Living Wittily

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  • Why it is a good thing when someone says Jesus was wrong!

    Listening to Radio 4 Any Questions yesterday, having come away from the Baptist Assembly, there was much discussion about the resignation of Canon Giles Fraser from St Paul's Cathedral Chapter.

    Some of the panel admired him but thought he was wrong, others admired him but thought, on balance, he was idealistic.

    Matthew Parris made the observation that Jesus Christ would have been amongst the protesters, and Jesus would have been wrong. Listen  to it on IPlayer – It's around the 2 minutes 20 seconds.

    What surprised me was the assumption that it was an outrageous thing to say that Jesus would have been wrong to be amongst the protesters.

    Of course he would have been with the protestors – and of course he would have been wrong.

    St paulsI think he might also have resigned had he been a Canon of the Cathedral.

    That said, I think he might have had problems with a place of worship receiving around £20,000 pounds a day from tourists, and if he overturned the Donation boxes he would have been wrong.

    I think there is an intriguing question about the church and its understanding of Jesus lurking behind Matthew Parris's cultured superiority in social and political realities, over the carpenter rabbi from unfashionable Nazareth. The question what would Jesus do is always asked when we want to do the right thing. I struggle with that question sometimes because I'm not sure Jesus is as predictable, or that my guesses at what Jesus might do are always accurate, disinterested, and – well, right.

    CleansingSupposing instead of asking what would Jesus do, we accepted that Jesus would often do the scandalous thing, the unexpected, socially unacceptable thing. Allow and approve of his feet to be washed in a provocative gesture by a woman; touching people with leprosy; having parties with the local owners of ASBOS; healing on the Sabbath; and yes, making life difficult for the religious status quo, including an act of protest in the temple that makes the St Paul's demonstration look like a peace camp.

     

     

    Somewhere in all this we have to hear what is being said. Matthew Parris has done the church an unwitting service in compelling us to stop wrapping Jesus up in respectability, and recover some of the disturbing truth that Jesus isn't our intellectual property so that we can simply always e right in deciding what Jesus would do. In the person and ministry of Jesus our best ideas are subverted, our clever strategies face the scrutiny of whether cleverness can replace radical critique, and our models for stable social relationships and an untroubled status quo collide with one who had nowhere to lay his head, who looked on the crowds and had compassion, and who knew all about symbolic acts of protest. 

    Thank you Matthew Parris - for reminding us that the cultured reason of the capitalist democrat has no acceptable category for those actions and sayings of Jesus that critique such comfortable forms of injustice.

  • Summoned by the Bell, Reverberating from the Touch of God

    "Faith is not the clinging to a shrine,

    but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

    Audacious longing,

    burning songs,

    daring thoughts,

    an impulse overwhelming the heart,

    usurping the mind —

    these are all a drive towards serving Him

    who rings our hearts like a bell."

     

    Church-bells-001Abraham Joshua Heschel is in the prophetic line of Jewish poets.

    He chooses metaphors for God with the instinct of Isaiah, an inner sensitivity to the power of an image created by association.

    "Him who rings the heart like a bell" is a quite extraordinary way of referring to God, until you begin to think of the rich resonances struck by the image of the bell.

    The alarm bell warning of danger, the bell inviting to dinner, the chimes of the bell on a clock reminding of time's transience, the musical notes that ring true from the integrity of the bell and clapper, the ringing of celebration and the ringing of summons to worship; God is each, all and more than these.

    And Heschel places that subversive metaphor after listing some of those inner moments of urgency, whether fear or surprise, that sometimes overtake or overwhelm us. And when they do, they strike the heart, and the purity of the note and clarity of the sound are evidence of that integrity by which our whole being resonates in sympathy with the touch of God.

     

  • The life enhancing secret in the photograph!

    Well finally someone asked. I wondered how long it would take, and it has taken three months. But finally someone needed to know.Jim The photo of me on the home page.

    Why am I looking so delighted and pointing enthusiastically at a plate of lentil soup?

    Sure health food is good for you – there are those who do indeed get enthusiastic about lentil soup, though I doubt they feel the need to take a picture of it!

    The dress code is a clue – and the tie is seriously making a statement ( I love ties!) – so this is me in Vienna as a guest having a meal out in one of its best Italian restaurants.

    The fork is also a clue – lentil soup can be thick, but doesn't usually need a fork to eat it.

