Category: Uncategorised

It is one of the gifts of art and image that words are compelled to recognise their limits.

What does "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" look like.

It looks like this.

C S Lewis,
the Christian popular apologist, in an essay, On Reading Old Books, accused
those impatient with history of being guilty of chronological snobbery.  The Prophet Isaiah dealt with a different
problem, chronological amnesia. Speaking to the people of Israel about their
exiled loneliness and dislocation, disorientation and spiritual confusion, Isaiah urged
them, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn”.  By which he meant study the past, find there
clues to understand the present and give imaginative energy to create visions
for the future.

History can
be boring, mind numbingly, soul sappingly uninteresting. By definition it deals
with what is past. It has a crisis of relevance in an age of fast, immediate
and instant. In a pragmatic can do world the crudely utilitarian question what
is the use of history asks precisely the question history can only answer if it
is, indeed used.

Historical
precedent, the perspective of another age, and the keeping alive of cultural
memory, are essential strands in human knowing. Learning with a humility given
backbone by intellectual integrity, and fuelled by curiosity, history helps us
come to understand who we are by answering first, how, why and when we got here;
what is our place in the world; and then to recognise the reality and dignity
of others whose history is different from ours, but with whom we share a common
humanity, in theological terms the image of God.

The history
of a Christian tradition is what gives it roots, explains its distinctive and
peculiar identity, and places its followers in the broader context of Christian
tradition and cultural change. Such self- reflection gives us a sense of
humility, a critical openness, and makes our voice worth hearing. It also makes
other voices more obviously worth hearing, and attending to with a listening
spirit.

When we
understand our own story, with critical faithfulness and the wisdom of
hindsight, we can then acknowledge the validity and integrity of other people’s
faith story, those whose history makes up another tributary in the river system
of the Christian tradition. Baptists
have a history, or should we say there are Baptist histories. Britain, the
United States, Europe, and Russia, each have their history. Amongst the
distinctives of Baptist spirituality is a passion for religious liberty, a
profound sense of the sovereignty of the individual conscience before God, and
an historic aversion to all forms of external compliance in matters of belief
and worship.

In times when Baptist Identity is either a contested series of questions, or a denominational irrelevance in a post-modern world impatient with particularity, it is imperative for the integrity of a Christian tradition that its adherents know who they are, understand the source of their convictions, and be visibly committed to the living practice of a tradition which is essential to the overall wholeness of the Christian witness of the Body of Christ, the Church.

Baptist is not a pseudonym for Evangelicals who happen to immerse believers, nor is it a euphemism for a generic evangelicalism, and it isn't a vaccuous denominational label either. It is a description of a specific way of being Christian; it is christologically centred, rooted in the life and mission of the Triune God, earthed and embodied in a community of believers committed in covenant faithfulness to discern the mind of Christ together.

Our history is chequered and splintered; our story is still being written and told; the witness to which Christ calls us remains a vital and vitalising discipleship of faithfully following after Christ. Only as we cherish and value our own tradition, explore and reflect critically on how far we have been faithful to Christ's calling, and listen carefully to what the Spirit is saying to us, only then will we be humble enough to listen with the same receptive care and an appropriate respectful questioning, to those other followers of Jesus in other Christian traditions. And then we will learn, and be enriched, and pray God, perhaps bring some gift of our own to an already laden table.

In the space of three minutes my quietly begun and enjoyable day was derailed by Radio 4. I listen to the Today programme most mornings, often with a mixture of interest and irritation. The irritation is usually at the aggressive, rude, badgering approach to interviewing; an obsessive admiration on the part of the intrerviewer for playing the devil's advocate, undermining the person interviewed and demonstrating to the audience how clever, ruthless and cynically correct the interviewer is. A week or two ago Lord Falconer demolished John Humphreys wall of shoogly words and opinionated self assertions.

This morning it was reported that the RSPCA had successfully prosecuted members of a a fox hunt, located in David Cameron's balliwick. They played sound footage of the hunt and the kill, then reported the judge as saying the fact the RSPCA had spent in excess fo £300,000 bringing the prosecution was 'staggering', heard one of the guilty ridicule the RSPCA for wasting so much money on prosecuting such behaviour, and then Justin Webb interviewed the chief executive of the RSPCA.

