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When tears are the words of our prayers.

Sometimes the coincidence of incongruence can become a prophetic and moving glimpse into mystery.

I came across the photo below last night, while browsing the Archbishop of Canterbury's website. Two holy men, and I mean that word, stand together. They are recognised leaders of two traditions that flow from Abraham, a confluence of faiths.

Behind them the evil enigma of Auschwitz, the rail lines converging on the gate of death, and the remembered anguish of millions, beyond comprehension, but requiring to be remembered. Christian and Jew, standing together, dressed in black, their faces unable to tell the story, but etched with immense sadness.

All this I am thinking, while Johnny Cash beats out his theme song, and one of my most favourite tracks on any record, Man in Black. And just as I happen on this picture, he's singing:

"I wear it for the thousands who have died,

believing that the Lord was on their side,

I wear it for another hundred thousand who had died,

believing that we all were on their side."

And the incongruent coincidence of music, the photograph, the memories of books I've read written by these two spiritual guides of our age – too much, and I cried.

And thus prayed. Kyrie eleison.

9 February 2010
Living Wittily and serving God in the tangle of our minds
To serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds….

This post was written three years ago when I started blogging as Living Wittily. It's based on the motto at the head of the blog page, words of Sir Thomas More, from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons.

I read it every now and then to check it is still mostly what I am about – and it is. I've posted it again as a blogging reiteration, a restatement of why the time and energy to do this blog seems worthwhile. This is now the 1001st post – a lot of words. I hope some of them have mattered and made a difference.

……………………………………………………

Almost every word of this phrase has significance for an obedient
following after Christ. At least for me. Unpacking this I use the inclusive
'we' – others may not think or feel this way, which is fine. I would be
interested though to hear from you what you think it might mean "to serve God wittily in the tangle of
our minds".

To serve
implies obedience, but as willing grateful surrender, an inner attitude of
consistent readiness, from which each action and activity derives its value as
an act of devotion following after Christ.

To serve wittily
means an end to naivete, a call to attentiveness and alert observation of the
world in which we live and move, and within which we are called to serve. So
having our wits about us will mean, (and this only for starters – feel
free to add to this unpacking process)
1. Not being rendered myopic by cultural
  assumptions, but rather
  see the world through the lens of the Gospel – not war but peacemaking;
  not greed but generosity; not lies but truthfulness; not power over others
  but power serving others.
2. Not being pushed around by consumer
  pressures but rather
  being intentionally shaped and transformed by Jesus. And what are the
  economics of the Kingdom; what is it that profits a human being?
3. Not being morally
  domesticated by ethical and cultural accommodations, but rather seeking to live
  in the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God where the only rule is God’s rule. The
  culture of hard realism challenged by visionary compassion; the idolatry
  of the bottom line questioned by gestures of sacrificial extravagance; the
  semantic cosmetics of political correctness superceded by communities of
  Jesus embodying radically inclusive love.
4. Not being embarrassed by the evidence of
  Christendom in decline, but rather
  seeking and embodying a lifestyle more faithfully rooted in the teaching
  of Jesus.
The tangle of our minds –
tidiness and system, an imposed order on life, what P T Forsyth called the lust
for lucidity – none of these answer to the sheer messiness and inconvenience of
the world, our culture and our times. There is that in the Gospel which resists
being combed into shape, style and fashion. ( I use the metaphor as one who no
longer has much use for a comb!) My own experience has been that Christian
theology, ethics and practice have to relate to a world constitutionally ambiguous,
unpredictable, inconsistent – and each human life is entangled in the
consequent joy and suffering that is a human life together.

And it is the tangle of our minds;
speaking here only for myself, my deepest theological convictions, and even my
most passionate spiritual experiences, are often rooted in the life of the
mind. Thought, reflection, consideration, contemplation, reason, understanding,
prayer – however deeply I feel the truth of things, they become most real and I
own them as life convictions mostly as they are received and welcomed as ideas
rooted in experience and expressed in the life God gives me to lead. Loving God
with my mind is an essential not an optional devotional attitude and aptitude
in my own spirituality – and for better or worse.

So as a motto, ‘to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds’,
provides a number of perspectives on my personal discipleship. However, in case
I get too serious about this, serving God wittily could also mean humorously,
good humouredly, and with hilarity. Fun and laughter being an essential
presupposition of healthily, gladly, en-joy-ably, serving God.
That sets me thinking about the spiritual discipline of fun – is there a
discipline of
fun, an obligation under God to be a gladness maker?!
8 February 2010
The importance of good customer service – are Christians more pleasant customers to serve?