    The reason for the beatific grin and the pointing finger and the need to have a photographic record is - I am about to enjoy the biggest creme brulee I've ever seen in my life. That large oval dish with its acres of brown caramelised sugar is a dream come true. After the photo shoot, I remember slowly making my way across the plate oblivious of all dietary consequences and aware only of finally knowing how loosely I'd previously used the adjective delicious. This creme brulee recalibrated the word for me. Once I thought I knew what it meant – now it is defined and its colour is yellow beneath caramelised sugar – and is not small :))

  • Thomas Merton, Nonviolence and Christian Obedience

    The past week I've been on holiday here in Westhill and finding ways to rest, amuse myself and keep in touch with the world. The events of the week were dominated by what has been happening in Libya, and the brutality of dictatorships menacingly reflected in the actions of those who bring dictatorships down. It remains to be seen what will happen to the Arab Spring and the kinds of political settlements that will emerge. The test of them will not be their suitability to Western ideals and advantages, but how far new governments serve the interests and the welfare of the peoples who live in these lands.

    200px-TMertonStudyI've been re-reading the letters of Thomas Merton, and especially those he wrote in the early 1960's when peace and non violence were the major theme of his writing and he was in trouble with his superiors for being concerned about things that were no business of a contemplative monk. It is one of the signs of Merton's Christian obedience that he tried to live within the strictures of the censors but also be obedient to his sense of being called to witness for peace, non-violence and the reconciliation of nations.

    His Cold War Letters, and essays written in the 60's are passionate arguments against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, racial segregation in the US, and the lust for power and things that lies at the heart of the affluent society. What he would say about Iraq, Afghanistan and other military adventures can easily be imagined – at times he felt the anguish of the world as a spiritual desolation at the core of his being. But out of that desolation grew a perennial trustfulness that human stupidity and brutality were not and never would be final arbiters of God's good creation. Here he is at his most theologically and existentially confident – and from a man like him we have much, so much, to learn if we are to live wisely and follow responsibly after our Lord.

    Nonviolence is not for power but for truth. It is not pragmatic, it is prophetic. It is not aimed at immediate political results, but at the manifestation of fundamental and crucially important truth. Nonviolence is not primarily the language of efficacy, but the language of kairos. It does not say "we shall overcome" so much as "This is the day of the lord, and whatever may happen to us, He shall overcome". 

  • Gaugin: Wrestling angels we never come away unscathed

    GauginYesterday at the National Galleries I stood for a while looking at this painting, now recognised as a work that finally defined Gaugin's own style, artistic voice and vision. It's called Vision after the Sermon. My first responses to Gaugin have been lukewarm, and I struggle at times to see beyond, or to want to see beyond, the sophisticated way he uses a more primitive style and naive or even crude choices of colour.

    I don't think this is a beautiful painting. But it is powerful and arresting, though it presupposes the prior knowledge of the story of Jacob wrestling the Angel of the Lord. As an expression of piety, prayer and how the religious imagination encourages, even compels spiritual devotion, it is a profoundly moving painting. Gaugin loved to paint the Bretons, men in the fields, women at domestic tasks and just as often at prayer. 

    The use of the tree to divide the people praying from the action taking place off centre, almost off stage, suggests strongly the importance of the real, the imaginary and the ways of bringing them into relationship. The angel figure is ambiguous too – who is going to overcome whom, and what is at stake, and for Gaugin the deeper agitation of what goes on inside the human mind and heart when looking for the meaning and value and direction of life. This is a disturbing not a devotional painting, with its contrast of prayer and struggle, real and unreal, this world and that spiritual world that breaks through with life enhancing or life shattering power. 

    Whatever else Gaugin's painting does, it takes with unflinching seriousness the awe and dread of some Old Testament stories that make it clear God is not to be messed with, and to encounter the Holy One of Israel is an experience from which at best we will limp away towards the sunrise, blessed but forever changed. "I will not let you go unless you bless me", said Jacob. Gaugin has captured the immensity of what is at stake when we wrestle with angels, when we see beyond the immediate realities of our lives to the reality of God, whose presence and mercy, power and love, challenge and comfort pervades all reality, and with infinite costly patience and struggle persists in His holy and wholesome purposes of redeeming, renewing, reconciling and reawakening to worship, and life and joyous completion, the whole of creation. 

    Or so it seemed to me as I pondered and go on pondering this strange painting.

  • The new Aberdeen University Library is stunning!