Take time to listen to it on IPlayer. In it Webb is biased, rude, cajoling, deaf to any answer he is given, loud in making his own opinion heard, and an utter failure as an interviewer. That is, if an interviewer is there to enable intelligent comment, question where that comment is unclear, and generally be present as the facilitator of a discussion the public might want to listen to. Webb seemed to operate with an hermeneutic of suspicion, assuming the chief Executive of one of the oldest charities in the land was an evasive power mongerer out to prove a point, or a sentimental fool who thought £300,000 was not a ridiculous price for a fox.

First, as was pointed out between rude interruptions, the RSPCA was upholding the law of the land, and by the way when it comes to fox hunting it is, quite literally, the law of the land.

Second, the Crown Prosecution Service have repeatedly and habitually  rejected such cases due to lack of evidence. This time the RSPCA gathered the evidence and brought the prosecution itself.  The defendants didn't even contest the charges and pleaded guilty.

Third, Webb made no concession to the point, made several times by the interviewee having to speak above the hectoring of Webb, that the fox hunters were deliberately and knowingly breaking a law they didn't agree with. A Standard Grade in citizenship would teach any of us that such a precedent of selecting which laws we agree with and only obeying them would be, well, socially inconvenient and legal nonsense!

And finally, for now, the RSPCA is older than the police force in this country. Was founded to prevent cruelty and protect animals from needless or deliberate suffering, and as such is an important expression of our humanity, care of creation, and responsibility to all other sentient beings on this planet.

Justin Webb's lack of respect, common courtesy and professional skill as a prime time interviewer leaves me, to use the words of a certain Judge, 'staggered'. A highly professional CEO of a charity deserves better than such cheap baiting and uninformed opinion badly disguised as robust intelligence.

I was brought up on farms in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. I've seen the damage foxes do on farms in the countryside. Farmers hate them, and have little compunction in killing them. They are not my favourite animal either. But fox hunting with hounds has been defined as a practice that causes unnecessary suffering and banned by law, along with hare coursing and badger baiting. Is a fox worth £300,000? What price do we put on cruelty, inflicted suffering, and the blatant ignoring of the law by the socially privileged? Not one word, not one, from the interviewer acknowledging the values that lie behind these questions, and that underpin the work of the RSPCA.

Oh. And to Justin's jibe that people don't give to the RSPCA to see the funds used in pursuit of such cases, in the words of the Panto audience, "Oh yes we do".

……………………………..

Update – the following complaint has been submitted online by me to the BBC.

Full Complaint: Justin Webb from the start of the interview was hectoring,
sceptical and biased. Repeated interruption and confrontational tone made it
difficult to answer or correct Webb's bias and uninformed comment. The lack of
respect and courtesy shown to a spokesperson of a leading charity was
embarrassingly obvious, and unacceptable. The key question of law-breaking was
drowned out by questioning the judgement of the RSPCA to fund and pursue
prosecution.The issue of the CPS declining to pursue previous charges was
likewise swept aside. No recognition in Webb's questioning that law breakers
should be prosecuted, instead blame for the RSPCA for using charitable giving
to bring the case. The claim that 'the public' would resent their money gifts
being used for such a purpose is unfounded, and an unfair criticism of a
judgement based on previous experience of CPS responses. The setting up of a
fighting fund for such cases was likewise rubbished by the interviewer, despite
the clear explanation given. This in the context of a prosecution for animal
cruelty, by pursuing a sport now outlawed and defined as a cruel sport. Why on
earth would the RSPCA not bring the case? The comment of the judge in the case,
which was used to set up the discussion was itself tendentious. An interview
ought to clarify issues, allow viewpoints to be heard, weigh evidence in an
exchange of views, and this in an ethos of courtesy, respect and intelligent
listening, by interviewer and audience.

 ‘Aye, that’s whit you think!' 

