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George Herbert Week: (i) Quaint complexity and Spiritual Intensity

The quaint complexity, spiritual inensity and metaphysical reach of George Herbert's poetry have made him one of the most popular devotional poets in the English tradition of religious poetry. In the 19th Century he was printed and re-printed in all kinds of editions, from the leatherbound deluxe to the small popular fit in your pocket devotionals. I have several copies, of various ages and values, and I try to resist the temptation to pick up others as they are published, or older ones with their copper plate illustrations, extravagant fonts and decorated pages.

The critical edition by Helen Wilcox, published by Cambridge a few years ago, and costing an arm and a leg in hardback ( in my case a gift from Sheila) but mercifully now available at an affordable paperback, is definitive. The introduction, critical notes and comments demonstrate the editor's easy expertise in the history, culture and religious thought of the 17th Century, and as a reader who loves the poetry enough to be a true critic – wise, informed, erudite and generous in the rich flow of information and comment.

The Everyman Edition is a lovely volume, as the new Everyman volumes are – clothbound, high quality paper, clear print in a good sized font, and again good introduction and notes full of information. And in hardback at £12.99 almost one tenth!! of the cost of the hardback Cambridge Edition.

The Editor is Ann Pasternak Slater – her middle name one of the celebrated names of Russian literature – she is Boris Pasternak's niece. Describing Herbert's capacity to take ordinary things and discern eternal significance, and commenting on his phrase 'heaven in ordinarie', she says, "The commonplace is not merely capable of sanctity; it is what can most easily explain the transcendent to us".

Only a few of Herbert's poems are anthologised these days; understandable for a writer whose every line is resonant with biblical words, ideas and associations, and whose every other line alludes to Christian experience, or classical reference, or theological or liturgical connections. Take the poem below; replete with suggestion yet no active verb – he never says what prayer IS. But every clause is a facet glinting with possibility and hesitant insight. If you know it, enjoy it. If you haven't come across it before, enjoy it. Maybe, when all is said and done, the most we should hope for in our prayers is that there is "something understood."

Prayer (I)

Prayer, the Church's banquet, Angels' age,

God's breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days'-world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

The land of spices, something understood.

12 August 2013
A morning on Scolty Hill, and Reflection on God’s Ridiculous Profusion.

Scolty Hill gives a panoramic view of Deeside, and now and then we go walking up there as a bit of wider horizon scanning. In other words it helps with life perspective when you stand on higher ground and pay attention to all that's around you.

Then there are the colours. A symphony in purple – heather, thistle, fox glove – with the cantus firmus of green. This is taken looking up the hill, and a panoramic photo would show the same vision of colours blending, contrasting and complementing.

And then two of my favourite things to look at, touch and smell – a Scotch Pine, covered in lichen. The smell part was about the exposed root, oozing pine sap, its smell sharp, clean, spicy and head clearing. Forget disinfectant – this is an aroma that for me is as satisfying and evocative as brewing coffee. And lichen the coplour of pale jade is one of the most beautifully crafted random patterns.

All of this adds up to a day when prayer is about paying attention, praise is having our eyes opened to the mystery of the ordinary and thanksgiving to wonder at the gift of moments and minutes simply to enjoy. The doctrine of creation in Genesis and the Psalms and Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount is not a bone of scientific or theological controversy and contention; instead it is the theological framework within which we see the handwork of God, intimations of a presence not always obvious, and a recognition that we as human beings belong within the richer more humbling context of God's creative and redeeming love.

Amongst the most wonderful moments on a walk like this is when you come to a ditch, and amidst the profusion and extravagance of a Scottish moor covered in heather, thistles, ferns, bracken, trees in seedling and mature forms, there are amongst the generality, specific and particular displays of beauty there for the seeing. The photo is the right way up, the flower growing out horizontally. " Look at the flowers of the field…..they neither toil nor spin…but not even Solomon shopping on Fifth Avenue with limitless credit is clothed anything like this."

