa of Avila takes seriously Paul's statement, 'you are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it'. Too often these words are reduced to mere metaphor, a grown up children's address on how the community is to work together, be co-ordinated, respect each other's contribution, never be dismissive of others as though we didn;t need them. All good and proper – but nowhere near the radical theology of Paul if that's all we think those words mean.

Christ is risen and present in the world by his Spirit; and where two or three gather together there He is in the midst. That isn't metaphor either – He really is present, and Paul's words carry an ontological force which means we are, yes, we are, the Body of Christ. We are In Christ, and Christ is in us; we are crucified with Christ and raised with Him as children of God. All of this Teresa understands, and this famous prayer-poem succinctly reminds us of what that means. One of the questions our severely practical and pragmatic culture likes to ask about anything not covered in the latest book for dummies is, "Yes, but tell me what that looks like"

"You are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it".

"Yes Paul, but tell us what would that look like?"

This is Teresa's answer:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

no eyes but yours

no hands but yours,

no feet but yours,,

Yours are the eyes through which is to look out

Christ’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;

Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

……………

Yes. And the bronze statue above is a potent reminder of precisely what it is Christ calls us to oppose with our bodies, and to generate in the world compassion, goodness and blessing in His name.

5 March 2014
A Week of Prayer and Photos (4)

The photo was taken late in the day last Spring at Loch Skene, a couple of miles along the road. It was a swan convention, one of those moments when beauty all but forbids trying to make such a coincidence of loveliness into a digital memory. George Macleod's book of prayers, The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory, is one of the devotional treasures of the Scottish Kirk. These prayers are carefully crafted by one of the most practical mystics in the history of the Church of Scotland. The term mystic shouldn;t be interpreted as meaning vague, soft, evasive of the grit and grind of reality. As far as Macleod was concerned his mysticism was both otherworldly and this-worldly; because it is the awareness of that other tworld, and its proximity to the affairs of this worold that suffused his preaching and writing with a passionate sense of the closeness of the holy to all that we do. He famously described Iona as a 'thin place', a place where heaven and earth are separated by the thinnest of veils.

This man could sit on an Edinburgh pavement eating fish and chips with young lads he had bribed to come to church with the promise of a fish supper; he could galvanise unemployed tradesmen to come and work at the restoration of Iona Abbey and gift to countless seekers a place tome and feel and see and discover the presence of God in the beauty of creation; he could stand as a man in his nineties and deliver an impassioned plea to the General Assembly for a principled and unerring condemnation of nuclear weapons and the abhorrence of the doctrine of deterrence. From such a man comes this prayer, its tenderness and peaceableness with God's creation, all but palpable. Pray it, and enjoy it.

Invisible we see You, Christ above us.
With earthy eyes we see above us, clouds or sunshine, grey or bright.
But with the eye of faith we know you reign:
instinct in the sun ray
speaking in the storm,
warming and moving all creation, Christ above us.

We do not see all things subject unto You.
But we know that man is made to rise.
Already exalted, already honoured, even now our
citizenship is in heaven
Christ above us, invisible we see You.

Invisible we see You, Christ beneath us.
With earthly eyes we see beneath us stones and dust and dross,
fit subjects for the analyst’s table.
But with the eye of faith, we know You uphold.
In You all things consist and hang together:
the very atom is light energy
the grass is vibrant,
the rock pulsate.

All is in flux, turn but a stone and an angel moves.
Underneath are the everlasting arms.
Unknowable we know you, Christ beneath us.

3 March 2014
The Vladimir Icon and the Crisis in Ukraine

Google has the uncanny habit of odd juxtapositions of ideas and highly logical but bizarre search results. I was reading the biography of Dorothy Day; noticed she treasured her copy of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God. Decided to Google Vladimir Icon and came up with an utterly incongruous hit. I then went on to Amazon looking for a book that might have more information on the Vladimir Icon. I found Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, at £30 – £40 used.

