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When it comes to satellite images of the surface of the earth they are endlessly fascinating and beautiful. Rocky mountains covered in snow, the merging of shade and colour, mostly gray, black, silver and white, a geological kaleidoscope that reflects light and captures shadow. I still remember flying over the alps at about 35,000 feet on our way to Austria, the first time I'd looked down on mountains from  that height, and wondering wide-eyed like a child hungry for experience and explanation.

No wonder mountains play such a role in the Biblical images of majesty, power and permanence. In the Bible either God raises mountains, shakes them, throws them into the sea, speaks from them or dwells on them. Around Zion the mountains symbolise the protection of God.

The two images above are not satellite pictures, and are only distantly related to the Alps, mainly by geological affinity, though that too is a guess. They are close-ups of a 13 centimetre across stone I found on the beach yesterday. Heavy, rough, sparkling, slightly oxidised, and in its way a thing of beauty quite beyond the polished varieties of smooth shiny gee gaws! It is neither objet d'art, nor artefact, it has no therapeutic qualities I know of, its history is millions if not billions of years in the making, how it came to be on the Aberdeen beach and why I noticed it and paid attention – sheer serendipity, random coincidence, juxtaposition of unplanned circumstance. Yes, all of these, maybe.

And then I remember that small gem of a book, Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy or too impatient. One should lie open, empty, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea."

And that's all this flat sliver of silver laced stone is, a gift from the sea.

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In the Celtic Prayer book of the Northumbrian Community, there is an odd couplet from the Hebridean Altars:

Though we prospered little,

yet we were rich in faith and unfearingness

Sometimes the clumsiness of a word gives it a jarring aptitude. Fear is a destabilising word, and an undermining experience. Fearingness is that fear made chronic, a state of apprehensive mind, a continuing anxiety suspicious of reassurance. Unfearingness is the opposite of each of these. Not chronic fear but inner constancy of peace; not an apprehensive mind but one comprehending something of the unchanging love of God in Christ; not suspicious anxiety but confidence born of trust and persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Unfearingness is what Jesus tried to make the disciples experience when he said to them "Fear not for I have overcome the world". Unfearingness is what isaiah described when he said "When you walk through fire the flames will not harm you, and through the waters the waves shall not overwhelm you." Unfearingness is precisely what is described in Psalm 23, lying down by still waters, led in a pth of righteousness, and goodness and mercy dogging our footsteps every blessed mile we trek.

Unfearingness is to listen to the wisdom of those ancient travellers who were pilgrims to Jerusalem, and who wrote their poems and prayers to the God who, they hoped and trusted, would keep them safe. "The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night…" The photo was taken on a February evening, frosty, silent and I have to confess not the slightest bit menacing. But then I wasn't trekking hundreds of miles across desert and bandit country, and doing so, not for trade and profit, but to go and worship the God by whose mercy I lived, and in whose covenant love I trusted come hell or high water. What I like about the Psalms is their honesty and unashamed admissions of fear, anger, depression, anxiety – the whole gamut of fearingness – but still, like needles drawn to the magnetic north, they turn to the Lord, in hope and trust, and pray for unfearingness.

This is a word I want to think about for a while – linguistically clumsy, but spiritually and theologically a word bespoke for the heart.

 

In this Psalm Shalom is founded on the majesty and artistry of the Creator. This panel of the tapestry contrasts the vast intricacy of the universe and the small human habitation at the waterside, its light reflected on the water. See the earlier post on the Defeat of Dogma by Understatement for the theological and polemical importance of stars in the Hebrew Bible.

Each of the panel of the tapestry is 9cm by 7cm. What you are seeing is a close-up. The canvas us 24 to the inch guage, and the cotton is six stranded cotton, with the colouts mixed in various combinations of strands – which means endless possibilities of colour and tone.

Psalm 8

⁹ Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I remember in 1977, reading W D Davies The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, a comprehensive examination of the background of that radical Kingdom of God manifesto.

A few years later F F Bruce published the fruit of a lifetime's study and immersion in the life and thought of Paul, his theological mentor whom he called 'Apostle of the Free Spirit'. A year or two later E P Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism forced a fundamental rethink of Pauline studies.

In the mid 1980's Bishop John Robinson, of Honest to God fame, completed the draft of his Bampton Lectures which was published posthumously as The Priority of John. Seldom have I read a more theologically sensitive exposition of the passion of Jesus, even if the underlying thesis was brilliantly argued but with few lasting converts.

