Living Wittily

Author: admin

  • A Wee Bit from A Prayer of George Macleod

    DSC00215

    God the Creator

    Thou hast changed us.

    Christ the Redeemer,

    Thou hast changed us.

    Holy Spirit the Binder,

    Thou dost keep us changed:

    Even as our lives are bound together in Thee.

    George F MacLeod, from The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory.

    As one trying hard to accomodate my books in a modest house, I have come to love slim books more than ever. Macleod's wee book of prayers is half a centimetre thick, and one of the gems of Scottish spirituality. I wouldn't part with it. He laboured over his prayers more than his sermons. There are prayers sketched on envelopes, on the back of utility bills, and even an occasional scrap of cereal packet – saved for the nation in the National Archives where his papers are held. They are holy fragments of a man's life, and even if Presbyterians don't do relics, and even less so us Baptists, these prayers, addresses, sermons and miscellaneous notes are amongst the treasures of the Kirk. I spent a couple of half days in Edin burgh going through them, and imagining this pipe clenching cleric hammering them out on a typewriter, or outlining them with a blunt pencil (making them a challenge to decipher), and sensing the spiritual passion of a man who made the vision of Iona more than a pipe dream.

    The book is still in print from Wild Goose, and available on Amazon.

  • And we complain at the cost of theological education – and sometimes at the inconvenience caused by some years of ministry formation.

    For students of Bonhoeffer yet another milestone is about to be passed. The English translation of volume 14 of Bonhoeffer's works is due to be released by the end of October. Between 1935 and 1937 Bonhoeffer was engaged in theological education and pastoral formation at the underground seminary in Finkenwalde. The slim book, Life Together, is as near a Rule for that Christian Community as he ever came to write. It is a passionate exposition of the disciplina arcana of a Christian pastoral spirituality resilient enough to resist the Nazification of German culture and the widespread collaborative capitulation of vast swathes of the German Church.

    This new volume gathers together for the first time Bible studies, sermons, lectures on pastoral theology and preaching, a huge collection of writing from the rapidly maturing Bonhoeffer who wrote at this time Life Together and Discipleship. At over 1250 pages I did wonder if it might come in two volumes – so I asked the good folk at Fortress – but no, it will be one very thick and heavy book. Cumbersome, but only in the sense that gold bricks are. I'm finishing off the other stuff I'm reading just now so that when this book is unloaded onto my desk there will be room for it, and time to join the seminary classes out of which came some of the most courageous pastors, many of whom would not survive the war.

  • A Week of Poems that “do it”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Sunday

    DSC00277

    Every Riven Thing

    God goes, belonging to every riven thing He's made
    Sing his being simply by being
    The thing it is:
    Stone and tree and sky,
    Man who sees and sings and wonders why

    God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing He's made,
    Means a storm of peace.
    Think of the atoms inside the stone.
    Think of the man who sits alone
    Trying to will himself into the stillness where

    God goes belonging. To every riven thing He's made
    There is given one shade
    Shaped exactly to the thing itself:
    Under the tree a darker tree;
    Under the man the only man to see

    God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
    The things that bring Him near,
    Made the mind that makes Him go.
    A part of what man knows,
    Apart from what man knows,

    God goes belonging to every riven thing He's made.

    Christian Wiman

    I've been reading Wiman for a few years now. This is a poem that needs little comment other than to hear the author read it here.

    This comes from an astonishing interview with Wiman recalling his life growing up in Texas. If you want to hear the full interview with Krista Tippett it's over here.

    As a taster of how this remarkable man's mind works, here's just one quote:

    I am convinced that the same God that might call me to sing of God at
    one time might call me at another to sing of godlessness. Sometimes when
    I think of all of this energy that's going on, all of these different
    people trying to find some way of naming and sharing their belief, I
    think it may be the case that God calls some people to unbelief in order
    that faith can take new forms.

    …………………………………………….

    The photo above was taken on Inverbervie beach – those smooth, sea shaped stones are amongst my favourite things in Scotland. I can happily meander along that rocky beach taking pleasure in the coulours, shapes, arrangement and sound of those stones being pushed and pulled by the waves. The phot below is of another of God's creatures who likes the same beach.


    DSC00265

  • A Week of Poems that “do it”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Saturday

    Rose tinted
    twilight;

    alert
    serenity, poised

    with effortless grace.

    Jim Gordon

    Yes haiku is poetry, and at least once this week I though I might be permitted a wee bit self indulgence and share one of my own Haiku!
    The photo was taken at Loch Skene this Spring during a long slow sunset. This time it isn't really the poem that "does it", its the combination of the poem and the picture, the memory of such a beautiful moment and its capture in words that in turn recall the memory.

