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The walled gardens at Drum Castle are a favourite place for a reverie. It's hard to have a reverie these days. Our minds aren't accustomed to the mental spaciousness and lapse of productiveness and reorientation of focus necessary for those episodes of creative restfulness and restful creativity. 

Walking on paths laid centuries ago, in a garden with historic borders and beds of old scent laden roses, and provided with a number of features intended to rest the mind and slow the body, like this old water feature not unlike a baptismal font, I reach for that word rendered obsolete by frantic lifestyles fuelled by acquistive habits, driven by dissipated attention, sustained by conveyor belts of desire-induced credit, and hostile to any use of time that is not work, entertainment, or retail activity. Reverie.

Reverie is to allow ourselves the freedom to notice; to be patient with and to feel this body that walks, talks and works; to remember rhythms of thought and movement that are respectful of place and time. Reverie isn't so much a time of thinking as a time of openness to thinking about the present as a requirement of being open to the future, and of not foreclosing on our past. 

Reverie is an imagination friendly environment, a space hospitable to thoughts however weird, wonderful or wide of the marks of the norm. Reverie is when we are not limited by here and not constrained by now, but when we are presented with the gift of wondering what it is like to be who we are, and to accept who we are without judgement, expectation, or disappointment.

Reverie is prayer if it is some or most of these things, because we are made in the image of a God who created for six days, and at the end of each day looked with critical appreciation and saw that it was good. We are made in the image of a God who at the end of the six days looked with critical appreciation and saw that it was very good, and then rested. The sabbath of God was a time of creative reverie, God rested, wondered, waited, allowed to be.

I wonder how much more effective Christian mission and activity would be if we rehabilitated the practice of inner sabbath, reverie. What would it do to our church programmes of discipleship, worship, mission and service if they arose out of a community comfortable with periods of critical appreciation, creative reverie, a wondering and waiting that was open to the present and therefore open to a different future?

One of the characteristics of the first Christians was their joy. Luke describes those days after the resurrection as times when the disciples disbelieved for joy. Paul lists joy immediately after love and before peace as fruits of the Holy Spirit. My point? The word reverie comes from obsolete French meaning rejoicing, revelry and is from rever meaning delirious! Now whatever else Christians have been accused of by the society they categorise as secular, we haven't been overburdened with charges of excess joy.  Maybe that's because there is insufficient value placed on Christians modelling a way of living in which reverie, creative wondering and imaginative care for the world, is the disposition out of which comes those redemptive gestures, out of which grows a spirit of reconciliation, and within which grows a community in love with the world God made, in which God became incarnate in Christ, which God loves into new life and new creation, and into which we are sent as revellers of the Kingdom.

Been away a few days Livingston, Paisley, Edinburgh, and a family funeral forbye. Hence the non disturbance in my corner of the blogosphere vineyard.

Not a bad time to be offline though. The ongoing sniping and rewinding of one side and the evasions and qualifications and lies and damned lies of the other side, are creating an atmosphere in which it's hard to breathe, and think, and imagine our way into the best kind of future for Scotland and the other countries which make up the UK. Listening to the spokesperson for Mediation Network Scotland, he made the interesting point that reconciliation can come too quickly before the significance of the hurt and the magnitude of the decision have been registered.

He's right. It takes time for complaint and grief, grievance and hurt, to find words, to say truth as it is felt and as it affects the inner and outer climate of life. It takes time to understand both ourselves and those who voted differently. But then there is a need to accept, to move on, and to be part of that forward movement. When sufficient words have been said, and enough time has passed isn't easy to guage, and will vary from person to person, group to group, and depends on the magnitude of the issue – this one was huge. So when is enough time?

Well it can't be far away – indeed for Scotland's sake the sooner the better. The constant flow of the discourse of injustice, cheating and foul play is in danger of saying what happened was not a democratic process. It was, and the result is the reality we now have to deal with. The evasions, manipulative doublespeak and selfish agendas of Westminster are equally endangering the credibility of what is claimed to be a showpiece democratic process.

