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Marilynne Robinson is a consummate artist in at least two literary genres – the novel and the essay. The novels are now beyond the need for recommendation; not to have read them is to have missed storytelling that probes the depths of human experience and persuades the reader of the loveable fragility of human beings caught up in the tragi-comic dramas of their own lives. I expect to read the novels again in the same way I expect to listen to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto again, and drink a Cappucino with a bacon rolldown at the Pavilion Cafe again, and make time to meet with friends and tell the stories of our lives to each other.

The essays are a different genre, but they are written out of the same generous view of the world as the novels. Trying to explain why Robinson is such a captivating writer, and why the best words to describe her writing might include such unlikely c0-descriptors as wise, astringent, holy, old fashioned, uncompromising, compassionate, analytic and discursive, begins to sound as pointless as painting a word picture of Van Gogh's Cafe on a Starry Night. For example to say her writing is holy is misleading, if by that is meant dealing with holy subjects. But it is precisely the right word to describe the concerns and inner life of the writer who sees the world as the theatre of God's glory, holiness and love, and does so without reducing these to mere words, platitudes and other safe but anemic terminology. God is God in Robinson's writing; no domesticated super parent, and no speculative construct rising from the wayward certainties of philosophies like so many kites cut free from their strings.

Reading The Givenness of Things has the surprising effect of wanting to go and read the novels again in the light of the author's confessions of faith, doubt and patience with a God who doesn't suit those who have bought into the consumer customer care culture as the palce where we discover what life is all about. For Robinson life is all about living in the world of creation and people as someone who observes and listens to the heartbeats of life. In her essay on Metaphysics she quotes Calvin; it should be said that Robinson regards Calvin in precisely the way the great Free Church of Scotland preacher Alexander Whyte advised of his students when he told them to "get themselves into a relation of indebtedness to one the great minds of the past." She is not uncritical of Calvin, but she regards him as a safe standpoint from which to view the changing landscape of ideas. He is the measure of theological and cultural movements and developments, and his intellectual and theological hold on the reality of God enables her to test whether these movements and developments are passing fads and fashions, or insights of enduring importance because rooted and grounded in the Christian tradition of scripture and doctrine. 

The abandonment of metaphysics as an essential foundation for human knowing she sees as both tragic and a mistake. She takes with utmost seriousness the poetry of the Johannine prologue and the Colossian hymn (1.15-20) "My Christology is high, in that I take Christ to be with God, and to be God. And I take it to be true that without him nothing was made that was made. This opens on all being of every kind, including everything unknow to us still, and everything  never to be know to us, for which our words and concepts may well be wholly inadequate. So naturally I view cogency with considerable mistrust." This essay becomes a conversation around the nature of God and the revelation of God in Jesus the Christ. The Prologue of John "has nerved me to embrace the thought that the presence of Christ in the moment of Creation would have meant that the nature of Christ is intrinsic to Creation, and an aspect of the relation of God to the world from the very outset. At which point she quotes Calvin who in his commentary on John 3.16 urges the believer to gaze in faith, "fixed on Christ, in whom it beholds the breast of God filled with love."

It is an interesting comparison, the writer of the essays in full theological flow, and the writer of the novels where God is a leading character in the background whose presence or absence impinges on the characters, their choices and circumstances, what they do and what befalls them. And then from the same essay there is this: "I understand Calvin to mean that the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth made manifest what was always true, that there was a love that could only be made known to us through a gesture of such unthinkable grandeur and generosity – over and above the grandeur and generosity of Creation itself." It is worth noting, Robinson describes God with words to often absent from mainstream theologies of whatever hue – grandeur and generosity.

Each of the essays in this volume is similarly confessional, theologically moored in "biblical and traditional theology." It's a mistake to be less than attentive to a writer whose thought range and conversational breadth includes John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Descartes, Chrysostom, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and an array of secondary writers and thinkers I'd never heard of before! The theological vision and framework that informs the essays, particularly the recurring expositions of the nature of God in Christ, are limned and woven through the fabrics of the novels. A close reading of this essay on Metaphysics followed by a re-reading of Lila will be an interesting exercise in hermeneutics, or source criticism, or spiritual autobiography.     

