Living Wittily

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  • When prayer feels like being in a half nelson!

    GauginThis Sunday coming I have the opportunity to preach in our church on that mysterious and scary encounter in Genesis between Jacob and the angel of the Lord, or was it God? It's one of those incidents that makes no sense by itself. It has to be fitted into the story of a dysfunctional family where jealousy, cheating, deceit, possessive love, emotional manipulation, violence and just about every other act and attitude corrosive of good relationships between relations, has wrecked any basis for trust.

    The sermon will be part of a series about struggles, one of those inoccuous words that hides a multitude of uncertainties and unpredictable tight corners on the journey we make towards God. Whatever this story means, it isn't a story of bland reassurance or blind faith. God is moved by neither.

    So. We'll see! My mother used to say that as a way of not disappointing us with a straight 'No!' I have a feeling this story isn't about how to live the voctorious life, but, we'll see!

    The painting by Gaugin, "Vision of the Sermon" is one of my favourite expressions of biblical art. A large print hangs above my desk, a daily reminder of the struggle and cost of living faithfully, and of the God who engages with our humanity with stern demanding compassion, severe gentle mercy and fierce creative love, bearing with our contradictions and urging us towards every new day.

     

  • The Psalms and Our Human Capacities for Hate, Vengeance and Violence

    Italy-pieta-michaelangeloThe following is my response to Bob Macdonald's comment on the post about Maria Boulding and the place of the Psalms in our prayers. It's in the comments section but Bob as always raises points that always make me think again and I didn't want it hidden away on the side-bar

    Bob, as I say, your comment makes me think again, and I am in complete agreement about the role of the Psalms as spiritual safety valves that allow moral catharsis by bringing our worst thoughts and feelings within the orbit of the mercy, justice and love of God. But if we believe the Psalmists spoke with utter frankness to God, then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life's extremities. The collisions of emotional and theological responses within the collection of Psalms is what makes them the prayer book of the human heart, and also enables such prayers to be an honest and authentic cry of faith whether struggling or celebrating, questioning or affirming. Behind such prayers there is the instinct for justice and the longing for some sort of healing and restored wholeness.

    But yes, any reading of the Sermon on the Mount, and serious reflection on the pivotal event of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross, requires of us the responses of those who are ministers of reconciliation. I think that's why Boulding acknowledges that certain emotional, moral and psychological responses to injustice, suffering and violence are better out than in – and are better acknowledged before God than nursed in the heart awaiting opportunity. The eucharistic cup, of anguished suffering and suffering love, of shared faith and holy communion, itself holds together the polar extremes of human experience and the infinite range of Divine love and peacemaking.

    The picture of Micaelagelo's Pieta sculpture is one of the miracles of Christian art – and a profound meditation on the alternative to vengeance, violence, hatred and murder.

    Just some thoughts which arise out of you pushing a bit harder Bob, so thanks and blessings on your own ministry.

  • Easter sunset, all in an April evening

    Van%20eyck%20adoration%20of%20the%20lambs-resized-600This evening at the ecumenical Easter service I was sitting admiring the stain glass windows, illumined from the outside by an April setting sun. There are two main windows facing the congregation. One has the four saints of Scotland and the other has the creation and the four seasons. Between them a smaller round window depicting the sower who went forth to sow.

    At the top of the Scottish saints window was the image of the Lamb, holding the red crossed banner, illumined around the head with the shekinah of heaven. As I was looking at that particular image the organist started to play All in an April evening, and I thought of the line, "I thought of the Lamb of God". That was one of those coincidences that some of us read as a significant nudge of the Holy Spirit. More so because….

    About 15 years ago, less than a mile from where I sat in the church, I was visiting an elderly member of the church where I was then minister. Her name was Carrie, and she was very near the end of her journey and I sat with her, along with her sister. There were five sisters, and their given name was Lamb. They had made up a singing group in their younger years. That Spring afternoon Carrie asked if her sister and I would sing All in an April Evening, and wouldn't take no for an answer.

