Living Wittily

Category: Women of Wisdom

  • “Glory makes it possible to see glory.”

    "Perhaps in no area of theology is it more improtant to keep in mind than in Trinitarian theology, that the object upon which we reflect is another 'subject' or 'self', namely, the God who relentlessly pursues us to become partners in communion.God who is Love chooses to be known by love, thus theological knowledge is personal knowledge.

    Theological knowledge is as much a matter of 'being grasped by God' as 'grasping God', of 'being conceived by God' as conceiving God.

    God can only be apprehnded, not comprehended, in the union of love that surpasses all words and concepts…to see God is to see with God's eyes. Glory makes it possible to see glory."

    Catherine Mowry Lacugna, God For Us. The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), page 332)

    5137ZREA7BL._SL500_AA240_ Hey, we had a fire drill the other day. In a few seconds I found myself outside having left my working library upstairs in my study and never gave a thought to that cliche question, "If there was a fire, which few books would you make sure you saved?" But if I had thought about it, one of them might have been my hardback copy of this book. I'm on my third re-read.

    Catherine Lacugna died far too young. A promising and gifted theologian whose theologising was conducted as a literary form of doxology. This is, whatever the adjective means, a "great" book. C S Lewis once decried devotional writing and opted instead for the kind of theology you read with a pipe gripped in your teeth. With apologies to Lacugna for commending her book on the back of comments made by an Oxford Don whose paternalism and patriarchal tendencies are all too apparent, and who thought hard intellectual work required such a masculine symbolic aid to concentration as a chewed pipe, but I know what Lewis meant. Lacugna's book is theology as doxology, passionate thought meticulously researched, written out of personal conviction and an inner vision of the glory and beauty and goodness and truth that constitutes the essence of the Triune God, personal holy love in mutual relation.

    She was one of the more conciliatory and authoritative feminist theologians, unwilling to assume hostility in those from whom she strongly differed in theological emphases. Her relational understanding of God provides a foundation for an entire systematics that sadly she did not live to write. And maybe she wouldn't have 'done' a systematic theology – systems are about control, constraint, predictability and management of ideas. Lacugna's theology does not lack rigour – but it breathes the spirit of intuition, privileges relational wisdom, expresses a fearlessly constructive urge, exudes contagious living urgency.

    This book is on any reading list I prepare for a study of contemporary thought on the Trinity. Like the best of T F Torrance's work, from which it deeply differs, this is the tue theologian who prays, whose inner life is responsive to the truth she seeks in the inner life of the Triune God. It is not theologically flawless, but as theology offered in the spirit of doxology, it is exemplary. And an important companion in my early morning Advent reading – has anyone ever come across a Trinitarian take on Advent……., hmmm?

  • Evelyn Underhill on Intercession

    Evelyn_underhill The
    great intercessor must possess an extreme sensitiveness to the state and needs
    of souls and of the world. As those who live very close to nature become tuned
    to her rhythm, and can discern in solitary moments all the movements of her
    secret life, or as musicians distinguish each separate note in a great symphony
    and yet receive the music as a whole; so the intercessor…is sensitised to every
    note and cadence in the rich and intricate music of common life. He stretches
    out over an ever wider area the filaments of love, and receives and endures in
    his own person the anguish of its sorrow, its helplessness, its
    confusions,  and its sin; suffering again
    and again the darkness of Gethsemane and the Cross as the price of redemptive
    power. For it is his awful privilege to stand in the gap between the world’s
    infinite need and the treasuries of the Divine Love.

    Evelyn
    Underhill, An Anthology of the Love of God, (Lobndon : Mowbray, 1953),
    162-3.

    Imaginative, theologically sensitive, a practical mysticism of intercession as love for the other and as redemptive activity. Writing like this is one reason Evelyn Underhill remains a spiritual writer whose work expands our sense of God, and helps us notice His work in our lives.

  • Oak trees, Suffragettes, and not taking political equality for granted.

    Oak leaf At University of Glasgow Library and parked my car near Kelvingrove Park.

    Frustrated and couldn't find what I wanted.

    Sauntered back to the car which had collected some large fading oak leaves from the big tree under which I'd parked it.

    Noticed a wee plaque at the base of the tree and went over to read it.

    Planted on 20 April 1918 by the Women Suffragette Movements in honour of their being granted the vote.

    Not sure why but I decided one of those oak leaves, from this 100 year old oak tree, should find its way into one of my books for a while.

    100 years is a long time, even for a tree. It is though, a magnificent tree.

    But it's astonishingly recent in the history of discrimination – just 100 years ago women were largely excluded from political decision-making. 

    The photo below is of women protesting outside Duke Street prison in Glasgow. The City had a Women's Socialist and Political Union (WSPU), just one of the organisations far too easily forgotten, but made up of women of courage, conviction and passionate commitment to social justice and political equality. My oak leaf honours them!

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  • Sisters of Sinai – best lecture I’ve heard in years!

