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Every detective story is a proof of God's existence.

When everything is suffused with reasons, that's the presence of God. Everything ought to be (and is) luminous with reasons. – although these are often not so easy to figure out. After all, everything flows from one single intelligent Creator. If one may say so, God knew what He was doing.

Still we have to recognise: God hates to be too obvious about things. He writes pretty darn good mysteries into almost everything He does. Our fun lies in the detection. Who would be attracted to God if He didn't drop a hint, or plainly plant a clue? And then cover it up again? We have to work for it. Use our brains a little. Keep pursuing the hidden God. God is pursuing us, and wants us to be adults. Not wimps. But we keep running from him…

I fled him, down the nights and down the days,

I fled him, down the arches of the years;

I fled him, down the labyrithine ways

Of my own mind.

God has been pursuing us. He has been flirting with us. He has been giving us all the hints we will ever need. It is okay to stop and let Him catch us.

No One Sees God. The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers, Michael Novak, (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 198-99.

This is popular philosophy, and no wonder it's popular. God the flirt! Life as a detective story! A hint dropping Deity! And if he may say so, "God knew what he was doing"

Quite so!

"And the Word became flesh and took up residence amongst us, and we gazed on His glory…"

The Absolute becomes relative. Absolutely! And that too is Advent.

(Blake's etching of the Trinity, above, is a beautiful contrast to our words – the embrace of love, the hovering comforter, the eternal communion of willing surrender and redeeming grace, the planted clue of divine unselfishness).

" To be sovereign of the universe is no great matter to God…We myst keep always before our eyes that vision of Lady Julian's in which God carried in His hand a little object like a nut, and that nut was "all that is made". God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them"

C S Lewis, The Four Loves, ch. 6

Yes, and having loved such creatures into existence, God proves that they are not superfluous. Advent is the evidence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A mid afternoon blizzard courtesy of Siberia and the North Sea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our patio table on Saturday….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then on Sunday morning pictured from the warmth of the living room.

And then there's me, looking suitably satisfied but knowing that the next snowfall will mean a repeat exercise. Exercise being the operative word because this beats an exercise bike for fun, aerobics and general physical work.

Till the snow is finished, clearing it seems futile, but it's a way of trying to pretend we can deal with whatever the world throws at us. An exercise in futilityperhaps, human pride maybe, and male delusion certainly!

A human being has not only a body but also a face. A face cannot be grafted or interchanged. A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning? We are all able to see it, and are all able to describe it. Is it not a strange marvel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two faces are alike? And that no face remains quite the same for more than an instant? The most exposed part of the body, it is the least describable, a synonym for an incarnation of uniqueness. Can we look at a face as if it were a commonplace?

A J Heschel, Who is Man? (Stanford University Press, 1965), pages 38-9. 

Isn't it wonderful irony that Heschel had one of the most unforgettable physiognomies of his generation? The best pictures of him show that same ironic but compassionate gaze on a world at once foolish and divinely loved. Anyway, my favourite Jewish author has been away too long from this blog.

Here he is again, compassionate and not ironic but eirenic, and he mentions the face as that universal means of recognition, by which we acknowledge each others' humanity. You see why I love this man?

The Psalmist's great joy is in proclaiming : "Truth and mercy have met together" ( Ps. 85:11 ). Yet so frequently faith and the lack of mercy enter a union, out of which bigotry is bom, the presumption that my faith, my motivation, is pure and holy, while the faith of those who differ in creed - even those in my own community - is impure and unholy. How can we be cured of bigotry, presumption, and the foolishness of believing that we have been triumphant while we have all been defeated ?

      Is it not clear that in spite of fundamental disagreements there is a convergence of some of our commitments, of some of our views, tasks we have in common, evils we must fight together, goals we share, a predicament afflicting us all ?

      On what basis do we people of different religious commitments meet one another ?

      First and foremost we meet as human beings who have so much in common : a heart, a face, a voice, the presence of a soul, fears, hope, the ability to trust, a capacity for compassion and understanding, the kinship of being human. My first task in every encounter is to comprehend the personhood of the human being I face, to sense the kinship of being human, solidarity of being.

From "No Religion is an Island". Read the whole lecture here

Not the voice but the choice,

not the clarity but the charity,

not the harp but the heart,

that makes music in the ear of God.

Let your tongue reflect your thoughts,

and your thoughts be in tune with God.

16th century inscription in the church of San Damiano, Assisi,  

Stanley Hauerwas is as honest as the day is long in his theological memoir, Hannah's Child. The book is littered with insights that only make sense because they emerge from a life on which Hauerwas has reflected with honesty and reported with candour. And there are moments of delightful humanity, when Hauerwas contradicts the popular version of his personality as a truculent Texan of theological self-deprecating genius. Here's one of them:

I discovered the gift of friendship. Indeed I discovered I had a gift for friendship. I love and trust people. My love and trust may at times be unwise, but I prefer the risk. I am not stupid. I do not like fools or pretension. But I love interesting, complex and even difficult people. Thank God, they often love me.

I do not think that questions concerning the truth of Christian convictions can be isolated from what is necessary to sustain friendships that are truthful. I am not suggesting that Christians can be friends only with other Christians. Some of my most cherished friends are with non-Christians. Rather I am suggesting that if what it means to be a Christian is compelling and true, then such truthfulness will be manifest and tested through friendship.