 L  Distressed and
hungry they will roam  through the land;
when they are famished  they will become
enraged and looking upward will curse their king and their God. (8.21)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

The
people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!

 L  They will look
towards the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and
they will be thrust into utter darkness (8.22)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

On
those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

 L  The Highways are
deserted, no travellers are on the roads, the land mourns and wastes away, Lebanon is
ashamed and withers (33.7, 9)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

The
desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and
blossom. Like the crocus it will burst into bloom

 L  Look brave men cry aloud in the streets, the
envoys of peace weep bitterly. The treaty is broken, its witnesses are
despised, no one is respected ( 33.7-8)

 R  Aye, that’s whit you think!

Unto
us a child is born…and the government will be upon his shoulders.

 L  The treacherous betray. With treachery the
treacherous betray. Terror and pit and snare await you O people of the earth

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

He will be called Wonderful
Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….of the increase of
his government and peace, there will be no end.

As the rain hides the
stars,

as the autumn mist
hides the hills,

as the clouds veil the
blue of the sky,

so the dark happenings
of my lot

hide the shining of
thy face from me.

Yet, if I may hold thy
hand in the darkness,

it is enough. Since I
know that,

though I may stumble
in my going,

thou dost not fall.

(Celtic, unknown)

The dark night of the
soul is an experience of stripping away the assurance of the senses.
Disorientation, uncertainty, loss of impetus, mean that absence is more real
than presence, and the unfamiliar displaces the familiar. A spirituality
fixated on the positive, and in which dogmatic assurances silence those
important murmurs of dissent, is for all its triumphalist note, a spirituality
of denial. Not self-denial to be sure, but a more toxic form of refusal, a
denial of that mysterious withdrawing of God's sensed presence by which we grow
beyond adolescent claimfulness.

The above prayer
doesn't express the classic experience of the dark night of the soul. The last
line of it is reminiscent of Isaiah at his most pastorally poetic, and as the
theologian who best describes the rhythm of feeling forsaken by the one who
promises not to forsake. This is a prayer I now use regularly because it allows
me to be both honest and modest about my experience of God. Honest enough to
confess that sometimes God's presence is not felt; modest enough not to think
my own sense of God or lack of sense of God makes any difference to the reality
of things, that God remains actually present even in acutely felt absence.

"Though I may
stumble in my going, thou dost not fall." Since I know that, I know the
most important thing. And even if I am overcome at times with doubt,
uncertainty, and the pain of unknowing, more important than what I know, is
that I am known, and by whom I am known. And one day I will know as I am known.
And until then prayers like the one above are, in Eliot's word, valid.

Some time this week this blog will pass the 250,000 visits mark. I'm not sure what that statistic means. Six years ago I started writing regularly here for faithful visitors who keep returning, and occasional visitors who drop in now and then, and maybe those who happen by accidentally or Google guided, find something interesting or helpful and disappear again into their own world.

If you want to know why I do this, what I hope to achieve, and why I think it's a worthwhile form of ministry and discipleship, then look at my original explanation of the name Living Wittily here. I don't trawl much through the archives, but I have a sense of how my own life narrative has flowed through the landscape of these six years, and the posts provide a rough cartography of the road travelled. Much has changed and much has stayed the same. New experiences question past opinions, in some senses I know more about God, and in more senses I know less. At times the process of writing, the act of articulation, takes thought where I never imagined it would go. 

I am a theologian, but have always wanted to dive into and explore the kind of theology that reminds me I am always out of my depth.

I love poetry, and the arrangement of words with precision and beauty is, for me at least, a spiritual discipline in obedience to the Word who became flesh and made his home amongst us ("tabernacled amongst us" is the older phrase, beautiful in its precision).

In recent years I have discovered how painting and sculpture, icon and calligraphy are valid forms of exegesis, and why it is wise theologians who were there long before us believed passionatelt that beauty, goodness and truth are the three transcendental virtues that underlie humane and humanising activity.

