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"The Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre church calling itself a "New Testament, Charismatic,
Non-Denominational Church," says it will go ahead with the torching of
the Koran on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 2001 attacks
against the United States. Gainesville authorities have said that will
contravene fire safety rules."

See here for more on this astonishing and dangerous nonsense from a group who dare to claim their behaviour has any conceivable connection with New Testament Christianity.

Their proposed actions have not the remotest congruence with the Holy Spirit whose charismata does not include hatred and incitement

Nor can their proposed actions carry even the most tenuously, tortuously, tediously argued iota of justification in the teaching and person of Jesus, whose clear command is (if they MUST name Muslim people as enemies), "Love your enemies!" 

Burning the sacred text of another tradition is thinkable for so called Christians only if:

• they have already disposed of the Sermon on the Mount as a defining text of the actions and dispositions that reflect the Living Christ
• and only if they act in direct contravention to all that the cross stands for as the reconciling act of God in Christ
• and only if they reject the truth of the resurrection – which is that life not death, love not hate, light not darkness, hope not despair, peace not violence, are the true values of the Kingdom of God, and the convictional commitments by which Christians live.

The US Government, and whole swathes of Amercican people have rightly and strongly condemned the plan, and called on the church not to proceed. In addition to all the other arguments and reasoned protests, one further point. When Jesus said love your enemies he was referring to those we considered enemies or who hated us. In my view, and my reading of the gospels, the Christian response to people of other faiths can never be hatred, and can never use the vocabulary of enmity, not if we are followers of Jesus. The idea that the One who took the scroll of the law to preach the Nazareth Manifesto, can be co-opted as a burner of the sacred book of another faith tradition is ludicrous, the image it conjures, grotesque, the religious message it sends, dis-graceful.

The name of the Church planning to burn the Koran – mark it well – The Dove World Outreach Centre. The picture below shows what real doves are about.

Moltmann at his rhetoriocal best:

So we may say that jesus' death on the cross was solitary, and exclusively his death, but his raising from the dead is inclusive, open to the world, and embraces the universe, an event not merely human and historical but cosmic too: the beginning of the new creation of all things.

With the overcoming of the disciples' crucified hope for the future and the shaken confidence in death of the women at the tomb, the early Christian belief in the resurrection acted in the ancient world like an explosion og hearts and sense. It attacked with elemental force 'the powers iof this world': the power of sin, the inescapability of death, and the hopelessness of hell. The risen Christ became the power of protest against these godless and inhumane forces.

Jurgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness Arise! (London: SCM, 2010) page 55

Question: Why does this 254 page paperback book cost £25 from SCM, and the soon to be published Divine Humanity by David Brown (on Kenosis) costs £50 paperback for 256 pages. Do the tow ectra pages cost £12.50 each??? I am emailing SCM about this 🙁

Much of my study time just now is spent preparing a keynote theological address for a gathering of ministers. I've long been persuaded that kenosis is an essential theological category for understanding the nature of Divine love. If God is revealed in Jesus, and God's love is Christ-like, then kenosis far from being a marginal sidelight, is the shining centre of the love of God incarnate in human life, crucified for a broken world, and resurrected in a power that remakes creation. The Colossian Christ of chapter 1 is the same Kenotic Christ of Philippians 2 and the same exalted Christ of Revelation 5,the lamb slain in the midst of the throne. The title is " 'This is love's prerogative, to give, and give, and give.' Trinitarian Kenosis as a Model of Ministry."

I fully recognise kenosis is a contested idea, especially if it is made the primary interpretive category in Christology. But whether such primacy is claimed or not, kenosis seems to me indispensable as a way of exploring what we mean when we talk of the love of God. I am interested that there is now considerable research activity around the theme – Bruce McCormack, David Brown and Paul Fiddes in systematic theology, Michael Gorman and M S Park in New Testament, Paul Fiddes and Timothy Herbert in pastoral theology. (By the way, David Brown's volume due out in a month or two is an SCM paperback – priced £50 – from this we conclude that kenosis is expensive, or at least to buy this book you need a kenotic (self-emptying) credit card!!!)

My own encounter with kenotic theology at its most persuasive is in the seminal work of W H Vanstone, Love's endeavor, Love's Expense – in 1977 I paid £2.95 (please note SCM) for this slim book that is worth its weight in platinum. I've given it as a gift almost enough times to buy David Brown's SCM volume. It has shaped and inspired and energised and quality tested my ministry from the start. I don't read it uncritically, but its central thesis about the nature of love as precarious, with no guaranteed outcomes, instinctively investing itself in the good of the other, as that in God which seeks the response of relational love, seems to me to be congruent with a Gospel of love as self-giving, conciliatory and transformative.