See! Self deprecating genius. That is as good a description of what friendship is as I've come across, and one which says well where I am myself when it comes to friendliness as a disposition towards others that is life enriching.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is one of the spiritual treasures of contemporary Britain. Ever since his Reith lectures on The Persistence of Faith I've read and listened and learned from this thoughtful interlocutor to the cultural arguments of our times. In one of his radio broadcasts he tells a story and draws clear lessons – as good teachers do, the narrative telling of truth.

"The Hasidic Rabbi asked his disciples "Where does God live?"

They were stunned by the strangeness of the question. "What does the rabbi mean?, 'Where does God live?' "Where does God not live? Surely we are taught that there is no place devoid of his presence. He fills the heavens and the earth."

"No", said the rabbi. "You have not understood. God lives where we let him in.

That story has always seemed to me more profound than many learned volumes of theology. God is there, but only when we search. He teaches, but only when we are ready to learn. He has always spoken, but we have not always listened. The question is never "Where is God?" It is always, "Where are we?" The problem of faith is not God, but human beings. The central task of religion is to create an opening in the soul."

Throughout the writings of Jonathan Sacks I hear echoes of that other great Jewish teacher, A J Heschel. It isn't that Sacks copies or quotes Heschel – it may not even be that he is all that familiar with Heschel's writing, though I suspect he is. But the spiritual honesty, the intellectual humility, the gentle confidence in the reality of God, the unswerving quest of the prophet for truth and integrity of life, and the instinct for prayer and devotion as essential human activities – these are held in common by Sacks, Heschel and those others who take the quest for God as the defining priority of the religious life and who recognise too that God is in quest of each of us.

In his book Prophecy and Discernment R W L Moberly describes in unmistakably kenotic terms the nature and practice of Christian existence.

Because his message is "Jesus Christ is Lord", its corollary is that Paul's role entails not mastery over others, but rather service of them…to proclaim the lordship of Christ entails a revaluation of human priorities in the way of Christ, the renunication of self-will and self-aggrandizement and the embrace of self-emptying and self-giving for the welfare of others. This is not only possible for Paul because he has "seen the light" – the light of God's glory revealed in the person of Jesus; it is this knowledge of God that determines Paul's priorities.

Quoted in New Perspectives for Evangelical Theology.Engaging with God, Scripture and the World, Ed. Tom Greggs, London, Routledge, 2010.

My feeling is still that much breast beating rhetoric about servant leadership never quite engages with those other psychological drives more satisfied by being the leader, and more  emotionally content with discourse of authority, envisioning, initiating and the other euphemisms for having a sense of power. I'm not against power – it exists and has to be managed. But the questions will always be – who has power – how is power exercised – what quailifies, constrains, governs power? And in Jesus' case it was love. So when leadership is discussed, described, embodied, let's use the discourse of love for others rather than the discourse of authority over others. Hmmph!

 

Before an Icon

Before an Icon

The unbeliever is challenged

The intellectual is lost for words

The theologian feels small

The artist's heart is filled with joy

The contemplative finds fresh inspiration

Those who thought they were strong are disarmed

The child throws wide its arms, and smiles.

Anon.

 

Oh my goodness!  If as Brutus claims,

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune", 

then  there is also

"a click in the affairs of men

which taken at the Amazon checkout leads on to spending a fortune!"

Which I now confess freely if a tad expensively, I have done. For a year or so I've flirted with the idea of buying the definitive set of books on Scottish Birds. The recent post about the yellowhammer's egg is just one incident in a lifetime interest in Scottish ornithology. No big deal, never made it a hobby, just always interested, always looking, gathering information, finding out about this one and that. But I was brought up listening early morning to skylarks, walking home at dusk listening to the hunted cry of the curlew, dodging the dive-bombing of hundreds of peewits (lapwings), knowing the difference between a wren and a goldcrest, fascinated by the flight of the pied wagtail, mesmerised by flocks of starlings doing their choreographic miracles before roosting in the haysheds, astonished at the kestrel defying gravity by simply facing the wind and angling its wings, excited by the wirring of a sinpes wings as it banked towards the ground, scared witless by the big owl that flew out of the farm barn one evening we were playing in the loft, and so well able to identify by call or appearance most of the birds that inhabit our wee country.

The books are a work of art. Forget coffee table books – these are dining table books. You need space on table or floor to open them. The illustrations are nearly all photographs by Scottish Ornithologists, the text is written in flowing narrative, the information is comprehensive, authoritative and up to date. But most of all they are simply sumptuous repositories of science, wisdom, testimony and required data to understand, appreciate, care about and care for some or the most beautiful creatures in our country. Since my childhood a large number of species have been decimated by the way we've lived and sprawled across the land. But there are still encounters that evoke wonder, moments of sheer magic, unlooked for surprises all over the place.

This blog has always been a place where great books are appreciated. And while much of the best reading of my life has been theology, there's always been for me the needed balance of books that broaden out into the wider avanues of our experience. Biography, history, good fiction, poetry – and natural history. These two large volumes will simply become part of our living room furniture – because expensive as they are – they could have cost 3 times as much and they'd still be a bargain – but they are to be looked at, loved, studied, browsed, handled, shaped by constant handling so that they don't stay nearly new books but begin to show signs of being used, referred to, plundered and gazed at.