Early 90's and John Ashton's major study Understanding the Fourth Gospel, (which cost £65 and was paid for by books tokens!) opened another vista on the theological masterpiece attributed to John.

Then I ploughed through N T Wright's The Origins of the People of God, volume 1, published in 1992. It was, and is, a hard read, but it too changed the way I read the New Testament, more fully aware of worldview and cultural norms and codes and social context.

Jesus and the Victory of God moved the discussion to a further level, and once again a massive book compelled new thinking, rewarded careful reading, and takes its place as a milestone in my personal study of the New Testament.

Sometimes commentaries have the same ground-breaking and ground-shifting effects. Ulrich Luz's three volumes on Matthew in the Hermeneia series are such. Beautifully produced, replete with learning long and slowly distilled, ranging across hermeneutical disciplines, developing a particular study of 'effective history', that is the effect of the text on readers throughout history – (different from reception history). They are a joy to use.

And now. News of another gold strike in New Testament studies! SPCK have announced N T Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Three volumes including the long awaited monograph on Pauline theology, a second volume on Paul's recent interpreters, and a third collecting Wright's most significant and seminal essays over 30 years. You can check this out for yourselves here. Me? I'm saving up!

http://www.logos.com/product/29160/paul-and-the-faithfulness-of-god?utm_source=prepublication&utm_medium=email&utm_content=4343421&utm_campaign=prepub

Amongst other things this blog is a celebration of the book, a conservation area for those who, without despising Kindle, still require as a life necessity, the proximity and availability of books. I await the advent of an e-reader that is as flexible, quick and easy to flick through and back and forth, as a solid reference book. Because some of the most important books are for reference.Thumbing through a reference book is education by serendipity, and the best reference books send you chasing in all directions, to articles and topics you hadn't realised were connected to your first enquiry. A good article in a quality reference book will have cross references to other articles and treatments of similar or related material. Now I guess hyper links and other devices allow a similar cognitive tour on an e-reader but I'm now so incurably attached to those large repositories of print and picture that I'll persist with the dictionary, encyclopedia, companion, handbook, and lexicon in book form.

One such dictionary I use often and am seldom disappointed. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, published in 1998 by IVP is according to its impressive sub-title "An encyclopedic exploration of the images, symbols, motifs, metaphors, figures of speech and literary patterns of the Bible." While working away at the Shalom tapestry I've consulted it on shepherds and sheep, moon and stars, mountains and rivers, trees and fruit, water and sunshine, cups that run over and my going out and coming in! The literary texture of Scripture is rich and dense, colourful and subversive, the range of its imagery drawing from many cultures, several languages, and centuries of history. The column and a half on stars is an eye opener to those who read biblical, texts with minds as dulled in vision as our eyes as we stand in a brightly lit street and see through a glass obscurely, missing the sheer magnificence and cosmic artistry of a night sky that should rightly reduce our utilitarian view of the world to a humbler respect for that whose vastness renders our self-importance of no intrinsic significance.

Because that's what Psalm 8 is saying. Human beings are made a little lower than the angels, because the Lord God made it so, not because we made ourselves so. Street lights are themselves metaphors for illuminated blindness, artificial light that obscures the billions of divinely appointed lights for the universe. Fanciful? Come on, stop being a literalist – the great Psalm poet wrote, "God determines the number of the stars; he gives to each of them their name"(147.4). In a world awash with astrological predictions, stellar worship and fear of the astral forces that fix human destiny, the psalmist upsets the game board and announces that the God of Israel, far from being subject to the whims and fates of the stars, is the one by whom they exist, the one whom they serve, and the one who gives each star its name – naming being a fundamental act of ownership. And yes, in the creation narrative of Genesis 1, as a fatal deflation of Babylonian arrogance and astrological controls, the writer says in a devastating parenthesis at the end of the story of the creation of earth and heaven, "he made the stars also". I don't know anywhere in all literature a more comprehensive defeat of dogma by understatement. 

All of this from a dictionary. Love them!

Prayer of Response

We
confess to you our Father, our small-mindedness and limited appreciation of
your greatness and almighty power.

We
confess that we scarcely consider your mighty movements at the beginning of
time, creating the heavens and the earth. 

Forgive us and enlarge our
understanding.

We
confess that the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ do
not infuse our thinking as they should: we are so hemmed in by transitory
interests and temporal pursuits that we lose sight of the essential and eternal.

Forgive us, and deepen our
love,

We
confess that we do not value and often do not welcome the gift of your Holy
Spirit to liberate our tongues to praise you and our lives to serve you. 

