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Prayer and supplication for Haiti: the God who in Christ entered the deepest darknesses of a fractured creation.

There are times I miss being a pastor within a local Christian community. There are plenty of obvious reasons for this. Less obvious, until it happens, is the inner urge to gather together with the community of faith, as one called to encourage and enable this particular community to work out its own theology, with fear and trembling, in the face of disaster. In my years as a pastor I found myself at different times on a Sunday Morning leading worship in the aftermath of Tiannemann Square, 9/11, the Omagh bombing, Piper Alpha, Dunblane, Lockerbie, and in subsequent days sharing the prayers, conversations, questions and grief of a community reaching out in heart to love a broken world.

The task of the pastor and community theologian, when disaster overwhelms some in our world, is to recognise the faith questions and the faith resources within the Christian community. Then gathering our wisdom and bewilderment, holding onto both our faith and uncertainty, mouthing our hope and defying the despair, we pray. Determined to try, together, to respond in a way that willingly absorbs the suffering and human anguish of others, we bring it all into our worship, our prayers, our supplication to the God who in Christ entered the deepest darknesses of a fractured creation.

And so today, with the anguish and danger facing the people of Haiti, I so wish I was again in that role of sharing the life of a known community as its pastor, learning again the necessary humility of the pastor who truly believes that theology and doxology, reflection and worship, plaintive prayer and patient praise, that these are the Church's work of witness in our world, and that they come not from her or him as pastor, but from the community itself. No hard edged doctrine of providence like so much theological shoulder shrugging; no Bible quotations to silence impolite questions; not a word justifying our faith, because God's response is never self-defensive. Instead tears for the dead and the broken; prayers for those who dig with their hands and with kitchen utensils; inner recoil from the hard fact that the logistics in Haiti just now are near impossible; guilt at our own impotence and gratitude for every gesture of help and humanity. ( The photo of the wee toddler's smile of recognition as he is handed to his mother is for me a powerful image of the reaching out hands of God).

How do you pray in all this? The question isn't so much where is God as where are we and where is help for our world, and what will help anyway? Money will. So we give it, then double it. Long term compassion will, because money and relief aid will be needed for years. Questions will – especially those about the unfair distribution of wealth across our world, and why it is that poor people, in a high risk area, whose homes are cheaply built and collapse easily, and who have no state sponsored medical service, are utterly vulnerable. And yes prayer will, especially prayer as Barth urged, the lifting up of holy hands against the status quo.

Last night, and today and coming days, I will light a candle and pray for the people of Haiti. And that small flame, the candle self-consumed in the giving of light, will signifiy our calling to lighten the darkness, to radiate the life and light of Christ – by the strategic generosity of giving money – by long term commitment to go on giving into the future – by not settling for the rules of the global money-grubbing and resource-grabbing game – by praying against all that diminishes and crushes human hearts and bodies, and by doing so in the name of the One whose own body was crushed, and through whom life and hope and the love of the Eternal reaches the darkest recesses of our God-loved world.

17 January 2010
Why academic achievement isn’t the be all and end all

Not everyone in academia thinks academic achievement is an unqualified good. Rick Gekoski (on page 167) manages to be both self-deprecating and maintain enough self esteem to not write himself off. But this is as salutary a paragraph as any I've come across that honestly looks at the cost and consequence of academic competitiveness in the University.

"I am told that one should feel proud of oneself and one's achievements, but I frequently value the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Pride resulting from, say, academic acheivement, is a kind of false pride based on false goals. Does high academic achievement make one happy, or good? Does it fill you with laughter and goodwill towards man? [sic] Look around the universities and despair. No. I rather prefer moderate, vigilant self-esteem, scepticism directed inwards, self-doubt: those qualities of mind that lead to humility, and to that irony which wryly registers the differences between the apparent and the real. And ironically enough, I still feel proud od my academic achievements, when I'm not mildly ashamed of them".

16 January 2010
Theologians I now couldn’t not read

There are some modern theologians I now couldn't not read. Sometimes a double negative is the best way to be emphatic, making a point by grammatical clumsiness. Double negatives act like speed-bumps on the rat run of our hasty assumptions.

So just to

slow   you down

enough

to   hear

the   point I'm making,…..

There are some theologians you read and that's it, you've done it and you can move on. But there are others who aren't so easily assimilated, and who refuse to be reduced to the status of transient interest now dispensable.
For different people, the names would be different. I know readers of this blog have their own need-to-read authors. For myself I couldn't not read Moltman, Bonhoeffer, T F Torrance, Yoder, Newbigin, Brueggemann, Hauerwas, Rowan Williams.

From earlier centuries there are others I return to, and some of them I couldn't not read either (Julian of Norwich for one, the very different P T Forsyth for another). But for now I've been reflecting on why these particular modern theologians have so fully entered my theological bloodstream that they are now essential to my spiritual and intellectual health. It isn't that I agree with all that any one of them says. And not as if they are all from the same theological stable. Some of them are quite hard to read, several of them write far too much, and I haven't read all that any one of them has written.

