Living Wittily

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  • Transfiguration and living to the glory of God

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    The memorial tablet of Michael Ramsey, 100th Archbishop of Canterbury reads,

     "The Glory of God is the living man and the life of man is the vision of God."

    Ramsey's best book was The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ. It isn't so much a book of technical NT scholarship as a study that opens up the Gospel text with studied reverent care. In it a young Ramsey reflects on the ambiguity of that glory which both reveals and obscures the presence of God, but which in Jesus compels such attention as judges us all.

    Out of his own praying he wrote this scholarly meditation on one of the most mysterious and transformative stories of Jesus. In Ramsey's own spirituality he grew in later years to contemplate further on  this Christ-enriched sense of glory. And by glory he meant the shining splendour of love diffused with holiness, and that dazzling holiness incarnate in the One in whom all the fullnes of God's love was pleased to dwell.

    "The Glory of God is the living man and the life of man is the vision of God."

    "Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever…."

  • Kimi the Clumber spaniel.

    Two good friends have just been adopted by a Clumber spaniel. Kimi arrived over the weekend on a quality inspection visit and is well pleased, other than the usual hesitations of dogs who expect high standards of accomodation and cuisine. But she's decided to stay. However being a Clumber spaniel she is genetically programmed to assume a more superior status than her ordinary springer, cocker and king charles cousins (note the lower case in their breed names). She's also a bit fussy about who gets to stroke her, and highly selective in those she deigns to acknowledge with as much as a tail wag. Next time I visit I'm hoping to be noticed.

    But when it comes to landing on your paws Kimi, it doesn't come better than landing in the living room of two dog loving folk like my friends. Just to ensure things go smoothly I prepped the new owners by presenting them with the well known dog manual, Feng Shui for Dogs! You know – bed beside radiator, food and water accessible and in dishes that don't skite across the shiny floor every time you eat from them. That kind of thing! Enjoy Kimi – if there's a promised land for Clumbers you've found it!

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  • The Stilling of the Tempest, Monika Liu Ho Peh

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    A favourite picture of a favourite story from my favourite Gospel

  • Lord’s Prayer Fibonacci

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    Fib: a poem of
    20 syllables in which the number of
    syllables in each line is the total of the two previous lines  – thus
    1,1,2,3,5,8. You can of course continue upwards so that the next line
    is 13, then 21,  then 34 after which it gets too silly I think.

    Fib poems are
    based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence    .

    This one could be better. But I still find the discipline of word control an effective way of clarifying some of the thoughts that come when praying the Lord's Prayer regularly, with eyes open to the world.

    Hallowed be your name

    Wait.

    Pray.

    Slowly.

    "Our Father…."

    Holy muttering.

    Anamnesis. Daily reminder.

    God's in His Heaven, and all's (far from) well with the world.

    Pater noster. Bread for hunger, forgiven wrong, hearts resilient and set free.

    Human life flourishing, name of God hallowed, the will of God who is Love lovingly lived. Let us pray, not for me, for us, "Our Father….."

  • Finally Comes the Poet: sovereign, suffering love

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    Speaking as communion, and thus speaking with God, has become problematic in a culture soaked in superficial speech and content with surface skating relationships. So when it comes to speaking with God, and in God's name, it's hard to find a secure covenantal basis for words to create, sustain and nourish communion.

    Walter Brueggemann has thought deeply on speech as communion and words as sacrament. Our lost capacity to speak with candour and trust makes the encounter with God a time replete with posssibility for renewal, when we can be renewed in the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit. And enabled again to speak, and commune with each other.


    "Our reductionisms in speech reflect a larger reductionism about communion. There is something convenantal, mutual, risking, demanding, surprising, frightening, and unsettling about real communion. Communion with the holy one is nearly more than we can bear, because we shrink from a meeting shaped by a massive sovereignty before which we bow, or by sufffering love that is self giving".

    "We are always shocked that the massive sovereignty of God yields before us, and the suffering love of God demands so much. We can hardly endure the strange juxtaposition of sovereignty and grace: the sovereign one who is shockingly gracious, the gracious one who is stunningly sovereign. The shock of such a partner destabilises us too much. The risk is too great, the discomfort so demanding. We much prefer to settle for a less demanding, less overwhelming meeting. Yet we are haunted by the awareness that only this overwhelming meeting gives life".

