Living Wittily

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  • Poem for Good Friday: George Herbert, “The Agonie”

    'The Agonie'

    Picture1Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
    Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
    Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
    But there are two vast, spacious things,
    The which to measure it doth more behove:
    Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.

    Who would know Sinne, let him repair
    Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
    A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
    His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
    Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
    To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.

    Who knows not Love, let him assay
    And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
    Did set again abroach; then let him say
    If ever he did taste the like.
    Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
    Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.

  • Good Friday with R. S. Thomas: “The fiercer light of the thorns’ halo…”

    6a00d8341c6bd853ef010536fb8be6970c-500wi

    Not much comment needed on this poem.1 Just three by way of context, and a comment on Jurgen Moltmann, the theologian whose work most closely mirrors some of Thomas's theological questions.

    1. By juxtaposing the inspired, disciplined agony of the artist, with the creative suffering love of God, Thomas revitalises theological imaginations smothered by the tedium of the overfamiliar. Ever since a friend chose to read this at a Good Friday service years ago, I've never again been able to listen to solo violin music with previous innocence, or been able to separate the vision of a musician giving his or her all, from the God who does the same.

    2. The copy you are reading was written by a man who attended that service, wrote out the poem and presented it to me. It is for me a literary Icon. Alistair first started doing calligraphy in an Asian POW camp, sharing accommodation with Laurens van der Post. His first tools were split bamboo nibs, with mud and water as ink. Though he almost never spoke of those experiences, he knew more than a little about suffering, and that in human faith and experience which makes "such music as lives still".

    3. That Good Friday reading of 'The Musician' alerted me to the theological profundity and complexity of the mind of this poet who composed and played such poems. Repeatedly, as poet-priest, Thomas returns to the Cross, the place where the mystery of the God who speaks through suffering love, and the place where the God who listens closely to the music of heart-broken humanity, performs the unoriginate music of the Passion of God.

    I finish with some words from Jurgen Moltmann, from whom I continue to learn not so much by way of satisfying answers, as by a fellowship rooted in both honest perplexity and steadfast refusal to give up on truth that is beyond the grasp of human reach.

    "The Son suffers death in this forsakenness. The Father suffers the death of the Son. So the pain of the Father corresponds to the death of the Son. And when in his descent to hell the Son loses the Father, then in his judgement the Father also loses the Son. Here the innermost life of the Trinity is at stake. Here the communicating love of the Father turns into infinite pain over the sacrifice of the Son. Here the responding love of the Son becomes infinite suffering over his repulsion and rejection by the Father. What happens on Golgotha reaches into the innermost depths of the Godhead, putting its impress on the trinitarian life in eternity." 2 

    6a00d8341c6bd853ef0120a5601bd9970c-320wiOne of the most controversial elements in Moltmann's theological explorations is the way he takes with utmost seriousness, Jesus' cry of abandonment, and its implications for the inner life of the Triune God. Not everyone is comfortable with Moltmann's theology of divine agonising and his insistence that the death of the Son implies the grievous bereavement of the Father, borne and absorbed into the life of God through the Spirit, embedded within the divine love from all eternity.

    But here is mystery beyond all our efforts at lucid coherence and systematic control. The truth is, no honest grappling with such searing realities should leave us feeling other than uncomfortable – because all honest and prayerful struggle to understand, and adore and surrender should be recognised for what it is – taking off the shoes of our intellect in acknowledgement of Love's eternal and redemptive and patient purpose.

    The phrase most closely associated with Jurgen Moltmann's theology, and the title of his most famous book, could just as easily describe much of the poetry and implied theology of R.S. Thomas, and could stand as a sub-title of his poem 'The Musician.' – The Crucified God.

    1. R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems. 1945-1990, (London: J M Dent, 1993), p.104.
    2. The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, Jurgen Moltmann, (London: SCM Press, 1981), p.81

  • Maundy Thursday: “you call and claim us as your friends and love us as we are.” 

    290061_369 mmac a2 posters - the washing of the feet (large) This evening, Maundy Thursday, I get to preach on John 13.1-17, that hinge passage in John's Gospel, when Jesus washes the disciples' feet.

    The atmosphere in that upper room was dangerously charged by emotional friction, a build up of static energy looking for a point of discharge. 