What I'm trying to do is explore kenosis as that in the love of God that is evident in the intra-trinitarian life of God. Moltmann of course is a major influence here – but so is Michael Gorman more recently, where kenosis is linked to the cruciform shape of divine love. But there are other thinkers – and just as important there are stories of human loving and caring that are themselves primary evidence that far from being a demanding passion ever tempted to selfishness, love is defined more by indefatigable goodwill, persistent kindness, self-expending energy for the other, self-donating in emotional gift, self-emptying not as a habit of self-negation, but as a pouring out of ourselves into the lives and blessing of others. In that sense kenosis isn't a contested theological concept – but an ideal of ministry in which the basin and the towel, the table and the cup, the open arms and outstretched hands of welcome, express that finest of book titles, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense.

Well into enjoyment week – varied experiences of en-joy-ment include, a punnet of opal plums (the Victorias aren't in the shops yet), making the least happy member of staff in a place I often go, smile; listening to the new Ennio Morricone double CD while sitting in traffic at roadworks; an exchange of emails about me being responsible for the "divinity" at the University, opening a book packagewhich is a common  occurence that never loses  the pleasure, oh and when I asked for soup at lunch in the wee place we go to, and was told there was none left, I immediately ordered a choc-chip muffin instead, and was given a lecture on healthy eating and aksed wouldn't I prefer a pizza….wouldn't I just!

Off to enjoy myself …… the picture above, captions please…..
 

I'm a stationery mug.

Not a stationary mug, i.e. someone who is both daft and immobile.

No. A stationery mug, i.e. a liker of all the things you write with and write on.

Sure. The computer, the printer and Microsoft Word produce high quality documents with a little help from my fingetips – but I still like to write some things, holding a pen or pencil or ink brush, physically forming the words, ink flowing from somewhere deep within the mind, through hand and pen, and leaving a trail of meaning on the paper.

I own an expensive Waterman fountain pen which I use to write special letters and cards.

I own an equally expensive Waterman ballpoint pen to impress others when I am attending those committees where others tap away at various electronic artefacts, for my part preferring a well crafted lacquered pen like the unrepentant Luddite I occasionally am.

When it comes to what you write on, I like notebooks – especially A5 notebooks.

So like the stationery mug I am, I was browsing in The Works and came across cloth covered, finely decorated, A5 notebooks with good quality paper, a couple of hundred pages, and at a ridiculous remainder price.

In the big bookshops and other upmarket places that sell notebooks to the Journal writing public, you'd pay nearer £10 or more for a stitched quality notebook like these.

So. £2.99 each.

Stationery mug here buys 3 – one for my study desk in Westhill – one for my study desk at College, and one to replace whichever of these two gets filled first.

And what gets written in them? Some of the stuff that eventually makes its way into Living Wittily; plus other footnotes and quotes from whatever is being read; ideas as they form slowly, take and then change shape, and evolve into understanding; and those frequent fleeting gifts of thought that unless written down are like the sparrow in the Celtic legend, that flies in one end of the barn and flies out the other, and is gone, its vanishing intimating the brevity of life!

For years I've kept different kinds of what used to be called a Commonplace Book, a repository of what at different times has seemed apt, important, funny, significant, worth attending to, and to keep safe whatever is ( to coin a clumsy word) shareable, until the time comes to share it. Off to note down a thought I just had…..

The morning started with a large plate of cereal – muesli and crunchy nut cornflakes, healthy and not so healthy balancing each other:) Then a walk up Glen Dye  – not too long but far enough; and saw a golden eagle doing the lunch patrol, a sight always worth a long walk. Back in time to creep into Old Aberdeen bookshop and browse for a while amongst the shelves. And came away with three books, which will occupy around three inches of shelf space. Yes. I've started counting the inches and feet of shelving needed to home my books. But these ones are worth the space.

This is one of the best books on R S Thomas – recommended highly by that unapologetic evangelist for all things RST, Chris over on Blethers – see sidebar for the link.

The poetry of Thomas is amongst the most poignant and perceptive formulations of those unsettling and inevitable questions about faith, God and ourselves that human life and circumstance can push at us. It is poetry that can be tender and angry, wistful and defiant, playful and cynical, hopeful and resigned, gentle and harsh – but the darker wing of these four pairs tends to dominate. And that gives his poetry an authority and credibility for those who have walked through valleys of deep darkness, those who have braved disappointment without inner capitulation to self pity, and those for whom God is love, but love that is tough, at times mystifyingly so.

