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                    "He bringeth the winds out of his treasuries…." Psalm 135.7

When my heart is low Mozart nearly always lifts it; when my body is tired two things always help, chocolate and exercise; when my mind is complacent and bored looking at some of my favourite paintings rekindles imagination and vision; when my emotions are jaded or tense, either cooking or tapestry help to nourish them or weave them into new patterns of wholeness. And if all of these fail I read theology! Not just any theology, chosen theologians, a medicine cabinet for the soul, a store of prescriptions which have proved effective in the past.On the bottom shelf within easy reach is P T Forsyth.

I was looking for something else and rediscovered this address by Forsyth, given over a hundred years ago. It's titled "The Place of Spiritual Experience in the Making of Theology". The last section touches into some things I feel deeply and approve strongly – the place of serious, continuous theological and biblical study in the equipping of preachers. Update the language, remove terms of gender exclusion, and I can read this and think – Yes, the point is still relevant, a century later.  

AN
EDUCATED MINISTRY
But I must leave many points alone in order to touch on two in particular
as I close. If experience is an insufficient basis for either Gospel
or theology,
if the base must be some-thing more objective, then, in the first
place, we may be more convinced than ever of the absolute necessity for
the Church
of
an educated ministry. If the burden of our preaching be our experience
any fluent and facile religionist may claim his place in the ministry.
But if our
burden be an objective gospel, which descends on our experience
both to kindle and to correct it, then we need that those set apart to be
bearers of the Gospel
should undergo the discipline of mastering their master, and becoming
at home in the nature and history of that which can never be given
by any experience,
but is given to it.

And
in the second place the preachers so educated should withdraw much of their
attention not only from their own experience, but
from the books,
booklets,
and prints that contain but the experience of others; and they
should bestow themselves upon the serious and resolute study of the Bible
in the best and
fullest light as the standing creator of Christian experience.
They should guard against the fantastic treatment of the Bible which so
easily besets
the preacher, and they so should devote themselves to the historical,
and not to
the historical alone, but to its objective spiritual message,
equally valid for every age and experience. The Bible is not our standard
simply but our
source. It is not there to prove doctrine, but to create the
faith
that produces doctrine. The trophies of a true minister of the
Gospel are
not only the precious
souls he has saved, but they should include his interleaved Greek
Testament packed with notes.

It
is not the Bible we preach; but what we have to preach is to be found nowhere
but in the Bible. And it is hid in that
field, which
must be
bought at much
cost and dug with much toil. Do not let us preach our experience,
but a Christ and a Gospel familiar to our experience. We
preach our experience
best when
people infer it.

Christianity
is nothing if it do not end in experience. But it is also nothing if it only
begin there. Experience is
its medium
and
its product,
but it is
neither its base nor its limit. It is its form, but not
its matter. And the experience even of an objective Gospel will
fade and
die if it remain
mere
impression and sensibility. It must wake our judgment and
compel our obedience. And whatever will do that will change the note
of popular
religion as well
as regenerate unpopular theology. Nothing but some such
change can give us the power to sway to God's will the new democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Vocation is where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Frederick Buechner

"For all that has been Thank You. For all that is to come – Yes!" Dag Hammarskjold

Not much I want to add to that as a summing up of what life can be about. Radio 4 Thought for the Day this morning quoted Buechner's bon mot. A telling corrective in a barcode and pin number culture.

I was down leading worship and preaching at Montrose today. One of the joys of those journeys, apart from the people, is the journey. I drive from Westhill to Stonehaven through Maryculter, and past Netherley. Over the past year like everyone else I've become accustomed to the appearance of windfarms and the occasional

 

solitary windmill, towering over farm and fields. Now I see them and resent them less. They are inevitably intrustive, giant geometric structures with their own engineering aesthetic, but clashing with the different geometry of anatomy and topography. I'm aware of the pluses and minuses, the clashing interests of green sustainable energy and the massive carbon footprint created every time one of these colossus sized machines is manufactured and bolted into concrete buried in the ground on top of hills and moors. In a country with so much beautiful scenery and naturally formed landscape, much of it unspoilt, it will walys be possible to object, to complain and to resent the intrustion of machinery that forever alters skylines. Mind you they are also far less intrusive than pylons criss crossing the country.

It's hard not to notice the Windfarms. But on the journey, paying attention, there are other things to notice.

Like the whitethroat sitting on a fence beside and acre of nettles south of Inverbervie.

Like the intensely lemon yellow fields stretching to the shoreline with oilseed rape in full flower, and against an azure sea reflecting a sunlit sky.

And speaking of colour, like the pink meadow flower (name to be confirmed and photo to follow!) clashing magnificently with the blazing yellow fields.

