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Vivaldi’s Gloria and sabbath moments of the soul

New patterns of life are bringing new ways of keeping inner experience nourished, and even enriched. I mentioned travelling in the car as my new place to listen to baroque and early music. Some of the music is an acquired taste I might never acquire. But then I remember I didn't like Yoghurt, loathed olives, didn't fancy smoked salmon, and would have thought stilton cheese was a good cheese gone bad. Now they are each of them staple food, and looked forward to treats. Music has been a bit like that for me too. I now listen with great pleasure to music I first thought boring because it didn't taste familiar on a very limited sound palate.

Now I'm writing this in College at 7.37 a.m. Listening to Vivaldi's Gloria. The fire alarm test has just gone for twenty seconds and shattered the intricate architecture of sound I was exploring. Sound – whether the fire alarm or chamber orchestra, is dependent on context. If a fire has broken out somewhere I want to be scared out of my seat, and a chamber orchestra can't do that; and if my soul needs the balm of music that opens up visions of glory and vistas of sound then I can do without the stress accelerator pedal being floored by a pitched for panic screaming fire alarm.

But back to new practices of inner sustaining. In the College and in my study (not an office - too many books contradict that – the ratio of filing cabinets to bookcases is for me the defining geography – and it's 1 to 5), I have started having half an hour of music, reading and thinking about the day with a sense that life is for joy, peace and purpose, as well as for concentration, work and obligation. I suppose such a half hour is a subversion of any work ethic that needs to have a measurable end product. Not sure how you can ever measure the impact on heart, life, mind, relationships, and overall view of the world and our place in it, that a great piece of music or fine writing can have. So I allow the music time, space, movement in and through those places of mind and heart that will soon be filled with other stuff. The other stuff is legitimate enough, in fact that's too grudging – not just legitimate but necessary stuff, obligations rightly placed, expectations fairly faced, work requiring to be done well, a vocation to fulfil. But before then – sabbath moment s for the soul. And anyway – you never know when the fire alarm will shatter the conversation between flute, oboe, strings and human voices.

18 May 2010
The tree of Calvary and the ecology of the heart

O Tree of Calvary

send thy roots deep down

into my heart.

Gather together the soil of my heart,

the sands of my fickleness,

the stones of my stubbornness,

the mud of my desires, bind them together

O Tree of Calvary,

interlace them with thy strong roots,

entwine them with the network

of thy love.

Chandran Devanesen.

At present I'm busy repairing, retrieving, restoring, reconstructing, gardens, our own and someone else's. This prayer means every tree stump removed, every square metre turned over to improve tilth, every shrub and tree pruned back to shape and fruitfulness, every weed and stone removed, becomes an inner aspiration for a renewed ecology of the spirit. No idea who the author was, but it's a prayer I've used before, and it comes and goes with the seasons of the heart.

17 May 2010
When contemplative prayer doesn’t work – and hard words do.

In the Celtic Daily Prayer of the Northumbrian Community there's a lot of liturgical material you don't easily find elsewhere. And sometimes it gets in the way of meditative or contemplative praying. Some sentences are just too provocative. Like this one:

"Many whom God has, the church does not have; and many whom the church has, God does not have."

That is Karl Rahner, an often controversial Catholic theologian, parodying Augustine, who was also controversial but tends to be seen as a central pillar of orthodoxy. One of Rahner's more controversial ideas was the notion of 'anonymous Christians', those who were unrecognised as Christian because they were outside the recognised spiritual terrories of the Christian churches. But their character, their inner impulses and instincts, were open to and responsive to the grace of God in Christ. Now however difficult this idea is, and it is fraught with theological contradiction and damaging tensions, Rahner is saying something important as a general observation on the Church's amnesia about some of Jesus' hardest words. "Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom".
And what about that huge granite boulder of a parable in Matthew 25 where the presumed righteous, (in Matthew's gospel, the Church), have to ask in consternation, when did we see you naked, hungry, thirsty, in prison and do nothing about it? That parable is a road-block on spiritual complacency, a take-down for theological over-confidence, a puncturing of presumed moral and ecclesial superiority.

