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  • How to Pray the Cursing Psalms during Holy Week

    51KJ+TfYOOL__BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-67,22_AA300_SH20_OU02_Dame Maria Boulding OSB wrote out of deep scholarship, alert self-awareness, and perceptive compassion about human hopes and failings, and all this informed by a lifetime of obedience within a Benedictine community. I treasure her books. During Lent I've made my way slowly through her last book, written as she endured painful terminal illness, within the loving support of her community.

    Gateway to Resurrection is a gentle reaffirmation of fundamental Christian beliefs centred on God's coming in Jesus, and the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a world class scholar and translator of Augustine, and as one who has reflected and practised the Rule of Benedict for a lifetime, she offers us a rich weaving together of her own experience, Benedictine spirituality, the biblical riches of Augustine's Expositions of the Psalms and the psychological narrative of his Confessions. But this is spiritual writing that is humble yet assured, accessible but utterly unpatronising, full of faith without for a moment encouraging uncritical piety or unthinking assertion in the face of disturbing questions – doubt too, has its place in our journey to God.

    She is spiritually shrewd on the vexed question of what we do with some of the cursing Psalms – for example, how does a Christian pray, 'O God break the teeth in their mouths'. (Mind you I guess some of us, some of the time, know perfectly well how to pray a line like that!).  But to pray for the extermination of our enemies children, and to wish those we hate dead and their children orphans – hard to reconcile prayers like that with the Sermon on the Mount. Her answer is profoundly theological, based on taking the humanity and divinity of Jesus with equal and utmost seriousness:

    When the Word of God, the Son of God, became man, he was not man in some abstract sense, but a man of a particular race, culture and time. What the instinctive Jewish response to injustice, cruelty or hatred were like, we hear in many of the cursing Psalms. Jesus was personally sinless, and his response sprang from love, but because he came in the loikeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin (Rom 8.3), he took up all our passionate responses into the raw material of his prayer, as he also took the flesh of Israel as the raw material of his sacrifice. We may find it possible as we pray these psalms simply to be with Christ in his Passion, as he assumes all these shouts of rage and despair, all these raw demands for vengeance, and transforms them: 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do'.

    At least we can be sure of two things about these psalms: first, that the sweet singers of Israel were rithlessly honest before God, and never thought that anything that was important to them was unsuitable to mention in his presence; second, that there are pre-Christian and non-Christian elements in ourselves that may benefot from exposure to God in prayer.

    Over the years I've read so many commentaries and theologies that wrestle with the imprecatory psalms. Here at last is a suggestion that is profoundly Christian because deeply rooted in a full and practised Christology. That our worst thoughts can become our most honest prayers, and be redeemed by being caught up into the Passion of God in Christ, and our darkest places flooded with resurrection light, and that these our most destructive responses are drawn into the eternal life-giving love of the Triune God – that's a thought worth pondering, and a way worth trying to walk, starting this Holy Week.

  • Snow and Spring Holidays in Aberdeenshire!

    DSC00470This was the view from our back door at 9.00 this morning.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    And this is a bird's eye view of the bird table!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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     Then this afternoon we had this!

  • The passion Story and the Complicated Complexities of our Anger

    Anger 2Last night I did a lot of thinking about anger. I'd been asked to lead the Holy Week Service on the emotions of the Passion, and my allocated theme was anger. You'd think that would be quite straightforward, but the more I read the passion story in all four Gospels the harder it was to pin down just exactly where in the passion story we have unadulterated anger.

    I came to the conclusion that anger pure and simple isn't there at all. What is there is that complicated cocktail of dark emotions that underlie the intractable mysteries of human sinfulness, that give rise to violence, hate, cruelty and the ultimate denial of our humanity by the inhumane way we treat other human beings.

