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A Search for George Herbert

A search for new books on George Herbert, the Anglican poet par excellence, brings up an intriguing not to say amusing range of options. George Herbert's poetry, to modern ears, can seem bizarre in its conceits and metaphors, flowery in its language, and at best distant echoes from a previous age. But his poetry has enduring value for human development and spirituality, and explores the intensity of guilt and gratitude, of self criticism and divine acceptance, of insatiable longing and unbearable bliss.

But the name also brings up books about and by George Herbert Mead, the American philosopher of social consciousness and psychology. He too explored the nature of the self, not through prayer but through the importance of play and game in developing social values and relations. The give and take of human activity such as asking and giving, seeking and finding, winning and losing, talking and listening becomes the basis out of which the self is created. Mead's work also has enduring value for human society

Then there are books about George Herbert Walker Bush. At which point you become aware of the bizarre juxtapositions of the Amazon search engine. And you become aware too of the weird fact that an Anglican 17th century priest and patron saint of devotional poetry, and a 19th Century philosopher of human development and social values, share the same name with a President of the United States whose contribution to human spirituality and development and social inter-relationships is of an altogether other kind.

18 January 2012
“Stephen Lawrence”, by Carol Ann Duffy

I have been a fan of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry for years. I presented a paper on her love poetry at a theological conference and said she should be the next Poet Laureate. That she was honoured with the appointment is no surprise to those who appreciate the humane and perceptive way she deals with human weakness, longing, hurt, anger, tears, love, desire and so much else that we include in our never adequate descriptions of what it means, and more importantly what it feels like, to be a human being.

I missed her poem on the outcome of the Stephen Lawrence trial. Talking over a meal with a friend last night he mentioned it and sent me the link. It needs no comment other than it demonstrates why she is Poet Laureate, the poet who captures the significant moments in our shared life.

"Stephen Lawrence", by Carol Ann Duffy

Cold pavement indeed
the night you died,
murdered;
but the airborne drop of blood
from your wound
was a seed
your mother sowed
into hard ground –
your life's length doubled,
unlived, stilled,
till one flower, thorned,
bloomed
in her hand,
love's just blade.

17 January 2012
Why the word mystical shouldn’t be used as a synonym for woolly thinking.

Now here's an interesting way of thinking, of looking at the world, at the self, and at others.

"I can survive only by trying to build bridges, both affirming and also denying most of my own ideas and those of others. Most people tend to see me as highly progressive, yet I would say I am, in fact, a values conservative and a process liberal.

I believe in justice, truth, follow-through, honesty, personal and financial responsibility, faithful love, and humility – all deeply traditional values.

Yet in my view, you need to be imaginative, radical, dialogical, and even countercultural to live these values at any depth.

Whether in church life or politics, neither conservatives nor liberals are doing this very well. Both are too dualistic…they do not think or see like the mystics"

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now (New York: Crossroad), page 10

16 January 2012
Wild geese, Loch Skene, and our place in the world

In Scotland the wild goose is an image that goes back to early Christian days. The Iona Community has almost made the metaphor its brand name. Migration as the search for food and home, the costly but lifegiving freedom of flight, the forward lunge of the wings, the honking in unison of a long skein, the collaborative use of the slipstream, the lead goose giving direction and creating impetus – it isn't hard to see the spiritual implications of wild geese in flight.

The photo is of Loch Skene – at this time of year a major stop-off point for migrating geese. Long noisy skeins of them fly over our house. A field a mile away was brown with grazing geese and must present a headache and dilemma for farmers who see young grass being eaten with frightening thoroughness.

Mary Oliver's poem about Wild Geese is one of her best, and she is one of the best North American poets writing today. You can have your own go at working out the significance of the migrating goose for our understadning of the human journey, the spiritual quest, the hunger for home, for community and for what lies ahead. For now, here's Mary Oliver's take on those chevrons of fellow pilgrims and travellers on this beautiful fragile planet

.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

.