We can all find good biblical and theological reasons to refute the claim "you can be a Christian without going to church". And we instinctively resist the idea that some people outside church life altogether are nearer to what it means to follow Jesus than some professing Christians who say "Lord, Lord." For myself, I am trying to stay alert, to see those whom God has, but the church does not have; I wouldn't presume to think too hard about whom the church has that God does not have. But I suspect there is a serious and troubling truth in Rahner's words that catches those warnings of Jesus to those who think they have Christian discipleship and their personal place in heaven sussed. And then there's that veiled promise of Jesus that there are those whom the church does not have, who are invited into the Kingdom because when Jesus was naked, hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, they fed, cared for and visited him. And all of those, God does have. Hmmmm.

16 May 2010
Ross County are in Europe….

Today is the biggest football day in the history of Ross County Football Club. The cup final at Hampden. There will probably be a few others there, but I've got my ticket and the important thing is I'll be there. The manager Derek Adams I've known since he was 8 years old; the Director of Football, Geroge Adams, a personal friend of years standing. The achievement of a former Highland league side in getting into Division 1 was huge – a cup final is a sign of another kind of arrival. And European football next year – I want tickets for Ross County v Barcelona.

No idea how the game will go – the miracle is their being there. To win would be a sign of eschatological proportions that would herald a new era in possibility thinking. Either way, travelling with two friends in their car (I've done the journey already this week! :)), encountering long roadworks on a road that will funnel both sets of fans from the North, getting parked and into the stadium, surviving the Hampden pie, and then home before whatever time – going to be a long, big, tiring, fun day. Why not?

Post Match Update

Ross County 0 Dundee United 3

Yes, I'm sad the fairytale came to an end Ross County. But they had over 20,000 supporters, the match was without incident or acrimony on the pitch and the fans were brilliant with each other. The Hampden pie didn't happen because the one thing that hasn't changed is the inability of a national football stadium to have caterers who can serve at something above slow motion. I stood in a queue for 12 minutes and it barely moved. However, given the other dietary experiments of the day, probably just as well. A long day – from 9.15 am till 9.45 pm – was it worth it? Yes – not for the football, but for the friendships.

15 May 2010
Spem in Alium – music and the experience of recovered equilibrium

As one who has spent most my life filling the unforgiving minute, there's the small question of how to fill 360 minutes of travel per week. I do it by car so the laptop isn't the answer. A combination of Radio Four and Classic FM helps, but at the times I'm travelling it tends to be news (Radio 4), and that becomes cyclic after half an hour; or you get weary of Classic FM's daft juxtapositions of Ave Verum followed immediately by silly advert jingles, or the Mozart Clarinet Concerto slow movement followed by a condensed milk voice dripping syrupy words about smooth classics!

So. A strategy. I have long wanted to explore the treasures of Baroque music, and I have a friend who knows stuff about Renaissance and early sacred music. So each journey I listen to a CD, sometimes the same one twice. This week it was a new double CD of Thomas Tallis, whose work spans the 16th Century Tudor period. Most of this is new to me, one or two I have a vague recollection of hearing before, but no real previous engagement with this range of early choral music. My one complaint is there is no copy of the words, Latin or translation. Now in complex choral music sung in parts, knowing what is being sung seems to me to matter – certainly to those unfamiliar with the pieces. That said. The central piece is Spem in Alium, which to my embarrassment I only recently discovered through the afore-mentioned friend asking if I knew Thomas Tallis. The first hearing of it was magical, shared in the background of quiet conversation, and immediately marked it for me as a quite beautiful expression of hopefulness and longing, human voices lifting that longing heavenwards in sounds that are breathtakingly lovely.

So I listened to Spem in Alium several times on the way home yesterday – for this one I do know the words and they are included below. It did what great music should do – it lifted my heart, it reconfigured the world around, it restored my inner climate, it was an experience of recovered equilibrium. One of the most important discoveries in my own faith development is that prayer is a much more thickly textured experience than any one Christian tradition can contain or express. For me great art like the Rublev Icon, the Caravaggio of Jesus calling the disciples (pictured), glorious music like Ave Verum or Laudate Dominus, or poetry like Herbert and R S Thomas, as well as great liturgies and great cathedrals, mountains, sunsets, mountain avens, a hovering kestrel, the face of a friend – they are all ways of recognising the presence of God, and the touch of love through created things. And perhaps prayer only happens at those points of recognition, when something other than us, greater than us, less self-consciously anxious than us, takes hold of the heart and mind and renews feeling and thought. That was what happened on the way home yesterday. Some might call it music therapy – I call it God healing the heart through created things, including those few people who know us best, and those people of genius in whose work we hear, see, apprehend, encounter, A God who is hard to ignore.

Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te

Deus Israel

qui irasceris

et propitius eris

et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis

Domine Deus

Creator coeli et terrae

respice humilitatem nostram

…………………………………….

I have never put my hope in any other but in you,

O God of Israel

who can show both anger

and graciousness,

and who absolves all the sins of suffering man

Lord God,

Creator of Heaven and Earth

be mindful of our lowliness

14 May 2010
They maintain the fabric of the world – a celebration of ordinary good folk

There are important people in our world who don't get all the rewards of big salary, career prospects, noticed by the so called movers and shakers, often don't even get noticed. So today is noticing day. One of them is the woman who cleans our College. The great thing about the College being on the campus is the interaction with a whole slice of human life the churches seldom if ever get near, or go near, or it seems at times, want to. At one of the cafes, in the library, along the corridors, up the High Street and random places in between all these, there are folk just getting on with their lives, and in their work helping us all get on with ours.

So our cleaning person ( we use gender neutral as the default discourse here 🙂 is here before me and I get in a wee tad early myself. We take time to chat and laugh and complain and grump, then she gets on with making the world cleaner and I get on with making the world…..well, making the world what?

This cleaner isn't content with the hoover, the jay-cloth and the mop. She washes our mugs; she puts on the kettle; she makes sure there's milk in the fridge cos she knows theologians are a bit otherworldly, and though they may demythologise the land of milk and honey, they soon discover the benefits of a land (or at least a fridge) where at least there is non-mythological milk – provided by the grace and goodness of someone else.

Ecclesiasticus has this wonderful litany of praise for workers – and at the end, when the ploughman and the blacksmith, the carpenter and the metalworker, the potter and the vine dresser, have all been commended for their part in the shaping and making of the world, there are the lovely lines: "All these maintain the fabric of the world, and their prayers are in the work of their hands." Quite so. And that clean mug every morning, the boiled kettle, the conversation that sets the world right, and the milk in the fridge – tell me they aint sacraments…..

13 May 2010
The Divine Love – Durable Faithfulness, not Transient Sentiment

Yesterday I wrote about the durable, faithful Love of God. It would be way too easy to sentimentalise the love of God, unintentionally reduce it to indulgent complacency, describe it with fatal inaccuracy as if it were a celestial flavour of niceness, or mistake it for an anodyne affection lacking the pain of passionate longing. Some of the greatest theology ever written struggles and strains within the limits of meaning to say what the love of God is, or is not. It's an area where I don't want to be dogmatic, but often end up being so! Some of the greatest religious poetry has also explored the ranges of of far distant meaning, or ransacked all the available semantic domains, or has continuously conceived conceited concepts….

(I know, just let my own wee conceit pass without comment:)

So when I discover a few lines of prose or poetry that backs up my own dogmatic tendencies, or subverts my equally dogmatic certainties, I copy it, think about it, interrogate it, – even let it interrogate me. One such attempted definition has been in my commonplace book ever since I read it in a poetry anthology years ago. Over the years it has broken down into the diverse butv fertile compost out of which grows my theological life and thought. I share it not because it is the last word, but because it is at least the first word.

Love ever gives, forgive, outlives,

And ever stands with open hands.

And while it lives, it gives.

For this is love's prerogative:

To give – and give – and give.

John Oxenham

12 May 2010
The Love that doesn’t depend on me believing in it all the time

Now and again life fills up when you aren't looking and then overflows all over your other plans. This blog has been one of the casualties of a week that has been busy, mostly away from home. C S Lewis once complained about the disruptive impact of his brother's alcoholism on Lewis's plans for academic peace and quiet, and his desire for freedom from the interruption of other people's demands, needs, presence. Then he wrote one of the wise lines that helps us tolerate such selfishness in a scholar writer Christian whom Christians either love or dislike – and some of his attitudes are thoroughly dislikeable, from snobbery, to chauvinism to the use of wit to diminish others. On the other hand he could be unusually compassionate, unexpectedly tender, and was just as likely to use his intelligence to lift up and encourage.

