Living Wittily

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  • Broadband, Aberdeen and Shortbread….

    After 5 weeks of intermittent posting, when Living Wittily has had its longest interruptions by far, I have discovered our new postman has beautiful feet. He brings good news. My start up pack for Broadband has glided through the letterbox, with the proclamation that we will be online again on April 30 – a mere 43 days after going offline at our last home. Now I'm a patient person give or take a few rants; and I am an understanding customer, provided there is a service to be satisfied with; and I have tried so hard not act as if the whole universe depended on each entity having uninterrupted access to the internet. But 43 days, when staying with the same provider, and expecting to be able to work from home – a home into which we moved on March 24, so it will be 37 days without online facility.

    But I'm back regularly from May 1, allowing for a day or two to sort out any glitches, technophobic panics, computer hang-ups. Meantime thanks to those who left comments that had to wait till I could go online to moderate them. Margaret asked about perichoretic relationships – that will get its own post later.

    Now started the new weekly regime of days at College and days in Westhill, Aberdeen. Travelling is now part of what I do – so I'm looking for ways to make time in the car more than a mere hiatus. Music, Radio 4, – haven't started talking books yet – not sure that's for me but willing to try. And strap line spotting. Lorries, vans, bill-boards, all displaying clever and not so clever strap lines. Might decide to do a strap line of the week. Followed a large lorry carrying shortbread. How many shortbread fingers on a 30 foot truck? And each one around 200 calories? The back of it had this image of golden crumbly butter enriched shortbread. Made to the recipe of Helen Deans, this family has been making shortbread for two generations. The strap line: "History in the baking", written just under this six foot image of a crumbly, butter shortbread finger. I followed it for a while wishing I'd brought a packet……


  • Friendship and Prayer; when the global becomes local, and the international becomes personal.

    Funny how the global becomes local, and the international becomes personal, and major crisis for millions is felt at the level of individuals. Almost everyone in Western Europe is now likely to find that they, or someone important in their lives, is stranded abroad, and as of today with no clear idea of when they will be able to come home. Ease and safety of travel has become such an integral part of what we take for granted as normality, that this past week has created a new level of awareness of just how vulnerable technology is to the elemental physical forces that drive and shape our planet.

    Easy now to slip into apocalyptic scenarion; but just as easy to assume that once the direction of the wind changes the situation will revert to normal. Somewhere between apocalyptic meltdown and complacent unconcern is the harder reality of having created a world dependent on air flight, air freight and air defence systems. And for the first time total shut-down has simply negated that assumption. The unprecedented now has precedent. In a world where risk assessment, risk management and rehearsed emergency scenarios have become standard activities of corporate bodies, it seems this particular combination of circumstances escaped the risk assessors and the Hollywood script writers.

    I'm not sure what to make of all this. But I do have friends stranded abroad; and I am only too aware of how little can be done to help them from a distance other than support by text, phone and email. And it is when the global becomes personal that the issues of life on our planet become much more persuasively focused, and the unyielding limits of our can do confidence are exposed.

    Meantime our politicians are out electioneering. I may have missed it, but has there been any statement from our Government about what it will do to help our citizens who are stranded abroad. Governments can't fix volcanoes or change wind directions, but it's an interesting question whether a forthcoming election is more important than one of the most significant natural disasters to impact on our country for a very long time. We don't have a Parliament or cabinet sitting in emergency session – but we do have election battle-buses, road trips and hustings tours. Am I being unreasonable, or is there a lost perspective, a wilful blindness to the real world beyond the horizons of politicians and Govenrment ministers and officials.

    For millions of people in this country, who wins the political leaders' TV Debate is less important than what is currently happening to members of our family and our friends, and what our Government has to offer by way of help, support and credible response to a world where party politics is an irrelevance. Volcanoes are not influenced by rhetoric.

    Intercessory prayer in churches this weekend should be the longest part of the service. Earthquake in China, major disruption across Europe, the mourning of Poland, – and these are just this week's news. Across the world, their are situations of human suffering and loss of which we seldom hear, or which come to our attention and disappear under the constant pressure of the next story. And whatever else intercessory prayer is, it is the holding of a God-loved world before God, and a willingness to reach out in that same love for the healing, the wholeness and the blessing of that world – in whatever ways we can, and where we can't, in supplication to the Father of mercies.

