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Same prayer today as yesterday. And you know, this prayer wouldn't be a bad basis for a political agenda off the back of the most remarkable democratic process in modern times in these lands. 

So today this prayer becomes a checklist of what Micah meant, "What does the Lord require of us but to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly…", with God and with each other.

Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
hold fast that which is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak;
help the afflicted;
honour everyone;
love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
and the blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
be amongst us and remain with us always.

Amen.

One of the hardest things to do is to put the toothpaste back into the tube.  One of the even harder things to do is to speak wounding words and try to persuade those we have hurt that it was just politics, it wasn't personal, it was the heat of argument and we now move on. The First Minister says he will expect to conduct negotiations in the event of a Yes vote in a spirit of 'comradely friendship'. What in the name of the wee man does that sound like to all those other people (near 60 million of them) who have been lumped together in the Westminster and England bashing of the past months?

I get it that the Better Together campaign represents the stutus quo, and that the status quo needs radical and long reaching change. I also get it that there is an historic patronising and complacent attitude of taking Scotland for granted. And I am old enough to remember Winnie Ewing winning Hamilton, and Margo MacDonald winning in Govan, and have long understood the vision and excitement of those who long for an independent Scotland. I also realise that in the give and take of politics, that for the players in these brutal political tennis rallies in which facts are hammered across a dividing net with cut, volley and smash, it's the winning that counts, not the feelings of the opponent, or the way you win even if you win ugly. But there the analogy stops and the rally loses its cogency as metaphor.

This isn't a tennis match. This is a huge argument about our future, and the future of these islands – not just Scotland. National pride and longing, passion for change and long term discontent with the way things are, concern for our own and our childfen's futures, and the darker impulses of self-interest, getting even and nurtured resentment all coalesce and challenge the integrity and viability of mutual and reciprocal relationships centuries old. What we say in order to persuade our side to vote our way, especially when it is dismissive, abusive and at times offensive to those others with whom we share these islands will have a long half-life. It isn't possible to portray a people as the cause of all our griefs, to impugn motive and exaggerate differences, to vilify and try to silence voices on the other side which don't want us to go, and then assume we will sit down in comradely friendship – without even an apology, which if it comes will come too late – the toothpaste is out of the tube.

As a Christian I am embarrassed at much of the discourse of those who represent the Scottish people at Government level rubbishing all that has been achieved together; as I am embarrassed at much of the discourse of those who represent Scottish people at Westminster who at times have behaved and spoken disgracefully towards the rightful aspirations of a people to be self- determining through agreed democratic process. Lying, bullying, intimidation, demonising, orchestrating of institutions – the darker tones of political manipulation are well enough documented.

Whether the answer is Yes or No to Independence, we will live next door to neighbours who since the Union have shared some of our darkest and lightest experiences as a nation. In order to win Independence, there is no need to abuse our neighbours and cast up all our resentments and grievances just to win support by creating a climate of complaint and reserntment. These are not emotions that go away easily – and they will simmer on both sides of the border long after Friday's announcement.

So as a Christian, I am already committed to a ministry of reconciliation, a call to peacemaking, to live as a forgiven forgiver, to see and affirm and respect in each person I meet that of Christ, to see dividing walls of hostility as barriers to be subverted, and to hope and work for that Kingdom of daily bread for each child of God, to offer and work for forgiveness and reconciliation, and to stand with courage against those forces and influences that thwart justice, oppress the vulnerable and drain the eneergy and joy our of people's lives.  

It's impossible to be living in Scotland and not have an opinion on the question of Independence. Anyway, even if you don't have one, you'll soon be told the one to have! Most people have come to their view from a mixture of personal history, social location, political commitments, moral judgement, and issues of self-interest. That view is also influenced, adjusted, hardened by other people either shoring up that view by agreeing with it, dismantling that view by attacking it, or questioning it by debate and discussion. The last of these is the most creative and democratically coherent approach, – open, healthy, respectful, informed, passionate but fair exchange of views, opinions and prejudices – and this is what both sides say they wish the other side would respect.

I have never known my country more divided, not only in opinion, but in spirit. For all the disclaimers to the contrary, that this is only healthy and forward looking debate, there are powerful passions and high expectation visions and desperate hopes out there, on both sides. But only one side will win this Referendum – and in winning, whichever side wins, we are in serious danger of all being losers.

Those who wish to remain a United Kingdom will feel desperately let down and thwarted, because their sense of nationhood and self definition has been changed against their will; those who wish to be independent and no longer part of the United Kingdom will likewise feel desperately let down and thwarted, because their sense of nationhood and self-definition has been changed against their will. There are few passions more dangerous and volatile than thwarted nationalism understood as a people's sense of nationhood. Both Better Together and Yes Campaigners are arguing for the future of the nation to which we belong. The argument is about identity, belonging, history, cultural integrity, a nation's sense of self, as much as it is about economics, social justice and defence which are currently the levers used to push towards independence or pull back from it.