11 August 2013
Lost in Translation: Ephesians 1.11

Language is a funny thing – and a very serious thing. Words never convey exactly 'the thing in itself'. But then if two people use the same word, it will resonate with different tones and notes depending on experience, personal usage, accepted meaning and much else. It gets more complex translating words into another language where none of the foregoing can be assumed, and where questions of accuracy oscillate between literal and dynamic equivalents. Add to that a gap of two thousand years and a cultural gulf between Greco-Roman and Postmodern Western civilisations and ways of life, and translation becomes pure dead complicated. (Pure dead is a compound adjective used in the West of Scotland for 'very', as in its phonetic use puredeadbrilliant) Oh, and by the way, I have a friend who also uses the term 'pure disgrace' as his ultimate term of moral opprobrium by oxymoron.

Anyway, I was reading Stephen Fowl's commentary on Ephesians, and his translation of verse 11a. I'm used to the phrase, 'In Christ we have an inheritance….' Fowl translates 'In Christ we have an allottment…'. a long footnote justifies this choice of word because 'it does not invoke the image of passing on property through death.' The commentary explains this further, quite persuasively. However. Language is a funny thing. The word 'allottment' may not invoke the inheritance theme, but to one brought up in the West of Scotland it certainly evokes the image of a fertile vegetable allottment. Those collective squares of quilted horticulture, 10 metres square or so, have been so important in staving off starvation, and then during the two World Wars providing fresh produce, and now husbanded by many an amateur gardener. You can read the history of the British Allottment movement here. Of course land development has bulldozed over many of them, to build yet more business opportunities. But the word allottment is still a powerfully evocative word for soil cultivation, food production and many a productive hour of gentle labour.

I will forego the children's talk formula, "That's a bit like Jesus…. In Jesus we have an allottment." But I think I'll have to retrain my mind if I'm to manage to read this verse in Fowl's translation without the extraneous connotations of something entirely different. Which of course is one of the major headaches for a translator – what seems fitting and appropriate to one mind, seems strange to another, because, well, words do not contain all the resonances and associations from one mind to another. Stephen Fowl in Baltimore, Maryland, cannot possibly be expected to know that his chosen word when heard by Scottish ears evokes very different images.

That aside, I think Fowl's commentary is puredeadbrilliant. :))

The photo of allottments is by Kate Davies whose own blog you can find here. I hope you don't mind its reproduction here Kate.

9 August 2013
Theological Reflection on a Frog.

We have a new addition to our family, defined as the various denizens who live in and around our house. In the wee pond at the foot fo the garden we now have a resident frog. Andrew who is the acquaculture expert around here dug a small 18 inch hole, planted it with water plants and marsh plants and created a mini-ecosystem which our frog clearly approves.

My favourite nature poet, John Clare, had a sensitive and compassionate understanding of creaturely life. His poetry reveals his intimate knowledge and alert experience of nature around him. His bird poems are amongst the best in our language. His poem Summer Evening, which I've quoted below, shows just how observant, sympathetic and "green" Clare was, a couple of centuries before any of us caught up with his way of looking at the world around us. More than most he saw human activity as despoiling, threatening and wasteful of nature's gifts, and understood human behaviour to be more about replenishing the earth rather than dominating it. Sure he recognised that nature has its cruelties and necessities; but these are natural in a way that human activity is not; manufacturing on an industrial scale, a free for all for the earth's resources of land, minerals, forests and wood, fossil fuels, tolerance of polluted oceans, and addiction to processes that accelerate climate change. Human greed is one of the original sins and is the primary ingredient in the setting agent that enables us to build structural sins into the machinery and plant of the human economy. The last two lines of Clare's poem capture exactly the inward groan of a looted creation awaiting its redemption.

