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I just read the notice of the recent death of Edward T Oakes. I was sad to read this, just because I only encountered him in his books, but I liked him! The picture we construct of an author we don't know except through their writing is entirely subjective, impressionistic but not without evidence, reliant on our literary tastes, temperament and the way our own minds work – but nevertheless intriguing. Oakes wrote with discernible passion in his theology, generous in his fairness to other views, and as obvious from the above poster, was himself a fine writer.

His book, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy is beautifully written, and is one of the best systematic Christologies around. The title is from Hopkins' poem "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe". I've read other books by Oakes, including The Cambridge Companion to Hans urs Von Balthasar, which he edited, and his highly prized study of Von Balthasar's theology, Pattern of Redemption.

It's one of the great mysteries of the faith, what our greatest theological thinkers make of the realities of which they wrote, when finally faced with the beatific vision, and still only having words as descriptors. As Barth's jaw drops, so will his pipe; Jonathan Edwards will have to learn to swim in 'the great ocean of love' of which he rhapsodised; Julian of Norwich will think this time she really has died and gone to heaven, and shout without decorum of her sourteous God, "My God, I was right! And all shall be well, and all manner of thing is well! O You Beauty!".

Pax Christi Father Oakes.

Science is not what they say, so serious

The truth being what you imagine

Not what you see

And not something useful

Or something that pays

Rebecca Elson was an astonishingly gifted scientist, a researcher of "dark matter" and "globular clusters", an astronomer deeply involved in the Hubble project, researcher at the Harvard Centre for Astrophysics and the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, and one of the most imaginatives scientific minds of her generation. Her book Responsibility to Awe remains for me a precious book, containing her poems, fragments and an autobiographical essay that is both positive and poignant. She died in 1999 at the age of 39.

And it is such a person, of such rare intellectual curiosity and critical generosity, who wrote the lines above – unfinished, unpunctuated and all the more impressive as a statement of science as the servant of human flourishing, not its master, and a vision of knowledge that allows for more than utility and profit, the two wings of technological power. for

Some Captions as Hermeneutic Suggestions.

"How come they didn't find my sword when they strip searched and jailed me?"

"My feet are killing me!"

"Come on think, think! What was that guy's name again, came from Philippi, begins with an E…"

"Wish they'd invent email and data sticks!"

"God, I need a good PA – I hate paperwork."

Happy to hear other caption suggestions for this painting.

……………….

The above is one of my favourite portraits of Paul the Apostle. Not the armour clad Caravaggio's muscle bound warrior, more the frail and hunted ageing apostle much less sure of himself. Is he ever going to leave prison – he doesn't know, so he has one sandal on and the other under his foot to keep it warm, how beautiful the feet that bring good news.

The books on his bed are almost as big as some recent works written about him by Jewett, Campbell and Wright! More seriously, this is the premier theologian of the nascent church thinking his way towards an adequate theology of the One he calls Lord; or maybe he's wondering just what he needs to write to those migraine inducing Corinthians whom he loves and longs to see grow up!

The sword, lying against those massive tomes, is no longer the persecutor's tool of trade, it is the Word of God, cruciform, the sword of the Spirit. He is blissfully unaware that his own face is radiated by the light of Jesus Christ, he is no longer lost, just lost in wonder, love and praise – even if his expression is a mixture of apprehension and contemplative puzzlement

The stylus is in his left hand – was Rembrandt left-handed, the most natural explanation for showing Paul like this. And the stylus is inactive, awaiting the clarity of thought that perhaps only an apostle who doesn't have delete and cut and paste has patience for, and therefore what is written has to be first thought, because papyrus and ink are unforgiving materials in the service of a forgiving Gospel.

What particular thought is he struggling with – Perhaps that moment of illumination when he, like the rest of us was unsure of God's purposes, and as he weighs the possibilities,  "For to me living is Christ, and dying is gain….I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you Philippians."

This portrait is of an apostle both vulnerable and uncertain, not a hint of self-confidence but somewhere deep in the heart's core, a love that inspired recklessness, persistence and some of the greatest thinking about God in Christ the church would ever know.

I like Isaac of Nineveh who said, "Be a herald of God's goodness". Against all preaching and announcing of life's negatives, this 7th Century Syrian Bishop insisted that the vocation of the follower of Jesus is to herald God's goodness.

