Category: living wittily

Any meaningful review of what my life has been through 2007 should balance negatives and positives. But if I gave an accurate review I would probably have to indulge in a bit of spin, to make this past year sound better than in fact it turned out to be. "Count your blessings" is one of those Promise Box type of exhortations that is devotionally valid but not always emotionally feasible. Of course a positive spin on how we tell our story doesn’t need to mean that the good stuff is invented or misleadingly told; just that emphasis is laid, attention is paid, capital is made, out of those experiences and circumstances that, in memory and mind, evoke positive feelings. So I count my blessings, name them one by one…..it’s just that there is another list of ambiguities that’s just as long, and often not as obviously beatitudinal. And my journey with God has involved both experiences I thank God for, and other happenings and experiences I wish hadn’t happened.

But the hard stuff also has its value. Life enriching experiences aren’t always counted as blessings at the time. Often those that enrich most initially seem emotionally expensive, relationally demanding, requiring that we grow in new directions, perhaps taking us through valleys of deep darkness where the presence of God might be felt more as absence than nearness. Which means even our hardest experiences can be beatitudinal. That’s twice I’ve intentionally, and with theological awareness used this clumsily precise word – ‘beatitudinal’.

When Jesus spoke of those who were Blessed, he wasn’t referring to those who could ‘count their blessings’ in a process of positive spin. He was talking about the meek and materially disadvantaged, the mourner coming to terms with loss and sorrow, the unjustly treated who hungers for the right to be done and seen to be done, the peacemaker who exists in relation to conflict, the merciful who confronts wrong with forgiveness, the persecuted whose sense of being threatened is subsumed beneath a sense of being held. A beatitudinal life is one in which, whatever happens, we need fear not, for it is our Father’s good pleasure to give the Kingdom.

So as a statement of honesty, for many reasons that don’t need to be told here, this has been on balance, a hard year. That isn’t a negative statement meant to evoke sympathy, it’s as factual and physical, and as significant as if I said the road from here to where I was born passes through some of Scotland’s bleakest moorland – it’s part of the journey from here to there. But it has been a beatitudinal year,in the kinds of ways Jesus declared blessed. Joy and sorrow, peace and anxiety, trust and doubt, companionship and loneliness, healing and hurt, gain and loss, fun and frustration, achievement and failure – and between these poles of human experience, enfolding us within purposes beyond our knowing, the purifying love and merciful constancy of the Triune God.

I suppose what I feel more than anything else on this first day of 2008, is that, year on year, I confess with more attempted humility but also more trusting hopefulness, that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, are the fundamental blessings that make my life beatitudinal no matter what. And counting them is easy – they come to Three in One!

Broccoli is good for one, so I am told. So like medicine I take it sometimes cos it’s good for one.

That’s probably why the elderly pensioner I met at the vegetable counter in our local supermarket was looking to buy some, but grimacing at the price. She had a broccoli head in her hand, and was wringing away at the long thick stalk, trying to break an inch or two off, her face still a grimace of frustration. I would have offered to help, because I thought myself the stalks were too long, and the purplish green floret head too small. Half the weight was in the part you throw away. What’s more, I thought, if broccoli is shipped from Spain should it not be mainly the edible part that’s transported and thus responsible for the carbon footprint? In any case, as my senior friend was discovering, the stalk was bendy and lacking in that crispness that is a sign of fresh harvesting – and would have made it easier to break!

Made me think about globalisation and growing older. A conversation with another senior citizen (I like that term, especially if it preserves a non-patronising respect for age, and acknowledges affectionately the value of cumulative wisdom and years of human experience) – this other senior citizen was pointing out that her favourite butter spread, Lurpak, has rocketed in price, (30%) as has milk and bread because, as she informed me, there is a global grain shortage. Indeed there is – and for many older people, and others on fixed or low incomes, such price fluctuations compel hard choices. In a society where disposable income is high amongst the haves, maybe globalisation is a blessing all but unmixed.

But disposable income, that income buffer-zone that absorbs price variations with minimal disruption to quality of life, is all but extinct amongst the have-nots. So limited and fixed income can make a significant difference to quality of life, erode morale and a sense of independence and personal hopefulness, and undermine the confidence that ordinary things are still affordable. I’ve little patience for those retail emotional health bulletins that agonise over consumer confidence. They are not ususally referring to the pensioner who can’t now afford Lurpak, or who wants to break the neck of the nearest broccoli head.

