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“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old.”

“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.”

A J Heschel wrote this 50 years ago, and he is more right now than he was even then. Why? Because today there are new and unprecedented challenges to living on into older age, and they contribute towards the reduced value of human being in market terms, and especially as each human being grows older.

Consider:

the digital age and multiplying forms of social communication which leave many behind in the technology is the way to go stakes

the global recession and the remorseless demands of the manufactured idol called Austerity

market criteria in social care and the barcoding of every act of community service paid for by tax payers

the fixation of Government on the bottom line without addressing the humanely critical questions of how that bottom line is reached

globalisation and the emerence of mega-structures of business, economics and finance, which means decisions made thousands of miles away by unaccountable corporations have immediate local impact on the wellbeing and welfare of people helpless to influence those decisions

cultural, ethnic and religious pluralism coinciding with a time of unprecedented polarisation in precisely these contested but rich areas of human experience.

It is a hard world in which to be old.

Affection and care for the old is a principle that Heschel derived not from a mere humanism, but from a humanism rooted in Torah, and in the deep quarries of prophetic visions of social justice, and concepts like mercy, righteousness and law as a constraint rather than an excuse for exercise of power over the vulnerable. As a Christian I identify with such theologically fuelled ethics.

As an example of much of the above, let me describe a recent scenario. I am currently minister of a church in a trown where the local authority is in the middle of a consultation with residents in sheltered accommodation. Care homes in this Local Authority have until now had a full time warden, a laundry and a social room or residents' lounge. The necessity, cost-effectiveness and long term viability of each of these services is being questioned by the Council as provider. And as happens with most consultations, there is a widespread perception that this is a soft approach to what will become hard realities.

The residents' lounge is a place where residents sit and meet and share experience, where friendships are fostered, relationships negotiated and developed, where social entertainment and conversation are encouraged. At a time when loneliness and isolation are described as epidemic amongst the older population, the removal of this facility would lack moral imagination, and instead would demonstrate the kind of social selfishness that lurks beneath the euphemism 'hard choices', and "essential cuts."

The presence of a Warden ensures that concerns and worries about health or being able to cope, issues about mobility, safety and maintenance, are borne by someone who understands, knows the people involved and has the network to ensure what is needed is available. As for the laundry, none of the residents have washing machines as they were told on entry that a laundry was provided; so in the event of laundires being closed, what are residents to do but buy and have installed a washing machine?

When decisions like these are taken, it is unhelpful and unfair to assume local politicians are heartless, thoughtless, or haven't agonised over the cost and consequence of such changes. It's clear with this Local Council that there is deep discomfort that such cuts, changes, adjustments, are even mooted for discussion, and may be thought necessary – but cuts will still happen, if not here elsewhere. Unless of course there is such pressure as forces a change of direction.

But if not here, where else are savings to be made? And therein lies one of the key social issues of our times. What is not up for discussion, it seems, is the need for savings to existing budgets. Why? Because there are limited funds available from Local and Central Government sources. Can these resources be strengthened by increases in revenue? Yes, by raising Council Tax, but that would itself be an unpopular decision, and one that the Scottish Central Government will not make because it is a major plank in their appeal to the electorate – and an election is scheduled in 6 months time.

But I as a member of that electorate would gladly pay more in Council Tax to enable the continuance of our care for our older people. A laundry, a lounge, and a Warden are not luxury options, but represent socially responsible and responsive care. Somewhere in all of this, Christian communities will have to think through what it means for a wealthy country (and we are one of the wealthiest in the world) to save money by making life harder for older people.

And yes the same case needs to be made for those who are poor, homeless, socially vulnerable, and in need of social support. But Heschel's words are piercingly precise in their diagnosis of a society's illness by looking at how we treat our elderly people. We need to pay attention to his description of where the true gold mines of a culture are to be found – in respectful care for our older people. Those gold mines are not to be found in budget cuts to essential services to people on whose life and work our society has been built.

6 November 2015
Walking by the sea, unfankling the mind….and prayer, maybe…..

I've always wondered how Elijah went for forty days on the strength of some oatcakes baked by an angel. Food is one of the necessities of life, but also one of the recurring pleasures, and undoubtedly the right food at the right time is profound soul therapy.

