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The collision between King Ahab and the prophet Elijah is described in brief stark terms in I Kings 17. Elijah announces a drought.

Three years later he returns from hiding to challenge the prophets of Baal to a religious trial of strength. For Elijah Mount Carmel was exhilarating, self-vindicating, and a very  public demonstration of  God's power. But it was emotionally draining, the cost only felt in delayed shock and an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. (I Kings 18

So he ran away, scared out of his wits by Jezebel.  God's response to Elijah's breakdown began with practical concern for a human body depleted by overworked limbs and overwrought emotions. Rest. Food. Sleep.

Then an interview on the mountainside.

This terrified man, afraid not only of Jezebel, but of the burden of his life, and the expectations of his God, discovers the presence and person of God, not in elemental force, but in the creative whisper that first moved on the chaotic waters and brought peace, life and blessing.

The life of faith has to be lived in the tension between Carmel and Horeb, between judgement and grace, between the high octane self expenditure of obedience and the quiet insistent whisper of the One who restores the soul. (I Kings 19)

Ad the triumphalist praise song 'These are the days of Elijah' should be tempered by the Quaker poet's contrasting hymn, 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways.' ( J G Whittier)

There are echoes throughout Whittier's hymn of Elijah's overdone passion, burnout and need of renewal – 'take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of thy peace."

One of the spiritually significant changes in my inner life since our daughter Aileen died, is the effect of grief on my capacity and desire to pray. At first I had neither the ability nor the motivation to pray, or even want to. The reverberations of grief, shock, and sadness so far beyond consolation, drain away so much of what is normal emotional engagement with life and its routines. That's because the routines are disrupted beyond repair; nothing will be the same in the aftermath of the greatest loss of our lives so far.

It takes time to take it in. It takes time to want to even think too much about it. And whatever else prayer is, it makes you think as you search for words. In a time of intense sorrow prayer is a process of taking in, of internalising a reality that cries out for denial and contradiction. Prayer requires engagement at the depths of our being with the God whose personal and interpersonal depths are replete with eternal love, infinite wisdom and redemptive creative purpose. That makes each attempt at prayer an exercise in vulnerability, trust and self-giving. And for the grieving heart, that's sometimes too much to ask. Grief renders us all but defenceless in the face of death, and to survive, much that is inside us shuts down to conserve resources already running out and nearing exhaustion.

It is at such times that the communion of saints stops being a theological idea and becomes a reality to which we are glad to belong. "You are in our prayers" then becomes much more vital and vitalising than the safe cliche of those unsure what else to say. To be conscious that our own silence and felt distance from God is a weight willingly carried by others is part of the comfort that sustains faith in such times. It isn't only that we are prayed for, as objects of prayer. It is also that people pray for us, that is, their faithful prayers are said on our behalf, their words give voice to what has rendered us silent, and their intercession draws us into the circle of a conversation which at the moment is beyond us. 

When those who love and care for us say, "You are in our prayers" or make similar promises to mention our names in the presence of God, they are being companions, intentionally taking into themselves the pain and the plight of the prayed for. That's an interesting, syntactically awkward phrase "the prayed for". These past months I have learned at a level more profound than I could have imagined, the meaning of Gethsemane, and how hard it is to be shattered  by the brute fact of death and loss.  Jesus' grief was exacerbated because no one said, or showed, "You are in our prayers." Quite the opposite; instead of praying with or for him, they were asleep. Jesus' sorrow at the soporific disciples isn't peeved self-concern, it is the cry of a heart needing support, the reflex of a mind tortured by doubt and inner agony.

So there are times when prayer is beyond us, at least for a time. The prayers of others, and the written and stated promises that they will pray for us, are gifts of love that hold us, indeed entangle us, within the communion of saints.  The experience of grief, and the inner adjustments it has imposed, has meant a new understanding of what prayer is, and what it is not. In our sorrow, bewilderment and inner derailment, there have been times when prayer felt impossible; other times when prayer didn't even enter a mind too busy processing a new life-changing reality.

