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The Love that doesn’t depend on me believing in it all the time

Now and again life fills up when you aren't looking and then overflows all over your other plans. This blog has been one of the casualties of a week that has been busy, mostly away from home. C S Lewis once complained about the disruptive impact of his brother's alcoholism on Lewis's plans for academic peace and quiet, and his desire for freedom from the interruption of other people's demands, needs, presence. Then he wrote one of the wise lines that helps us tolerate such selfishness in a scholar writer Christian whom Christians either love or dislike – and some of his attitudes are thoroughly dislikeable, from snobbery, to chauvinism to the use of wit to diminish others. On the other hand he could be unusually compassionate, unexpectedly tender, and was just as likely to use his intelligence to lift up and encourage.

The line is in the volume of letters, They Stand Together, a book I once lent, and never saw again. I asked for it and the borrower swore they returned it. I swore he didn't, and maybe I also swore! Anyway as Lewis pulled himself back from complaint and criticism to compassion and accepted inconvenience on his brother's behalf, he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves, "I often wish life would get back to normal, and then I realise this is normal". And I suppose the wisdom in that is to accept that normal cannot ever mean problem free, obligation free, change free. Wouldn't endless normality be tedious, lacking the oxygen of new possibility, stagnating for want of movement. Isn't there a place in our lives, and maybe many of them, when a new normality has to be allowed to emerge, routines established but always provisionally, because life never stays the same? I hope so. because that's where I am, trying to construct a new normality of life at two bases for a while. And no it isn't easy, it has its moments of self-doubt and other times of wishful thinking about a life less complex.

A number of times recently (7 weeks after moving), I've been asked if life has settled down now. No is the answer. How is it working out others ask. I don't know yet. Someone even asked, do you think you've done the right thing – disconcertingly I want to say "yes, and no"; or "it feels like no but I know it's yes"; or even more scary, how can you know how any big life-changing decision turns out till you make it, and then whether it was right or not, you live with it. I think that's more of what it means to live by faith than all the praying for certainties and signs. I've always admired those who look you in the eye and say " I have a peace about this". It's not my experience – I sometimes have to look right back and say, "I wish I had a peace about this". The truth is, for me, faith cannot be without risk, certainties and sign feel to me like safety nets for the untrusting, and seeking them more like risk assessments in matters of the soul.

So there are days when I wonder and worry; then there are days when I have a sense that the new way of life is workable but needs working at; other times I push in the John Michael Talbot CD in the car and sing loudly along with, "And he shall bear you up, on eagle's wings"; and then there are emails and comments from students who talk about their own life changing decisions, and their appreciation and gratitude, and share what for them is also scary times, loss of normality – and then you begin to realise that loss of normality, and working at making our lives work, and taking risks because life is for movement and growth, and change and is a gift for giving which can't be lived under a canopy of certainties, all these are in fact the normal way a human life of faith is to be lived.

Lewis was right – no point waiting for life to become normal. What we are living is normal – and in the normality the faithfulness of God which for all Gods durable lovingkindness, is a love that manages to be constant without tedium, supporting the heart without dominating the will, allowing risk and freedom and room for error and never for a nana-second wavering in a love that is eternal, self-giving and ever responsive to where we are in our lives, wherever we are. To God, eternal love is normal – to us, it is that eternal love that means however safe or scary, however hurt or whole, however good or bad life turns out, and however unsure we are of decisions made and consequences lived with, eternal love doesn't change. It might feel like it. There are hard places and barren roads, and frightening corners enough at this stage of my life journey to make me think twice at least about talking up my own faith in God's durable, faithful love. But behind all my uncertainties; beneath all my shaken foundations; around all my questions and hesitations, there is a Love that doesn't depend on me believing in it all the time. It just is. Ands because of it, I just is!

……………………….

The detail from the Book of Kells is included because I think it's wonderful. No other reason, it is simply beautiful and deserves to be enjoyed.

11 May 2010
Prayer for others: the circle and cycle of generosity we call grace.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about prayer recently. Truth is, I've been doing a lot of praying recently. No. I hope I'm not turning into one of those spiritual show-offs Jesus had a dig at. There's nothing all that worthy or praiseworthy about doing a bit more praying than usual. Mind you it depends how you define prayer.