    In those days before Britain's Got Talent there was no one there to laugh at us – in fact, imperfect and at times hilarious as it was, Carrie joined in both the singing and the hilarity, and somehow we made our way through to the close. In those moments of unrehearsed friendship and pastoral encounter the three of us, in our own way, and from our own experiences, 'thought on the Lamb of God'. A day or two later Carrie died, and discovered that the eternal love of God is like another of her favourite pieces of music – the place where 'Sheep May safely Graze'.

    So there I was tonight, looking at this lovely sunlit stained glass image of the Lamb of God, the organ playing a piece so replete with memory and affection for me, and within hearing distance of a bleating lamb from that room where in ministry and friendship, our faith was shared in a mixture of poignancy and hilarity. In the co-incidence of window, music and memory, of image, sound and remembering, I felt a deep and lovely feeling of what the Communion of Saints really means. I know I believe it as in the Creed; I've sung about it; I can do the theological exposition of it -but each of these is but the articulation of an experience that now and again transcends argument and intellectual grasp. It was an Easter moment, when in memory and love cor ad cor loquitur 'heart speaks to heart'.

    These words were the motto of Cardinal Newman, whose prayer was a favourite of the sister who sang with me:

    O LORD, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shades lengthen, and the evening cometh, and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done. Then, Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

  • How to Pray the Cursing Psalms during Holy Week

    51KJ+TfYOOL__BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-67,22_AA300_SH20_OU02_Dame Maria Boulding OSB wrote out of deep scholarship, alert self-awareness, and perceptive compassion about human hopes and failings, and all this informed by a lifetime of obedience within a Benedictine community. I treasure her books. During Lent I've made my way slowly through her last book, written as she endured painful terminal illness, within the loving support of her community.

    Gateway to Resurrection is a gentle reaffirmation of fundamental Christian beliefs centred on God's coming in Jesus, and the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a world class scholar and translator of Augustine, and as one who has reflected and practised the Rule of Benedict for a lifetime, she offers us a rich weaving together of her own experience, Benedictine spirituality, the biblical riches of Augustine's Expositions of the Psalms and the psychological narrative of his Confessions. But this is spiritual writing that is humble yet assured, accessible but utterly unpatronising, full of faith without for a moment encouraging uncritical piety or unthinking assertion in the face of disturbing questions – doubt too, has its place in our journey to God.

    She is spiritually shrewd on the vexed question of what we do with some of the cursing Psalms – for example, how does a Christian pray, 'O God break the teeth in their mouths'. (Mind you I guess some of us, some of the time, know perfectly well how to pray a line like that!).  But to pray for the extermination of our enemies children, and to wish those we hate dead and their children orphans – hard to reconcile prayers like that with the Sermon on the Mount. Her answer is profoundly theological, based on taking the humanity and divinity of Jesus with equal and utmost seriousness:

    When the Word of God, the Son of God, became man, he was not man in some abstract sense, but a man of a particular race, culture and time. What the instinctive Jewish response to injustice, cruelty or hatred were like, we hear in many of the cursing Psalms. Jesus was personally sinless, and his response sprang from love, but because he came in the loikeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin (Rom 8.3), he took up all our passionate responses into the raw material of his prayer, as he also took the flesh of Israel as the raw material of his sacrifice. We may find it possible as we pray these psalms simply to be with Christ in his Passion, as he assumes all these shouts of rage and despair, all these raw demands for vengeance, and transforms them: 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do'.

    At least we can be sure of two things about these psalms: first, that the sweet singers of Israel were rithlessly honest before God, and never thought that anything that was important to them was unsuitable to mention in his presence; second, that there are pre-Christian and non-Christian elements in ourselves that may benefot from exposure to God in prayer.

    Over the years I've read so many commentaries and theologies that wrestle with the imprecatory psalms. Here at last is a suggestion that is profoundly Christian because deeply rooted in a full and practised Christology. That our worst thoughts can become our most honest prayers, and be redeemed by being caught up into the Passion of God in Christ, and our darkest places flooded with resurrection light, and that these our most destructive responses are drawn into the eternal life-giving love of the Triune God – that's a thought worth pondering, and a way worth trying to walk, starting this Holy Week.