Oh I know. Prayer is supposed to be natural for a Christian; an obvious first resort; an open invitation from God; a habit learned over years of practice. That's just the point. The disorientation of mind and heart, of reason and emotion, have made prayer more difficult, not less. I know that isn't everyone's experience, but it has been mine. And the communion of saints, the struggling for words friends who said, "You are in our prayers" and "We are praying for you" have rewritten the Gethsemane experience. They have watched with us, and they have watched over us. 

Praying is different for now. Tempered by a continuing sorrow it is often "the burden of a sigh"; arising out of loss and the need to reconfigure our world, the mood of every prayer is interrogative;  as someone most at home with words, silent longing may become the new eloquence. And in the grasp of a loss that will be for life, somehow the love and hope and memories of Aileen will be a constant longing which may occasionally find words, but that longing will always be there as love sensing the incompleteness her absence creates. 

If theology matters at all, it matters as a way of exploring the things that matter most in the world, and in our lives. These past weeks sadness has been an unasked but persistent companion. Is there a theology of sadness? I've taught theology, and amongst other descriptions I've spoken of theology as thinking about and looking at the world with God on the horizons. 

But what if the horizons are obscured, and landmarks have shifted? Sadness is a complex and elusive experience. It can be longing for what seems now beyond reach; the ache of an emptiness that cannot now be filled; an inner de-motivation of mind and heart when important things suffer a recession of value and significance; a loneliness traceable to great loss, and which cannot be satisfied because that loss is final; and therefore sadness is a felt deficit at the deep core of who we are. Something, or someone is missing, and missed.

A theology of sadness must bring that deep crisis of loss into conversation with an understanding of God which neither minimises that loss, nor dismisses its accompanying sadness as lack of faith. 
As I work away at Aileen's tapestry, weaving colours and stranding threads, I also try to strand thought and prayer from within this strange climate of loss and longing. And I listen to music which not only speaks to me, but speaks for me, becoming a true articulation of life as presently experienced. Tonight Gabriel's Oboe became a prayer pouring out loss, sadness, longing, and hope. Our daughter Aileen loved this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WJhax7Jmxs&fbclid=IwAR0HNgJjn7imzaOWQcmu5CCrd-ZBnT5HXoHbyatkwyfqUvHXIjcp-LZmt-Q

For years now I have written Haiku, in the classic form of 5x7x5 syllables on three lines. The economy of words in this art form requires each word to carry significant weight, and like a setting of stones around a diamond, each word is placed just so, to enhance and highlight the central idea.

Over these weeks since our daughter Aileen's death, there have been times when the precision and economy of Haiku have enabled me to express the confusion and disorientation of such an irreparable loss. Grief is a multi-dimensional human experience that is pervasive and persistently patient in its hold of the heart, mind, body and soul. Grief affects our deepest relationships, re-configures our sense of life's meaning and value, forces an unwelcome reconsideration of present realities and future plans, and all of this accompanied by an inner sadness which oscillates between aching emptiness and overflowing sorrow.

Last night I reflected on this photo, taken not far from Aileen's grave. There are days here in the North East when the sky is intensely blue, inviting that long gaze into an infinity of space and possibility beyond our knowing.

These old Scots Pines survive on a small atoll, surrounded by new building developments. Here, after snowfall, outlined against a sky of burnished blue, and protected by a drystane dyke that has seen better days, its stones tumbling around it, they look defiant behind their defensive wall, holding out against the elements, and the developers. Out of such images came these Haiku.

"God made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end." These words by Julian of Norwich distil into a sentence one of the most remarkable books ever written.

Written by a woman when women weren't encouraged to write; an essay in profoundest theology by someone who called herself 'unlettered'; an account of a near death experience and a vision of the passion of Jesus that she reflected on for the rest of her life; written in vernacular English in a world where serious writing was done only in Latin; and most remarkable of all, a book that envisions a universe in which eternal purposeful Love finds a way to redeem, renew and conserve a creation gone wrong. 