15 January 2012
We shall not live by bread alone, but we shall not live without it either

Nicholas Berdyaev:

There are two symbols,

bread and money;

and there are two mysteries,

the eucharistic mystery of bread,

and the Satanic mystery of money.

We are faced with the great task;

to overthrow the rule of money,

and to establish in its place

the rule of bread.

9 January 2012
The abyss of loss – and the promise of recovery

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted.

Mourning is a process of diminishment, a weakening of purpose, the reflexive ache of the human heart traumatised by loss. The death of someone whose life is entwined with ours in friendship, loving commitment or long years of shared experience creates an abyss of loss at the edge of which we tremble.

But there are other deaths – the dying of a loving relationship that is now suffering from a sclerosis of those channels of trust and communication that are the oxygen of of love. The loss of work, when a hoped for career doesn't work out, when redundancy means more than the technical word for being paid off, but takes on a note of fixedness that defines a human being as being superfluous to economic requirements. Illness and the loss of health, the recognition that the human body is so made that it naturally slows down, grows old and gradually loses its powers. The loss of place, when home no longer feels that secure, familiar retreat where welcome, renewal and belonging simply happen because that's what home is.

Comfort is more than the emotional security invested in a 'comfort' blanket. The word is about strength, fortification, en-couragement. But what strengthens and fortifies is the presence of the one who stands alongside, the one who is there for us. There is something to be said for holding on to the now obsolete name of the Paraclete. And even if it needs recovered significance, refreshed meaning, semantic repristination, there are few words that say better what it is that the mourner needs. A Paraclete, someone who is there for us.

The Matthean text uses the divine passive – comofort isn't available on demand from our own resources. It is that which is given, the gift of presence, the accompaniment of one who understands us, and stands under us, upholding with a strength that supplements our own weakness, and with a persitence and constancy that remains despite the changes that loss has made inevitable.

Mourning is the slow process of sorrow adjusting to loss, of reduced vitality and struggling hopes; comfort is the presence of one who is there for us, looks out for us, who enourages us towards a future still possible.The marble relief below is a moving image of the two poles of this beatitude – mourning and comfort, loss and presence, the reality of sorrow and the alternatiuve reality of hope.

8 January 2012
Haiku Prayer II The Importance of Lichen

The Director of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens spoke in the aftermath of the recent gales about the unprecedented damage to trees and glasshouses. One of the casualties was an ancient oak, lying on its side. He pointed out that this was the best view of the top of the tree they had ever had, sadly now possible. What amazed him was the rich variety of lichens that were flourishing in the higher branches. Lichens are amongst my favourite things. Their soft colours and delicate tracery I find fascinating, beautiful, and yet often hidden, unassuming and unannounced. The importance of lichen flourishing is that lichen are so sensitive to air quality that they are badly affected by contemporary forms of pollution. The rich forests of lichen on this oak tree was a sign that the air quality in Edinburgh has drastically improved in recent decades. Not everyone needs to know this I realise – but it confirms further my liking for these lovely plants.

Below is a photo taken during a recent walk up the hills, of lichen, growing out of a moss-covered tree stump. One of nature's annunciations of the gratuitous artistry of on permanent display in God's world.

Haiku Prayer II

Such Beauty! Hidden!

Fragile jade green filigree

set in sphagnum moss.

8 January 2012
Having Compassion on our Contradictions

Titian, "The Tribute Money," about 1560-8

I am two men; and one is longing to serve thee utterly,

and one is afraid.

O Lord have compassion upon me.

I am two men; and one will labour to the end,

and one is already weary.

O Lord have compassion upon me.

I am two men; and one knows the suffering of the world.

and one knows only their own.

O Lord have compassion upon me.

And may the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ fill my heart

and the hearts of all people everywhere.

