Living Wittily

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  • The Friends Who Help Us Grow Roots

    Tom and Beth have left a comment on the sidebar. They are two people whose hospitality, care and patience helped me in the early days when I had little idea what following Jesus was all about. For several years I was educated in welcome, and given a grounding in one to one pastoral care through their own informal generosity.

    Tom and I worked in the same engineering firm for a year or so, we sang together in the Christian Endeavour choir and most weeks I was run home because I;d stayed so late I missed the last bus.When they left for New Zealand I was already sensing God's call to ministry and chasing after Highers at night school to enter University. I've only seen them a couple of times since, when they were home over the past 42 years. Life moves on and so do each of us as we grow, change and slowly become the people God calls us to be, with all the diversity of experience and perspective that shapes and directs us.

    But I've never forgotten you Tom and Beth, and always look back on that first Christian friendship as one of the rooting powders that helped my life towards a rootedness and stability in a faith that has sustained me. We can never know who it is we help and befriend, nor how their lives and ours turn out. But amongst the strategic graces with which God blesses our lives are those who befriend us, encourage us, and who share parts of our journey with us. Tom and Beth have been two such graces in my life, and it's a Christmas surprise to hear from them.

    God bless you in your own retitrement in Brisbane, and the peace of the Prince of Peace fill you home and your hearts. 

  • Prayer of Praise and Hope – O Come Let Us Adore Him

    This prayer was prepared for Advent worship and used in several churches throughout Advent when I was preaching. The Isaianic promise about the child who is born remains one of the most magnetic visions of a world redeemed from ruthless greed, re-educated from arrogant ifnorance to life giving wisdom, and pacified by conciliating love rather than brutal power. For a world like ours, Isaiah remains a resource of hope, and an affirmation of possibility that God is neither silent nor complacent over the brokenness and recalcitrance of human existence.

     

    O come let us adore him

    Mighty God, in Jesus your Son, through your Holy Spirit,

    you have made yourself known to us as Father. 

    We praise you for the love that eternally flows

    between Father, Son and Spirit;

    your love has overflowed in creative purpose,

    bringing into being all that exists.

    O come let us adore him

    Yellow

     

    Everlasting Father,

    we thank you for the gift of our own lives,

    for daily bread, clothing and a home.

    You have called us to be your children,

    and we praise you for your faithfulness,

    and for the untiring mercy and goodness

    that follows us all the days of our lives.

    We look on our world,

    its beauty and brokenness,

    its wealth and impoverishment,

    the light and the darkness,

    and we pray that your kingdom may come

    and your will be done on earth.

    For every act of forgiveness,

    every word of reconciliation,

    every look of compassion,

    every generous gift,

    every attempt to heal,

    every step taken towards peace and justice,

    every tear turned to laughter,

    we praise and adore you.

    O come let us adore him

     

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    Wonderful counsellor,

     teach us to keep in step with the Spirit;

    to let ourselves be taught about the things of Jesus,

    and to be open to the strength and power you give

    that enables us to follow faithfully after him day by day by day.

    Give us wisdom and courage

    to live in a world with more questions than answers;

    teach us the humility to listen,

    patience to understand

    and compassion to care,

    before we blurt out our words,

    so that when we speak of Jesus,

    when you speak through us,

    we do so as sinners saved by your grace,

    as beggars telling others where to find bread,

    as fellow travellers whose own footsteps are uncertain.

    For the guidance and gift of the Wonderful counsellor

    we praise and adore you. 

    O come let us adore him

     

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    Prince of Peace,

    you came as light into the darkness of our world;

    the light shines and the darkness has not overcome it.

    By love you confronted hate,

    by peace you disarm violence,

    by service you undermine power,

    by forgiveness you dissolve the toxins of enmity,

    by resurrection power you give new life.

    Teach us your followers to be people of peace;

    create peace in our hearts,

    pervade peace in our homes,

    establish peace in your church,

    pour peace into your world.

    And by peace more than the absence of hostility,

    but the presence of shalom, goodwill, health and justice,

    room to grow and flourish in freedom.