  • Administration, preparation, re-organisation and the joys of tapestry

    Beautiful sunny day here in Aberdeen. Morning spent answering emails, writing a couple of admin things what need to be wrote, and reading in preparation for next week's teaching. Also perused a mass of documents relating to stuff I'm doing next week – I do sometimes wonder just how much documentation is needed to establish a new course, and how that compares with how much is required to wear out a shredding machine. I know! My mood of skeptical impatience is not helpful.

    It's been a mixed week of two days of meeting, course preparation and marking, rearrangements of books already arranged and rearranged, and in between in my leisure time I have cut swathes of organised space out ofa garage that was filled with all the stuff we didn't know what to do with under the immediate pressure of making sure the beds were up, the kettle was available, the painting was done for the carpet-fitters,  – oh, and the cold water tap on the bath was still secure…….

    Speaking of leisure. The tapestry of the redstart is finished and I think it works. I'll scan it one of these days before it's framed, but I've enjoyed playing again with colour and texture, of wool, cotton and canvas. I am also now well on with the Celtic Cross but I think it is going to grow into a bigger piece of work – it is also free-hand, and I've seen some of the most stunningly dyed wool from Uruguay in a local shop, and I want to use it. The ideas aren't settled yet but I know what I want to try to do – just don't know yet how! Amongst the theological hints I am trying to weave into this is a trinitarian theme and an expression of perichoretic interrelationships. I know. Nothing if not ambitious, but why shouldn't symbol, colour, shape and pattern work on canvas as well as icon wood or oil canvas?

    Off to read the next chapter of the new Bonhoeffer biography – in the sun, shaded, and with a large pot of earl gray tea. .  .

  • General Election, Serving God wittily, and the tangle of our minds

    The title of this blog and the prescript in the title bar are borrowed and adapted from one of the scenes in Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons. In the life of Sir Thomas More, statesman with a conscience, civil servant par excellence, scholarly saint, theological policeman, astutely naive politician, one of the most turbulent and dangerous times was played out to its tragic end. Interpretations of More's life, character, motives and significance are varied, controversial, and usually depend on where the interpreter stands – Catholic or Protestant, traditionalist or revisionist, political realist or political idealist.

    Yesterday I read A Man for All Seasons again. And over Christmas I read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which is more about Thomas Cromwell than Thomas More. But which exudes the same atmosphere of power, political menace, oppressive religious change, and a nation in the throes of transition from medieval to modern, and a church convulsed by cultural changes that would compel it to reconfigure its theology, its self understanding and eventually push it from the centre of power to the margins of cultural influence centuries later – now, in fact.

    What remains the same is the complexity of Christian obedience and the costliness of Christian witness when the affairs and interests of state collide with the convictions and mission of the Church. And in the weeks leading up to a General Election what became clear yesterday as I read again the story of Thomas More, is at least one telling similarity between post-modern 21st Century Britain and late Tudor England. And that is how hard it is to identify good people who can get the job done. Who in all the vaccous rhetoric of the hustings are we to give credence to? Which political figures speak words that are expressions of conviction, conscience and humane intelligence – by which I mean whose policies are about compassion for people, concern for the health of society, for whom economics are not based on ruthless self-interest, for whom human community is not party coloured?

    Whatever else Thomas More was, he was a man of conscience, "the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced", according to the opinionated wisdom of Samuel Johnson. And I am left asking, a little uncertainly, which of our political leaders are people of such conscience and conviction that they would risk all on maintaining personal integrity. More unsettling still – where in our modern political discourse does the idea, the concept, of conscience feature. What weight given to the inner experience of conscience as a crucial way of moral knowing, and as a voice that is allowed to share the conversation between reason, pragmatism and expediency?

    So here is More again: "God made the angels to show him splendour – as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man he made to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind!"

    Innocence, simplicity, splendour – not really the stuff of politics. Political territory is more about the tangle of our minds, complexity, compromise, expediency, manipulation, power-broking. And in all that, to discover what it means to serve God wittily, with subtle intelligence, with wise caution, with lateral thought, but with conscience and conviction as moral parameters. Thomas More wasn't always right in what he thought was right. His treatment of Tyndale was in the technical sense, a scandal – in the moral sense, outrageous. That too is the danger of acting according to conscience, when the conscience is educable, malleable and then given supreme authority in human action. True enough.

    But it is still the case that political activity, and the character of political acttivists and leaders, requires some public assurance of integrity, a clear statement of what is believed, articulated convictions about what they are about and what they would do with power. And whoever I vote for, questions of conscience, both mine and theirs, will go far in helping me decide – and that may not mean party lines at all. I will try to serve God wittily in the tangle of my mind!