In Morrison's Saturday morning for the usual top-up of what we forgot to buy.

Other customers at the checkouts seemd to have articulated trolleys carrying a month's supplies for a family of ten.

Waited patiently while the couple in front loaded the checkout with food piled like a mountain range, then loaded their bags, paid and departed with enough supplies to survive a sizeable biblical siege.

During this time the young assistant chatted cheerfully about her job, commented on various food items which she liked or didn't.

Our turn comes and we only have enough to fill two carrier bags – so our checkout chatter engaged us in enjoyable comment about our pineapple, the creme caramele, the chilli cream crackers.

Aged 19 she recently tried to prepare a fresh pineapple for the first time, but was left with butchered pulp, but she thought the creme carameles looked nice enough to eat, and the chilli crackers she confessed were one of her habits.

Enter behind us customer with protruding bottom lip – not a natural physiological phenomenon but a highly visible signal of disapproval that she was being delayed by a lassie's friendliness.

Instead of protruding my tongue, or using my lips to form words like 'Smile God loves you', I decided to do it for her, and smiled disarmingly as those who know me know I can.

Didnae work – and our loquacious friendly, light-hearted checkout assistant continued her running commentary on our dietary tastes (garlic this time) oblivious of looming clouds of customer checkout rage.

Behind her the protruding lip was dangerously reaching maximum disapproval extension, reinforced now by lowering eyebrows and folded arms.

At which point I put my plastic into the PIN pad and commented in my most winsome tones to our stressed out customer, so allergic to conversation, laughter, friendliness and fun, "Isn't it nice to have somebody who talks to the customers?"

Didnae work – she obviously didn't know who I was, and didn't want to.

Left me with a new understanding of the phrase "customer service".

I think those who serve customers should be served their fair share of courtesy, appreciation, understanding, friendliness, and downright respect.

Know which one I'd rather meet at a party – or a football match – or a supermarket for that matter.

Wish the Morrison's training staff had witnessed this.

Maybe she isn't good at preparing a fresh pineapple – but she is very good at what she does at the checkout – and we said so – loudly.

……………………….

With this post Living Wittily passes the milestone of 1000 posts. In celebration, consolation or consternation, tomorrow I will repost the raison d'etre of this blog. A gentle reminder to me and those who visit, why I think all those words have some value beyond the pleasure of writing them.

7 February 2010
A three stranded cord is not easily broken – friendship defined.

Was speaking with a close friend the other night and quoted the text about the threefold cord that is not easily broken. The faithful strengthening that comes from woven companionship has been important in this and many friendships.

Decided
to play around with this maxim from Ecclesiastes, that good natured Jew who was
gently sceptical about life, God and the elusiveness of happiness: “a three stranded cord is not easily broken.”
(4.12).

Tried a little Midrash on this, exploring the multiple choice interpretations, not
to choose the right one but to see the rich possibilities in each. The complete verse says, “If one person can
overpower another who is alone, two can resist his opponent. A three stranded cord
is not easily broken.”

The Jewish
setting and background is that of a journey. The danger of being on the road
alone. Vulnerability and risk are lessened when there are those who stand with
you, one on each side. That’s what friendship is. Those who stand on either
side of you, between you and those who mean harm or hurt.

Or from
another angle, this time Christian, the threefold strand could be the
companionship of the Triune love that is God. In the old Irish prayer, “I bind
unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity.” The grace of Christ, the
love of God, the fellowship of the Spirit.

Then
again, from an ethical perspective “these three abide, faith, hope and love,
but the greatest of these is love.” Yet they belong together in a threefold strand.
Love without faith and hope lacks trust and promise. But where there is trust,
and forward looking promise, then love lives again and abides.

Whichever
way we take it, the three stranded cord of human friendship, of God’s enfolding
love, of the cardinal virtues, provides support and strength that is beyond any
one of us, but belongs to us together. Indeed human friendship, entwined with
divine love, and kept faithful by the three virtues, is just about the most
secure place any of us can be.

6 February 2010
He so contained the Gospel in its intensity, that its light radiated from the cracks

There are several biographies of Christian people that for me are definitive of the genre – and I mean the genre of Christian biography. Not hagiography. Not over devotionalised life stories projected as exemplars to make the rest of us feel guilty, inadequate or spiritual amateurs. Not propaganda for Christian projects, lifestyles, or personalities.