I've read this book often, and deeply. It is theologically provocative, pastorally comforting, but above all a deeply personal account of an experience that touches those universals of human existence, love, death, meaning and purpose. Lately, in the aftermath of Aileen's death, I've gone back to Julian's Revelations of Divine Love. Part of the work of grief, and grief is very hard work, is to sift through the wreckage of life that is left when someone dies whose life was integral to our own life, and essential to our happiness. 

Memories and regrets, hopes and fears, investments of time, energy, emotional commitment and love building over the years, are all parts of life that now seem broken beyond repair. It's a commonplace that grief is the cost and consequence of love. But true nevertheless. Our deepest loves are built towards a lifetime of trust, presence, sacrifice, commitment and the inherent promise always to be there for, and be there with and be there alongside each other. Death interrupts that, indeed death seems to contradict the very hopes that lead us to say such things in the first place.

Our human love cannot guarantee what it hopes for, indeed has no guaranteed outcome. Those prepositions of being there for, with, alongside seem erased by death. What Julian of Norwich brings to our attempts to understand the mystery of love and the power of death to shatter love's hopes, is an exposition of the Love that inspires and underlies and empowers our own capacity to take the risks of love, and to trust the God whose love is revealed finally and fully in Jesus, the eternal self giving love of God. "Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters God is love." That old Victorian hymn channels the truth Julian spent her life thinking and writing about. As Julian had already said, "God made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end."

Actually another very different voice comes from an Edwardian Scot, who spent most of his life as a preacher theologian in England, and who was born in Aberdeen. Peter Taylor Forsyth echoed much of Julian's vision of a God who finally, in the end, would bring things to their proper completion. I find his words deeply comforting, and shining with a generosity and hopefulness that finds clear echoes in my own heart:

The end of all is the grace unspeakable, the fullness of glory – all the old splendour fixed, with never one lost good;all the spent toil garnered, all the fragments gathered up, all the lost love found forever, all the lost purity transfigured in holiness, all the promises of the travailing soul now yea and amen, all sin turned to salvation. Eternal thanks be unto God who hath given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord, and by his grace, the taste of live for every one.

(The photo was taken some years ago on the links at Banff)

Over 40 years ago I read W E Sangster's book, The Craft of Sermon Illustration. It is still a workmanlike book for preachers prepared to do the hard work of careful exegesis and imaginative exposition rooted in the text of the Bible. Amongst other pieces of very clear advice to preachers was, read poetry. As a young man I took that to heart and have never regretted it. Most of my life now I've read poetry. A poem is itself an act of interpretation, and an example of the art of self-interpretation. Whether human life, the world around, or the depths and heights of human experience, poetry is a process of reflection, illumination and imaginative response to the world around us and within us.

Early on I came across a poem by Jean Ingelow called 'Regret'. In particular, four lines have remained as memorised wisdom which at different times in my life has provided a way to understand, and if not understand then to accept, and try to learn from, those experiences that cast a shadow over everything else.

I find myself going back to those lines in the aftermath of sudden bereavement and the raw immediacy of grief following our daughter Aileen's death. They can sound trite and more like timid wishful thinking. They may seem less than honest about the bewildered sorrow and gnawing regrets when someone we love as dear as life itself dies, and is now beyond further words of love, comfort, explanation or apology. But here they are:

For life is one, and in its warp and woof

There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair;

And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet

Where there are sombre colours.

Now I've designed and worked tapestries for years. And sometimes they have been born out of life crises and they became a way of creating brief interludes of equilibrium. You know you're stressed when the thread is pulled too tight; and the discipline of counting cotton strands, and mixing tone and colour requires an attentiveness that gives the mind a break from more painful realities. 

So those words describe an image that has serious and persuasive power for me, especially those times when my own life tapestry has had to be worked with sombre colours. In the overwhelming sense of loss and disorientation that befalls us with the death of someone we have loved as life of our life, it is hard to see any light, and no thread of gold is either apparent or seems even appropriate. For grief compels and requires of each of us our personal encounter with the reality of who and what we have lost…a journey the Psalmist calls "the valley of the shadow of death."