  • Vocation, our life choices and the live performance of our discipleship…

    Been away for a few days and unable to log into the blog. Which is a pity given the number of genuinely pastoral comments, and theologically imaginative suggestions relating to my recent ana – ana- ana-baptist experience in our new bath room. They would have been a source of reassurance and comfort during a demanding couple of days of travel, meetings and being away from home comforts like a warm, uninterrupted bath!

    Sorry the comments couldn't be moderated till I returned, but they are now made public so that those whose pastoral credentials are unarguably dubious, and those whose pastoral style is theologically and biblically reflective may be identified 🙂

    More seriously, for the first time since our move I now have a number of weeks which will be fairly standard in terms of diary and commitments, giving me a chance to establish a new rhythm and balance in a different way of living out my vocation – which I've never identified wholly with the work I do. My marriage, family, friendships, intellectual and emotional life, building of home as place of welcome, participation in the Body of Christ, locally and ecumenically, are all part of that far too easily limited word "vocation".

    The call of God is occasionally not easy to discern – but usually it is pretty clear, and the issue isn't discernment, but obedience. And by that I don't mean compliance. Hard faced duty isn't half as hard as a smiling faced, grateful yes to what is presented to us as the life we are to live – its circumstances, the gifts of other people's presence, the opportunities to say yes and no which can both be response of glad obedience to the One we seek to follow.

    And yes – living with the choices we made in good faith and trust, and creating out of our responsive and responsible decisions, a life and work in which tension and tuning, practice and skill, self-knowledge and self-confidence, (and thus honesty and humility) enable us to perform before God the quite specific, indeed unique music of our own vocation. And since life is not a rehearsal (not always the daft cliche it sounds), what we are asked to do is perform our vocation as a Premiere, an unrehearsed, live, from scratch, one off performance. Just as well the grace of God pervades as well as peruses our performance – and that the Gracious God who is our primary audience knows the script far better than we do!



  • Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison – far reaching fragments of testimony.

    Book lovers, and theologians as book lovers, are prone to exaggerate. There's always some new benchmark publication, some indispensable volume, some publishing event of the decade. I do it myself. Lists of favourites, overstated reviews triggered by initial enthusiasm, positive appraisals of books that reflect our personal shopping list of theological essentials, selected books to be rescued in the event of fire – or a flood from an upstairs bath where the cold water tap has fallen to pieces…

    But the point of all this is to say I am looking forward to what for me will be one of the very few really significant publishing events of the decade. On August 1, 2010, Volume 8 of the English Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer will be published, and I fully intend to plan several days in August around reading what is one of the most influential theological texts of the 20th Century. Bonhoeffer is one of the primary presences in my theological canon. As a Christian witness he remains definitive, enigmatic, complex, laden with integrity while weighed down also with controversy. And this volume of fragments, given unity mainly by the mind, heart and faith out of which they emerged, contains some of the most exciting and demanding theological statements ever written under real and intentional threat of life itself. 

    So a critical edition, with a full Introduction placing the Papers in their historical context, and in their relations to Bonhoeffer's other writings, is one of those greatly to be desired gifts that English speaking Bonhoeffer students with little facility in German, have prayed for and waited in vain. Till now. In these fragments Bonhoeffer explores his own mind and heart, probes at the sensitive core of his own faith, speaks with open heart about his loves and fears, the cost of being brave, the complexity and ambiguity of all attempts to be faithful to Christ in the midst of war, politicised evil, and a world convulsed with violence in the name of state, nation and conflicting visions of the human future.

    I wrote some weeks ago about the importance of primary sources in theology, and the relative importance of the secondary. This volume, and others in the series, is primary theology in two senses. It is Bonhoeffer, the distilled essence, and written in hearts blood. And second, it is theology articulated through the specific experience of one whose life focus and vocational certainty centred on Christ as the final and absolute authority. And whatever else Christian witness is, it is when a still young man faces death for his decisions as a Christian and as a man, and did so having written the uncompromising words that told the world, when Christ calls a man to follow him he says come and die.

    When I have my copy of this book, I will feel I have in my hands that rarest of gifts to the Christian heart – testimony to Christ, forged in suffering, glimpses elusive yet persuasive, of a soul triumphing by a grace that overpowers power, witnessing to what is true in the face of all that is false, living the costliness at the heart of all redemptive action, and enduring death while affirming the promise of life.