I mean the telling of a life in such a way that we can see how far what the person believed and what they lived coincided, and where they had more than a little resemblance in practice and values to the life and person of Jesus of Nazareth.

I mean the skilled unfolding of the delicate parchment of a person's lived experience, with such care and comprehension that those of us reading over the biographer's shoulder can appreciate the living text of a human life given in its own way to God.

I mean the quite rare ability to be both appreciative and critical, honest but understanding, imaginative yet without making things up for effect, open to the disappointments that are part of every life and alert to the gifts that are easily hidden.

I mean a reading of a life that is both theological and biographical, so that the experience and convictions of faith are allowed to inform the flow of the narrative, while the story provides a plausible framework for a portrait of a life given Christianly, both complex and living.

On my own shelves, as a select biographical bibliography there are a dozen or so books that are treasured for such reasons.

Helen Waddell, by Dame Felicitias Corrigan; R. W. Dale, by his son A. W. Dale; Temple Gairdner of Cairo, by C E Padwick; The Selected Letters of Baron Friedrich Von Hugel; Jonathan Edwards, by George Marsden; Michael Ramsey, by Owen Chadwick; H. R. L. Sheppard. Life and Letters, by R. Ellis Roberts; George Macleod, by Ronald Ferguson; Dorothy Sayers, by Barbara Reynolds; Thomas Chalmers, by Stewart (Jay) Brown; Cicely Saunders, by Shirley Du Boulay. And a few more.

But I suspect most (?) readers of this blog will wonder who H R L Sheppard is or was. He was one of God's fragile, flawed, earthen vessels who so contained the Gospel in its intensity that its light radiated from the cracks. One of those rare and magnificent pastors of the people that the Church of England produces, and critics of Anglicanism far too easily overlook and underrate.

I read the volume in 1976, again in 1986, and once more since. Then I lent it to someone who later couldn't find it to return it. A pity – it was a marked copy, and marked by me when I was in my first pastorate, and as receptive of heart as I've ever been since, I reckon. Last week I remembered a passage from my lost book – and no I didn't then find that by a miracle of providential circumstance or awakened conscience it turned up.

No miracle, just Amazon. I went looking for it and found a crisp clean copy which has now arrived. I've browsed in it off and on since it arrived – and now decided more people need to know about this pastor whose missiological methodology was love embodied, enacted, exemplified and enmeshed in the lives of others. So I'll read it again – and post on it again. Here's a sampler:

The biographer speaks of Dick Sheppard who for "snatched and precious moments in the early morning, came ardently, humbly to Jesus in prayer, remembering his friends, remembering his family, remembering himself, wrestling with God for Dick, desiring passionately to understand God enough to be able to proclaim him to all people as the Love he knew Him to be."

One of the most complex and vulnerable personalities of his generation, Dick Sheppard was no emotionally overwrought pietist – he was an emotionally engaged human being whose compassion and drive was traceable to an intense love for God, understood as the One exhibited in the ministry and passion of Jesus. I can think of only two or three Christians as attractive and available as a human being to those who knew him and found Christ through him. I wish I'd met him.

5 February 2010
Mary Oliver on why life should be lived with energy and intentionality.

The photo is of a gardener whose 100th birthday has passed. And he is sowing seeds with the expectation of organic veggies next year!

A poem. About why life is good, and why it is important to receive it as a gift and enjoy it as a blessing. Mary Oliver understands that mixture of hard-headed strategy and wistful longing that recognises life only happens once, and is precious and is not ever to be devalued as mere routine, or wasted through unamazed disdain. We are ourselves God's investment, created by a love that knows our possibilities, capax dei, "dust, but glorious dust", as Richard Holloway once wrote in a magnificent reflection.

When Death Comes

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement:

I was a bridegroom, taking the world

into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something

particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing

and frightened

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having

visited this world.

4 February 2010
Wolff on Micah 3: Forgiveness as victory.

This is a long quotation.

It took a while to type in.

It was worth it.

Wolff on Micah 7.18-20.

"The seventh statement brings a final climax, "Thou dost cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." In Exod. 15.5 we hear concerning the Egyptians who pursued Israel, "the waves covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone." As the foe went down like a stone, so sin our foremost foe, sinks into the depths of the sea like a stone. Let us note that the determining categories here when the forgiveness of sins is being discussed, are those of the exercise of power, of conquest over foes! The Lord displayed himself as victor, as the victor over the Egyptian army on Israel's behalf; similarly forgiveness is an act of surpassing victory which completely transforms the entire situation. Sin is humanity's deadly enemy – that is the presupposition here. When the foe has been hurled into the depth of the sea, life's circumstances are entirely new. Sin can cause no more trouble; it has been entirely removed.