And music – on the way down the road today I played Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and realise that when it comes to music I am a mere amateur, but that doesn't stop my heart thumping in synchopated sympathy with sounds that are persistently subversive of complacency, and measured intimations of the beauty and brokenness, but also the redeemable loved-ness of God's creation.

All of this comes tumbling down on this poor keyboard more or less at random. It allows me to hold on to and savour, and reflect more critically and appreciatively on the immense mystery in the ordinariness of a life, and to fail once again in computing the infinite value of each human being to the God who chooses to notice us, cherish us, and to need the love and possibility of each imago dei, to seek fellowship with each human being, trying to live in the responsive freedom of children of God. It is in the living and dying that is our lives, the flourishing and suffering that makes us aware of our humanity, the joy and the pain of union and separation in love, the prayers and praises and pleadings and passions that speak out our fears and desires our losses and our gains, it is in such kind or cruel places that God is encountered. And it is also in such places that we are compelled to face ourselves, but in the presence of a Holy Love that judges us with mercy, and forgives us with a Grace infinite in range and depth.

All of which is to say that the blog writer receives more than they give, and providing they nearly always stay this side of self indulgence, what they write can also become blessing to others. Or so it has been with me. 

It's some time since I did consecutive blogging on a theme or a book. I have asked for a review copy of John Swinton's new book, Dementia. Living in the Memories of God, which has now arrived. In my own circle of friends and family, and in years of pastoral ministry, I have watched those for whom I care begin to lose their sense of self, and have supported those who love them through the valley of deep darkness that they have sensed ahead of them, and the one they love. The theological and pastoral questions are urgent, crucial and take us to the foundation convictions of Christian theology and pastoral responsiveness to each human being as made in the image of God. Dementia is a condition that raises profound questions about human being, human love, the sense of personal identity and ultimately the meaning and worth of each human life.

A blog is a good place to explore all this, and invite insights from others, and share and learn together something of what it means to cherish and celebrate the depths of our own humanity, and God's love beyoind understanding.

" The glory of human beings is not power, the power to control someone else; the glory of human beings is the ability to let what is deepest within us grow."

Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger, quoted in Swinton, page 153.

The photograph is a reminder of the joys of createdness, and pictures one of those creatures for whom living wittily comes naturally!

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone is not out to get you.

I know – it's an old line, but recently I've wondered.

Thursday – Need snow tyres put on and swapped with the others.

Go to garage – "nae problem son" says somebody who looks younger than me.

But there is a problem, son! The alloy rim is cracked and it costs a years pocket money to replace.

But. There's a wee man round the corner does welding – so we jump in the car and the wee man hums and haws and girns (nae teeth in) – but aye, he can dae it.

Then I get my tyres on, and the bank balance falls disproportionately.

Friday – go to dentist to have a tooth seen to. A large chunk came off while chomping a chocolate covered Brazil nut.

Oops. Root not good, big filling not enough – root canal and a crown, but no guarantee either will work. See the X-Ray? Tooth condemned….

Oh, and the tooth next to it needs a large filling too.

Beginning to think I'd have been as well letting the tyre changing man deal with my molars as well.

One extraction later, and one large filling later, my bank balance falls again. Hard to say thank you without unseemly dribbling with a frozen face and a mouth which has been subjected to an archaeological dig.

Monday – 6.30am out at the car clearing ice. Driver's window down and up to clear condensation.

Except it goes down. And stays down!

A funny whirring sound mocks me at 6.40 am, in minus 4 degrees in Westhill, Aberdeenshire. Go on son, drive to glasgow with an open windae!

So along to the nice Honda people who take it to the workshop and yes, the motor is whirring nicely they agree, but to no effect sir, – it's knackered.

Book it in for Friday, when my bank balance will be further reduced.

Now just because I'm paranoid……

My friend Geoff Colmer has been recommending with much enthusiasm the book Unapologetic by Francis Spufford. The sub title is Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. I got it recently and have been reading it with much laughter, much thought, and am so glad that someone has written an intelligent riposte to the lazy thinking and arrogant opinion-pushing of those who dismiss the whole religious thing. And emotional sense matters, just as much as common sense and intellectual sense.