Like the police speed trap cleverly sitting off the road and quite well camouflaged with said yello fields behind them. I use my cruise control in speed limits!

Like the ostriches in their pen at Maryculter, long necks, long legs, evil eyes and pickaxe bills, looking at passing cars and dreaming of the race between souped up speed and the real thing.

Like the spire of St Cyrus Church, seen from miles away, reminding me of many a walk along St Cyruse cliffs and beaches. And slopes emblazoned with another shade of yellow, gorse this time.

And at the end of that journey, time spent with folk who work together at being a community of Jesus, sharing bread and wine, and finding in their worship and prayers, nourishment for roots and fruit.

 

Readers of Living Wittily will have noticed my absence for the past week. One of the words I struggle to give priority to is prioritise!  That means most times I try to do everything in my diary and on my conscience, as well as meeting expectations, my own and other people's. That same perfectionist impracticality fuels a sense of responsibility for fulfilling promises, meeting deadlines, standing by commitments and therefore often living life with more energy than wisdom. Or so it seems now and again.

This week I prioritised. Few things concentrate the mind more than the unlooked for advent of serious illness amongst those we care for most. So that's where energy, time, and all my focus has been. Thankfully we are now in a much better place and life goes on. But that very fact, "life goes on", is itself the reason for gratitude, humility and reflection.

Gratitude because life is a precious and unique blessing of the Living God. Our deepest emotions and experiences come to us through those in whose lives we live and move and have our being.

Humility because life is not ours to control, manage or dispose at will; we are human and have each our gift of years and days.

Reflection because when it comes to happiness, fulfilment, meaning, being a gift to the world and the world being gift to us, with life we realise comes responsibility, opportunity, choice, the miracle of existence and that most human of perspectives, hope.

This blog is about Living Wittily, serving God with mind and heart. Amongst the things this means is working out in the flux and frustration, the costs and consequences, the anxieties and aggravations, the loves and laughters, the gladness and the grief, the prayers and the promises, the give and the take of our daily lives, what it means to live with wise humility before the God who is sovereign in mercy and vulnerable in love.

The photo below was taken by Sheila while on a walk last year – the tranquil beauty and delicate colour of the grass – if God so clothes the grass…..how much more….

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow….. I will fear no evil.

A number of years ago I decided I wanted to read through the Gospels regularly; likewise the Psalms. After some trial and error I created a daily reading chart that would take me through the four Gospels and the Book of Psalms every 3 months – four times a year. One chapter of the Gospel and one or two Psalms gets it done. Yes I try to do it daily; and yes sometimes I miss. But over a year I still get through a lot of Gospel and Psalms with odds on I've read them at least three times! This isn't a guilt trip – it needs discipline but with a small d. And the benefits are not surprising:

The Gospels are read as narrative, not piecemeal. Granted a chapter can be a big chunk (John 6 isn't rec reational browsing) but over time there is a sense of coherence and unfolding story.

The four Gospels take on their own characteristics and you become aware of Jesus as a multi-dimensional figure rather than a vague confluence of Gospel fragments arranging themselves in our minds as if the Gospel writers didn't mind us playing Scrabble with the text. Matthew's Jesus is didactic, a re-presentation of Moses and Exodus and new covenant on the Mount; Mark's Jesus is God in a hurry; Luke more than the others reaches to the margins in a story of inclusion, scandal and healing with Jesus as the protagonist of the Kingdom of God and the prophetic critique of power; John is all about glory, but a strange and beautiful glory of kenosis, the Word made flesh and dwelling amongst us, the presence in our history of I AM, and the defining confrontation of light and the darkness which can neither comprehend it or overcome it. 

The voice of Jesus becomes familiar, and the different accents noticeable from Gospel to Gospel. There is the voice that speaks the words; and their is the message of how Jesus acts, what he does, how he behavesm who he is. By the way I want to do another post on What Would Jesus Do? I'm not at all sure we can be as confirdent of answering that question as is sometimes claimed.

Then there's the Psalms. A book of prayers that disturbs as much as comforts; in which complaint and praise can pour from the same heart; in which silence can be companionable or threatening, contemplative or crushed; and in which the conversation with God moves from intimacy and joy to alienation and fear.

Regular reading of the Psalms has been a spiritual habit of the church from the beginning. And no wonder. The whole range of emotion and human experience, the peaks and troughs of the faith journey, the endless perspectives of the soul arguing with, wrestling with, resting in, trusting in, fearful of, mindful of, angry at, wondering at, God.

My new RSV New Testament and Psalms was bought to continue a daily exposure of heart and mind, conscience and will, to those four Gospels and the Prayer Book of Israel. Below is a file showing the first half of 2013. Soon I'll produce the one for July to December.