  • Snow and Spring Holidays in Aberdeenshire!

    DSC00470This was the view from our back door at 9.00 this morning.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    And this is a bird's eye view of the bird table!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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     Then this afternoon we had this!

  • The passion Story and the Complicated Complexities of our Anger

    Anger 2Last night I did a lot of thinking about anger. I'd been asked to lead the Holy Week Service on the emotions of the Passion, and my allocated theme was anger. You'd think that would be quite straightforward, but the more I read the passion story in all four Gospels the harder it was to pin down just exactly where in the passion story we have unadulterated anger.

    I came to the conclusion that anger pure and simple isn't there at all. What is there is that complicated cocktail of dark emotions that underlie the intractable mysteries of human sinfulness, that give rise to violence, hate, cruelty and the ultimate denial of our humanity by the inhumane way we treat other human beings.

    You can read what I shared in the file below. I'd be grateful if you respected the copyright on this, but am happy that readers of the blog should be able to read it, and comment if you wish. It is thought in progress, and I'm sure some of it needs second thought. But it does try to take seriously a central paradox of the Passion, how human contrivance and co-ordinated self interest result in torture, injustice and execution.

    The two pictures referred to are Peter Howson's Last Supper, currently on exhibition here in Aberdeen Art gallery, and Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Mocked.

    Download The Emotions of the Passion

  • The reverse Politics of Palm Sunday

     Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry.
    0 Savior meek, pursue Thy road,
    With palms and scattered garments strowed.

    2. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    In lowly pomp ride on to die.
    0 Christ, Thy triumphs now begin
    O'er captive death and conquered sin.

    3. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    The angel armies of the sky
    Look down with sad and wondering eyes
    To see the approaching Sacrifice.

    4. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
    The Father on His sapphire throne
    Expects His own anointed Son.

    5. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    In lowly pomp ride on to die.
    Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain.
    Then take, 0 Christ, Thy power and reign.

    Lorenzo-ghiberti-entry-of-jesus-into-jerusalem-north-doors-of-the-baptistery-of-san-giovanni-1403-24Saviour meek, lowly pomp, wondering eyes, the last and fiercest strife – this Palm Sunday hymn is far removed from the triumphalism of much modern praise sing discourse. The power to reign is not power, it is sacrifice; and the majesty evokes wonder not by the authority of might but by the relinquishment of power in suffering. Palm Sunday sets the agenda for the coming week. The Passion Story isn't about God winning by compulsion and forced compliance, but about the vulnerability of God in Christ loving enemies with a gentle defiant refusal to confirm that might is right. The heart of God is revealed in peacemaking, the surrender of a love that seeks to reconcile by healing hatred, subverting violence, embracing the treacherous and forgiving those who crucify.

    God commends his love towards us in that while we were his enemies, Christ died for us. I guess that the witness of Christians in the 21st Century could take a new turning of risk and costly adventure if the politics of Palm Sunday shaped the politics of our daily lives, our personal relationships and the way we express our citizenship of the world, and God's Kingdom.

    …. Ride on, King Jesus, through conflict and debate

    ride on through sweaty prayer and the betrayal of friends

    Lord this Palm Sunday forgive me my evasions of truth,

    my carelessness of your honour;

    my weakness which leaves me sleeping

    even when in others you suffer and are anguished;

    my cowardice that does not risk the consequences

    of publicly acknowledging you as Lord.

     

  • Why we write the way we write…

    Brother_deluxe_typewriter_1The other day I got a lovely letter from a friend, expressing appreciation for something I'd written. What makes the letter more special is that it was typed, not word-processed. It's perhaps entirely a matter of perspective, or maybe there is an aesthetic of the technologically obsolete, but a typed letter feels more personal, takes more effort and care when there's no delete button, conveys a generous intentionality as trouble is taken.

    My friend Stewart, whose funeral I shared on Friday, gave me a gift two days before the stroke from which he eventually died. The Naked Now. Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, is now one of those books twice treasured – for what it is, and from whom it came. Inside it Stewart wrote in a characteristic hand, with his fountain pen, his own greeting and appreciation of friendship – neat, firm, legible and instantly recognisable as Stewart.