The line is in the volume of letters, They Stand Together, a book I once lent, and never saw again. I asked for it and the borrower swore they returned it. I swore he didn't, and maybe I also swore! Anyway as Lewis pulled himself back from complaint and criticism to compassion and accepted inconvenience on his brother's behalf, he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves, "I often wish life would get back to normal, and then I realise this is normal". And I suppose the wisdom in that is to accept that normal cannot ever mean problem free, obligation free, change free. Wouldn't endless normality be tedious, lacking the oxygen of new possibility, stagnating for want of movement. Isn't there a place in our lives, and maybe many of them, when a new normality has to be allowed to emerge, routines established but always provisionally, because life never stays the same? I hope so. because that's where I am, trying to construct a new normality of life at two bases for a while. And no it isn't easy, it has its moments of self-doubt and other times of wishful thinking about a life less complex.

A number of times recently (7 weeks after moving), I've been asked if life has settled down now. No is the answer. How is it working out others ask. I don't know yet. Someone even asked, do you think you've done the right thing – disconcertingly I want to say "yes, and no"; or "it feels like no but I know it's yes"; or even more scary, how can you know how any big life-changing decision turns out till you make it, and then whether it was right or not, you live with it. I think that's more of what it means to live by faith than all the praying for certainties and signs. I've always admired those who look you in the eye and say " I have a peace about this". It's not my experience – I sometimes have to look right back and say, "I wish I had a peace about this". The truth is, for me, faith cannot be without risk, certainties and sign feel to me like safety nets for the untrusting, and seeking them more like risk assessments in matters of the soul.

So there are days when I wonder and worry; then there are days when I have a sense that the new way of life is workable but needs working at; other times I push in the John Michael Talbot CD in the car and sing loudly along with, "And he shall bear you up, on eagle's wings"; and then there are emails and comments from students who talk about their own life changing decisions, and their appreciation and gratitude, and share what for them is also scary times, loss of normality – and then you begin to realise that loss of normality, and working at making our lives work, and taking risks because life is for movement and growth, and change and is a gift for giving which can't be lived under a canopy of certainties, all these are in fact the normal way a human life of faith is to be lived.

Lewis was right – no point waiting for life to become normal. What we are living is normal – and in the normality the faithfulness of God which for all Gods durable lovingkindness, is a love that manages to be constant without tedium, supporting the heart without dominating the will, allowing risk and freedom and room for error and never for a nana-second wavering in a love that is eternal, self-giving and ever responsive to where we are in our lives, wherever we are. To God, eternal love is normal – to us, it is that eternal love that means however safe or scary, however hurt or whole, however good or bad life turns out, and however unsure we are of decisions made and consequences lived with, eternal love doesn't change. It might feel like it. There are hard places and barren roads, and frightening corners enough at this stage of my life journey to make me think twice at least about talking up my own faith in God's durable, faithful love. But behind all my uncertainties; beneath all my shaken foundations; around all my questions and hesitations, there is a Love that doesn't depend on me believing in it all the time. It just is. Ands because of it, I just is!

……………………….

The detail from the Book of Kells is included because I think it's wonderful. No other reason, it is simply beautiful and deserves to be enjoyed.

11 May 2010
Prayer for others: the circle and cycle of generosity we call grace.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about prayer recently. Truth is, I've been doing a lot of praying recently. No. I hope I'm not turning into one of those spiritual show-offs Jesus had a dig at. There's nothing all that worthy or praiseworthy about doing a bit more praying than usual. Mind you it depends how you define prayer.

Driving in the car and looking across at the Mearns Hills at sunrise, sky and mountain playing out a visual symphony of God's beauty

listening to Lesley Garrett singing the Celtic prayer "Deep Peace of the running wave to you" at a volume that is just this side of what I think the sopranos in the heavenly choir might reach

jumping on a trampoline with an enthusiastically joyful young friend whose skill on the bounce is way beyond me, and not sure whether I'm praying for safety, strength or energy to go on enjoying it, but realising too that I can now see over a neighbour's high hedge in defiance of my unaided height

hearing a student talk about the gains and changes experienced in her two years in College, and sharing that with the College community as the gift of encouragement it surely is

unexpectedly meeting a friend at Baxter's Aucheterarder, out for a day trip and attacking a very large strawberry tart with a relish that made us both forget how hard life has become for her

These and much more are times of prayer without ever having been planned as such. They are moments of recognition; interruptions, even eruptions of grace into ordinary life; intimations of God's presence that are quiet, yet unmistakably fluent with significance.