Not that I've seriously read Isaac of Nineveh, but I've come across him now and then. Most recently in Olivier Clement's The Roots of Christian Mysticism, a catena of patristic texts threaded by Clement's commentary. I keep it handy because it provides food for rumination on any page I open.

In a chapter on the difficult love, that is the demand and cost of loving God and neighbour, Isaac is quoted to show that the Divine Love outshines and indeed overwhelms our own effort, and in doing so doesn't obliterate them but redeems them.

As a grain of sand does not balance a load of gold, so the effect of God's justice does not counterbalance His compassion.  As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of frail flesh as compared with God's providence and mercy. As a fountain that flows abundantly is not dammed by a handful of earth, so the mercy of the Creator is not vanquished by the wickedness of the creatures.

Now speaking of grains of sand – I recently bought this book as a visual tonic. The micro-photographs are amazing, exept our capacity to be amazed suffers from the deflation of that word being over-used.  Likewise the word awesome. But using the words without the downward drag of careless overuse, the photographs do cause what Arthur Quiller Couch calls 'cerebral inconveniences', and their beauty does hint at the transcendent – so yes, amazing, and awesome.

Now when I read about sand in the Bible I have a much richer sense of what a grain of sand looks like – and the individuality and beauty of each and every one of them – that;s another overused cliche, often used in churches, as we pray for 'each and every one of them'. But I can think of few better uses of the phrase than sich an inclusive set of brackets – each and every one. Maybe the one biblical text where grains of sand don't get such a good press is when foolish builders build houses, not on solid higher ground, but on flood plains!

Been thinking a bit about openness within the community of Christ. What kinds of relationship makes it possible for us to speak with each other trustfully and listen attentively? These essential presuppositions of mutual pastoral care and accompaniment are about our willingness to entrust ourselves to others, who also entrust themselves to us, in a relationship of mutual respectful love. Such New Testament imperatives as ‘bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ’, and ‘admonish one another in love’, require an openness of heart and spirit that is hard to manufacture, and grows within us only as we are open to the grace of Christ.

When Paul is having a hard time with the Corinthian community he urges them to open their hearts to him. For Paul Christian fellowship is only possible when generosity of heart issues in emotional and spiritual hospitality as we welcome one another as God in Christ welcomes each of us. Paul is not commending emotional exhibitionism, spiritual self-advertisement, or any other self-concerned form of ‘sharing’. He is rooting our care for each other in the compassionate competence of Christ, the sufficient grace of God, the enabling and transforming counsel of the Counsellor. Such open-hearted conversation enables each of us within the Christian community to speak and listen, and come to a new understanding of what it might mean to be heard, understood, and affirmed within the love of Christ.

A couple of recent encounters with folk have led to conversation about just how hard it is to follow after Christ, just to keep going, and to know that we are travelling in the right direction

De-motivation – what takes the wind out of our sails? Which of our recent experiences drained us of energy, eroded confidence, knocked our self-esteem – which is different from teaching us humility? Recognising and challenging de-motivators in us, and in others, is one of the first principles of a ministry of encouragementis important in sustaining our ministry.

Life Balance – Prioritising is an obvious way of managing conflicting demands. But who decides on the order of priority? Family; personal walk with God; wider ministry; ministry in the church; Sabbath; study versus people. How far would we trust someone to tell us we are unbalanced?

Hopes – ambition is not a bad word, unless it is an engine driving us along a self-chosen road. So what we hope for arises both from our identity and from our self-awareness. Talking of our hopes is an important way of articulating our faith – and of putting anxiety, fear and tedium into perspective. But who would we netrust with our hopes, and with the insight to guide us towards them?

These I think are crucial areas in which genuine spiritual accompaniment takes place within a discerning and wise sharing. When Paul speaks to the Corinthians about opening their hearts in affection towards him he is asking an awful lot; and so do we when we throw around that word, 'sharing'.

One of the benefits of a slim book, apart from economy of shelf space in a crowded study, is the ease with which it can be re-read, especially if first time round it was annotated. You'd think previous pencil footmarks and annotated fingerprints would be a distraction – it is if someone else did them. For me they always make me wonder why I thought that important enough to underline, annotate, not want to forget; and also to ask do I still think that? Colin Gunton's Christ and Creation, 126 pages of lucid reflection on two alpine doctrinal themes, is well worth re-reading, as I've just discovered. 

