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I was in Aberdeen a couple of years ago when Jean Vanier and Stanley Hauerwas were jointly leading a conference exploring contrasting ways of caring for each other gently in a violent world. (The photo is its own contrast in the gentle listener and the passionate talker!) Hauerwas can sometimes be hard to read – not only because of what he says, but at times he is obtuse, hard to follow, and seems to be pursuing an iniosyncratic bee in his bonnet rather than saying plainly what is so, what needs fixing and why. But most of the time I recognise the angry prophet, the angular debater on philosophy, ethics and theology, getting stuck in to those who live heedless of others, their competitive ways raising issues of human vulnerability, social justice, power-mongering and the idolatry of the bottom line in hard cash terms. Both aspects of Hauerwasian theology were on show at Aberdeen – parts of the lecture that were frustratingly blurred, and times when his meaning was unambiguous. The following two quotations about how hard it is to listen, I heard him say, and they show why Hauerwas remains an important voice himself worth listening to:

"I am an academic, and academics are notoriously bad listeners. We always think we know what people are going to say before they say it, and we have a response to what we thought they would say in spite of what they may actually have said. To learn to listen well, it turns out, may require learning to be a gentle person." 

"I want to remain the academic who can pretend to defend those with mental disabilities by being more articulate than those I am criticizing. I want to be a warrior on behalf of L'Arche,* doing battle against the politics that threaten to destroy these gentle communities. Jean of course, is no less a warrior. But where I see an enemy to be defeated, he sees a wound that needs to be healed. That's a deep difference."

Hauerwas and Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World, (IVP, 2008), 79, 80.

* L'Arche is a netwrok of communities for supported and shared living, that began in the 1960s in Troisly, France and is now a global network providing living space in community for those of different abilities. The work of Jean Vanier is in my view a singular expression of Christlike accompaniment and care that values the human person in radically compassionate terms. Sometime soon I am going to do a Jean Vanier week.

This from AOL News, a lesson in missiology that applies not only to the Church of England, but has considerable relvance to midlle class, well resourced, respectably comfortable evangelicalism of varied flavours.

"The Church of England needs to shed its middle
class "Marks and Spencer"-only image in order to attract the Asda and
Aldi generation of worshippers, a senior bishop has warned.
The Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Reading,
spoke of his sense of frustration at the view that the Church of
England was the "Marks and Spencer" option only, for the highly
educated or "suited and booted".
Jesus would just as likely have shopped at Asda and Aldi as at Marks and Spencer, he said."

He said: "Even today I meet people who think
you have to be highly educated or suited and booted to be a person who
goes to church. That's so frustrating. How did it come to this, that we
have become known as just the Marks and Spencer option when in our
heart of hearts we know that Jesus would just as likely be in the queue
at Asda or Aldi?"

"Jesus got us started with church simply. Like this – sitting us down
in groups on the grass and telling simple stories. Not simplistic. But
certainly not complicated. All his first disciples were down-to-earth
people who wanted to know what life was all about."

Of course like all generalisations it
sounds a bit unfair; and like all rhetorical overstatements it sounds
simplistic. But I didn't find it easy to shut the good Bishop up with a
good put down – even if I do sometimes shop at Aldi's and Lidl's
myself.

I do wonder about the fairness of my own title for this post though –
because the use of the word type is itself a blunt instrument, and act of stereo-typing. Why
assume only the highly educated go to M&S? And what evidence that
Asda shoppers don't have university Degrees? Still. The Bishop is not
wrong about the predominant impression that Christianity is
respectable, comfortable, reliably safe, for the quite well resourced, and by and
large attracts a better class of, a more respectable type of, a more
well-spoken kind of, well, person.

Whereas the inclusive Gospel of
Christ wants the Church to declare and demonstrate that there is
neither M&S nor Aldi's, John Lewis nor Primark, Sainsbury's or Lidl
– in the eyes of the God made known in Christ Jesus, all are to be equally loved, valued and welcomed. The missional challenge for the church then, whatever the denominational flavour, is to create a community in Christ where the least important distinction between us is where we shop.
And where the most important distinctive is to embody the indiscriminate love of God.  