Christians, in obedience to Jesus, convert hate into peace, enmity into love, and doing harm into doing good. Why? Because we are Bethlehem people, we are Calvary people, and empty tomb people – we believe in a love that has entered the abyss and the darkness and has emerged as radiant life giving light.

What we teach and show our children determines the next generation’s loves, hates and commitments. In a world of refugees and terrorists, Facebook and Twitter, war and violent hatreds, Christians are called to be witnesses to the Kingdom of God. We are summoned to pray the Lord's Prayer, not as pre-film advert, but as subversive Gospel, as alternative worldview, as our way of showing we are followers of the crucified King, worshippers of the Lamb slain.

At this time of year, we know that Jesus knows about being a refugee, fleeing from massacre at Bethlehem. Our Saviour met all the world’s hatred head on at Calvary. Our Lord triumphed over hate, violence, evil and death at the empty tomb. Bethlehem and Calvary point to the God in the light of whose Holy Love we view the evil realities and tragedies of Paris. And for Christians the future doesn;t belong with the battle cries of religious power seekers of whatever faith, nor the battle strategists of whatever sides in our world's conflicts, but to a garden where once early in the morning as the sun rose, the Son rose. And power was redefined, the power of love over love of power. Bethlehem, Calvary, a garden – the geography of reconciliation and redemption.

In a world afraid of radicalisation we are called to redeem and convert that word into another kind of radicalisation – of the command to love our neighbours, and that means opening ourselves to the grace of the God, and to that Holy Love which transforms fear into love for our enemies. The cross is where the radical love of God goes to the root of human evil and creation's brokenness and heals it. "While we were still God’s enemies C died for us. In a world awash with fear and suspicion, a world of enemies, hatred, terrorism, refugees and shattered communities, the Christian church, the Body of Christ is called to practice, perform, embody and live out the principles that convert hatred to peace – mercy, neighbourliness, hospitality, peaceable speech, the Golden Rule, and the four imperatives to love, do good, bless and pray for those who are seen as enemy.

If anyone is in Christ – New creation! The Christian is born again, born from above, a child of the Father. Followers of Jesus are lights in a dark universe, lights of the world born to radiate the love of God, to speak forgiveness, to talk not hate speech but love speech. Welcomed by God Christians live out of trust, not fear, practising not rejection and exclusion but welcome and friendship. As children of the Father Christians resist stereo-type and caricature, encountering each person, every other, with respect and dignity because each person is created in the image of God.  Hate is not the last word, it isn't even close – holiness, love, mercy, forgiveness, peace have the higher claim because they speak the nature of God. And underlying all of these, the sovereign grace of the God whose Holy Love is the light that shineth in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

……………………………….

These previous posts on hate are attempts to help towards a Christian way of thinking about the cruelties and tragedies, the atrocities and ccyles of violence that so disfigure our world. They are not so much an answer, or answers; they are more by way of prayerful considerations, thoughtfulness about Christian obedience and witness in an age where if we are not careful hate, mistrust and a toxic siege mentality will create spirals of exclusion, hostility and violence.

Once we have some understanding where hate comes from, the next challenge is to identify some biblical principles for converting hate into peace. The starting point is the clear positive command of Jesus – not advice, guidance or good option we might consider – but command.

"But I say to those who will hear: Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you." (Luke 6.27) Love of enemies is not meant to be a political manifesto and general rule for civil society. Questions of civil defence, political and military action are not the focus of these words. They are to persecuted disciples. This command is throughout the New Testament a hallmark of the redeemed, an ethical barcode that identifies and defines the forgiven life, the deep footprint of the disciple of the crucified. Love of enemies, refusing to hate, is core to the Christian witness to a God who was in Christ reconciling the world, and has given the ministry of reconciliation to those who are the Body of Christ. What such "doing good" looks like might mean thinking about other things Jesus taught and lived, and died to affirm:

Mercy – Blessed are the merciful, forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us, are transformative truths embedded in the teaching of Jesus and characteristic of the God he reveals. How we see God affects how we see others. God so loved the world is a primary statement, as is "while we were God’s enemies Christ died for us". And the prayer cry of Jesus, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do", bears witness to the God who in Christ steps into the cycle of violence and absorbs the shock waves of hate into a heart ablaze with holiness as judgement and love. Mercy as practice is a generosity of the heart, compassion, caring for, empathy that understands what it’s like to be that other person – the refugee, the abused migrant, the person suspected and rejected because of their faith.

