Author: admin

Last evening I was restless. Lock down does that. For all our attempts to look for the positives, and all the well meaning urgings from others to find ways of using well the time and freedom from routine responsibilities, some days during lock down are just mince. 

Now, in Scottish vernacular the descriptor 'mince' has important negative vibes. Indeed, the Scottish slang use of 'mince' found its way into Hansard, the record of Parliamentary proceedings at Westminster in 2016.

Kirsty Blackman, MP for Aberdeen North described some of the standing orders as 'mince'. On being asked subsequently for a translation, she Tweeted,  "The word I used was *mince*." Mince is Scottish slang used to describe something which is below par or rubbish." That is now a footnote in the official record. 

So I use the word advisedly, and in its Hansard definition. Some days are mince. But not many days, and seldom a whole day. When such times come walking helps, and so does the spiritual practice of taking photographs.

My camera has become a way of re-framing the world. Walking with eyes attentive to what is there, and mind deliberately turned outward to the world, you begin to see what otherwise would simply not exist to the preoccupied mind. So much time and energy is needed to sustain the inner life of the introspective temperament; so in recent times I've come to recognise when the time has come to quieten the inner conversation, still the swirling movements of thought, and turn to the world outside of this ever present inner me. It's the thing to do when the day just doesn't seem to be working.

I walked down to Arnhall Moss, a mile from our door, and stood on the path, the sun slanting behind me, and noticed what looked like a sunlight footstep pointing the way. Of course it was mere coincidence, an accident of light requiring a far fetched hermeneutic to think that it could have been, well, meant. But in fact it was well meant. On yet another day of sameness and constraint, a Hansard day, that was beginning to feel like mince, "below par or rubbish", I stepped into a wood touched by late sunlight. And that light falling across my path  for all the world shaped to reassure, a beckoning forward, an invitation to walk in the sunlight and shadow. 

Only when I came home and looked at the photograph did I make all these connections, and sense the heart-lightening message of that sunlit footprint. And then a further nudge from Who knows where, the familiar rhythm of a favourite song we will sing again in our church as soon as we meet again in the freedom of friendship, fellowship, worship and praise: 

The Spirit lives to set us free, 

Walk, walk in the light;

He binds us all in unity,

Walk, walk in the light! 

And then from a very different source, another hymn, written by someone for whom many days were mince. The poet William Cowper suffered throughout his life with prolonged periods of depressive illness, a chronic sadness that could escalate from low grade self-doubt to desperate self-despair. Out of such inner anguish he wrote several hymns about how to survive days that are mince:

Sometimes a light surprises
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord, who rises
with healing in his wings:
when comforts are declining,
he grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.

Last evening in Arnhall Moss, I proved Cowper right: "Sometimes a light surprises….. 

 

This Scottish Paraphrase goes back to 1745. The Scottish landscape of mountain and glen is in the background; so are the Jacobite rebellions and the desire for peace and harmony between nations. 

"The biblical phrases are incorporated into the verses with a dignified rhetoric that is in the best tradition of metrical Psalmody." This Scripture paraphrase of the eschatological vision of Isaiah, combined with the tune Glasgow, is one of the most powerful peace hymns I know.

Long before the more recent Make Me a Channel of Your Peace, the Scottish hymn and liturgical tradition produced a deeply contextual theology of peace between nations and longed for reconciliations.  

(The hymn was sung at the close of the funeral service for Scotland's first First Minister, Donald Dewar.)

1 Behold! the mountain of the Lord
in latter days shall rise
on mountain tops above the hills,
and draw the wondering eyes.

2 To this the joyful nations round,
all tribes and tongues, shall flow;
up to the hill of God, they'll say,
and to his house we'll go.

3 The beam that shines from Zion hill
shall lighten every land;
the King who reigns in Salem's towers
shall all the world command.

4 Among the nations he shall judge;
his judgements truth shall guide;
his sceptre shall protect the just,
and quell the sinner’s pride.

5 No strife shall rage, nor hostile feuds
disturb those peaceful years;
to ploughshares men shall beat their swords,
to pruning-hooks their spears.

