Tucked away in C K Barrett's wee book on Paul is a gem of theological precision born of intellectual humility. As a description of the proper disposition of the true theologian it's as good as I know:
"Faith is not a collection of theological propositions but a readiness to let God be the God he means to be and to give him thanks for being the kind of God he is."
(C K Barrett, Paul. An Introduction to his Thought (London: Chapman, 1994) 97.
In his comment on yesterday's post Graeme wonders if "trying to imagine the invisible being made visible" might be the aim of my new tapestry. And if so maybe an empty canvas would best depict the mystery of Christology. Yes, and no. Yes in the sense that the Colossian hymn is about the pre-existent coming into existence, the Creator becoming a creature, what the poet calls 'infinity dwindled to infancy', and yes, the invisible becoming visible – which all sounds like paradox as escape route.
Therefore no, I'm not trying to make the invisible visible by an empty canvas because incarnation is revelation, and the last Word God has spoken, in the sense of ultimate, final, definitive and therefore effective in accomplishing that for which He is sent, is the person of Jesus. Thus the Colossian Christology is both mystery and revelation, glory and humility, splendour and tragedy, as the one who made all things comes into that which was called into being by Love, and in the midst of brokenness and fragmentation, reconciles all things to himself making peace by the blood of the cross.Not paradox then, but both and, both mystery and revelation.
So an empty canvas won't do, at least not for me. But neither would one in which the content was so specific and sure of itself, so settled and certain, so tidy and predictable that it becomes the mere human image of that which in unimaginable. So perhaps the canvas which does indeed hold all things together in any tapestry, nevertheless supports a content that seeks to imagine, understand and represent that which elsewhere Paul urges as impossible but imperative, "to know the love that surpasses knowledge". But Graeme's question is a cautionary reminder that all art, from the written to the painted, the sculpture to the photo, the tapestry to the woodwork, are sacraments of thought and devotion, mere finite feeling after the infinite. But when it comes to worship, the word "mere" doesn't mean insignificant, but on the contrary indicates those activities and responses which are the telling evidence that God has put eternity in human hearts.
The photo is taken 30 miles south of Fort William, another of those moments when mystery and gratitude, wonder and worship, merge into praise.
Today I'm starting a new tapestry. At the moment it's undefined except I want to do a colour exegesis of Colossians 1.15-20. I want to do it as a representation in colour and allow the developing colours to define the form and pattern. I'm considering starting in the middle of the canvas and working outwards, and each time I pick it up, always to read the passage and then just get on with it! Now here's a theologically loaded question for aesthetics; or perhaps an aesthetically probing question for theology – What colour is pre-existent and incarnate Christology 🙂
All of this is of course radically subjective and there's the risk, perhaps even the likeliehood that I'll simply indulge and favour my favourite colours. Yet as a form of contemplation, a dwelling in the world of the text, there are some gains, and some safeguards. The first is a constant reading and re-reading of the text, each time before the needle returns to the canvas. The second is to dig into and around the text, keeping a journal of exegetical excavations, recording reflections and ideas, keeping a photographic record of its development. In this way the work of exegesis, the welcome discipline of faithful enquiry, the guiding of feeling in conversation with the text will I hope open imagination beyond the immediate and subjective. The third is to try to faithfully and honestly reflect on the text from the daily context of life as I live it, the world as it is, and my own inner climate as the text does its work of command and invitation to perspectives other than my own.
All of this is experimental, and as open ended as these things can be. The framed canvas without a stitch but with needle poised was the easy part! It's Advent, and Colossians 1.15-20 seems to me to be a text of hopefulness and expectation. To peace on earth and good will to all peoples, Colossians earths that hope on a Jerusalem dump where God in Christ is reconciling all things, making peace by the blood of the cross.
But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence we call God…
It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins; that call us out over our
own fathoms.
It's the eve of Advent which is a season of depth and waiting, of promise, hope and patience. Just as the frantic frenetic fanaticism of fundamentalist consumerism reaches its fantastic fever pitches of greed and getting, I welcome not an excuse, but a reason, to find time and space for silence and ungrasping.
And yes, that last sentence is overwrought and over-written, but it tries to describe a culture that is equally overwrought and precisely at this time of year descends into the chaos of hyper-consumerism.
So these words of R S Thomas draw me towards the mystery of that which cannot be purchased; remind me of a grace that has no barcode, and gives access to the Good and all goods without a credit rating. And Thomas recognises that the depths of human longing and hoping reverberate with the presence and promise of God, that we are beings with our own unfathomable reaches, beyond our ken but within the knowing of a love eternal and constant.
The photo was taken on the Fort William road, the reflection of the hills over the depths of the loch an icon of the human being, the reflected image of God. A place that invites us to come within listening distance of the silence of God.
Veni Emmanuel.
s
Winter Haiku.
Frosted autumn leaves
discarded in the gutter,
defy the greyness.
……………………………….
Getting into the car I noticed these frosted now defrosting leaves in the gutter which was full of grit, gunge and oily road surface. In unexpected places there are those who defy the greyness.
Five minutes on Saturday morning sitting at the side of Loch Lomond looking at this. What fascinated me was the blueness. Our weather is often grey-coloured, much of the light muted or filtered, making everything seem opaque. That too can be beautiful, dripping with life, what George macleod would call the seeping drizzle of God's gentle grace.
But on a morning like this, you need a blue colour chart to trace the diversity of tones and shades of blue, from denim and sapphire, azure and steel, to Yale and tufts. No, I don't know all these colours by sight; I didn't even know there are 60 indicative categories of blue. But sitting on a large cold rock, with hat, jacket and gloves, just looking, I was aware of the changing of light and colour, sunlight and cloud, calm and ripple; it was like a watercolour being worked in some sky-artist's studio.
