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Kathleen Raine, Good Friday and the Healing Reality of the Garden

The biblical narrative sometimes turns on the encounters that take place in a garden. The garden of Eden is a place of creation and destruction, of carefree joy and cosmic tragedy, of divine fulfilment and human failing. And however we read that story, it portrays in poignant poetry the two poles and entire latitude and longitude of human experience, from innocence to shame, from life affirming stewardship to earth shattering grasping. Gethsemane is the garden where the tragedies and triumphs of human sinfulness become concentrated on the soul of the One who gathers within one human being, the cosmic and human toxins of creation alienated. The Gospel phrase for this anguish, "sweating great drops of blood", and the location of the garden of Gethsemane, make this Gospel episode a cross section of a fallen creation, exposing the age rings of human history which has sweat its own great drops of blood.

I think it's no accident, or incidental stage setting, that the tomb was in Joseph of Arimathea's garden, and that garden the place of resurrection. There's something wonderfully playful about that line of John's, explaining Mary Magdalene's grief-stricken confusion, "thinking him to be the gardener…". Eden the place of lost innocence, Gethsemane the place of God's angst, and that morning scene of so human trauma, of grief and joy, of disbelief and scared to admit it faith – so much of what matters in our faith begins or ends up in a garden.

Kathleen Raine wrote about the garden in terms that make it clear it is a place of healing, and not a place of unreality and retreat from the world. Her poem suggests it may be that we enounter what is most real, most urgent for our flourishing, and most telling for our humanity, in a garden.

I had meant to write a different poem….

I had meant to write a different poem,
But, pausing for a moment in my unweeded garden,
Noticed, all at once, paradise descending in the morning sun
Filtered through leaves,
Enlightening the meagre London ground, touching with green
Transparency the cells of life.
The blackbird hopped down, robin and sparrow came,
And the thrush, whose nest is hidden
Somewhere, it must be, among invading buildings
Whose walls close in,
But for the garden birds inexhaustible living waters
Fill a stone basin from a garden hose.
I think, it will soon be time
To return to the house, to the day’s occupation,
But here, time neither comes nor goes.
The birds do not hurry away, their day
Neither begins nor ends.
Why can I not stay? Why leave
Here, where it is always,
And time leads only away
From this hidden ever-present simple place.

Kathleen Raine

22 April 2011
Kathleen Raine and Rumours of the Abyss

Kathleen Raine's poetry is not a recent discovery for me – but it is a recent re-discovery. I'd forgotten just how perceptively she sees, and the lucid integrity with which she describes, the human condition. And there are lines that give voice to those subterranean longings that run through our souls, their sound the distant echoes of what we have lost or have never yet found. Her poetry is imaginative and wondering, mystic without being vague, compassionate but avoiding indulgent sentiment that distorts the vision of what life is at its most real, and what it might be if only we had the courage to see it and say it and live it with honesty and freedom. Some of her poems exemplify the poet at her most visionary and prophetic, able to play with ideas that are light or dark, allusive yet descriptive of her way of seeing the world, and beyond. Here's one.

WORLD'S MUSIC CHANGES

World's music changes:

The spheres no longer sing to us

Those harmonies

That raised cathedral arches,

Walls of cities.

Soundings of chaos

Dislodge the keystone of our dreams,

Built high, laid low:

Hearing we echo

Rumours of the abyss.

There was a time

To build those cloud-capped towers,

Imagined palaces, heavenly houses,

But a new age brings

A time to undo, to unknow.

There are few poems I know that so succinctly define post Christendom and the Post-modern malaise of the spirit, as Christians struggle to come to terms with a fading tradition, lost influence, the confused climate of moral life and the intellectual challenge of transposing the Gospel into a different key for a different and changing age. In my own canon of poets R S Thomas comes closet to her in voice and in the unflinching honesty with which he sees the world. More of Raine in the next few days.

21 April 2011
Michael Ramsey and missional psychology.

"The lessons of the crisis of faith may have helped us and may help us still to know the glory of the Triune God, the Creator, the Judge and the Saviour of Humanity, and to proclaim it with more humility, more love, and more understanding of those who find faith hard…it is through the facing of dark nights, whether in the mysery of God or in the agonies of the world, that the deepening of faith is realised."

