Author: admin

When I was 11 and 12 my brother and I lived in a railway carriage. The farm cottage was too small for a family of five, and the carriage was the outside supplementary house room. It had a wood fired stove (health and safety and risk assessments were still some way off), it stood a few yards from a burn which could be a gentle stream or a raging torrent, fed from the hills a mile or two behind us. The burn had trout that grew as long as 12-15 inches, and we often guddled for them in the deeper pools.

It was a lot of fun still being at primary school and having that kind of independent space. When the weather was wild the flues of the fire whistled, rain battered the windows and the felted roof, and the burn came up the three foot banks – only a couple of times overflowing. The railway carriage was one of the thousands cut from the rolling stock after the Beecham butchery of the railways in rural Scotland. It smelt of pine and paint, and on top of the stove you could make pancakes!

So a powerful wave of nostalgia swept through me when I came across this old carriage, sitting on moorland backed by sand dunes up at the Ythan nature reserve. It's still standing, but won't for many more years unless someone renovates and restores and makes it watertight. I hope they do. These are now historical artefacts, what's left of a way of life long gone and all but forgotten.

Looking at its dilapidated condition, you can still see the lines and the workmanship of a century ago. Joiners and engineers, upholsterers and welders collaborated in a joint project of skilled craftsmanship by tradesmen proud enough to take pride in their work. Progress is inevitable, but not inevitably benign for everyone affected by it. Work is an essential part of human community, an activity that brings dignity to the worker, and the self-respect of each person as a net contributor to society and to the common good. Such a high view of work is much less valued today, and that too brings its deficits in human fulfilment and community health.

Such thinking about work, labour and skill leads me back to one of my favourite passages, from Ecclesiasticus 38. It is a celebration and thanksgiving for the skills and creativity of various trades and crafts and arts, and their value in 'maintaining the fabric of the world.' And look out for the repeated phrase 'they set their heart on' – that is the clue to good workmanship. The worker embodies skill and energy focused to purpose. This piece of work matters, and so it matters that it is done well. 

You need places where you can think. And when I say think, I don't always mean reasoning things out; I often mean a more desultory form of thinking. Like reflection, when you gaze inwardly and play with ideas, or take memories out to look at them, or ask ourselves how we are feeling. I was once playfully critiqued by an avid sermon listener for my (too) frequent use of the word 'reflect'. John thought a phrase like 'think about' was fine, whereas 'reflect' suggested something more abstract, maybe even verging on the pretentious. I could see what he meant, and I cut it back a bit and found other ways of inviting people to engage, ponder,and yes, think about. But I still like the notion of reflecting, both looking for illumination and gazing inwardly at the thoughts that might shed light.

So, you need places where you can think in that reflective, ruminative way that is open ended but nevertheless wants to explore possibilities, analyse how and why we feel what we do, or take time to listen to our heart. A walk alongside the waves on a beach is a necessary and recurring joy for me. A walk by the sea places me alongside rhythmic movement that, like a metronome, helps my inner world of thought and mood to regain and then sustain an inner rhythm less frantic, more attuned to the harmonies around and within, resetting the beat and timing of life.

Of course, reflection encourages introspection, which is no bad thing in itself. I have a fairly strong introspective strand, and a lifetime of reading, writing, and busy social engagement with people often means the tension between wanting to be alone and wanting to be with people. So the beach is a good place for such relief. Solitude is not loneliness, and spiritual writers have long distinguished between the two. In solitude there is time to listen to our life, and to become reacquainted with who we are becoming

When I walk the wave line I am often focused on the sand, and whatever the sea deposits there. I've learned to pay attention to shells, stones shaped by friction, wood worn smooth and reshaped, and often the happenstance arrangement of such fragments along the edges of the tide. To stop, look, see, gaze, even study this particular randomly placed artefact of the sea is an exercise in pondering the trivial, except that once you start looking and reflecting, something happens. A mind has noticed; an imagination stirs; a coalescence of thought, feeling and present circumstance give this previously unnoticed shell, a significance which may transcend that attended moment.

