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I first read a Chaim Potok novel when I was 23. I opened the orange penguin edition of The Chosen on the top deck of a Glasgow bus on its way from Sauchiehall Street to Glasgow University. It was raining, mid afternoon and the street lights were already on. I was in the front seat, and I've never lost the child's fascination with travelling upstairs with a drivers-eye view, and particularly the wavy swing of the bus going round a tight corner, more exaggerated from on high.

I was soon immersed in a very different world of Hasidic Jewish culture, in pre-war Brooklyn, a society of Talmudic Judaism which was intense, fervent, strange and fiercely defensive. That book changed my entire view of Judaism, Jewishness and provided me with an entry into a world I have come to value, to some extent understand, and to sense at times a deep affinity with those who take prayer, worship, obedience and reverent love for the sacred texts of the Hebrew Bible with life affirming seriousness. Since then I've read Potok's novels, studied A J Heschel's volumes of philosophy and theology, much of Martin Buber's philosophy, immersed myself in Denise Levertov's poetry and essays, consulted Shalom Paul and Moshe Greenberg's commentaries on Amos, Isaiah and Ezekiel, revelled in Robert Alter's literary studies and translations, wrestled with the moral dilemmas of Elie Wiesel holding a world to account for the attempted murder of a people, and worked through the often dense but brilliant writing of George Steiner.

It wouldn't be true to say I owe all these intellectual field trips to discovering Potok's work. But there's no doubt my own theological worldview has been positively enriched by such encounters; my awareness of the truth and value of other faith traditions has been sensitised, and in turn my own learned lessons in humility have encouraged an openness and receptiveness to the truth that others bring to us as their gift. All this triggered by reading Conversations with Chaim Potok, in which he explains why and how he wrote the novels, and in particular, his concern to explore the experience of modern Jewish communities  where people live at the core of two cultures, and in a nexus of colliding values.

Here is his apologia for writing 'at its best':

"Writing at its best is an exalted state, an unlocking of the unconscious and imagination and a contact with sanctity."

I have a feeling that Heschel, Buber, Levertov, Shalom Paul and George Steiner would underline that passage with a tick in the margin. If you haven't read Potok, be it far from me to tell you what to do, but….

This is a photo taken earlier this summer.

I was going to write a poem about it.

On reflection it is already a poem – visual, evocative, suggestive.

Weathered paint, cracked pointing, crumbling stone,

sashes, lintel and frame worn away with the wind.

A window of opportunities taken? Perhaps not, now lost.

No mere hole in the wall, an apperture of light,

illuming the human,the homely, the holy.

What is it that leads us to describe an experience, a poem, a hymn, a talk, a book as 'devotional'? Devotional can mean it makes me feel better, or its purpose is to awaken emotions of love to God, or it creates in us a desire to serve  God better, or repent and turn away from our sins. But an equally important question for me is what makes a hymn, picture, book or whatever else 'devotional'? I started thinking about this when I came across a hymn I haven't sung for years, but even reading it I felt something deeply stirring, a mixture of memory and resonance, faith and familiarity, love and longing, desire and determination, regret and renewal. 

The word devotional is an essential word in Christian theology and spirituality. It refers to those experiences and encounters, those moments of intimate significance in our journey with God, when our deepest hopes encounter love inexhaustible, and when therefore our greatest failings are gathered up into grace sufficient.

Sometimes I don't know what to pray when most fully aware of my humanity, and the apparent impossibility of being other than a recurring disappointment to God. (The apostle above portrays this kind of spiritual being scunnered!) That of course is itself a lack of trust in the power of God's love and grace to renew and transform and make possible a new creation. So a hymn like the one below, more or less consigned to memory like an artefact from a previous age covered over with all that has come after, retains a mysterious hold on my religious affections. It more fully expresses my faith than most ad hoc words of stammering yearning I can write in a journal, or say in a prayer. This is a hymn which isn't about how I feel, as if God didn't already know all that anyway. This is a hymn of spiritual aspiration, of ethical re-affrimation and of discipleship which takes seriously inner disposition as well as outer behaviour.  It will find its way into an order of service soon, as I am privileged to preach around and choose some of the hymns – to choose this one would be to choose a hymn undeservedly neglected, but which is, in the richest senses, devotional. 

Tuesday night was a milestone night for me. The College organised a retirement dinner to celebrate my years as Principal of the Scottish Baptist College. (This cake shows me in characteristic pose speaking lots of words!)

These have been eleven years of hard work, ministry fulfilment, richly rewarded by the evidence of students discovering the transforming power of theological study, formative learning, practical training and all this in a shared community focused on God, open to the Holy Spirit, centred on Christ, and committed to finding out what it means to follow faithfully after Jesus.

