Living Wittily

Author: admin

  • One sentence Blogposts – Thought bytes for the mind 1.

    300px-Christ_of_Saint_John_of_the_Cross



    "God is our last hope

    because we are God's first love."


    Jurgen Moltmann, The Source of Life, page 40

  • One sentence blogposts – Thought bytes for the mind.

    Barefeet-footprints-sand Decided I'm getting too verbose, overly loquacious, verbally profligate, semantically extravagant, expostulating far beyond the exuberance of my usual verbosity (as my Gran used to say – she did, you know!).

    Too many long posts, methinks.

    So for the next week I'm only going to do ONE sentence posts.

    Is there enough in one sentence to kick-start the mind?

    We'll see.

    Here are the rules:

    • After today, and for the next week, only one sentence with no comment before or after.
    • An image included to complement the words.
    • Each sentence must come from a different author.

    As a practice run:

    "I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot" 

    (John Bunyan, 17th Century)

  • The Subversive and Creative Consequences of Convictional Teaching

    Shadow in the middle Theological education is not theologically neutral. A confessional College working within the framework of a secular University can either opt for a stance of critical distance and attempted intellectual objectivity, or it can self-consciously position itself within its own confessional tradition, while encouraging that tradition itself to be open to critique and review. Of course critical distance and attempted objectivity can never be neutral anyway; and there is something to be said for stating at the outset the position adopted by teachers, the assumptions and presuppositions that underlie any given course.

    That's why our Scottish Baptist College is deliberately and intentionally open about our commitment to a Baptist way of doing theology, while also being open to that mutual enhancement of educational practice made possible by collaborative partnership with a publicly funded University. Theological education is no different from other subject-focused forms of learning. We pursue our peculiar agendas, exploring our particular subject field, develop distinctive discourse, and seek enriched understanding through that cross fertilisation of ideas we call multi-disciplinary study. But all this is done as a theological College which is self-consciously Baptist and Scottish.

    It's against that kind of background that Wallace Alston Jr. makes a passionate plea for convictional teaching, a real and acknowledged  relationship between a teacher's personal beliefs and their public instruction. Theological education as a process of Christian formation is at its most formatively effective when teachers are vocational mentors who demonstrate an attractive and persuasive discipleship of the intellect.

    "What I am talking about is classroom teaching that leaves no doubt in the student's mind concerning where the teacher stands in relation to the subject under consideration, whether it is of life and death importance or simply an object of dispassionate reflection and evaluation. Convictional teaching is teaching done from the inside of an issue or idea as a sympathetic participant  rather than from the outside  as a disinterested spectator. It is teaching with such obvious passion for the subject matter that the student is caught up, drawn into it, and brought to the point pf personal decision about its meaning and merit. Convictional teaching in theological education  is a form of intellectual mentoring whereby the teacher approaches  questions of truth in scripture and tradition with a hermeneutics of trust and gratitude that bears witness to the sheer delight of serving God with the life of the mind."

    Wallace Aston, 'The Education of a Pastor-Theologian', The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints. The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian, Wallace M Alston & Cynthia A Jarvis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 71-2.

    The painting is called 'Shadow in the Middle' and is by Daniel Bonnell. The play of light and shadow, the protective stance of Jesus, the tooth shaped shadows around Jesus and the woman, the stones lying on the ground – whatever else, Jesus is no dispassionate observer. A crash course in theological education might start with an exegesis of this painting, some convictional teaching on holiness as moral courage on behalf of others. And the competence based learning outcome might be "a demonstrated capacity to stand in the middle beside the vulnerable, daring the stone throwers"!

  • Theological education, deep people and the importance of a Glasgow fountain.

    Kfount1 Still doing a lot of thinking about the relations and interactions between theological education, ministry training and personal formation. Competence based learning outcomes are currently the most significant element in criterion driven assessment in higher education. But are they sufficient of themselves to reflect the necessary balances of an education intended to achieve more than the desirable employable competences and student customer satisfaction?

    Related to the search for demonstrable competences are questionable assumptions about technique, practice, and knowledge as information.   Here's one pastor-theologian's take on the tensions between theological formation, technical competence and an instrumental approach to vocation and vocational formation.

    "An equally significant concern about the increasing role of techno-rationality in pastoral and theological formation blurs the boundaries with the management models akin to economic institutions. In this context, the ubiquitous techno-rationality in whose waters children grow up, teenagers mature and thirty-somethings swim extensively these days in this part of the world, is also present in faith communities. The communities of faith are malleable due to their de facto participation in both the good and ills of our culture.