My main concern, and I mean concern, in this post, is the reality that the debate, however refreshing, exciting, unprecedented and historically significant, will nevertheless leave a legacy of deep discontent for almost half of Scotland's population. Whethere and where such disaffection, anger, anxiety, resistance and sense of powerlessness in face of a fait accompli can be safely channelled and creatively redeemed into generous hopefulness and constructive commitment to the common good, is quite another question. And it is the one to which the leaders on both sides should be paying more attention. The use of the word 'Celebration' by the First Minister, should it be a yes vote is understandable, some would say obvious and natural, but it is politically immature and unnecessarily provocative, and threatens to expose the partisan over-againstness that has characterised the Yes campaign.

And on Friday morning, if the supporters of whichever side wins forgets the other side which has lost, then it's hard to see in what sense we are either better together or better apart, because the loser will be Scotland. Dancing in the streets when the other half of the population feel they have lost something that defines who they are is not the way to bring about consensus around a shared and better future. There are powerful subterranean forces in a nation's consciousness of itself and it is dangerous and naive for any group that represents only half a nation to ignore these, or assume the winner's rostrum with a champagne bottle surrounded by the like-minded as if they are the only ones whose passions, aspirations and decisions matter.

One of the tests of a mature democracy, is learning to use power wisely – and whoever assumes such power on Friday would be wise to speak in the chastened tones of those who know the family have come through serious differences, and what is needed before Friday is a recognition that Scotland is bigger than the winners.

Early this morning I read much of that slim masterpiece, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. You know those times you wake up and know you won't sleep again? There doesn't have to be an explanation, at least not one that tries to make out that the occasional refusal of the body to sleep is explicable or a problem. A large mug of tea, a couple of hours of quiet, and a favourite book, with margin marks as footprints of previous readings of this book whose first reading in 1977 set me on a theological trajectory the impulse of which still propels my theological research and spiritual quest.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Cross. So I sat reading Vanstone, and now and then gazing across the study at the sculptured wall panel, a study of the XII station of the cross, a gift from my friend with whom I've talked often about art, tragedy, beauty and God. Without planning or intention, those early hours in silence and peace became prayer as words and image coalesced, and the cruciform shape of love formed and reformed around words like redemptive, creative, reconciliation, peace and life through death as death dies.

This book has instructed my mind and heart throughout my years of ministry and learning. When Jesus said, "Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest", he went on to extend that invitation beyond the promised renewal of rest to a call to lifelong learning. "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart…" 

It's hard to find a better definition of a Christian – one who takes on the yoke of Christ and learns of Him,for the rest of their lives. The yoke, which harnesses the strength and energy of the ox to purpose; the student, who learns by being with the Teacher; combine them and you have the meaning of folloqwing faithfully after Jesus. This book, even in its title, is profoundly and enduringly Christ focused and crucicentric – it is about God's love, precarious, vulnerable, sacrificial, expensive, risky and with no guaranteed outcome. God's love becomes effective by not being cost effective, love wins without coercion and therefore risks losing. Vanstone's hymn says all this, a masterpiece of evocative theology which looks on the suffering love of God, in all its tragic triumph, and because of the clear vision of what the cross means to God and to Creation, looks without flinching. The cross reveals love;s endeavour and love's expense, and the response is theology lifted to doxology.     

Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows' flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;

Soaring music, tow'ring words,
Art's perfection, scholar's truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory's treasure, grace of youth;

Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love's agony,
Love's endeavour, love's expense.

Love that gives gives ever more,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.

Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.

Thou are God; no monarch Thou
Thron'd in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

A walk up the hills around Banchory yesterday and on the path the contrast between potential and fulfilment.

The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.

How come we are so taken in by the absurdities of our age?  Are we too gullible to notice when we are being had by the adverts? Are we so self obsessed we are deaf to the voices from elsewhere saying we are not the whirring centre of the universe? How has the human gift of longing, journeying and exploring, in short the essential forward pull of the quest, become a seeking after that which is illusion and delusion, leaving us searching frantically for some kind of grail if only we knew what, and where, and when, and with no sense that what we seek is something that transcends our oh so limited horizons.