6 No longer hosts, encountering hosts,
shall crowds of slain deplore:
they hang the trumpet in the hall,
and study war no more.

7 Come then, O house of Jacob! come
to worship at his shrine;
and, walking in the light of God,
with holy beauties shine. 

 

 

This hymn draws its power from the cruciform image of Christ's outstretched arms. Athanasius used that image to powerful effect in his De Incarnatione.

It's a good introduction to a hymn we could do with singing these days, a lot:

"How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a man dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was that He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself."

When Christ was lifted from the earth,
his arms stretched out above
through every culture, every birth,
to draw an answering love.
Still east and west his love extends,
and always, near or far,
he calls and claims us as his friends
and loves us as we are.
Where generation, class or race
divide us to our shame,
he sees not labels but a face,
a person and a name.
Thus freely loved, though fully known,
may I in Christ be free
to welcome and accept his own
as Christ accepted me.
(Brian Wren, 1980)

This hymn is a rich exposition of what it means to believe "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" and "He has given to us the ministry of reconciliation".

Honesty about our own sinfulness and propensity to excuse ourselves; honesty too about structural as well as personal sin; then to hear our true name called in the welcome of Christ who serves us before we ever get to serving Him.

The last two verses weave around themes of love, justice, hope-building, peace-making, in the multiform practices of those called to embody and enact God's love for God's word. 

 

Lord God, Your love has called us here,
As we, by love, for love were made.
Your living likeness still we bear
Tho’ marred, dishonoured, disobeyed.
We come, with all our heart and mind
Your call to hear, Your love to find.

We come with self inflicted pains
Of broken trust and chosen wrong,
Half free, half bound by inner chains,
By social forces swept along,
By powers and systems close confined,
Yet seeking hope for human kind.

Lord God, in Christ You call our name,
And then receive us as Your own,
Not thro’ some merit, right, or claim,
But by Your gracious love alone.
We strain to glimpse Your mercy seat,
And find You kneeling at our feet.

Then take the towel, and break the bread,
And humble us, and call us friends.
Suffer and serve till all are fed
And show how grandly love intends
To work till all creation sings,
To fill all worlds, to crown all things.

Lord God, in Christ You set us free
Your life to live, Your joy to share.
Give us Your Spirit’s liberty
To turn from guilt and dull despair
And offer all that faith can do,
While love is making all things new.

(Brian Wren is a prolific hymn writer, some of whose hymns are amongst the best in the modern tradition. He has a particular concern and interest in seeking language and metaphors for God that are inclusive and less freighted with ideas of power, dominance and the legitimation of oppressive ideologies. His book What Language Shall I Borrow remains a powerful challenge to the use and imposition of language more suited to Constantinian power politics than a Gospel of love, justice and reconciliation.)  

We've all had to find ways of getting through days and weeks of lock down, and staying at home more than we ever have before. Once the garden is tidier than tidy, the grass is cut almost to manicured standard, the car is washed to an unfamiliar gleam, the study spring cleaned and each book affectionately dusted, the entire house hoovered – serially, the daily walk completed (recently walks, plural), the essential shopping procured through stealthy raids when most folk are doing other things, – once all that's done, what's to do?

That's where books have been my lifeline – mental, emotional, intellectual, imaginative lifelines to that necessary balance between escapism and realism. When I review what I've read in three months I'm intrigued that I've largely stayed away from novels; for some reason fiction hasn't worked. That surprises me because I've read novels throughout my life, and often as a way of dealing with stress by either escapism (think Lee Child, John Grisham), self-reflection through narrative (think Salley Vickers,Gail Godwin, Marilynne Robinson), or whodunnit detectives, (Val McDermid, Jacqueline Winspear – these two are very different in levels of dark).

I've read poetry, these past weeks, mostly by those I already know; George Herbert, R S Thomas, Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov and browsing in a serendipitous way in a few anthologies. I've read biography, the real life experience of people seeming more rooted in a world where, for a while now, so much seems unreal. The word surreal has become an overused descriptor for anything slightly unusual – our experience of the pandemic has been more than slightly unusual; not even surreal describes the vortex of confusion, fear, anxiety and the recent loss of confidence in the way the world is experienced as low grade dread. Biography has a way of carrying us inwardly into a life other than our own, a time different from now, and a place where pandemic is a word for another time and place. 