Michael Ramsey was writing in the 1960's – but those simple priestly words have considerable resonance for the confused and anxious Church of the 21st century on these islands. In them he identified humility as the essential tone of missiology in a secular society, and love as the distinctive hallmark of truly Christlike discipleship, and compassionate understanding as the required emotional psychology of the follower of Jesus. Hard to improve on that.

16 April 2011
Waiting – road to frustration or way to fulfilment?

I left Glasgow Airport at 7.00 am having been up since 5.am! I'm now in Manchester waiting for a taxi to take me to the airport, where I'll wait for a flight to take me to Glasgow, where I'll wait in the car park for Honda Assist to come and fix a punctured front tyre. Then I'll wait till it's fixed and decide what to do about dinner, and swither (Scots for "cannae make up my mind yet") whether or not to make it a longer day still, and head for Aberdeen, .

All this waiting, reminded me of the title of a favourite book. If you know me at all, you'll know that W H Vanstone is one of my theological must haves. Three short slim books give the distilled essence of ministry that was selfless, awkward, traditional, inspiring, focused on divine love and lived out in the most ordinary parish settings. One of his books, The Stature of Waiting is a profound study of passivity, surrender and patient waiting upon circumstance. Vanstone is hard to emulate, hard to follow as an exemplar, I guess he was a one off! Yet even when I can't go with him, or he says things I resist, I know I'm listening to an important voice, and if I disagree I realise I have to have cogent, viable reasons of my own. And sometimes his one liners are simply unanswerable – one of them comes to mind, capturing his traditional commitments in liturgy, his deeply reflective theology, and his sharp observations articulated in sharper comment:

"Sometimes the church is like a swimming pool, where all the noise comes from the shallow end"

No answer to that. At least, not one I'm prepared to offer.

13 April 2011
Martin Buber, Friendship and Some Limits of Social Networking

It was Martin Buber who called attention to the life-giving distinction we all must make if we are to value, respect, care for and take responsibility towards, each other. From the deep wells of Hebraic experience of God and community, Buber distinguished between relating to that which is beyond ourselves as "It" and relating to the Other who is beyond ourselves as "Thou". Only as I address the other person as "Thou" do I acknowledge the full dignity of their personhood.

And when that relationship of "I and Thou" takes root in the heart and in the will, then deeply human ties of respect, affection and shared commitments grow into committed and close relationships with those we call our closest friends. And within such friendship deeply human responses begin to be naturally expressed in trustful conversation, playful enjoyment of the other's presence, an inward orientation of care and commitment, and an investment of time and energy that is incalculable because unselfconscious, unreflective generous gift, the response of person to person and heart to heart. Friendship is not therefore a duty or a task, but the name we give to those few "I and Thou" relationships that not only enrich us but slowly and gently over time begin to define us by their very nature as gift and grace.

Reading Buber again for quite other reasons, I've been reminded of how profoundly relevant his view of the world is, in a world which is increasingly enmeshed in the endlessly trivial and restlessly fascinating web spinnings of social networking. It may be that Buber's passionate advocacy of personhood as that in the Other which we address as Thou, offers a way of putting social networking in its place. Facebook, Twitter, even this blog, can never be a substitute for person to person address, an intentional relationship of I and Thou.

At its best social networking supplements, informs, communicates and provides fuel and energy for existing relationships. Friendships as personal exchange and attentive address are nourished by such communication. In social networking stories are not only told but written in the fragments of exchange, and changed as they are responded to in the writing. But there are essential and defining qualities of human relating that cannot be replicated in social networking – they are what Buber means with his distinction between subject and object, Thou and It, – a vital life-enhancing distinction between that which I use as an "It" for my own ends, and this person whom I address as an end in herself or himself.

Here's vintage Buber – I and Thou take their stand not merely in relation, but also in the give and take of talk…Here what confonts us has blossomed into the full reality of the Thou. Here alone then, [in human friendship] as reality that cannot be lost, are gazing and being gazed upon, knowing and being known, loving and being loved.