One of the thin books I read years ago was The Unattended Moment, by Michael Paffard. It gathered together the experiences of people who had encountered in the world around them, a sense of a presence other than themselves. As a Christian I have no problem with the reality of God's presence in and through the world; nor have I any hesitation in recognising the activity of the Creator who sustains and works in the rhythms and changes of loch and landscape, mountain and forest, – and in the hearts of human beings who attend to such moments of God saying hello.
At such moments, as T S Eliot remarked, we are in a place where prayer is valid.
Making Peace
On Saturday I travelled from Glasgow to Fort William. I was sharing in the opening of the newly completed extension of the Baptist Church there. It was a terrific afternoon with a packed church, heartfelt singing, and a sense of achievement mixed with gratitude and genuine surprise at the goodness of God.
One of the spectacular bonuses for me was the drive up, through some of the most beautiful landscapes of one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I stopped at least half a dozen times and if I hadn't had a time and destination beckoning I might have spent the day just looking. So I took some photos, and was frustrated by the limitations of the camera. I don't just mean my camera – I mean any camera.
Once or twice I did a 360 degree scanning of the countryside and just wondered, and gazed, and felt that strange ache of sadness that we know isn't so much unhappiness as the authentic sense of our own finitude, discovering yet again the limits of our capacity to behold and see, and yet for all our incompleteness sadness laced with the sheer ecstasy – by which I mean the outgoingness of our inner life of thought and feeling – the sense that we are looking at the work of the hands of God, and the knowledge that the overlap distance sadness and joy disappears at such moments.
This was Loch Lomond at about 11.00, and I could have sat there for ages.
I stopped here and took some photos for young German visitors and took this one for myself. Psalm 121, "I to the hills will lift mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid?
And this is the Loch as mirror, one of the most serene moments of reflection – both on the water surface, and as I sat and was amazed.
I've written more than once on this blog about my attachment to the Gospel of John, and my debt to some of the great commentators 'on this most mystical of the Gospel narratives'. One of the Oh My Goodness moments in my research in the papers of James Denney was coming across an entire series of lectures on the Gospel of John. At the time I didn't have either the time or energy to read them; they lie in New College, and they may be of no great moment, though it was James Denney who wrote them, and I'd be surprised if they weren't well worth exploring.
Which brings me to Denise Levertov once more. On page 195 of her biography of Levertov, Greene almost incidentally mentions that during a month when she couldn't write poetry Levertov wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John. Yes, Levertov on John, a manuscript apparently too long for publication. One of the leading poets of our time, whose patron saint was Thomas Didymus, whose religious inheritance included Hasidic Judaism, Anglican parents and her recently embraced Roman Catholic faith, at a key moment of questioning and discovery on the borderlands of faith, produced a handwritten commentary on the Gospel of John.And written by someone whose poetry, letters, essays and lectures demonstrate the power of words to move, fire imagination and persuade.
Somewhere in an archive box at Stanford University, there are some notebooks that if they were ever published would make the most remarkable reading. Levertov in conversation with the Fourth Evangelist would bring two poets, two seekers and two scintillatingly complex personalities together, sparking lights and glints of truth off each other, exegeting the Word made flesh, pointing to those flashes of recognition, as the Light that lightens every human being comes into the world as word again. I can't think how I'd ever have the chance to read Levertov on John. But in a strange way I found it a gladdening thought that a favourite poet would invest such thoughtfulness on a text that uses the images and stories of human life such as give value and poignant fittingness to the themes of her own best work. Maybe just knowing that she wrote that commentary, and it was comfort and guidance at a time when much was uncertain and she was looking, not for certainty but for that which would hold her.
What makes Dana Greene such a good biographer of Denise Levertov is Greene's respect for the mystery of her subject, and her honest, even glad acceptance of her own limitations as biographer of such a complex human being.
"A biography tracks the arc of a life over many decades, narrating a story as a subject lived it temporally, appreciating flaws, misjudgements and achievements. It then translates life into art, and in so doing preserves it. Without the unity biography brings to disparate facts, a life would devolve into its various parts and disintegrate. Biography's mission is to rescue a life and make it accessible to future readers." (232)
Referring to her research and reflection Greene closes her book with a statement that helps us discern what makes for a satisfying biography.
"This biography was undertaken as an experiment in penetrating the inner life of Denise Levertov. The voluminous raw materials – diaries, written and oral interviews, correspondence, poems, essays – allow the biographer to investigate and intuit, patch and paste, imagine and verify. To gain a closer hold on Levertov is to discover that she remains elusive, much like the mountain – present and absent, her person never fully grasped, but only pointed to and honored."
Levertov would approve the modesty and honesty of that statement. She was herself ambivalent about the created link between an artist's biography and their art. Yet she made available to the world an entire archive now residing at Stanford University, which includes some of her most personal papers, letters, and diaries. From these papers Greene has woven a credible, affectionately critical and illuminating account of a poet whose rich lived experience of joy and sorrow she distilled into poems that are both uniquely personal, and touch on the familiar and universal in human living and dying.
This isn't so much a review of Greene's book as an appreciation for her work. And if I, a man, may say so without being given a hard time, Levertov's interior life is made more accessible because this biography was written by a woman. Yes, a scholar, one who uses words as a way of life, a writer whose stated aim is to make a poet's life accessible to her readers. But also a woman more likely to understand some of the hurts and healings, relational complexities and self-questionings which are woven into and throughout Levertov's life and personality. Having read this book I now read the poems with more understanding, both of the words, and of the woman with courage and vocation enough to write such words, and such words of life.