Neighbourliness. The Good Samaritan didn't set out to be good, he set out on a journey and met someone who had been beaten up. The neighbour is whoever is in need – not those I like, but those I can help – random acts of kindness are fair enough, but neighbourliness is intentional, becomes a habit of the heart and a way of being towards others. The neighbour is the person at the parking meter who hasn’t enough money, and to whom you hand over some of your own change, and refuse to give your address when they want to pay it back.

Golden Rule. The same logic as love your neighbour as yourself, and the same command as throughout the Torah about love for the stranger. We want for us and our children safety, to belong, to be accepted, to be free to work and live and buy; to contribute to life around us. So do others, including 'the other'. Ask yourself says Jesus – how do you like to be treated? Respect, friendship, acceptance? …well be like that to others. If mercy asks what’s it like to be you; Golden rule asks how do I like to be treated.

Hospitality.  Doing good includes sharing food, drink, clothes. Food banks are places of social hospitality; food is a gesture of friendship – a coffee is a statement to everyone about colleague, friend, family, partner. When I am seen in public having coffee with someone, it's a social green light to everyone around. This person is my friend, colleague, one whose company I seek and share. That is what my friend was saying by having coffee with a young woman wearing a hajib. That is what the commenter on her FB page needs to learn. (See start of previous post for this important reference)

Free speech There is a compelling case for Christians contradicting tabloid speak by Jesus speak. Not what would Jesus do – what would Jesus say, about the frightened, the vulnerable, the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee – He wouldn't parrot tabloid speak. Christians sin deeply whenever our words are prejudiced, stereotype, discriminate.The drip of toxic thought into the life blood of a community is one of the social sins of our day, practiced with persistent determination by tabloids, who make money by selling junk food for thought. The Christian alternative is in Phil 4.8 – here truly is food, for thought.

Four rule response Following Luke 6.27 Jesus spells it out – love, do good, bless, pray. Jesus is talking about how we are to be towards those who hate, harm and hurt us – those we’ve no time for, our prejudices and stereotypes – each word is an imperative, has the force of a command – love is not feeling but good will; not emotion but moral governor of word and action. Doing good means patient determined kindness; bless means not curse, positive regard for and not wishing harm to, this person; praying for them and for ourselves in relation to them brings the entire network of our relationships into the presence of the God who deals with dividing walls of hostility, give a ministry of reconciliation and calls the peacmakers his children.

(There is a conclusion to this sermon which I'll publish tomorrow)

It would be helpful if you've not been following this series of posts to read the previous one which places this and the subsequent post in context, and explains what I am trying to find words to say.

Hate into Love: Turning One Four Letter Word into Another

Three incidents in the past week raise for Christian communities the need for working out how to deal with the anger, fear, revulsion and desires for revenge that swirl dangerously following the attacks in Paris on Friday 13th. A few days later an Islamic centre in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, was set on fire deliberately and is being treated by police as a hate crime. Four days after the attacks one of my Facebook friends posted that she had coffee with a friend who is a Muslim woman, and they talked about shopping, the children, school, faith and the recent events. She mentioned her friend was wearing a hajib; amongst the comments was a rant by someone that the hajib should be banned as hajibs are used to disguise terrorists coming into the copuntry as refugees. The hajib of course is not a burka. The arrival of the first plane load of Syrian refugees was greeted with much positive welcoming in Scotland; but police are investigating some Twitter postings including one that hoped the plane would nosedive into the Clyde.

Where Hate Comes From
Suffering inflicted and Undeserved. Unjust, or deliberately inflicted suffering is remembered and converted to rage. Memory is the savings bank of hatred, and revenge is the interest we pay on all that saved up hatred. Often such grievances are real injustices suffered, and until there is justice the cycle of grievance, rage, hate and revenge goes on. Hatred always has a history, and hatred is often cyclic, retaliatory and eventually grow into violence and the use of destructive negative absolutes like relentless, remorseless, merciless, thus construing hate as unchangeable and permanent.

