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Sometimes radical Christian discipleship requires us to push routine courtesy beyond the limits opf what is socially acceptable. Jesus shared a table, food and conversation with "the wrong people", those who didn't deserve to have their place at a table reserved for good people. Jesus didn't sit at tables reserved only for those good enough, socially powerful enough, respectable enough. If you wanted to be in Jesus' company, that was enough.

So Paul urged those early Christian house groups to "welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, in order to bring praise to God." Paul was echoing some of Jesus words, and recalling many of Jesus actions. To welcome someone is to rejoice in another’s presence. Welcome carries with it the presumption of friendship. Remember the insult and nickname, "the friend of sinners." 

William Barclay called Christian love indefatigable goodwill; as a West of Scotland voice he could just as easily have said love is not easily scunnered! Welcome is not self-assertion but respectful consideration of others, attentiveness to their presence, care for their welfare, alertness to who they are. And we do this in order to bring praise to God. Welcoming brings praise to God. Who'd have thought it? Not our barriers; not our sound theology that defines who's in or out; not our cherished viewpoints we dare to call biblical, Christian, orthodox, sound, or any other exclusionary mindset; but welcoming others as Christ welcomes us. That brings praise to God.

So. Welcome is Christ-like acceptance. A welcoming community is a gathering of those who seek to embody, faithfully practice and consistently demonstrate the welcome of Christ. Welcome is a habit of the heart, a lifestyle of acceptance of others, respect for persons, indefatigable goodwill. In our personal, out-there, ordinary everyday lives, in our shared life together in the local body of Christ we call the church, there’s us and there’s others – and every person we encounter we welcome as Christ welcomed us. To welcome is to refuse to 'other' the other person.

In Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead the elderly 3^rd generation pastor is trying to make sense of the Gospel, of what God demands in a world changed and strange:

"This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation."

Welcome one another as Christ welcomed you – in the same way as, to the extent that, on the conditions that, with the grace that, Christ welcomed, and welcomes you. Welcome for Christians is rooted in who Christ is, and how Christ welcomed, accepted, received, forgave, made room for.

Some years ago in St Johann on the Austrian Tirol, we discovered a small tea room that served English tea, home baking, and did so from rose garden china cups and saucers. As we entered the shop the lady proprietor with gentle firmness met us. smiling, and asked us to take off our walking boots, as they scratched the furniture and marked the floor. It was done with such grace. Then when we were seated, she asked, "Now. How may I serve you?" 

We were entirely disarmed by the hospitable warmth and obvious pleasure she took in the making and serving of that afternoon cup of tea, turning an encounter into an occasion. Welcome is when someone else feels that meeting us, talking with us, and being in our presence, is an occasion. "So you must think. What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation."

Welcome is a presumption of friendship, enjoyment of another's presence, and is confirmed by words like, "Now. How may I serve you."  

 

Amongst my favourite images is the drystane dyke. As a boy growing up in Ayrshire farms they were as familiar as our own living room. I climbed over them, hid behind them, peeked through the holes, and always, always, replaced any stones that had fallen into the field.

Jimmy Welsh was one of the older farm workers, and to me he was as ancient as some of the drystane dykes he repaired and occasionally built. He had an old and huge bicycle on which I learned to go a bike, by putting a leg through the frame because the seat and the bar were far too high for me to even reach the pedals – let alone the ground.

Jimmy used to work on the dykes around our house and I sometimes helped him. The way he weighed up a stone, visualised its shape, found the right way to position it, then repeat with the next stone, and gradually the dyke was repaired. Ever since I have loved the workmanship and the aesthetic functionality of a wall built without cement, each stone fitting with and supporting the others. Over years the lichen gently invades and in the right places moss creeps across the edges and gaps, and the colours weather and blend.

A well built dyke is like a brushstroke across a landscape; an old and overgrown dyke is for me, a thing of beauty. Walking on the edge of an Aberdeenshire wood I stopped and admired the layers of colour, texture, light and form. The photo is of a retaining wall beside an old estate forest, I guess going back at least to the end of the 19th Cenutry, possibly much earlier. It stands there as evidence of durability in the midst of change. Softened by moss, framed in purple heather and contrasting sunlit green branches, this is a venerable dyke. The word is chosen with some care; 'venerable' means "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character."