– Austen Williams (1912-2001), Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (1956-1984)

7 January 2012
Meeting the Christ of St John of the Cross.

I went to visit an old friend on Wednesday. Actually two old friends. One I've known for over 40 years, the other I first encountered 30 years ago. My friend of 40 years shared a coffee, then lunch, then much talking about the things that matter and some things that don't. That friendship has settled into an unspoken but mutually understood trust that enables us to speak with freedom not merely in confidence, but in the confidence that what is said is heard, listened to and attended to.

The second old friend now resides in a setting that does justice to its beauty, power and commanding presence. Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross needs neither accolade nor commendation. It is a masterpiece. That it excites argument and admiration, creates controversy while depicting reconciliation, and draws you into the spiritual realities of Christian faith while resisting facile devotional reductionism, simply confirms its status as on of the greatest paintings of the 20th Century.

It also excited the hostility of someone with a knife who ripped and scarred it half a century ago, and subsequently inspired the restorers to work with painstaking patience to repair it. Which brings me to one of those epiphany moments that perhaps it takes the context of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, and the love Glasgow folk have for their art collection, and this particular painting.

I am sitting on the bench and all but paddling in the sea shallows at the edge of the painting. In came two Glasgow punters, one who had never seen the painting before and one who thought it was a "braw picture". They stood up close and the experienced art guide who had seen it "hunners o' times" helped his pal to stand at just the right angle, in line with the lights, and pointed out the L shaped scar, barely visible, but there to be seen if you knew where to look. They talked for a while describing in Glaswegian discourse the perpetrator of the damage, and spoke with wondering gratitude (but in that same Galswegian discourse) of those who "sorted it". Then they went away. At no time did they stand and look at the painting as it is. Having inspected the damage and the repair, away they went. I was offended for my friend, and should have gone and asked them to come and meet the masterpiece properly. I'm glad I didn't.

A few minutes later as I walked out of that small place of peace and prayer that is the right setting for this painting, there the two of them were, sitting there and taking in the visual presentation of the history of the painting and how it came to be in Kelvingrove, and how £8,200 was an enormous amount of money 60 years ago, and how one man's vision and persistence resulted in Glasgow owning a work of art that is now all but priceless. It was just ending, and they got up and went back in to the painting. And I smiled a deep inner smile – now they were going to meet my friend properly, having done their background research.

Several times I've taken a class to look at this painting – online just doesn't work. They go having discussed it in class, looked at the background, and with some idea of what to look for. What they don't have an idea of, is what it will be like to stand before this astonishing artistic statement – Dali's professed aim to paint a beautiful Christ of the Cross. Then we go walkabout, in company or alone, and meet some time later for round the coffee table discussion in the cafe downstairs. Some of my most rewarding and moving experiences of teaching and learning (and both are so intermingled we are all learner / teachers) have taken place round such a table, having encountered Dali's masterpiece. And the irony is, in achieving his aim, an act of vandalism has left a scar that is still visible if you know where to look. And in that irony is one of the great theological mysteries, of created beauty, damaged and restored, having the power to subdue our worst and renew our best.

6 January 2012
The Beatitudes as a Daily Exposure to the Radical

The Beatitudes –

these are such potent and condensed logia of Jesus

that there should never be a claim to definitive exegesis –

more a docile yet energetic receptiveness

before a wisdom that subverts the most cherished notions

of a materialist, consumerist and hedonistic mentality

bent on reducing all of life to barcodes, images and strap lines,

in the service of the self-centred project of secular salvation,

and doing so through radical practices and redemptive gestures.

No’ a bad wee rant that! Made it up myself!

More seriously, I've had reason to revisit the Beatitudes for a study project.

I'm currently reading them slowly each day

in a kind of receptive repetition,

wondering if such attentive pondering

will become a slow absorption of truth,

and create a transformative patience

with values and virtues too outrageously odd

to take at anything other than their face value.

The photo is of Dorothy Day, whose outrageous opposition to racism and injustice led to this outrageous redemptive gesture. She is an embodied Beatitude.

5 January 2012