Dehumanising language. The discourse of hate includes words, cartoons and caricature. Terrorists wear the burka to sneak into Europe is a common enough refusal to see each person as a human being. The daily Mail cartoon about refugees at sea being rats leaving sinking ship, distorts the desperate hopes of humans for survival into a cliche imaged by vermin. One of my strangest discoveries in researching where hate comes from is the insight of a Hollywood musical, South Pacific:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

Culpable Ignorance. Yes, you’ve got to be carefully taught. It is crucial for Christians to balance a theology of the human being, made in the image of God, with the inescapable limitations of what we know and how we know. Much of what most people know about Syrian refugees, the history of the middle East, and Islam, is mediated through TV, online and newspapers. Many such sources are simple and brief, have a resistance if not an allergy to ambiguity, on TV News with little time for complexity, nuance and distinction, or thoughtful informed debate. And few alternative human interest stories that portray Islamic, Syrian refugees, and other refugees risking the Mediterranean, in a positive, humane and honest light. Hence the Facebook commentator who didn't even know the difference between a hajib and a burka, and saw not a human individual, a woman, but a potential terrorist, and instead of her name, a demonic abstraction, Isis.

Fear. Terrorism and acts such as those in Paris are designed to create fear, to sow seeds of mistrust into a soil fertilised by the fear of globlly publicised atrocity. But as Marilynne Robinson points out,"Fear is not a Christian habit of mind." Often what is feared is that our country will be swamped, our values overridden and changed, our neighbourhoods colonised, our jobs taken – and the operative word in all these is "our". Our selfish holding on to what is ours, our way of life whatever that is, feeds the fear of difference, the suspicion and latent rejection of 'the other'.

What we fear is the encounter with another religion, a different culture, strange dress and unfamiliar food, music, and appearance. The Bible is clear on our responsibility and responsiveness to the stranger, sojourner. And it has nothing to do with fear and much to do with welcome: You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Lev 19.34.  “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. Ex 23.9

( The second part of the sermon is on Converting Hate to Peace, by Being Who Christ Calls Us to Be. I'll post that tomorrow.)

But I say to those who hear me: "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you." Luke 6.27.

This is the text I preached on this morning in our small church, with a diverse and thoughtful congregation. The young people's part was about how we use the word hate, from "I hate cold macaroni", to "I hate it when people dive and cheat at football" to "I hate when drivers overtake and cut in and risk accidents." The four letter word hate is easy to use, difficult to unsay once it is said.

So we then looked at how hating easily becomes hating the person who does the things that annoy us, hurt us, offend us. And then at what Jesus says, replace one four letter word with another, hate for love – do good to those who don't do good to us. That's fine, and it's hard to argue that a Christian response to offensive and hurtful behaviour is as Jesus said, "to love, do good, bless and pray for" that person, seeking to befriend someone we could easily have a fight with.

Then came the sermon. I have hesitated to post the notes of my sermon here because they are not full notes. Much of my preaching is prepared in mind and heart, and the notes are mainly the controlling framework of thinking already done. So I am not tied to what is written; usually more is said than is in the notes. But starting tomorrow I'll post the essence of what I shared with our folk this morning. The truth is, trying to say anything meaningful and practical about events such as happened in Paris on Friday 13th, will always be inadequate, provisional, a search for comfort, wisdom, hope and a way to live our lives forward with faith.  

The sermon isn't trying to tell people what to think, what you should feel or what you should do. It is a serious and admittedly partial and quite inadequate attempt by one Christian pastor, to share what I as a follower of Jesus have been thinking and praying and feeling as I try to respond to the Paris attacks. The sermon is me thinking out loud in the good company of brothers and sisters likewise seeking wisdom, grace and help in dealing with events that raise our deepest questions and fears.