The photo is one such captured moment. A mussel shell contains sand, seawater and reflected sky. An accidental microcosm which left me with a deep sense of wonder at the casual beauty of something so transient. It provided a moment of gratitude and something hard to describe, but what I might call amazement. The shell had been home to a creature now gone, and was now a useless discard. Except that I saw it, admired its beauty, and felt a surge of gladness for the gift of such random loveliness. 

In a time of great sadness and slow recovery, I've found such immersion in the detail of life around me helps in the hard work of adjustment. They are gentle reminders of the everyday miracle of life, consciousness, and our ability to see and interpret the world. A discarded shell has the power to grant a sabbath from sorrow.  

Late in 2018 I had promised a tapestry to my daughter for her birthday. She would have been 43. She loved Aberdeenshire, especially around Bennachie, and her first employments were in property management for the National Trust for Scotland. Following Aileen's death on Christmas Eve I decided to fulfil my promise and design and complete her tapestry.

The view is of Bennachie. Her favourite view was from Castle Fraser, were she was property manager for a few years; another view she enjoyed was from Garlogie overlooking Loch Skene. The two views are collated in the tapestry, which pictures the shire landscape in summer and autumn. The colours of gorse, bracken and heather, the blue and dusk of a late evening, the loch and the farmed landscape are all reflections of her love for this countryside.

The tapestry is a traditional half cross stitch, worked free hand in stranded cotton. It isn't meant to be a photo; it's more an impressionist celebration of a landmark familiar and loved. The loss of Aileen from our family leaves an unfillable space in our lives. And every view of Bennachie is a reminder of her, the combined ache of loss of our loved lass, and gratitude to God for the place she still holds in our lives and hearts. She would have loved this tapestry.         

Comfort. Solace. Consolation. Each of them a word about the alleviation of woundedness, loneliness and a disconsolate spirit. I think too, comfort, solace and consolation are gifts best delivered personally, that is, in the context of a relationship. All of that sounds a bit abstract, and even enigmatic. So let me make it plain.

Today we had a visit from two of our oldest friends. We met them almost 50 years ago, before we were married. Their daughter and our daughter were born within 24 hours of each other. Throughout nearly half a century we have laughed and cried together, guided and supported each other, entrusted our hopes and fears and shared without calculation whatever we each needed. And all this in a friendship where we can go a year or two without meeting and pick up where we left off.

They are peculiarly well placed to feel and understand how we are feeling as we try each day to come to terms with the loss of our daughter Aileen. Their coming to visit us was an act of unsurprising generosity, the kind of thing close friends do without thinking. The comfort comes from the gift of time, presence and attention, a willingness to listen with neither interruption nor unasked for advice. Then add an unspoken recognition that your grief is embraced in the shared pain of a sorrow that needs no unnecessary words attempting to reduce its unremitting burden; and that is solace, the feeling of being understood as one trying to make sense of an incomprehensible loss.

Consolation is solace rooted i such deep companionship. After lunch out at a favourite place we walked up around and beyond Drum Castle. We talked. Well, I talked a lot, and Jack listened a lot. We walked, often in silence, in the castle grounds and up into the forest. There we heard birdsong, the music of trees moving in the breeze, the sound of footsteps on pine needles, and for a while, no words. Instead a friend walking the path alongside, enacted metaphor of the love of those select few who understand us enough to know that there are some things in each of our lives we will never understand fully; and that's ok. Today consolation was the presence of a friend, who took the trouble to come, now walking alongside, often silent, always attentive, sharing the moment, then the next moment.

At the time I was simply grateful for friends like this friend; thinking about it some hours later, though, I realise that there was an Emmaus feel to this afternoon. In Luke 24 two disciples are walking along disconsolately, grief stricken, and unsure what the future will look like. And though they don't know it, the stranger who joins them is the risen Jesus. Comfort, solace and consolation were mediated through the presence of this new companion on the way. Not very different, the presence today of a friend in whose presence there is the sense of a communion greater than the two of us, and in the fellowship of Christ the sustaining sacrament of a love that has proved itself over decades, and is not only the gift of God, but in its self-giving, gives the love of God a living presence and voice. 