John Clare didn't live to see the full impact of the Industrial Revolution. But for his illness he might have been a David Attenborough though, or at least a presenter on Countryfile. In any case, he would have smiled and nodded appreciatively at Andrew's handiwork, and the provision of a purpose built home for our frog.

Summer Evening

The frog half fearful jumps across the path,
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath;
My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive,
Till past, and then the cricket sings more strong,
And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear
The short night weary with their fretting song.
Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare,
Cheat of his chosen bed, and from the bank
The yellowhammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank,
And drops again when no more noise it hears.
Thus nature's human link and endless thrall,
Proud man, still seems the enemy of all.

John Clare

8 August 2013
“A non religious language…but liberating and redeeming”; Bonhoeffer’s Advice to the 21st Century Western Church

"The day will come …when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite non-religious language, but liberating and redeeming, like Jesus' language, so that people will be alarmed. and yet overcome by its power – the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God's kingdom is drawing near."

"The most important question for the future is how we are going to find a basis for living together with other people, what spiritual realities and rules we honour as the foundations for a meaningful Christian life."

These words were written by Bonhoeffer a year or so before Bonhoeffer was executed. They seem to me to be an important comment on the words of jesus, spoken a year or so before he was executed, "I have come that you might have life, and have life in all its fullness."

This identification with Jesus is spelt out further in another of Bonhoeffer's letters: "Our relationship to God is no 'religious' relationship to some highest, most powerful and best being imaginable – that is no genuine transcendence. Instead, our relationship to God is a new life in 'being there for others,' through participation in the being of Jesus."

"Liberating and redeeming like Jesus' language". If only Jesus' ambassadors could echo the tone and content of Jesus' language, words formed and gifted by grace to set free and make possible a new and renewed beginning. "The whole creation groans awaiting its redemption", and that was as clear to Bonhoeffer in his cell, when his life was forfeit, his family at risk, his nation embroiled in a fight to the death and its military responsible for mass death by blitz, Holocaust and the madness of power. His words were written and his thought shaped by concern for what the church would be, and need to be, in a post-war world.

As Clifford green comments, quoting Bonhoeffer further, "The overall emphasis is on service, not domination, on demonstrating by example what new life in Christ means, of speaking with 'moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.'" The italics are mine, because these ten words provide a barcode for ecclesial speech, Christian witness, a discipleship that so shapes emotion, will, and thought, that what is articulated in words is recognisably, and startlingly reminiscent of Jesus.

They may be one of the vital clues to what disqualifies the church from the attention of a secular, post-modern culture. Speech that is self-excusing and self-defensive yet critical and judgemental of "the other", the world; on too many occasions words that are carefully chosen as if witness was a synonym for diplomacy; unchristian attitudes of moral superiority, betraying a profound unawareness that is itself sin at its most toxic; and pervasive in the language and apologetics of the church, a fear and anxiety of the world of culture and technology, an ambivalence about human progress and human crisis; and most tragic of all, the gradual disappearance over time of Jesus Christ as the living centre of the church and the dynamic source of Christian life, thought and action.

In a prison cell, facing his own death, looking to a future he would not see, Boinhoeffer wrote letters to his friend containing seeds and seedlings of some of the most crucial ideas required for the Church facing a world where assumptions of religious commitment could no longer hold, and in which the status quo of religious institutions and their influence and power would disappear. In both senses his words were prophetic – speaking into the future, and speaking necessary truth inspired by the Spirit of God.

Amongst the miracles of providence, was the relationship established between Bonhoeffer and Corporal Knobloch, a member of the guard detail in Tegel Interrogation Prison. But for Corporal Knobloch, the letters to Eberhard Bethge would not have survived, may not even have been written. By such coincidences of providence, the gates of Hell shall not prevail…..

7 August 2013
Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 ; And a Mother and Children’s prayers

When all the arguments are stated and heard, whether military, strategic, historic, or even moral, I am much more persuaded by the theological solemnity of the late George Macleod's contention that atomic warfare is a blasphemous abuse of God's creation and of nature's energy.

