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Saturday was a full day. Up at 5 a.m. to deliver Andrew to Glasgow airport bound for the furthest extremities of England to carry on the fish management studies. Which meant back in the house at 6.00 a.m, bright eyed, feeling skeich, ("in high spirits, animated, daft", according to the Scots Dictionary!), and wondering what to do with a day that the weather woman said would be bright, cold and clear.

By the time it was daylight we were in the car and heading north west. The sunrise in the rear view mirror was a glowing orange advert for the new day, a dazzling copper gold diffused by low mist – the kind of effect Turner strove for but only now and then came close – which is saying a great deal. By the time we were crossing Erskine bridge the sunrise was a far too beautiful distraction from driving, so I only glimpsed it. Decided to go via Helensburgh, then Rhu (a favourite place forever associated in my mind with John Macleod Campbell, one of Scotlands greatest theologians).

Then up the loch. Gareloch's beauty is now permanently disfigured by miles of metallic link fence topped by razor wire, boasting our capacity to look after our weapons of mass destruction, and keep them safe – just in case we need to use them! The incongruity of such natural age-old beauty as those Scottish hillsides and glens, co-existing with state of the art weapons techonology, concealed and incalculably lethal, is a parable of our lostness; an admission that pushed far enough, our fears might prove more decisive than our hopefulness. For surely the decision to use nuclear weapons could only betray the distorted preference of those who would risk no future for any of us, rather than the future they don't want – a form of moral and political nihilism. Of course I know there are complex arguments justifying all this. But they aren't where I've chosen to stand – and they don't make me less outraged by what all that razor wire is for.  

But with that ugliness behind us, parts of the drive to Arrochar were sublime – the beauty of hills carpeted in shades of brown, green and those colours on Scottish hills that seem only to come alive in a bright winter sun, and all of this reflected on the mirror surface of the loch – disturbed at one point only by a seal breaking the surface to breathe, eat, bother the seagulls, or just admire the view. Inveraray as always was set against that kind of background that looks like a shortbread tin cliche – but which on a morning like this is the real thing. Brambles was open for business by 10.30 and we had near perfect coffee and the just out the oven rock bun, while I read the Herald Supplements. How hard does life get? 

So on slowly to Crianlarich, Ben More (Photo not mine – a freebie), and then the packed lunch simply looking while we ate. The drive back down was pleasant enough but by then the sun was going down, we were on the shadow side of the hills, and everybody else by this time was up and about and in a bigger hurry than me. So home by 3'ish.

Decided in the absence of a long walk I'd do the exercise bike for a while listening to my new CD of Beethoven's 7th Symphony.
I defy anyone to cycle slowly during the last two movements of this raucous celebration of dancing sound and orchestral frenzy. By the finale I was approaching knackered – but what a madly generous piece of music. No wonder some of the critics suggested Beethoven had had too much to drink when he composed the final movement. The argument between the brass and the strings is one of my favourite musical shouting matches.

The rest of the evening was good food, a read at the book, preceded by a long hot soak. All of which is a way of saying that the Sabbatical is now all but done. Back to College on Monday and ready to try to remember what it is I do there……!?

One or two of the blogs I visit have started exploring the fun of the Fib. Gave me the idea that it might be fun to have a Fib Fest of Bible Stories. Would help to keep your mind active and attentive to more serious things than the usual Christmas pastimes. If there are enough it would be fun to compile them into a Collection of Bible Fibs – to go alongside the Haiku Introduction to the NT. (If you missed this you can view it on the September 8 posting. )

Just to be clear, a Fib isn't an untruth! It's a poem of 20 syllables in which the number of
syllables in each line is the total of the two previous lines  – thus
1,1,2,3,5,8. You can of course continue upwards so that the next line is 13, then 21, after which it gets too silly I think. Fib poems are based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence and you can find a fuller explanation here. 

The rules for this Fib Fest of Bible Stories are simple and three:

The Fib

1. can only have 7 lines, on the pattern explained above, the last being 13 syllables.
2. must encapsulate a story from the Bible.
3. leave your Fib in the Comments Page.
   

To illustrate I've chosen two of my favourite stories. Try to choose a story no one else has attempted so far, so that we can have a wide range of biblical stories. A later Fib Fest may focus on one story, from the multi-perspectives of the contributors. Cumulatively that would be communal exegesis!

Oh and have fun – much in the best Bible stories makes for laughter, food for thought – even prayer!

Sarah

Sarah

laughed!

Why not?

So would you!

Old age child-bearing,

even when announced by angels

with straight faces; a cruel joke, or God’s promise. Which?

…..

Jacob

Dark

night.

Jacob

fast awake,

conned into wrestling

for his life, then hirpling into

the breaking dawn, learning to lean on integrity.