Fifty years ago Dag Hammarskjold observed with worldly wise perceptiveness that in the modern world the road to holiness lies through the world of action. And he was doing so at the same time as Thomas Merton was drawing seekers of God from the hyper-activity of contemporary life to the contemplative search for silence, solitude and the true self. Action and contemplation – not opposites, but forms of being that are intrinsically human and without which our humanity is diminished, our spirituality thrown out of balance and our Christian obedience reduced to monochrome. Parker Palmer has done important work on human fulfilment and lifelong learning as a life enhancing commitment. His writing often reads like a spirituality of pragamatic outward looking action, commending a lifestyle in which energy, inter-relationship, noise, creativity and work, can be as fulfilling as silence, solitude and retreat. In one book he brings as usual, an important balance to all of this.

People caught in the gap between monastic values and the demands of the active life sometimes simply abandon the spiritual quest. And people who follow a spirituality that does not always respect the energies of action are sometimes led into passivity and withdrawal, into a diminishment of their opwn spirits.

in the spiritual literature of our time, it is not difficult to find the world of action portrayed as an arena of ego and power, while the world of contemplation is pictured as a realm of light and grace. I have often read for example, that the treasure of "true self" can be found as we draw back from active life and enter into contemplative prayer. Less often have I read that this treasure can be found in our struggles to work, create, and care in the world of action.

Parker Palmer, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990) p. 2.

My guess is that often the spirituality we settle for is a damaging dualism between what we think of as spiritual and all the other stuff. The point is, all the other stuff is the bulk of what we have to do to live life at all. Work, family, other people; the mobile, the laptop, the car; shopping, home-keeping, travelling; caring for friends, pets and ourselves. And God is in it all, not just the overtly intentional spiritual stuff.

And what's more, God can be just as quickly found, and more deeply encountered, not in the retreat and the deep journey into ourselves, but in the outward journey of work, people, circumstance and happening, in the way we drive, the use of our computer, the texts we send, the meals we cook, the bills we pay, the conversation at the checkout, the blether with the neighbour, the walk with the dog, the train journey and the birthday party. None of these get much mention in the more intense worship songs, in the list of spiritual disciplines or prayer techniques. But for followers of Jesus, the Word made flesh, the life of the body with its energy and capacity to work and transform the world, is a life which seeks to incarnate the love of God, suffusing life with the energy and creative action of the God in whose image we are ourselves made. And in the loving of God in all our activity, something deeply sacramental happens, so that all this ordinary stuff stops being a means to an end and becomes a means of grace. Well, anyway, that's what I think! And the new term starts tomorrow and in the busyness of it, God will be found, and will find us.

(The photo above is of a one hundred year old gardener who fully intends to harvest the vegetables from the seed he is sowing.)

Two George Herbert poems set to music, on the one day! Sunday Morning worship in our church began with a George Herbert hymn. As we sang it I could almost see the small parish church of Bemerton, placed lovingly in the mind of Herbert against the backdrop of rural England, 17th Century national politics and Herbert's theological assumption that church and creation reflect the reign and love of God:

Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
The heavens are not too high, his praise may thither fly,
the earth is not too low, his praises there may grow.
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!

Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
The church with psalms must shout, no door can keep them out;
but, above all, the heart must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!


Then on Songs of Praise last night, the kind of hymn that is so old fashioned I thought it almost forgotten, not just out of favour but out of sync with current taste and preference. It recalls a spiritual atmosphere and intensity of devotion requiring more of us than our usual contemporary attempts at dumbed down intimacy and informal conversation with Holy Love that is both transcendent and immediate. But there it was, sung with that restrained politeness that in Anglican spirituality comes near to the spiritual quality of courtesy and quiet gratefulness, not spiritually greedy or emotionally ambitious, but showing that quality of balance that makes Herbert's poetry such a fine example of what he himself called "my utmost art".

King of glory, King of peace,

I will love thee;

and that love may never cease,

I will move thee.

Thou hast granted my request,

thou hast heard me;

thou didst note my working breast,

thou hast spared me.

Wherefore with my utmost art

I will sing thee,

and the cream of all my heart

I will bring thee.

Though my sins against me cried,

thou didst clear me;

and alone, when they replied,

thou didst hear me.

Seven whole days, not one in seven,

I will praise thee;

in my heart, though not in heaven,

I can raise thee.

Small it is, in this poor sort

to enroll thee:

e'en eternity's too short

to extol thee.

