Blog

Less than a centimetre across, a single flower, and the only one I saw on the St Cyrus path through the dunes. We think it's a dwarf Storksbill – but prepared to be corrected. How could this little beauty not remind me of Emily Dickinson's playful poem, which like all her poetry, nudges us out of our mental laziness and dares us to think! Life isn't all available on Google – thank God – there is still mystery, surprise and wonder – Emily Dickinson celebrates both. 

As If Some Little Arctic Flower

S if some little arctic flower,

Upon the polar hem,

Went wandering down the latitudes,

Until it puzzled came

To continents of summer,

To firmaments of sun,

To strange, bright crowds of flowers,

And birds of foreign tongue!

I say, as if this little flower

To Eden wandered in–

What then? Why, nothing, only

Your inference therefrom!

(Emily Dickinson)

Upon a bank I sat, a child made seer
Of one small primrose flowering in my mind.
Better than wealth it is, I said, to find
One small page of Truth's manuscript made clear.

I looked at Christ transfigured without fear–
The light was very beautiful and kind,
And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed
I read it through the lenses of a tear.
 

And then my sight grew dim, I could not see
The primrose that had lighted me to Heaven,
And there was but the shadow of a tree
Ghostly among the stars. The years that pass
Like tired soldiers nevermore have given
Moments to see wonders in the grass.

The past two days on holiday the weather has been wet and cold. Didn't stop us going out for a walk along the front at Aberdeen, getting soaked and cold but doing it for the coffee and bacon roll at The Pavilion cafe afterwards. As well as walking in the rain, I was putting up a couple of new blinds which needed the width adjusted before hanging them.

That's where Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics came in handy. During Holy Week I'd left my favourite volume IV.i lying around the living room so I could pick it up and browse in it at random when I had free time or coffee, or nothing on the TV I wanted to pay any attention to. It was an interesting experiment in spiritual reading piecemeal, or ad hoc theological reflection. It was well worthwhile – not the same as a determined, steady, continual reading through one of those impressively heavy volumes with their pages packed with granite theology mined from the deepest quarry of divine mystery.

A brief read at a paragraph became a page, then a bit more, then …the phone rang, or the tea was ready, or I was engaged in conversation. Over the week I probably had it in my hand several times a day. Sometimes it was like looking at Everest, the height of the Divine love. Other times it was like looking at Niagara, a cataract of passionate exposition of the cross. Or like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, vast, spacious, deep and utterly there, as that which puts us in our place. Times too when a line or two was quite enough to be going on with – and I wrote it down in the wee notebook, and thought about it – a lot.

Pages 259-273, are on the meaning of Jesus' temptations, indeed Jesus' temptability, from his baptism to Gethsemane. Reading these pages none of the metaphors above are exaggerations of Barth's theological capacity – Everest, Niagara, Grand Canyon – none of them answers fully to Barths exposition of the mysterious depths and wonders of the Divine reconciling love, or to the fixedness of the determined Yes of God in Christ, or to the height and majesty of the Divine purpose to redeem and reconcile and renew the image of God and the gift that is Creation and New Creation. Not many theologians compare with Barth when he takes off his shoes to stand on the holy ground around the cross. His interpretation of the Gethsemane prayer, "Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but yours be done…" was, for me, breathtaking, a masterpiece of imaginative hermeneutics and constructive Christology.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – remember the new blinds – well, cutting them to the right width is tricky, and it needs the end of the blind anchored so that it won't move as it's measured. Volume IV.i, still lying to hand on the coffee table, served perfectly. But all those jokes about big books and door-stops are mostly the words of the ignorant. It's no disrespect to Barth that one of his volumes comes in handy as a make-do weight. My real estimate of the Church Dogmatics is that while I was doing DIY, a volume was to hand!

The following is my response to Bob Macdonald's comment on the post about Maria Boulding and the place of the Psalms in our prayers. It's in the comments section but Bob as always raises points that always make me think again and I didn't want it hidden away on the side-bar

Bob, as I say, your comment makes me think again, and I am in complete agreement about the role of the Psalms as spiritual safety valves that allow moral catharsis by bringing our worst thoughts and feelings within the orbit of the mercy, justice and love of God. But if we believe the Psalmists spoke with utter frankness to God, then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life's extremities. The collisions of emotional and theological responses within the collection of Psalms is what makes them the prayer book of the human heart, and also enables such prayers to be an honest and authentic cry of faith whether struggling or celebrating, questioning or affirming. Behind such prayers there is the instinct for justice and the longing for some sort of healing and restored wholeness.

But yes, any reading of the Sermon on the Mount, and serious reflection on the pivotal event of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross, requires of us the responses of those who are ministers of reconciliation. I think that's why Boulding acknowledges that certain emotional, moral and psychological responses to injustice, suffering and violence are better out than in – and are better acknowledged before God than nursed in the heart awaiting opportunity. The eucharistic cup, of anguished suffering and suffering love, of shared faith and holy communion, itself holds together the polar extremes of human experience and the infinite range of Divine love and peacemaking.

The picture of Micaelagelo's Pieta sculpture is one of the miracles of Christian art – and a profound meditation on the alternative to vengeance, violence, hatred and murder.

Just some thoughts which arise out of you pushing a bit harder Bob, so thanks and blessings on your own ministry.

This evening at the ecumenical Easter service I was sitting admiring the stain glass windows, illumined from the outside by an April setting sun. There are two main windows facing the congregation. One has the four saints of Scotland and the other has the creation and the four seasons. Between them a smaller round window depicting the sower who went forth to sow.

At the top of the Scottish saints window was the image of the Lamb, holding the red crossed banner, illumined around the head with the shekinah of heaven. As I was looking at that particular image the organist started to play All in an April evening, and I thought of the line, "I thought of the Lamb of God". That was one of those coincidences that some of us read as a significant nudge of the Holy Spirit. More so because….

About 15 years ago, less than a mile from where I sat in the church, I was visiting an elderly member of the church where I was then minister. Her name was Carrie, and she was very near the end of her journey and I sat with her, along with her sister. There were five sisters, and their given name was Lamb. They had made up a singing group in their younger years. That Spring afternoon Carrie asked if her sister and I would sing All in an April Evening, and wouldn't take no for an answer.

In those days before Britain's Got Talent there was no one there to laugh at us – in fact, imperfect and at times hilarious as it was, Carrie joined in both the singing and the hilarity, and somehow we made our way through to the close. In those moments of unrehearsed friendship and pastoral encounter the three of us, in our own way, and from our own experiences, 'thought on the Lamb of God'. A day or two later Carrie died, and discovered that the eternal love of God is like another of her favourite pieces of music – the place where 'Sheep May safely Graze'.

So there I was tonight, looking at this lovely sunlit stained glass image of the Lamb of God, the organ playing a piece so replete with memory and affection for me, and within hearing distance of a bleating lamb from that room where in ministry and friendship, our faith was shared in a mixture of poignancy and hilarity. In the co-incidence of window, music and memory, of image, sound and remembering, I felt a deep and lovely feeling of what the Communion of Saints really means. I know I believe it as in the Creed; I've sung about it; I can do the theological exposition of it -but each of these is but the articulation of an experience that now and again transcends argument and intellectual grasp. It was an Easter moment, when in memory and love cor ad cor loquitur 'heart speaks to heart'.

These words were the motto of Cardinal Newman, whose prayer was a favourite of the sister who sang with me:

O LORD, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shades lengthen, and the evening cometh, and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done. Then, Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.