Driving in the car and looking across at the Mearns Hills at sunrise, sky and mountain playing out a visual symphony of God's beauty

listening to Lesley Garrett singing the Celtic prayer "Deep Peace of the running wave to you" at a volume that is just this side of what I think the sopranos in the heavenly choir might reach

jumping on a trampoline with an enthusiastically joyful young friend whose skill on the bounce is way beyond me, and not sure whether I'm praying for safety, strength or energy to go on enjoying it, but realising too that I can now see over a neighbour's high hedge in defiance of my unaided height

hearing a student talk about the gains and changes experienced in her two years in College, and sharing that with the College community as the gift of encouragement it surely is

unexpectedly meeting a friend at Baxter's Aucheterarder, out for a day trip and attacking a very large strawberry tart with a relish that made us both forget how hard life has become for her

These and much more are times of prayer without ever having been planned as such. They are moments of recognition; interruptions, even eruptions of grace into ordinary life; intimations of God's presence that are quiet, yet unmistakably fluent with significance.

But I mean more than that. A number of special people in my life are having to walk a hard road just now. Big decisions that will affect future plans; health crises that affect them or those they love; hurts and wounds that diminish the spirit and need gentle, strong, patient and faithful companionship to recover a sense of life's worth-whileness; uncertainty and long term worry about job, life-chances and coping with a world that becomes daily less humane; anxiety about family as parents grow older, more vulnerable; elderly folk, like my strawberry tart connoiseur above, living bravely with diminishing freedom and capacity.

It isn't always easy to know what to pray for each of those people whose lives enrich ours and whose hard times we willingly share.
So as I pray, I sometimes use my holding cross, a gift from a friend, and the hand clasped around it becomes something less than words, and yet more than words.
Other times I hold a small heavy pewter dove in flight, inscribed "Live by the Spirit", another treasured gift from a friend which invariably lifts the heart to trust again to the God of new possibilities. And the Rublev Icon above, a masterpiece of theological imagination, drawing me into the circle of love and mutual recognition that is the life of the Triune God. Because whatever else I pray for these my friends, I pray that they may know the grace of Christ, the love of God and the companionship of the Spirit.

And so as I pray for these my friends, I walk with them on their hard road. And because I care for them, their journey becomes my hard road too. And yet. Walking together it becomes clear that the shared journey means we are fellow travellers, and at different times we each walk the hard path – and we give and receive, love and support, pray and care, for each other. I think it's the way God meant it to be – because in the economics of grace-filled friendship, we can never give more than we receive. The blessing is in the giving, and in the receiving, and maybe that's what intercessory prayer really is. The practical, actual, living accompaniment of others and finding that in the exchanges of loving action, even in the dark terrain, God is present, and we are drawn into that circle and cycle of generosity we call grace.

Love ever gives, forgives,
outlives:

And ever stands with open hands.

And while it lives. It gives.

For this is love's prerogative:

To give–and give–and give.

6 May 2010
The Ethics of Sport – a proposed new degree programme?

There is an entire subject area devoted to sport in University education these days. Sport psychology, commercial and marketing of sports management and events, sport in relation to health, sport and celebrity, sport as an expression of cultural values and social norms, even a spirituality of sport.

Is there a course somewhere, even a wee certificate or diploma, on the ethics of sport? You know, even a foundation module on why cheating is wrong. Or a more advanced one on why doing your best is good enough, but enhancing performance with banned substances is not good enough. And maybe an honours course on the way money influences loyalty, challenges integrity, and tempts towards a greed more powerful than the valid motivation to excel.

I've no idea what the explanation is of the events surrounding the world number one snooker player John Higgins, and the allegations of bribery apparently captured on camera by undercover reporters. I do know that there is now so much money in sport that it attracts malign influences from political pressures, to media manufactured scandals to the presence and interests of organised crime. And the media which thrives on celebrity, scandal, gossip both benign and malicious, has its own code of practice which might struggle to be described as an ethic of journalism – more a set of guidelines that shows where the baleful and sordid crosses the line into the territory of litigation, libel, and legally enforced apology.

Quite apart from the mess snooker finds itself in on the weekend of its showpiece world final, there is an undoubted problem in professional sport. Too much money and too few responsible role models; too much emphasis on excellence of performance sustained and improved, and not enough on moral maturity and social responsibility. The gym in our culture bears little relation to the gymnasium of the good life, the training of mind, motive and conscience to ensure that whatever else we excel at, we can demonstrate a capacity for fairness, appreciation of the skills of others, a balance between self-confidence in our ability and arrogant admiration of our own brilliance.