The interactive gaze of two people, the knowing and being known, the loving and being loved, talking and listening, laughing and crying, supporting and being supported, these and much more that is of the extraordinary ordinariness of human friendship, are only visible expressions and signals of that address that in the presence of the other always, and faithfully, says "Thou". That is why the conversation of friends is such a great sacrament, the grace of words and silence, both alike interpreting and articulating the shared experience of the mystery and mercy of the life that is ours to live, and to share.

11 April 2011
Why it’s life-enhancing to creatively and respectfully disagree

I like this!

Division of opinion, too often the fault line of human relationships, is, when we embrace it openly, what invigorates thinking and stirs new thought. It is the ground of new beginnings, the beginning of new insight, the foundation of new respect for the other. If anything sharpens the dull edge of a relationship it is often when it ceases to be boringly predictable. It is when everybody on two continents knows what we are going to say next that we know we have stopped thinking. Then we need to have a few old ideas honed. We need to think through life all over again. "Of two possibilities", my mother used to tell me, "choose always the third".

Uncommon Gratitude, Rowan Wuilliams and Joan Chittister, (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2010), 41

Yes, I do like that. I seldom read Joan Chittister without nodding or shaking my head. She is a wise, shrewd, compassionate but unsentimental analyst of spiritual psychology and human relationships. Reading her is for me a form of therapy, if therapy is that process by which we are helped to think of ourselves and our world, and our relations to self and the other, with more compassion, insight and patience.

Her writings on the Rule of St Benedict are that rare thing in spiritual writing – well considered common sense, moderation without compromising on the essential, and enough humour to remind us that laughter is one of our most humanising and loveable traits. And she faithfully, persistently and persuasively urges Christians to see the world with eyes open – with creative thought and critical consciousness. As to creativity – "We fail to realize that it is precisely the ability to think beyond the context of the times in which we live that makes us fit to live in times to come." But also "Critical consciousness is the testing ground of new ideas, the gatekeeper of tomorrow".

This resonates in my own spirit on a number of levels. Whatever else it means to grow older, it cannot mean growing narrower, or being content with familiar and limited horizons. However else spiritual maturity might be evidenced, it isn't in static thought, contented convictions, complacent certainties, fixed ideas, or life still drawing on the capital of past experience. Wherever the future of the church lies – and I mean the Church Catholic, the Body of Jesus Christ in all its rich diversity, historic rootedeness and future possibilities – that future cannot be a perpetuation of the present, let alone a repristination of the past.

In all our lives there come times when we have to think beyond the context of our times, think creatively, and be critically conscious of who we are, how the world is, and what it might mean for us to live faithfully for Christ in that context. That can be a soul stripping experience, a re-orientation that can only take place out of experiences of disorientation. And at such times prayer becomes a crie de couer, a re-aligning of what matters as we discover what matters most. And at such times I find T S Eliot's words from Little Gidding express better than any words I could compose, the risks and consequences of any one life that dares to be open to the love of God and to the mystery and miracle of human life, the range and beauty of human thought, and to human relationships in all their complexity and capacity for wounding and healing.

You are not here to verify,
instruct yourself,
or inform curiosity or carry report.
You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid.
And prayer is more than an order of words,
the concious occupation of the praying mind,
or the sound of the voice praying.

9 April 2011
Vermeer and the artist as amateur exegete

This painting by Vermeer is a masterpiece of exegetical imagination. It seems to me impossible to tell where Vermeer's sympathies lie. Traditional interpretations of Christ in the home of Martha and Mary take at face value Jesus' words in praise of Mary and the quite gentle but dismissive words to Martha.

Mary sits attentively at Jesus' feet, listening and learning; Martha is harassed and hassled trying to fulfil the obligations of hospitality and the duties of kindness. The story is often used to illustrate the superiority of the contemplative over the activist, as if devotion to Jesus all comes down to attentive passivity (prayer) rather than distracted activity (service). What is at the centre of Vermeer's painting is a loaf, bread, the substance that nourishes and sustains. And bread isn't made in five minutes – it takes work, energy, time, and the patience to let the yeast work, the oven bake and the loaf to be ready.