    Judas is there, his inner world weighted with the menacing ambiguities of a man about to do what he thought was right for the right reasons, but feeling as if he was about to carry out the worst decision of his life. How to justify betrayal of the Messiah whose crime is to be peacemaker?

    James and John are there, still simmering in their arrogance that they even asked about the seating arrangements in the Kingdom of God, and getting their applications in early for the most important seats. Had they learned nothing from three years of following Jesus. And still puzzling over Jesus answer to their ambitions: "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45)

    Peter was there, troubled and yet confident of his resilience to defend Jesus and be absolutely there for Jesus no matter what. Sure enough, he had a habit of promising more than he could deliver, but always well-intentioned, enthusiastic,  guilty only of being impulsive, unreflective and honest in that sometimes embarrassing wear your heart on your sleeve way of his.

    The others, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, who had followed every step of Jesus from day one. All of them, still outraged at the arrogance of James and John scheming for their place at the top table. They had all made sacrifices, they shared a love for the strange glory of this Son of Man who turned water to wine, and transformed ordinary routine hopelessness into the extraordinary extravagance of a love that couldn't be contained in any containers however huge. 

    DoreThere's something almost amusing about a group sulk. But given the danger Jesus was in, the excitement of the crowds when Jesus entered the city and the sense that whatever happens next, life will never, ever, be the same. This meal, this time together, this is the slope above the ski-jump – once you push off, you can only hope to jump safely, or fall to disaster.

    Who will first put that into words? What words could possibly reassure each in their personal anguish, calm things down, draw out and deal with the cocktail of toxins such as fear, anger, jealousy, and love helpless to make the bad stuff stop?

    There are no words. That cliche is sometimes true. Jesus used no words, nit at first.

    Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end… The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 

    Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

     Jesus kneeling, holding each foot of Judas. Feet that had followed, walked with Jesus as companion; com panus, eating bread with. Feet that, once washed, would soon walk out the door, hurrying to betray his companion, friend, Lord.

    Jesus kneeling, holding the foot of John the Beloved disciple, who would later write the Gospel, and this story of the word become flesh; kneeling and holding with firm gentleness the foot of Thomas, who had his own doubts and hopes and who a few days later would kneel at the feet of Jesus saying, My Lord and my God.

    And Peter, big mouth, big feet, big ego. Loud, proud and centre of attention – "No. Not my feet." Yes Peter, your feet, those feet that first left nets and boats and came with me; those feet that climbed the mountain of transfiguration; these feet, Peter, with which in three days time you will run all the way to the tomb and beyond.

    When stripped down to the story, Maundy Thursday has two lessons.

    The humility of the eternal Son of God. "All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made…" Those "hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered…This is out God,m the servant king. And here is the Eternal Word, God's creative energy, in a human body handling human feet. He who was equal with God "emptied himself of all but love" – the humility of God in disposition of love. Washing the feet of his disciples was not the docile humility of submission; it was the strong humility of assertion. That basin and towel are the silencing of all arguments about who's right, who's first, who's the leader. The answer is kneeling at our feet, washing them. 

    Jesus Washing Peter's Feet by Ford Madox Brown 1856 - The Bible Bloodhound

    Jesus demonstrates the radical no-nonsense hospitality of God. Jesus is the host, we are the guests. Jesus is the welcome of God wearing a towel and holding a basin. In the upper room, humble love breaks the silence of resentment, and washes feet. This is Jesus, showing with human hands the humility and hospitality of God to each of us. Those same hands will take bread and break it and give it; pour wine and share it. Those same hands will be tied behind his back and nailed to the cross. And it isn't only the nails that hold the arms of God open in welcome – it is the embrace of eternal love, bearing the sin of a broken world. 

    Dear Christ, uplifted from the earth,
    your arms stretched out above
    through every culture, every birth,
    to draw an answering love.

    Still east and west your love extends
    and always, near and far,
    you call and claim us as your friends
    and love us as we are.     

  • Lent with R. S. Thomas: The God of deeper fathoms and distant stars.