Forgive us, Creating and Redeeming God, and open our hearts,

Through the love of our Lord
Jesus

And by the power of
the Holy Spirit,

Amen

PAYING
ATTENTION

Sunshine
illumines

a
million raindrops; turning

life’s
kaleidoscope.

The morning was so beautiful, frosty, misty, pastel sky, sunlight that began as white and turned slowly to a crystal clear light and blue sky. I put on U2, Beautiful Day and heard it with the clarity that comes from two new hearing aids!

By mid morning it was warm at the back door and Smudge had the sense to lie on the garden table and soak up some vitamin D.

I came out with my camera and the first photo she co-operated but by the time I wanted one or two more her mood changed. Here is photo 1, with her indulging my intrusion. The request for more photo-shots was greeted by the face on the second photo! Phot 3 is Smudge's opin ion of camera in your face!

That's why I love cats – their eyes let you know what they're thinking – inscrutable sometimes, utterly to the point at other times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a Celebrity….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't push it…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look I've done the celebrity bit…get out of here!

 

Aid money could go to defence. That's a headline on BBC News Online. Now I can think of a number of moral arguments which demonstrate the ethical minefield (excuse the inappropriate metaphor) the Prime Minister proposes to walk across. And I could quote a few sayings of the OT prophets who had a thing or two to say about the collision of military hardware and works of mercy, or the hubris of the powerful protecting the interests of economics at the cost of humane politics.

But it's late. And this is just a wee blog with a few hundred readers. So I guess there's little point in going into either a long reasoned argument or and even longer gratifying rant. So I'll content myself with the words of Isaiah 58. Perchance these could be offered as some questions for Prime Ministers Question Time…

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

.

Does anyone out there still listen to John Michael Talbot? I first bought a vinyl album yonks ago called The Quiet, and loved the quiet instrumental music played at contemplative pace, and with some beautiful melodies. Today I've been having a sabbatical couple of hours on a Sunday, listening to Our Blessing Cup: Songs for Liturgical Celebrations. The tracks are mainly Psalms set to music and several of them do what good music should do. But just what is it good music should do?

In deference to the post-modern sensitivities about prescribing criteria for everyone else, here's what good music does for me, whether it should or not!

As sound and stimulus from  beyond my own mind, it interrupts my preoccupations, and breaks the self-generated agendas of the habitually active brain. Yes there is music that fulfils the role of background sound, but I mean music that simply insists on a listener. Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and Brahms' Violin Concerto, and Christian Forshaw's Sanctuary CD do this for me.

Music is a mood changer. Good music coaxes me out of my complacency, persuades me to unclench hands that hold too tightly to my worries, and lifts the heart above the limited horizons that obscure the hopes and possibilities there to be imagined, felt and sought with a trusting heart. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Allegri's Miserere, John Denver's Windsong Album, and Our Blessing Cup with John Michael Talbot have often rescued me.

Good music is like the smile on the face of a friend, something that evokes joy and reminds of life's blessings so often tied to those faces we know, and who recognise us. The face of a friend seen unexpecedly in a crowd, or sought for companionship or support, however familiar, remains a transformative encounter with embodied welcome. Those melodies, lyrics, and songs that have woven themselves into our view of the world, ourselves and the meaning of love, are irreplaceable and without them we would be less than who we are.

This is soul music, those cadences and harmonies that like the Spirit brooding over the chaos of the deeps, speaks a new order and purpose into us, those sounds and tones, notes and chords which re-shape and re-direct our hearts desires and longings. The coincidence of music and our own story creates a unique fusion of memory, emotional capital and new possibility each time we hear again that which has changed us. Mozart's Clarinet Concerto slow movement, Tallis' Spem in Alium, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (Psalm 2,23), Mary Chapin Carpenter's 'Jubilee', The Seekers version of 'Blowin in the Wind', Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, are just a few of those that can re-arrange the furniture of the heart for me. 

All of which comes from sitting here listening to a Franciscan monk singing his heart out.

On a lighter note – I had no idea why he was singing 'Forever relaxing'!

He was singing 'Forever will I sing', but ran the words together and I was sure he was singing about heaven as an armchair with a coffee, a freshly baked scone with butter and jam, and a good book….but there you go, instead I have to sing for eternity! Lord help us all 🙂

The photo is of tonight's sunset from our front window – taken by Aileen on her phone – I was too busy listneing to Father Talbot to notice!.

 

Forver will I sing = forever relaxing!?