Of course moods change. And though grief is eased by comfort, solace and consolation, the sorrow is still there, the loss is just as real, the ache of sadness has become familiar and isn't going away anytime soon. How could it? Love has its cost, and love pays it with neither complaint nor evasion, because that's what love is; the exposure of the heart to the risks of hurt and loss. God knows, love's worth it. And today, through the visit of our friends, the God who knows this came near. 

(The photo was take by Aileen, one of her favourite views of Bennachie)

Food accessibility, food availability, and food affordability, are major levers of power. Historically, access to food is so crucial to human survival that food, its abundance or scarcity, has been weaponised. I detest that recent addition to our discourse, but it is a word ugly enough to be unambiguous. A siege is about food and water; near starvation diets are the tools of the oppressor, a exercise in power over and against others. On the other hand, provision of adequate food and water, home and heat, are signs of power exercised for and on behalf of others. In an affluent and well resourced country, food shortage and hungry families are largely the result of political choices to do something else with Government revenue from taxes and economic activity. 

Granted even some truth in that argument, food poverty in a country as rich as the UK is a key indicator of political decisions inimical of social justice. The normalisation of the Food Bank is one of the baleful achievements of several Governments in the past decade or two. Food poverty arises out of a failure of political imagination and a constraining of moral and social responsibility amongst those supposed to govern in the interests and for the welfare of every member of our society.

Social justice, and compassion are essential elements of a moral climate in which everyone has a chance to flourish. This article is saying something about a society that tolerates other people's hunger. And the deliberate policies that cause it. Here is a brief extract, but it is worth reading the whole warning about the assault on the dignity of people who live hungry in a land of plenty.

 "at least 480,583, food parcels were distributed by the Trussell Trust and independent food banks during the 18-month period.

The Trussell Trust’s most recent figures on Scottish food bank use, taken from April to September 2018, found a 15% year-on-year increase which it linked directly to the rollout of universal credit. A similar increase was detected across the whole of the UK.

The situation is becoming more and more desperate, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see that this is happening in England and Wales, too,” she said. “We need action that deals with the root causes [of food poverty]. We need a social security system that is fit for purpose, and wages that are related to the cost of living.”

The collision between King Ahab and the prophet Elijah is described in brief stark terms in I Kings 17. Elijah announces a drought.

Three years later he returns from hiding to challenge the prophets of Baal to a religious trial of strength. For Elijah Mount Carmel was exhilarating, self-vindicating, and a very  public demonstration of  God's power. But it was emotionally draining, the cost only felt in delayed shock and an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. (I Kings 18

So he ran away, scared out of his wits by Jezebel.  God's response to Elijah's breakdown began with practical concern for a human body depleted by overworked limbs and overwrought emotions. Rest. Food. Sleep.

Then an interview on the mountainside.

This terrified man, afraid not only of Jezebel, but of the burden of his life, and the expectations of his God, discovers the presence and person of God, not in elemental force, but in the creative whisper that first moved on the chaotic waters and brought peace, life and blessing.

The life of faith has to be lived in the tension between Carmel and Horeb, between judgement and grace, between the high octane self expenditure of obedience and the quiet insistent whisper of the One who restores the soul. (I Kings 19)

Ad the triumphalist praise song 'These are the days of Elijah' should be tempered by the Quaker poet's contrasting hymn, 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways.' ( J G Whittier)

There are echoes throughout Whittier's hymn of Elijah's overdone passion, burnout and need of renewal – 'take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of thy peace."

One of the spiritually significant changes in my inner life since our daughter Aileen died, is the effect of grief on my capacity and desire to pray. At first I had neither the ability nor the motivation to pray, or even want to. The reverberations of grief, shock, and sadness so far beyond consolation, drain away so much of what is normal emotional engagement with life and its routines. That's because the routines are disrupted beyond repair; nothing will be the same in the aftermath of the greatest loss of our lives so far.