Preceding everything that Israel could achieve or ruin was the word of God's unbreakable faithfulness, his promise to the forefathers (v 20). Through Jesus, the cross, and resurrection at the centre of history, that word of promise has been sealed for Israel, and at the same time put into effect for all peoples. It is in force and valid! Before I was born, this fundamental principle of the forgiveness of all our sins was put in force as the end of all our disputations with God and of all God's disputations with us.

When the burning fire within has been stamped out, and our sins sunk into the depths of the sea, then our community and each of its members experiences the legally valid end of God's dispute with us. That means nothing less than this; the final judgement, the last judgement has already been validly anticipated. Everyone can join in singing the sevenfold hymn of 7.18-20." (H W Wolff, Micah the Prophet,pages 130-31)

3 February 2010
“Though I may stumble in my going, Thou dost not fall.”

As the rain hides the stars,

as the autumn mist hides the hills,

as the clouds veil the blue of the sky,

so the dark happenings of my lot

hide the shining of thy face from me.

Yet, if I may hold thy hand in the darkness,

it is enough. Since I know that,

though I may stumble in my going,

thou dost not fall.

(Celtic, unknown)

The dark night of the soul is an experience of stripping away the assurance of the senses. Disorientation, uncertainty, loss of impetus, mean that absence is more real than presence, and the unfamiliar displaces the familiar. A spirituality fixated on the positive, and in which dogmatic assurances silence those important murmurs of dissent, is for all its triumphalist note, a spirituality of denial. Not self-denial to be sure, but a more toxic form of refusal, a denial of that mysterious withdrawing of God's sensed presence by which we grow beyond adolescent claimfulness.

The above prayer doesn't express the classic experience of the dark night of the soul. The last line of it is reminiscent of Isaiah at his most pastorally poetic, and as the theologian who best describes the rhythm of feeling forsaken by the one who promises not to forsake. This is a prayer I now use regularly because it allows me to be both honest and modest about my experience of God. Honest enough to confess that sometimes God's presence is not felt; modest enough not to think my own sense of God or lack of sense of God makes any difference to the reality of things, that God remains actually present even in acutely felt absence.

"Though I may stumble in my going, thou dost not fall." Since I know that, I know the most important thing. And even if I am overcome at times with doubt, uncertainty, and the pain of unknowing, more important than what I know, is that I am known, and by whom I am known. And one day I will know as I am known. And until then prayers like the one above are, in Eliot's word, valid.

2 February 2010
The theology of the cross and a church thirled to a theology of glory

The whole history of Christianity,

and the history of the world,

would have followed a different course

if it had not been that again and
again

the theology of the cross

became a theology of glory,

and that the
church of the cross

became a church of glory.

—Theologian Emil Brunner, The Mediator, 1927

The cross is “the signature of the one who is risen.”

—Biblical theologian Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, 1969

Both quotations used as epigraphs in an article by Michael Gorman in Catalyst, see here http://www.catalystresources.org/issues/313gorman.html

1 February 2010
Wolff on Micah 2. Walking humbly with God

Here is Wolff on Micah's Manifesto, about acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. The comment is on what it means to walk humbly – shows why this is my kind of commentary

"Education for Dissent" is a necessary thing insofar as it is based on the fear of God. Disobedience to human authority is good for humans to the precise extent that it arises from unconditional obedience to the good Master of all humans and to his word and not from pure belligerency and lust for controversy. To say it another way, dissent is good insofar as it arises out of deep humility, the will to submit to humanity's Creator and Liberator. From that source arises a new style of living, a new way of acting out of dissent. The new lifestyle is a part of humility in the presence of God. It brings a new life up out of the waters of baptism.

But the Hebrew word for this third description of what is good contains a bit more than is expressed in our word "humility". Hasenea denotes attentiveness, thoughfulness, watchfulness. What then is good for us humans? "to live attentively, thoughtfully, watchfully with your God." It would take a lifetime to exhaust the implications of this expression. This third description of what is good does not refer to humility as an ethical posture of being ready to accept a lower social ranking (to say nothing about it being what it is often understood to be, an inauthentic pose, a false posturing of submission). What is meant is the attentive sharing with God in the journey on which He is travelling, "attentive journeying together with your God", what the New Testament calls "following Jesus". (pages 112-13)

Oh my goodness! Can that text be expounded better?.

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31 January 2010