Ecclesiastes observed, with some irony after looking at the vanities and futilities of human pretentiousness, "You have put eternity in human hearts". Yes, God, you have. But that sense of eternity has been so eroded by mass produced experiential trivia, so corroded by the appetite to possess everything and experience whatever and dominate whoever, that what is left is a distorted vision, and instead of an upward longing for God, there is a downward longing for a dream reality. So we are gobsmacked by banality disguised as significance, tempted into ethical illiteracy trying to persuade us that cash value is confused with worthiness, and mistakenly believing street credibility is more important, more personally defining, than authentic human experience – joy and suffering, achioevement and failure, acceptance and rejection and self-awareness and self-questioning. By the way the important word in these pairings is the conjunction 'and', because we reach our richest potential as human beings, when we recognise and acknowledge and learn from the whole spectrum of experience, the positive and negastive. Ours is an age of denial, which avoids, minimises, talks down, intentionally overlooks and understates, those experiences and realities which interfere with the dream reality we have created.

All of this non-sense, absurdity, Foley cleverly and I think persuasively exposes. Such attitudes are the sources of our capacity to live absurdly. The second major section of the book explores a number of cultural strategies that help pull the wool over our eyes; or perhaps more accurately cultural obfuscators which grow like cataracts over those ways of seeing which we might want to call, a conscience ethically informed, knowledge distilled to wisdom, critical discernment, and honest, brave, open-eyed knowledghe of ourselves. The first of these rang so many alarm bells it deserves a post on its own – the next post. For now here is how the chapter starts, and you;ll see why as a recently retired academic teacher, it made me smile, wince and sigh all at once.

"A student fails to submit a project on time and then misses an appointment with his supervisor to discuss the problem. The university sends the student a letter informing him that he has been given a mark of zero for the project. Now the student not only comes to the supervisor but barges into his office without an appointment.

This project must be accepted late, he demands

Why is that?

Because I'm suffering from TCD

Which is?

Time Constraint Disorder – a chemical imbalance in the brain that means i can't meet deadlines or turn up on time for appointments.

Foley goes on, "I invented TCD as a joke….and the  discovered that a Professor Joseph Ferrani of DePaul University genuinely wants procrastination recognised as a clinical disorder and included in the standard reference work for mewntal health professionals, the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)."

The chapter is called 'The Undermining of Responsibility" in which Foley examines the refusal of responsibility, the sense of entitlement and deserving, and the various slippages of social and personal accountability that lead to non-responsibility for the way we act, speak and live our lives.

Mike Foley is good with words, and questions. "Who in the Western world has not been deranged by a toxic cocktail of dissatisfaction, restlessness, desire and resentment? Who has not yearned to be younger, richer, more talented, more respected, more celebrated…who has not felt entitled to more, and aggrieved when more was not forthcoming…."

He's even better when he tackles the slippery tonic word happiness. Academic study defines it as Subjective Well-Being (SWB, not joking); recent popular books call it Wellness.  Foley points out the major growth in the literary genre of tragic lives and misery memoirs and notes that childhood happiness memoirs don't sell. Then he suggests a new academic discipline – Happiness Studies, which could be given intellectual heft by calling it Eudaimonics, from the Greek!

But what Foley is arguing for is not subjective well being, nor mere vague wellness. "The greatest gift of happiness may not be the feeling itself as much as the accompanying thrill of possibility. Suddenly the world is re-enchanted and the self born anew. Everything ids richer, stranger and more interesting. The eyes see more clearly, the mind thinks more keenly, the heart feels mpore strongly – and all three unite in enthusiasm, delight and zest." These three last words will recur throughout the book. They are not so much feelings as dispositions; not reactions to the world but responses to the world as it is. But in a culture of perpetual wanting, pervasive advertising, inordinate consuming, and obsession with novelty, status and image, these three human dispositions are degraded by exposure to their counterfeits.

One of the interesting areas for reflection while reading this book is the way Foley pinpoints the cultural forces which shape our spirituality by frustrating and eliminating the conditions through which we can become aware of our inner selves and the call of transcendence. "What we need is detachment, concentration, autonomy and privacy, but what the world insists upon is immersion, distraction, collaboration and company". The three disciplines of solitude, stillness and silence are near impossible to achieve. Why? Because of the new religion he calls Commotionism – which demands faithful obedience to the imperatives of constant company, movement and noise. The result is an inner exhaustion, often undiagnosed, and for which the remedies of stillness, solitude and rest are noisily drowned out by the perpetual motion of a culture in flux.

We are drowning in noise, and fear silence; speed, movement, multi-tasking, and the worship of instant, make us impatient with our own body, spirit and mind which aches for breath, space and time to be. If once the world was too much with us, now the world is too much within us, around us; and its ruinous interruptions destroy our peace, like a mobile ring-tune, its tinny, strident command for attention demolishes just that moment as the concerto pianist's fingers hover over the keys, waiting in the silence to play the resolving notes that gather together the fugitive emotions of an audience entranced by music which will take them beyond themselves and this world. Few things bring us down to earth more brutally than someone else's mobile going off at such moments of peak significance. But such crashing disappointments are the stuff of lives lived to the ring-tune rather than the soloist and orchestra.

