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  • Oppression, Occupation and The Prayer of the Butterfly

    Decided earlier this week to quietly change the colour and format of my blog.

    Chose a cool blue-green with minimal ornamentation.

    Wasn't sure if I liked it.  Seemed too, well,… cool, in a cold kind of way.

    Nobody else said anything – didn't notice? Didn't like it? Too polite to say?

    I didn't like it much – so back to my Art Nouveau design with the red butterfly.

    Butterfly One of my favourite thin books (cost me £1.80 I see) is Prayers from the Ark, by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold (translated by the novelist Rumer Godden). Mademoiselle de Gasztold started writing poetry during the German occupation of France. When confronting tyranny words matter – and in times of oppression poetry is the art of making words matter.

    After the war she was helped to recover from serious illness in a Benedictine Abbey just outside Paris. This became her long term home as librarian and fitter of stained glass in the windows. Her poem prayers were first circulated privately then published in 1953 in French and in 1962 in English.

    In this slim volume the prayers express the joyful response of each creature to God, the words capturing the unique character and beauty of the creature, expressing the mind of the Creator. One of them is the Prayer of the Butterfly. It reads well in English, but at times the subtleties of humour and allusion that convey precision of feeling and meaning are muted but not lost, in translation. A prayer expressing the fluttering delicacy of the fritillary captures exactly the restless inattentiveness of those of us who, seeing so many possibilities to experience, are frustrated by the finitude of time and the brevity of life. A kind of Ecclesiastes moment, this prayer.

    The Prayer of the Butterfly

    Lord!

    Where was I?

    Oh yes! This flower, this sun,

    thank You! Your world is beautiful!

    This scent of roses…

    Where was I?

    A drop of dew

    rolls to sparkle in a lily's heart.

    I have to go…

    Where? I do not know!

    The wind has painted fancies

    on my wings.

    Fancies…

    Where was I?

    Of yes! Lord,

    I had something to tell you;

                                                                       Amen

  • Walter Brueggemann – Bible teacher, man of prayer, spiritual upstart.

    Brueggemann Walter Brueggemann is amongst the most important voices in biblical theology and church reflection on mission and ministry. I can learn as much about how to let the Bible speak its truth from one page of Brueggemann, as from whole chapters, even books, of those who recycle  received and safe but tired ideas that end up domesticating and subduing the restless,demanding urgency of Scripture text.

    In recent years some of Brueggemann's prayers have been published – they too have a startling freshness, a disturbing originality to ears more used to extempore carelessness and informality oblivious of required reverence. The faith of an Old Testament scholar and biblical interpreter inevitably informs and fuels their scholarship, and reading Brueggemann's prayers makes me inexcusably jealous of those who over 40 years have sat in his classes and felt the Bible go red hot in their hands!

    Here is one of Brueggemann's prayers at the start of his Old Testament Theology class:

    With you it is never "more or less"

    We will be your faithful people –

                                       more or less

    We will love you with all our hearts –

                                       perhaps

    We will love our neighbour as ourselves –

                                       maybe.

    We are grateful that with you it is

                                      never "more or less"

                                      "perhaps" or

                                      "maybe."

    With you it is never "yes and no,"

                      but always "yes" – clear, direct,

                      unambiguous, trustworthy.

    We thank you for your "yes"

                     come flesh among us. Amen

    From Awed to heaven – Rooted to Earth, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 139.

  • Thomas Merton on the humility of the theologian who dares to write about God

    09feature1_1 I wish I could write better out of respect for God, who gave me these small and very usual and familiar and unstartling and generous graces…

    But if I am humble I will write better just by being humble. By being humble, I will write what is true, simply – and the simple truth is never rubbish and never scandalous – except to people in peculiar perplexities of pride themselves…

    May I write simply and straight anything I ever have to write, that no dishonour come to God through my writing about Him.

    Thomas Merton, quoted in Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (London: Sheldon, 1986), 191

  • Denominational amnesia and loss of convictional integrity

    Cartoon







    Now I don't want to trivialise  denominationalist, post denominationalist arguments. But I can't make up my mind whether this cartoon is saying something funny in a serious way, or saying something serious in a funny way.

    But for myself, I remain passionately committed to the diversity of the Body of Christ, and a yearner for its unity to be expressed in the co-ordination and harmonic actions that embody the presence of the risen Christ in the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father. The reasons why a denomination was first formed can of course lose their validity and convictional hold for later generations – but not necessarily so. And not if those reasons continue to express distinctives made authentic in convictional practices that are to the enrichment of the whole body. Something about if the whole body were an ear where would be the sense of smell…..