So when I need a few hours on my own, or want to think, walk, pay attention to what's going on around me and inside me, a favourite place is the beach. And sometimes, not always, – occasionally not often, – I'll stop at my favourite cafe for an Elijah half hour. Being a good follower of Jahweh, Elijah didn't have the bacon roll, and wouldn't have milk with meat either. Still once the coffee and bacon roll arrive, there is the feeling that, once this is finished, I can walk in the strength of it for 40 minutes at least.

More seriously, walking by the sea is one of the places where the rhythms and steadiness of waves and tide, the wind whether breeze or gale, the sand soft or packed by the motion of the sea, combine in one of nature's most soothing orchestrations. The old scots word fankle, refers to what happens to wool once a cat gets a hold of it, or what happens to a silver chain taken off carelessly leaving it a recalcitrant clutter of knots. It's a good word, and sometimes it describes a particular state of mind. Walking with the wind in my face, the waves curling over and running for the shore, and with the sand smooth underfoot, is for me a way of unfankling my mind, disentangling trivial and crucial, restoring a sense of proportion to those worries that can undermine and overwhelm. Those rhythms of waves and walking work away at the soil of the soul until it's cultivated enough for new seeds of thought.

I'm not one for praying as I walk; unless walking is a kind of praying, which I suppose it is. After all following Jesus isn't mere metaphor, it has a referent in the real world of feet on the ground, even footprints in the sand! But the hymns I cherish and know by heart; the bible passages I've dwelt on so long they are part of my intellectrual breathing apparatus; memories and thoughts of people who are in my life, or have been and their memories remain as another kind of presence. Each of these makes for a well stored mind and an equally well stored heart. A long walk along the sea edge, preceded by a coffee and bacon roll. There is a spirituality of the favourite places, sounds and food!

5 November 2015
Learning Latin and Learning Hope from Van Gogh and Levertov

As often, when I am looking for words of substance I turn to poetry from one of those poets who have been my companion for a long time. Denise Levertov is one whose work I have read and pondered, for a long time. Some of it is worth pondering, some was so immediate, so woven with context that its fabric quickly fades with time. One reason Levertov is to be cherished is that, at her best, her poetry has a long view, she understands the importance of time and patience in the formation and growth of hope. This was a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve, and who wrote her heart in her poems. And the longer life went on the more she became a poet whose political and ethical vision burned with moral passion and compassion. From her opposition to the Vietnam war, the atrocities in Cambodia, El Salvador, Iraq, and global threats of nuclear armaments, ecological crises and economic injustices, she wrote with anger, pity, love, and with hope. For Levertov, hope is inherently patient, involves waiting, summons us to take the long view, literally, longing for hope.

I remember my first year of learning Latin at school I came across the little word "diu", meaning "for a long time". I never forgot it, I liked it from the first day I learned it. Perhaps the sense of permanence, the longevity and spaciousness of time implied by those three letters, "diu", for a long time, appealed to a boy with his own hopes and forward looking into a future yet to come. Levertov's poem For the New Year 1981 is a poem about hope, the patient multiplication of gestures that take the long view and make space in human hearts and relatedness for hope. The Van Gogh painting becomes self explanatory after reading the poem

For the New year 1981

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

–Denise Levertov

4 November 2015
A Prayer of Intercession for a School Visited by Tragedy

Following the tragic murder of a schoolboy in Cults Academy, I am leading prayers of Intercession in Crown Terrace Baptist Church today. This the prayer I have prepared:

Eternal God, the One we have come to know as Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom are hidden all the secrets of wisdom, knowledge and power.

Every day, every term, every year, our schools are communities of learning, places of growth and human development, where friendships and experiences shape and change young lives.

We thank you for all the investment of time, energy, skill and money that goes into our schools, to make them places where knowledge and learning open up new windows, new roads, new opportunities for our children and young people.

We thank you too for the dedication and sheer hard work of teaching staff and pupils alike, year in and year out. That work makes our schools places of excitement and possibility, where knowledge and learning open up new windows, point to new roads, invite and empower towards new opportunities.

God of wisdom it is because we value our schools as dynamos of energy in our communities that we care so much for them, and for those who work and learn and teach there.

And so we come this morning our hearts made heavy with sadness, loss and confusion, because in one of our schools this week, that vision was shattered by unexpected tragedy.