    DurerA lot of time and money is spent on books on prayer which are of the Teach Yourself, Idiot's Guide, Prayer for Dummies genre. Sometimes it's a help if someone gives you the instructions for the IKEA pack. There are also books of prayer or prayers that prime the pump, kick-start the engine, flick the switch, reboot the hard drive – these metaphors are all a bit reductionist, mechanical and utilitarian, but unless we are super-saints, we all need that kind of encouragement and stimulus, at least sometimes.

    Then there are those times when with open Bible, or some other text worthy of Lectio Divina, we allow our minds to ponder, weigh, consider; or imagine, wander and play; or give way to those inner feelings of the heart such as gratitude, joy, and trust or on the down side, anxiety, grief and doubt. But the text holds us as we hold it; there is nourishment in those long-ago written words; the words and the Word sometimes coalesce in blessing as we receive them and embrace them.

    Such reflections on the practice of prayer as life habit and spiritual discipline are blown out of the water by R S Thomas. The reader of R. S. Thomas's poems must learn to be patient with his doubts, caring and understanding about his complaints, and respectful of a man who with utter and compelling seriousness, followed his quest for God with hard questions and mostly no answers. At least none that he found persuasive enough to convince, or come near to the kind of closure that ends this most demanding of quests to know God. God is not the object of our knowing, but the subject whose presence and absence, lures us into waters deep enough to overwhelm all our concepts, words and attempts to frame within the confines and limits of human knowledge.

    "The sea at his window was a shallow sea; a thin counterpane over a buried cantrel. There were deeper fathoms to plumb, 'les délires des grandes profundeurs', in which he was under compulsion to give away whatever assurances he possessed. He was too insignificant for it to be a kind of dark night of the soul." 

    Words like deep, profound, and vast are mere intensifiers – deep thought, profound feeling, vast oceans. But they are all he has as he looks at the shallow sea outside his window, and becomes aware there are "deeper fathoms to plumb," so deep and so impenetrable that "he was under compulsion to give away whatever assurances he possessed."

    The prose poem  acknowledges that in the human hunger for truth, reality, and personal encounter with the Mystery beyond the reach and grasp of human intellect, there are no guarantees, no assurances given; not even the cold comfort that the absence of such assurance is the genuine spiritual experience of the dark night of the soul. Out of such uncertainties comes this poem:

    Hear me. The hands
    pointed, the eyes
    closed, the lips move
    as though manipulating
    soul’s spittle. At bedsides,
    in churches the ego
    renews its claim
    to attention. The air
    sighs. This is
    the long siege, the deafness
    of space. Distant stars
    are no more, but their light
    nags us. At times
    in the silence, between
    prayers, after the Amens
    fade, at the world’s
    centre, it is as though
    love stands, renouncing itself.1

    "Hear me", the classic cry of the Psalmist, which Thomas with uncomfortable realism describes as "the ego's claim to attention", and in so doing puts all our praying in its place. But the cry to be heard encounters the deafness of space. So are our prayers heard? Or is is possible that after the words are spoken and the silence falls, what is left in the heart and the mind is the real prayer, coming after the speech, when the Amens have stopped their echo?

    HubbleAs so often in his poems on prayer and the absence or presence of God, the final line or two move towards a resolution, not certainty, not recovered assurance, and certainly not closure, but resolution as pray-er and prayed-to experience each other like the mystery of light seen now that was extinguished aeons ago. Our prayers, like the light from dead stars, still nag the pray-er and signal the presence of the prayed-to.

    The image of the dying star, whose light reaches us though the source is now gone, may be an oblique reference to this God whose nature is self-renouncing love. The Cross stands at the world's centre, and "it is as though love stands, renouncing itself." There are few poets I know who probe so deeply into the psychology of prayer, who examine so precisely, at times fiercely, the theology of the God prayed to.

    Late in life Thomas, who had edited a selection of George Herbert's poems, confessed he couldn't read Herbert any more, "I cannot get on matey terms with the Deity as Herbert can." This is the God of deeper fathoms and distant stars; to be wrestled with if his name is to be discovered; to be known as love, but love renouncing itself.

