Blog

Some time this week this blog will pass the 250,000 visits mark. I'm not sure what that statistic means. Six years ago I started writing regularly here for faithful visitors who keep returning, and occasional visitors who drop in now and then, and maybe those who happen by accidentally or Google guided, find something interesting or helpful and disappear again into their own world.

If you want to know why I do this, what I hope to achieve, and why I think it's a worthwhile form of ministry and discipleship, then look at my original explanation of the name Living Wittily here. I don't trawl much through the archives, but I have a sense of how my own life narrative has flowed through the landscape of these six years, and the posts provide a rough cartography of the road travelled. Much has changed and much has stayed the same. New experiences question past opinions, in some senses I know more about God, and in more senses I know less. At times the process of writing, the act of articulation, takes thought where I never imagined it would go. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a theologian, but have always wanted to dive into and explore the kind of theology that reminds me I am always out of my depth.

I love poetry, and the arrangement of words with precision and beauty is, for me at least, a spiritual discipline in obedience to the Word who became flesh and made his home amongst us ("tabernacled amongst us" is the older phrase, beautiful in its precision).

In recent years I have discovered how painting and sculpture, icon and calligraphy are valid forms of exegesis, and why it is wise theologians who were there long before us believed passionatelt that beauty, goodness and truth are the three transcendental virtues that underlie humane and humanising activity.

And music – on the way down the road today I played Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and realise that when it comes to music I am a mere amateur, but that doesn't stop my heart thumping in synchopated sympathy with sounds that are persistently subversive of complacency, and measured intimations of the beauty and brokenness, but also the redeemable loved-ness of God's creation.

All of this comes tumbling down on this poor keyboard more or less at random. It allows me to hold on to and savour, and reflect more critically and appreciatively on the immense mystery in the ordinariness of a life, and to fail once again in computing the infinite value of each human being to the God who chooses to notice us, cherish us, and to need the love and possibility of each imago dei, to seek fellowship with each human being, trying to live in the responsive freedom of children of God. It is in the living and dying that is our lives, the flourishing and suffering that makes us aware of our humanity, the joy and the pain of union and separation in love, the prayers and praises and pleadings and passions that speak out our fears and desires our losses and our gains, it is in such kind or cruel places that God is encountered. And it is also in such places that we are compelled to face ourselves, but in the presence of a Holy Love that judges us with mercy, and forgives us with a Grace infinite in range and depth.

All of which is to say that the blog writer receives more than they give, and providing they nearly always stay this side of self indulgence, what they write can also become blessing to others. Or so it has been with me. 

It's some time since I did consecutive blogging on a theme or a book. I have asked for a review copy of John Swinton's new book, Dementia. Living in the Memories of God, which has now arrived. In my own circle of friends and family, and in years of pastoral ministry, I have watched those for whom I care begin to lose their sense of self, and have supported those who love them through the valley of deep darkness that they have sensed ahead of them, and the one they love. The theological and pastoral questions are urgent, crucial and take us to the foundation convictions of Christian theology and pastoral responsiveness to each human being as made in the image of God. Dementia is a condition that raises profound questions about human being, human love, the sense of personal identity and ultimately the meaning and worth of each human life.

A blog is a good place to explore all this, and invite insights from others, and share and learn together something of what it means to cherish and celebrate the depths of our own humanity, and God's love beyoind understanding.

" The glory of human beings is not power, the power to control someone else; the glory of human beings is the ability to let what is deepest within us grow."

Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger, quoted in Swinton, page 153.

The photograph is a reminder of the joys of createdness, and pictures one of those creatures for whom living wittily comes naturally!

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone is not out to get you.

I know – it's an old line, but recently I've wondered.

Thursday – Need snow tyres put on and swapped with the others.

Go to garage – "nae problem son" says somebody who looks younger than me.

But there is a problem, son! The alloy rim is cracked and it costs a years pocket money to replace.

But. There's a wee man round the corner does welding – so we jump in the car and the wee man hums and haws and girns (nae teeth in) – but aye, he can dae it.

Then I get my tyres on, and the bank balance falls disproportionately.

Friday – go to dentist to have a tooth seen to. A large chunk came off while chomping a chocolate covered Brazil nut.

Oops. Root not good, big filling not enough – root canal and a crown, but no guarantee either will work. See the X-Ray? Tooth condemned….

Oh, and the tooth next to it needs a large filling too.

Beginning to think I'd have been as well letting the tyre changing man deal with my molars as well.

One extraction later, and one large filling later, my bank balance falls again. Hard to say thank you without unseemly dribbling with a frozen face and a mouth which has been subjected to an archaeological dig.

Monday – 6.30am out at the car clearing ice. Driver's window down and up to clear condensation.

Except it goes down. And stays down!

A funny whirring sound mocks me at 6.40 am, in minus 4 degrees in Westhill, Aberdeenshire. Go on son, drive to glasgow with an open windae!

So along to the nice Honda people who take it to the workshop and yes, the motor is whirring nicely they agree, but to no effect sir, – it's knackered.

Book it in for Friday, when my bank balance will be further reduced.