I found one long passage one of the most original reflections on the nature of guilt, the preciousness of human life and the nature of forgiveness and grace. The honest understanding of the late in life request for the presence of a friend by Field-Marshal Montgomery is a superb piece of pastoral journalism and moral realism. Knowing he would die soon he said 'I've got to go and meet God and explain  all those men I killed in Alamein.' There follows a wide ranging meditation on the importance of taking our moral failures seriously, and recognising the human capacity to mess up life and wound those around us. It is all but impossible to quote or summarise this sustained piece of theologically astute psychology, though the book is crammed with one liners, phrases and paragraphs of cleverness distilled to wisdom.

There's something salutary and earthing about reading such a book during Advent. Christmas and nativity stories and the birth narratives in the Gospels are easy targets for those who want to debunk the Christian way of seeing and being in the world. But the significance of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth and the intersection of human history and divine purpose which underlies the birth of Jesus and the Word made flesh is about more than over-clever dismissals of religious traditions as mere legend or myth.  Because 'his name will be called Emmanuel, God with us.' And 'you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.' So there is indeed an issue for Field Marshall Montgomery and the lives lost in war and in all the brokenness of the world, and the need to face God. Except that in the Incarnation, God came to face us, with our own propensity to mess things up, and God's propensity to redeem.

The picture is of Da Vinci's drawing of a woman and child – one of my favourite images of Christmas understood with theological imagination.

I continue to work a small tapestry of the Hebrew word for 'shalom'.

There is no intended or discernible pattern, no fixed image of what the finished work will look like. It is being worked slowly, in those odd brief spaces of time when the notion to stitch and the opportunity to do so coincide. The colours are being mixed, strand by strand, sometimes three or even four shades woven into one six strand thread – they reflect the mood I am in at the time, but they also weave into a pattern of hope. The colours are greens, yellows, blues, browns, but they are mixed, juxtaposed, blended, sometimes random, so that the overall work is open-ended; and yet.

I hear the Israeli ambassador to the EU defending 3000 more houses in a settlement on the West Bank; and I stitch some more of this beautiful Hebrew word, and its background in the mercy of God. Palestinian outrage, rockets and political maneouvering raises the anger and fear stakes further, and I stitch a few more quiet points of hopefulness. In Belfast the flying of the Union jack creates riots and police officers are injured, I want to stitch.

I guess for me this tapestry has become a metaphor for mercy, a symbol of shalom, a pitch for peace, a protest, a prayer, a promise, or at least a reminder of those great promises in Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospels and Revelation.

about lions and lambs in close but safe proximity

about spears into pruning hooks and rockets into trade agreements

about justice flowing down like rivers, and doing right by each other as natural and reliable as water runs to the sea

about loving enemies and embracing the other so that the other becomes brother

about leaves of the trees for the healing of the nations, and people from every tongue, tribe and nation praising the God who is all in all

about the New Jerusalem, over which the three great monotheistic faiths no longer need to battle and do murder, because there is space and welcome for all in a new creation and in the reconciliation of all things.

That's quite a theological load for a tapestry; but it is also the theological implicate of praying that looks to a different future because God is the God of the future whose loving purpose, just mercy, and reconciling heart, intersects with the reality of our present, but does so with Eternal intent. Whatever else advent and incarnation mean, they open up those wide doors for the King of glory.

I was in a charity shop and found this brass plaque. The inscription shows the initials of two people the dates 1887 – 1937. The relief in the centre is of Jacob and Rachel at the well. The surrounding reliefs are the story of Jacob's journey, his wooing Rachel and working for Laban. The two names are inscribed in Hebrew on the top left and right of the reliefs. My guess is this is a Golden wedding plaque, made in 1937, and featuring one of the greatest love stories in the Hebrew Bible.

The quality of the central relief captures the moment of encounter, a beautiful portrayal of accidental providence, those unlooked for meetings when God is at work in the ordinariness of everyday. Except with Jacob, very little is ordinary. Below is one of the scenes from the outer reliefs. I love this plate – it will hang in my study, a piece of brazen exegesis 🙂