    What is it about beauty that brings a lump to our throats and makes it hard to swallow? Then there's the deeper sense, that the power of beauty to apprehend us floods us with an inner joy and outer clarity so that we see, we pay attention and we glimpse that which is beyond us. There are few moments in our lives in which we more closely encounter truth, than those moments of clarity when unexpected beauty illumines our world, and our painful longings for goodness are strengthened from ideal into resolve. Such transforming moments of encounter with beauty, goodness and truth are what Aquinas understood as contemplative theololgy, when the three transcendentals of beauty, goodness and truth are integrated by love, experienced and expressed as a transformative trinity of human responsiveness to the Eternal Love that occasionally irupts and bathes all creation with radiant glory.

  • A Week of Poems That Do “It”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Friday

    Sunset sken

    EVENING, Emily Dickinson

    She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
    And leaves the shreds behind;
    Oh, housewife in the evening west,
    Come back, and dust the pond!

    You dropped a purple ravelling in,
    You dropped an amber thread;
    And now you've littered all the East
    With duds of emerald!

    And still she plies her spotted brooms,
    And still the aprons fly,
    Till brooms fade softly into stars –
    And then I come away.


    DSC00970

    I don't remember my first encounter with the strange beauty and enigmatic brevity of Emily Dickinson's poems. More than many others I've read, even favourite poems of hers read differently every time; they evade critical and even appreciative capture. If poems are capable of playing hard to get, then many of her poems do frustrate our desire to possess, our drive to understand, and refuse to pander to our insecurity pushing us to pin down meaning. What on earth does it 'mean' to say "Till brooms fade softly into stars" – and then you realise, that what it 'means' isnt the point. In six words she makes the transition from dusk to darkness, and the word 'softly' is hushed with reassuring gentleness. It isn't too speculative to say this poem is informed by witnessing hundreds of performances by "the housewife in the evening west".

    I am ridiculously fond of fudge with stem ginger, covered in dark chocolate. The collision of flavours and richness of each slice means you don't eat it like sweeties! A bar of this connoiseur's confection lasts me a month (it's quite a big bar though). Likewise Dickinson's poems – hers is a book on my desk and I seldom read more than one or two poems at a time. What a waste of taste, sensation and anticipation to sit down and devour them without lingering over the sheer joy of sampling each poem. Aye, chocolate covered ginger fudge, and Emily Dickinson's poems – you could do worse than enjoy both, together.

    The first photo was taken from my study window; the second from a layby near Sherrifmuir looking north west.

  • A Week of Poems That Do “It”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Thursday

    DSC00388

    Ode To Autumn

    1.
    Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
            Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
        Conspiring with him how to load and bless
            With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
        To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
            And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
              To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
            With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
        And still more, later flowers for the bees,
      Until they think warm days will never cease,
              For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

    2.
      Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
          Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
      Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
          Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
      Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
          Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
              Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
      And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
          Steady thy laden head across a brook;
          Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
              Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

    3.
      Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
          Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
      While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
          And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
      Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
          Among the river sallows, borne aloft
              Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
      And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
          Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
          The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
              And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

                                                                                  John Keats
    The best time to read this is just after listening to Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Autumn movement from his Seasons suite, after which have at least three Victoria plums followed by oatcakes with Ayrshire cheese and pear chutney, then a large pancake with butter and bramble and crab apple jelly, at an open window listening to the migrating geese honking their way south. That's about as devotional as this post gets today! Autumn – love it.
    The photo at the top is of a straw swiss roll taken from the field a mile away. The small acer is years old and last winter gave it a hard time. It's still spectacular at this time of the year – for about 5 days.

    DSC01660 (1)



  • A Week of Poems That Do “It”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Wednesday

    DSC01654

    Favourite poems sometimes have complex pedigrees. The prayer of thanksgiving by Simon in The Wisdom 0f Sirach 50.22-24 was the inspiration for Martin Rinkart to write the German Hymn Nun Danket Alle Gott. This was translated by Catherine Winkworth as  Now Thank We All Our God, the version printed below. Incidentally that supposedly sweet tempered, gentle Anglican and spiritual director, Evelyn Underhill, was less than impressed with Winkworth's translations of the German Mystics, referring to her as 'wicked Winkworth'. But whatever her shortcomings as translator, she produced a rock solid hymn of praise and thanksgiving adequate to our deepest and simplest theology. Karl Barth was guilty of writing some of the deepest and simplest theology in the history of the Church, and the hymn below was one of his favourites, and its middle verse a personal prayer credo – one which I'm happy to sign up to myself.

    The photo was taken in August – Smudge is a crypto-Barthian in her spare time.

    Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,

    Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;

    Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way

    With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.


    O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,

    With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;

    And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;

    And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!


    All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;

    The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;

    The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;

    For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

    Martin Rinkart (1586-1649)

  • A Week of Poems That Do “It”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Tuesday

    DSC01619

    I took this photo sitting looking across from Brechin towards the coast on an August evening. The moon drifted to and fro between the clouds, or so it seemed. The tracks of the tractor across the cornfield brought a sense of peaceful waiting for harvest, under a harvest moon. Amongst the pleasures of taking photographs is the required reduction of pace, the suspending of other agendas, and the deliberate intention to observe rather than glimpse, and to take in rather than pass by at the maximum allowed speed limit.

