Life is a pilgrimage of learning,
a voyage of discovery,
in which our
mistaken views are corrected,
our distorted notions adjusted,
our
shallow opinions deepened
and some of our vast ignorances diminished.
John Stott, Mission in the Modern World.
H W Longfellow
( The photo taken on Tuesday morning around noon – the forecast was for sunshine!)
Whom God loves He loves to the end;
and not only to their own end, to
their death, but to his end;
and His end is, that He might love them
still.
John Donne.
Before all greatness,
be silent—
in art,
in music,
in religion:
………..silence.”
Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, Letters to a Niece.
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
Mary Oliver, Evidence. Poems
I did this once before.
To try to say each day, in one sentence, something worth saying, reading, hearing.
This time with something worth looking at as well.
The photo was taken 3 miles from our house, looking over Loch Skene. on a sunny day – yes we do get them, now and again…..
"Love does not consist of gazing at each other,
but in looking outward together in the same direction."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince).
I do not deny that I love a good fight,
but I also know that it is a mistake,
at least if you are a Christian,
to have your life or theology determined by who you think are your enemies.
Christians know we will have enemies
because we are told we must love our enemies.
That we are commanded to love our enemies
is not a strategy to guarnatee that all enmity can be overcome,
but a reminder that for Christians our lives must be determined
by our loves, not our hates.
That is why Christians cannot afford to let ourselves be defined
by what we are against.
Whatever or whomever we are against,
we are so only because God has given us so much to be for.
(Stanley Hauerwas, A Better Hope (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2000), page 9.
The picture is of Dorthy Day loving her enemies, and showing what she is for, and therefore what she is against. It serves as a monochrome icon.
Hans Kung recently decided to retire from public life. He is now 84. I first came across the writing and thought of Kung when as a young Baptist minister in my first church I was given a copy of On Being a Christian. It is a huge book – in size, in word count, but more than that, in the scope of its vision of what it means to be a Christian. Reading it was like working out with a personal intellectual trainer. You recognise that the book isn't there to indulge you, but to push you; you don't need to like it, just engage with it; the benefits are not immediate, but they are lasting.
That book was an eye opener. And my eyes have stayed open. Hans Kung in that book, and in subsequent writing has given to the Church a body of theological and philosophical work that is disruptive, questioning, and demanding. Disruptive in the positive sense of not being content with received wisdom or institutionalised answers; questioning because he is an ardent and patient seeker for truth who is impatient with those who try to obstruct that quest; demanding because he is a bull in the ecclesial china shop, a non-conformist in the most internally conformist tradition of Christian faith; a voice that refuses to be silenced by any authority, (ecclesial or academic) which is hostile to question, enquiry and the reform that discovered and rediscovered truth must inevitably provoke.
Yes he is a pain in the mitre of Pope and Curia; and yes his theology veers in directions some of us think are wrong directions; and maybe he does come over at times as arrogant, self-assured and unwilling to listen and negotiate towards views that others can own. But on the other side his range of knowledge and depth of thought, the combination of rigour and passion in argument, the note of faithfulness to the truth of Jesus as the sub-stratum of theological and philosophical exposition, and all this in a mind both questioning and generous, replete with learning and alert to the urgency of his own priestly vocation; such characteristics make him a complex and necessary voice in contemporary Christian reflection and apologetic
These sentences below sum up the spirituality and loneliness of Kung, his voice not always loved, but always faithful:
Following the cross does not mean copying the suffering of Jesus, it is not the reconstruction of his cross. That would be presumptuous. But it certainly means enduring the suffering which befalls me in my inexchangeable situation – in conformity with the suffering of Christ. Anyone who wants to go with Jesus must deny their self and take upon their self not the cross of Jesus, but their cross, their own cross, then they must follow Jesus. (On Being a Christian, p. 777)
The predictive text on my ancient Nokia (the one on the left above) which was produced shortly after cuneiform became obsolete. I once discovered only after sending that when I type 'meal' its first choice is 'neck'. If you don't check before sending that can be embarrassing.This Christmas I had to send a number of texts which informed, invited, described or intimated a meal.
I am taking the staff out for a well earned meal.
We had a long lesiurely meal at Cardosi's.
Last night was the annual fellowship meal.
For once we had a meal together without arguing.
Are you free to come over for a pot luck meal with the rest of the house group.
We had a hot meal, which was just what we needed.
Need I go on. Just substitute neck for meal in any of the above.
Always check the predictive spelling then. Does your phone do stuff like that?
Confessing our Small-Mindedness
We
confess to you our Father,
our small-mindedness and limited appreciation of
your greatness.
We
confess that we scarcely consider
your mighty movements at the beginning of
time,
creating the heavens and the earth;
nor do we even barely notice
the potential purposefulness of ordinary moments.
Lord we have sinned:
Forgive us and enlarge our
understanding.
We
confess to you Lord of Life,
that the life and death and resurrection of the Word made flesh,
do
not expand our thinking as they should:
we are hemmed in by transitory
interests and temporal pursuits,
and afraid oir unaware of the essential and eternal.
Lord
we have sinned:
Forgive us, and deepen our
love,
We
confess to you Spirit of God,
that we do not value
and seldom welcome
the gift of your Holy
Spirit
to liberate our tongues to praise you
and energise our lives to serve you.
Lord
we have sinned:
Father forgive us for our
failures and our sins,
Through the love of our Lord
Jesus:
And help us by the power of
your Holy Spirit, Amen
((c) Jim Gordon: Please feel free to use for yourself or in worship services)
One of the more expansive minds in my poetry canon is Denise Levertov. In her poem Candlemas, economy of words contrasts with the enlarging images of open arms, light, new life, deep faith and illumination. But the theological jolt of the poem is the final turning of Simeon, who held in his arms the Light of the World, towards that deeper darkness where the ineffability of God remains eternally secure from human prying.
A recovery of apophatic humility is now an essential dimension of a spirituality capable of withstanding the ephemeral, endlessly articulated imprecision of the noise and chatter of information, connectivity, immediacy of communication, transience of contact and superfluity of trivia. In other words, perhaps God is calling for a recovery of depth in our feeling, attentiveness in our hearing, reverence encouraging reticence in our speaking, and a reacquaintance with silence as the sign of a soul that, before God, knows its place.
Candlemas
By Denise Levertov
With certitude,
Simeon opened
ancient arms
to infant light.
Decades
before the cross, the tomb
and the new life,
he knew
new life.
What depth
of faith he drew on,
turning illumined
towards deep night.