Now just because I'm paranoid……

 

 

My friend Geoff Colmer has been recommending with much enthusiasm the book Unapologetic by Francis Spufford. The sub title is Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. I got it recently and have been reading it with much laughter, much thought, and am so glad that someone has written an intelligent riposte to the lazy thinking and arrogant opinion-pushing of those who dismiss the whole religious thing. And emotional sense matters, just as much as common sense and intellectual sense.

I found one long passage one of the most original reflections on the nature of guilt, the preciousness of human life and the nature of forgiveness and grace. The honest understanding of the late in life request for the presence of a friend by Field-Marshal Montgomery is a superb piece of pastoral journalism and moral realism. Knowing he would die soon he said 'I've got to go and meet God and explain  all those men I killed in Alamein.' There follows a wide ranging meditation on the importance of taking our moral failures seriously, and recognising the human capacity to mess up life and wound those around us. It is all but impossible to quote or summarise this sustained piece of theologically astute psychology, though the book is crammed with one liners, phrases and paragraphs of cleverness distilled to wisdom.

There's something salutary and earthing about reading such a book during Advent. Christmas and nativity stories and the birth narratives in the Gospels are easy targets for those who want to debunk the Christian way of seeing and being in the world. But the significance of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth and the intersection of human history and divine purpose which underlies the birth of Jesus and the Word made flesh is about more than over-clever dismissals of religious traditions as mere legend or myth.  Because 'his name will be called Emmanuel, God with us.' And 'you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.' So there is indeed an issue for Field Marshall Montgomery and the lives lost in war and in all the brokenness of the world, and the need to face God. Except that in the Incarnation, God came to face us, with our own propensity to mess things up, and God's propensity to redeem.

The picture is of Da Vinci's drawing of a woman and child – one of my favourite images of Christmas understood with theological imagination.

 

I continue to work a small tapestry of the Hebrew word for 'shalom'.

 

There is no intended or discernible pattern, no fixed image of what the finished work will look like. It is being worked slowly, in those odd brief spaces of time when the notion to stitch and the opportunity to do so coincide. The colours are being mixed, strand by strand, sometimes three or even four shades woven into one six strand thread – they reflect the mood I am in at the time, but they also weave into a pattern of hope. The colours are greens, yellows, blues, browns, but they are mixed, juxtaposed, blended, sometimes random, so that the overall work is open-ended; and yet.

I hear the Israeli ambassador to the EU defending 3000 more houses in a settlement on the West Bank; and I stitch some more of this beautiful Hebrew word, and its background in the mercy of God. Palestinian outrage, rockets and political maneouvering raises the anger and fear stakes further, and I stitch a few more quiet points of hopefulness. In Belfast the flying of the Union jack creates riots and police officers are injured, I want to stitch.

I guess for me this tapestry has become a metaphor for mercy, a symbol of shalom, a pitch for peace, a protest, a prayer, a promise, or at least a reminder of those great promises in Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospels and Revelation.

about lions and lambs in close but safe proximity

about spears into pruning hooks and rockets into trade agreements

about justice flowing down like rivers, and doing right by each other as natural and reliable as water runs to the sea

about loving enemies and embracing the other so that the other becomes brother

about leaves of the trees for the healing of the nations, and people from every tongue, tribe and nation praising the God who is all in all

about the New Jerusalem, over which the three great monotheistic faiths no longer need to battle and do murder, because there is space and welcome for all in a new creation and in the reconciliation of all things.

That's quite a theological load for a tapestry; but it is also the theological implicate of praying that looks to a different future because God is the God of the future whose loving purpose, just mercy, and reconciling heart, intersects with the reality of our present, but does so with Eternal intent. Whatever else advent and incarnation mean, they open up those wide doors for the King of glory.

I was in a charity shop and found this brass plaque. The inscription shows the initials of two people the dates 1887 – 1937. The relief in the centre is of Jacob and Rachel at the well. The surrounding reliefs are the story of Jacob's journey, his wooing Rachel and working for Laban. The two names are inscribed in Hebrew on the top left and right of the reliefs. My guess is this is a Golden wedding plaque, made in 1937, and featuring one of the greatest love stories in the Hebrew Bible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quality of the central relief captures the moment of encounter, a beautiful portrayal of accidental providence, those unlooked for meetings when God is at work in the ordinariness of everyday. Except with Jacob, very little is ordinary. Below is one of the scenes from the outer reliefs. I love this plate – it will hang in my study, a piece of brazen exegesis 🙂

Today was a busy day with several appointments to see people, do stuff and have stuff done to me. Coming out of the doctor's surgery facing me was a ridiculously blue sky and two trees that looked made for such an azure background. And not 50 metres from Tesco's car park!

 

My day also took me down to the University and King's College. On a frosty sunny morning it's difficult to believe that this is a modern University campus, so I sat in the quad for some minutes, chilled but cheerful, and watched the world amble past slowly. I love the old crown on the chapel, and in the sunlight it looked its best. Then a cappucino to go, a walk up the high Street, and an impulse buy of three books for the price of two. Work done, folk met, several important conversations, and then tonight five a side football, that spiritual stress buster in which there is an entire absence of the fruit of the Spirit!.