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A Jewish Golden Wedding 75 years ago.

I was in a charity shop and found this brass plaque. The inscription shows the initials of two people the dates 1887 – 1937. The relief in the centre is of Jacob and Rachel at the well. The surrounding reliefs are the story of Jacob's journey, his wooing Rachel and working for Laban. The two names are inscribed in Hebrew on the top left and right of the reliefs. My guess is this is a Golden wedding plaque, made in 1937, and featuring one of the greatest love stories in the Hebrew Bible.

The quality of the central relief captures the moment of encounter, a beautiful portrayal of accidental providence, those unlooked for meetings when God is at work in the ordinariness of everyday. Except with Jacob, very little is ordinary. Below is one of the scenes from the outer reliefs. I love this plate – it will hang in my study, a piece of brazen exegesis 🙂

3 December 2012
Scots Pine, Kings College, Blue Sky and a Good Day

Today was a busy day with several appointments to see people, do stuff and have stuff done to me. Coming out of the doctor's surgery facing me was a ridiculously blue sky and two trees that looked made for such an azure background. And not 50 metres from Tesco's car park!

My day also took me down to the University and King's College. On a frosty sunny morning it's difficult to believe that this is a modern University campus, so I sat in the quad for some minutes, chilled but cheerful, and watched the world amble past slowly. I love the old crown on the chapel, and in the sunlight it looked its best. Then a cappucino to go, a walk up the high Street, and an impulse buy of three books for the price of two. Work done, folk met, several important conversations, and then tonight five a side football, that spiritual stress buster in which there is an entire absence of the fruit of the Spirit!.

30 November 2012
Greeting Death by Celebrating Life

Last week I took the funeral service for my brother-in-law, Sheila's brother. We all have our ways of coming to terms with loss. I had been best man at Ian's wedding 40 years ago, which added to the poignancy, and the fittingness of conducting the funeral of a good, gentle, man.

Inevitably when death comes close we are wise to think about that word inevitable. And to prepare for what must surely come nearer as day passes day. That isn't a morbid, unnatural negative thought – it's simply the truth that needs to be faced so that life can be enjoyed for what it is, precious unrepeatable gift. A human life is a succession of giftedness, each day a miracle of consciousness that we are, and wonder that we are at all. And as a Christian that miraculous wonder borrows the rhetorical prayer of the Psalm writer, "What is a human being that you care for us, mere mortals that you the Eternal pay attention to us?"

Mary Oliver is one of my canonical poets. Her reflection on how to greet death, is an exuberant celebration of how we greet life. I love this poem.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the
hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from
his purse

to buy me, and snaps his
purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an
iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the
door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage
of darkness?

And therefore I look upon
everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no
more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another
possibility,

and I think of each life as
a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable
music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of
courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to
say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom,
taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want
to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I
don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of
argument.

I don't want to end up
simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

29 November 2012
Living the Justice of the Triune God

A candidate for Baptist ministry was asked if he had enjoyed his time at College.

"No" he said, "But I learned stuff."

"Can you give an example of something important you learned", he was asked – the usual open question on the hunt for evidence.

"The definition of a good book", the wary reply.

"And what is that", the obvious follow up.

"A thin yin", the reply in unadulterated colloquial Scots!

And faur frae bein' wrang, he wis dead right!

I'm reading a thin book – Living the Justice of the Triune God, D Power and M Downey, Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2012. It is a good book, by any definition.

"The book offers a fresh vision of the justice of the Triune God to a world anguished by deprivation, division, ecological degradation and the loss of a sense of purpose and direction. Their praxis theology of the life-giving Word and love of God made tangibble in the particularities of cosmic and human history speaks to the crises and sufferings of our time."

And so it does.

27 November 2012
The Early Church Fathers and the Cure and Care of Souls

I recently had to write something on the pastoral theology and practices of the Early Church Fathers. Much of what they thought, wrote, did and understood now seems strange, from another world, unenlightened in the view of post enlightenment minds! And yet.

The pastoral heart is evident in
many of the Church Fathers. The inevitable tensions between compassion and discipline, the intellectual and spiritual wrestling over the relationship between the life of grace, the struggle with sin, the holiness and mystery of the Triune God, and the nature of prayer, worship and Christian living as the proper response to the love of God in Christ.Their primary goal and foundational value was
growth in the love of God, towards the perfect love of God and all inclusive love of neighbour.

