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Seeing, really seeing, isn't as easy as looking. I like the older word "behold", its sense of recognising the isness and reality of that which we see, and holding what we see in our attention, paying attention, a phrase that says exactly what is required to see, the cost of attentiveness. Gerard Manley Hopkins saw, beheld, paid attention, acknowledged and recognised the isness of what he saw around him. He was often thought eccentric, odd, introverted – but perhaps the oddity was due more to that propensity for attentiveness, his instinctive perception of the reality and value of the other, and the Other who was encountered within and beyond the self. Anyway, I've been reading some Hopkins and it so happens there is a kestrel family along the road between here and Aberdeen and one or other can be seen hovering at just about telegraph pole height, defying gravity, reflecting sunlight, moving with grace, precision and beauty. It reminded me of Hopkins poem.   The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-   dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding   Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,         5   As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding   Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!   Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here   Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion         10 Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!     No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,   Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The past two days on holiday the weather has been wet and cold. Didn't stop us going out for a walk along the front at Aberdeen, getting soaked and cold but doing it for the coffee and bacon roll at The Pavilion cafe afterwards. As well as walking in the rain, I was putting up a couple of new blinds which needed the width adjusted before hanging them.

That's where Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics came in handy. During Holy Week I'd left my favourite volume IV.i lying around the living room so I could pick it up and browse in it at random when I had free time or coffee, or nothing on the TV I wanted to pay any attention to. It was an interesting experiment in spiritual reading piecemeal, or ad hoc theological reflection. It was well worthwhile – not the same as a determined, steady, continual reading through one of those impressively heavy volumes with their pages packed with granite theology mined from the deepest quarry of divine mystery.

A brief read at a paragraph became a page, then a bit more, then …the phone rang, or the tea was ready, or I was engaged in conversation. Over the week I probably had it in my hand several times a day. Sometimes it was like looking at Everest, the height of the Divine love. Other times it was like looking at Niagara, a cataract of passionate exposition of the cross. Or like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, vast, spacious, deep and utterly there, as that which puts us in our place. Times too when a line or two was quite enough to be going on with – and I wrote it down in the wee notebook, and thought about it – a lot.

Pages 259-273, are on the meaning of Jesus' temptations, indeed Jesus' temptability, from his baptism to Gethsemane. Reading these pages none of the metaphors above are exaggerations of Barth's theological capacity – Everest, Niagara, Grand Canyon – none of them answers fully to Barths exposition of the mysterious depths and wonders of the Divine reconciling love, or to the fixedness of the determined Yes of God in Christ, or to the height and majesty of the Divine purpose to redeem and reconcile and renew the image of God and the gift that is Creation and New Creation. Not many theologians compare with Barth when he takes off his shoes to stand on the holy ground around the cross. His interpretation of the Gethsemane prayer, "Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but yours be done…" was, for me, breathtaking, a masterpiece of imaginative hermeneutics and constructive Christology.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – remember the new blinds – well, cutting them to the right width is tricky, and it needs the end of the blind anchored so that it won't move as it's measured. Volume IV.i, still lying to hand on the coffee table, served perfectly. But all those jokes about big books and door-stops are mostly the words of the ignorant. It's no disrespect to Barth that one of his volumes comes in handy as a make-do weight. My real estimate of the Church Dogmatics is that while I was doing DIY, a volume was to hand!

The following is my response to Bob Macdonald's comment on the post about Maria Boulding and the place of the Psalms in our prayers. It's in the comments section but Bob as always raises points that always make me think again and I didn't want it hidden away on the side-bar

Bob, as I say, your comment makes me think again, and I am in complete agreement about the role of the Psalms as spiritual safety valves that allow moral catharsis by bringing our worst thoughts and feelings within the orbit of the mercy, justice and love of God. But if we believe the Psalmists spoke with utter frankness to God, then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life's extremities. The collisions of emotional and theological responses within the collection of Psalms is what makes them the prayer book of the human heart, and also enables such prayers to be an honest and authentic cry of faith whether struggling or celebrating, questioning or affirming. Behind such prayers there is the instinct for justice and the longing for some sort of healing and restored wholeness.