When in the creed Christians confess the church as Holy and Catholic, like so much theological language, it all depends what you mean by "holy". Nicholas Lash offers  a rich exegesis:

"Holiness is otherness, the unimaginable, the unattainable fulfilment of all our hopes and dreams, perhaps of all our fears. God, alone, is holy, awe-inspiring, glory-templed. And the purifying touch of holiness can burn. But in uttered Word and outbreathed Spirit, the Holy One comes close, touches and transforms. Holiness is, then, after all, communicable. Indeed all things are sanctifiable, may be made holy, by the breath of God. Life in God's Holy Spirit is, accordingly, all things' existence purified into peace and friendliness, reconciled relationship, sharing – in delight and harmony – in the very life of God. Hence the enablement, and the requirement, that human beings, who are moral agents,…conform their words, and deeds, and institutions, their treatment of each other and of what we call the natural world, to the pattern of God's outpoured peacefulness. Thus it is that, quite properly, but, nonetheless, secondarily and derivatively, we conceive the church's holiness in moral terms. If it could be shown that, on the whole, Christianity had made and makes no significant contribution, by announcement and example, to the peacefulness and healing and completion of the world, then there would be no reason to give it any further serious consideration."

Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 88-89

Burrowing around in my friend Chris's second-hand bookshop up in Old Aberdeen, I unearthed one of those instantly recognisable gems. You know, those ones that you know exist, you've just never seen this particular one before. The Prayers of Kierkegaard, edited by Perry D Lefevre,  is a book of two halves – the first a collection of his prayers from throughout his works, the second a brief but brilliant editorial introduction to Kierkegaard's thought.

Given that P T Forsyth and James Denney were admirers of the Danish philosopher-theologian, I'd expect to find in his writing rebuke and consololation, gospel seriousness and humane sensitivity, moral demand anchored in a radically transformative conception of enabling grace. And it's there in thick chunky nuggets of pastoral truth-telling. Instead of the self-concerned individualism and privatised fulfilment of much contemporary spirituality, Kierkegaard (like Bonhoeffer), calls to a much more astringent way of life.

Like many others Kierkegaard is unfinished business for me. I've read several of his books in English translation, but there is much more I've never read. You can't read everything. But I've a feeling there's more of Kierkegaard I should have read. Still, for now I'm using one of these prayers each day – there's around a hundred of them. Here's one I've already lingered over….

NOT TO ADMIRE BUT TO FOLLOW

O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou didst not come to the world to be served, but also surely not to be admired or in that sense to be worshipped. Thou wast the way and the truth – and it was followers only Thou didst demand. Arouse us therefore if we have dozed away into this delusion, save us from the error of wishing to admire Thee instead of being willing to follow Thee and to resemble Thee.

Today is the fourth consecutive day of meetings. I don't mean days in which there was a meeting. I mean days which were entirely made up of meetings. it's not that I don't like meetings. It's just that meetings involve, well meeting; they are held indoors; meetings function by people talking, something that comes too easily for me; the food is usually bought in to allow us to have maximum time for meeting rather than eating.

And if I ask what's been achieved by all this meeting – quite a lot actually. It isn't that this week of meetings has not been worthwhile – more that they are all on the one week. But even with the most creative diary juggling, such a meeting of meetings in the one week has simply proved impossible to avoid. Today there will be four meetings. Well, now – I could become super-spiritual and pedantic and say that tonight isn't a meeting. Since it is our annual College Thanksgiving Service it is worship – and if that's a meeting it's planned, an intentional time for us to meet with each other and with the God whose presence is promised not only tonight but in the academic year that's just gone.

But I don't want to be super-spiritual. Whether committee or worship service – offered to God our time, gifts and service is in the most important sense, worship. For me, every meeting this week has been about trying to serve God in our lives by doing well what we are all called to do. So Monday was Subject Panel and Programme Panel when student performance was reviewed and confirmed. And that performance ranged from good to stunningly good – which is reason enough for thanksgiving, by students and staff. Tuesday and Wednesday were Board of Ministry days when we walked alongside four people seeking God's will for their future as they tested their call to Baptist ministry – in prayer, conversation and discussion – that too is reason for thanksgiving. Today one meeting will be about ongoing financial challenges and encouragements, the next will explore issues around learning and teaching and how to do both better, then College Committee which is the group responsible for College Governance and Development and for exploring more widely the next stages of our life together. I see all of these meetings as integral to what we will do tonight in our worship, thanksgiving and celebration of the ministry of God.

So. A day of meetings, at the end of a week of meetings, but all of it ending with thanksgiving – and our glad meeting together to say so, to God, and each other. If you read this on time, and tonight have the time, come and share the evening with us.

Scottish Baptist College Annual Thanksgiving Service

When – Thursday June 18, 7.30

Where – in Central Baptist Church in Lady Lane (Just across from Thomas Coats Memorial Church).