    I think Thomas would have burned all prayer manuals that presume to reduce prayer to practicalities; he believed too much in the life or death struggle that prayer is to put up with such trivialising pragmatism. As he said in an earlier poem, he would "flee for protection from the triviality of my thought to the thought of its triviality…" 2

    1. R. S. Thomas. Collected Later Poems, Bloodaxe, 2004, page 70
    2. Ibid., 67.

  • Thought for the Day for Holy Week 2023

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    Monday

    Matthew 21.4-5 “This took place to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet: “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

    A humble king demonstrating soft power. We don’t associate gentleness and power. The word Matthew uses is often translated meek; but that word is also used of the ox harnessed to a plough, and so means strength harnessed to purpose. Jesus comes to Jerusalem with strength and purpose. Here he will confront the powers that be, from religious authorities who fear him, to a Roman Governor who pities him.

    Tuesday

    Matthew 21.12-13 “Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.”

    Strength harnessed to purpose, remember? Money-making in the holy place; the noise of bartering and selling and the clinking of shekels drowns out the psalm singing and the prayers. Those tables stand for all the business and busyness that leaves no time or space for God in our lives – and they should be overturned!

    Snowdrop

    Wednesday

    Matthew 21.15-16 “But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”

    One way or another, the vice jaws of power will crush the upstart Nazarene. WE now read the story knowing how it will end. The signs are ominous. Those who have the power to prosecute (Chief priests) and execute (Pilate) are already moving into place. And Jesus denies nothing. Instead he says the children simply shout the truth. Holy Week is about the confrontation of truth with power, the truth of who God is confronts the truth of what human beings are capable of.

    Thursday

    Matthew 26.26 “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying “Take, and eat; this is my body.”

    The simplicity of the action is completely normal, but made emotionally stunning; its meaning heart-breaking as it dawns on his disciples. Jesus knows this is the last meal he will share with them. Then the wine, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.” When we take communion, we replay the reality of those words, real then, real now, for us.

    Blake-trinity2

    Friday

    Matthew 27.31-2 “After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”).

    No matter how often we read this story, it touches deep into who we are, and what we believe about God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” Unlike Simon who had no choice but to carry someone else’s cross, Jesus calls us to take up the cross and follow him. “Were the whole realm of nature mine that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” 

    Saturday

    Matthew 27.59-60 “Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away.”

    Silence. It is finished. Nothing is happening. Hope is extinguished. The rock thuds into place. What now? Holy Saturday is the day that seems to last forever. Twenty four hours in which the whole creation groaned, awaiting its redemption. The darkness that fell on Golgotha has deepened, inside and outside the grave. Death has won, the powers that be get their way. They always do. Unless…No, “It is finished.”

    Sunday

    Matthew 28.5-6 “The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.”

    Ah, now it is finished! The unfolding drama of redemption comes to its climax in front of an audience of the two Marys and a couple of Roman soldiers knocked senseless by events a universe outside their experience! Life is let loose, and has invaded and conquered the darkest prisons of death. This is a world where resurrection has happened, where love and life and light can finally and fully eclipse hate and death and darkness. “Thine be the glory, risen conquering son.”         

  • “Emptied Himself of all but Love…”: Holy Week and the Kenosis of the Son of God.

    Lectionary Texts for Passion Week.

    • First reading
      • Isaiah 50:4-9a
    • Psalm
      • Psalm 31:9-16
    • Second reading
      • Philippians 2:5-11
    • Gospel
      • Matthew 26:14-27:66 or Matthew 27:11-54

    6a00d8341c6bd853ef01bb08228b09970d-320wiWhat are we to make of the contrast between the One who ‘was in very nature God’ and the one who ‘became obedient to death – even death on a cross’? Why would “he who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” make himself nothing and take the form of a servant?

    Unless we ask this question we ourselves haven’t grasped what Paul is on about in this passage. “Made in human likeness, he humbled himself.” Again, why? Charles Wesley taught us to sing the answer, “Emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race…Amazing love! How can it be?”

    And in one of Graham Kendrick’s finest lines, “Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered. This is our God.” So that’s why. The self-giving love of the Triune God.

    The diamond pivot of this passage is the word kenosis, which has caused no end of discussion amongst biblical scholars and theologians. It means to empty, to become nothing. It refers to the self-emptying of the One who in obedient love to the Father, refused to cling to divine prerogatives. This is Paul at his most daring as he explores the divine heart of the Triune God. But not because he is interested in theological speculations about the pre-existence of Christ. He has a far more practical purpose.