The First Minister promised he would accede to "the settled will of the Scottish people" – it's time he led by example in that direction and pursued the interests of all the Scottish people, 100%, not the 45% who voted in support of his vision, but also the 55% who chose otherwise.

The Prime Minister and his Westminster colleagues in party leadership promised a range of powers unconditionally – it's time he and they demonstrated the integrity of their words, and stopped the blatant vacillations, reeking policy smokescreens, and acknowledged the unprincipled arrogance in linking unconditional promises made to the Scottish nation with tawdry offers and late entry conditions made to assuage the anger of the crown princes of his party, and only made once the result was in.

So. When will enough time have elapsed for the 45% to start thinking of themselves again as part of the 100% that is our Scottish nation? How long will it take for Westminster to deliver what was promised, whether willingly or under compelling political pressure? The answer to that second question is inevitably linked to the answer to the first. Westminster needs to be confronted now and on into our future, by a united Scottish voice that won't take no for an answer. It is the First Minister's duty, and privilege, to serve the people of Scotland, all of us, and to defend the interests and rights of all the Scottish people post Referendum. So instead of leading the choir of complaint perhaps he should be putting together a choir and orchestra to premiere a new Scottish Choral Symphony – "symphony" – a consonance of voices. That's what Westminster needs to hear – a consonance of Scottish voices.  

Same prayer today as yesterday. And you know, this prayer wouldn't be a bad basis for a political agenda off the back of the most remarkable democratic process in modern times in these lands. 

So today this prayer becomes a checklist of what Micah meant, "What does the Lord require of us but to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly…", with God and with each other.

Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
hold fast that which is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak;
help the afflicted;
honour everyone;
love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
and the blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
be amongst us and remain with us always.

Amen.

One of the hardest things to do is to put the toothpaste back into the tube.  One of the even harder things to do is to speak wounding words and try to persuade those we have hurt that it was just politics, it wasn't personal, it was the heat of argument and we now move on. The First Minister says he will expect to conduct negotiations in the event of a Yes vote in a spirit of 'comradely friendship'. What in the name of the wee man does that sound like to all those other people (near 60 million of them) who have been lumped together in the Westminster and England bashing of the past months?

I get it that the Better Together campaign represents the stutus quo, and that the status quo needs radical and long reaching change. I also get it that there is an historic patronising and complacent attitude of taking Scotland for granted. And I am old enough to remember Winnie Ewing winning Hamilton, and Margo MacDonald winning in Govan, and have long understood the vision and excitement of those who long for an independent Scotland. I also realise that in the give and take of politics, that for the players in these brutal political tennis rallies in which facts are hammered across a dividing net with cut, volley and smash, it's the winning that counts, not the feelings of the opponent, or the way you win even if you win ugly. But there the analogy stops and the rally loses its cogency as metaphor.

This isn't a tennis match. This is a huge argument about our future, and the future of these islands – not just Scotland. National pride and longing, passion for change and long term discontent with the way things are, concern for our own and our childfen's futures, and the darker impulses of self-interest, getting even and nurtured resentment all coalesce and challenge the integrity and viability of mutual and reciprocal relationships centuries old. What we say in order to persuade our side to vote our way, especially when it is dismissive, abusive and at times offensive to those others with whom we share these islands will have a long half-life. It isn't possible to portray a people as the cause of all our griefs, to impugn motive and exaggerate differences, to vilify and try to silence voices on the other side which don't want us to go, and then assume we will sit down in comradely friendship – without even an apology, which if it comes will come too late – the toothpaste is out of the tube.

As a Christian I am embarrassed at much of the discourse of those who represent the Scottish people at Government level rubbishing all that has been achieved together; as I am embarrassed at much of the discourse of those who represent Scottish people at Westminster who at times have behaved and spoken disgracefully towards the rightful aspirations of a people to be self- determining through agreed democratic process. Lying, bullying, intimidation, demonising, orchestrating of institutions – the darker tones of political manipulation are well enough documented.