I have a friend who has spent a lifetime in sport, managing and coaching young lives, pouring into his sport both the experience and skills that help players grow, and the instillation of values, goals and character formation that enables players to see beyond the game, and to prepare for the much more important performance of a life well lived. He is of course in a minority; but perhaps his success is in the number of ex-players whose contribution to our communities goes well beyond their ability in a game, a sport, an industry. At its best, sport can integrate those drives that enable us to compete fairly, to strive for excellence, to value the other as person, to acknowledge good achievements whether ours or not, and to recognise that with success comes responsibility.

The irony is that for sport to survive it needs finance. Some sports are awash with money, even if most of it is borrowed under burdens of debt that at some point will crush its bearers. To handle money honestly, to recognise when money is tainted, to learn to walk away from money when the cost is a mortgaged conscience, to live wisely as a rich person, is not an economic problem. It's an ethical one. Wonder which University will be the first to offer a course on sporting ethics? Or is there one out there already but with too few recruits?

3 May 2010
Nihilism, alienation, the church’s mission and the Christian as upstart!

Twice in an hour I've come across words that have serious consequences for human happiness. One is nihilism. It's a bleak word, and not to be confused with skepticism, cynicism, or even atheism. One of the most remarkable little books published 50 years ago was by Helmut Thielicke, a theological prophet of a past generation, and it was entitled, Nihilism. Thielicke confronted the ethical and spiritual vacuum of post war Europe by contradicting the latent nihilism of a world coming to terms with the Holocaust, the Bomb, post war austerity and gradual transition to prosperity. Nihilism isn't simply an ideological stance based on rejection of value, meaning and significance. It is a world-view with its own ethic, its peculiar convictions, its practical consequences in how we live, regard others and look on the future with curtailed hope.

Robert Cording is a poet working out of Holy Cross University, and Jason Goroncy has posted one of Cording's poems on Mozart's starling. It is a beautiful poem, a wonderfully imaginative celebration of life in ordinary, and taking joy in simple things. There is no surprise that Cording in ways very different from Thielicke, challenges the latent but sometimes blatant nihilism that runs through our culture. He does so in poetry, by the creative use of words, writing an alternative story of the world and its consequence, hinting strongly but gently of those spiritual intimations that whisper and murmur loud enough to be heard by those soul-sick enough to listen. Here's his own description of what he is about – and how we need more of what he is doing, taken from his own self-description on the website of the Journal Image, found here.

"I am teaching and directing a creative writing concentration that
is part of the English Major at Holy Cross, as well as working on my
fifth volume of poems. My current work strives to reincorporate
religious language and content in a way that interests and wins over a skeptical modern
audience. My work is rooted in the belief that words can invoke
what the critic George Steiner calls "real Presences," and that
these presences bring us back again and again to the fundamental
question of being: that there is something, rather than nothing.
The poems I'm writing lately try to criticize and call into
question what we have rarely questioned—our own unexamined nihilism."

Writing over 40 years ago, Thomas Merton
often reflected on the experience of alienation, another form of human diminishment so familiar to the modern
western spirit. In our own age of self-obsessed concern for the self (and yes that is a deliberate solipsism), Merton's words come as yet another shrewd, compassionate and passionate plea for a much less artificial, posturing, exaggerated presentation of the image of the self we want others to see. Here he is, reflecting on the confusion of personas culture forces us to adopt, as it changes and fluxes, shape-shifts and dissolves only to re-form in new configurations, expressions and expectations.

"The result is the painful sometimes paranoid sense of being always under observation, under judgment, for not fulfilling some role or other we have forgotten we were supposed to fulfill."

"The peculiar pain of alienation in its ordinary sense…is that nobody really has to look at us or judge us or despise us or hate us. Whether or not they do us this service, we are already there ahead of them. We are doing it for them. WE TRAIN OURSELVES OBEDIENTLY TO HATE OURSELVES SO MUCH THAT OUR ENEMIES NO LONGER HAVE TO. To live in constant awareness of this bind is a kind of living death."