    In the coming of the Prince of Peace

    these things are no longer a transient pipe dream,

    but the beginning of the fulfilment of eternal promises

    for which we praise and adore you

    O come let us adore him

     

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    The photos are –

    'Yellow', taken looking out beyond Johnshaven in June on the Montrose Road.

    'Mirror', taken on the Fort William Road late November.

    'Sheila' taken walking in Glen Dye in May 2012

    'Horizons' taken at Loch Rannoch in June

  • Community, Gratitude and the Constancy of Kindness.

    DSC00277I wasn't sure I liked th poem below when I first read it. It's in Marva Dawn's Truly the Community p 215. It seemed overstated, an ideal rather than a relationship, a tone of too good to be true, and too sweet to be wholesome. Until I got to the last four lines and the too good to be trueness was proven to be true. Grace is too good to be true, resurrection the kind of impossibility that gives miracles a bad name, and Hilarity…Well it was the word hilarity that clinched it – this is a poem that asks us to think of caring, friendship, community not as human projects, but as the outcome of love incarnate, new creation through resurrection, and real community a grace enabled gift that creates new conduits of grace. Many of which flow towards us in the taken for grantedness of genuine love that is about presence, action and the faithfulness that makes the presence constant and the actions reliably fitted to those blessed to receive them.

    With Gratitude

    You said

    "Call us, anytime you need us",

    and I felt at home in your words.

    I poured out my grief,

    and you hugged me.

    I told you my fears,

    and you prayed that I would sleep protected.

    I expressed my confusion,

    and you helped me sort out the parts.

    I tried to face my ugly self,

    and you kept on caring.

    I gave you my pain,

    and you gave me a kiss.

    How can I thank you?

    How do I express this awareness

    that I have found a home in your love,

    that I've been adopted by your grace?

    It's like the Resurrection, promising life

    and healing and Hilarity.

    It's just that Easter

    is incarnated in your care.

    The photo of beach cobbles was taken on Inverbervie beach – this is one way of taking them away and enjoying them without plundering the beach. There's a random harmony of cobbles washed into relationship with each other.

  • Leadership and Walking on Grass

    DSC00183Designer Christopher Williams tells a story about an architect who built a cluster of large office buildings that were set on a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the pathways between the buildings.

    "Not yet," the architect said. "Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings."

    This was done, and by late summer pedestrians had worn paths across the lawn, connecting building to building. The paths turned in easy curves rather than right angles, and were sized according to traffic.

    In the fall, the architect simply paved the pathways. Not only did the new pathways have a design beauty, they responded directly to user needs.

    I like this story. I wonder if leadership is more about letting people find their way of being, and then affirming it? I wonder too if leadership is more about waiting for people to find their direction an d destination, rather than telling them what it is, or ought to be?

    Scolty hill (photo) has its own network of paths worn into the patterns of countless feet.

  • Nativity Panto Football Supporters on a Saturday Afternoon

    I went to the pub today with my son Andrew to watch the Manchester City v Arsenal game. As we were watching it a Christmas tree walked in. It was soon joined by a silver sequined star, a middle eastern backpacker in scarlet and yellow silk and a few shepherds. Seems the nativity and the panto came together in a performance later today, but the guys decided to come to the pub and watch the football first.

    It was a hilarious sideshow watching a nativity play and panto combining with the roles of football supporters and pub regulars enjoying a beer. Just now and then, all the pre-packaged laughter, the incessant battering of our retail instincts, the repetitive strain syndrome of millions of index fingers punching PINs, the overdone music, ubiquitous decorations and overloading of food expectations is exposed as sadly unreal, and the real thing emerges. Folk enjoying themselves, engaged with Christmas but able at least for a while to stand outside the addictive magnetic pull for just long enough to have a drink, watch a match, and do so with no sense of incongruity that they are really, or is it virtually, a christmas tree, star, shepherd, wise man or whatever.

    I suppose if I wanted to turn this into a wee homily I could say that even then, in the reassuring incongruity of that pub, in the company of those nativity panto actors, and while watching a game that finished 6-3, there was still no sign of that baby in whom infinity was dwindled to infancy. Maybe in the laughter, the good natured engagement with the story to the extent of dressing up and telling the story, for me, that will do for now. I'm glad they came.