The route to this love was a
long training, an instilling of spiritual disciplines to train the personality
in the fruits of the spirit, to educate the soul in self-critical ethical
scrutiny, to co-operate with God in the restoring of the image of God, which
though marred remains the defining truth of every human being. To be made in
God’s image is to be able to know God choose the good and learn to love – it is
to have the capax dei, to train the passions by spiritual discipline in
order to love God with that balance of mind, heart strength and will.

Reading some of the Fathers today is an exercise in strangeness, but sometimes that's what a church which is now overfamiliar with God needs; and a church confident of the can do approach to theology can be reminded that living for God isn't about our can do, but about God's enabling grace; and a humbling corrective to theological and pastoral practitioners, that in the end we are all unprofitable servants, and what we seek to practice is a life rooted and grounded in the eternal love of the Triune God, seeking to know and make known the love that is beyond knowledge.

So we ignore the Fathers to our
loss. In the history of the cure of souls they had their own spiritual
psychology, their unique sense of the sacred, a profound sensitivity about sin
but matched by a diamond edged view of grace sufficient to cut and shape
character towards Christlikeness.

26 November 2012
Haiku, the Sea, and Grace Sufficient

You know the bit in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist finds peace beside the still waters and the green pastures? Sometimes that works for me too. But more often when I need a place of solace, silence and solitude, I find it on the edge of the sea.

This has been a week of sadness following a family bereavement. By the end of the funeral yesterday and then the journey home I was tired and inwardly out of sorts. No surprise there.

But this morning I knew what I wanted to do. Sheila and I went down to the front, bought a capuccino to go, and walked awhile. Then I stopped, Sheila walked on and i sat awhile listening to the rhythm of the waves, watching the play of sunlight on water, sand and stone. Few things for me, reconfigure the mind and restore the rhythms of the heart more gently than the sounds and sights of this ancient toing and froing of the sea. I almost never come away from the beach without a stone – shaped and smoothed by the faithful monotony of wave, after wave, after wave – patiently, persistently and playfully rolling rocks against each other, the lapidary friction defining the grain and structure of each stone.

And maybe, just maybe, minds overtaxed and overtired learn again the significance of slowness; hearts carrying excess baggage lighten up in the sunlightl; and that fragile reality we call the self recovers equlibrium and the soul is restored. I often find that the presence of God becomes more tangible, or discernible, in those places where you can lose yourself – by which I mean, for a short time let go of that self-preoccupation that silences other voices and obscures the reality of the God who, as Nicholas Lash says, 'does not shout'.

Haiku, The Sea, and Grace Sufficient.

PRAYER

Not our neat rhythmic prose

but sunlight on sand and stone

speaks our heart's true need.

HOLINESS

The gentle rumble

of stone on stone; the sea's gift

of polished granite.

HEALING

The liquid mercy

of waves, the sand's kind friction,

grace that heals, and saves.

(C) Jim Gordon

I took the photo while finishing a wonderful capuccino to go from The Pavilion Cafe.

24 November 2012
When the Aim is an Ethos and a Discipline: Further Thoughts on the Order of Baptist Ministry.

While at the Second Convocation of the Order of Baptist Ministry we spent some good time reflecting on the aim of the Order. I had come to the Convocation because the intimation and invitation
seemed a good way of creating space to gather my thoughts and allow the
sediment of a too full life to settle a little. Too much sediment and water becomes
worryingly opaque.

What follows is a personal reflection shared with the others, and providing a basis for further reflection. During the discussion of the aim of the order the sediment settled enough for me to see that such an Order
would provide and important alternative to other understandings of ministry
prevalent within our own communities of faith. That is, the Order would provide an alternative living out of Baptist
Ministry that, with intentional seriousness of purpose, seeks to pay close
attention to both words, Baptist and Ministry, thereby offering a framework of
relationships which will enable, encourage and enhance ministry in a self-consciously
Baptist way.

Not that
Baptist is the only way, or even the best way. But if we take our identity
under God seriously, then we are called to be Baptist in those essential
convictions and practices which are inhabited, and lived out, in the gift and
calling of our varied but shared ministries within Baptist communities.

This means
that the Aim of the Order would be neither critical of other expressions of ministry,
nor satisfied with our own ways of living out our vocations. Ministry is too
rich, varied and expressive of the diversity of the Body of Christ to be
captured or constrained by any particular model or embodiment. Baptist however
is a term we consciously own, as the talent entrusted by the Lord to our
particular communities of faith. While the name Baptist is rightly contested,
and understood in Baptist communities in different ways, the Order seeks to
give lived expression to the theology, practices and spirituality that are
quarried from the rich seams of our own historic and theological peculiarities.