We pray your mercy and grace for the pupils and staff of Cults Academy, And for the wider community of Cults, and of this city.

We hold before you, in sorrow and shared bewilderment the parents, grand-parents, friends and wider family of Bailey Gwynne. We pray that in the empty ache of loss beyond any words they can say, they may know themselves supported and helped by the love of others. God may your mercy filter through those countless acts of kindness, flickers of light when everything else seems dark.

We pray for the parents of both boys, who in different ways look to a future helpless now to change circumstances none would ever have imagined. Be with them in whatever they feel at this moment.

Lord give wisdom and compassion to those who bring counsel and help; we thank you for the leadership of Anna Muirhead the Head teacher, and staff of Cults academy; grant continuing strength and wisdom to them and to the liaison police, counsellors, social workers and parents.

Lord by your Spirit of love and healing and consolation, enable all those young people to support each other, and to find in all this bewildering mess of sorrow, hard truths and big realities on which to build their own futures with greater hopefulness and care for the world around them.

Creator God, whose will is life and whose purpose is to redeem and renew, who hears the cry of the heart-broken, and understands the deepest loves and hurts of every parent and child, We place into your hands all affected by this tragedy.

In your mercy hear us; by your grace uphold and give strength; in this, as in every dark valley, walk with those who are afraid, be light in the dark places, in the name of your Son Jesus Christ, whose light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, Amen

1 November 2015
Just When You Thought It was Safe to Take a Photo – God Gets in the Way….

Some went out on the sea in ships;
    they were merchants on the mighty waters.
²⁴They saw the works of the Lord,
    his wonderful deeds in the deep.
²⁵For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
    that lifted high the waves.
²⁶They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
    in their peril their courage melted away.
²⁷They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
    they were at their wits’ end.
²⁸Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he brought them out of their distress.
²⁹He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    the waves of the sea^[a] were hushed.
³⁰They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven.
³¹Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
³²Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people
    and praise him in the council of the elders.

Today I sat in the car and watched a troubled sea. My first trip out for a week after being quite unwell, another episode of bodily weakness possibly brought on by living beyond the limits of what is sensible for someone my age; equally it may well have been one of those random things that happens. Either way, I need to start acting my age, it seems, one of those days, maybe……

But through the murk and gloom of a sea roiled and rolling in a wind neither wavering nor weakening, and painted more than fifty shades of grey by rain thrown in messy freehand rather than spread evenly from some invisible palette, came a large container ship slowly making its way to the harbour entrance. It was like watching a documentary based on Psalm 107, the section about "merchants on the mighty waters." With the Psalms open on my knee, I read those words, 107. 23-32, and watched the skill and courage of a crew arriving at "their desired haven". Then I took the photos.

This is a Psalm for people who have tales to tell; who have been hungry and somehow food has appeared, who have been sick but somehow they got well again, whose lives have been closed in, and their bodies, hearts or minds imprisoned one way or another, but have recovered their freedom, who have sailed stormy waters and against the odds, or so it seems, made it to a safe place once more. And as I sat there watching this ship aim for the narrow harbour entrance and slip thankfully into the shelter of those bastion walls, I was aware I had just watched Psalm 107 enacted and performed for my benefit. Because reading the Psalm I had unwittingly said the prayer that I as much as anyone needed to say, "O Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so…"

The Psalm has four case studies of when life seems to fail – hunger, sickness, loss of freedom, danger to our future – but these four examples are framed by the heart cry of gratitude for the steadfast love of the good God (v1-3) and a beautiful poem at the end about what such steadfast love looks like in lives no less complicated and unpredictable for any of us. And it finishes with the no nonsense advice to consider, to think seriously, to take into full account in any assessment of who you are and where your life is right now, to remember not to forget "the steadfast love of the Lord".

And sitting at the North Sea front at Aberdeen, in a howling gale, rain battering the windscreen, book of Psalms on my knee and reading aloud the words of this Psalm as the boat arrived at harbour, I was taught again to do precisely that, "to consider the steadfast love of the Lord who brings us to our desired haven… and raises up the needy". The Psalm writer isn't saying everyone will want to do this; but he is blunt enough to say "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so". If they don't, who will?