I guess it seems odd and even daft to think of an ancient hand built dyke as embodying wisdom and character. But as old Jimmy Welsh might have said, "Haud oan a meenit!" Think of the wisdom and character of the builder being built into his work. Think of the years of experience, the trained eye, the calloused hands, and the pride in building something that uses what is there to good purpose.

Then consider what the dyke is for, to separate boundaries, as a retaining wall, or to enclose a field for animal grazing. For none of these purposes does it need to look attractive, but a well built dyke is craftsmanship in stone, and is built to last, and over years takes on the look of something that belongs where it has always been. Hence, a venerable dyke.

Allow me to quote one of my favourite poems by Wendell Berry, who sits on the easiest to reach bookshelf of my personal canon:

              Sabbath Poems

                     2002 

                       X

Teach me work that honours thy work,

the true economies of goods and words,

to make my arts compatible

with the songs of the local birds.

 

Teach me patience beyond work –

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest.

What I learned from Jimmy Welsh was the importance of loving the work you do, doing "work that honours work." I learned that lesson by watching it happening; I was a child witness to patient thoughtfulness informed by an experienced eye, and implemented with hands that knew the shape and heft and fittingness of each stone. Coming across this old Aberdeenshire drystane dyke, I felt an inner vindication of such memories. Not so much sentimental nostalgia; more an inner recalling of a lesson I saw performed with quiet contentment and ease of confidence, one I have never forgotten.

When you build the form of your life, as we all have to do, using well what is there, shaping and forming heart and mind by discovering the fittingness of things, honour that work with patience, and love the work. It is an art form, a skill and discipline honed over the years of our living, and a calling to build something that will last. Venerable is not a bad description of a well built dyke, or a well lived life: "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character." Aye. That.  

Dear Friends

We were on holiday in Exeter, and decided to go to Evensong in the Cathedral. We were shown in and told to sit where we pleased. Since we wanted to be near the Choir we sat in some side seats near the front, facing where we thought the Choir would be.

I put it down to being an uncultured Nonconformist and long term Baptist! The Dean (we learned afterwards) came forward and said, ever so courteously, that these too were choir seats. But we could sit ‘over there’, which meant gathering our bits and pieces and, heads down, relocating to the nave, like everyone else!

Jesus was right. It’s embarrassing to be in the best seats and be told to move. Time and again Jesus’ words teach us about meekness, humility, not always wanting to be first, best and loudest.

Then there was that disciples’ dressing room argument about who was the most important, the one that matters most, or the one that gets to make the big decisions. Mark tells the story in his Gospel. Big argument amongst the disciples; Who would have the honour of sitting on Jesus’ right and left hand in the Kingdom of God?

Jesus’ answer is the first and last word about leadership, the gift of service and the call to mutual care for one another within the community of His followers.

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”   (Mark 10. 42-45)

If service is beneath you, leadership is beyond you. That, in a nutshell, is a Christian theology of leadership. Imagine the ill feeling, resentment and division amongst Jesus’ carefully chosen disciples. This was the kind of division that makes people want to walk away. That’s why Mark begins by saying “Jesus called them together.” This isn’t about them. Their individual self-interest is irrelevant, their ambitions are misplaced, and their over-confidence in their own importance are just selfish reasons to argue. So Jesus calls them together.

The way of the world is domination, the way of the Kingdom is service. Authority is all about power and pride, service is all about compassion and humility. Mark makes that point too. “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served…” If we are following Jesus then we follow a Servant King. Unless we serve each other we are not exercising Christ-like leadership. The Christian criterion of all devotion to Jesus is the cross, the hallmark of genuine Christ-like service is the self-giving love of God in Christ. The Christian who wants to be first for Jesus’ sake, will not wait till someone else picks up the basin and the towel. In washing each other’s feet, in that at least, they will be first.

All of this becomes very important to us as a church community during these days of separation. And the longer our time without meeting goes on the more important it is to hear again Jesus words about his ministry, and the ministry to which he calls each of us. We are called together by Jesus, to be with Him, to be with each other, and to discover the joy and the cost and the fulfilment of being His servants.