    .

  • The most stressful relaxation bath ever!

    Bought Radox Muscle Soak Salts with Rosemary Parfum, as you do.

    Running the bath with a generous couple of fistfuls of pale blue saline therapy.

    Standing au naturel ready to be immersed, a particularly Baptist liturgical act.

    The water temperature a bit hot so turn on the cold tap.

    A fountain of North East cold water hits the ceiling and sprays the au naturel Baptist with a bracing deluge of snow melt temperature water.

    The top of the cold tap has come loose and I try to push it back into the socket.

    Won't go – too much water pressure, and the bathroom is beginning to get seriously wet.

    Won't turn in the screw because I can't make up my mind whether it is a reverse screw to tighten or slacken – and by now I'm so spooked I turn it both ways without success.

    Prayer doesn't help despite a number of biblical stories about rain, floods, stormy seas and how prayer makes water behave.

    Yell for help. Lady of house finds the cold water supply turn off tap, but can't turn it off.

    By now the tap is back in and only thin jets of iced water are escaping – an iced face shower wasn't ordered.

    Change places and I hurtle downstairs turn off the water supply, run back upstairs and resume my finger in the wall approach to water control.

    At last, tank drained, and tap can be screwed back together. By which time I hate water – hot or cold, Radox doctored or plain.

    What started as relaxation therapy ended as emotional, mental, physical and spiritual trauma.

    Went back to the tapestry and to a world where order, precision, creativity, and the myth of me being in control can be restored.

    Question 1. What if I had been alone in the house with no one to stem the flow of water?

    Question 2. What use theology when you need a plumber?

    Question 3. What will happen when I try the tap for my next bath?

    Question 4. Why not stick with the shower……………..?

  • Tapestry and theology – well, nearly!

    Over the past week I have been working a tapestry I started a while ago and left in a desk drawer where I regularly came across it and always intended to finish it. I suppose the difficulty was knowing how to finish it. The design is entirely out of my head (don't do tapestry kits) – one of my favourite birds, the redstart, standing on a moss covered hillock against a sky at dusk. How do you capture a sky at dusk on stranded cotton thread, most often separated and mixed in a textile equivalent of pallette working, and the intricacies of colour, tone and shade on moss and heather, and the shape and proportion of a small bird, and all this using only a half-cross-stitch which is by definition a technique dependent on angles of mathematical precision, and on canvas with 20 to the inch guage? Easier to write and preach a sermon – sometimes.

    Well it's almost finished and I'm as satisfied as I've any right to be given the outrageous daftness of trying to do this in the first place. There is a Celtic cross on the other frame which is coming along more slowly, a form of contemplative activity that allows reflection on the meaning of symbol, colour and pattern as itself a form of theologising. Mind you, tapestry is also a good tension guage – stitches pulled too tight, a tell-tale sign of stress reaching even to the fingertips. But the co-ordination, the practice that makes it possible to find precisely a tiny hole from the back of a canvas and so working blind, the gentle rhythm of making and allowing to become, is all very therapeutic. Which is just as well – they weren't kidding when they said relocation and house moving are up there in the top three of the premier league of stressors!

    When the redstart is finished I'll scan it and post a picture – be a wee while yet. Meantime I need to start thinking about those other forms of tapestry – like life, work, relationships and all the other strands that make up the pattern of our days. Oh, and by the way, on my visit to the craft shop I'll need to buy a stitch remover, a small needle-like tool with a sharp delta blade for cutting out wrong stitches, removing evidence of mistakes, allowing the chance to get it right. Wish life had one of them too! :)).

  • Life, the universe and a train leaving Paris

    Was reminded of words I noted from Rebecca Elson, written at a hinge point in her life, a brief epiphany of her own self, her worth and her self-worth, while sitting on a train pulling out of Paris. Seemed to me then, and seems to me now, she had captured a sense of life's precious possibilities, glimpsed the adventure and the cost of living as well as we can with the circumstances that we make, and that make us – the things that happen and that often happen to us.

    Hs-2008-21-a-small_web Reading it I am aware of the blessings that seep unnoticed into the soil out of which we grow, the friendships and gifts that irrigate and prevent us becoming arid, the changes and challenges that push us on an outward journey we might not have chosen, but which is our journey, and the sense that we are made for more than we know, and capable because graced and toucched by the mighty love of God, of what medieval theologians called God-given capax dei, the capacity for God. Elson hesitated about how we think of God – she was a brilliant astro-physicist whose insight into the nature of matter, the universe, its origins and its majestic mystery, left her intellectually humbled and agnostic – but never closed to the possibility of the God whose love moves the sun and other stars.