But the next hit was this! Now there is an irony in the use of the word icon to describe the Russian President whose power has been shown to be ruthless, spiteful, brutal and pervasive in and beyond Russia. Especially is such a link incongruous when the Vladimir Icon is traditionally believed to have saved Moscow from enemies on numerous occasions, including in the 20th Century. So in Russian Christianity an Icon is a window on to God. But to push this and assert that in this Icon resides a power that shapes providence partially on behalf of the Russian nation, that's different. My own theological take on that development is skeptical, and I mean theologically doubtful to the point of dismissal – I do not believe in a God who mediates divine power through images in the interests of political, material, far less national interests.

Nevertheless. The subtitle of this book seems to suggest that Vladimir the President now has the role of the Vladimir Icon, saviour of Moscow, defender of the national interests and self-proclaimed strong man who will make Russia a world power again. And all this on the day when the Russian Parliament approved the deployment of soldiers into Crimea, and with no veto on their movement into the rest of Ukraine. The political complexities, ancient alliances and enmities, the history of betrayals and pay-offs, and the current uncertainties of geopolitical balance and counter-balance, make the Ukraine crisis an impossibly difficult collision of forces and grievances for Western nations to understand. Certainly I can claim no substantial knowledge of Ukrainian history.

But the danger signs are already glowing red, and what is needed is a Vladimir Icon which is not about the protection of narrow nationalist and ideological ambitions, but which portrays the vulnerable love between mother and child, between the infant Christ and Mary, between the Incarnate Son and the Theotokos, the God Bearer. The profoundly human snuggling of the infant into the neck and face of his mother is a masterpiece of religious communication – here is the incarnation, the Word made Flesh, the kenosis of God in Christ who did not count equality with God a thing to be clung to for dear life, but that which would be sacrificed in death for the saving of the world. The idea that such an icon could ever be aligned with military and geopolitical power games in which there is the real threat of war within, and perhaps beyond Ukraine, is one of the incongruities of a fallen world in which beauty and holiness are co-opted by the power brokers and corrupted into propaganda. Whatever power emanates from the Vladimir Icon, is divine only insofar as it provokes to peacemaking, calls secular power to account, subverts the rhetoric of national security as excuse for invasive expansion. Perhaps the most dangerous forms of idolatry is where men (it usually is men) take what is sacred and consecrate it to the exclusive service of their own dire projects.

May the tenderness of God, so vividly visible in this icon;

May the blatant lovingkindness of Christ and his Mother;

May the Word made Flesh, crucified, risen and present in our world;

Bring victory, not to those who are merely powerful,

But to those who seek justice, peace, and the chance to live.

1 March 2014
A week of Prayer and Photos (3)

The photo was taken this morning on Cairn O' Mount. Low cloud drifting across mountain moor, sunlit cloud and the line of the far horizon inviting into the unknown. This prayer by Thomas Merton likewise acknowledges mystery, trust and the mixture of obscurity and insight that is the essential tension of spirituality, the cloud of unknowing and sunlight epiphany.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton.

…………….

The integrity, honesty with self and radical trustfulness of this prayer have always moved me. The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton's naively brilliant autobiography, is a remarkable conversion story, written with an intensity of devotion which left the immature monk struggling for humility that wasn't put on. That humility and self-deprecation is all the more attractive and authentic for its tone of uncompromising naivete which would later mature into a knowing humility; and an honest self-knowing in which Merton recognised humility and self assertion as the two poles of a powerful personality, given over to grace yet true to itself in its longing for self-transcendence.

Merton has been a companion all my Christian life – often quirky, sometimes annoying, wisely critical, funny without malice, passionate about justice and peace, compassionately humane, a lover of solitude and silence and one who found written communication irresistible. His Thoughts in Solitude, New Seeds of Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer, volumes of letters, essays and journals, are a repository of monastic reflection in which the early Merton is undiscerningly positive, and the later Merton is lovingly critical. With all its faults The Seven Storey Mountain remains a remarkable story of a soul being saved, and then going on being saved, by a grace tougher than his own will. The prayer above comes from a heart that knows its limits, and trusts a love that has no limits.

1 March 2014
A Week of Prayer and Photos 2

You who are over us,

You who are one of us,

You who are also within us,

May all see you-in me also.

May I prepare the way for you,

May I thank you for all

that shall fall to my lot,

May I also not forget the needs of others.