    You can read what I shared in the file below. I'd be grateful if you respected the copyright on this, but am happy that readers of the blog should be able to read it, and comment if you wish. It is thought in progress, and I'm sure some of it needs second thought. But it does try to take seriously a central paradox of the Passion, how human contrivance and co-ordinated self interest result in torture, injustice and execution.

    The two pictures referred to are Peter Howson's Last Supper, currently on exhibition here in Aberdeen Art gallery, and Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Mocked.

    Download The Emotions of the Passion

  • The reverse Politics of Palm Sunday

     Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry.
    0 Savior meek, pursue Thy road,
    With palms and scattered garments strowed.

    2. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    In lowly pomp ride on to die.
    0 Christ, Thy triumphs now begin
    O'er captive death and conquered sin.

    3. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    The angel armies of the sky
    Look down with sad and wondering eyes
    To see the approaching Sacrifice.

    4. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
    The Father on His sapphire throne
    Expects His own anointed Son.

    5. Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
    In lowly pomp ride on to die.
    Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain.
    Then take, 0 Christ, Thy power and reign.

    Lorenzo-ghiberti-entry-of-jesus-into-jerusalem-north-doors-of-the-baptistery-of-san-giovanni-1403-24Saviour meek, lowly pomp, wondering eyes, the last and fiercest strife – this Palm Sunday hymn is far removed from the triumphalism of much modern praise sing discourse. The power to reign is not power, it is sacrifice; and the majesty evokes wonder not by the authority of might but by the relinquishment of power in suffering. Palm Sunday sets the agenda for the coming week. The Passion Story isn't about God winning by compulsion and forced compliance, but about the vulnerability of God in Christ loving enemies with a gentle defiant refusal to confirm that might is right. The heart of God is revealed in peacemaking, the surrender of a love that seeks to reconcile by healing hatred, subverting violence, embracing the treacherous and forgiving those who crucify.

    God commends his love towards us in that while we were his enemies, Christ died for us. I guess that the witness of Christians in the 21st Century could take a new turning of risk and costly adventure if the politics of Palm Sunday shaped the politics of our daily lives, our personal relationships and the way we express our citizenship of the world, and God's Kingdom.

    …. Ride on, King Jesus, through conflict and debate

    ride on through sweaty prayer and the betrayal of friends

    Lord this Palm Sunday forgive me my evasions of truth,

    my carelessness of your honour;

    my weakness which leaves me sleeping

    even when in others you suffer and are anguished;

    my cowardice that does not risk the consequences

    of publicly acknowledging you as Lord.

     

  • Why we write the way we write…

    Brother_deluxe_typewriter_1The other day I got a lovely letter from a friend, expressing appreciation for something I'd written. What makes the letter more special is that it was typed, not word-processed. It's perhaps entirely a matter of perspective, or maybe there is an aesthetic of the technologically obsolete, but a typed letter feels more personal, takes more effort and care when there's no delete button, conveys a generous intentionality as trouble is taken.

    My friend Stewart, whose funeral I shared on Friday, gave me a gift two days before the stroke from which he eventually died. The Naked Now. Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, is now one of those books twice treasured – for what it is, and from whom it came. Inside it Stewart wrote in a characteristic hand, with his fountain pen, his own greeting and appreciation of friendship – neat, firm, legible and instantly recognisable as Stewart.

    Typewriter and fountain pen – it's not that I undervalue all the other ways we keep in touch with each other these days – email, text, facebook and all other forms of maintaining and repairing relationship. But the typed letter, and the handwritten flyleaf re-present the faces and the voices of two dear friends. Emails and texts are transient, often enough informal chits of chat. But a typed letter and written flyleaf are artefacts of friendship and lasting fingerprints of touches on our lives.