    All these habits are formed in close proximity to consumerism. Cyber-culture is an environment structured by technique-laden values and practices that foster information-intensive, technique oriented habits. [Quentin Schultze in Habits of the High-Tech Heart p. 18] is prudent to warn against "the lightness of our digital being" and its "cosmic and moral shallowness".  With it comes a quasi religious philosophy of what Shultze defines as "informationalism" – "a faith in the collection and dissemination  of information as a route to social progress and personal happiness". Such a disposition emphasises the "is" over the "ought to", observation over intimacy, and measurement over meaning. The result is promiscuous knowing which promotes instrumental habits while eclipsing virtuous practices…." 

    (Kristine Suna-Koro, 'Reading as Habitus', in The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints. The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian, Wallace M Alston & Cynthia A Jarvis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009),

    When Bernard of Clairvaux diagnosed the cultural and moral shortcomings of scholastic and speculative philosophy he used the image of the canal and the reservoir. The problem was too many canals and not enough reservoirs; the culture wasn't forming enough "deep people". 08 The image comes back to my mind the day after the recognition of Robert Stewart, one of Glasgow's greatest local politicians. (The fountain pictured above is in his memory, and yesterday was unveiled in its renovated and restored glory – I'm going to see it this week). Stewart was the driving force in realising the visions of bringing safe and clean drinking water to a city ravaged by typhus, cholera and dysentery. The 25+ mile-long viaduct conveying the water to Mugdock and down into Glasgow was a stunning piece of civil engineering even by the standards of Victorian self-confidence. It is an example of conduit and reservoir in creative relationship; depth and dissemination; deep resources and widespread application. For the people in October 1859, it was drinking water on tap; but for it to happen it needed the deep reservoirs of a Scottish loch, and the equally deep reservoirs of human wisdom , moral urgency, humane compassion and persuasive rhetoric of a Robert Stewart. In other words it was done by the right balance of techno-rationality and humane wisdom. The first is assessed by competence and technical know-how; the second is evidenced by moral know-why. Contemporary education needs to recover the know-why, I think; we need deep people. 

  • Ornithology, poetry and around 70 shopping days to Christmas!!!

    Robin2 Feel the need of a poem. Too much theological prose dessicates the imagination, and makes the mental processes sluggish.

    (Interesting how we learn words – 'dessicated' I learned as a wee boy who loved coconut and raided the packets bought for baking)

    Just watched the robin clearing out the local sparrow scruff from the back garden. Reminds me of Fanthorpe's poem, "The Robin".

    It's reference to Christmas is allowed in October – Dobbies have their Christmas cards out. So that's all right then.

    The Robin

    I am the proper

    Bird for this
    season –

    Not blessed St Turkey,

    Born to be eaten.

                        

    I’m the man’s
    inedible

    Permanent bird.

    I dine in his
    garden,

    My spoon is his
    spade.

     

    I’m the true token

    Of Christ the Child–King:

    I nest in man’s
    stable,

    I eat at man’s
    table,

    Through all the
    dark winters

    I sing

  • Evangelism described in a cliche – but cliches are often true

    Bread A cliche is a now unoriginal phrase that started off as something original and well enough said to be repeated often enough to become a cliche. If you see what I mean. The following brief quotation has a metaphor for evangelism that has entered the less than honoured lists of cliche – but its truth is no less important for its over-exposure:

    "Evangelism is witness. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food. The Christian does not offer out of his bounty. He has no bounty. He is simply guest at his Master's table and , as evangelist, he calls others too."

    D. T. Niles, writing thirty years ago, quoted all over the place but nobody ever footnotes it. Is it oral tradition, or displaced text, or borrowed so often it is now orphaned from the original source. So. Where was it first written? I don't know the answer but want to.

  • Haiku, Isaiah, and cultural fatigue syndrome.

    Golden eagle_300_tcm9-139839 Preaching this Sunday on Isaiah 40 and on the theme of weariness. I often explore Scripture text by reframing its themes into the disciplined focus of Haiku. Sometimes it works better than others – but most times it allows a serious playfulness, and invites an alternative approach to exegesis – contemplative exegesis. The three Haiku below acknowledge the soul fatigue and body weariness we often experience in the stampede of the Gadarene swine that we call daily living, in a culture built on an unquestioned assumption of constant economic growth and now facing the realities of an eaually unqestioning recession.