Thomas Merton, Echoing Silence, Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing, (ed), Robert Inchaustri, (Boston, New seeds, 2007), 72-3

I'm not sure who has replaced Thomas Merton as the spiritual director of secular society, and as a prophet who often saw clearly what everyone else only vaguely guessed at. He lived the paradox of worldly contemplative, gregarious hermit, immersed at one and the same time in silence and solitude, and in the world of human affairs, and his heart was open to that world with an openness to risk on behalf of others that was truly Christ-like. Not personal physical danger, but the spiritual ambiguity of being a worldly monk, a vocation to detachment from the world combined with a vocation to attachment to that same world, living out a genuine love for the world that seeks to replicate the outgoing, self-giving love of God. Because whatever else contemplative prayer was for Merton, it was to love the world with the heart of God.

Nihilism and alienation. Two words loaded with spiritual toxins, diseases that affect the whole inner person – intellect, heart, conscience, will. While the church seeks new ways of doing mission, maybe it also needs to find new ways of bringing the good news of Jesus to bear on a culture in which nihilism and alienation remain favoured default positions. Whatever else the New Testament contradicts, subverts, challenges, confronts, it entirely and comprehensively negates these two enemies of human wholeness, healing and blessing. The church of Jesus Christ needs more Thomas Mertons, Robert Cordings, more of those upstarts who call in question the spiritual status quo of a culture desperately searching for whatever will fill its self-created emptiness, nature isn't the only force that abhors a vacuum – so does the divine love that seeks to fill all in all.

2 May 2010
Pastoral theology as a story to be told
Some of the more annoying comments I've heard and read recently have come from those who describe a novel as a man's novel, or a woman's novel, and with a number of sub-categories also assumed. Now I do recognise that writers of big-selling novels write for target audiences, and are often pushed by publishers to stick with the known commercially successful formula. Fine, let them do what works for them. My problem though, is that some of my favourite novelists are women, some of my favourite novels are consigned to the constraints of the category 'woman's novel', and some of those are amongst the best explorations of female experience available to a man! Oh, and just to mix it a bit more, you then have a novelist like Colm Toibin who writes with understated and nuanced wisdom about the experience of a young Irish woman in the 1950's, finding herself, finding her way and looking for her place in a world that offers no certainties.

This isn't in any sense a novel to be dismissed, stereotyped, or otherwise reduced in its achievments. If the novel is a literary form that enables human experience to be told, and if the telling of that experience cherishes and celebrates what it means to be a human being, and if in the telling what is cherished and celebrated is a life in which choices have defining consequences not only for what we do but for who we are, then this novel is a gem, glinting and glowing with humane observation.
- The jealousies and commitments of siblings growing up and competing for the advantages of life but caring for each other's welfare
- the struggle to make ends meet in hard economic times, and the reductionist snobbery of those who look down their noses on people who want to build their future
- the loneliness and homsickness of those who move away from home and have to find their own place, rely on their own wits and work, and weave their own network of relationships within which to live
- the ties and burdens of family responsibilities, and how these are almost never fairly distributed
- the first intimations of love emerging from friendship and growing into a longing for permanence and faithfulness
- the death of one we love, and have depended on as a landmark that makes sense of life's geography, and as a benchmark that demonstrates what a life well lived might look like
- the dilemmas when two kinds of love threaten to cancel each other out, and love for lover and love for family force a choice in which it is impossible to avoid heartbreak
In this novel, Brooklyn, all of these, and much else, are threads woven into a tapestry that has subtelty, variety, and central images which are cleverly connected to the whole canvas. Tobin enables us to understand the inner world of Eilis, who emigrates to America, and through her eyes and experiences we observe what it means for her to 'get on in life', and what it costs, and why in the end, she has to bear the weight of consequence that settles on her own choices. And any reader, regardless of gender, will find in Toibin's gentle probing psychology and his underlying affirmation of those human relationships that define us most, important clues to many of our own experiences as they coincide with the examples given above.

And so yes, this is a book I'd ask a pastoral theology class to read. Apart from some obvious questions arising from the points earlier noted, I'd want them to reflect on how such sympathetic insight into human longing and failure; how such hopefulness and affirmation of life's possibilities, how such humane faith in people and their lives so replete with significance waiting to be discovered, how all that can be translated into a pastoral disposition that enjoys, likes and loves people.