The preacher is the Rev Brian More, Senior Pastor for Congregational Leadership at Newton Mearns.

As always the folk from Central Baptist congregation will provide refreshements at the end. Come if you can.

Just received the first of two big books being delivered this week. This one I so wanted to buy for my sabbatical last year – but £85 in hardback and no paperback edition till May 2009. So with patience born of frustration, I waited. Now it's here, in a stout and well upholstered paperback version, at the more affordable (and justifiable) price of around £25.

The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology is one of those books that's about four volumes in one. The first part is an introduction to the relationship between literature and theology. Next comes a chronolgical section with nine chapters on the formation of the tradition, spanning the earliest origins of the English tradition, through reformation, enlightenment and on through romanticism and modernism to postmodernism. This is a 150 page book in its own right.

Part three explores literary ways of reading the Bible and 200 pages are devoted to such literary explorations as the Pentateuch, Judges, Psalms, Song of Songs, Wisdom books, prophetic literature, Gospels, John and apocalyptic. All of them major tributaries of the biblical river. I note, and probably want to reflect on the editorial choices that lay behind the exclusion of a chapter on Pauline literature and OT historical books, each in their own right theology and literary genre. Paul in particular is inextricably woven into the moral categories of Western thought and story, and is inexplicably omitted – Bunyan for example is deeply Pauline in his portrayal of the soul's drama, and Puritan theology was called a Pauline renaissance.

Part four examines theological ways of reading literature and contains chapters on major figures in the English literary tradition. Eleven chapters, 300 pages, and a near comprehensive coverage of major figures and movements. Part five looks at theology as literature, 230 pages on a selection of major theological influential figures – Cranmer, Bunyan, Butler, Keble, Newman, Arnold, C S Lewis – again editorial choices, but a broad selection – Ian Ker on Newman is a 15 page account of a man on whom he wrote a book which at 788 pages is almost as thick as this one!

The last section looks at great theological themes and how they have been treated in literature. Evil and the God of love, death and afterlife, pastoral trditions, the passion story in literature (Paul Fiddes), redemption, heaven and hell and several others. These essays offer important alternative perspectives on Christian doctrine and how foundational doctrines may be better expressed in novel, drama, poem, which aim less at precision and more at cumulative persuasion.

Anyway – not going to read it through. But several of the chapters are on the 'when I have a spare hour' list. Incidentally, not to name drop, but one of the editors, Andrew Hass who lectures in religious studies at University of Stirling, was in the church I attended on Sunday. It occurs to me that when I preach there, I sometimes use literature to help explore theology. Hope he wasn't marking my sermon………

Speaking with a good friend yesterday about one of those situations common in the life of any community, organisation, or church. The new minister does things differently. My friend's dad is a long-standing member, previous officebearer, but doesn't like the changes. And as well, in the first year of ministry the minister has only spoken to him once, and hasn't visited. You can see both sides – probably nothing deliberate, or intentionally hurtful on the part of the minister, but on the part of the elderly member an understandbale sense of rejection, a lost sense of significance and belonging.

My friend who is as fair minded and courteous and responsible a person as I know, with a good sense of humour and a high ethic of loyalty, feels torn both ways – the minister is doing a good job in a hard place all things considered, but dad isn't happy, and has started going elsewhere most Sundays. With some justification he feels he's now like many of his age, unnoticed and surplus to requirements nowadays. How to sort this before dad leaves. How to alert the minister to something they really should have noticed and recognised for themselves – it isn't that big a congregation.

So my friend says she wants it sorted – "but it isn't my place to tell the minister there's a problem." She's not being deliberately difficult or unhelpful – she genuinely feels interference would be wrong.

Which raised for me the following questions we went on to discuss

• If not her place to intervene, then whose place?
• When is it "our place" to become involved in a relationship breaking down and try to sort it?
• Is peacemaking ever possible without some third party being willing to risk the initiative, and isn't that each Christian's "place"?
• And if efforts at peace-making, seeking to be a bridge of reconciliation, is seen as unwelcome interference, isn't that the risk worth taking?
• Scaled up to the level of community and nation, isn't such a breakdown in communication and the resulting looming breach of relationship, something that calls out for third party risk taking?

So two further questions

• Is peacemaking creative intervention or unwelcome interference?
• Are there times when even if it is seen as unwelcome interference, conciliation is a Christian imperative that can't always be risk managed?