Graham Kendrick has written a lot of hymns, probably like Charles Wesley, too many hymns. And like Charles Wesley, there are a few masterpieces, quite a lot of good ones, and quite a few that only bear singing now and again and maybe then best forgotten. But The Servant King is one of the great hymns of the past 40 years. The last verse distils into lovely simplicity the essential teaching of Jesus about leadership, service, fellowship and being called together by Jesus, to serve him, and each other:

So let us learn how to serve
And in our lives enthrone Him
Each other's needs to prefer
For it is Christ we're serving.

This is our God, The Servant King,
He calls us now to follow Him;
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to The Servant King.

Your friend and pastor,

Jim Gordon

By the time we come to Part III, of After Evangelicalism, readers are already aware of the nexus of moral dilemmas and human suffering around three key ethical challenges: Sexuality and Gender, Politics, and Race. Given his own life story, Gushee speaks with considerable authority about the lived experience within and outside evangelicalism, and as one whose track record of ethical reflection and intellectual engagement is recognised and acknowledged far beyond Christian academic circles. Those who have read his previous work will know where Gushee is coming from, and going to. 

On sexuality and gender his previous books Changing Our Mind, and Still Christian, give a clear exposition of Gushee’s theology and ecclesiology of inclusion and welcome of LGBTQ people. This book reaffirms that conviction, while also offering a critique of the attitudes and assumptions of white and patriarchal evangelicalism which underlie rejection of, and moral judgement of LGBTQ people. There are no easy answers, neither an ethic of sexual perfectionism, nor an ethic of libertinism. Instead Gushee urges a humble discerning of what human love is, and the call on Christian communities to search for ways in which all humans can flourish in a covenanted community called together in the name of Jesus.

The chapter on Politics is an unsparing exposé of white evangelicalism’s embrace of Trumpism. The writer tells of the watershed moment when Trump’s election was confirmed, aided by 81 per cent of white evangelical voters. His own words are unsparing: “The worst parts of Trumpism track closely with the worst parts of the long evangelical heritage: racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia, and indifference to ecology and the poor.” (144). Gushee urges a Christian faithfulness that maintains a critical distance  from all earthly powers, an ethical discipline provided by Christian social teaching tradition, a global perspective on concerns for the poor, the ecology of the planet, and peace issues, and a thoroughgoing repentance of racism, xenophobia or nationalism.

The closing chapter on race and racism is a cry of the heart. Rooted in a history of slavery and slave ownership in America, Gushee argues that enculturated and institutionalised racism are powerful strains in the DNA of American evangelicalism, and that racism is, in fact, doctrinal heresy. Racism in attitude, action and social structures is a doctrinal aberration that denies the imago dei, and rejects the full consequences of Jesus as the Word made human flesh, for our understanding of both humanity and God.

A painful section recounts the missed opportunities for evangelicalism to repent, to own the wrong and to change direction. Perhaps Gushee will have to write another book, devoted to the deconstruction of white supremacy, and challenging cultural and institutional racism with the full force of the Kingdom ethics of Jesus. Such a book would require a theology strong and wide and deep enough to make possible reconciliation and peaceful racial healing. In turn, such a theology would also require to be substantial and durable, radical and prophetic, sacrificially repentant and costly, if it is to awaken hope for an end to systemic racism. Gushee has no time for virtue signalling; as a theologian and ethicist he is calling exvangelicals to form communities which in their performative practices, ethical activism and public rhetoric of reconciliation and welcome are the living contradiction of racism, exclusion and discrimination.

I finished this book with a heavy heart; not because it was finished but because it had to be written, and has to be read. On my reading, it is a sustained effort at two things. An honest and personal critique of the white evangelical tradition in the United States, and a courageous attempt at reconstructing a basis for Christian obedience in following Jesus and living the ethics of the Kingdom. White evangelicalism is on the decline in the United States; it may well be that its embrace of Trumpism will both hasten and harden the trajectory of its decline. Gushee’s book is a long time insider’s analysis of that weakening and decline, and of what he sees as a fundamentalist hegemony fixated on power and holding on to white privilege, in recent years, apparently at any cost.