But yes, any reading of the Sermon on the Mount, and serious reflection on the pivotal event of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross, requires of us the responses of those who are ministers of reconciliation. I think that's why Boulding acknowledges that certain emotional, moral and psychological responses to injustice, suffering and violence are better out than in – and are better acknowledged before God than nursed in the heart awaiting opportunity. The eucharistic cup, of anguished suffering and suffering love, of shared faith and holy communion, itself holds together the polar extremes of human experience and the infinite range of Divine love and peacemaking.

The picture of Micaelagelo's Pieta sculpture is one of the miracles of Christian art – and a profound meditation on the alternative to vengeance, violence, hatred and murder.

Just some thoughts which arise out of you pushing a bit harder Bob, so thanks and blessings on your own ministry.

This evening at the ecumenical Easter service I was sitting admiring the stain glass windows, illumined from the outside by an April setting sun. There are two main windows facing the congregation. One has the four saints of Scotland and the other has the creation and the four seasons. Between them a smaller round window depicting the sower who went forth to sow.

At the top of the Scottish saints window was the image of the Lamb, holding the red crossed banner, illumined around the head with the shekinah of heaven. As I was looking at that particular image the organist started to play All in an April evening, and I thought of the line, "I thought of the Lamb of God". That was one of those coincidences that some of us read as a significant nudge of the Holy Spirit. More so because….

About 15 years ago, less than a mile from where I sat in the church, I was visiting an elderly member of the church where I was then minister. Her name was Carrie, and she was very near the end of her journey and I sat with her, along with her sister. There were five sisters, and their given name was Lamb. They had made up a singing group in their younger years. That Spring afternoon Carrie asked if her sister and I would sing All in an April Evening, and wouldn't take no for an answer.

In those days before Britain's Got Talent there was no one there to laugh at us – in fact, imperfect and at times hilarious as it was, Carrie joined in both the singing and the hilarity, and somehow we made our way through to the close. In those moments of unrehearsed friendship and pastoral encounter the three of us, in our own way, and from our own experiences, 'thought on the Lamb of God'. A day or two later Carrie died, and discovered that the eternal love of God is like another of her favourite pieces of music – the place where 'Sheep May safely Graze'.

So there I was tonight, looking at this lovely sunlit stained glass image of the Lamb of God, the organ playing a piece so replete with memory and affection for me, and within hearing distance of a bleating lamb from that room where in ministry and friendship, our faith was shared in a mixture of poignancy and hilarity. In the co-incidence of window, music and memory, of image, sound and remembering, I felt a deep and lovely feeling of what the Communion of Saints really means. I know I believe it as in the Creed; I've sung about it; I can do the theological exposition of it -but each of these is but the articulation of an experience that now and again transcends argument and intellectual grasp. It was an Easter moment, when in memory and love cor ad cor loquitur 'heart speaks to heart'.

These words were the motto of Cardinal Newman, whose prayer was a favourite of the sister who sang with me:

O LORD, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shades lengthen, and the evening cometh, and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done. Then, Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This was the view from our back door at 9.00 this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is a bird's eye view of the bird table!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then this afternoon we had this!

 Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry.
0 Savior meek, pursue Thy road,
With palms and scattered garments strowed.

2. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
0 Christ, Thy triumphs now begin
O'er captive death and conquered sin.

3. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
Look down with sad and wondering eyes
To see the approaching Sacrifice.

4. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
The Father on His sapphire throne
Expects His own anointed Son.

5. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain.
Then take, 0 Christ, Thy power and reign.

Saviour meek, lowly pomp, wondering eyes, the last and fiercest strife – this Palm Sunday hymn is far removed from the triumphalism of much modern praise sing discourse. The power to reign is not power, it is sacrifice; and the majesty evokes wonder not by the authority of might but by the relinquishment of power in suffering. Palm Sunday sets the agenda for the coming week. The Passion Story isn't about God winning by compulsion and forced compliance, but about the vulnerability of God in Christ loving enemies with a gentle defiant refusal to confirm that might is right. The heart of God is revealed in peacemaking, the surrender of a love that seeks to reconcile by healing hatred, subverting violence, embracing the treacherous and forgiving those who crucify.

God commends his love towards us in that while we were his enemies, Christ died for us. I guess that the witness of Christians in the 21st Century could take a new turning of risk and costly adventure if the politics of Palm Sunday shaped the politics of our daily lives, our personal relationships and the way we express our citizenship of the world, and God's Kingdom.