It takes time to take it in. It takes time to want to even think too much about it. And whatever else prayer is, it makes you think as you search for words. In a time of intense sorrow prayer is a process of taking in, of internalising a reality that cries out for denial and contradiction. Prayer requires engagement at the depths of our being with the God whose personal and interpersonal depths are replete with eternal love, infinite wisdom and redemptive creative purpose. That makes each attempt at prayer an exercise in vulnerability, trust and self-giving. And for the grieving heart, that's sometimes too much to ask. Grief renders us all but defenceless in the face of death, and to survive, much that is inside us shuts down to conserve resources already running out and nearing exhaustion.

It is at such times that the communion of saints stops being a theological idea and becomes a reality to which we are glad to belong. "You are in our prayers" then becomes much more vital and vitalising than the safe cliche of those unsure what else to say. To be conscious that our own silence and felt distance from God is a weight willingly carried by others is part of the comfort that sustains faith in such times. It isn't only that we are prayed for, as objects of prayer. It is also that people pray for us, that is, their faithful prayers are said on our behalf, their words give voice to what has rendered us silent, and their intercession draws us into the circle of a conversation which at the moment is beyond us. 

When those who love and care for us say, "You are in our prayers" or make similar promises to mention our names in the presence of God, they are being companions, intentionally taking into themselves the pain and the plight of the prayed for. That's an interesting, syntactically awkward phrase "the prayed for". These past months I have learned at a level more profound than I could have imagined, the meaning of Gethsemane, and how hard it is to be shattered  by the brute fact of death and loss.  Jesus' grief was exacerbated because no one said, or showed, "You are in our prayers." Quite the opposite; instead of praying with or for him, they were asleep. Jesus' sorrow at the soporific disciples isn't peeved self-concern, it is the cry of a heart needing support, the reflex of a mind tortured by doubt and inner agony.

So there are times when prayer is beyond us, at least for a time. The prayers of others, and the written and stated promises that they will pray for us, are gifts of love that hold us, indeed entangle us, within the communion of saints.  The experience of grief, and the inner adjustments it has imposed, has meant a new understanding of what prayer is, and what it is not. In our sorrow, bewilderment and inner derailment, there have been times when prayer felt impossible; other times when prayer didn't even enter a mind too busy processing a new life-changing reality.

Oh I know. Prayer is supposed to be natural for a Christian; an obvious first resort; an open invitation from God; a habit learned over years of practice. That's just the point. The disorientation of mind and heart, of reason and emotion, have made prayer more difficult, not less. I know that isn't everyone's experience, but it has been mine. And the communion of saints, the struggling for words friends who said, "You are in our prayers" and "We are praying for you" have rewritten the Gethsemane experience. They have watched with us, and they have watched over us. 

Praying is different for now. Tempered by a continuing sorrow it is often "the burden of a sigh"; arising out of loss and the need to reconfigure our world, the mood of every prayer is interrogative;  as someone most at home with words, silent longing may become the new eloquence. And in the grasp of a loss that will be for life, somehow the love and hope and memories of Aileen will be a constant longing which may occasionally find words, but that longing will always be there as love sensing the incompleteness her absence creates. 

If theology matters at all, it matters as a way of exploring the things that matter most in the world, and in our lives. These past weeks sadness has been an unasked but persistent companion. Is there a theology of sadness? I've taught theology, and amongst other descriptions I've spoken of theology as thinking about and looking at the world with God on the horizons. 

But what if the horizons are obscured, and landmarks have shifted? Sadness is a complex and elusive experience. It can be longing for what seems now beyond reach; the ache of an emptiness that cannot now be filled; an inner de-motivation of mind and heart when important things suffer a recession of value and significance; a loneliness traceable to great loss, and which cannot be satisfied because that loss is final; and therefore sadness is a felt deficit at the deep core of who we are. Something, or someone is missing, and missed.