By being
faithful to our own Baptist particularity we remain alert and obedient to God
who called us to follow and serve Christ in ministry. We do this precisely by
seeking to sustain authentic Baptist ministry as a gift to the whole Church of
Christ. Calling is always a gift, and the Aim of the Order, it was felt, ought to articulate
the specific peculiarity of what we believe is God’s gift to us. Therefore we
commit ourselves to walk together under the rule of Christ, faithfully
following after the Great Shepherd of the sheep, as Baptist Christians
encouraging and accompanying each other in fulfilling the vision of service we
believe is entrusted to us.

Nevertheless,
and that word is a decisive caution and qualifier – nevertheless we recognise
humbly and gratefully the richness and necessity of other forms of ministry,
which have their own validity, and which are God’s varied gifts to the Church as
the Body of Christ. As Baptist we gladly acknowledge our
dependence on the insights and resources of the Church Catholic, and seek to
sustain and enrich Baptist ministry by appropriating the gifts and spiritual
resources of the wider ecumenical consensus of faith in the Triune God. The Order aims to explore and enrich Baptist pastoral spirituality by conscious indebtedness to the rich catholicity of Christian thought and experience: building upon disciplines of prayer in the Daily Office, developing and sustaining a pastoral disposition that is both attentive and contemplative, and pursuing in prayer and study, a humble receptiveness to the knowledge and wisdom of the Triune God.

The Order
aims to give faithful expression to a vision of Baptist ministry and therefore
the aim could be stated: To embody, encourage and enable ministry
that is intentionally Baptist, vocationally pastoral, and spiritually faithful,
under the rule of Christ.

20 November 2012
Ancient texts and Digital Photos

He leads me beside still waters: He restores my soul….

Devotions by photograph often works for me! Especially when the photo carries with it memories of significant moments.

In more reflective moments of whimsical "what ifs" I wonder what the Gospels might have looked like if they had been illustrated with photos taken by Peter or Mary.

How good would a time delay photo series have been in those key moments at Cana when water became wine, huh?

Or if one of the Magi had taken a few holiday snaps of the living conditions of ordinary people in Bethlehem?

Then, what if Mary Magdalene had used her smartphone to snap the gardener early in the morning?

More seriously, the juxtaposition of personally taken photos with personally significant texts is just one other possibility for a contemplative hermeneutic.

As I look for ways of slowing down, paying attention, thinking thoughtfully rather than rapidly, I am finding music, paintings and now photos provide occasions of prayerfulness.

17 November 2012
Google – and a moment of unexpected and accidental theological insight!

Looking for a poem online ( because my own collection of Elizabeth Jennings' poems is at home) I Googled the line "Forgiveness – the word we live by". Still the mighty Google couldn't give me the poem I want. So it made a polite suggestion that maybe I meant something else. "Did you mean 'Forgiveness – the world we live by'?"

Oh well, yes! And no. But Oh my Lord, Yes! The insertion of one letter magnifies the entire idea of forgiveness into one that has global consequences, worldwide opportunities to begin again, intimations that at last, spears might yet become pruning hooks.

So I said the Lord's Prayer in the Office this morning ( the prayer cycle not my College study – though I say the Lord's Prayer there too) with knowing smirk at the subversion of that word, 'forgive', its potential to change a world, whether my inner world of resentments and walls of remembered hurt, or that big world out there where Gaza, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, and any other elsewhere where dividing walls of hostility still contradict the peace made by the blood of the cross.

Your will be done…our daily bread…as we forgive our debtors….deliver us from evil….for thine is the kingdom, and your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. No wonder that prayer holds countless gigabytes of the truths and realities by which the world lives.

Forgiveness – the word we live by. Forgiveness – the world we live by. So that forgiveness isn't the occasional giving in to our better nature and letting go the odd grudge – it is a way of life, and the way to life.

The photo is from Minsteracres Retreat Centre – "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself."

15 November 2012
The Book Pyramid is an Architectural Triumph.

As a bibliophile, one who prefers a library to a shopping mall, and who believes libraries should attract the most creative and sympathetic architects, this is a beautiful place. As a statement of the continuing importance of books, it is a resounding rejoinder to the digitalisation of everything. And this is a public library, a place of beauty, quiet, learning, light and culture, housed in glass, like an educational greenhouse where people can grow.

Follow the link here for a guided tour of The Book Pyramid, a building of hope where the love of possibility and learning are made into a statement of intent. . e

13 November 2012