Maggie Fergusson's biography of George Mackay Brown has been on my get it list for a while. Too busy with other things, and reading other stuff. But mint hardback for a quarter of the new price means it now dispalces other holiday reading plans.

Brown's poetry is cherished by those who read him and stay with him. I remember first reading  "Song for St Magnus", written in 1993, and asking the Orkney saint to intercede for the women of Bosnia and Somalia. At the time a friend in our church had known Brown as a personal friend while working in the second hand bookshop around which he often lingered. She and Charlie Senior (Mentioned often in this book) had befriended Brown, and now and again we read his poetry together when life had become a bit much for her. In the Song of St Magnus the poet asks for priests:

In this time of hate

   (Never such hate and anger over the earth)

May they light candles at their altars

This day and all days,

    Till history is steeped in light.

And while we are talking about poets and their poems, this book by R F Capon is a celebrated exploration of Jesus' parables. I have no hesitation whatsoever in describing Jesus as a poet – both in his use of words, in parable and story, and in the way his own life enacted human experience with attractive persuasion, so that words and actions came together in a natural rhythm, a harmony of the spoken and the demonstrably real.

One of the best blurbs I've read adorns the back of this book:

"Capon releases the parables out of their right-handed prison and frees them into the land of left handed mystery where they belong. He reminds us that these parables are not theological propositions calling for analysis or requiring systems of thought. They are pictures, images, poetry – left handed communication calling for faith and demanding obedience." Jesus the poet – in words and life – he is the picture, the image, the poetry, of God. A thought that Paul had long before me – Colossians 1.15, now there's a poem! And Luke 15 – there's another one!!

The whole creation speaks thy praise

that so our soul rises

out of its mortal weariness

unto Thee,

helped upward by the things

Thou hast made

and passing beyond them

unto Thee

who hast wonderfully made them:

and there refreshment is,

and strength unending,

St Augustine, Confessions Trans F J Sheed.

Not long after Sheila and i got married, a salesman came to our door, and when I answered he asked, "Is your mother in son?"

Last night I went to a concert which was pay at the door, and was assumed to be a Senior concession.

So what happened between these two incidents of mistaken age. Quite a lot!

Anyway. Said concert was a performance by the National Youth Strings Academy with a programme of Coreli's Concerto Grosso, Bartok's Roumanian Dances, and Shostakovich's Sinfonia for Strings and Orchestra. The lead violinist was superb. During the Shostakovich piece she held the music together during the long sustained argument between her violin and the rest of the ensemble. The tension built up to the point where you are sure she will falter, the note will go flat, or her arm will get tired and the bow wobble – no chance – this was a brilliant performance by a group of young people who simply dived into the scores and didn't drown. And what they needed in mature experience and long honed skill, they made up in energy, gift and a compelling sense of thereness, right at the heart of the music. Loved it. 

The village of Kilfenora is famous for more than the filming of Father Ted during the mid 1990's. The name means Church of the Fertile Hillside, and within the ruined but covered nave there are several very fine carved stone crosses. Ireland is a land in which the geography and topography is littered with historical artefacts, and that history is demonstrably Celtic and Christian. Long before the sectarian divide which betrays the spiritual tragedy and the ethical paradox of Christians engaged in reciprocal hatred and mutual mistrust, and at times foments bloody violence in the name of God or land, long before that, there were deep traditions of faith, richly textured stories of Christian spirituality, mystical and mysterious figures whose lives were touched with fear and awe and a longing to draw near to God.

Amongst the landmark achievements of Celtic Christianity are the standing crosses, stone carved witnesses to the Gospel, centuries old reminders of a faith that is not easily erased, forgotten or ignored. And whatever else our postmodern hunger for relevance and meaning might question, these stone crosses silently bear testimony to a faith that can survive questions because our deepest human answers fall short of its own eternal realities. Creation, incarnation, atonement, resurrection; Father, Son and Spirit; sin, forgiveness, reconciliation; church, sacrament, service; peace, justice, joy; faith, love and hope. So standing for a while gazing at these larger than life stone crosses, I felt I was incorporated into something vaster than my personal experience of God, immensely wider than my own denominational tradition, defiant of all theology that makes claims of certainty locked into human words, and deeply rooted in a faithful history of dicipleship that our postmodern impatience might fail to understand, and again pay the price.

Ancient celtic cross,

silent witness to Love, carved

in grey weathered stone.