Today I'm blogging at Hopeful Imagination on "steadfastness in a spasmodic era". I wonder if instead of urgent activism, there are times when the church's steadfast stance on Kingdom values requires us to live in a place of necessary tension – between trustful waiting and impatient longing for justice.

Anyway – you may want to go look.

And no – my lost book isn't yet found by Easyjet. I feel a parable coming on about the lost book – not sure if it ends with angels in heaven rejoicing or gnashing of teeth.

During these sabbatical months I've quietly pursued my interest in conversations that might be possible between theology and poetry. I am interested in how the different approaches of these two disciplines can be mutually enriching to matters of life, truth and meaning. As a theologian-pastor I've long felt it important to listen to voices that speak in a different tone, from other perspectives, about life, truth and meaning. I know such pastorally responsive listening includes philosophy, the sciences, ethical and social reflection, and cultural voices in music, film and other media. But it's the particular discipline of poetry that currently fascinates me; and by discipline I mean human creativity bent to artistic purpose for the common good.

Now I recognise that such a view of poetry could become reductionist and utilitarian, a form of theological imperialism that wants to lay tribute on whatever can be used to theological advantage, without thought of poetry's right to self-determination. At the same time though, there are undoubtedly poets whose work flows from inner depths of experience that resonate profoundly and sympathetically with theological concerns. When theology makes comprehensive truth claims the poet more modestly demurs, "instead of saying that's true, I could say, there's truth in that…" This altogether more tentative approach to the world and our experience,is rooted in responsible and responsive openness to what is seen, listened to and cared about. This makes the poet an important reference point for theological convictions, which without pastoral rootedness and lived actuality ossify into truth claims lacking that purchase on human embodiedness that alone gives them credibility.

What does the systematic theologian make of Seamus Heaney's claim that the poet "enters and explores and exceeds himself by entering and exploring and exceeding the language"? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us – that is, the truth of God, embodied in the Word made flesh, entered, explored and exceeded all the languages of human life. Theology therefore exists as a process of articulation happily and necessarily incapable of ultimate success – likewise poetry. Both poetry and theology are only possible on the understanding that articulation of our ultimate concerns is proximate, provisional – because the perfect poem is not so much the one that pins truth down in final form, but the that which enables truth to be transformative of how we see the world and how therefore we henceforth and now live in the world. Here's Heaney again talking of what he had hoped for one of his poetry collections:

The poet's role, and the gift of her poetry, is to enable the reader to journey towards a clearer view of their place in the world, because they see the world differently. That might equally serve as a vitalising vision of a genuine pastoral theology, in which words about God are carefully shaped and spoken, where journeys are undertaken together, and when in the miracle of life and truth, human transformation is earthed in that grace ad infinitum which was embodied in the Word made flesh, and which is given as the light of every person.

"…the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not"
Our language neither comprehends by intellectual control, nor encompasses by systematic constructions, nor extinguishes by exhaustive explanation. From the poet the Christian theologian could learn intellectual and spiritual attitudes more in keeping with the source and style of Christian theology in the Incarnation. Kneeling before mystery, waiting in contemplative trustfulness, giving voice to questions of justice, meaning and faithful living, pushing outwards the boundaries of faith and understanding – and always in language not fully up to the task, but within which all stories must be told.

Walking through Buchanan Galleries (Glasgow's upmarket shopping mall), past the open stalls in the walkways. Ahead of me two assistants at a cosmetics and cream stall for men and women are accosting passers-by to come and try the various beauty products and processes for sale. The three people ahead of me were all stopped, invited and given an advertising flyer. I wasn't. I suppose they recognise a lost cause, eh?

Sitting in one of our favourite coffee haunts that does the most outrageously good meringues – so big I haven't risked one yet! The three women meeting up for their afternoon refills are asked for their order. Two of them go for cakes to die for – the third says, "Ah'll go fur the low calorie option. Kin ye gie me a meringue wi' less cream?" That would be called creative calorie accounting then?

In Borders I'm engrossed in the poetry section. A tall man in a leather jacket, iron filings for hair, says to no-one in particular and anyone who's listening, "Onybody heard of Edgar Allen Poe? He writes stuff". I asked him if it was for a present, and was it poetry or stories. It was stories he was after – his daughter was "intae that stuff". We headed to the fiction, arranged alphabetically, came to P and there was Poe's tales. "Ah don't usually come intae bookshops, ken. And there's too many books in here onyway." Decided not to disagree, since by then we were getting on fine.

Later, on the hunt for a fleecy throw of a particular colour for someone who'd asked, noticed Primark sells 8 pairs of cotton socks for £2. That's 25 pence a pair. Today they are accused of paying 7p an hour to workers in Bangladesh where there is 70% food inflation and the going rate of pay has stayed at 7p for 2 years (£19 per month). War on Want (see here) accuses Primark, Asda and Tesco of not matching previously given commitments to ethical standards of pay in developing countries. They of course have their answers – but am I the only one that thinks 8 pairs for £2 means somebody somewhere is getting a very bum deal? Who? Not us. Not Primark. So who?