    Isaiah 40 is a text for a culture like ours, which bought into the worship of finance and lost heavily when it's god began to dissolve by acid of its own making – a culture that now needs to find a less exhausting deity, a different liturgy and a new vocation as stewards of a fragile creation. One way Christian's witness to the Gospel in such a culture, is by a life less driven by acquisitive competition, and more impelled by agapaic generosity. But that will mean Christians like me learning to see the world differently, because from the heightened perspective and with the precision sighting of the eagle. But such a radically different worldview only comes when we wait, and are ourselves upborne by strength beyond our own, by the one Isaiah describes with defiant confidence, as the Creator and Redeemer.

    Three Haiku on Isaiah 40. 29-31

    Unable to run,

    weariness weighs down the soul

    unwilling to wait.

    …

    To walk and not faint;

    yet the body has limits

    we cannot transcend.

    …

    Borne on eagles wings,

    resurgent strength uplifts me,

    changing my worldview.

  • “Conformitas Christi” and a “CHICKS” Concert.

    Conformitas Christi!

    In response to my post of a couple of weeks ago, Angela has sent me an unlooked for gift. Thanks Angela – your gift arrived on a day when I was at the kind of meeting which I call a suit meeting, and it gave me an option for later in the day! So, I'm now the proud owner of a sport shirt with the motto "Conformitas Christi!" embroidered in red! With a hoodie carrying the College Logo, and a sport shirt making theological statements of experiential fact, I'm wondering if clothes that either say our convictions explicitly or in code, or that say who we are by advertising, are forms of brand awareness promotion. Only thing is – you wear something that says you're a Christian, there is a question of being consistent with your clothes. Which was what Paul meant when he spoke of Christian believers, having put off their old garments and being clothed with Christ – I think, maybe, as one exegetical option…

    Logo Then last night Sheila and I went to a concert in our local church, sponsored by the Arkleston Singers. Local folk who make up an amateur singing group, help raise money for local and wider based charities through public concerts. This one was on behalf of Country Holidays for Inner City Kids (CHICKS). Children and young adults who are disadvantaged, have experienced abuse or neglect, or where parents are not able to cope with them at home, are provided with a week's holiday in Devon and Cornwall. The short video was a beautiful thing to watch and hear. Most of it was the young people themselves telling what their holiday meant – the first time a 14 year old had seen the sea and wanted to know where the deep end was; the young girl who had ridden a horse, the lad who had climbed the climbing wall twice, and come down twice without falling, he said. And they canoed, had water fights, long climbs up hills, and all in the company of trained adults and volunteer carers. One youngster, who had arrived frightened and withdrawn, pointing to the CHICKS logo on a carers shirt and saying it meant being safe. At the end of the holiday they get a personal photo portfolio of them and their friends, a lasting memory of how life can be, that can become hope giving and something to hang on to.

    For years I worked within the children's hearing system in Scotland, and I understand the hugely affirming and renewing impact of supported fun, the gift of freedom and friendship somewhere else, for children whose ususal living place is heart breaking – for whatever reason. Sometimes God has to dunt us in the ribs to notice something significant is happening. Standing in the middle of the Arkleston Singers was someone I'd met for the first time 6 hours earlier at the meeting of suits in the University! She too had changed clothes in order to be part of the occasion – and we agreed that the evening was the more significant event, when measured by the criteria of the Kingdom of God in which the valuing and cherishing of children is a key competence – and a sign of Conformitas Christi!

    As to the concert – well Mozart's 'Ave Verum', the spiritual 'When I go down to the river to pray', Abba's 'I have a dream', the more contemporary 'You lift me up', Howard Goodall's soul touching arrangement of 'Love Divine', John Rutter's 'Gaelic Benediction' – and Billy Joel, Lloyd Weber. The singing was polished and passionate, the accompanist more than icing on the cake.

    13-vg-sower_with_setting_sun Yesterday was one of those days when you live through it and don't realise how much living was in it till you think about it and even blog about it. Hard work verging on tedium in the morning and afternoon, and enjoyment verging on tears in the evening – and in both places folk trying to do their best to make the world work better. In different ways, for different reasons, but the seed often grows secretly, and the Kingdom mindset is to believe in the life potential of seeds. Whether one growing secretly, or countless scattered on rock, among thorns, hard worn paths and good soil – whenever and wherever, seeds grow. The birds, thorns, the trampling feet take their toll, but with life bursting force, seeds grow.