And yet. As a Christian I believe in that thread of gold. As a looked for pencil line of light along the horizon of the long night; as a seed of hope planted in the deep and dark soil of Calvary, awaiting resurrection; as one whose life is a following faithfully after Jesus, believing his words about resurrection and life, the peace only God can give, the love that never lets go, the forgiveness that never turns away. Or that thread of gold glimpsed in the ordinary yet extraordinary kindness and prayers and companionship of those who have come close to share the sorrow and whose love glitters in our darkness. Threads of gold, woven through sombre colours.

Those sombre colours are inevitable, even necessary, for the integrity and balance of the pattern that is our shared life, and every human life. For myself, the thread of gold that runs through my life is neither sentimental optimism nor certainty based on disallowing hard questions. The thread of gold that runs through my life, and that glitters against the sombre colours, is faith that takes the risk of trusting God. I believe deeply, and try to trust daily, the Eternal self-giving love of God revealed in Jesus – his words, his ministry, his death and his resurrection. In Jesus God placed redeeming love and recreative purpose at the centre of all reality.

Such faith clearly gives no immunity to heartbreaking loss, nor does it allow us to evade grief beyond words, nor does it defend us from that inner brokenness of human hearts that may never fully heal. But it does draw those deeply wounding experiences of bereavement, grief, suffering and loss into a larger pattern of meaning. The redemption of suffering, the reconciliation of a broken world, the forgiveness of all we have wronged and all that has wronged us, the renewal of hope in despairing hearts, the restoring of relationships sliced apart by death; however we describe this world's and our own brokenness, love is at work from all eternity, and came into our human history with healing purpose and the gift of a radical hope. The Cross and Resurrection are the beating heart of the Christian gospel, the place where finally and definitively God takes ownership of a shattered creation, and remakes it towards a new future.

For me faith in that kind of God is the thread of gold that glitters, – sometimes, – in the woven texture of our lives. The sombre colours, when they don't obscure it, are part of a larger pattern and purpose of a God whose love raises as many questions as it answers. Which is why Julian of Norwich, that wisest of theologians of the love of God, chose to speak with a simple image about mysteries beyond our ken:

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.

And into the eternal care and creative purposes of such love, we have entrusted our daughter Aileen, and ourselves. Sombre colours, and a thread of gold. The tapestry of our lives.  

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid?

The old Scottish paraphrase of Psalm 121 is that strange literary hybrid – it lacks literary sophistication, but for those who know it, and have sung it in a Scottish congregation, its homely imagery and verbal simplicity vibrate with spiritual power generated less by liturgical formulae than by an immediate sense of dependency.

Mountains are a challenge, there to be climbed, but often dangerous, demanding and for ancient travellers on foot, full of risk. The Psalmist is engaged in a risk assessment; what are the dangers of the journey? Treacherous screes of broken shale and rock, thieves and wild animals at night, long miles without water in a baking sun, and the threat of madness in moonlight as an ancient fear of the night – all these, and much, much more. Until the Psalmist reduces all the imaginable dangers to a simple theological equation; the Lord and maker of heaven and earth is the protector and guard for every eventuality so that all harm is disarmed, the whole of life is protected, and on the journey, whether coming or going, now and always, the Lord is an ever present help and defence.

Life is risk, and risk aversion can never be the stance of faith. Risk assessment, however, is different. Risk assessment can never exclude danger, but it does avoid both the paralysis of fear that never wants to journey at all, and the reckless certainties of those who think they have life sorted, or that they have God contained in a theology afraid of questions. There are times in our lives when the football cliche rings with a truth that threatens to test our trust to breaking point, when "we've now got a mountain to climb".

Two weeks ago, at our daughter Aileen's funeral, we sang that same old Scottish paraphrase (the full version is below). It was a prayer for ourselves; and it was a prayer for Aileen entrusted to the protective love of the God who never sleeps, God who always watches over, and sees all our comings and goings on earth, and on into the presence of a love eternal and inexhaustible in welcome and blessing. 