Freedom is not an absolute, but something exercised in relation to other persons, and that means in the first instance that it is the gift of the Spirit of God over against us, God in personal otherness enabling us to be free. It is in our relatedness that we are free or not, and this is true of all human life. (p55)

The self-emptying of the eternal Son in the incarnation and passion is an expression of the love of the triune God worked out in the structures of fallen time and space. (p88)

The church is thus the community where fallen forms of relationship are invalidated and outgrown; are unlearned through the grace of God and the work of the Spirit. It is important to remember that what is involved is not instant transformation, but a reordering of teleology or directedness. (p110)

Freedom, kenosis and community – now there are three areas crying out for serious consideration as validating criteria for Christian community which exists for the purposes of witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On a sunny July afternoon, sitting under a plum tree, in a cottage garden near Goatland, Yorkshire, I was reading the first volume of an autobiography. A few yards away at the bottom of the garden, the stream chuckled and murmured, the small bird population was out and about, and it was a good day to be on holiday. Across the stream, the old railway line on which the steam train still ran twice a day, and a hundred yards away the railway bridge, its arches blackened by smoke, through which the train appeared still puffing out the smoke that immediately sent me back to a childhood in Ayrshire beside the main New Cumnock – Dumfries line.

That afternoon, in good time, the train could be heard chugging its way along the valley, and as it approached the bridge the whistle sounded. It was a moment of epiphany for me, a coincidence of sound, smell and sight which transformed what I was reading into words that became eerie and frightening, and resonant with a solemn awareness of life's ambiguity and tragedy I have hardly ever felt, before or since.

I was reading Elie Wiesel's newly published autobiography, All Rivers Rune to the Sea. I was reading, at the precise time the Yorkshire steam train approached the bridge, the paragraphs in which he recalls as a teenager, the sound of the train engines chugging, the whistles screaming, the clanking of the wagons, as trains left for Auschwitz. In Yorkshire, on holiday in sunshine,the picturesque reminded of the grotesque 60 years earlier in Poland. And did so with such force the memory remains vivid. That coincidence of my life with what I was reading of another's life, is fixed as one of those moments in life when truth penetrates well below the radar of rational control, and we are bereft of explanation. There is a mystery of human connectedness that just is, and we are not wrong in sensing the need for humility, and the risk that we stand on the brink of what is holy. 

In perhaps the most famous words Wiesel has written, seared in the minds of those who read them first in Night, Wiesel stated with adamantine intent, his life's work:

"Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

Holocaust Remembrance Day is as important as any other day in the Christian Calendar. It is a day to remember human capacity for evil, and for good. But actually, Wiesel does not see these two as the ultimate polarity. His experiences at Auschwitz showed him something much more sinister and corrosive of humanity, something that can ignore cruelty, smother compassion, approve atrocity, silence conscience, even re-set conscience to a default setting of complacency – he called it indifference.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

To play Mozart as the welcoming music at Auschwitz is a grotesque example of such indifference. At the heart of Christian civilisation mechanised murder was made possible, and human worth and value neutralised by ideology, and indifference to human consequences. This should never be forgotten. Wiesel is right, and has the right, in my view the absolute right, to require of the Christian church, a willingness to remember, to repent, and never to forget the consequences of a Christian theology laced with the toxins of anti-semitic rhetoric, co-opted by a state church in thrall to the political power brokers. Such thralldom is as far removed from the New Testament truth of the crucified Jewish Jesus, and the New Testament visions of the Church as the Body of Christ, as can be conceived by minds indifferent (Wiesel's word) to the message of reconciliation in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, and the realiry of the Messiah in whom the two become one.

The last words are from Elie Wiesel.

For us, forgetting was never an option. Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.

“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.”

During the Cold War, when the rhetoric of hate was used to manufacture enmity, and the world stood as never before on the brink of mutual destruction, and the imagination was seduced, exploited and ultimately corrupted into seeing the Other as ultimate threat, malign in fanatic intent to destroy those who were not them – during that chilling time, there were other voices. One of them was Wendell Berry. The following poem is the rhetoric of respect, empathy, understanding and flagrant humanity. Yes flagrant, there to be seen, unmistakable evidence, an example of the imagination redeemed from alienating the other to seeking shared concern, murtual help, unambiguous welcome.