This is a book by an ex evangelical writing primarily about white American evangelicalism in its evolution and current manifestations, and out of his personal knowledge, experience and perspective of that context. The book combines personal testimony, ethical critique, reconstructive theology, and pastoral guidance to those who are ex-evangelicals. He is not writing to comfort evangelicals. He is deeply concerned to offer ex evangelicals like himself, some foundations on which to build a more inclusive community of faith that flourishes as the soil in which the seeds of the Kingdom can grow. The book is both personal search and public manifesto. His last sentence in the book has its own poignancy, and latent hopefulness:

“If I have helped to provide, even for a few people, a way out of this lost place and a way ahead in the direction of Jesus, then all I can say is: thanks be to God. (170) 

 

Part II, titled Theology: Believing and Belonging, continues the critique and deconstruction of American white evangelicalism by examining the doctrines of God, Jesus and Church. Gushee’s theology of God has six woven strands: Kingdom of God theology, social gospel theology, Holocaust theology, liberation theologies, Catholic social tradition, and progressive evangelical social ethics. Gushee is profoundly aware of the dangers attaching to claims of divine sovereignty, linked to biblical inerrancy infallibly interpreted within a closed doctrinal framework, and reflecting the agendas of male white power at the centre of a faith tradition. He has lived through the negative consequences of that mix.

As a scholar immersed in Holocaust history and reflection he insists that any Christian theology of God must stand questioned before Auschwitz, and the story of the Jewish people. He understands God in terms of the story of Israel, from which he draws this conclusion: the Hebrew Bible tells the narrative of “divine love for covenant peoplehood and mission on behalf of humanity.”(Italics original) Out of such reflection comes this: “The idea of a God who risks trusting us with freedom, and suffers from the choices we make, is critically important in moving us away from theologically problematic and morally disempowering understandings of divine sovereignty.” (80)

Using Jesus According to the New Testament by J D G Dunn as a starting point, the chapter on Jesus critiques ‘Jesus according to white evangelicalism’, as a pietistic, sentimentalised, prosperity Jesus, kept at a safe distance from the ‘apocalyptic prophet, lynched God-man and risen Lord’ of the New Testament. Gushee, like many of us, recognises the neglect and even silencing of Jesus in such an understanding of the Bible, God, and the Gospel. Those who suggest Gushee caricatures white evangelical portrayals of Jesus, may need to reflect more critically and honestly on the massive evangelical industry that lies behind the current dominance of the evangelical presence in current American politics.

Here again, Gushee blends testimony with critique, and his own past experience with his current thinking. Referring to the meaning of the Cross today:

 ”We kill one another. We killed our best. We killed God who came to save us. When we kill another, we kill the God who made them and loved them, who was in them and who came to save us. This is what I see these days when I look at the cross.” (99)

These words are fuelled by a lifetime spent within a tradition in which the cross is central to individual salvation but less prominent in discussions about injustice, poverty, racism, and environmental catastrophe. They are written by a Christian thinker steeped in Holocaust history and reflection, scarred by what he sees as the co-option of Jesus and the Christian Gospel for political ends, and in particular, a white supremacist understanding of human society and political vision; and these embodied in a Presidency and Administration given uncritical legitimacy by court Evangelical leaders.

The chapter on the Church gives a clear definition of what is needed: “The church is the community of people who stand in covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ and seek to fulfil his kingdom mission.” (104, emphasis original) This description is some distance from what Gushee and other ethicists, social analysts and theologians see as the characteristic forms and goals of American white evangelical churches, their leaders and their political spokespersons.

“Evangelicalism is a consumer culture…What many heavily consumerized evangelicals understand church to mean has been taught to them through the most successfully marketed musicians, authors, trinket salesmen, and parachurch groups. Evangelicalism is also a brand, a kind of proprietary product that those at the top defend for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they and their institutions have vested financial interests in doing so.” (108)

As a contrasting alternative, Gushee describes two church contexts with which he is familiar and within which he currently flourishes. In First Baptist Church, Decatur, he is a class teacher to a group of people who opt to meet every Sunday to explore, discuss and study the meaning and implication of Jesus and his teaching of the Kingdom of God. Then he tells of his regular attendance at Holy Cross Catholic Church, and his perception that in the United States the Catholic Church has so much more awareness of the multiracial and multi-cultural society of a country significantly populated by immigrants, and is itself ‘richly global’.

The balance and tension between these two regular encounters with people of faith, have in common a sense of covenant love for all humanity as the base line of Christian activism and ethical behaviour. For Gushee, ecclesiology is about being a people focused on following Jesus, held together in covenant and mutual commitment, their common life expressed in Christlike compassion, the basis of that life being relational rather than contractual, Kingdom oriented in worship and obedience, and including all whom others reject; in effect being to others what Jesus was, friends of sinners.