We are now climbing the mountain of grief with all its ache, risk and questions, and singing from the deep wells of the heart, "From whence doth come mine aid?" And borne and carried by the prayers and kindnesses of our companions on the way, singing also, "My safety cometh from the Lord, who heaven and earth hath made." 

No, that doesn't settle everything. The journey is harder than we could have imagined. Faith is not unruffled serenity, but a grasping at hope. Faith is a grappling with questions better asked than ignored. Faith is a trust in the preciousness of life and the deepest bonds of love, but also a relinquishing of more than we ever thought we had. And at the heart's core, faith is a vision of a love that understands and comes alongside us on this lonely road, an Emmaus walk that is also a via dolorosa. 

The Emmaus road is an upward road, and broken-hearted disciples of Jesus walk it with questions and sorrow, and the bewilderment of those trying to make sense of a life shattered from within. And the Stranger comes near, walks with them, speaks new things into ears desperate for truth and meaning, and some assurance that all shall be well. Grief is an Emmaus road, up dangerous paths and through dark nights, in the company of the risen Christ. 

1 I to the hills will lift mine eyes:
from whence doth come mine aid?
My safety cometh from the Lord,
who heaven and earth hath made.

2 Thy foot he'll not let slide, nor will
he slumber that thee keeps.
Behold, he that keeps Israel,
he slumbers not, nor sleeps.

3 The Lord thee keeps; the Lord thy shade
on thy right hand doth stay;
the moon by night thee shall not smite
nor yet the sun by day.

4 The Lord shall keep thy soul; he shall
preserve thee from all ill;
henceforth thy going out and in
God keep for ever will.

I have been silent on this blog for well over 5 weeks. That's the longest interruption since I started writing here in 2007. The reason is unarguably valid. On Christmas Eve, December 24th our loved and lovely daughter Aileen, died suddenly and unexpectedly. The silence here is a consequence of sorrow, and the essential ways in which love responds to an all but overwhelming loss. 

On the death of someone so definitive and rooted in who we are as a family, practical things need attending to; priorities are reset with ruthless singularity of purpose; mourning goes along with careful and loving management as itself a signal of deepest love and deepest loss.

Much that could be done has been done, in her memory and in our love for her. Our lives, so diminished and depleted by Aileen's going from us, will take time to recover and find a new shape which carries her presence forward in our family and amongst her friends, as it turns our her many and different friends.

There may come a time when I will be able to reflect more fully on all that has happened. But not now, and not until there are perspectives other than loss, sorrow, and mourning, at present not made easier by memories, but made bearable by our gratitude for Aileen's gift to us of her presence, her personality and the love she gave and inspired. 

Aileen loved Aberdeenshire, and the view of Bennachie from any angle in a range of 20 miles is one of the images that she enjoyed whether sunset or sunrise, rain or sunshine, spring or winter or autumn or winter. 

Living Wittily is a blog that attempts to explore how to live wisely and well, as a person of Christian faith, without arid certainties, with life shaping convictions, and with a wide angled lens on human life and experience. I will continue to write here, but as someone inevitably transformed, and I hope both deepened and made more open, by the gift and the loss of Aileen, whose coming amongst us was such joy, and whose going from us into the safe arms of God is the deepest sadness of our lives.  

This book arrived today. I've looked for a reasonably priced and clean copy for a long time. I collect literary criticism on George Herbert, and I have several editions of his poems, from mid 19th Century to the more substantial modern editions. They take up over three feet of shelf space and I don't grudge a centimetre of it. Metaphysical poetry is a niche interest, and academic books for limited interest groups can require an equity raid on your house to afford them. So I was pleased to get this volume, shipped from Kentucky, for under £7. It's an ex-library copy, and inside it says it's a 14 day loan book from Lexington Public Library. It's tight, clean, forty something years old, and as often, I wonder who read it beforre me?