(The two photos are of Bennachie in a late August sunset, and Inverbervie beach – two places where silence, stillness and solitude can be enjoyed with enthusiasm, delight and zest!)

Michael Foley's book The Age of Absurdity is a sharp, ironic but very perceptive analysis of what is wrong with our distracted and overstimulated culture, obsessed with novelty and transience. What Harry Emerson Fosdick called 'rich in things and poor in soul'. Never have so many wanted so much so badly – I love the front cover of this book – it could be a study on ecology, sociology, anthropology, technology, theology – in fact it's a study of absurdity.

Foley eyes the whims and obsessions of a consumer culture with what can only be called expert irony. Many of his comments are simply unanswerably self evident except they weren't so evident till he pointed them out. Even some of his chapter headings are fun, in an ironic way. The Ad and the Id; The Old Self and the New Science; The Righteousness of Entitlement and the Glamour of Potential. Early on he lists with an envious glance at Buddhist wisdom, so absent in Western consumerism, the Four Ignoble Truths

1. We can't sit still
2. We can't shut up
3. We can't escape self obsession
4. We can't stop wanting things

Four telling sermons could be preached on each of these as symptoms of a culture which far from being godless is god-ridden. If everyone is free to choose their own Gods, and want their own version of salvation, and to construct and be whoever they want to be at any particular time in their lives, and ignore any inner sense of obligation to that which is higher, more durable, more significant than the self, if 'whatever' is the mantra that underpins the weight of life's longings and those deep potential's of each human spirit, then we are in trouble. And Foley traces that trouble to its sources, and exposes the strategies that persuade us to buy into (important wee metaphor that) – to buy into someone else's vision of who I am, what my life is about, to let someone else subliminally shape my choices, influence my preferences and turn me into a money-spender and things getter.

I'll do a couple of other posts on this book – he has important things to say to the Church (which isn't even on his horizon) if we are prepared to overhear someone whose analysis of the culture within which we are placed to follow Jesus and share the Gospel is way ahead of some of our own efforts within the Christian Church.

I've been browsing, reading and at times reading carefully Dick France's commentary on Matthew – the big one. His smaller Tyndale commentary is a good reliable guide to Matthew, but this volume, along with his commentary on the greek text of Mark represents the culmination of a lifetime study of the Gospels.

This series of commentaries has very few duff volumes, and several of them are just about all I personally need and want in a commentary. This volume is well over 1100 pages, it needs a desk for reading it and it has one of the inevitable drawbacks of thick books – it doesn't lie open on the desk until you're 100 pages in! Those who use big books will know the experience.

The cover for this series is a work of art – literally, Botticceli's Annunciation, but also the deep and warm colour and sharp detail. Someone thought carefully about this cover but I haven't come across a publisher's explanation. As an image of hermeneutic encounter it's brilliant – the Virgin reading, distracted, drawing back but in the pose of reaching out, the hands ambiguous reaching out or fending off, Gabriel's eyes open and her eyes closed in prayer, or fear, and in the space between the two hands with fingers of blessing and open vulnerability, the place of choice, decision, response. 

The cover picture honours Mary, the bearer of the Word, the mother of our Lord. On her own word, yes or no, depends more than she can ever know or imagine. The Gospel, literally, depends upon her Yes. The cover captures that moment when the destiny of creation, the plans of redeeming love, the kenosis of the Son, turns on the obedience of Mary. It is a moment of astonishing hermeneutic significance. Because Mary doesn't have to understand the mystery; she is called to assent to the Divine Annunciation, to trust the Lord and magnify the Lord with her soul; she has no guarantees other than her faith in the grace of God who has looked favourably on this young woman; her Yes changes her life forever, and changes the world too.

No wonder the Magnificat kick starts such powerful generators of political change and future hope. Here's her hymn in old English

My soul doth magnify the Lord : and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded : the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth : all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me : and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him : throughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm : he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel : as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.

Reading a hefty volume of the Oxford History of the Christian Church, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. The Christian Church 1900-2000.

One of the embarrassments and perplexities of being an ecumenically minded Baptist is the anomaly of a fragmented church mandated with a message of reconciliation to the world!

So I was amused and heartened by Colin Morris, quoted in this book in a discussion of 1964 ecumenical delegates who dared suggest a union of churches by 1980!

Morris thought the churches were demonstrating how implausible was their offer of a gospel of reconciliation.

"Their pitch rang as hollow as that of a bald man selling hair restorer".

Nae political correctness in his pulpit in 1964 then. His ater career was in the higher levels of BBC management, especially religious broadcasting. Wonder how he'd survive there today.

Oh, and this has just arrived so some decent music later.