     

  • The Beatific Vision and the Funeral of a Soul Friend

    And That Will Be Heaven

    and that will be heaven

    and that will be heaven

    at last   the first unclouded

    seeing

             to stand like the sunflower

    turned full face to the sun    drenched

    with light     in the still centre

    held     while the circling planets

    hum with an utter joy

                            seeing and knowing

    at last     in every particle

    seen and known     and not turning

    away

         never turning away

    again

    (Evangeline Paterson)

    I shared in the funeral of my friend Stewart today, and was given the privilege of trying to explain the mystery that is the human life, precious, unique, surprising, the gift of presence, and communion, and inward companionship. The poem expresses the breathless wonder of our earthbound eyes seeing through the eyes of God to the face of God, and how in the end God will be all in all.

    Amongst the words borrowed and used in the service were these from Julian of Norwich, Stewart's favourite theologian, and fro m Paul, who understood the limits of human thought and experience to comprehend the infinite mystery of eternal love, stooping to redeem and renew:

    Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning.

    And I saw quite clearly in this and in all,

    that before God made us, he loved us,

    which love was never slaked nor ever shall be.

    And in this love he has done all his work,

    and in this love he has made all things profitable to us.

    And in this love our life is everlasting.

    In our creation we had a beginning.

    But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning.

    And all this shall be seen in God without end.

    In the end the beatific vision is to gaze with joyous wonder on the brilliant dazzling darkness that is the mystery of Love Divine:

    When I was a child,

    I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

    But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

    Now we see things imperfectly,

    like puzzling reflections in a mirror,

    but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

    All that I know now is partial and incomplete,

    but then I will know everything completely,

    just as God now knows me completely….

    and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

  • Social Justice and the Complicated Complexities of VAT on Pies!

    Amongst the anomalies and curiosities of the recent Budget, is the decision to apply VAT to heated pies and pasties to bring them into line with cooked food as served for example in restaurants. The Chief Executive of Greggs the bakery company has dubbed this the Pie Tax. The  subsequent debate has covered issues such as the clientele who buy such hot food being those who can least afford a hiked price in food. But the most bizarre part of the debate focuses on what constitutes 'heated food'. It seems this is based on a comparison between the ambient temperature outside and the temperature of the food being heated! So on a sunny day in summer lukewarm food might not count, whereas in a snowbound winter…… Here's a quote from the debate:

    "With the weather as it is today, a lukewarm pasty from Greggs is not VAT-able because the ambient temperature outside is the reference point, whereas if it is the middle of winter and freezing cold it is VAT," Mr Mann said. "It is an extraordinarily complex situation when you are having to check with the Meteorological Office on whether or not to add VAT on pasties in Greggs, which is what your consultation paper does."

    Off course there are two sides to this debate – but I can't help wondering along with most sensible people, whether the leaders of the Coalition have any idea what the real world feels like, and whether they have the moral imagination to recognise the real and the symbolic impact of choosing to tax food at a time when austerity measures are supposed to be balanced by the mantra 'we're all in this together'. The tax-payer subsidised restaurants at Westminster versus the queue for taxed hot sausage rolls at Greggs. As an own goal it is as spectacular as Peter Crouch's real wonder goal against Manchester City at the weekend.

    For that reason I'll resist submitting that particular Budget proposal to the more searching moral scrutiny that a prophet like Amos might have carried out. He had something to say about the luxuries of the the rich and the poor being ground into the dust for the price of a pair of slippers….for contemporary application read 'a hot pie'.

    You can read more on this at the link below – and smile – but then reflect, because the title of this post is not entirely playful!

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/osborne-touch-greggs-boss-060141772.html

     

  • Justification for buying yet another new book on Vermeer!

    This morning a book arrived in the post, yet another book.

    This is an all but weekly occurrence that whether it puzzles others, frequently puzzles me.

    Whence the imperative to read, and to own and handle the word made matter?

    Is it self-indulgence, or sacrament – means of survival or means of grace?

    Philip Toynbee said books were his royal road to God.

    Not all books that lead to God are books about God.

    But

    To confer with and consult minds other than our own.

    To see what others point out to our limited sight.