Gratitude is the emotion we seldom feel whenever life is taken for granted. In a culture where self-sufficiency is maturity, independence and self-determination a life goal, material prosperity considered the best security, and the selfie the ultimate personal statement, gratitude for the sheer gift of being alive, and gratitude for all the gifts we neither made nor deserve but which make our life possible at all – well gratitude is blindingly conspicuous by its being silenced beneath the din of lives lived selfward.

I an thankful for this Psalm; I am thankful for this ship and that it reached safe harbour. But I am also thankful for those experiences that remind me to be thankful, those times when life isn't going so well for me, or those I care most about. Because undergirding, underwriting, this life I live, is the steadfast love of the Lord whose goodness endures forever, and who will bring us, like that boat, to our desired haven.

29 October 2015
Commentaries as Manuals of Devotion.

The Christian Spiritual Tradition has its enduring classics, not all of which stand the tests of time, or postmodern-critique. The Imitation of Christ, so introspective, guilt inducing and Pelagian in its emphases towards self improvement; the Letters of Fenelon, patronising and patriarchal in their assumptions about feminine spirituality, yet written with an affected feminine tone which some 21st C women may well find irresistibly funny if not ioffensive; Teresa's Interior Castle, a kind of handbook on spiritual Grand Designs for a residence fit for a king; Julian's Revelations of Divine Love, an uncomfortable combination of morbid fascination with death and a level of denial about the reality and perhaps irrevocability of tragedy, evil and divine failure; The Cloud of Unknowing, that strange mixture of Dionysian mystical strategies and structures and The Dark Night of the Soul of John of the Cross, whicvh may be one of the most helpful guides for a culture utterly sated with its own desires and dying of its own surfeits.

I've read all of these, and taught them in classes as substantial building blocks in Christian spirituality, acknowledging all these weaknesses but still insisting that these are the legacy of souls who struggled with the cost and consequence of seeking God.

Each of those spiritual classics is the product of a life lived Godward, and a desire to leave a few footprints for others to follow. (The photo is of my 1831 edition of Fenelon's Lettres) And yes they can be shown to be limited, flawed, less relevant, even harmful in the way they can perpetuate oppressive ideologies and attitudes if read uncritically and without regoard to context. And yet. The wisdom of some of the Christian tradition's greatest thinkers and explorers of the spiritual life is that these classics of devotion are gold, albeit mixed with the dross of their own times and contexts and normative frameworks. So every now and again I go back to one or other of them and recalibrate my own spiritual sensitivities, push back my hermeneutical horizons, revisit landscapes which I remember but which on returning I find to have changed, or perhaps that I have changed and can never see things this way again.

For most of my intellectual life as a Christian I have found spiritual and intellectual sustenance, stimulus and enjoyment in another kind of reading altogether. The biblical commentary is a particular genre of biblical studies, itself a major discipline under the wider roof of theology, subsumed under the canopy of the humanities! In these later years of semi-retirement when there is time for more discretionary reading I confess to indulging in more of what I;ve always done – reading commentaries. Yes commentaries are for consulting, they are reference wqrks, they gather in one place as much of the relevant information needed for responsible intepretation of the text, and I use commentaries in that way. But I also read them; like a story, with a plot, characters, tensions, resolutions and ongoing questions about where this is all going.

Commentaries have always been my manuals of devotion, to be placed alongside the classic works of that genre, and often to be given more time, and in return they give more for the effort and time spent. One example. The story of Martha and Mary and Jesus occurs in St Bernard, in the Cloud of Unknowing and in Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton. Each of these treatments eventually commends the contemplative over the active. But pursuing this gospel story through several academic commentaries opens up other interpretive possibilities and perspectives. I haven't looked at so called devotional commentaries on Luke, whatever they might look like. Instead I spent a while with the scholars who have dug deep into the text, who know the layers of cultural and social signals, who are alert to the assumptions and constraints that can skew a text and load an intepretation. The result is a profound sense of gratitude for the residual ambiguities in the story; is Jesus rebuking or comforting Martha? Will Jesus refuse the bread Martha has baked in the hot and bothered kitchen? Can the church ever thrive on the false dichotomy of contemplative prayer versus hand dirtying service?