Give me a pure heart-that I may see you.

A humble heart-that I may hear you,

A heart of love-that I may serve you,

A heart of faith-that I may abide in you. Amen.

Dag Hammarskold, Markings.

Humility before the transcendence of God, and intimacy that grows out of the soil of trust; that kind of balance is only achieved as a relationship grows and matures into mutual respective love; what Julian of Norwich called 'courtesy', a word she used often in referring to 'our courteous Lord'. Hammarksjold gently and unerringly taps the nails on the head when it comes to Christian prayer – to be available for God's service, grateful for God's gifts, alert to the needs of others so that prayer is an opening outwards of the heart. And then those four closing petitions for a heart worthy of the love of God, a precis of devotion to God.

I lent my well used and annotated Faber paperback of Markings to a friend who left it on a train. I now have a used Knopf Hardback which has untrimmed edges. I still like the odd book that is distinctive with its rough edges. But I miss that paperback which I bought in 1976 in John Smith's in Glasgow – now long gone, and sadly so.

Hammarskjold was to many an enigma, and yet a highly effective diplomat; a man of the world whose inner strength enabled a highly effective and influential active life in the world of affairs. I place Markings alongside Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, Moltmann's The Crucified God, Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense as amongst the 20th Century masterpieces of Christian reflection and committed, passionate discpleship.

The photo was taken on the road to Fort William in the autumn of last year. Sometimes an image is itself a kind of prayer – faith as surrender, trust and joy.

28 February 2014
A Week of Prayer and Photos 1

" 0. Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life,

until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,

and the busy world is hushed,

and the fever of life is over and our work is done.

Then of Thy mercy,

grant us a safe lodging,

and a holy rest and a peace at last

through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

(John Henry Newman)

…………………

Some versions omit 'this troublous life', maybe a concession to the saccharine tastes of commercialised kitsch on cards, posters and prints. Why would you pray such a prayer if life was untroublous?

The version I first learned used the phrase 'bring us to a safe harbour'. Does anyone else know that version – I'm happy with safe lodging, but I like the image of a safe harbour!

The photo is of the harbour in the village of Whitehills on the Moray coast. Quiet, safe, and a place of peace – in the summer, until the troublous sea gets started!

27 February 2014
R S Thomas: Mysticism and Meeting God on the Moor

We all meet God in our own way. There are moments of recognition that, brief as they are, touch those deepest longing we find it hard to name. In the encounter with God it is seldom clear whether we mee God or God meets us, and in any case, to make such a distinction risks missing the mystery that challenges all such certainties.

Years ago, I sat at coffee with a man who was recovering from a stroke. He was as unmystical as anyone I ever met. Down to earth, a man of good humoured shrewdness, lived for his family and worked hard all his life to m,ake things happen for them, his own unapologetic self-description, a working man. He spoke of his time as a telephone engineer in Orkney, laying cables across the moorland, and one day, unbidden, unexpected and unexplained, he was aware of the presence of God. And he knew. He knew he was known, and by Whom. His life, he said, was never the same after that. He remembered the cold wind, the cry of curlews, the unthreatening loneliness, and most of all the space.

We talked a while about God, moorland, the cry of moorland birds, and the way that emptiness can suddenly be filled with presence. We agreed that the cry of the curlew is one of the most beautiful sounds in Scotland, a combination of longing and the cry of the heart that opens us up to the incredible.

At such moments of opening, I believe in the democratisation of mysticism, and the need to stop categorising and defining what in the end is the interruption of our lives by the God who invests those rare moments with transcendent significance. So in one sense my friend was unmystical – in another sense this most practical of men was alert to the invasion of gift, responsive to the call of God, and spoke only in quiet humility of what had happened to him. God had happened to him – and it is the sharing of such spiritual reality that is one of the most persuasive encouragements for the rest of us. We too have had our moments.

The Moor

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.

There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.

26 February 2014
The Eloquent Face of Smudge

Smudge outside the window wondering why those obtuse and thick human beings don't realise it's flipping baltic out here – and would you move that useless ornamental tack cat off the window sill and let me in?!

23 February 2014