The constraint I have felt to preach on hate has been urged by two deep convictions. First, as Christians we are called by the very nature of the God we believe in to understand the nature, cause and consequences of human hatred, and to work out our responses from a rootedness in the Christian Gospel, and those responses shaped by the God we believe in. It should not surprise us if we have a sufficiently robust doctrine of sin that there are those in our world who carry out planned and purposeful atrocities perpetrated and justified in the minds of those who practice their own hatred with such cruelty and fatalistic certainty of the righteousness of their cause.

Second, I believe every follower of Jesus is called to respond to hate in terms of the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.This means as a Christian I am called to resist the language of hate, to stand alongside those demonised and made scapegoats for our fears, rage and urge for revenge, and to refuse to buy into any construal of events that is driven by cynicism, prejudice, populist rhetoric or hatred, covert or overt. 

Jesus said, "To those who will hear me, Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you."

I'll post the first part of today's sermon tomorrow. 

Having announced I am preparing a sermon for Sunday on the theme of hate, someone whom I have known for decades, and whose judgment and Christian wisdom I hold in high regard, asked me why. Why at this time of all times, preach on a subject which is raw, painful and very much a reality in the emotional and mental experience of all who are still reeling from shocking events in Paris a week ago – and now further atrocity in Mali. So I have tried to answer those questions, and to do so with genuine hesitation and inward humility.

The problem with a brief statement of intent about a sermon subject is it gives little information about where the text is going to end up. The text in question is Luke 6.27, "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you." My concerns are not about the right way to deal with the barbarity and loathesomeness of the terrorist attacks – those who do such things should be faced with all measures that remove them as a threat to others, including lethal force. I have no issue with that at all. The hatred Isis has for the West, and the hate speech of radicalised terrorists who defile the faith they claim, is not something that can or should be dealt with at the individual level for me or any other single person. The consequences of such entrenched hatred in terror atrocities, requires responses relating to national security, international judicial and military measures, and the co-operative efforts of governments to deal both with Isis and with the history that brought Isis into being – not least Western intervention in the Middle East.

But such practical and necessary responses to murderous and indiscriminate slaughter isn't the hate problem I feel compelled to confront as a Christian minister. Though we really need to ask why in our generation so much of the Islamic world hates the West, and should do so remembering that as I write we are still bombing in areas where there are innocent civilians. None of which could ever justify recent events in Paris and elsewhere. I have no interest in questioning the validity and justification of moral outrage, anger and hunger for justice that everyone is feeling in the aftermath of the Paris attacks- I feel the same emotions myself. They are natural, normal and an index of our humanity.

What is a hate problem, however, and something for which we do have to take responsibility, is the pervasive resentment and fear of Muslim people, the increased stereotyping and caricaturing of refugees, the conflation of the words Muslim and refugee into a suspicion that every Muslim seeking asylum and every refugee is a potential terrorist. It is a fact that 750,000 refugees have settled in the US since 9/11, the majority of them Muslim, and there is not one record of one of them being arrested or even questioned on terrorist related matters.

And yet in our own country, on Facebook, in many papers and other news media, a common discourse is the language that provides the umbilical cord of hate, caricatures stoking resentment, drip drip demonising of refugees, stories and rhetoric feeding the fear, and much of this with the disclaimer that the users of such language are merely telling the truth, issuing a wake up call to all of us to see and sense the danger, close the doors, and keep an eye on the new neighbours. Luke 6.27 is Jesus' veto; Christians cannot do that and be faithful to the teaching of Jesus and life the Christ life characterised by mercy, compassion and love.

The causes of hate are complex.

It's a ridiculously obvious truism that mutual hatred lies at the heart of some of the greatest wars and atrocities in our own lifetime.

But Jesus words compel serious answers to some of the hard edged questions provoked by those attacks in Paris.

• Does the Gospel have nothing to say that brings comfort to victims of hate fuelled violence, and especially at a time like this?
• What does a truly Christian witness sound like to a wounded world, coming as it does from those who have come to know a crucified and risen Lord, whose death was a confronting and defeating of sin, an enduring and overcoming of death and therefore a descent into despair only to rise in glory?
• How are we to conduct ourselves as Christians in a society increasingly fearful of the stranger, suspicious of 'any other" who happens to be different from us?
• How do we respond to hate language of prejudice and abuse in the workplace? Do we join it, dissent from it, ignore it, or don;t we think it matters?