    "So much to look forward to, so many
    possibilities, places, people. The thing is to accept that life is an
    adventure, and any adventure has difficult moments….Be gentle, be attentive,
    be understanding. Make life easy for yourself. There is a kind of joy of
    movement, a moment almost like flying inside yourself, soaring with the sun and
    the music, and the train moving out of Paris. Leaving behind something so good, so solid to return to…a very beautiful moment on the train leaving Paris, of that energy which propels you through life. Places with fresh air, and sunshine, and the sea, and Spiring on its way.    "  (Rebecca Elson, Responsibility to Awe, [ precise reference is – in the book somewhere in a box somewhere in the spare bedroom!])

    ………………………………..

    Living Wittily is coming back to normal – not quite there yet as I'm still accessing through the slow dongle! Moderated comments will stay on till I have regular and easy access to moderate myself. Meantime activity here is recovering at the same pace as I am recovering 🙂



  • The subversive voice of great art; or why the Church must not be culturally conditioned. Reflections on Rogier Van der Weyden’s masterpiece.

    Amongst the pleasures of the Easter weekend was the BBC programme on Rogier Van der Weyden's masterpiece, The Descent from the Cross. Apart from the fascinating history of how this astonishing painting was commissioned by the guild of crossbow archers, and the subsequent story of how it was bought, purloined, stolen and almost ruined and then restored with near miraculous skill and patience, the images themselves were deeply moving and resonant of spiritual and theological depth.

    5140-004-555B9FE3 What surprised me was my ignorance of this painting. In all my trawling and browsing last year, searching for paintings of Christ, especially the crucified Christ, I have no recollection of this painting. The artist was introduced to me by a friend who knows a thing or two about medieval and renaissance art, and I now have on my desk a postcard size reproduction of Van der Weyden's "Magdalen Reading", courtesy of that same friend. To have watched such a programme on Holy Saturday was one of the more reflective hours of a good weekend. And I suppose I'm left with a couple of thoughts I'd like to reflect on  further.

    In an age when we are more attuned to moving images, graphic realism, and a selection of secularised saviour stories, I wonder if part of the church's mission is to go on persistently presenting and patiently preserving, the deep symbolism and the subversive otherness of the Gospel story. Relevance, accessibility, the Gospel popularised to the point of caricature, impatience with profundity, dismissive noises when thought and reflection are required, the default assumption that attention spans are now measured in 5 second info-bytes – all of this is fundamentally challenged by a painting like Van der Weyden's deposition. And while I am entirely comfortable with the idea of a church culturally attuned, and alert to the meaning and message of the Gospel as it relates to 21st Century experience, I am equally sure that somehow the church needs to hear what my theological hero James Denney called "the plunge of lead into fathomless depths". That sound of lead sounding the depths is missing from  much of contemporary Christianity.

    The other thought is more straightforward, but complex too. The absence of symbol, art and representation in the worship and devotional life of my own tradition is, in an image soaked culture, now a missed mission opportunity. Sure, a number of churches have banners, ranging from the cliche to the art form, from the textual to the pictorial, but few if any survive repeated contemplation. A telling comment in a recent conversation with Sandy Stoddart, Professor of Sculpture at University of the West of Scotland comes to mind. Great art is never capable of exhaustive explanation; there is that which is beyond articulation, comprehension, cognitive control and aesthetic appreciation. There is a depth beyond us that draws us towards it. I would call it the transcendent, and a great theologian like Hans Urs Von Balthasar took 7 large volumes to explore that depth beyond, the place where the mystery of God's love is all but inaccessible – except that God in love comes to us in Christ, and what is revealed in Christ is the fullness of God, the one who fills all in all.

    And until we recover a sense of that vast mystery of grace and mercy, and find ways to explore, contemplate, cherish and celebrate the reality of God whose 'eternity dost ever besiege us', (Helen Waddell), then our faith will remain prosaic, practical, partial, pragmatic, everyday accessible – and to that extent culturally conditioned. And we will, often without knowing it, long for that depth beyond, an encounter with the mystery of God who cannot be reduced to the measure of our needs, and for the chance now and again in life to stand in that place of bewildered wonder and nameless longing that is the place of adoration. A picture like Van der Meyer's has for many people, been a window where such moments happen.