  • Crowded trains, scowling train drivers and exuberant passengers.

    Smile3t On the train going into Glasgow to meet Sheila around 4 o'clock Thursday.

    Stop at Corkerhill and it seems the entire student cohort of Cardonald College want to get on this train.

    Three loud talking and laughing female teenagers threw themselves into the seats opposite and beside me.

    The one on my side dunted me as she landed, turned and smiled which I think was an apology.

    In front of me on the table a glossy Now Magazine, and the girls across from me picked it up and looked at me. No I said, it isn't mine! One smiles, laughs at her pals, and then they flick through it using the various pictured celebs for slagging off target practice.

    As we draw into Glasgow Central another train drew alongside and the driver with a permafix unsmile was within four feet of our window. All three girls waved and smiled and he looked across – but his mouth didn't flinch one millimetre towards that place where life might look half tolerable for him.

    Which sent all three of them into near hysteria mixed with incredulity at their failure to coax him back to the world where it isn't all so grim.

    Embarrassed by this virtuoso facial performance of negative emotional equity I muttered to the three of them, 'Apologies on behalf of my generation'. The one holding the magazine looked at me and said one word 'Awthatsawrightyourcool'

    By the time I met Sheila at Queen Street I'd stopped floating, buoyed up by such proximity to fun, energy and young possibilities of life, grinning in defiant goodwill at those daft enough to make a career out of joylessness.

    Oh, and while we're on the daft stuff. While waiting for Sheila's train to arrive, I noticed a woman eating chips while texting a friend, and managing both with considerable dexterity. Presumably, despite the fact that the phone keypad must have been getting a bit slippery……multi-tasking develops in ever stranger combinations, huh?

  • “Fellowship” according to Bonhoeffer – “to kindle the flame of the true fire of Christ.”

    One of my problems with the word 'fellowship', and an increasing diifculty with the word 'community', is the cosy, soft, non-angularity of the words. These are words with a marshmallow softness, a painted-with-a-pastel-palette look that's more impressionist than real, a squishy shapelessness under pressure that gives no confidence we know what their real shape is or would look like. I also worry that both words are more about feelings than actions, and that their overuse makes them sound like sacred alternatives to secular expletives, which tend to be the unthinking blanks inserted to sentences to convey emotional engagement or just as often as a vain repetition by habit.

    Bonhoeffer Which is why now and then it matters to have someone say something about 'fellowship' and 'community' that unsettles us, and dissipates the devotional haze that obscures what fellowship and community at their demanding uncomfortable Christlikeness might actually  look like, feel like and be like. And one of the people who regularly does that for me is one of my best theological friends, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A theological friend is one who isn't interested in reinforcing my conceptual comfort zones, or ignoring my bad intellectual and theological habits, and whom I trust enough to listen when he tells me I'm talking or thinking nonsense.

    So. To the popular notion that fellowship and community are directly tied to intimacy, like-mindedness, mutual knowledge of each other's story, sharing of personal needs and problems, and current place in the world, Bonhoeffer enters a disconcerting disclaimer. Like the good theological friend he is he confirms his trustworthiness as a friend not by agreeing with us but by telling us why we are wrong. In Sanctorum Communio,in a discussion of the Lord's Supper Bonhoeffer compares the experience of those who know each other well with those who break bread as strangers:

    Breadwine It has been deplored that urban congregations celebrating the Lord's Supper are faced with the unfortunate fact that participants do not know one another; this situation allegedly diminishes the weight placed on the Christian Community and takes away from the personal warmth of the ceremony.

    But against this we must ask is this very kind of a church-community not itself a compelling sermon about the significance and reality of the community of saints, which surpasses all human community? Isn't the commitment to the church, to Christian love, most unmistakable where it is protected in principle from being confused in any way with  any kind of human community based onb mutual affection? Is it not precisely such a community that much better safeguards the serious realism of the sanctorum communio – a community in which the Jew remains a Jew, Greek Greek, worker worker, and capitalist capitalist, and where all are nevertheless the Body of Christ – than one in which these hard facts are quietly glossed over?

    Wherever there is a real profession of faith in the community of saints, there strangeness and seeming coldness only serve to kindle the flame of the true fire of Christ; but where the idea of the sanctorum communio is neither understood nor professed , there personal warmth merely conceals  the absence of the crucial element  but cannot replace it. 

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 245-6