So I have great sympathy with my elderly shopping colleague, and her covert assault on a bendy broccoli stem with a too heavy carbon footprint. Would it have been an act of prophetic protest and solidarity with the poor to snap off the unwanted chunk of broccoli stalk for her? Or should I have waited at the check-out and paid for an extra one and given it to her, making sure the manager knew what was going on and why?

I did neither, and I regret that.

A retrograde step for ecumenism.

A scene reminscent of The Life of Brian.

An illustration of religious devotion carried too far.

A new approach to church cleaning.

A sign that when it comes to loving and following Jesus, the church still doesn’t "get it".

An alternative approach to spiritual warfare.

Or just one more reason why a Gospel of peace and reconciliation lacks credibility in an age long past skepticism and cosily habituated to cynicism.

The story is carried by AOL. Judge for yourself – then perhaps find time to pray…..

Priests Fight at the Site of Christ’s Birth

Broom-wielding priests fought each other at the site of Christ’s birth after rows broke out between rival factions as they arrived to clean the shrine.

The robed Greek Orthodox and Armenians clashed inside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

The basilica, built over the grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities. Any perceived encroachment on one group’s area can lead to vicious feuds.

Dozens of priests and cleaners went to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January.

But the cleaning session turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church’s section, setting off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue.

A while ago I posted a photo of my father lying  in front of our farm cottage, resting with our working collie, before going to do the evening milking. It’s a year ago today since my mother died. I don’t mark this day as an expression of sadness, but as a day of thankfulness. The obvious self-interested gratitude of a son to the one who gave him life – but  gratitude also that in my mother I was given a remarkable gift.

In a culture that has grown used to benchmarks as standards of quality, she benchmarked several human qualities that I now value and try with varying degrees of success or frustration to live towards.

Generosity that could be reckless but never calculating.

A capacity for work that lived up to one of her own greatest compliments -‘not a lazy bone in her body’!

Laughter that revealed a sense of humour always sharp, but never cutting.

Courage to bear and forbear an illness that often undermined her deepest sense of self.

Compassion for others that was neither ashamed of tears nor afraid of the cost of helping.

A love for animals that was Schweitzer-like in its reverence for life.

An instinct for the circumstances of others that made her alert to those small, random acts of kindness we all like to have happen to us.

My mother also had her faults – I recognise some of them in me. But today I simply celebrate a life to which I owe my own, and incalculably more besides.

Requiescat in pace.

I have been blogging today at Hopeful Imagination. Elizabeth Jennings’ Carol for 2000 has important things to say about preventing the past from determining our future. Memory can be an important perspective, a way of holding on to significant expereince – it can also be a block to newness, an obscuring of fresh possibility, a silencing of voices which invite us into the future. Go look here.

This is one of the most unsentimental nativity scenes I’ve ever seen. The dividing wall, the spy-holes too high to see through, the key people excluded from the manger – wish I knew where to buy one. The concrete wall, which some call a necessity and others an obscenity separates Jew from Palestinian, and is a scandal – in the technical sense of a stumbling block, the place where hope and humanity are tripped up, the obstacle that halts progress.

And the angels sang, ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples…but we still strain to hear that angel song. And every time we give ourselves to peace-making, and every-time we slowly dismantle those walls which have been built, in our family, where we work, in that place where we live, and in the wider world, – brick by brick, hurt by hurt, wound by wound, we work away at those far too numerous walls of enmity and hostility, those ancient hatreds and daily resentments, those scandals, which in the end have to be removed by the scandal of God come amongst us as the crucified God – in whom God was reconciling the world to himself….breaking down dividing walls of hostility….

I am carless again. Not sure if it was an act of generosity, a gesture in the direction of green living, a parental response to a carless daughter who could use some mobility and convenience for a couple of weeks. A mixture of these and other less obvious motives. Anyway, my car is away on holiday to Edinburgh. This will be an occasional but not drastic incovenience. I’ll still get to work. Two lengthy journeys planned this week can be done on the train, an education in patience, perhaps endurance, and certainly soul-training in greeting the unpredictable with either trusting equanimity or resigned and determined cheerfulness. Autonomous mobility is often important to any one of us, and at the moment we are working on the basis that those who have two cars should lend their daughter one!