A theology of sadness must bring that deep crisis of loss into conversation with an understanding of God which neither minimises that loss, nor dismisses its accompanying sadness as lack of faith. 
As I work away at Aileen's tapestry, weaving colours and stranding threads, I also try to strand thought and prayer from within this strange climate of loss and longing. And I listen to music which not only speaks to me, but speaks for me, becoming a true articulation of life as presently experienced. Tonight Gabriel's Oboe became a prayer pouring out loss, sadness, longing, and hope. Our daughter Aileen loved this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WJhax7Jmxs&fbclid=IwAR0HNgJjn7imzaOWQcmu5CCrd-ZBnT5HXoHbyatkwyfqUvHXIjcp-LZmt-Q

For years now I have written Haiku, in the classic form of 5x7x5 syllables on three lines. The economy of words in this art form requires each word to carry significant weight, and like a setting of stones around a diamond, each word is placed just so, to enhance and highlight the central idea.

Over these weeks since our daughter Aileen's death, there have been times when the precision and economy of Haiku have enabled me to express the confusion and disorientation of such an irreparable loss. Grief is a multi-dimensional human experience that is pervasive and persistently patient in its hold of the heart, mind, body and soul. Grief affects our deepest relationships, re-configures our sense of life's meaning and value, forces an unwelcome reconsideration of present realities and future plans, and all of this accompanied by an inner sadness which oscillates between aching emptiness and overflowing sorrow.

Last night I reflected on this photo, taken not far from Aileen's grave. There are days here in the North East when the sky is intensely blue, inviting that long gaze into an infinity of space and possibility beyond our knowing.

These old Scots Pines survive on a small atoll, surrounded by new building developments. Here, after snowfall, outlined against a sky of burnished blue, and protected by a drystane dyke that has seen better days, its stones tumbling around it, they look defiant behind their defensive wall, holding out against the elements, and the developers. Out of such images came these Haiku.

"God made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end." These words by Julian of Norwich distil into a sentence one of the most remarkable books ever written.

Written by a woman when women weren't encouraged to write; an essay in profoundest theology by someone who called herself 'unlettered'; an account of a near death experience and a vision of the passion of Jesus that she reflected on for the rest of her life; written in vernacular English in a world where serious writing was done only in Latin; and most remarkable of all, a book that envisions a universe in which eternal purposeful Love finds a way to redeem, renew and conserve a creation gone wrong. 

I've read this book often, and deeply. It is theologically provocative, pastorally comforting, but above all a deeply personal account of an experience that touches those universals of human existence, love, death, meaning and purpose. Lately, in the aftermath of Aileen's death, I've gone back to Julian's Revelations of Divine Love. Part of the work of grief, and grief is very hard work, is to sift through the wreckage of life that is left when someone dies whose life was integral to our own life, and essential to our happiness. 

Memories and regrets, hopes and fears, investments of time, energy, emotional commitment and love building over the years, are all parts of life that now seem broken beyond repair. It's a commonplace that grief is the cost and consequence of love. But true nevertheless. Our deepest loves are built towards a lifetime of trust, presence, sacrifice, commitment and the inherent promise always to be there for, and be there with and be there alongside each other. Death interrupts that, indeed death seems to contradict the very hopes that lead us to say such things in the first place.

Our human love cannot guarantee what it hopes for, indeed has no guaranteed outcome. Those prepositions of being there for, with, alongside seem erased by death. What Julian of Norwich brings to our attempts to understand the mystery of love and the power of death to shatter love's hopes, is an exposition of the Love that inspires and underlies and empowers our own capacity to take the risks of love, and to trust the God whose love is revealed finally and fully in Jesus, the eternal self giving love of God. "Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters God is love." That old Victorian hymn channels the truth Julian spent her life thinking and writing about. As Julian had already said, "God made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end."

Actually another very different voice comes from an Edwardian Scot, who spent most of his life as a preacher theologian in England, and who was born in Aberdeen. Peter Taylor Forsyth echoed much of Julian's vision of a God who finally, in the end, would bring things to their proper completion. I find his words deeply comforting, and shining with a generosity and hopefulness that finds clear echoes in my own heart:

The end of all is the grace unspeakable, the fullness of glory – all the old splendour fixed, with never one lost good;all the spent toil garnered, all the fragments gathered up, all the lost love found forever, all the lost purity transfigured in holiness, all the promises of the travailing soul now yea and amen, all sin turned to salvation. Eternal thanks be unto God who hath given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord, and by his grace, the taste of live for every one.

(The photo was taken some years ago on the links at Banff)