    This afternoon I sauntered down Old Aberdeen enjoying the bustle of students, the autumn colours, a chill North Sea breeze, and the sunlight and shadows on the old buildings. And in the middle of this back in time olde worlde community sit several large modern buildings built over the years as the campus has expanded.

    The latest one, the new library building looks like this!

    DSC00370

    When it was being built I was skeptical, harrumphing with disapproval at this immense greenhouse.

     I was wrong. This is a stunning building, a statement of confidence, an architectural art form that asserts the importance of knowledge and the central, crucial role of a library in any University. Walking towards it I was excited and moved by the sheer sheen of sunlight and sky reflecting outwards and downwards upon those coming under its shadow.

    I think it's great such bold creativity is invested in making space attractive and surprising, the building exceptional in concept, and a powerful affirmation of the importance of space dedicated to learning, understanding and contributing to the intellectual and social capital that enriches us all. On the way back to the car I played with words and eventually formed a dedicatory haiku, or two!

    Propagation of Thought

          Glazed green grass blades shine,

    growing towards sun and sky;

    greenhouse of wisdom.

    The foyer brings you straight into the cafe so the place of learnin g and culture has one of its most  important departments in the front window – good coffee, light ambience and a buzz of stuff going on.

    Then you look up and this is what you see! I took the photo with the permission of the library staff who love the place. Can see why.

    DSC00373

    

    

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Intellectual Discovery

    Mind's aspiration:

    thoughts beyond known horizons,

    spiralling upwards.

     

    This is a place I will want to come to, and come back to, again, and again.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Wise Stewardship or generosity on behalf of others: which is a Kingdom principle?

    12899a559cb69bc6I've been doing some thinking. About stewardship. Wise stewardship. I dislike the expression "no brainer", but I'm guessing most Christians, Christian organisations and churches would, when push comes to shove, or when vision comes to cash, opt for responsible stewardship as the essential wisdom in dealing with money. Stewardship itself is a word replete with responsible thoughtfulness, careful use of resources for maximum effectiveness, and made more rigorous by qualifiers like "wise" and "responsible" the case seems unanswerable. There are even parables about it with their message of bad things happening to those who don't invest wisely, or spend responsibly.

    But I've been doing some thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing for any of us. Especially if it begins as an annoying niggle, develops into a serious question and compels a complete rethink of a sacred "no brainer" questions and answers like responsible stewardship applied to the use of Christians' money and resources, individually and corporately.

    What was responsible stewardship for the Macedonian Christians who out of their poverty gave to other Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters in that wonderful piece of irresponsible stewardship called The Collection which dominated the end of Paul's life?

    What was responsible stewardship for the sower who went forth to sow and knew that 75% of the seed would be wasted or worse.

    What was responsible stewardship for the woman who brought an alabaster jar of precious ointment and in an act of outrageous extravagance used it to anoint the feet of the Teacher who had helped her to a place where she could feel loved again? And, said Jesus, with not a hint of concession to responsible stewardship, "She has done a beautiful thing", that would echo round the world and be remembered long after all the budgets and cost cuttings and careful strategies for growth are consigned to that unmemorable place called the balance sheet.

    In a consumer culture where choices of what we do with money are driven by recession, I'm left asking what it is Christians do that is radically different, outrageously generous, counter cultural in the positive sense of offering something that contradicts the worship of the bottom line. Against the current focus on getting and receiving, value for money and the buy one get one free approach to life, what it is that the Christian faith offers is precisely a lifestyle of offering, a way of enacting and embodying a love defined in giving.

    Now I can think of a number of ways the the contemporary church has bought into the whole value for money mentality and I'm aware but not persuaded by the way we re-translate that bottom line spirit by calling it stewardship, wise or otherwise. You see I can't get away from the astonishing puzzle of how it could be that 'he was rich yet for our sakes became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich'. That is an approach to wealth redistribution that recognises no bottom line, cannot read barcodes, and fails to see the value of always wanting value for money.

    As a Gospel people, Christians are called to that fundamental orientation away from self-interest to self giving, finding value in that which makes for the Kingdom of God which is justice and joy, forgiveness and peace, and a quite reckless generosity that questions careful stewardship as the default position for how we use God given resources. Now and again, and more often than we are prepared to think, we are called to sow seed at a 75% loss, we are moved to take that alabaster jar and waste it in an act of devotion that enriches the world, though some ask the tediously responsible question "why this waste?" We are stewards, not only of money, but of an extravagant Gospel that commits us to a life that is creatively and persistently and inconveniently generous and uncalculating. These are not budget criteria, they are attitudes that require a different calculus.