It was for me a night when I felt humbled and proud, and hopefully each of these at the appropriate moments. To hear the testimony of students to their own decisive shaping and self-discovery during their time at College, was reason enough for gladness and gratitude. That they were willing to speak so warmly and gratefully about my own role in that process was more than enough reason for humility undergirded by a sense of immense privilege, and if it is ever right to be proud, then yes, that too. But only in the sense of feeling that whatever I had offered as gift to them was hardly adequate to the trust they had shown in entursting their training for ministry into our care, a deep gratitude to God for all that has been accomplished in the learning and teaching, shaping and forming, that is the core commitment of our College.

I was able to pay tribute to a remarkable group of people who serve the Scottish Baptist College – Rev Dr Stuart Blythe, who is now acting Principal, Rev Ian Birch, lecturer in biblical studies and much else, Joyce Holloway, Bursar and PA to the Principal, Isabella Stevenson, promotions and publicity, Rev Dr Edward Burrows and Frances Addis who together look after our library. The fun and banter, the commitment and dedication, the care for each other and for the students, have made our College a healthy place of learning and teaching which is student centred in its ethos and goal.

I was presented with a magnificent framed silk painting of the Paisley skyline, a glass clock and a cheque, three gifts, the three-ness may or may not be related to my known preference for all things Trinitarian! The frame was too big to fit in a full car so it will be brought home next week – and I'll post a picture of it then. And Sheila was given a stunning orchid bowl which now sits in tropical splendour at our fireplace!

I will continue teaching one day a week at the College in the coming year, but once the dust settles, will take time to reflect, to read, think and pray, before deciding what might be the next stages of ministry and service, within the church and beyond.

“I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will
come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value
of the paints used in the picture.”

How poignant is that? If only he could have known. A year or two ago the best episode ever of Dr Who imagined what it would be like to go back to Van Gogh's time and tell him how famous he would become, how admired his art would be, and how revered as an artist. It finished with Van Gogh transported into the future to observe the adulation of visitors to the Van Gogh museum admiring his paintings.

Real life isn't like that. He died poor, unrecognised and his paintings largely unsold. His work is now essentially a collection of masterpieces – even minor paintings are of major importance, and there's little point now in talking of monetary value. Just keep adding zeros. So the finding of a new full size landscape, confirmed as an authentic Van Gogh, is cause for celebration and gratitude from everyone whose world is the richer for the work of Van Gogh.

The letters written by Vincent to his brother Theo reveal much of the inner life of this remarkable, tortured genius. He repeatedly talks of the importance of love, the inner springs of imagination, art as both passion and tedium, and the stars, the importance of the stars as guides not only for his feet, but more significantly for his heart. "When I have a terrible need of, shall I say – religion? Then I go out and paint the stars."

 And he knew about risk, anxiety, failure and rejection. At times he can be almost stoic in responding to his own anguish, and finding in it possibilities otherwise unavailable. “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining
ashore.”

His paintings remain, for me at least, texts of comfort and solidarity, sermons in symbol and colour, and as in all great art, a summons to see, to attend and to be changed.

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24014186

Simon Schama is a genius. But that's not his greatest gift. There are few broadcasters whose erudition translates so beautifully into education by conversation, learning by contagious passion, and for once a creative balance between scepticism and faith, or to put it in other terms the complementarity of an hermeneutic of suspicion and an hermeneutic of trust. The new BBC1 series on the Story of the Jews began last Sunday evening and goes for a further 4 weeks. 

I remember doing history of the Ancient Near East, the history and religion of Israel, and a wide ranging introduction to the Hebrew Bible as part of my Arts degree at Glasgow University – there I encountered an hermeneutic of supsicion, and little patience in the classroom with trust as faith commitment. I revisited some, but not much of that material in my theological education, this time in a College where trust and faith commitment were part of the hermeneutical process. Of course this was without ignoring or demeaning the gains from critical scholarship, with respectful practice of a disciplined critical and historical analysis of text, culture and context, and as part of a multi-disciplinary subject-field that was diverse and required an approach to learning we would now call integrated.

So this first episode was a treat. From the sceptical reflections on the absence of hard histoirical, archaeological evidence for the Exodus, to the sequence of family scenes at Passover celebrated in Schama's own household, to the ecstatic and passionate love for Torah, for words and for reading and for the scrolls, that is utterly characteristic, essential, to Judaism – this was wonderfully captured in the scenes at the synagogue. This is superb television; more than that it is a first class education at an accessible level in what it means to be a people of faith, albeit a faith diverse, historically rooted in change and continuity, and that continuity despite repeated persecution measurable on a scale stretching from ridicule to the Holocaust. 

I don't always agree with some of the premises, or conclusions of the programme, but that is only judging by the first episode. We will wait and see what is still to come. But I look forward to sitting down with time and attentiveness in what is a master class in contemporary education that aims at heigtened awareness of issues, balanced provision of information, posing of questions that compel reflection rather than make-do answers, and that brings a world different from mine alive, with sympathy, insider knowledge, humour and Schama's geuine greatness as a scholar whose learning elicits admiration, and invites engagement with his world of thought.