These are key questions of Christian faithfulness and costly discipleship – and they are demands that certainly I feel deeply just now as a Christian who believes and stakes my life on a Gospel of love, reconciliation and atonement.

That's as best I can explain where my mind and heart is with all this. I take the privilege and burden of preaching with great seriousness. A decision to tackle these disturbing questions at this moment in our lives is not easily taken, nor is it taken in ignorance of the sensitivities. But. You know the saying, What would Jesus do? I think just as searching is, in the face of all this suffering and brutality, "What would Jesus say?" I would never be presumptuous enough to say I  know what that is – but I feel profoundly the importance of looking to what Jesus has already said, what he actually said, and trying to apply that to where we are now.

I've preached a lot of sermons on or around the theme of love, love of God and love of neighbour. Love of God as God's initiative, God loves the creation, the world, the church and even me! Love of God as my love for creation, the world and the God who created and redeemed all that is, including me. But I've never preached on hate.

My friend Stuart Blythe raised this homiletical oddity on Facebook the other day. His comment raised for me several considerations. Given that love is such a central theme in Christian theology, ethics and spirituality, you would think that hate might also be worth substantial reflection, careful theological consideration, a long pondering about the origin, nature and anatomy of hate. But no. I've now looked in the index of a shelfload of books on Christian ethics and they are stuffed with references to love and in not one of the indices does the word hate or hatred feature as a topic worth indexing.

Then I thought about the kind of world we now live in where hate is a frequent component in compound nouns; hate language, hate crimes, hate mail. Indeed the prevalence of social media has both increased the incidence of hate exchanges and required laws to identify such postings and legal criteria to prosecute them. The past year or two has seen hate taken to new levels of public exposure. The psychopathic hatred of Isis, advertised through the propaganda of broadcast executions of the most brutal kind; the savagery and lack of mercy in the treatment of those who deviate in the slightest from the ideology, practices and goals of Isis; the shocking narrative still unfolding of the terrorist massacres in Paris, and the degree of hatred you have to presuppose in human beings behaving so inhumanely that vocabulary becomes exhausted of superlatives as people try to describe it.

But one of the most dangerous features of hate is its capacity to reproduce itself, often in the victims of hate inspired violence, who in turn hate the perpetrators and wish violence on them. Then there is the contagion that spreads through communities so that hatred mixes with fear, is reinforced by remembered suffering and violence, seeks a target and focus for the resentment and rage detonated by the violent hatred of the other, at which point a viscious circle is spinning wildly.

Once hate exists in the mind, the heart and the memory, it manufactures images and stereotypes, constructs caricatures and rehearses inwardly the hostility and violence urged and driven by those incidents, histories and experiences of those on the receiving end of hate. When Paul spoke of dividing walls of hostility he was speaking of ancient enmities, indomitable misunderstandings, bridges long broken and the masonry used to build walls of exclusion and willed mistrust. 

We have seen all of this and more in recent years, weeks, and these past few days since Friday 13 in Paris. And it's time Christian theology took on the narratives of hate and violence, the social disease of hate speech, the casual ignorance of those who demonise the other and turn them into scapegoats. Goodness, the week Rene Girard died we saw across the social media overwhelming evidence that his thesis on mimetic violence has the diagnostic elegance of a laser removing a cataract and restoring clear vision of what is happening in the real world.

So on Sunday I'll preach on hate. I'm a minister of the Gospel, the good news of God's love in Jesus Christ, but I'll preach on hate. What kind of love does it take to redeem hate? Are there forms and degrees of hatred that place the hearts and minds that contain them beyond redemption? If someone is possessed by hatred is reconciliation impossible, peace-making unattainable, forgiveness a waste of time and moral energy? What about hate and the cross of Christ? Surely some light can shine from that darkest of places into the darkest places of the human heart, after all God is light? And how do we respond to the person whose hatred has matured into murderous intent and seeks the harm or extinction of those "others" who are the cause of the hatred in the first place?