The Living Bible is hardly the most reliable rendering of tthe Bible text. But occasionally, it delights in its freshness. 2 Peter 1.7 is one such rare occasion: "enjoy other people, and come to like them, and finally you will grow to love them deeply." That is what Toibin is teaching in this novel. Oh, I know. The novelist may well laugh at any suggestion he set out to teach anything. So let me rephrase; that is what any careful reader of Toibin is more than likely to learn, that people, in all their complexity and fragility, in all their simplicity and strength, in all their potential and actual growing, offer no guarantees as to how their story will unfold. But they are to be enjoyed, liked, loved, precisely because they like us, are stories still in the telling.
1 May 2010
I’m Back – Connected

After a conversation with a very patient and courteous support team worker,somewhere on the other side of the world, my broadband is now live and I can get back to doing the things that have been hard to do these past weeks. Email, blog, research, browsing, and the many other time saving and time wasting ways of being online.

From the start I have wanted this blog to be updated and maintained on an almost daily basis, so that regular callers and new visitors are given something to think about, smile about, maybe even get passionate about. The hiatus has been frustrating and I hope over the next few weeks to get back into good habits. Strangely I can't say I have lots of ideas that have accumulated over those weeks – probably because I tend to enjoy the spontaneous rather than the scheduled.

Meantime, thanks to those who kept faith, kept in touch, and trusted my promises to return to literary ways as soon as possible.

30 April 2010
Novels – core texts and essential reading in pastoral theology

Reading Colm Toibin's new novel, Brooklyn. About the emigration of a young Irish woman to the United States, and the experience of separation, loss, disorientation and soul-testing loneliness that we call homesickness. Tobin is a beautiful writer, and writes about women's experience with sensitivity, insight, and a counsellor's sympathy, combined with an admirer's confidence in the resilience and dignity of this woman's ways of meeting circumstance and change. It doesn't make much sense to review a book only a third of it read, so I'll come back to this novel later.

But even what I've already read shows why novels are essential reading for people whose calling is to the care of others through pastoral friendship. I'm often asked about good books on pastoral theology, or for recommended titles that get to the heart and the point of what real pastoral care is. You often see the skeptical, disappointed, even dismissive expression on the face when instead of the latest theological heavyweight, or practical how to do it manual, or popular pastoral care in twenty minutes kind of book, (has anyone written pastoral care for Dummies yet:))you offer a list of three or four novels. Now I'd want to add biography, poetry, and some philosophy as other required resources (alongside obvious pastoral theology texts), but for now sticking with novels, here's one novel of one writer I learned from and still do. (Going to do several more over the next couple of weeks).

The Good Husband, Gail Godwin. A magnificent central character, Magda, is a literary scholar, a charismatic liberated and utterly impressive woman, is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Her husband, Francis, who happily lives in her shadow, becomes the carer of a stellar woman facing the greatest challenge of them all. No it isn't sad, morbid, dark – it is humane, compassionate, incisive. Godwin dissects the responses and attitudes of those who come and go, gather and stay, accompany or stay away from Magda in her last months. But the faithfulness, the cost and the self-effacing but effective presence of the good husband holds the balance of a relationship that is both blessed and doomed. And I can't think of a more nuanced and gentle exploration from different perspectives, of the experience of dying, in any pastoral theology book. The wrong things said, the crass questions, the gentle unintended kindnesses as well as the intentional acts of care, the tongue tied visitor embarrassed by pain and diminishment as well as the caring silence of the one who simply sits, holds hands and speaks only in sounds of reassurance, and then the practical carers who get things done without fuss and without intruding, the medical procedures at times humiliating, at times restoring, and all this told by a novelist who should be given an honorary doctorate in the humanities for the sheer humanity with which she writes.

I did a presentation on this book at a gathering of newly accredited ministers. It would make a too long post. I'll adapt it and post it over a couple of days next week – unless of course broadband is up and running at my new hoose up in Aiberdeen, like!

29 April 2010
Tapestry, Birds, the Book of Kells, the Eagle Nebulae and Friendship

Still spending time doing and designing tapestry. The wee bird one, (a stonechat), is finished, framed and hangs on someone's wall. Maybe as a reminder of life's colours, threads and patterns, and the strange miracle of how 15,000 tiny stitches eventually form a picture, and how the weaving and mixing of stranded cotton has its counterpart in those relationshiops of life that we call friendship. Three quotations perhaps explain how designing and working tapestry freehand is a way of celebrating beauty, acknowledging blessings often unlooked for, and affirming those friendships which provide the canvas and pattern of our own living. Following no set pattern, open to improvisation amongst endless options with freedom to choose, yet a sense of the whole, an instinct for what works and what doesn't, so that the freedom is within an existing commitment – like friendship.