But they are,

every one of them,

Christian theologians who have required of me

a new depth of response,

demanded a full measure of intellectual integrity,

and instilled a spiritual seriousness

that understands the necessary connections

between good theology,

Christ-like practice,

and the habit of doxology.

This coming year I intend to pick one book from each of these, and read them again. With one or two it might be one I haven't read before. But Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, Newbigin's The Open Secret, and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, (I see these two as essentially together), Yoder's Politics of Jesus, and Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, are all but self selecting. It's a sign of age I'm told – to re-read instead of reading what's new. To be honest though, even the five books cited above are hard to beat as worthwhile theological writing that is inherently if at times uncomfortably transformative for those who engage with them.

Which other theologians, writing today, meet the benchmarks of that italics sentence above?

15 January 2010
The ethics of honesty as a person’s default mechanism

Antidote to cynicism.

Making the world a better place, and making us feel better about it.

Compassion as the guarantee of honesty.

Which one proved to be the neighbour, huh?.

Click on this link and smile knowingly, then go and do likewise.

14 January 2010
Praying not for the right things, but to be the right person

Found this prayer over at Michael Gorman's blog and thought it worth circulating.

I think some of the readers of this blog are likely to appreciate its spirituality of perceptive self-critique, and love's instinctive but demanding integrity that seems utterly congruent with the call of Jesus.

I'm compiling a sheet of seven prayers which I'll use one each week-day for a while. This is one from a Franciscan community is one of them.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half
truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within
your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and
exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and
peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to
comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you
can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others
claim cannot be done.

13 January 2010
The joy of being scunnered!

Wasn't going to complain. But

28 December to 30 December blocked main drain. Details censored in consideration of those with delicate imaginations.

30 December no water – main supply fractured and three postcode areas affected. Bought 30 litres of water to divide amongst the neighbours – water back on before it could be distributed.

4 January took our 17 year old cat to the vet – had to come home without him, and he is now, it warms my heart to believe, purring in eternity.

Sunday January 9, at 2.13 pm ( I noted the time) the cold water supply burst in the cavity between the garage and the kitchen.

Three hours later, fingers numb and feeling as big as cucumbers, arm scraped after lying on the road on the ice, trying to locate the cold water supply turn-off valve while my cheek was pressed into the slushy tarmac, I managed to attach a hose to the gushing pipe and persuade the water to run harmlessly into the main drain, which was now mercifully unblocked.

Monday Jan 10, still unable to locate the turn-off valve in the house, accompanied by a plumber whose patience was biblical in its perdurance, and after us trying again to get the street valve to turn-off while avoiding multiple hernia injuries, we finally attached two pressure seals to the ends of the fractured joints, the only down side being the icy plentiful spray that ( I use the word for once in its more accurate and untheological sense) inerrantly found that part of our necks and the inside of the sleeves at the wrists, so that channels of icy water flowed up to the oxter and encountered channels of icy water flowing down the front of our shirts.

There are valuable and profound and meaningful and transformative spiritual lessons to be learned from all this, but I can't be bothered.

Those familiar with the Scots language will know what I mean when I say I am scunnered. Those unfamiliar with the word – ask me on a better day. 🙂

12 January 2010
Johnny Cash and the deeply turned tilth of personal experience

Just listened again to a Johnny Cash album, the definitive collection. Some of these songs are masterpieces of their genre; and one or two of them transcend genre in their significance and power. I remember the first time I heard the album Man in Black. Along with The San Quentin and Folsom Prison Concerts, and Bitter Tears (a stunning apologia and lament for the way of life of the native American peoples), these albums confirmed Johnny Cash as one of the artists whose music is for me indispensable. I know the often noted weaknesses – sentimentalism, sensationalism, banal lines, thematic repetition, and sheer deluge of recordings some of them little more than ordinary. But Johnny Cash is one of the truly great artists whose greatness grew out of the deeply turned tilth of personal failure, emotional suffering and his own acknowledged brokenness. Few Country singers give voice to the highs and lows of human experience with such searing honesty, and with that knowing tone of voice that articulates lostness, longing, love, laughter and lament.

The title song, Man in Black, became Cash's theme song, and black his chosen fashion statement. Bernard Levin, in his book A Walk Up Fifth Avenue, tells of going into the top tailor's store and being measured for a suit that cost a year's salary. The justification?

"Clothes aren't only for wearing Mr Levin. When you wear this suit you are making a statement."

Cash knew that – "there's a reason for the things that I have on", he . Man in Black is one of those pieces that takes its place in the premier league of protest songs, the songs of the discontented, the poetry of the dissenter, the lyrics of those fed up with the status quo, the music that combines compassion and outrage, ballads that tell a human story to elicit human understanding and responsiveness.

The poignancy and dignity of his last few years when suffering from Parkinson's disease pushed Johnny Cash deeper into his search for inner and outer peace, for healing mercy and a way of leaving life that would finally satisfy his yearning for a life that had been worth living. His courage in performing till his hands wouldn't do what was needed on his instruments, that unique gargling-with-gravel voice weakened but still able to orchestrate the pathos and passion of human emotion with the range and intensity of a full orchestra. And the closing scene of Hurt, when he closes and caresses the piano lid – these are unforgettable moments of great art, and human tragedy transcended by brave dignity.