     

  • Attentive to a different light – Rebecca Elson, Astronomer Poet

    Hs-2005-35-a-webThe slim volume of Rebecca Elson's poetry, Responsibility to Awe, sits on my desk at College. Elson was a gifted astronomer, combining intellectual curiosity with creative cognitive insight and these focused on the vast complex questions of existence. Around the time when Hubble was sending back images of our universe that are at once beautiful and terrifying, expanding beyond previous imagination the exploding, extending immensity of what we call space, the totality of what exists. Her scientific work 'focused on globular clusters, teasing out the history of stellar birth, life and death'. She was fascinated by dark matter, "hidden mass which can be inferred only from its influence on observable objects". 

     It's no surprise she is a poet. Precise observation, imaginative reflection, contemplative gaze, the instinct not only for fact, and its significance, but also for its hiddenness, mystery and capacity to provoke questions rather than provide answers. I've often thought the fusion of intellectual penetration and empirical observation, with contemplative wonder and patient humility before what can't be exhaustively explained or dequately described, could produce a rare form of poetry – and for that matter theology! 

    This collection of poems and extracts from her notebooks was written when she knew she was terminally ill, and its contents are by turns poignant and playful, questioning and serene, drawn from recalled memory or pushed towards anticipated realities. The result is a book that invites the reader into an intimate conversation not only about dark matter, but about what matters, and why.

    The title, A Responsibility to Awe, describes the disposition of the true scientist – and though she wouldn't naturally draw the inference, it describes also the proper disposition of the true theologian, and indeed the true worshipper of the Triune God of love made known in Jesus Christ.

    Telescopes

    Those few brave pilgrims

    standing white robed

    At the edge

    of earth and sky

    On their dark mountain

    in the thin dry air,

    for all their altitude

    no nearer, really, to the stars.

     

    But hopeful

    and so patient,

    high above the traffic

    of the lowlands, tracking

    the minutiae of the Universe

    attentive to a different light.

    Now read Psalm 8.

  • Hauerwas and what the church is and is not about

      Hauerwas Stanley Hauerwas, self described as a truculent Texan who swears, is one of the leading exponents of discipleship as theological ethics embodied in virtues and practises that are so reminiscent of Jesus they tell forth the same good news, albeit in fallible humanity trying to be faithful in our following.

    Those who have heard Hauerwas lecture know that he doesn't do scintillating rhetoric, and at times is just plain hard to listen to. But he's always worth the effort and irritation it takes to grasp what he's saying because he seldom misses the hearer and hits the wall. His writing likewise can seem at times obtuse, other times persuasive, and occasionally needing to be read with some patience and that intelligent watchfulness that comes from realising this man is a teacher, and a very, very, good one. And if we come away from an encounter with his voice, mind and keyboard with nothing much new to think about, it may be that our own capacities of thought and capaciousness of heart are the limiting factors.

    Just been reading his essay on 'The Servant Community: Christian Social Ethics' in the book Living Out Loud, edited by Luke Bretherton. He's at it again. Telling the church to be the church and stop trying to be what people think the church should be.

    "The church serves the world by giving the world the means to see itself truthfully. The first question we must ask is not 'What should we do?' but 'What is going on' Our task as church is the demanding one of trying to understand rightly the world as world, to face realistically what the world is with its madness and irrationality."

    I used to have an elderly friend who would emphasise her emphatic tone by mixing up her words, and to borrow one of them in response to Hauerwas, abso-bloomin-lutely!!

    And how does that work out in practice? Here he is again:

    "It is particularly important to remember that the world consists of those, including ourselves, who have chosen not to make the story of God their story. The world in us refuses to affirm that this is God's world and that, as Loving Lord, God's care for creation is greater than our illusion of control. The world is those aspects of our individual and social lives where we live untruthfully by continuing to rely on violence to bring order."

  • The strangeness of a generous world

    DSC00281 Apologies for an absence most of the week. Priorities compel choices. This week I've been a bit like the science teacher in my first year at Secondary School who used to pour some mercury on the work bench and push it around and then try to gather the globules together into one recapturable blob. I seem to have been running after fragments of time and trying to pull together too many different things into a coherent whole!

    But it's national poetry day so here's a poem:

    A Stranger here

    Strange things doth meet, Strange treasures lodg'd in this fair

    World appear;

    Strange all, and New to me.

    But that they mine should be, who nothing was,

    That Strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

    Thomas Traherne