You may hang your walls with tapestry instead of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic, or have them frescoed by a great painter: all of this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule: Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

William Morris in 'The Beauty of Life' lecture 1880

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone, and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.” Sandra Day O’ Connor.

Last night a friend first met 26 years ago dropped an email, prompted a phone conversation, and added a few more stitches to a rapidly filling canvas. And she was the one, along with her husband, whose quiet enthusiasm for all things needlepoint, from quilts to crochet, from tapestry to knitting, got me started.

Now beginning to think of some new projects – the Book of Kells, the Hubble images – imagine trying to do a tapestry of the Eagle Nebulae?!

28 April 2010
Moments of grace, and how to spot them!

Several moments of grace recently. Not the holy, theological, prevenient, or sovereign kind. but definitely the saving kind. Here's two of them.

In Dobbies for a scone and a latte – a frequent sacrament of friendship with Sheila. On this occasion we had one scone broken between two so yes, a sacrament. At Dobbies you take your tray, choose your scone and butter and jam. Then you can bypass the cooked breakfast queue and head straiight for the coffee makers.

As I begin walking the 20 yards to the coffee place, alongside me two women, mother and daughter. She eyes me, I eye her, she walks faster, so do I. Moral and pastoral question. Do I sprint and beat her to it, or do I slow down and let her "win". Being the last word in repartee I said, On you go". She grinned and said,"Thanks. I'd have beat you anyway." Much laughter. She ordered, I ordered, and my coffee provider worked faster so I got to the till first. Who won? Who cares? We both did.

Having a bad day. We all have them, and I had just had one. All kinds of reasons and none of them really fixable in any quick way. You know the kind of day when you would feel more negative about things if only you had the energy. So as it is, and as you can only carry so much excess baggage, you give up your aspirations to feeling negative+, and just settle for being, well, negative. And then a friend intervenes. Conversation, coffee, company, affirmation. And by the end of the day you are in that place in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, just moving from the thunderstorm to the peasant's thanksgiving and dancing, and the gentle persistent intervention of that beautiful melodic movement I never hear without thinking of all the good things that make it possible for us to look again and be surprised at how good life is. And all that negativity is discharged like lightning and earthed harmlessly, and the sun shines again. Well, that was yesterday.

Grace is undeserved favour.

Grace is the gift we never asked for, looked for or worked for.

Grace is beautiful and makes beautiful.

Grace looks you in the eye and says you matter, no matter what.

Grace is two people with scones on trays inadvertently inventing a new sports event, the scone and tray race.

Grace is the presence of those people who are like sunshine pushing through clouds, and inviting us to dance.

And yes, grace is what God is about, always and ever.

And we often encounter that grace in the faces, and at the hands, of others who love us with the friendship of God.

The Rublev Icon above is there because it is in my view one of the greatest Christian images of grace as loving welcome and attentive hospitality.

27 April 2010
A Sunrise of Wonder Over Stonehaven, and the Blessings of Each New Day

Now and then I wish the car rear view mirror was a camera. Not because of the irresponsible tail-gaters, and not to watch the car I just ovetook vanish in the distance, humiliated because overtaken by an elderly Corsa with a mileage that would take it round the world 3 and 3 quarter times. No. I want a rear-view camera not to glower or gloat, but to glory in the beautiful artwork of God.

This morning, around 5.15 am, driving round the sweeping corner towards Stonehaven, the sun in the space of several seconds, drew a brilliant fine line on the horizon using a fine-point silver and gold pen borrowed from a generous Creator. Just where sky and North Sea meet, the line became stronger in colour, broader in reflected brilliance. That was the rear view. In front of me a sky that was blue, long broad brushed clouds that were contrasting grey softened by projected, but out of place pink, except that it didn't seem at all out of place – it was beautifully apt, mixed on the palette of an expert in light, who knew how to suffuse greyness with glory, and how to draw a new day's dawn with pencil line precision.

And today at College I read some of that beautiful, wise book by the late Michael Mayne, This Sunrise of Wonder. The title comes from words of G K Chesterton, quoted on page 7:

At the back of our brains, so to speak, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.

Now and then broad brush grey clouds all but cover our sky. Reflected glory, grey suffused with hope, this sunrise of wonder – this masterpiece of embroidered light and shadow, pink and gold and grey and blue, is God's intimation that as sure as day follows day, so new every morning are the blessings of God. .

26 April 2010