I finish this first post on hate with these words, which offer no easy answers and raise the kind of questions our world doesn't want to hear, and if we are honest, most of us Christians would rather not hear either.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

In 1971 I bought a budget LP, Big War Movie Themes. I was into big band music and I liked Geoff Love, especially under his other name of Manuel and the Music of the Moutains. It was on the War Movie Themes LP I discovered the soundtrack for "Is Paris Burning?", and around that time I also saw the film. The music remains a wistful, melodic defiance of the brutality that tries to crush the human spirit. Today I listened to the soundtrack again, on Youtube, accompanied by black and white film of the German occupation of Paris.Two years of French Studies at Glasgow University opened up French literature, politics, history and art provided deeper insight into the pivotal role of French culture in the formation of a European mind.

The cultural and historic importance of Paris as symbolic of European intellectual and political achievement, and of the European ideal itself is beyond serious dispute. The choice of Paris for a visitation of malignant violence and merciless malice was made by those who understand with chilling menace the political leverage, cultural foundations and the anatomy and mechanics of terror. The deluge of social media messages, images, exchanges and condolences confirms both the reality and impact of the atrocity itself. They also confirm the recognition that something deep in the roots of what makes us human revolts at the perverse rationality that argues that murder is good, that celebrates slaughter, and while killing all remorse in themselves, believe they are chosen and blessed agents of a radicalised God whose will they do.

Against such fatalistic ideology we now have architecture lit up with the tricolour, the Eiffel Tower as symbol of defiance and hope, flowers, candles, written messages, vigils and many other simple ways of saying no to violence, defying the terror, facing the fear, clinging to hope, holding on to community.

While thinking these thoughts I remembered reading some words of the Canadian astrophysicist Rebecca Elson, a remarkable human being, brilliant mind, sensitive writer and courageous woman who died of cancer aged 39. Her expertise was in the nature of dark matter, globular clusters, the birth of stars and other such mysteries and wonders of this vast at times pitiless universe. During one of her times of remission from her illness she visited Paris, and became unwell again. And she wrote this passage in her journal, while leaving Paris by train.

I end this piece here by quoting words of hope, realism and the genuine humility of someone who tried to live her life with wonder, facing her fears, and cherishing the utter miracle that is an individual life set abroad against the vast mysterious ocean of incalculable possibility. She writes lovingly of this great city, itself a metaphor for the many causes of gratitude in her life; and she writes lovingly of herself:

So much to look forward to, so many possibilities, places, people. The thing is to accept my life is an adventure, and any adventure has difficulties. But really its more fear than physical, With the right strategy, the right environment, why can't I keep my body in balance with itself.  No reason. Be gentle, be attentive, be understanding. Make life easy for yourself.

There is a kind of joy of movement, a moment almost like flying inside yourself, soaring with the sun, and the music, and the train moving out of Paris, leaving behind something so good, so solid to return to. I feel deeply capable of leaving you deeply free. A very beautiful moment on the train leaving Paris, of that energy which propels you through life. Places with fresh air, and sunshine, and the sea, and spring on its way.

She hangs on to the essential insight, that human life is miracle indeed, and miracle enough to nourish and nurture hope. And that insight was quickened in her again by her visit to Paris.   

While away on a short break earlier this week we went to Beauly, a small Highland town west of the Moray Firth. It was cold, windy and enough rain to make you cold within minutes of leaving the car. We were there to see the ruins of Beauly Priory, founded in 1230 by a strict offshoot of the Benedictine Order. It was one of three communities, the others in Oban and Pluscarden (which is still an active Benedictine community). 

It takes a feat of imagination to feel something of what it was like to be an order committed to prayer, contemplation and Scripture in a building like this, in the 13th Century, situated in a beautiful site but subject to a full Scottish winter and the vagaries of every other season in Scotland. Imagine – no central heating; no double glazing; no electric kettle for a quick cuppa; no Berghaus wind and water proof jackets; no microwave for fast food. Indeed fast meant something else to monks when it came to food. A daily routine of early (3am) rising, sung prayers, eucharist, the hours of prayer throughout the day, and the same faces day in and day out.