    Paul is writing to a church he loves and a community that loves him. But it’s a congregation in trouble. There are factions and differences of opinion, relationships are strained and for all the talk of unity, two prominent leaders, Euodia and Syntyche are at loggerheads. Paul wants them “to agree in the Lord” (4.2)

    So this prose poem about the eternal glory of the Son of God, is the story of the coming of Jesus in the incarnation, his full humanity, ministry and crucifixion for the sins of the world – a story Paul now tells straight into the life of a congregation as a critique of self-assertion, a rebuke for broken relationships, and an encouragement to “be likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.’

    Pastorally, how can people who have fallen out with each other be helped to realise this isn’t the way of Jesus? What argument could persuade those split into opposing factions, and riled by party spirit, to think differently about each other? Is it possible to tame the ego, or in Paul’s words, how do you tell people “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

    Before Paul begins that astonishing story in 6-11, of how it came to be that the Son of God became the Son of Man, he raises the bar of Christian behaviour to its highest level: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” (2.5) So that’s the goal to strive for, the true prize of the high calling of God, the gold standard of Christian obedience; to have the mind-set, and motivations of the One “who because he was in very nature God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” 

    Cross westhillThe Lectionary links this passage to a Psalm in which the Psalm-poet anticipates the realities condensed into those few words of Paul: “he became obedient to death, even death on the cross.” (See Psalm 31.9-16) The Psalm is a cry for mercy, and a prayer of obedient surrender: “My times are in your hands.” (15) Whatever happens as a result of being obedient and faithful to God, the Psalmist who has humbled himself and become obedient to God has the confidence to pray: “Let your face shine on your servant, save me in your unfailing love.” (16)

    The inner thoughts of the Psalmist echo the other Lectionary passage from Isaiah 50.4-9a. The words of v 6 describe with uncanny detail, the experiences distilled into those five words, “even death on a cross.” Anticipating the words of the Servant Song in Isaiah 53, Isaiah’s words expose the brutality and cruelty that characterise human sin at its most imaginative, and vile.

    “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard, I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.” But. “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.” (Isaiah 50.6)

    And so back to Philippians and those five words, this time plus one, “even death on a cross. Therefore…” The hinge point of the story of Christ is embedded in that word of eternal consequence – “Therefore”. The humble one is exalted; the servant is enthroned; the one made in human likeness is given the name that is above every name; the crucified is exalted. The unfailing love of God, revealed in the humility of the eternal Son, triumphs over all and every other name and power. 

    The final Lectionary reading from Matthew 27.11-54, is the long story of the passion; the One “who made himself nothing, took the very form of a servant “and ”became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Holy Week contains the long unfolding in history of Paul’s prose poem in Philippians 2.6-11.  From triumphal entry, to the Last supper, from Gethsemane to Calvary, and from the Saturday tomb till the Sunday resurrection morning, we follow in the footsteps of the One who made himself nothing.

    Why? For love of all that God has made. Wesley, as already noted, shows deep theological instinct: “Emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race.” 

    (This piece was commissioned for Goodfaith Media, and published earlier this week as a reflection on the Lectionary Readings for Holy Week. The reflections are based on the Philippians text in conversation with the other texts. You can access the published version here)

  • Valuing the Classics in Historical Theology

    A wee glimpse of one of my bookshelves; then a second glimpse into the work ethic of one of my favourite New Testament scholars of a past generation.
     
    Vincent Taylor's trilogy Jesus and His Sacrifice, Atonement in New Testament Teaching, and Forgiveness and Reconciliation, still sit on one of my theological classics shelves, alongside:
    • H R Mackintosh The Christian Experience of Forgiveness,
    • Emil Brunner, The Mediator,
    • James Denney, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation,
    • P T Forsyth, The Work of Christ,
    • A B Bruce The Humiliation of Christ,
    • D M Baillie God Was in Christ.
    P1000779Taylor's trilogy is still one of the most thorough explorations of the work of salvation as expressed in the New Testament. Yes, scholarship has moved on, by quite a distance since the 1950's. But Taylor, and the others mentioned are important witnesses to what it is we do not move on from as those seeking to follow faithfully after Jesus;, which is the centrality of Jesus Christ in Christian thought, faithful Christian existence, and that practical and grateful obedience to the Love of God in Christ that is so richly explored in such historical theology.
     