    To feel the impetus of those who push us beyond the restrictive horizons 0f what we know.

    To revel in the intellectual humility that provides the humus out of which good learning grows.

    To keep alive curiosity and pay attention to the world and listen to our own lives.

    To take and read, and to wonder and ponder on goodness, beauty and truth.

    To nurture imagination, refresh the wells of thought, replenish our emotional capacity.

    41ASNT7T2HL__SL500_AA300_Books do this, and much more for me.

    And in that sense they are a means of grace, constant sources of new understanding, encounters with minds different from mine and no less valid.

    As a matter of interest the book that arrived is an updated classic of art investigation. Beautifully written, it explores the intricacies and complexities involved in establishing the provenance and authenticity of paintings attributed to Vermeer.

    But it is Gowing's analysis of Vermeer's temperament and character, and of how these inevitably influenced his technique and artistic expression, that makes this a profound study of genius. When much has been said about cultural milieu, historical context, social influences, and political background, there is still the mystery of temperament and personality, and the complex intertwining of accident, circumstance and personal intention. These may be all but insoluble, but in the attempt, much comes to light that otherwise would remain hidden. Gowing as noted above, is an impetus pushing the reader towards new horizons, teaching us to pay attention to our world, itself a sacrament of creation.

    Few artists paid more detailed attention to the sacrament of the ordinary than Jan Vermeer.

  • Buechner Week IV The Coincidences that Add Up to Vocation

    DSC00097Who knows where those life changing moments come from – the ones where we finally decide, 'This is what I want to do'. Not everyone sees a glowing bush over in a corner of the desert compelling us to turn off the beaten track of the routines and habits of our comfort zones. I doubt many hear that voice in the small hours insistently waking us up by saying our name, and even fewer think to say, Speak Lord, your servant is listening.
     
    No. Usually the voice of God calling us, (which is what vocation is), sounds most clearly in that coincidence of opportunity and circumstance, our own heart's desires, and that decisive act that enables us to put our lives where our best desires are, and to affirm who we are by putting ourselves in the place of new possibility. 
     
    I know of nobody who says that better than Buechner, in one of his finest pieces of applied theology and spiritual direction, reduced to essentials:
     
     
    "The kind of work God usually calls you to
           is the kind of work that you need most to do
                  and that the world most needs to have done…
    The place God calls you to
           is the place where your deep gladness
                  and the world’s deep hunger meet."
    – Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking" – his definition of 'vocation'.

  • Buechner Week III Betting your life that God is Love.

    DSC00223Yesterday one of my dearest friends died. We first met 28 years ago, and from our first meeting we sensed an affinity that is hard to explain and requires no explanation because friendship is gift, grace, goodness and gratitude all bundled together in a congruence of mind and heart.

    In due course I'll say more. I mention my friend here because this is Buechner week, and I've been re-reading and re-thinking Buechner's wisdom. There is a spiritual family resemblance between my friend's and Buechner's take on God and the graced life. In 28 years we had countless conversations about the meaning of God, and love, and what it means to be human, and how to reach out to the other, and who Jesus is for us and our broken world today, and why blessing is the default setting of any heart openly receptive to the love of God that is always there before us, and behind us. When I read Buechner, I think he has been reading my friend's diary, overhearing many of those conversations, wishing he could interrupt and agree or disagree by saying, 'But have you looked at it this way?'

    Here is Buechner on love, words that coincide exactly with my friend's theology, and mine.

    Of all powers,

    love is the most powerful and the most powerless.

    It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer

    that final and most impregnable stronghold

    which is the human heart.

    It is the most powerless

    because it can do nothing except by consent.

    To say that love is God is the most romantic idealism.

    To say that God is love is either the last straw,

    or the ultimate truth.

    Wishful Thinking, 50-54

    The photo was taken a stone's throw from my friend's house. An exuberant garden was one of his delights, probably because such profusion of colour, variety and vitality answered to much in his own inner world.