Whether the answer is Yes or No to Independence, we will live next door to neighbours who since the Union have shared some of our darkest and lightest experiences as a nation. In order to win Independence, there is no need to abuse our neighbours and cast up all our resentments and grievances just to win support by creating a climate of complaint and reserntment. These are not emotions that go away easily – and they will simmer on both sides of the border long after Friday's announcement.

So as a Christian, I am already committed to a ministry of reconciliation, a call to peacemaking, to live as a forgiven forgiver, to see and affirm and respect in each person I meet that of Christ, to see dividing walls of hostility as barriers to be subverted, and to hope and work for that Kingdom of daily bread for each child of God, to offer and work for forgiveness and reconciliation, and to stand with courage against those forces and influences that thwart justice, oppress the vulnerable and drain the eneergy and joy our of people's lives.  

It's impossible to be living in Scotland and not have an opinion on the question of Independence. Anyway, even if you don't have one, you'll soon be told the one to have! Most people have come to their view from a mixture of personal history, social location, political commitments, moral judgement, and issues of self-interest. That view is also influenced, adjusted, hardened by other people either shoring up that view by agreeing with it, dismantling that view by attacking it, or questioning it by debate and discussion. The last of these is the most creative and democratically coherent approach, – open, healthy, respectful, informed, passionate but fair exchange of views, opinions and prejudices – and this is what both sides say they wish the other side would respect.

I have never known my country more divided, not only in opinion, but in spirit. For all the disclaimers to the contrary, that this is only healthy and forward looking debate, there are powerful passions and high expectation visions and desperate hopes out there, on both sides. But only one side will win this Referendum – and in winning, whichever side wins, we are in serious danger of all being losers.

Those who wish to remain a United Kingdom will feel desperately let down and thwarted, because their sense of nationhood and self definition has been changed against their will; those who wish to be independent and no longer part of the United Kingdom will likewise feel desperately let down and thwarted, because their sense of nationhood and self-definition has been changed against their will. There are few passions more dangerous and volatile than thwarted nationalism understood as a people's sense of nationhood. Both Better Together and Yes Campaigners are arguing for the future of the nation to which we belong. The argument is about identity, belonging, history, cultural integrity, a nation's sense of self, as much as it is about economics, social justice and defence which are currently the levers used to push towards independence or pull back from it.

My main concern, and I mean concern, in this post, is the reality that the debate, however refreshing, exciting, unprecedented and historically significant, will nevertheless leave a legacy of deep discontent for almost half of Scotland's population. Whethere and where such disaffection, anger, anxiety, resistance and sense of powerlessness in face of a fait accompli can be safely channelled and creatively redeemed into generous hopefulness and constructive commitment to the common good, is quite another question. And it is the one to which the leaders on both sides should be paying more attention. The use of the word 'Celebration' by the First Minister, should it be a yes vote is understandable, some would say obvious and natural, but it is politically immature and unnecessarily provocative, and threatens to expose the partisan over-againstness that has characterised the Yes campaign.

And on Friday morning, if the supporters of whichever side wins forgets the other side which has lost, then it's hard to see in what sense we are either better together or better apart, because the loser will be Scotland. Dancing in the streets when the other half of the population feel they have lost something that defines who they are is not the way to bring about consensus around a shared and better future. There are powerful subterranean forces in a nation's consciousness of itself and it is dangerous and naive for any group that represents only half a nation to ignore these, or assume the winner's rostrum with a champagne bottle surrounded by the like-minded as if they are the only ones whose passions, aspirations and decisions matter.

One of the tests of a mature democracy, is learning to use power wisely – and whoever assumes such power on Friday would be wise to speak in the chastened tones of those who know the family have come through serious differences, and what is needed before Friday is a recognition that Scotland is bigger than the winners.