I mention all this as a reflection on how hard it must have been just to get through each day, and the discipline required to keep going, to not give up, to persevere in seeking God and living with each of the brothers as if they were Christ himself, which they believed in a deep and ineradicable sense they each were to each other. All that, for a life of prayer.

Which brings me to my own easily dislodged good intentions about prayer; my awareness of minor inconveniences that nudge prayer down the to do list; the clutter and clatter of things that get in the way of quietness and commitment to paying attention to God; the contemporary obsession with connectivity which while creating the illusion of social engagement and embeddedness is a form of digital distancing and often a source of anxiety and loneliness and unhappiness that our lives aren't as interesting as 'our friends'. Add to this the focal points of contemporary spirituality, at least on the broadly evangelical circles of my own Christian walk; of worship as experience intended to revify through praise and pervasively subjective music, of mission as yet another driver of activism and programmes and goals, of Scripture as a how to book instead of a here's who you are and here's who God is kind of book, and all this against a background of competing voices in the marketplace pitching for our time, money, energy and engagement. 

Prayer has never been easy, and never been more essential to spirituality and sanity. Monasteries are not the answer today, but by remembering why they came into being we are reminded of the questions we are required to ask, and answer. And the questions, the real questions are not posed by the market, the culture, our context or our life situation. These are constants, but constants that change and change us.

No. The real questions are posed by God. "I have placed before you today death and life, therefore choose life…" "Be still and know that I am God". "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly." "Take up your cross and follow me…" "He died that those who live should live no longer for themselves but for him who died and was raised…" These are all statements which force us to face the most significant questions in our entire lives. 

So somewhere in our own times there is a need for a radical re-orientation on the scale of the monastic communities. Not a new monasticism, but a renewed sense of urgency about God, a recovered sense of our humanity as invested in the redeeming love of God in Christ. And with that, a relativising of all those important, pervasive drivers that dictate how we live our lives, and a re-setting of our attention to focus more clearly on what matters, and on what matters most. Prayer, and time made and kept for prayer, may be one of the most radical forms of mission, worship and service a Christian can offer in our digitalised, globalised, economised, pluralised and atomised world.

All of this from walking in the cold, in cloisters no longder visible, but in the place where once, in the words of T S Eliot, "prayer was valid."

I've always wondered how Elijah went for forty days on the strength of some oatcakes baked by an angel. Food is one of the necessities of life, but also one of the recurring pleasures, and undoubtedly the right food at the right time is profound soul therapy.

So when I need a few hours on my own, or want to think, walk, pay attention to what's going on around me and inside me, a favourite place is the beach. And sometimes, not always, – occasionally not often, – I'll stop at my favourite cafe for an Elijah half hour. Being a good follower of Jahweh, Elijah didn't have the bacon roll, and wouldn't have milk with meat either. Still once the coffee and bacon roll arrive, there is the feeling that, once this is finished, I can walk in the strength of it for 40 minutes at least.

More seriously, walking by the sea is one of the places where the rhythms and steadiness of waves and tide, the wind whether breeze or gale, the sand soft or packed by the motion of the sea, combine in one of nature's most soothing orchestrations. The old scots word fankle, refers to what happens to wool once a cat gets a hold of it, or what happens to a silver chain taken off carelessly leaving it a recalcitrant clutter of knots. It's a good word, and sometimes it describes a particular state of mind. Walking with the wind in my face, the waves curling over and running for the shore, and with the sand smooth underfoot, is for me a way of unfankling my mind, disentangling trivial and crucial, restoring a sense of proportion to those worries that can undermine and overwhelm. Those rhythms of waves and walking work away at the soil of the soul until it's cultivated enough for new seeds of thought.

I'm not one for praying as I walk; unless walking is a kind of praying, which I suppose it is. After all following Jesus isn't mere metaphor, it has a referent in the real world of feet on the ground, even footprints in the sand! But the hymns I cherish and know by heart; the bible passages I've dwelt on so long they are part of my intellectrual breathing apparatus; memories and thoughts of people who are in my life, or have been and their memories remain as another kind of presence. Each of these makes for a well stored mind and an equally well stored heart. A long walk along the sea edge, preceded by a coffee and bacon roll. There is a spirituality of the favourite places, sounds and food!