This is an all but unanswerable argument for understanding between cultures, nations, communities and families, and for a conversion of mind from national self interest to the recognition that we live, not in a pluralist world where difference is prioritised, but in a human world where common humanity is what constitutes togetherness, and guarantees that other differences are transcended by the inherent worth, miracle and mystery of human being. I of course would want to push this thought further into the importance of imago dei as one of the fundamental axioms of how Christians view other human beings, and I have a feeling Wendell berry would not be uncomfortable with giving such high currency to the value and beauty of every human life. 

This is a long poem – and needs to be.

TO A SIBERIAN WOODSMAN
(after looking at some pictures in a magazine)

Wendell Berry

1.
You lean at ease in your warm house at night after supper,
listening to your daughter play the accordion. You smile
with the pleasure of a man confident in his hands, resting
after a day of long labor in the forest, the cry of the saw
in your head, and the vision of coming home to rest.
Your daughter’s face is clear in the joy of hearing
her own music. Her fingers live on the keys
like people familiar with the land they were born in.

You sit at the dinner table late into the night with your son,
tying the bright flies that will lead you along the forest streams.
Over you, as your hands work, is the dream of still pools.
Over you is the dream
of your silence while the east brightens, birds waking close by
you in the trees.

2.
I have thought of you stepping out of your doorway at dawn,
your son in your tracks.
You go in under the overarching green branches of the forest
whose ways, strange to me, are well known to you as the sound
of your own voice
or the silence that lies around you now that you have ceased to speak,
and soon the voice of the stream rises ahead of you,
and you take the path beside it.
I have thought of the sun breaking pale through the mists over you
as you come to the pool where you will fish, and of the mist drifting
over the water, and of the cast fly resting light on the face of the pool.

3.
And I am here in Kentucky in the place I have made myself
in the world. I sit on my porch above the river that flows muddy
and slow along the feet of the trees. I hear the voices of the wren
and the yellow-throated warbler whose songs pass near the windows
and over the roof. In my house my daughter learns the womanhood
of her mother. My son is at play, pretending to be
the man he believes I am. I am the outbreathing of this ground.
My words are its words as the wren’s song is its song.

4.
Who has invented our enmity? Who has prescribed us
hatred of each other? Who has armed us against each other
with the death of the world? Who has appointed me such anger
that I should desire the burning of your house or the
destruction of your children?
Who has appointed such anger to you? Who has set loose the thought
that we should oppose each other with the ruin of forests and
rivers, and the silence of the birds?
Who has said to us that the voices of my land shall be strange
to you, and the voices of your land strange to me?

Who has imagined that I would destroy myself in order to destroy you,
or that I could improve myself by destroying you? Who has imagined
that your death could be negligible to me now that I have seen
these pictures of your face?
Who has imagined that I would not speak familiarly with you,
or laugh with you, or visit in your house and go to work with
you in the forest?
And now one of the ideas of my place will be that you would
gladly talk and visit and work with me.

5.
I sit in the shade of the trees of the land I was born in.
As they are native I am native, and I hold to this place as
carefully as they hold to it.
I do not see the national flag flying from the staff of the sycamore,
or any decree of the government written on the leaves of the walnut,
nor has the elm bowed before any monuments or sworn the oath of allegiance.
They have not declared to whom they stand in welcome.

6.
In the thought of you I imagine myself free of the weapons and
the official hates that I have borne on my back like a hump,
and in the thought of myself I imagine you free of weapons and
official hates,
so that if we should meet we would not go by each other
looking at the ground like slaves sullen under their burdens,
but would stand clear in the gaze of each other.

7.
There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with
you in silence besides the forest pool.
There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose
hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys.
There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who
dances and sings and is the brightness of my house.
There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he
comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.

I went along Aberdeen prom yesterday then out to the Torry Battery. It was a mind clearing exercise with a chilled North East breeze, an agitated sea, and a capuccino to go from the Inversnecky cafe! Took these three photos – I love the sea in this boisterous mood, putting on a show of power – and reminding us we should never complain about the price of haddock!

"Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths" 

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. Psalm 107

This is Moltmann enaging in the best kind of theology – critique and comfort for the church seeking to be faithful to the triune God of love.

…………

If the church acquires its existence

through the activity of Christ,

then her characteristics, too,

are characteristics of Christ's activity, first of all.

The acknowledgement of

'the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church'

is acknowledgement of the uniting,

sanctifying, comprehensive and commissioning

Lordship of Christ.

(Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, London: SCM, 1977) 338.