    Now, Vincent Taylor's work ethic. His magnum opus was his monumental commentary The Gospel According to St Mark. He was often asked how he managed to complete the massive task of writing a commentary of just under 700 pages, mostly double column small font. The answer is a lesson in industry, and in the cumulative effects of small goals regularly met:
    "Taylor had a firm belief in the principle that a regular accumulation of small drops will eventually-and more quickly than is often supposed-fill a vessel of considerable size. During the ten years he devoted to the production of his monumental Commentary on St. Mark’s Gospel, his aim was to complete ’ one quarto page
    per day ’-and seldom did he fail to do so (later, upon his retirement, Dr. Taylor applied a similar method to the task of shifting fifty tons of soil from the front gate to the back garden of his bungalow at St. Annes-on-Sea !) (Expository Times, vol. 75, Issue 6, page 164)

  • The Blessing of Brief Encounters with Lonely People.

    P1000769Sitting on a bench looking at this yesterday.
     
    An old local worthy stopped by, accompanied by one of those joyous dogs, a brown cross Springer spaniel and Border collie.
     
    In ten minutes he spoke of a life in the merchant navy, on a fishing trawler where he went overboard and barely survived, his loneliness and at times overwhelming sadness following his wife's death some years ago, his dog's liking for burns, culverts, puddles and other places to get filthy, his skirmishes with the Council about their various shortcomings in keeping the beach clean.
     
    Came away glad he had stopped to speak, and pleased to have listened to those parts of his story he felt able to tell to two strangers. 
     

  • Praying for Our Country to “Act Justly, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly before God.”

    I've just listened to today's full Statement to the House of Commons by the Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick, and to an hour of the subsequent debate. The Statement set out Govt plans to create several more large bases to accommodate "illegal migrants" who have arrived via "small boats."
     
    Asylum boatThe blanket phrase "illegal migrants" recurred with almost liturgical import throughout the 7 minute speech. He was concerned about those who "abuse our generosity", and the "eye-watering cost" of hotel accommodation which would "act like a magnet to millions of people displaced and seeking better economic prospects."
     
    Repeatedly he pitched the plight of those arriving on small boats against "the British people", emphasising the "cost to the hard-working British tax-payer", the "security concerns" the need to act in the national interests and "fundamentally alter the posture towards illegal migrants."
    At no stage was there the slightest acknowledgement that the word illegal has no relevance to people seeking asylum and refugees. His tone in both the Statement and his responses was divisive and as good a demonstration of "othering" vulnerable people, as much else that is being spoken by Government ministers, all the way up to and including the Prime Minister.
     
    He wants to stop "illegal migrants from breaking into our country". In reply to the response from the Shadow Home Secretary, “They would make the United Kingdom a magnet, there would be open doors, an open cheque book, and there would be open season for abuse.”
     
    I came away from an hour of this wondering about the future of a country exposed day and daily to rhetoric that dehumanises, lacks the cogency of compassion, and is fuelled by anger and self-righteous claims about "standing up for the British people. A deliberate rhetorical strategy which chooses words carefully for their push-button effect on some of our most negative feelings towards those we are being encouraged to fear, resent and "other".
     
    ReconciliationAnd as a Christian and a citizen, a tax-payer and one of those Mr Jenrick claims to be speaking for, I challenge the arguments he uses, and reject the discourse of division, and refuse to have my ethics so badly misrepresented.
     
    Over the past 18 months, I and others in our church community have had much to do with numbers of people seeking asylum and housed in a hotel a few minutes walk from our church. I've listened to stories, looked at photographs, struggled over language barriers, talked of separated family, shared coffee and companionship, tried to find ways of making life less bleak and more hopeful. These are human beings, with inherent worth and a right to live without fear, people with hopes and gifts, deserving of at least a hearing, and until then, treatment under-written with dignity and respect.
     
    I refuse to sign up to the language of "othering", the rhetoric of resentment, and policies aimed at making life harder for people already vulnerable. "He has shown us, every human one of us, what He requires: to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God." Aye, that.