But I mean more than that. A number of special people in my life are having to walk a hard road just now. Big decisions that will affect future plans; health crises that affect them or those they love; hurts and wounds that diminish the spirit and need gentle, strong, patient and faithful companionship to recover a sense of life's worth-whileness; uncertainty and long term worry about job, life-chances and coping with a world that becomes daily less humane; anxiety about family as parents grow older, more vulnerable; elderly folk, like my strawberry tart connoiseur above, living bravely with diminishing freedom and capacity.

It isn't always easy to know what to pray for each of those people whose lives enrich ours and whose hard times we willingly share.
So as I pray, I sometimes use my holding cross, a gift from a friend, and the hand clasped around it becomes something less than words, and yet more than words.
Other times I hold a small heavy pewter dove in flight, inscribed "Live by the Spirit", another treasured gift from a friend which invariably lifts the heart to trust again to the God of new possibilities. And the Rublev Icon above, a masterpiece of theological imagination, drawing me into the circle of love and mutual recognition that is the life of the Triune God. Because whatever else I pray for these my friends, I pray that they may know the grace of Christ, the love of God and the companionship of the Spirit.

And so as I pray for these my friends, I walk with them on their hard road. And because I care for them, their journey becomes my hard road too. And yet. Walking together it becomes clear that the shared journey means we are fellow travellers, and at different times we each walk the hard path – and we give and receive, love and support, pray and care, for each other. I think it's the way God meant it to be – because in the economics of grace-filled friendship, we can never give more than we receive. The blessing is in the giving, and in the receiving, and maybe that's what intercessory prayer really is. The practical, actual, living accompaniment of others and finding that in the exchanges of loving action, even in the dark terrain, God is present, and we are drawn into that circle and cycle of generosity we call grace.

Love ever gives, forgives,
outlives:

And ever stands with open hands.

And while it lives. It gives.

For this is love's prerogative:

To give–and give–and give.

6 May 2010
The Ethics of Sport – a proposed new degree programme?

There is an entire subject area devoted to sport in University education these days. Sport psychology, commercial and marketing of sports management and events, sport in relation to health, sport and celebrity, sport as an expression of cultural values and social norms, even a spirituality of sport.

Is there a course somewhere, even a wee certificate or diploma, on the ethics of sport? You know, even a foundation module on why cheating is wrong. Or a more advanced one on why doing your best is good enough, but enhancing performance with banned substances is not good enough. And maybe an honours course on the way money influences loyalty, challenges integrity, and tempts towards a greed more powerful than the valid motivation to excel.

I've no idea what the explanation is of the events surrounding the world number one snooker player John Higgins, and the allegations of bribery apparently captured on camera by undercover reporters. I do know that there is now so much money in sport that it attracts malign influences from political pressures, to media manufactured scandals to the presence and interests of organised crime. And the media which thrives on celebrity, scandal, gossip both benign and malicious, has its own code of practice which might struggle to be described as an ethic of journalism – more a set of guidelines that shows where the baleful and sordid crosses the line into the territory of litigation, libel, and legally enforced apology.

Quite apart from the mess snooker finds itself in on the weekend of its showpiece world final, there is an undoubted problem in professional sport. Too much money and too few responsible role models; too much emphasis on excellence of performance sustained and improved, and not enough on moral maturity and social responsibility. The gym in our culture bears little relation to the gymnasium of the good life, the training of mind, motive and conscience to ensure that whatever else we excel at, we can demonstrate a capacity for fairness, appreciation of the skills of others, a balance between self-confidence in our ability and arrogant admiration of our own brilliance.

I have a friend who has spent a lifetime in sport, managing and coaching young lives, pouring into his sport both the experience and skills that help players grow, and the instillation of values, goals and character formation that enables players to see beyond the game, and to prepare for the much more important performance of a life well lived. He is of course in a minority; but perhaps his success is in the number of ex-players whose contribution to our communities goes well beyond their ability in a game, a sport, an industry. At its best, sport can integrate those drives that enable us to compete fairly, to strive for excellence, to value the other as person, to acknowledge good achievements whether ours or not, and to recognise that with success comes responsibility.

The irony is that for sport to survive it needs finance. Some sports are awash with money, even if most of it is borrowed under burdens of debt that at some point will crush its bearers. To handle money honestly, to recognise when money is tainted, to learn to walk away from money when the cost is a mortgaged conscience, to live wisely as a rich person, is not an economic problem. It's an ethical one. Wonder which University will be the first to offer a course on sporting ethics? Or is there one out there already but with too few recruits?

3 May 2010