(Part III of the review, titled Ethics: Being and Behaving will appear tomorrow.)

This is Part I of 3, an extended review of After Evangelicalism. 

After Evangelicalism. The Path to a New Christianity, David P. Gushee. (Louisville: WJKP, 2020) 225pp.

This book is written under what the author sees as emergency conditions. Evangelicalism in its United States version is no longer a viable expression of morally responsible Christianity. White Evangelicalism has finally sold its soul by its uncritical support for all that the Trump administration and the Republican Party now stand for. What is more, the causes of Trumpism and evangelical collusion with its tactics, policies and goals, go back far and deep in American Christianity. In that sense this is a very American book, and some aspects of the arguments have less purchase in the British evangelical context. The history of American Evangelicalism, Gushee argues, holds within its DNA, certain attitudes, convictions, prejudices and social goals that are inimical to the teaching and person of Jesus of Nazareth.

For those reasons white Evangelicalism is on the decline. The last lines of any book are often worth pondering as possibly the most important final thoughts of an author:

“This I know: many millions of young people got lost in that evangelical maze. They couldn’t get past inerrancy, indifference to the environment, deterministic Calvinism, purity culture, divine violence, Hallmark-Christmas-Movie Jesus, rejection of gay people, male dominance, racism, God = GOP, or whatever else…I want to live for Jesus till I die. And I want to help other people find a way to do that too, if they are willing.  (page 170)

David Gushee has spent 40 years teaching, preaching, and writing from within an American Evangelical context, much of that time within the orbit of the Southern Baptist Convention. He writes out of a personal journey in which his mind has changed on a number of the key doctrinal and ethical issues he exposes and explores. Now a Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, this book is a long reflection on his relationship with the evangelical culture within which he came to faith, at times in the form of personal testimony.

But the driving impetus comes from his search for faith and practice that is consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels and the Kingdom ethics presupposed in the life and teaching of Jesus. He seeks to offer those who count themselves as post-evangelicals, and who are looking for a new direction in which to follow Jesus,
"a manifesto, a love letter, and game plan for fellow exvangelicals." 

The book has three main parts. Part I examines the origins and later developments of Evangelicalism in America culminating in its current alignment with Republican political agendas. One of the pillars of that alignment is an insistence on biblical inerrancy as fundamental to all else, and chapter 2 examines, deconstructs and critiques those claims, and the power games that underlie them. Chapter 3 is a reconstruction of authority, indeed authorities, in Christian faith and practice. What ‘the Bible says’ requires responsible interpretation,  humble listening, communal discernment and an openness to the Holy Spirit leading into new or newly understood truth.

Gushee acknowledges he is virtually commending the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience. But he is arguing for something even more nuanced, a Christian Humanism which has the qualities of Reason, Experience, Intuition, Relationships and Community. This is both a searching and a generous invitation to followers of Jesus to move beyond a narrow ‘sola scriptura’. “Given human limits – even as humans with Jesus in front of us, the Bible open before us, and the Spirit within us – I am rejecting any inerrant path to infallible doctrine.” (45)

To listen to God’s voice, and discern God’s will, requires the hard work of humble listening, open-ended risk taking in the presence of God, and communal responsibility in moral decision-making and lived by convictions. In that sense an inerrant text, infallibly interpreted by 'sound' or 'authoritative' teachers, is a short circuiting of a process that requires an interpreting community engaged in communal discernment, and open to the truth as it is in Jesus and as it is prompted by the Spirit of God moving once again on the waters to bring forth life.   

Dear Friends

It was a year or two ago. Stevie was having a hard day. The previous day and through the night the wind had been ‘blawin’ a hoolie’. The West end of Aberdeen is a leafy suburb, and Stevie was a road sweeper. Through the night the wind had whipped through the trees, blown over the odd wheelie bin, and the pavement was a mess.

I was walking along Carden Place and stopped to say hello. Stevie wasn’t happy. It was obvious from the way he used his brush, like a defensive weapon pushing back the forces of chaos. You can say a lot about someone’s emotional inner climate by the way they use a brush!