    By contrast there is the conflict between life pace and life peace, the contrast between rush and rest, and the impoverishment to our view of the world and ourselves if we only ever glance and seldom gaze. I love Hopkins poem because he is realistic about the elusiveness of peace, and the illusion of ever thinking life can consist of rest. Even God rested only after 6 days of creative exertion. But Hopkins is no pietist merely craving inner calm and long term serenity. He recognises that conflict within and conflict without are inevitable because essential in lives that are to grow and reach out beyond the mere interests of the self. He doesn't use the word affliction in this poem, but it is a profoundly pastoral response to suffering, loss and the absence of peace. "Patience exquisite" is the fruit of such peacelessness – and the coming of the Dove of peace, the Holy Spirit, is not to speak words of pointless comfort, or even articulated love, but more importantly to sit and brood. As at the Creation the Holy Spirit brooded upon the waters and God's creative word rang out, so upon the experiences of unpeace, the Spirit sits and broods to coax new life into being. 

    PEACE, G M Hopkins

    When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
    Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
    When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
    To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
    That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
    Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

    O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
    Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
    That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
    He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
    He comes to brood and sit.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins

  • A Week of Poems That Do “It”, Whatever “It” Might Be – Monday

    Time for a mary Oliver poem. In fact this week I'll post a poem a day from my favourite poets. Hard to reduce them to seven, and I wouldn't want to say that these this week are the top seven – but they are seven I read often, sometimes deeply, and seldom disappointingly. I'll indulge myself by combining the poems with a photo – not because the photo holds a candle to the poem, just because I…well, just because!

    This first poem is like the flip side of a Psalm of Lament. Often enough I'm a sharp eyed observer of life's apparent negatives; a conscientious barometer of my own inner climate; an alert listener to the background noise of life to hear the rumbling bass more clearly than the melody. And this poem, like many of Mary Oliver's, is a perspective changing poem, an equilibrium restoring poem, a rhythm of words and syntax of lightness that awakens gratitude.

    DSC01637

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Mindful, Mary Oliver

    Every day

    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?

    ………………………….

    On a different note entirely, well maybe not entirely different – see here

  • Where is Wisdom to Be Found? …. in the One who is the Reconciliation of All Things.

    15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and
    invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things
    have been created through him and for him.     17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He
    is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn
    from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
     19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and
    through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether
    on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

    I spent a while today reading around this passage. It's probably a hymn, composed by Paul, or borrowed by him and edited to fit the theme and argument of his letter. Even in English translation the rhythm, images and rhetorical impetus are felt when it is read with care. Seven times the universal "all" is used. The ultimacy and particularity of Christ as Lord of the universe could hardly be more exclusively claimed.


    DSC01043One of the most intriguing articles I've read is Morna Hooker, "Where is Wisdom to be Found? Colossians 1.15-20", in Ford, D., and Stanton, G., (eds) Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom, (London: SCM, 2003) 116-128.     Nearly as good, in the same book with the same title and on the same text is Richard Bauckham's essay. But it's Hooker who shows how the Hebrew scriptures extol Wisdom and Torah as pillars of creation and active agents of God's essential being – and that is Paul's background as he writes. The hymn doesn't mention wisdom – it describes the creative power by which creation and renewal of creation are fully expressed by Christ in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. It doesn't mention wisdom – it describes Wisdom's accomplishments. Hooker shows how the theme of wisdom is a connective thread in elsewhere in Colossians, and finds its focus on the apostolic aim to lead Christians into wisdom and understanding and to "present everyone mature in Christ". This is Christology as the basis of hopeful Christian existence, looking for the reconciliation of all things by the only One able to fulfil such a redemptive reversal of creation's brokenness. Christian maturity is to live within that ethos of conciliatory wisdom, vulnerable love and hopeful trust.

    Why is this important enough for a blog post? Here's a few sentences from Hooker's concluding pages. In them she takes with utmost seriousness, in a way many fear to do, the absolute priority of Christ as the interpretive key to Scripture. As a Baptist committed to communal discernment, her words affirm the radical freedom of the gathered congregation to seek the mind of Christ in Scripture:

    "The text does not mean what you think it means, because it witnesses to the one who is behind the text, namely Christ. For Paul the 'canon' is not Scripture itself, but Christ, which means that Scripture  must be read in the light of Christ. Where is wisdom to be found. Notr in the written Torah – not even in the epistles of Paul – but in the living Christ.

    How do we interpret Scripture? How do we distinguish between and ethical and an unethical reading? Between a reading that is legitimate and one that is illegitimate? Between one that is right and one that is wrong?  Between one that is wise and one that is unwise? …For Paul the answer is: look at Christ, and at what he reveals to us of the love of God; interpret Scripture in the light of Christ." 


    M51%20Hubble%20Remix-420Where is wisdom to be found? In Christ, crucified, risen, living and present in the church and the world, amongst his people as they gather with Scriptures open, hearts receptive, minds alert and hopeful in trust, with fear and faith that the Lord of creation awaits our obedience as discerned in the words that bear witness to the Word.