The photo shows four of the books I've spent time reading, other than poetry and biography. I decided to catch up on reading a number of recent books in New Testament Studies. The State of New Testament Studies is a refresher course on recent development over the past 20 or so years, in the many and various strands of New Testament scholarship. There isn't an essay in this book, and there are 23 of them, that doesn't repay the reader's time; taken together they provide a map of the current landscape with enough detail to show the important routes ahead and how we got to where we are. 

Constructing Paul vol 1 by Luke Timothy Johnson is readable scholarship, authoritative and persuasive, independent in its conclusions, and is a constructive account of Paul's life, social context, cultural environment, and relations with the churches with which he corresponded. Johnson does two things that make this book an important contribution. First, he uses all the canonical letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament. His defence of this approach is based on his deconstruction of the critical consensus that there are only seven "undisputed letters". Johnson insists that using the thirteen letters provides a much more rounded picture of what he calls the canonical Paul. I have always been hesitant about the confidence with which Pauline authorship of certain letters has been dismissed; I found Johnson's reasoned rebuttal persuasive in itself, and more so when the results are then set out in a way that allows for the complexities and ambiguities of Paul's personality and compound identities as Jew, Greco Roman, apostle and controversialist.

In addition to using the entire canonical corpus of Paul's letters, Johnson gives decisive weight and substance to the New Testament accounts of Paul's personal experience of Christ. Johnson is known for considering religious experience an essential body of evidence in constructing a credible account of Paul's life, the lives of the earliest Christian communities, and indeed for understanding the faith and practices of contemporary Christians. Paul's encounter with Christ, his experience of life in the Spirit, and the reconfiguration of his worldview, created for Paul a radically new understanding of God's purpose for Israel, the Gentiles and the new mission of the communities formed by faith in Christ. But that radical newness was not seen by him  as a final discontinuity, but a fulfilling of God's purposes through Messiah Jesus. While Johnson has long insisted that the religious experience of believers is relevant data in trying to understand the historical, social, cultural and ecclesial context of those early Christian communities, it is in this book that he pursues that line of investigation in constructing Paul. The result is a tour de force, readable, persuasive, and for me, convincing in its portrait of Paul.

The biography of Rendel Harris is a huge book just short of 700 pages. I'm still immersed in it. A full review of it will appear in a Quaker Journal later this year. But this Quaker biblical scholar is a deeply fascinating subject. His travels in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, on the hunt for ancient manuscripts read like the best travel books, often illuminated by his wife's journals. He and his wife were outspoken in their protests and political representation on behalf of the Armenian people many of whom were massacred and their communities destroyed under the order of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Harris worked as a scholar in America, Cambridge, and especially in Birmingham as the first Principal of Woodbrooke, establishing the primary Quaker Research Institution in the world. His textual studies, contributions to ecumenical co-operation, curatoriship of important manuscript collections and so much more, make this late Victorian Quaker one of the most attractive and at times eccentric figures in English nonconformity. 

George Hunsinger is a leading Princeton theologian, a world class authority on Karl Barth, and the founder of The National Religious Campaign Against Torture. His commentary on Philippians published only last month reflects much of that depth and range of theological understanding, his continuing passion for social justice, and careful unfolding of Paul's letter from prison to the Philippian believers. I'm almost finished this one.

Hunsinger is a refreshing and generous commentator, at ease with exegeting the text and then exploring how such ancient guidance to an upset house church in Philippi, can become contemporary and urgent in our own faith struggles of the 21st Century. There are some verses where Hunsinger decides to dig down deeply to discover the theological foundations on which Paul is building. His take on what Paul means in Philippians 3.9 "not having a righteousness of my own…" is simply superb. Those few pages are an education in how to balance historical critical exegesis with what Hunsinger calls an ecclesial hermeneutic.

There is similar stimulus in his treatment of the Christ Hymn Phil. 2.5-11. So much has been written on this passage; it would be easy to either repeat what others have said, but more briefly; or try to find something novel to say. Hunsinger does neither. The exegesis is woven through his theological reflection on Christology, the Trinitarian relations of the Godhead, and how Phil 2 relates to the Nicea-Chalcedonian definitions. This has been a deeply satisfying study of one of Paul's letters, one I already knew well – I now feel I know it better.