Download Gospels and Psalms Daily

Below is a prayer of Intercession written recently for a worship service I was invited to lead. It's probably a bit long and tries to do too much, but then again  if a prayer is written around the theme and reality of the Triune Love of God then it is likely to suffer from an embarrassment of riches and an overload of possibility! Yet to take the eternal inexhaustible communion of self-giving love of Father, Son and Spirit, as the pattern and paradigm of prayer, is to be called to prayer that is outwardly generous and forwardly hopeful and patiently creative. Anyway – this is one attempt to combine prayer for ourselves and for the world in a way that acknowledges the reproductive power of the Triune God in whose Love we live and move and have our being.

The photo is from the cliffs at St Cyrus. The gorgeous golden gorse, the old fishing cottage and smoke houses, and miles of sand and waves – what's not to love about a world like that, eh?

 Eternal
God and Father, whose
infinite yet intimate love,

shared
from all eternity between Father and Son,

is
the love you have now poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

 

Drawn into that life of loving communion,

we
pray for those in our lives, touched and transformed by love,

faithful,
unselfish, generous, joyful, love.

Lifelong
friends and good neighbours,

wives
and husbands, parents and children,

sisters
and brothers, best friends and new friends:

love overcoming
differences in language, race, gender, religion,

so that in the rich life of love between Father, Son and Spirit,

we
glimpse and discover love’s inexhaustible possibilities

 

We pray for those whose lives are broken for lack of love:

children
whose safety and health come second to adult demands;

friendships
ended by exploitation and backstabbing;

marriages
shredded by unfaithfulness and shattered by broken promises;

families
fractured by social pressures, whether poverty or affluence;

neighbourhoods
where to survive love is weakness and compassion despised;

businesses
whose bottom line matters more than the welfare of their people.

 

We
pray for Churches, and for our church which
you have called to be the Body of Christ.

Give grace and imagination to
embody and to model the love of God in Christ,

which
is gift of the Spirit and the sign of your Presence.

Make us living conduits of your eternal love,

generously given, lovingly available, patiently
faithful,

willingly sacrificial,persistently
hopeful, and self-evidently joyful.

 

Like
Jesus gives us eyes to see Zacchaeus hiding in shame;

voice to ask the name of violent terrified Legion;

courage to
stand between the vulnerable victim and those holding the stones;

compassion to
touch with tender risk those who like the leper are feared and excluded;

generosity to
see the best in the Samaritan, and go do likewise;

reckless kindness to
open our arms in welcome like the prodigal father;

faith to
take our loaves and fishes and bless them to the use of others;

 

…and
so to be perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect,

whose
sunlight love gives life to all within your radiance

whose
rain of mercy falls on each with life giving refreshment,

who
radiates and rains love that warms and waters,

whose embrace holds and heals broken worlds and broken hearts alike,

and
all this in Jesus name and in the power of the Spirit,

Amen

 

Lord
how much juice you can squeeze from a single grape.

How
much water you can draw from a single well.

How
great a flame you can kindle from a tiny spark.

How
great a tree you can grow from a tiny seed

My
soul is so dry that by itself it cannot pray;

Yet
you can squeeze from it the juice of a thousand prayers.

My
soul is so parched that by itself it cannot love;

Yet
you can draw from it boundless love for you and for my neighbour.

My
soul is so cold that by itself it has no joy;

Yet
you can light the fire of heavenly joy within me.

My
soul is so feeble that by itself it has no faith;

Yet
by your power my faith grows to a great height.

Thank
you for prayer, for love, for joy, for faith;

Let
me always be prayerful, loving, joyful, faithful.

(Guigo the Carthusian, died 1188.)

I took this photo on an evening drive down to Glasgow. I was looking across the Mearns to the west and stopped at a layby for ten minutes to gaze. Then continued to drive, this time with more care and attentiveness to a world both fragile and durable, and to a rhythm whose regularity recurs in the Psalms as a metaphor of God's faithfulness and the dailiness of blessing. "From sunrise to sunset the Lord's name is to be praised."

In the Fiddler on the Roof, the image of sunrise and sunset describes growth and maturity, as the love of parents for children begins to relinquish and set free while still acknowledging that the investment of our deepest feelings in those we love, and enlarging the circle of those we love, is life's high calling. And in the lyrics, the recognition that life is movement and change, happiness and tears, and what we hang on to, what hangs on to us, is that same rhythm of faithfulness and the recurring cycle of light and life, sunrise, sunset. 

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

"Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee…" Well, yes, that's true – though there are shadows, and sometimes it feels like they are cast by the back of God! And then you see a sunset, and our faith holds on for dear life to mystery, and we are smitten by a beauty redolent of love, gently revealing the goodness and mercy that surely follows us all the days of our lives, sunrise, sunset.