Jesus is pointing at Mary and talking to Martha – who looks not a little miffed that her efforts are so quickly and lightly demoted as distraction, compared to her sister's unhelpful passivity. And for me, that loaf is Vermeer's comment. Not Martha or Mary, not contemplative or active, but the one loaf that signifies the heart and energy of Christian devotion – both prayer and service, what Merton would call contemplative action, and what Dag Hammarskjold meant when he said of the modern Christian (as true for postmodern ones!), "The road to holiness lies through the world of action".

This is the only extant biblical picture Vermeer painted – but it has a depth and warmth to it that is lacking in some less accommodating interpretations of Mary's piety and Martha's too easy dismissal. Apart from anything else, Jesus is so relaxed – that hand over the arm of the chair and the other open, palm upwards and pointing to Mary doesn't convey tension and criticism, but a conciliatory persuasion. I doubt Jesus ever dismissed the importance of bread, – sure he refused to magic bread out of stones, but he also enshrined daily bread at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, and the breaking and sharing of bread was to become the way he was remembered, celebrated, and yes, served.

I love this painting, not only for its beauty, but for its exegetical fairness to Martha, its softening of the tradition as to Jesus demeanour and tone to Martha, for that loaf, forever the gift of our Lord to a church often too quick to judge, too ready to criticise, and always tempted to overplay its pieties at the cost of its service to others – that loaf is decisive for Christian devotion and discipleship. Did Vermeer mean all that? Almost certainly not. But that's the joy and fascination of gazing for a while at a picture, and allowing it to question and unsettle unexamined assumptions. Vermeer was no biblical scholar – but sometimes the amateur exegete, using the tools of an altogether different discipline, provides the human texture that prevents the exegetical tradition being monopolised by the professional guild.

8 April 2011
Hill walking, red kites and a sunny, windy day in the North East.

Yesterday amongst other things we went a walk up Brimond Hill. Nothing ambitious, just a 2 mile walk, half of it uphill, and half of it down! But it was bright sunshine, seriously windy, and at the top a sound recordist for the BBC would have had exactly the sounds needed for a documentary or film that needed the wail and whine and muted roar of the wind. The telephone masts with their enormous drum disks provided a weird wind instrument that varied the note and tone depending on the direction and force of the wind.

Standing at the top you can see a 360 degree view that starts with Aberdeen, the North Sea, the white early warning globes, Inverurie in the distance, Benachie, hills all the way down to Clach na Ben looking like a distant pimple, and so down to the mearns, and then the dip towards the sea again, and Stonehaven beneath the horizon 15 miles sse. A while ago some ill meaning person removed the brass viewpoint information disc which means you have to guess the names of the far mountains unless you are an expert. The photo can be found here which gives a good route guide for mountain bikers.

And on the way up we saw the red Kites patrolling over the fields and trees. Several pairs were recently released near where we live. Their delta tails and pointed wings make them unmistakable – they have only recently been reintroduced to Scotland and most recently Aberdeenshire. Reading about them later, it's obvious what caused their decline and near extinction. In the late Victorian age, and into the 20th Century when grouse shooting was the pastime of the rich and the absentee landlords, 267 of these birds were shot as vermin on one huge estate in several days. I've always been slightly puzzled and more than slightly annoyed at the idea you shoot the birds that feed on the birds you really want to shoot! Such arbitrary values reflect a ruthless kind of stewardship.

There's an environmental brain teaser – how to balance the interests of the leisure seeking human being, with the survival needs of the varied species that share our land. Watching the red kites entirely at home in the gusts and fickleness of a strong North East wind, I was glad to see them be what they are. I might have thought different if I'd been a grouse – but then I'd likely have more chance being chased by the occasional kite for food, than when I'm forced to fly towards 20 shotguns held by people hiding behind screens, and calling it sport!

The photo is from The Guardian, ironically accompanying an article about the systemativ poisoning of red kites, this time in the Scottish Borders. .