There's something reassuring about intellectual engagement with familiar subjects and disciplines. A good therapist might deconstruct what is actually going on here, and that's OK. It has worked for me, and there are the additional longer lasting benefits; the uncomplicated joy of reading, the contentment of a mind supplementing its store, delight in new discovery and some hard to hide smugness when you are able to say, "Oh, I knew that."   

      

   

The View from the Window, R. S. Thomas

Like a painting it is set before one,
But less brittle, ageless; these colours
Are renewed daily with variations
Of light and distance that no painter
Achieves or suggests.  Then there is movement,
Change, as slowly the cloud bruises
Are healed by sunlight, or snow caps
A black mood; but gold at evening
To cheer the heart.  All through history
The great brush has not rested,
Nor the paint dried; yet what eye,
Looking coolly, or, as we now,
through the tears' lenses, ever saw
This work and it was not finished?

R S Thomas, Collected Poems, 1945-1990, (London: Dent, 1993, page 81)

God the artist is ceaselessly at work, and the poet is reflecting on his worldview through the limited standpoint of a familiar window. Every time the poet looks the scene has changed, the colours renewed, and the work displaying a subtlety and technique beyond the reach of any human artist. There is, in this poem, a deeply reverential acknowledgement of the cost and unending discipline of the artist persevering in continued work on the same canvas. This tireless artist  is painting not only the fluid, elusive landscape visible as topography under the sky, but with the same deft knowing of the subject, he is painting the changing movements of the inner landscape of the viewer / reader. "Cloud bruises/are healed by sunlight", "white snow" contrasts with a "black mood", and "sunset gold" brings cheer to a heart at times more aware of the bruise than the sunlight.

Creation as continuous, the world as an unfinished masterpiece, the constant expenditure of the Creator's energy and emotional investment, enables Thomas to convey the soul of this artist poured out on his work: "All through history / The great brush has not rested, / Nor the paint dried…". It isn't often that Thomas's readers are given such a clear and genuine articulation of the poet's sympathy for the work and works of God. But in this poem the juxtaposition of a constantly moving landscape and a continuously working painter evokes in the reader a sense of a work in progress, and the artist's commitment to bringing it to completion.   

What I find intriguing in all this is the theological reticence of Thomas in dealing with creation and Creator. There is no creation by fiat, none of the "God spoke and it was so". The refrain of Genesis that God spoke, it was so, and it was good, is absent. Instead there is the presumed presence of the painter, working away every day, renewing colours, adjusting light and shadow.

And as the painter works, the viewer looking through the window, watches, and then there is a moment of vision, a fusion of outward scenery and inner feeling, as the painter's deft touches, over the years of watching, build up the colours of light and shadow, on landscape and soul. 

"All through history
The great brush has not rested,
Nor the paint dried…

The Creator Artist is at work, and the view through the window is of a work in process, with as yet no deadline for completion. The artist is fully engaged, continuously working away at it, "all through history", bringing towards completion a vision that is dynamic not static, a work of artistic self expenditure that is, quite literally, his life's work.

This poem has made me wonder, along with other aspects of Thomas's theological poetics, whether he read the Process philosophical theologians of the 1960's and 70's (e.g. Whitehead and Hartshorne). Their emphases on God's involvement in the fate of the world, God as one who interpenetrates and animates all that exists (panentheism), the world as held within God creative purposes, and God as the lure of Divine Love, preferring persuasion to coercion, acting in the vulnerability of love rather than inscrutable sovereign power, shaping all that is towards future consummation and fulfilment.

Such a God risks the act of creating creatures with freedom, placing them in a world that is contingent and made for such creaturely freedom, creativity and potential, a world and universe where things can and do go badly wrong. Much of the central concerns of Process theism is hinted at in the image of the artist persisting towards perfection with no guaranteed outcome, such as is woven through 'The View from the Window.' 