…. Ride on, King Jesus, through conflict and debate

ride on through sweaty prayer and the betrayal of friends

Lord this Palm Sunday forgive me my evasions of truth,

my carelessness of your honour;

my weakness which leaves me sleeping

even when in others you suffer and are anguished;

my cowardice that does not risk the consequences

of publicly acknowledging you as Lord.

 

The other day I got a lovely letter from a friend, expressing appreciation for something I'd written. What makes the letter more special is that it was typed, not word-processed. It's perhaps entirely a matter of perspective, or maybe there is an aesthetic of the technologically obsolete, but a typed letter feels more personal, takes more effort and care when there's no delete button, conveys a generous intentionality as trouble is taken.

My friend Stewart, whose funeral I shared on Friday, gave me a gift two days before the stroke from which he eventually died. The Naked Now. Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, is now one of those books twice treasured – for what it is, and from whom it came. Inside it Stewart wrote in a characteristic hand, with his fountain pen, his own greeting and appreciation of friendship – neat, firm, legible and instantly recognisable as Stewart.

Typewriter and fountain pen – it's not that I undervalue all the other ways we keep in touch with each other these days – email, text, facebook and all other forms of maintaining and repairing relationship. But the typed letter, and the handwritten flyleaf re-present the faces and the voices of two dear friends. Emails and texts are transient, often enough informal chits of chat. But a typed letter and written flyleaf are artefacts of friendship and lasting fingerprints of touches on our lives.

 

And That Will Be Heaven

and that will be heaven

and that will be heaven

at last   the first unclouded

seeing

         to stand like the sunflower

turned full face to the sun    drenched

with light     in the still centre

held     while the circling planets

hum with an utter joy

                        seeing and knowing

at last     in every particle

seen and known     and not turning

away

     never turning away

again

(Evangeline Paterson)

I shared in the funeral of my friend Stewart today, and was given the privilege of trying to explain the mystery that is the human life, precious, unique, surprising, the gift of presence, and communion, and inward companionship. The poem expresses the breathless wonder of our earthbound eyes seeing through the eyes of God to the face of God, and how in the end God will be all in all.

Amongst the words borrowed and used in the service were these from Julian of Norwich, Stewart's favourite theologian, and fro m Paul, who understood the limits of human thought and experience to comprehend the infinite mystery of eternal love, stooping to redeem and renew:

Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning.

And I saw quite clearly in this and in all,

that before God made us, he loved us,

which love was never slaked nor ever shall be.

And in this love he has done all his work,

and in this love he has made all things profitable to us.

And in this love our life is everlasting.

In our creation we had a beginning.

But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning.

And all this shall be seen in God without end.

In the end the beatific vision is to gaze with joyous wonder on the brilliant dazzling darkness that is the mystery of Love Divine:

When I was a child,

I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

Now we see things imperfectly,

like puzzling reflections in a mirror,

but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

All that I know now is partial and incomplete,

but then I will know everything completely,

just as God now knows me completely….

and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Yesterday one of my dearest friends died. We first met 28 years ago, and from our first meeting we sensed an affinity that is hard to explain and requires no explanation because friendship is gift, grace, goodness and gratitude all bundled together in a congruence of mind and heart.

In due course I'll say more. I mention my friend here because this is Buechner week, and I've been re-reading and re-thinking Buechner's wisdom. There is a spiritual family resemblance between my friend's and Buechner's take on God and the graced life. In 28 years we had countless conversations about the meaning of God, and love, and what it means to be human, and how to reach out to the other, and who Jesus is for us and our broken world today, and why blessing is the default setting of any heart openly receptive to the love of God that is always there before us, and behind us. When I read Buechner, I think he has been reading my friend's diary, overhearing many of those conversations, wishing he could interrupt and agree or disagree by saying, 'But have you looked at it this way?'

Here is Buechner on love, words that coincide exactly with my friend's theology, and mine.

Of all powers,

love is the most powerful and the most powerless.

It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer

that final and most impregnable stronghold

which is the human heart.

It is the most powerless

because it can do nothing except by consent.

To say that love is God is the most romantic idealism.

To say that God is love is either the last straw,

or the ultimate truth.

Wishful Thinking, 50-54

The photo was taken a stone's throw from my friend's house. An exuberant garden was one of his delights, probably because such profusion of colour, variety and vitality answered to much in his own inner world.