  • Lent with R. S. Thomas: “the opposite of poetry is not prose, but science.”

    You could be forgiven for thinking that R S THomas was a Luddite, a hater of technology and the mechanisation of life. The machine is manufactured, and Thomas was deeply fearful of what "man" "makes" in factories, what machines do to the land and to the human soul.

    Many of his poems are ambivalent about science, even more uncertain about technology, fearful and mistrusting of human knowledge applied for the purposes of mastering nature by machinery and mechanisation, rather than serving creation by care and stewardship. He had lived through the years of war, of the tractor replacing the horse, the combine harvester devouring fields in half a day that would have taken men a week with scythes, twine, forks and sheaves, and further days of toil at the threshing mill.

    6a00d8341c6bd853ef01b8d1a01b13970c-320wiHis deeper fears focused on human applications of physics, the creation of the atomic bomb, the deploying, as threat, of nuclear weapons capable of destroying human life and earth as a viable home. Picking mushrooms reminded him of the mushroom cloud, and the white domes of early warning systems.

    The laboratory was a place where power and domination were exercised over matter, so that the same power could be exercised over other people, peoples and nations. Like George MacLeod, Thomas had no hesitation in seeing the splitting of the atom, and nuclear fission, harnessed to military ends, as blasphemy, the turning of the fundaments of life to the ends of mass death.

    The opposite of poetry is not prose, says Thomas quoting Coleridge, it's science. Jesus was a poet, he argued, implying much that we are left to ponder. "Jesus was a poet, and would have teased the scientists, as he teased Nathanael". Nathanael was the disciple 'in whom there was no guile', sitting under the fig tree, whether thinking, praying, waiting. (John 1.43-51) But the allusion to Nathanael and his waiting under the tree provides Thomas's entry point for one of his ironic and apologetic critiques of the scientific enterprise, the technological mentality, the mechanistic worldview.

    His quarrel wasn't with science, but with science as dominance, technology as efficiency, lust for knowledge unrestrained by humility. His late poem on the theme of science as both wrong question and wrong answer shows he is not an obscurantist opposed to science, discovery and learning. The poem considers the futility of science as an explanation of ultimate concerns (he was in well-read  dialogue with Paul Tillich). Science and technology are not of themselves a sufficient basis for human flourishing, and are not to be trusted as guarantors of a human future. This from The Echoes Return Slow:

    *

    "Because Coleridge had said that the opposite of poetry was not prose but science, that was what he preached from the pulpit at times, his eye straying through the leaded window to the sea outside that passed and remained always. He defended himself with the fact that Jesus was a poet, and would have teased the scientists as he teased Nathanael."

    *

    I have waited for him
                  under the tree of science
    and he has not come:

                and no voice has said:
    Behold a scientist in whom
                there is no guile

    I have put my hand in my pocket
                    for a penny for the engaging
    of the machinery of things and
                    it was a bent
    penny, fit for nothing but for placing
                    on the cobbled eyeballs
    of the dead.

                         And where do I go
                     from here? I have looked in
    through the windows of their glass
                     laboratories and seen them plotting
    the future, and have put a cross
                     there at the bottom
    of the working out of their problems to
                     prove to them that they were wrong.1

    Download"I have…put a cross…" At the centre of Christian faith is a truth beyond the powers of science to explain or even explore. The cross is a symbol of all that is wrong with the world; how can the answers be right if all the workings and working out are based from the start on false premises, incomplete data, and skewed purposes. The cross is also a symbol of all that is right, at least insofar as the Cross is God's way of confronting the self destructive impulses that go back to the beginning when under another tree, the knowledge of good and evil was filched from God.

    This is a poem that absolutely requires biblical literacy to be able to hear the potent theological and biblical sub-texts. As a Lenten poem it could be a call for us to adopt a far less sanguine view of human technological ingenuity, as in its rapid advances it outstrips our moral maturity and wisdom. And in place of intellectual hubris, a Cross, that symbol of the marker that something is so wrong in the conclusion, that the questions and answers require deeper and better thought.

    1. R. S. Thomas. Collected Later Poems, Bloodaxe, 2004, page 56.