Thomas finishes with a question that opens up the entire range of human emotion, from cool detachment to tearful wonder. To human eyes the work is finished; yet look again and the artist is still at work, building up the texture, adjusting tone and colour, recalling the words of Jesus about the unrelenting demands of God's work: "As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me." (John 9.4)

So the artist works ceaselessly and patiently. God works, and waits, with all eternity to work in. "The activity of creating includes the passivity of waiting….of waiting upon one's workmanship to see what emerges from it." (W H Vanstone, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense, (London, DLT,1977, p.33.) The God portrayed here is solicitous, patient, persistent, invested in the outcome, restlessly intentional in actualising potential by giving fullest expression to his vision. 

It is a hallmark of Thomas's spirituality that the pressing questions of human existence, our varied and oscillating experiences of faith, and our incessant longing for beauty, truth and goodness, set up a force field of tensions that an earlier, simpler age might have called hunger for God.

"The tears' lenses" is a phrase of studied ambiguity – like the changing landscape of sunlight and shadow, now bright then dark, Looking at the view from the window, through our tears they refract as a rainbow spectrum, tears of sorrow or joy, wonder or regret, or ultimately trustful surrender. This is R S Thomas the priest poet at his most poignant.

"These colours are renewed daily". In writing those words, I wonder if Thomas was alluding to the one sunlit verse in the bruised clouds that brood over the Book of Lamentations 3.22-23:

"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
 They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness." 

Sometimes our hunger for innovation, over-concern with relevance, insistence that hymns reflect personal experience rather than objective affirmation of faith in God, all combine to dull our awareness of that world out there, and the realities that have to be encountered and navigated every day.

Fosdick’s hymn is an unflinching confession of the mess of things, its recurring prayer to be granted wisdom and courage for living this hour, these days, at this time.

Praying this hymn brings before the God of grace, the state of our world, our country, and confesses the troubled heart and mind of contemporary culture.

 

1 God of grace and God of glory,
on thy people pour thy power;
crown thine ancient church's story,
bring its bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage
for the facing of this hour.

2 Lo! the hosts of evil round us
scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!
From the fears that long have bound us
free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage
for the living of these days.

3 Cure thy children's warring madness;
bend our pride to your control;
shame our wanton, selfish gladness,
rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
lest we miss your kingdom's goal.

4 Save us from weak resignation
to the evils we deplore;
let the gift of thy salvation
be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
serving you whom we adore.

 

 

Those first two lines are breathed out like a long sigh of longing, the first verse a prayer for a different way of seeing the world and being in the world.

In a world of earthquake, wind and fire, both natural and contrived by foolish human ways, this is a prayer for simple trust, love interpreted, noiseless blessing, and ordered lives confessing the beauty of peace.

Replacing suspicion with trust, hate with love, loud cursing with noiseless blessing, and life ordered, reconfigured to peace; if you sing this hymn, that's what you're asking for, longing for, wanting for our world.

 

 

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Children's Song

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.

And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

R S Thomas, (Collected Poems, 1945-1990, page 56.)

In around 80 words Thomas deconstructs adulthood as a different planet, a different discourse, a lost capacity for imaginative immediacy, a diminshed sense of life's vivid colours and wondering mindset. When Jesus said unless you become as children you cannot see the Kingdom of God, perhaps amongst other things he meant that unless you retain the power to see, somehow or other prevent an occlusion of vision, resist the seductive power of the analytic in order to see the reality of what just is, unless you can do that, you will never see the miracle of mustard seed, the marvel of yeast, the outrageous humanity of the Samaritan para-medic.

No wonder Jesus told the adult disciples whose description and behaviour match some of the above paragraph, to "let the children come and don't chase them away – they are the true heirs of the Kingdom". And likewise little wonder he took a child and placed her in the midst of them and delivered the first children's address – to a group of obtuse adults, far too serious for their own good, and addicted to conclusions too quickly jumped to!

And R S Thomas was too good a priest not to know that though hands and knees are an adult trick to make children think we are just like them, the children aren't fooled. Neither is God. Amongst the things we put away when we grow up is that innocent take it for grantedness, that looks on the world and wonders, and never even realises that wonder is a gift you use or lose.