The Bible remains the primary text of the Christian Church. For two thousand years saints and scholars, readers and writers, prayers and preachers, have found there words that have become the Word of God to them. The immense learning and energy that has gone into the work of biblical interpretation is one of God's great gifts to the church. And while I fully recognise the market pressures and commercial advantages of publishers multiplying commentary series and finding increasingly flimsy justifications for yet another allegedly indispensable, authoritative, ground-breaking, innovative or whatever else seem plausible reasons, the work of biblical interpretation remains a vital and vitalising activity of the Christian Church.

Were I to reduce my library to a hundred volumes, I'd want more commentaries than classic manuals of devotion and systematic theologies put together.

27 October 2015
Prayer in the Fluctuating Flux of Post-Modern Malaise.

Franciscan Benediction

May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God's creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and all our neighbors who are poor.

Amen.

I came across this prayer attributed to St Francis. It sounds too modern, western, and reads too rhetorically tidy for me to have much confidence it came from the medieval monk and troubadour. But then again, someone who spent three weeks in dialogue and as a peacemaking envoy to the Sultan of Egypt may well have shown the inner dispositions for which this prayer asks. So there's a spiritual congruence of these prayer petitions for converted attitudes with what we know of what Francis was about. And there is a further alignment of the heart if this prayer is read alongside the more famous prayer attributed to Francis – Make me a channel of your peace.

In both prayers, the sentiments and ideas, the psychological insight and spiritual intelligence that gets to the heart of what is wrong in the world, and how God is seeking to make it right, show considerable family resemblance. So if the prayer isn't by St Francis – it could have been, indeed it should have been! In any case Christians seeking to follow faithfully after Jesus in the fluctuating flux that is our western cultural malaise, will find in this prayer important clues for living intelligently, faithfully and with inner integrity. Because we are called to witness to Christ the way, the truth and the life amongst the greed and injustice, the lies and deceit, the fear and anxiety, the hedonism and sadness, the individual uncertainties and collective confusion of a society so lost and blurred in vision that it gets harder to distinguish between a road and a cliff edge.

23 October 2015
Meditation on a Photo in 100 Words (5) Rosehips in October

Rosehips are the legacy left to us when the fragility and form of the rose has gone. Both are beautiful, but in autumn the defiant green refuses yet to fade, and sets off scarlet globes crammed with seeds. Such fruitfulness after the beauty of blossom, October remembering June, protecting the promised seeds of next year, and the next.

So rosehips combine memory of beauty and hope of tomorrow. If Jesus had preached his sermon somewhere on the road to Bervie where this photo was taken, he might have said, "Consider the roses, and the rosehips…not even Solomon's glory…..

20 October 2015
Keir Hardie, The Labour Party and the State We Are In.

I've been enjoying Bob Holman's study of Keir Hardie for various reasons. Professor Holman was one of the finest teachers I had at Glasgow University. Much of Hardie's life was lived in and around Cumnock, in Ayrshire, where much of my own childhood was spent. His background in mining, and the importance of the mines in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire resonates with my own family history in which back to 1860 on both sides, my own family were predominantly miners. And therefore his passionate outspoken criticism of wealth built on low wages and dreadful housing, of inherited privilege and its political protections, and his compassion for poor labourers, destitute unemployed and all but abandoned elderly poor likewise fires my own political and ethical opposition to injustice that is systemic and the valuing of human life on economic and financial scales.

An intriguing series of parallels with Jeremy Corbyn makes it even more interesting. Hardie was mocked and verbally abused for daring to come into Parliament dressed in workers' tweeds; he was not prepared to validate the class elitism of the monarchy and on numerous occasions was outspoken about the cost of the monarchy, the indifference of the royal family to the plight of workers, and the validation of the Czar by a royal visit seeking trade agreements; he was vehemently opposed to militarism and especially the recruiting of working class young people to fight in the interests of Empire economics abroad. It would be too far to say Corbyn has modelled his political style and actions on Hardie, but there is strong DNA evidence of a common ancestry of ideas.

Reading this story shows the vast distance that the modern Labour Party has travelled away from its social, ethical and ideological roots. In some ways it has had to adapt and develop, reshape and reinvent, in a rapidly changing world. But you are left with the question: If the blade of my spade wears out and I replace it, then the handle breaks and I replace it, do I still have the same spade – indeed, depending on what I replace the aprts with, do I still have a spade at all?

19 October 2015
Have Mercy O Lord. The sea is so large, and my boat is so small.

(Prayer of Breton Fishermen)

19 October 2015