.

11 January 2010
The dangers of reading philosophy too early

Don't know if this book is fun in a serious sort of way, or serious in a funny sort of way. There is an emerging genre of autobiography by harvesting the insights from a lifetime of reading. Rick Gekoski is an academic, a litrerary critic, a bookseller and collector, and other things besides. He writes with honesty, humour and is good at choosing the things to say about what he has read, and why it mattered. Here is one of his comments on his philosophical phase as a post-grad student, when he read widely in philosophy, symbolic logic, ethics and aesthetics. He realised that he had become intellectually arrogant, argumentative, aggressive and was merely fashioning tools to mask his failings and attack others. The sin of cleverness as a weapon.

"I honed my analytic skills. Honing is a dangerous metaphor here, for in general we are rightly anxious about immature people with knives. You can sharpen a scalpel or butcher's knife, and achieve marvels of accurate surgery upon the living or the dead. But offer a knife – even worse a badly honed one – to someone without skills or the sense to know how to use it, and a lot of misdirected slashing is likely to result." (page 74)

10 January 2010
Why the dignity of each human being matters

"The despiser of humanity despises what God has loved,

despises the very form of God become human."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, page 87

9 January 2010
Kay Carmichael – Social Reformer, Academic Teacher, Peace Activist – She looked humanely forth on human life

By the time I met Kay Carmichael in 1974 she was already a highly respected and influential leader in social policy. She had served on The Kilbrandon Committee in 1964, under whose Report recommendations the Scottish Children's Hearing System came into being under the Children's (Scotland) Act 1968. The introduction of Children's Panels not only decriminalised many of the actions of children normally taken before Juvenile Court, they moved thinking from punishment to help. The approach recognised that many childhood difficulties, including neglect, abuse, criminal activity and other situations that put children at risk, required to be addressed with support, understanding and actions taken "in the best interests of the child", and decided by trained members of the local community guided by a Children's Reporter, and in conversation with the responsible adults in the child's life. The philosophy underlying these policies was, and remains, creative, forward looking, and optimistic about the difference that can be made in young lives if good decisions and adequate resources can be put in place. The result is a way of viewing children and their families that is widely admired across the world; and one which successive Scottish Governments do well to maintain, develop and protect from those accountancy viruses that so destructively undermine in the interests of money the health of something almost unqualifiedly good.

Later in the 1970's Kay Carmichal was involved in the Lilybank project, working with those on benefits in the East End of Glasgow. Controversially she went incognito for three months, and was filmed living on the Benefit Level of £10.50 per week. She exposed the humiliation, the indignity, the sheer grinding inuhumanity, that so many people encounter in dealing with the State Welfare system. Again, what was being demonstrated and thought through was the revolutionary impact on social policy of respect for persons and humane social policy as default values in a political philosophy.

She began working with the most violent prisoners, trying to reconnect alienated people of violence to the community. It was experimental thinking like hers that would lead to the setting up of the Barlinnie Special Unit, once again encouraging at the level of policy-making, the search for understanding, relational co-operation, and how to harness the resources of the wider community in addressing social and human failings. Later in life she explored much more deeply the issues of sin and forgiveness, society's response to criminality and the deeper human questions of restorative justice and human rehabilitation. Kay Carmichael was my teacher, the best kind, who managed to combine impressive intellect, creative pragmatism and awareness of the significance of teaching young minds to look humanely forth on human life. There is therefore something deeply moving about the thought that she completed her PhD on Sin and Forgiveness at the age of 76, after a lifetime's professional, academic and political experience in the social implications of human failure and community response, sin and forgiveness.

More could be said – her lifelong anti-nuclear activism as a peace delinquent (her word), her work on behalf of those ensnared in prostitution, her instinctive resistance to all kinds of social discrimination, her support for schemes to give disabled people the right to as much independent living as they could manage, and her deep moral antipathy to poverty that in her view is not inevitable, if only we could develop a more humane politics and a less ruthless economics.

Social work is a hard place to be now. Seldom are those who work within the systems rewarded by public respect, moral support, and a wider awareness of just how hard it is to get everything right all of the time. And I do have a troubling suspicion that future Kay Carmichaels may be unable to break free of the current love affair in large service providers, with micro-managed constraints that discourage creative reflection, and avoid the risk of experiment. Which in turn suppresses (as by product or deliberate policy the result is the same) the expression in professional theory and practice of that social compassion, those imaginative ideas that are building blocks of vision.

For now I salute this woman whose articulate and passionate voice spoke for so many whose voices were seldom listened to. And time spent in her class was as important in the formation of my understanding of a truly pastoral and good news ministry as love for others, as any other course I took – including an intense theological training in our own College.

There is a fine Obituary in the Scotsman here. I haven't found an online photo of Kay. Her funeral service will take place in Glasgow later today. I greatly regret I won't be able to be there, so this post is intended as a modest acknowledgement of an immodest personal debt – by the way her funeral is to be followed by champagne and sausage rolls at a local hotel – how characteristic is that!

8 January 2010