It wasn’t just the litter; it was the carpet of green leaves, twigs and occasional branches that obviously annoyed him. “It’s July”, he said. Stevie poured so much heartfelt complaint into that two word answer. And I could see where he was coming from. Leaves are for October, when they have the blowing machines and extra folk to do the tidying up. And it was his day to do the streets that were tree lined – he even showed me the highlighted map of his day’s work.

I thought then, and I’ve thought a lot about it since. The wind of the Spirit of God blows where and when God pleases. The Holy Spirit takes us by surprise, inconveniences us, propels us from behind and pushes us forward, blows in our faces and wakes us up. “You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with those who are born of the Spirit” (John 3.8)

And sometimes the Holy Spirit gets in the way of our tidiness, tears up our wee roadmaps of what we plan to do with our day. Other times the Spirit blows when we don’t expect it, and is not required to explain or apologise for any inconvenience caused. It is one of the pivotal moments in the history of the church of Jesus’ followers, that the sign of the Spirit’s arrival was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. The result for that scared group of disciples, hiding away and silenced by their fears, was a regenerated hopefulness, a reckless boldness, and an overwhelming need to throw open the doors and follow Jesus out into a world where the wind blows and new languages of love, grace and hope are spoken.

I wonder sometimes if we occasionally have a Stevie attitude to the disruptive, creative, unpredictability of the presence and power and purposes of the Holy Spirit, blowing through our comfort zones, upsetting our set ways, tugging at us and even pushing us from behind with the latent energy of the Spirit of Life.

The work of the Holy Spirit, especially in the book of Acts, is the creation of the community of Jesus. Sure there is the miracle of the Gospel preached in whatever languages were understood by all the people in the busy cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem. The list of ethnic diversity in Acts 2.9-11 is always fun to read out loud. Healing and preaching, boldness and joy, grace and generosity, hopefulness and fellowship, compassion and courage – these and more were the gathering evidence that God was at work. The Holy Spirit was let loose on the world, a world which crucified Jesus and in which resurrection had negated the worst the world could do.

The stable centre of all this is described in Acts 2.42, and this too is the work of the Holy Spirit. “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.” Christian community is not something we create; it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who takes of the things of Jesus, explains them to our hearts and minds, draws us together, and orchestrates our gifts.

Quite understandably, the continuing disruption of our church life by the pandemic has deprived us of much that we have previously known and experienced together as a church. We don’t know how the future will look. What we do know is:

1. i) Jesus our risen Lord, will build his church just as he promised.
2. ii) The wind of the Holy Spirit blows where God pleases and will mean changes, disruption, and the hard work of being the people of God right here and right now.

iii) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to equip us, sustain us, guide us, energise us, and impel us forward to God’s future.

Yes, I too have a lot of sympathy with Stevie. Sometimes in the plans and purposes of God there are more leaves in July than in October! But don’t look at the leaves; listen to the sound of the wind, the loud, rushing movements of the Holy Spirit in the world.

   Spirit of holiness, wisdom and faithfulness,
   wind of the Lord, blowing strongly and free:
   strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping
   Spirit of God bring your fullness to me, to us, to your people.

Your friend and pastor,    

Jim Gordon

There is beauty in stones thrown together randomly over who know how long. The lapidary motion of the waves works a slow and relentless friction, and produces over time a softness of line and tone out of all proportion to the hardness and resistance of the material. I've often thought a human mind can be just as intransigent to the changes and influences of the forces around us. Or that the human heart likewise is capable of being moulded and shaped if it is exposed to those same environmental forces and movements.

Some years ago I wrote several Haiku expressing the delight and satisfaction of looking closely at the cobbles on the beach, and simply wondering at the randomness of relentlessness; or, to put it otherwise, being amazed at the results of millions upon millions of accidental collisions of stone with stone. Inevitably I pondered the parallel, or contrast, with how human community works.

A friendship over time begins to shape and form attitudes, affections, opinions and thought. I think of several of my closest friends and know that long conversations, time spent in each other's company, outbursts of laughter and sadness shared, and all those gestures of kindness, gift and affection that turn a relationship into a sacrament, these have shaped and formed who I am. That same friendship will have survived disagreement, disappointment, lengths of time when one or other has struggled and hurt, or been worried and uncertain, but always, always, the shaping of human character and relationships by those encounters by which something of our love, respect and commitment rubs off on them, or they on us, and we are again nudged towards inner change.