    Soskice3
    On Thursday night last, Janet Soskice was all that you want in a philosophical theologian delivering a public lecture which is the story of two Ayrshire Victorian women and their extraordinary contribution to NT textual criticism. In their fifties they visited Mt Sinai Monastery and discovered a palimpsest on which were the faded words of the four Gospels, dating back much earlier than previously known texts, and representing a crucial comparative landmark for textual critics.

    My
    childhood was spent in Ayrshire. One of my side-interests is the
    history of NT Interpretation. Biography is a favourite genre and an
    important theological resource in its own right. My own subject fields
    are theology and history of Christianity, but this was a masterclass in controlled erudition laced with gentle but telling humour. Add to these Soskice's gift
    for telling a story and building a rounded biographical portrait of these two remarkable women,
    and the obvious sub-stratum of assiduous research behind this lecture –
    and it was indeed a very satisfying evening.

    5156Ns1EPNL._SL500_AA240_
    Sheila and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I sent an email to say thank you to Dr Soskice for
    telling this story, and recovering the contribution of two women to NT
    scholarship. The work of excavating lives like these from a largely
    male dominated history remains an important form of protest and balance
    restoration in historiography, and perhaps particularly in the historiography of Church history. Even in the telling of the story of these two women, the academic jealousies of Victorian Cambridge, the in-fighting of male scholars claiming intellectual property rights over their original work, the appearance of Professor William Robertson Smith (one of the greatly wronged scholars in the collision of ideas that accompanied the demise of Victorian Scottish Calvinism thirled to the Westminster Confession) as their sponsor in establishing the importance of their find, all of it a tale of intrigue, amateur versus professional scholarship, and huge stakes. If this story is dramatised for TV it would be rivetting viewing – the book on which the lecture was based is now on sale. It's a dead cert holiday read for Sheila and I. The story of a key episode in NT scholarship that doesn't even get a footnote in the standard histories – unlike Tischendorff, they were women, and they didn't remove the codex – they photographed it onto glass slides and then returned to transcribe it.     Oh, and by the way, these Irvine lassies (amateur scholars, indeed!), taught themselves Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Egyptian, Syriac – and the Syriac was mastered in 9 months!

  • Dame Cicely Saunders: Advocate for the dying, and for life

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    In 1975 at the MacRobert Centre in Stirling, I first heard the late Dame Cicely Saunders speak about the nature of hospice care. Amongst the arguments she used was that the humanity of a society can be measured by the way it responds to the needs of the most vulnerable, those whose contribution to society can no longer be measured in cash value terms. By which she meant that the care of the dying human person, and the support and accompaniment of their family should be a priority in any humane society. She spoke as a nurse, a former social worker, a doctor, a Christian and a determined and formidable advocate for dedicated, highly skilled, fully resourced provision for the dying as a right

    Ever since, I've been a passionate supporter and strong believer in the role of the hospice in modern health care. A view which, whether or not shared by successive Governments, still seems to fall short of outright approval of adequate funding. And yes – there are hard budget decisions, health care priorities, variations in local provision, a growing gulf between resources and an increasingly elderly and resource expensive population. But for all the dedication, compassion, responsibility and skilled care of nurses in our general hospitals, it isn't possible within that widely demanding context to provide the specialist care and patient specific treatment in palliative medicine and family support, that is possible in the purpose built and resourced hospice.

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    The very fact we are able to discuss hospice care at all owes much to the vision, determination, courage, and refusal to take no for an answer that was one of Cicely Saunders great spiritual gifts. I've just bought the volume of her letters and will be reading this as part of my Lenten reflections. Not because they are "lenten material" (whatever that might be anyway!), but because she is one of those remarkable Christian women whose life's work was carried out against a strong tide of resistance. Medicine is a profession that during the second half of the 20th Century only slowly, and with some reluctance, welcomed the contribution of women in the higher levels of professional recognition and vocational influence. In my current interest in biography as theology, she is an example both of spiritual journeying and vocational constancy – her practice of the Gospel was embodied in her advocacy for the right of the dying to die with dignity and as much of their humanity intact as modern skill and knowledge allows. As she said often to patients who came under her care,     "You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life." That is not a specifically Christian principle, but it was backed by specifically Christian ethical and theological values.


  • Dorothy Sayers, Trident submarines, and the Triune God?

    Dorothy
    Yesterday I posted the delightful poem of Dorthy Sayers, a form of compline in verse, gently urging gratitude as the defining disposition of life. I also posted on the nonsense of nuclear subs colliding because they were too good at hiding from everyone, even their friends. An evening prayer of thanks for friendship, forgiveness, laughter and wisdom, contrasted with a road traffic accident on the ocean floor. The irony of two cloaked submarines colliding, is matched by a further irony in my juxtaposition of a post on gratitude for life's blessings and a post on weapons of mass destruction

    And here's another ironic twist. Dorothy Sayers near the end of The Zeal of Thy House, one of her plays, has one of the characters compare the creativty of the Triune God with human creativity which is the mirror image of divine activity – (forgive the gender exclusive 'men' – Dorothy would have been front of the queue to have inclusive language set as the gold standard in communication).