6 April 2011
Kindle, George Eliot and the Slow Absorption of a Story

Just had a few days at a friends house down in the East Neuk of Fife. Cold and wet, windy and grey, but it was a good rest and I'm home less fatigued than when I left! I took the Kindle with me just to try it out for convenience and flexibility. I'm slowly making my way through Middlemarch, and one of the great bonuses of Kindle is the way it helps redeem those 5 and 10 minute hiatuses (what's the plural of hiatus by the way?) Waiting for the pizza to heat (12 minutes), or the 9.00 news to come on (5 – 10 minutes usually, or sitting in the car waiting for Sheila (1 – umpteen minutes), and especially those quarter hours that are just about the maximum period of consciousness between sliding beneath the duvet and the onset of eyelid fatigue swiftly followed by irresistible soporific longings.

The point is – I'm reading George Eliot several times a day in byte sized chunks and enjoying the leisurely meandering more than that determined enjoyment with which I usually tackle a big novel. It's a different kind of read, but just as enjoyable, and maybe the slow literary drip is as effective a way of living in a story as the conscientious page turning that may get the book finished quicker and the story absorbed more effectively – but it may be that rather than us absorbing the story, a slower reading allows the story to absorb us, and draw us in. Anyway, that's my experience so far – and as a stunningly obvious commonplace observation for Eliot fans – she is a wonderfully wise, lucidly sharp, comprehendingly compassionate and critical narrator who knows the depths of, and points with unerring skill to, the machinations and motivations of human behaviour. Her novels are post-graduate courses in moral psychology and moral philosophy – impossible to read and not see ourselves in a different, sometimes better, sometimes more critical, light.

I know there are lots of ways to use Kindle – people now use them as the sermon notepad, lecture notes, PDF readers – I'll probably get round to some of these. But it's as a way of filling the unforgiving minute by spending it in the company of an omniscient narrator that Kindle has so far "done it for me". That cliche would have survived a nanosecond within range of Eliot's editorial pen!

5 April 2011
Emmaus and the journey towards a new wholeness.

The walk to Emmaus is one of the high points of gospel narrative. The journey, the lonely road, two bewildered travellers, the unlooked for stranger who becomes a companion, the change of conversation, and the way the journey passes quickly in such company. Each of these are features of the skilled storyteller, and each of them exactly what I guess are universally recognised clues for what we all need when walking the road of uncertainty ourselves – company, conversation and companionship that stays with us.

The Emmaus walk and the Emmaus Supper have provided artists with some of the most emotionally charged narrative and some of the most poignantly imaginative encounters in the entire Christian tradition. For those who are honestly facing the realities that call previous certainties in question, or who have reached those unknown places of uncertainty and significant life change, Emmaus is a pivotal story. "He took bread and blessed and broke it….And their eyes were opened…and he vanished from their sight".

Easy to miss that. The moment of recognition lasts just long enough to surprise, remind, reassure, and to release vision and energy enough for a lifetime. Open-eyed recognition, and he vanished. Like those first disciples, the reader today wishes he had stayed longer, we long for more permanence. Yet. Whatever else faith is, it cannot be chronic certainty. The constituents of faith are wonder and surprise, risk and trust, voluntary vulnerability, and contentment with hints of truth and glimpses of glory. That walk to Emmaus could have left the disciples where they were – bewildered, resentful, and in terms of life purpose at a loose end. "and a stranger drew near…and they didn't recognise him…". But he walked with them just the same, won confidence enough to not only speak, but be listened to, and on being asked to stay longer, like a good guest, he welcomed their welcome, and shared their meal.

For all kinds of reasons Luke's Emmaus narrative of that troubled journey and its resolution, touches into those deep places of our human experience, those parts of our journey that are also troubled, from which we don't emerge unscathed or unchanged. But in the breaking of bread, the Guest becomes the Host, our eyes see, and our souls are fed – and life is nourished again towards wholeness.

in trying to get hold of things mysterious
we try to invent something definite
and mystery can never be defined
or must always be redefined
or better yet
come at newly and indirectly
through stories and things around us
thru parables and food

The window was designed by William Morris. The verse is quoted in an early book by Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables, Fortress, 1975, p.114.

31 March 2011