Or so it seems to me. The Haiku is a form that I have come to use as a way of reducing the amount of words needed to distil truth. There is a discipline in the self-constraint that sharpens the truth, and therefore makes the point. At the same time, in writing Haiku, there is a recognition of the necessary limitations of words to convey our deep and complex selves to others, who are similarly deep and complex selves.

That yearning for communication, community and communion, is one of the mysteries of those friendships that endure and grow through the lengths of our days, with their tidal rhythms shaping and enhancing who we are becoming. Of such rich encounters, these words try to speak.

    

       Remorseless friction,

      waves lapidary tumbling,                                 Tones in harmony

      the beauty of grey.                                            well rounded community

                                                                                     of shaped difference. 

      Cobbled together,

      aeons of geology,                                                 Pebbles of friendship

      placed by time and tide.                                     in easy togetherness;

                                                                                       colour and contrast.

For as long as I can remember I have loved mosses and lichens and all the locations where they are to be found. As a boy much of the days and evenings were spent tramping over miles of moorland, climbing over old drystane dykes, squelching through marsh and bog, or walking into and through woods and pine forests. In all of these places I became aware of this lovely green stuff, and how it slowly and gently covers stone and wood, a natural and beautiful form of organic upholstery. 

Over these months we have taken to walking in the woods, some of them on our doorstep, others further afield, though not too far. Several are old forests, planted in the 19th Century, and in all that time trees have grown, seeded, and fallen;they have shed their leaves and needles year on year, until the forest floor feels like the best Axminster carpets. For those who might not have heard of Axminster, in this age of convenience laminated floor covering, allow them to introduce themselves:

"Axminster Carpets has been synonymous with carpet luxury and craftsmanship for over 250 years. We are Britain's oldest, best known and most prestigious carpet designer and manufacturer." So there! 

These woods and forests are old, maybe some of them as old as Axminster, and they are the perfect environment for mosses and lichens to flourish. What I've noticed, and once you notice it you start seeing it often, is the way moss inhabits and enfolds old tree stumps. It's almost as if the tree having gone, there's now space and enough residual organic nutrition to entertain those plants that don't need much of anything other than some hospitable living room, some occasional light, and the nearness of water.

What I've found fascinating is the capacity of moss to fill in the spaces, to cover the nakedness of rocks, and to upholster tree trunks and roots. When Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, I know he wasn't thinking of the flora of the North East of Scotland. Nor was he making oblique references to bryology or lichenology. But the word that comes to mind when I look at, walk on, or step over, moss, is a word like meek. As Jesus used the word reported in the Gospels, the two English words used most often to translate it are meek, and gentle. There's nothing showy, loud or attention grabbing about moss. But once you notice it, you begin to see it, and it becomes part of the background pleasure of what we see. 

Take this tree stump for instance. It's old, broken and all that remains of a tree long gone. But its sharp points and jagged outlines are gentled by slowly encroaching mosses, providing a new habitat for who knows how many wee beasties and other living things.

Behind it is an ancient drystane dyke, and all around it the softening lines of moss covered stones, and alongside it a young holly tree. A dead tree stump is an encourager of life, sculptured by the years and clothed in shades of living green.

The meek shall inherit the earth. Those who gently intrude into places of little promise, and make them live again. Those whose presence makes possible new environments and living spaces and possibilities. Those who provide background colour and cover, texture and tone. Moss is a miracle of the mundane, a sacrament of life's patient persistence, a parable of change and decay in the cycle and circle of life. The moss covered rock is an interface of ancient geology and transient plant forms. The tree stump slowly clothed with moss bears testimony to what used to be, and what is now becoming. Moss is a specialist in slow, an understatement, but a true statement, of life finding ways to downsize and survive.

There have been times when walking in the woods and coming across old moss-covered tree stumps, familiar melancholic words have resurfaced: "Change and decay in all around I see, O Thou who changest not abide with me.." I know. Life's hard enough just now without humming funereal tunes. But actually I don't find those words depressing, or melancholic. They simply say what is. Change and decay are built into life, all of life, and each life. The Creator and giver of life  transcends transience, and is both Light and Life.