The photo is of a mother and children praying for surviving victims 68 years on from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The only nation on earth that has been attacked with nuclear weapons speaks and acts with a different authority when addressing the problem of nuclear weapons, human fallibility and our capacity as humans to self destruct. Such voices can never be on the side of deterrence; they are on the side of peace.

For myself, I too want to place my hands together, and love this world with all its brokenness and possibility, and hold a wounded creation before the loving Creator, and align my hope and trust with my faith in the God of resurrection whose gift is life, and whose light is not the blinding flash of nuclear death, but the brilliance of love magnified by the splendour of holiness, earthing its energy and power in our world in the stable, the cross and the empty tomb.

And my favourite prophet points to an alternative reality:

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the
paths of the Most High. And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares
and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword
against nation – neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.

6 August 2013
“Dogma clarifies rather than obscures” biblical interpretation…

Now here's a no nonsense statement on intent from the publishers of a theological commentary series.

This series of biblical commentaries was born out of the conviction that dogma clarifies rather than obscures. The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible advances upon the assumption that the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture. God the Father Almighty, who sends his only begotten Son Son to die for us and for our salvation and who raises the crucified Son in the power of the Holy Spirit so that the baptized may be joined in one Body – faith in this God with this vocation of love for the world is the lens through which toi view the heterogeneity and particularity of the biblical texts. Doctrine, then, is not a moldering scrim of antique prejudice obscuring the meaning of the Bible. It is a crucial aspect of the divine pedagogy, a clarifying agent for our minds fogged by self deception, a challenge to our languid intellectual apathy that will too often rest in false truisms and the easy spiritual nostrums of the present age rather than search more deeply and widely for the dispersed keys of the many doors of Scripture.(Brazos Theological Commentary, Series Preface, Matthew, Stanley Hauwerwas, page 12).

I've only used the Brazos commentary on Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas. It was definitely Matthew through the lens of Hauerwas, and none the worse for that. The truth is the Hermeneia Commentary is Matthew through the lens of Luz. Every commentator brings their self to the text, and the text is explored, exegeted, expounded, explained so that every commentary is treasure in an earthen vessel.

Has anyone who reads this blog, and reads commentaries, used any of the other commentaries in this series with the magnificent Series Preface as quoted above?

5 August 2013
The Bible and the Error of Literal Mindedness: A J Heschel Again

I'm reading Abraham Heschel again – and also working through Divine Pathos and Human Being. The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel by Michael Chester, a Methodist scholar whose post-grad work was done on Heschel. Time and again I find Heschel writing in the 40.s, 50's and 60's saying things that have powerful resonance and uncanny relevance to some of the challenges and cultural pressures facing people of faith today. As a Christian I have a profound love, respect and I hope some humility when I explore the faith and traditions which give Christian thought and experience much of its shape and historic rootedness. Heschel's conviction that faith is to be lived, practiced, evidenced by action performed in obedience, given heart and motivation by piety as reverence for the One whose ultimate claim upon human life is grounded in the ineffability, holiness and loving mercy of God.

The Bible (by which Heschel meant the books of the Hebrew Scriptures) is a profound, uniquely rich and authentic text out of which comes the voice of God calling to obedience, seeking response rather than explanation, and demanding transformed living as well as, and indeed as more important than, full understanding. Here are two brief paragraphs from Heschel which would be provocative starting points in a class on hermeneutics and sacred text.

The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally, to imagine that God spoke to the prophet on a long distance telephone. Yet most of us succumb to such a fancy, forgetting that the cardinal sin in thinking about ultimate issues is literal mindedness. The error of literal mindedness is in assuming that things and words have only one meaning.

Man has often made a god out of dogma, a grav en image which he worshipped, to which he prayed. He would rather believe in dogmas that in God, serving them not for the sake of heaven but for the sake of creed, the diminutive of faith. Dogmas are the poor man's share in the divine.