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Yesterday the death was announced of the Reformed theologian William Placher. I first came across his work in his Narratives of a Vulnerable God, and The Domestication of Transcendence, two books which sought to recover the biblical paradox of a God who relates to creation as vulnerable yet transcendent, and in so doing correct those all too human urges to either foist on God our notions of power, or treat God as if that power could be co-opted for our projects and prejudices. His latest book The Triune God: An Essay in Post-Liberal Theology, explores the complexities and limitations for human beings of personal relationships, and seeks to ground them in the relatedness of Love and Being that is the Triune God of the Christian Gospel. The pastoral alertness of Placher's theology can be sensed in words like the following. They demonstrate why his death is a significant loss to the work of relating Christian theology to the realities of life in a post-most things world. How much our world has to learn, and to learn quickly, if we are to learn to live creatively with human difference:

The man who wrote like that, also spoke like that. In a sermon in College Chapel he urged, "The way we best show our love to the whole world is… to love with a particular passion some little part of it."

We need more, not fewer theologians like Bill Placher.

Went to an Advent and Carol service last night. It was highly liturgical, mainly choral music performed by a choir, rather than carols made accessible to a congregation. Delayed by a car accident on the way, we arrived just as the choir, complete with candles, had begun their introit. So we waited with the warmly welcoming door stewards, complete with torches as in the old cinema days, till the first hymn was being sung, during which we were able to slip in without disturbing the carefully choreographed theatre of light and darkness, sound and movement, words and music.

But we didn't have an order of service did we? All distributed before we arrived. And the service was intended to move without interruption so no announcements of hymns and numbers. In the absence of anyone looking upon us with compassion and sharing their Order of Service we were compelled to sneak looks over shoulders, glance sideways at other opened hymnbooks, play guessing games with the words to deduce the hymn we were supposed to be singing before the hymn ended, and while the rest of the congregation sung securely on. But in fact of the four hymns sung I only knew one anyway – and I thought I knew "hunners ae hymns".

All of which drove me to an inner reciting of the unhelpful and non-liturgical response, "It's worship Jim, but not as we know it". We did feel a bit left out. The unfamiliar place, sounds, content of the service made it feel alien, uncomfortable, almost like a different religion. That isn't an over-reaction – it's an attempt to find in our experience a parallel to a number of other people's experience when they come to our country and look for fellowship and welcome, and some reminders of home in Christian churches.

A week or so earlier at my own local church I'd had a greatly uplifting conversation with an African couple trying to get their heads round, and their hearts into, a form of worship which, compared to worship as they know it, lacked passion, colour, movement and sheer in your face God inspired emotion. They spoke so movingly of their sense of the strangeness of things, of wondering where the connection points are between worship as they knew it and worship as they now encountered it amongst people of another culture, country and Christian tradition. And all of that makes me wonder what it now means to say there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, because we are all one….. Yes I believe it. But how does that actually work? How in a globalised world can the Church, the Body of Jesus Christ embody forth that underlying unity that while expressed in almost endless diversity, nevertheless retains the face of our Lord recognisable to us all.

At that point I want to think about love, welcome, hospitality, and grace. Take grace for example. Our theology of grace as God's initiative of welcoming love, can surely guide us in our response to the strangers amongst us, and could be a model for Christians who are strangers amongst those of us who, for them, are "the others". I mean initiative that reaches out in friendship. The grace that goes before, that speaks first, that dissolves cultural and emotional barriers by an open and vulnerable acceptance, that enables us to look generously on other people's ways of telling God of their love and worship, or which looks with understanding and a willingness to accommodate the hesitations and confusion of those not familiar with our own ways. Grace which looks the other in the eye, smiles to convey the face of welcome, and looks on the other as a Charis, a gift of presence from God.

All of this connects with some of my planned advent reading. I'd already decided to read several novels located in cultures other than the one I know best, and from perspectives not only different, but possibly hostile to that worldview with which I have grown up. Given the journey of the Magi, the slaughter of the innocents, and the flight to Egypt, the Advent story opens many windows on a world where difference and otherness too easily degenerate into fear, violence and hatred. So as a way of critically exploring and enhancing my own openness, I'll be reading stories that view the world differently, and try to appreciate the difficulties and opportunities of encounter in a world uneasy with otherness.  The four novels are:

A Thousand Splendid Suns,by Khaled Hosseini

The Islamist, by Ed Hussain

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid

The Road Home, Rose Tremain

Blogging elsewhere today. I've just posted a report on the first meeting of the Scottish Baptist Theological Society which took place last night. Around 20 of us gathered to hear Dr Stephen Holmes, Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the University of St Andrews, deliver the inaugural lecture: Baptists and the Authority of Scripture. You can find it here at the College Blog. 