    Typewriter and fountain pen – it's not that I undervalue all the other ways we keep in touch with each other these days – email, text, facebook and all other forms of maintaining and repairing relationship. But the typed letter, and the handwritten flyleaf re-present the faces and the voices of two dear friends. Emails and texts are transient, often enough informal chits of chat. But a typed letter and written flyleaf are artefacts of friendship and lasting fingerprints of touches on our lives.

     

  • The Beatific Vision and the Funeral of a Soul Friend

    And That Will Be Heaven

    and that will be heaven

    and that will be heaven

    at last   the first unclouded

    seeing

             to stand like the sunflower

    turned full face to the sun    drenched

    with light     in the still centre

    held     while the circling planets

    hum with an utter joy

                            seeing and knowing

    at last     in every particle

    seen and known     and not turning

    away

         never turning away

    again

    (Evangeline Paterson)

    I shared in the funeral of my friend Stewart today, and was given the privilege of trying to explain the mystery that is the human life, precious, unique, surprising, the gift of presence, and communion, and inward companionship. The poem expresses the breathless wonder of our earthbound eyes seeing through the eyes of God to the face of God, and how in the end God will be all in all.

    Amongst the words borrowed and used in the service were these from Julian of Norwich, Stewart's favourite theologian, and fro m Paul, who understood the limits of human thought and experience to comprehend the infinite mystery of eternal love, stooping to redeem and renew:

    Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning.

    And I saw quite clearly in this and in all,

    that before God made us, he loved us,

    which love was never slaked nor ever shall be.

    And in this love he has done all his work,

    and in this love he has made all things profitable to us.

    And in this love our life is everlasting.

    In our creation we had a beginning.

    But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning.

    And all this shall be seen in God without end.

    In the end the beatific vision is to gaze with joyous wonder on the brilliant dazzling darkness that is the mystery of Love Divine:

    When I was a child,

    I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

    But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

    Now we see things imperfectly,

    like puzzling reflections in a mirror,

    but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

    All that I know now is partial and incomplete,

    but then I will know everything completely,

    just as God now knows me completely….

    and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

  • Social Justice and the Complicated Complexities of VAT on Pies!

    Amongst the anomalies and curiosities of the recent Budget, is the decision to apply VAT to heated pies and pasties to bring them into line with cooked food as served for example in restaurants. The Chief Executive of Greggs the bakery company has dubbed this the Pie Tax. The  subsequent debate has covered issues such as the clientele who buy such hot food being those who can least afford a hiked price in food. But the most bizarre part of the debate focuses on what constitutes 'heated food'. It seems this is based on a comparison between the ambient temperature outside and the temperature of the food being heated! So on a sunny day in summer lukewarm food might not count, whereas in a snowbound winter…… Here's a quote from the debate:

    "With the weather as it is today, a lukewarm pasty from Greggs is not VAT-able because the ambient temperature outside is the reference point, whereas if it is the middle of winter and freezing cold it is VAT," Mr Mann said. "It is an extraordinarily complex situation when you are having to check with the Meteorological Office on whether or not to add VAT on pasties in Greggs, which is what your consultation paper does."

    Off course there are two sides to this debate – but I can't help wondering along with most sensible people, whether the leaders of the Coalition have any idea what the real world feels like, and whether they have the moral imagination to recognise the real and the symbolic impact of choosing to tax food at a time when austerity measures are supposed to be balanced by the mantra 'we're all in this together'. The tax-payer subsidised restaurants at Westminster versus the queue for taxed hot sausage rolls at Greggs. As an own goal it is as spectacular as Peter Crouch's real wonder goal against Manchester City at the weekend.

    For that reason I'll resist submitting that particular Budget proposal to the more searching moral scrutiny that a prophet like Amos might have carried out. He had something to say about the luxuries of the the rich and the poor being ground into the dust for the price of a pair of slippers….for contemporary application read 'a hot pie'.

    You can read more on this at the link below – and smile – but then reflect, because the title of this post is not entirely playful!

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/osborne-touch-greggs-boss-060141772.html