Herbert was never everyone's taste, although there was a surge of admiration and new editions in the Victorian period. Herbert's devotional lyricism, albeit often expressed in clever (too clever?) linguistic conceits, appealed to a deeply religious culture impressed by the immediacy, intimacy and restrained passion of Herbert's poems. 

In celebration of this book, whose title comes from Praise II, one of Herbert's better known poems, here are the first three verses. The direct address to God is caught up in a rhythm of I and Thee and Thou and me. The combinations of intimacy and reverence, of familiarity and formality, and of emotional warmth and devotional frankness, are features of Herbert's best poetry. These lines are a lovely prayer for start of day, or indeed for end of day. There is an entire lexicon of meaning in those two words, 'utmost art', the dedication of skill, energy, gift, artifice and imagination, to the praise of God

KIng of  Glorie, 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 spar’d me.
Wherefore with my utmost art
I will sing thee,
And the cream of all my heart
I will bring thee.

I have been a student of your love

and have not graduated. Setting

my own questions, I bungled

the examination. Where? Why? When?

Knowing there were no answers

you allowed history to invigilate

my desires. Time and again I was

caught with a crib up my sleeve.

This poem is the last in a sequence of eleven poems under the title 'Incarnation'. They are part of the Counterpoint collection, published in 1990. They are poems in the interrogative mood, and in this last poem the mystery of the Incarnation frustrates by its elusive allusions, and its answerless, or even unanswerable questions.

In eight lines Thomas addresses the one whose love became incarnate. The 'I' and 'you' are, however, the pronouns of a monologue. What is striking on a slow reading of this poem is the honest self-awareness of someone who not only failed the exam, but asked, and then answered, the wrong questions. Central to the poem are three monosyllabic questions essential to understanding the everyday phenomena and events we perceive. The question where is locative, and places the event. The question why is purposive and seeks explanation. The question when is about temporal placement. Together the three questions triangulate the event enabling the mind to fit it into categories of understanding.

Which misses the point. The student of love is not examining an event or phenomenon, but a relationship. The missing question is the clue to the poem; Who? This is the word that prevents the poem being mere description, and exposes the three questions as category errors. The student of love incarnate fails the final examinations by answering the wrong questions. The questions are not wrong because their answers are irrelevant, but because the questions are secondary. The primary question is who is the 'you' whose love is studied. Who is it who invigilates our desires and uses history to keep us honest?

And yet. For all those efforts to tutor our desires and prepare us for the examinations, the student of love incarnate persists in cheating. There is a crib with the correct answers up the sleeve. And that word 'crib' Thomas has packed with playfulness. The crib is the student's secret revision sheet; it is also the place where love incarnate lies, secretly, vulnerable, the Who of the unasked question. 

There is a lightness of touch in this last poem in the Incarnation sequence. There is also the characteristic note in R S Thomas, of unresolved tension and the admitted inadequacy of human answers when faced with the God whose ways are not human ways and whose thoughts are not human thoughts. The line of the sentimental and overplayed nativity hymn 'no crib for a bed',is contradicted by the cleverness of that last line which suggests there was a crib, but it has been stolen by the student of love incarnate who has the answer up his sleeve. 

Reading this poem in Advent I sensed echoes of the Johannine theology of the Word, become flesh. John's Gospel embeds divine love in the history of creation and in human history. Love is embodied, and while the great questions of Where? Why? and When? are all answered in the unfolding Gospel, they can only ever be fully and correctly answered in the light of the central, final and primary question of Who?

The author of the Gospel of John would also have said, "I have been a student of your love and have not graduated." It was he who wrote, "No one has ever seen God. The only one who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." Mystery is not susceptible to our questions, nor answerable to our answers. No student of divine love ever attends a Graduation ceremony. In the divine learning economy sufficiency of knowledge and proficiency in the subject are impossible. However much we cheat, or set our own questions, time and again we come back to the crib.

The reluctant agnosticism of Thomas contrasts with the exuberant confidence and embrace of mystery in Richard Crashaw's poem; taken together they bring us to the crib where we learn that intellectual humility is a precondition of adoration.

“Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span,
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man!
Great little One, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to earth.”