Not everyone is into this kind of thing though. So here's a poem from U A Fanthorpe (a poet my friend Kate pushed me towards)

We got our first two Christmas cards this week – one from Australia and one from nearer. Years ago I inadvertently threw away a Christmas card I meant to keep. I so wish I hadn't been so careless…

It was made by Christian refugees caught up in the conflict that tore the heart out of Beirut. The picture was of a woman holding her baby, standing in a doorway at night, illumined from behind by a large bright star. Her shadow fell forward in the shape of a cross, as her two arms, half open holding the child, and her upright but tired body, intersected in the light, and cast history forward.

This Sunday is Advent – my favourite liturgical season. Those who pass by this blog – what are you planning to read / listen to?

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm not a Jonathan Ross fan. So please note that the book pictured here is by one Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven: Yale, 2001). This book is utterly absorbing because based on original research, with masses of material organised around an overall theme, and then written with verve and an evangelistic zeal to persuade. Rose has unearthed and illustrated the significance of the working class autodidact – the self taught scholar whose learning is the result of self-motivation towards improvement and a latent yet persistent intelligence and hunger for knowledge that will not be frustrated by being denied social opportunity.

Books about reading are irresistible to the long confirmed and happily resigned to their personal fate bibliophile. But when such a book is also a window on social development and human aspiration, and in addition acts as a catalyst for recalling my personal memories and reinforcing some of my least negotiable political convictions, then it is given a space on the shelf reserved for books to be read straight through, without the diversion of anything else being read at the same time. This is a book for those drizzly, dreich weekends, to be read while fortified by the good things of life. Not piecemeal chapter a day lift and lay, but wholesale undiverted attention.

Rose explains and illustrates why it is that reading and learning has been such a a formative human activity these past couple of centuries. reading him you learn the importance of the Everyman Library, consider the significance of facts like this – Scottish weavers were amongst the most literate citizens of 18th and 19th C Scotland; (David Livingstone wasn't the only one who propped latin books on his weaver's beam). No wonder the Scottish Lowlands had 'one of the highest literary levels in the world in the late 18th century', creating a community in which the Waverley Novels and the poetry of Byron and Moore fired the minds and imagination of thousands of day labourers. And then there was John Christie 'the literary shepherd', who amassed a library of 370 volumes which included complete sets of the Rambler, Spectator and Tatler, and who was one of an entire culture of self-taught agricultural workers who used their isolation in the bothy to read. And much more of the same. 

But Jones is pursuing an even bigger goal – he is exploring how working folk read – read texts of all kinds, including books, newspapers, lectures, sermons, plays, films, radio broadcasts. In other words this is a book about how people excluded from elitist education, nevertheless learned for themselves how to read the world. This is a history of working class independent hermeneutics, in which Rose provides "an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves". But who did, and with remarkable social and historical consequences.

My two grandfathers could remember older Lanarkshire miners in Shotts, early in the Twentieth Century discussing the atonement, socialism and other "intellectual" questions at the coal face, while eating their "pieces".* And my grandmother, the wife of a miner, (who had full sets of Dickens, Scott, Dumas, and several editions of Burns), knew as much about the Waverley novels, the social context of Walter Scott, and was as aware of the distortions caused by such historical romanticising of Scotland's history as any academic expert of her own time. Of my four grandparents, she is probably most responsible for that wonderful gene that makes a love of reading hereditary!

* A "piece" in Scotland refers to the home made packed food workers took to their work. And a "play piece" the food taken to school in the absence of crisps, chocolate and other unheard of extravagances!

This post is for the benefit of Lynn "who works with children", recently decanted to Edinburgh, and who visits this blog and occasionally comments. During our visit to Cornwall Sheila and I visited Penlee House in Penzance and in the art gallery I was fascinated by this picture. It is of an early Sunday school trip, and is an important and early piece of social documentation of what became for many years a highlight of children's lives.

The painting is called "The Sunday School Treat", and the artist was W H Y Titcomb, one of the Newry school of Cornish artists who flourished in the late Victorian period. This painting shows how Sunday School treats were done on the Cornish coast and estuaries. Despite the unfashionable subject matter some of Titcomb's best paintings document religious themes such as Primtive Methodist prayer meetings, pastoral care of the dying, and the prayer and devotions of the Cornish fishermen. Incidentally Thomas Cook started his travel business by organising day trips on trains (with food included) for Sunday Schools and Temperance gatherings.

Now Lynn – with all the health and safety, risk assessment, child protection and other essential legislative safeguards, I don't suppose we're ever likely to see the likes of these outings again. Anyway – it's so idyllic I thought I'd share it to encourage you and and all those whose ministry and vocational gifts are poured into the high energy demands of working with children. I reckon Jesus probably put such ministry into the higher echelons of good long term Kingdom building.