Both quoted in Chester, page 58.

Heschel's reverence for Torah is not so much articulated in words and ideas; it glows throughout his writing, it imbues his words with passion and poetry, Torah represents the splendour and glory of God gifted in grace to human eyes, ears and hearts. He would have been moved deeply by this picture, and the story that goes with it here.

3 August 2013
A Day on the Moray Coast and a new word – “Desult”

Today was our 41st wedding anniversary, a statistic that can easily be appealed to should Sheila ever require evidence of a miracle for her canonisation. It was a sunny day all along the Moray coast, one of our favourite haunts so we spent the day there. Lunch was at the Whitehills Galley which you can find out about here Jumbo haddock in breadcrumbs for me and Monkfish Scampi for Sheila. This is an excellent place to eat, and worth booking beforehand – we were lucky and got the last table before the rush. Then a wander along the coastal path before having the dessert, which was a double scoop 99 from Portsoy Ice Cream Shop.

After that a visit to Fordyce, a hidden gem conservation village which has a peaceful slowness about it that we love. There is an old church yard where if it was nearer I'd happily spend an hour now and again. Some of the stones go back 300 and more years, and the older stones have the brief story of the life of the person comemorated.These two photos are from inside the ruined church tower.

The harbour at Whitehills has been in operation for centuries and is owned and run by the village. It's a lovely place to sit and desult – that is, sit and enjoy the sea, feel the breeze, and think and thank in a desultory way.

Up the back of the harbour is a ruined gable end with a window. I like this photo; it will be on my profile page above for a while.

2 August 2013
A Small Church and a Battered Bible; Theological Reflection in a Scottish Glen.

Along the single track road that leads to Forest of Birse you eventually come to the little Forest of Birse Church. This small chapel in the glen sits in a secluded fern covered field, behind and around it the hills which today were beginning to look purple with the early heather, encouraged by long sunny days. Inside is the size of a large living cum dining room, plainly decorated and with windows on only one side.

Behind the pulpit, lying on a chair was this old Pulpit Bible, which has seen better days. It would be easy to see it as a sign of days long past and never returning; to interpret its battered testimony as signaling the demise of the church and the Christian way of life; and my photo providing the kind of image to put on the cover of yet another book lamenting the loss of biblical literacy. A battered Bible, pages in disarray, torn and water stained, but still there, as if no one has the heart to remove it.

Looking at it yesterday, with what I can only call affection and admiration, I can well understand how such an object as a worn out copy of a sacred book should be treated with reverence, and perhaps buried with thanksgiving for all that it has given of truth and guidance to those who preached from it, and heard it, and tried to live it. The refusal of Jewish people to simply dispose of old scrolls of the Hebrew Bible at the recycling units, comes from a deep instinct for that which is holy, sacred, precious and indeed sacramental in significance. This old Bible as you see contains the comments of Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott; their multi-volume works were written as expositions which explained and applied each verse to the life situations of the reader. This pile of paper, torn, disarrayed, and 'disbound' as used book dealers would call it, is much, much more than a battered old relic.

Here for generations was the bread of life; here the lamp unto countless feet tramping up and down this glen; here the light to paths too easily missed; here the sharp two edged sword that pierced to the marrow and inspired love, drew forth praise, urged to repentance and changed ways, and comforted broken hearts. This old Bible should be placed in a prominent place, a glass case even, with a notice telling whoever comes into the church, what its life has been. We were numbers 6 and 7 who had signed the visitors' book yesterday by 3.00 pm – that's a lot of people for an isolated glen. But then, those who go looking for solitude, a long walk, Highland scenery, and communion with either God or God's creation, are likely to take time to go in and look at this simple sacred space, enriched with all its human stories of fellow travellers, and have a seat for a few minutes, and either speak to God, or listen for the quiet whisper that says "Be still, and know that I am God….."

Here are some other photos of the Church.

1 August 2013