It’s an interesting experience to hand over a car for a couple of weeks. The actual mechanical, physical, four-wheeled transporter will not be missed from the front window. But the freedom it represents, and which you get so used to, to go wherever, the independence of private available mobility, the convenience to cover miles in minutes, whether to visit someone else, go to B&Q, head out to that contemporary oasis of therapeutic ambience, the coffee shop – that needs some additional forethought, planning, and some of it may not get done because public transport would be such a pain!

It does raise an interesting question about car-sharing in families or at work though. My car is insured for two other named people apart from my wife and myself, my daughter and a colleague. Costs a bit more on insurance, but it does make life more flexible for others, if not for me when the car is with someone else. Maybe in a two car family if one of them was insured for several other occasional users it would provide the benefit of a car when really necessary without multiplying ownership. Would that be living wittily? Am I on to something, or am I trying to console myself by claiming an act of reckless generosity and intentional inconvenience was social responsibility in disguise!?

Selected Incoming Emails over two days.

1. A courtesy reminder from Glasgow Uni Library about books now due, with the gentle threat of draconian fines. So I returned them
2. Suggested arrangements from my pal Ken, coming over from the States and wanting to meet up. Where else, out at the Fort, in Borders, at Starbucks, near Christmas.
3. A friend informed me that a mutual friend has died suddenly, and my sadness is immediate and heartfelt. I pray for her and her family.
4. Amazon inform me that Jurgen Moltmann’s Autobiography, In a Broad Place, has just shipped from the US and will be with me by New Year. It will displace all other reading as soon as it arrives.
5. Confirmation a meeting is cancelled leaving space for other things that also need doing. The tyrranny of the diary occasionally broken.
6. Extra papers arrive for a big all day meeting on Monday. I refuse to open the attachments till early Monday. The tyrranny of the immediate, the urgent, the allegedly essential is also occasionally broken.
7. A thank you from the University nursery for sending now obsolete Paisley University headed paper to the nursery where children will ‘recycle’ them.

It’s too easy to moan and grump about email, the work it creates, the administrative nagging it represents, the impersonal tone and blunt instrument prose. But it also allows all kinds of social exchange – and can usually be humanised and made people friendly. On balance, I wouldn’t have wanted to not receive any of these emails – except maybe the late papers. But even then – why not make allowances for those times when people’s work is done late? How do I know the hassle, the late working, the impossible workloads, and the normal failings and mistakes of ordinary folk trying to do their job? Have I never missed a deadline, overlooked an important detail, failed with the best will in the world to get through the day’s ‘to do’ list? Course I have – and so have you.

Blessed are those who receive emails, and the wisdom, humour and patience, to see the humanity of the person who clicked ‘SEND’.

Back in circulation after returning from my jaunt to the Highland city of Inverness. New friendships, renewed friendships, thinking together with folk as we move into Advent, sensing and exploring the spiritual and pastoral life of another Christian community – all made it a great week-end.

Highlights other than the in-church activities included supporting Ross County as they tried to smite the Raith Rovers Amalekites; the steak pie at half time; an evening meal with friends from way back which included Morag’s chicken, cooked by Iain; Sunday lunch at the manse where hospitality is warm, generous and the home made chocolate sauce sinfully more-ish. I know cos I sinned!

Advent is an important time of waiting – perhaps in a culture which worships instant, we need a place in the practices of our faith where we learn again to wait, to anticipate, and to recognise that while patience is a virtue, impatience can sometimes be an indication of how important whatever we are waiting for is!

So morning by morning, with my advent candle lit, mind and heart and will turn towards the great promises of Isaiah, and I pray for an Isaianic vision of how what is can be renewed, how the status quo is rendered provisional by the God who has seen it all before. And so the light of Christ shines, and the darkness cannot comprehend it. I love the double meaning of that older word – the darkness can neither understand, or engulf, the light of Christ.

Thank you Hilton congregation for having me as your guest – and may Advent draw you into the future where God awaits you, and into which God accompanies you. And by the way, the photo of the Hilton Church, with the cross above the cherry blossom, is a rich symbol which carries with it a sense of the abundant, extravagant fruitfulness of life lived within all the promises and purposes of God. I know it’s a Spring picture – but Advent is about anticipation of light, growth, life and the renewal of creation by the Creator. Just look at the profusion of blossom, like a garland of grace – dead Advent that, so it is!