Early this morning I read much of that slim masterpiece, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. You know those times you wake up and know you won't sleep again? There doesn't have to be an explanation, at least not one that tries to make out that the occasional refusal of the body to sleep is explicable or a problem. A large mug of tea, a couple of hours of quiet, and a favourite book, with margin marks as footprints of previous readings of this book whose first reading in 1977 set me on a theological trajectory the impulse of which still propels my theological research and spiritual quest.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Cross. So I sat reading Vanstone, and now and then gazing across the study at the sculptured wall panel, a study of the XII station of the cross, a gift from my friend with whom I've talked often about art, tragedy, beauty and God. Without planning or intention, those early hours in silence and peace became prayer as words and image coalesced, and the cruciform shape of love formed and reformed around words like redemptive, creative, reconciliation, peace and life through death as death dies.

This book has instructed my mind and heart throughout my years of ministry and learning. When Jesus said, "Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest", he went on to extend that invitation beyond the promised renewal of rest to a call to lifelong learning. "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart…" 

It's hard to find a better definition of a Christian – one who takes on the yoke of Christ and learns of Him,for the rest of their lives. The yoke, which harnesses the strength and energy of the ox to purpose; the student, who learns by being with the Teacher; combine them and you have the meaning of folloqwing faithfully after Jesus. This book, even in its title, is profoundly and enduringly Christ focused and crucicentric – it is about God's love, precarious, vulnerable, sacrificial, expensive, risky and with no guaranteed outcome. God's love becomes effective by not being cost effective, love wins without coercion and therefore risks losing. Vanstone's hymn says all this, a masterpiece of evocative theology which looks on the suffering love of God, in all its tragic triumph, and because of the clear vision of what the cross means to God and to Creation, looks without flinching. The cross reveals love;s endeavour and love's expense, and the response is theology lifted to doxology.     

Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows' flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;

Soaring music, tow'ring words,
Art's perfection, scholar's truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory's treasure, grace of youth;

Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love's agony,
Love's endeavour, love's expense.

Love that gives gives ever more,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.

Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.

Thou are God; no monarch Thou
Thron'd in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

A walk up the hills around Banchory yesterday and on the path the contrast between potential and fulfilment.

The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.

How come we are so taken in by the absurdities of our age?  Are we too gullible to notice when we are being had by the adverts? Are we so self obsessed we are deaf to the voices from elsewhere saying we are not the whirring centre of the universe? How has the human gift of longing, journeying and exploring, in short the essential forward pull of the quest, become a seeking after that which is illusion and delusion, leaving us searching frantically for some kind of grail if only we knew what, and where, and when, and with no sense that what we seek is something that transcends our oh so limited horizons.

Ecclesiastes observed, with some irony after looking at the vanities and futilities of human pretentiousness, "You have put eternity in human hearts". Yes, God, you have. But that sense of eternity has been so eroded by mass produced experiential trivia, so corroded by the appetite to possess everything and experience whatever and dominate whoever, that what is left is a distorted vision, and instead of an upward longing for God, there is a downward longing for a dream reality. So we are gobsmacked by banality disguised as significance, tempted into ethical illiteracy trying to persuade us that cash value is confused with worthiness, and mistakenly believing street credibility is more important, more personally defining, than authentic human experience – joy and suffering, achioevement and failure, acceptance and rejection and self-awareness and self-questioning. By the way the important word in these pairings is the conjunction 'and', because we reach our richest potential as human beings, when we recognise and acknowledge and learn from the whole spectrum of experience, the positive and negastive. Ours is an age of denial, which avoids, minimises, talks down, intentionally overlooks and understates, those experiences and realities which interfere with the dream reality we have created.

All of this non-sense, absurdity, Foley cleverly and I think persuasively exposes. Such attitudes are the sources of our capacity to live absurdly. The second major section of the book explores a number of cultural strategies that help pull the wool over our eyes; or perhaps more accurately cultural obfuscators which grow like cataracts over those ways of seeing which we might want to call, a conscience ethically informed, knowledge distilled to wisdom, critical discernment, and honest, brave, open-eyed knowledghe of ourselves. The first of these rang so many alarm bells it deserves a post on its own – the next post. For now here is how the chapter starts, and you;ll see why as a recently retired academic teacher, it made me smile, wince and sigh all at once.