    The cartoon is on page 62 of the Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality, Evan B Howard, (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008). Don't be fooled by the title – this "Introduction" is 500 pages of double column large format hardback. It's a superb resource and very, very good value – The Book Depository has it for around £13 including postage.

  • Holy, wondering delight in God

    "Truth sees God;

    wisdom gazes on God.

    And these two produce a third,

    a holy, wondering delight in God,

    which is love."

    Hand1 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Penguin, 1976, 130.

    Few writers manage to combine commonsense conclusion and speculative reflection as successfully as Julian. (A second thought: after writing that I realise it could easily be written, "commonsense reflection and speculative conclusion", which would be equally true.)

    Some of her sentences, like the above, read like a theological prose-poem celebrating those experiences of God that sharpen, deepen and extend our grasp of the Love that grasps us – and my use of three different terms is deliberate.

    Loving God can never be one dimensional – it is the response of our being to God. It begins with understanding truth, grows to contemplative wisdom, and flowers into worship – which in the end is that deep, transformative response of our being to the Being of God.

  • Barth: Putting theologians in their place

    396274 Every now and again we all need to be put in our place. Brought down a peg or two. Reminded of our limitations. Told what's what.

    Here's Barth telling all would be, self-affirming theologians what's what:

    Theology is not a prviate subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the church.

    Karl Barth, God in Action, (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1936), 56-7

  • Smile3t The last fortnight has been less than the leisurely, contemplative, laid back, spiritually replenishing, intellectually productive illusion I now and again fantasise about as being the ideal life of the grown up Christian. When it comes to the tension between activism and passivity, most times I'm an activist wishing I was a contemplative! That isn't a complaint, more a confession – and not so much a confession of guilt as a confession of faith. There comes a time when you have to trust to who you are, and have faith in the God who made you who you are!

    If I had the last fortnight back and was given the chance to revise it, balance it, adjust its demands more in keeping with energy levels – not sure there's much I'd change. Nearly five of the ten working days were dominated by meetings – but none were superfluous, even if at times they redefined upwards the capacity of tedium to enhance sanctity. Three parties in Aberdeen in 12 days and the Induction of Gary to a new ministry in Crown Terrace Baptist Church, Aberdeen  – not a chance we'd have missed any of them. Several pastoral things to share in others' lives, hospitality both given and received in the essntial sacrament of kindness and welcome – it's been a fortnight of much happening.

    Images Last Thursday night was Annette's 90th birthday party. If I'm half as sharp and well at myself as Annette when I'm half way between my age and hers I'll be well content. I was asked to say "Grace" before the party dinner, and I used the occasion to write a prayer especially for Annette – drawing together all that makes her the remarkable friend she is. Reader extraordinary, blessed with spiritual honesty and intellectual curiosity; creative worker of needle and cross-stitch; over 40 years a volunteer at Oxfam; Munro bagger and hill-walker; Christian extraordinary evidenced by a lifetime's faithfulness and attention to detail in the school of Christ. She is one of the most remarkable women I know, one who came into our lives as gift and has remained an established and loved presence there. It is for Annette that the following prayer was written:

    Grace for a 90th
    Birthday

    Gracious
    God, tonight we celebrate Annette’s birthday

    To say “Grace”, and so thank you for all that nourishes
    our life:

    The beauty of a world to walk in and wonder – a feast for
    our eyes

    The companionship of friends in laughter and tears – food
    for our spirits

    Living the joy and hard work of love and family  – 
    nourishing our hearts

    For years the week on week grace of  voluntary work – helping to feed others

    Long hours of reading for intellect and imagination –
    sustenance for the mind

    A lifetime of fellowship in the community of Christ –
    replenishing our souls     

    The sense of life’s pattern in cross stitch and tapestry
    – nurturing memory

    And through it all, a body to enjoy and experience your
    Grace in all these graces of life

    So God
    of grace, we say “Grace”, thank you,

    for all that nourishes our lives,

    and so, for this food,

    shared in joy and eaten in friendship

    For all that is past – thank you

    For all that is to come – Yes.

    Amen.