    Burne-Jones nativity is a favourite ever since I got a Christmas card years ago using this picture. 

  • Advent and the Ode to Joy as I Never Heard it Before

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBlQZyTF_LY

    I've just watched this on a Sunday afternoon and rediscovered the meaning of sabbath:

    The gift of life celebrated by celebrating the joy of humanity.

    Eyes lifted above the mundane towards the future and our least selfish hopes

    Voices raised together in praise, supplication and self-offering to that which is greater than us.

    The renewal of hope by the eclipse of cynicism.

    The sifting of our emotions and the repristination of our desires.

    The costliness of excellence by disciplined gifts offered in the service of others.

    Harmony of voice, vision and purpose in realising our greatest longings as human beings.

    The performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy here is, I use the word advisedly, awesome. And as an Advent connoiseur I resist the showy, the superfluous, the trivial and as much as I can of the consumerist sideshows. But this film clip performs on an Isaianic scale. Heaven.  

  • The Photo and the Poem

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    Photo taken on Friday, from Stonehaven beach.

    God's Mercy

    Gods boundlesse mercy is, to sinfull man,
    Like to the ever wealthy ocean:
    Which though it sends forth thousand streams, 'tis n'ere
    Known,or els seen to be the emptier:
    And though it takes all in, 'tis yet no more
    Full, and fild-full, then when full-fild before.

  • Nelson Mandela and the Dance of Reconciliation

     

    Human greatness is difficult to define, much more easily recognised in the way a life is lived. Even then, greatness may not be recognised during a person's lifetime, or come late in life. I listened to a Glasgow man on Radio Scotland, speaking with deep emotion and obvious honesty about the way he used to think of Nelson Mandela. As a young man he had seen a photo of Mandela, the convicted and imprisoned "terrorist", and he thought he looked an evil man. Ever since, he has been suspicious of the press, of self-serving State rhetoric, and the use of legislative policy to disqualify protest and resistance. If ever the word repentance was appropriate it was in this man's brief comments.

    I guess he wouldn't have known the Greek word metanoia – why would he. But he didn't need a lexicon – his tone of voice and what he said made it clear. Once he discovered the truth that Mandela stood for, and understood the oppression and dehumanisation of institutional apartheid, his commitment and way of looking at the world shifted, turned round.

    That one reflective Glasgow punter says as much about the gift that Mandela was to our world as all the other prepared tributes of the good and the great around the world. When Glasgow conferred the freedom of the City on Mandela it articulated the strong currents of respect for justice and commitment to human dignity that run deeply in the Scottish psyche. And is perhaps more to be reckoned with given our own shadowy past as an arm of empire, with implications in the slave trade.

    My own tribute to Mandela is the recognition that when a man comes out of prison and greets the world in the name of peace, then we are hearing the voice of human greatness. When that same man accepts the burdens of political responsibility and makes it his life's goal to bring reconciliation, justice, peace and a future to his people, and to all people, then the world is compelled to recognise that same greatness. Only then are we helped towards a definition of what we mean by human greatness. Yet it may be just as much the disposition of such a man, the humility and humour, the compassion and seriousness of purpose, the self-effacing determination to bring righteousness and peace into conversation, that is the real benchmark not only of human greatness, but of political courage and moral integrity focused on human welfare.

    It would be wrong to portray Mandela as a saint, secular or otherwise. But in another sense it is both essential and required of us, that we see in such a man, the mysterious quality of leadership that convinces the heart as well as persuades the mind, that here is someone who understands the tragic complexities of human society, and the moral perplexities of political justice. In my lifetime only Martin Luther King shares the stature, ambiguity and inspiration of Mandela as one whose own suffering and capacity for forgiveness were so obviously transformative of our shared life. And in the great vision in the book of Revelation, where people of every tongue, tribe, nation and people stand in praise before God, somewhere in that crowd is an ex-prisoner, dancing to African rhythms, and celebrating the great reconciliation of the peoples of the earth. Or so I hope. You can see a foretast of that dance here.

  • Faith as letting God Be God

    Apostle-paul-by-rublev

    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.

  • When Infinity Dwindles to Infancy…And God’s Final Word is Spoken

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    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.