    Children of
    men, lift up your hearts. . . .

    Praise Him that He hath made man in His own image,

                   a
    maker

    And craftsman like Himself, a little mirror of His

                   Triune Majesty.

    For every work of creation is threefold, an earthly

               Trinity

    to match the heavenly.


    So the Creator God makes the multitudinous creatures of the sea, and calls them good; and we make submarines with Trident capability and the powers that be try to tell us they are good – but just what kind of God does Trident mirror? 

  • Dorothy L Sayers, “To view the whole world mirthfully”.

    This playful and life loving poem is one of the reasons I like Dorothy Sayers. Hard headed common sense, intellectual curiosity, love of language and story and formidable Christian intelligence makes her one of those people it would have been fun to meet, even if you were a fool – whom, according to this poem, she would nevertheless have suffered gladly. The poem is about friendship, love, laughter – and the foolish wisdom that brings a sense of perspective to life. Not a bad late night prayer – compline in verse.

    Lord if this night my journey end,
    I thank Thee first for many a friend,
    The sturdy and unquestioned piers
    That run beneath my bridge of years.

    And next, for all the love I gave,
    To things and men this side the grave,
    Wisely or not, since I can prove
    There always is much good in love.

    Next, for the power thou gavest me
    To view the whole world mirthfully,
    For laughter, paraclete of pain,
    Like April suns across the rain.

    Also that, being not too wise
    To do things foolish in men's eyes,
    I gained experience by this,
    And saw life somewhat as it is.

    Dorothy L Sayers, Op 1, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1916)

  • The inclusiveness of being chosen

    Kathleen Norris is a writer who manages to write about herself without that subtle egotism that sometimes turns personal and spiritual reflection into exhibitionism disguised as candour. As a Benedictine Oblate she has thought long and hard on the Rule of St Benedict, and tries to live out the discipline of that Rule in the various contexts that make up her life – her marriage and family, her vocation as poet, and her service to her church and community.

    The Cloister Walk is just the kind of book for holiday reading. No long chapters; more a collection of reflections and essays about monastic living adjusted to the daily routines of faithful living.

    Norrispix
    A number of books have been written about amazing grace (a no longer very original superlative) – including her own volume, Amazing Grace. The subtitle is A Vocabulary of Faith, and it too is a mixed collection of essays, biblical reflections, theological and literary ruminations about experiences, her own and those she knows, all written around Christian theological terminology. She writes with a poet’s sharpness of sight, and insight. Her Christianity is warm, unjudgemental, regulated by her vows of vocational commitment, yet open to change and difference in a way that resonates with my own reluctance to have everything pinned down. You can’t be wide eyed and happily bewildered by amazing grace, and at the same time insist that such grace can be domesticated, organised, turned into the religious routines of theological defensive play, with no risks, creative surges repressed, nothing unprecedented or unpredictable looked for or wanted.

    After preaching she was accosted by a recently ordained Lutheran deacon who said to her, ‘I feel sorry for you because you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ’. All because she didn’t press the right verbal buttons; tick the spiritually programmed boxes; click her way through the how to get saved menu. Reflecting on such encounters she wrote

    In the suspicious atmospehere of the contemporary Christian church, it is good to know one’s ground. When others label me and try to exclude me, as too conservative or too liberal, as too feminist or not feminist enough, as too intellectual or not intellectually rigorous, as too Catholic to be a Presbyterian or too Presbyterian to be a Catholic, I refuse to be shaken from the fold. It’s my God too, my Bible, my church, my faith; it chose me. But it does not make me “chosen” in a way that would exclude others. I hope it makes me eager to recognise the good, and the holy, wherever I encounter it. (Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, 143)


    Amen to that!

    On the same theme of Gospel inclusion, she tells of an old Benedictine Sister who was comforting her mother as she was dying and said, “In heaven everyone we love is there”.
    The older woman corrected her daughter, “No, in heaven I will love everyone who is there.”

    Amen to that as well!

  • Julian Of Norwich and a sustainable because sustained earth

    Hand1 ‘And he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled that it continued to exist and did not suddenly disintegrate; it was so small. And again my mind supplied the answer, ‘It exists, both now and for ever, because God loves it’. In short, everything owes its existence to the love of God.’

    ‘In this little thing I saw three properties. The first that God made it. The second that God loves it. The third that God keeps it.’

    Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, (Penguin ed. p. 68).

    Long before eco-theology, environmentalism, carbon prints and climate change, this contemplative theologian understood the heart of God and the nature of created reality. Few have grasped more firmly the need to think hopefully, believe defiantly and live trustfully. Others need to do the hard theological thinking about the future of our planet in the aftermath of modernity’s abuse of the only place we have to live – but we need Julian and her like to remind us of power and purpose that is not defeated by the worst case scenarios of our sinfulness. In other words we need an eschatology that takes its goal from the nature of God in Christ rather than from scientific and secular visions which preclude the central reality of the Gospel – a world reconciled, redeemed and part of a creation in which all things are held together in Christ.