Oh Lord of mystery and miracle,

redeem our so grown up view of the world,

and renew our old minds to think new thoughts.

Help us

   to notice the extraordinary ordinariess of our lives,

      to pay attention to the wonder of things,

         to recover the fun and freedom of play,

            and to take what is given us for granted,

               but also with gratitude.

Holy Spirit

   renew our imagination,

      refresh our emotions,

         reset our ambitions,

            revive our hopes,

               restore our energy,

                  release our laughter,

                     recreate our world,

                        resurrect our lives,

                           in the power of the Risen Lord, 

                                                                          Amen. ( J Gordon)

 

During lock down I took photographs of paths. The ones I like are the well worn ones, the ground shaped and the landscape etched by thousands of footsteps over who knows how many years. With so many people walking for their hour's exercise it becomes clear that they discover short cuts, and so new paths are made.

I read somewhere that an architect designing new housing developments suggested putting grass down and only designing one or two obvious paths. After six months it becomes obvious the walking routes people use to the shops, the bus stop and navigating between streets. The paths were then laid where people were already used to walking. Something like that happened on some of the common ground where we live – people's walking had created new paths.

Two of the most familiar texts in the Bible are about paths. "He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Sung at weddings and funerals, in Psalm 23 there are deep resonant images of life as a journey and the importance of taking the right path. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." The book of Proverbs is about wisdom, good choices, moral integrity, ethical relationships, honesty with money, care and truthfulness in speech – these are the paths of life, that lead to life. This verse distils all that into one maxim, "Trust in the Lord…he will direct your paths." (Prov. 3.6 KJV)

So I like paths, I'm comfortable and content walking a known way; known at least by those who have gone before me, countless times. But one of the realities of lock down and living with the ambiguities and disruption of a pandemic is that many of the known paths seem to have disappeared; there is disorientation, a sense of displacement, a strangely unsettling loss of confidence that we know where we are, and where we are going.

Sheila and I walk a lot, have done all our time together. Often as she walks ahead, I'm aware of the journey we share, the companionship of a lifetime, the sense of moving forward together. The sunlit path, but with shadows and light, and life experiences that are likewise variable, changeable, unpredictable and in the end contingent, these are the given material out of which we make of life what we can. But we do so in concert, in step, on the same path which, though at times has been harder than we could know, is the path we have chosen to walk as both intentional journey and shared adventure.  

An old hymn has remained a constant source of inner longing and spiritual sustenance ever since I first sang it as a new Christian convert, still trying to work out what in heaven's name had happened to me! I chose it as my ordination hymn, and at each induction service since.

Christ of the upward way, my Guide divine,
Where Thou hast set Thy feet, may I place mine;
And move and march wherever Thou hast trod,
Keeping face forward up the hill of God.

When I try to define what it means to be a Christian, like the Anabaptist tradition, I use the image of "following faithfully after Christ." Following with faith in Christ, following the faithful Christ, knowing Christ goes ahead of me, on the path I'm called to walk, faithfully. Those first followers of Jesus were called followers of the Way, people who walked a recognised path, the way of the cross. 

During these past weeks of pandemic lock down there has been time to think. Reviewing the photographs I've taken has been an exercise in self-examination. Not the guilt hunting type, nor the introspective worrying about how I feel and why, nor that inner audit to check if I measure up to my own self-expectations.

A gentler questioning of why certain things interest me enough to want to stop and take a photograph in the first place; a more reflective and non-judgemental exploration of such a world as this, its beauty and significance, its capacity to perplex and fascinate, its evocation of wonder and endless possibility; a deliberate act of pausing, to look and to see, to be present to and to pay attention, to move from such slowed-down taking an interest to the gradual recognition that all of this that we call our lives, takes place in the presence of the God who is before us and behind us. The dynamic movement of the journey, this life of mine that is inextricably linked in love to another, and beyond her to countless others, these moments of encounter and attentive expectation before a flower, a path, a clouded sky, a blue tit, golden gorse, far horizons, these are also moments of praise and prayer, of contentment and longing, of self-discovery and self-forgetting.

To recall the interrogative technique of the wonderful David Frost; It is, is it not, a wonderful world.