The moss covered tree stump is simply a reminder that we live in the temporary now. When I see the modest beauty of life at the later stages in such a photo, the deeper instinct is to trust the abiding presence of the One who calls us to live in the temporary now with an eye on the eternal Now. The mystery of our existence is beyond our fathoming; but the mundane miracle of moss is at least a reminder that our life is rooted and grounded in Love beyond our knowing.  

    

Yesterday was a day of high literary significance for me! It involved the delivery of a new chair, as pictured. On the wise assumption that reading is enhanced by comfort, context and location, I decided on a chair that fits my current size, shape and literary purposes. It's a small armchair, which fits me and suits me. I deliberately avoided choosing one of those chairs that are so comfortable and spacious, it's easier to fall asleep than to read. This wee beauty fits exactly into the space by the window and the radiator, near the heat and light.

This is a reading chair. No, that's not what it's called or how it's styled. But that will be its purpose; a place to sit and read, think, pray and listen. The study is already that kind of place of course, but there's a difference between reading, studying and consulting books at the desk, and reading and paying attention to one particular book as it is read from start to finish. 

For that you need comfort, space, and perhaps the deliberate training of the mind that, when you sit here, in this chair, you are moving into a different mode of learning, thinking and being. Over a lifetime of reading you learn to distinguish between reading that is informative, or formative or transformative; some books are a combination of these.

I'm thinking that at this stage of my life, I could do with a place for unhurried reflection, or imaginative rethinking of ideas that have become too comfortable and familiar. A place too for storytelling and story reading as a way of exploring how I have come to be me. But definitely a place for non-acquisitive enjoyment of what others think, feel and have experienced in their own search for understanding, wisdom and a life worth living.

I've had a reading chair before, of course, and I've often wondered why over the years I slowly became fixed to the desk. I blame the laptop, and the long learned and lived habits of writing on a keyboard to gather, accumulate, organise and harvest the fruits of all that reading! It's more complicated than that, but there's no doubt that information technology, the online world encyclopedia, and the infinite library of knowledge accessed by keyboard, has revolutionised the way we think, learn, and learn to think. Every day I benefit from this revolution like everyone else, and I'm grateful for it and would find life without the online world so much more limited. But it has its limits, this online world of unlimited information.

Which brings me back to books, and a reading chair. A book is such a beautiful concept, and its inbuilt finitude is an essential element of that beauty. For example. A novel creates a world in which the story is told; you read it and much that makes you human is invited, persuaded, even compelled to respond. But a novel has an ending and a resolution. And it is just that capacity to linger in the memory as a continuing lesson in human experience, that makes the novel such a powerful agent of transformation. 

Poetry, on the other hand, provokes and encourages an openness to other ways of seeing the world, ourselves, and what matters. But a poem too is finite, and indeed its form and constraint are essential poetic disciplines, requiring the reader to work at it, to feel and think and imagine new ways to the truth of who they are. One of the finest poets understood this deeply, and well: "I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of one's self." (Seamus Heaney) 

Biography is the narrative of a life, and it matters greatly who writes it. Hagiography and hatchet jobs are the two extremes to be avoided. A well written biography has to be critically appreciative, selectively comprehensive, recount a narrative with impetus but interpreted and illumined by reflection on context, character and an evaluative honesty about the subject's achievement and significance. All of which depends on the integrity, skill, humanity and self-effacing instincts of the biographer.

As a theologian I read theology books, all the way through. Of course I do, you'd think that would be obvious. But I have in mind the kind of theology that unsettles untroubled complacency; writing and thinking about the mystery of God that provokes thought by asking awkward questions we'd prefer to silence; reading therefore theology that expands the dimensions of mind and heart to accommodate new ideas, because God is the new wine that bursts those useful and safe old conceptual wineskins that long ago were new but now need renewed. Not many theological books accomplish that. In my own reading they would perhaps fill a shelf or two if gathered together in one place. Which are they? That may be a post for another time.  

A reading chair, then, or at least this one, is for novels, poetry, biographies, theology, and other books intended to be read through, thought about, and allowed to linger in the mind, inform the imagination, and go on doing their work in the heart. So, what will be the first book read in the reading chair? The other day I took down a book I first read 8 years ago. It is more important today than it was then. So the first book will be a re-read: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs, (Oxford: 2011). I'll let you know how I get on.