"A student fails to submit a project on time and then misses an appointment with his supervisor to discuss the problem. The university sends the student a letter informing him that he has been given a mark of zero for the project. Now the student not only comes to the supervisor but barges into his office without an appointment.

This project must be accepted late, he demands

Why is that?

Because I'm suffering from TCD

Which is?

Time Constraint Disorder – a chemical imbalance in the brain that means i can't meet deadlines or turn up on time for appointments.

Foley goes on, "I invented TCD as a joke….and the  discovered that a Professor Joseph Ferrani of DePaul University genuinely wants procrastination recognised as a clinical disorder and included in the standard reference work for mewntal health professionals, the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)."

The chapter is called 'The Undermining of Responsibility" in which Foley examines the refusal of responsibility, the sense of entitlement and deserving, and the various slippages of social and personal accountability that lead to non-responsibility for the way we act, speak and live our lives.

Mike Foley is good with words, and questions. "Who in the Western world has not been deranged by a toxic cocktail of dissatisfaction, restlessness, desire and resentment? Who has not yearned to be younger, richer, more talented, more respected, more celebrated…who has not felt entitled to more, and aggrieved when more was not forthcoming…."

He's even better when he tackles the slippery tonic word happiness. Academic study defines it as Subjective Well-Being (SWB, not joking); recent popular books call it Wellness.  Foley points out the major growth in the literary genre of tragic lives and misery memoirs and notes that childhood happiness memoirs don't sell. Then he suggests a new academic discipline – Happiness Studies, which could be given intellectual heft by calling it Eudaimonics, from the Greek!

But what Foley is arguing for is not subjective well being, nor mere vague wellness. "The greatest gift of happiness may not be the feeling itself as much as the accompanying thrill of possibility. Suddenly the world is re-enchanted and the self born anew. Everything ids richer, stranger and more interesting. The eyes see more clearly, the mind thinks more keenly, the heart feels mpore strongly – and all three unite in enthusiasm, delight and zest." These three last words will recur throughout the book. They are not so much feelings as dispositions; not reactions to the world but responses to the world as it is. But in a culture of perpetual wanting, pervasive advertising, inordinate consuming, and obsession with novelty, status and image, these three human dispositions are degraded by exposure to their counterfeits.

One of the interesting areas for reflection while reading this book is the way Foley pinpoints the cultural forces which shape our spirituality by frustrating and eliminating the conditions through which we can become aware of our inner selves and the call of transcendence. "What we need is detachment, concentration, autonomy and privacy, but what the world insists upon is immersion, distraction, collaboration and company". The three disciplines of solitude, stillness and silence are near impossible to achieve. Why? Because of the new religion he calls Commotionism – which demands faithful obedience to the imperatives of constant company, movement and noise. The result is an inner exhaustion, often undiagnosed, and for which the remedies of stillness, solitude and rest are noisily drowned out by the perpetual motion of a culture in flux.

We are drowning in noise, and fear silence; speed, movement, multi-tasking, and the worship of instant, make us impatient with our own body, spirit and mind which aches for breath, space and time to be. If once the world was too much with us, now the world is too much within us, around us; and its ruinous interruptions destroy our peace, like a mobile ring-tune, its tinny, strident command for attention demolishes just that moment as the concerto pianist's fingers hover over the keys, waiting in the silence to play the resolving notes that gather together the fugitive emotions of an audience entranced by music which will take them beyond themselves and this world. Few things bring us down to earth more brutally than someone else's mobile going off at such moments of peak significance. But such crashing disappointments are the stuff of lives lived to the ring-tune rather than the soloist and orchestra.

(The two photos are of Bennachie in a late August sunset, and Inverbervie beach – two places where silence, stillness and solitude can be enjoyed with enthusiasm, delight and zest!)