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christian biography as the biography of a Christian

    Bonhoeffer The definitive biography of Bonhoeffer remains that of Eberhard Bethge, published by Augsburg in 2000 as a revised edition. My own hardback copy goes back to the early 1970's, when I first read it as a young pastor. I've never lost the admiration bordering on awe that was evoked by encountering a life so genuinely moral and so theologically shaped around the form of Christ. One way or another, year on year, I've continued to wrestle with the challenge of this man who died in his fortieth year, and whose life so powerfully demonstrated the cruciform shape of Christian existence.

    The theological existentialism of the 1970's created an atmosphere of unrest, of impatience with classic expressions of theology, ministry and church. And in the flux and theological turmoil of the time, I sensed in Bonhoeffer both a determination to be faithful to Jesus Christ and a capacity for radical departures from the assumptions and structures of dogmatic formulation and ecclesial pattern. According to Bonhoeffer, an authentic Christian existence, expressed in faithful discipleship, demanded a constant reorientation of life around the person of Jesus Christ, while standing beneath the cross. A life so lived is the most persuasive statement the church can ever make about the reality of her Lord, the nature of the Gospel, and the cost and consequence of following Jesus in the contemporary world. And I was fully persuaded. Ever since, the life and thought of Bonhoeffer have been trusted navigation points for my own traveling in theology and discipleship.

    41p3FR3dJcL._SS500_ The announcement of a major new biography by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen is therefore an important event. For myself, the significance of a new biography isn't so much that it will provide new information, but that it will exegete the text of a life formed after Christ, and do so with critical reverence for that text. Biography as theology means that a Christian life is itself primary theological data, the living testimony of those who have lived and died by the truth they discerned in Christ. Biography is therefore a key theological resource, primary material for research, albeit mediated through the secondary reflection of the biographer. Schlingensiepen's father was Principal of one of the confessing Church seminaries, and he himself is a German pastor and friend of Bethge. The book is due early December: if the publishers can make that date it will be my Advent companion this year, drawing me into the interplay of light and darkness that is the reality of human life, lived by faith, oriented by hope and sustained by the love that moves the stars and sun.

    I wasn't able to blog yesterday, November 15. On that date in 1931 Bonhoeffer was ordained, and so began one of the most remarkable ministries to grace the Church.

    Here's Bonhoeffer on the proper balance between pastoral care and the unique freedom of each person in Christ. An entire renovation of authority centred attitudes to Christian leadership is required by Bonhoeffer's central contention:

    As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone. However, this means that I must release others from all my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love. In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for other Christians, before I could begin to act, I must allow them the freedom to be Christ's. They should encounter me only as the persons they already are in Christ.

    Life Together, pages 43-44. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5, Fortress 1966

  • Bonhoeffer and Merton – The same scent of sanctity

    But
    questions cannot go unanswered

    unless they first be asked.

    And there is a far
    worse anxiety,

    a far worse insecurity,

    which comes from being afraid to ask the
    right questions –

    because they might turn out to have no answers.

    One of the
    moral diseases we communicate to one another in society

    comes from huddling together

    in the pale light of an insufficient
    answer

    to a question we are afraid to ask.

    W.Shannon, Silent Lamp. The Thomas Merton Story, (London : SCM,
    1993), 22.

    09feature1_1 I remember the first time I read those words. One of those rare occasions when you realise that an important question can be as revelatory and as much an epiphany of Christ the Truth, as those "sound", clever, apologetically driven answers that hurtle out of our over-confident certainties and unexamined assumptions.

    One of the signs of Merton's sanctity was his vulnerability and uncertainty. At times it got him into trouble, not only with his superiors but with the God for whom he searched and often in interrogative mood. Bonhoeffer


    And yes – there is considerable incongruity and even cognitive dissonance in reading the passionate intensity of Bonhoeffer at his most Protestant Lutheran, and reading Merton the Trappist monk – but as C S Lewis said of such wildly different examples of authentic sanctity – they carry the same scent of the far country.

  • Baptist shaped community – what it is and isn’t.

    Posting today over at Scottish Baptist College. The second in a short series explaining the values that shape and define our ethos as a denominational theological College.

    Today I am reflecting on Baptist-shaped community, taking seriously the content of what used to be a name of derision, a sarcastic nickname, "Baptist". What I describe there isn't intended to disenfrachise other Christian traditions, or claim that we are more right or less wrong than other Christians seeking to follow Christ in the way that answers to their own sense of call, identity and style of witness. But I am attempting to  explain that cluster of convictions which, taken together, create the parameters of Baptist witness and touch on key theological convictions and faith inspired practices.