    (Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, pages 44-5).

  • Just published: Baptist Theology. A Four Century Study.

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    This huge contribution to Baptist theology and history is just published. I've just ordered my copy. Obviously this is of more interest to Baptist readers of this blog – but indulge me. This is a landmark volume and it will be reviewed on the College blog in due course. here's the blurb as issued by the Baptist World Alliance Theological Commission:

    James Leo Garrett, Jr., is writing a twelve-chapter, four-century
    history of Baptist theology, which is to be published by Mercer
    University Press, Macon, GA, and is designed to appear in advance
    of the Baptist quadricentennial in 2009. A coordinated and comprehensive
    history of Baptist theology from 1609 to the present, with an
    initial chapter on pre-1609 influences, it is to provide an integrated
    interpretation of Baptist confessions of faith, major Baptist
    theologians, and Baptist theological movements and controversies.

    The volume is to focus on
    Baptist doctrine and will not encompass Baptist ethics, Baptist
    spirituality, or Baptist apologetics. Although it tends to be
    organized chronologically, it is not a narrative history but rather
    an interpretation of theology in various historical contexts.
    It gives major attention to England and the United States but
    also includes the Baptist theology of other nations. Although
    it is centered on distinctive Baptist theology, it also exhibits
    both theological beliefs held in common with most other Christian
    denominations (for example, the Trinity and the person of Christ)
    and the heavy influence of certain other confessional traditions
    upon Baptists (for example, the Reformed). The book does not defend
    a single thesis per se but does constitute a massive argument
    that there has been and is a Baptist theological tradition. It
    does not attempt to treat authors having rather limited influence
    or to interpret the beliefs of rank-and-file church members.

    The volume is designed to
    serve as a textbook for courses in Baptist theology or the Baptist
    heritage in Baptist colleges, universities, seminaries, and divinity
    schools. It is likewise intended to be read by pastors, educators,
    and informed lay persons and to be purchased by institutional
    libraries and by local church libraries.

    Garrett is distinguished
    professor of theology, emeritus, at Southwestern Baptist Theological
    Seminary, having taught also in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
    Baylor University, and Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary.

  • The Lord’s Prayer: Praying the Pronouns

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    Praying the Lord's prayer three times a day is a spiritual exercise. I don't mean that in the quietly grudging way that we sometimes refer to those spiritual disciplines and devotional habits that give shape and substance to our spirituality. I mean it more in the sense of knowing the day after unaccustomed exercise, that muscles I didn't know I had, actually and achingly exist.

    Pronouns are an intriguing quality test of prayer. The first person plural is counter-balanced by the second person singular throughout the Lord's Prayer. So three times a day I'm forced to ask – excuse me, but who are the others whose presence turns my into our, and me into us? Who are the ones who gate-crash my prayer and turn I into we? The very first word of the Lord's Prayer displaces the ego, dismisses the singular, incorporates my individuality into something outside, beyond and more than me. To pray the Our Father is to be drawn into a life immeasurably richer than the inner life of the singular self. 

    In the same way the address to God is second person, but always the possessive "Your", never the direct address "You". It is God's name, God's kingdom, God's will – and the three petitionary verbs are said to God – give, forgive, deliver. And yet again the counter-balance – because the giving, the forgiving and the delivering are, to use the old fashioned words, asked usward.

    So every time I pray this prayer, I utter the insistent reminder that I share my life with others – with family and friends, with colleagues and neighbours, with the community of faith to which I belong, with strangers and foreigners, with Western and Eastern, Northern and Southern, men and women, young and old, all colours, all languages, people of many faiths and no faith. Our Father – the plural means I pray as a member of a vast family of humanity. And this vast family needs daily bread, daily forgiveness, daily deliverance from those tests of humanity that are so strong they could destroy us. And the One we ask is Our Father, whose name is to be reverenced, whose will is to be done, whose Kingdom comes secretly, subversively, unexpectedly….but surely.

    So I go on praying persistently, noting the pronouns, allowing them to become the heartbeat and pulse of the prayer. Our Father …your name…your kingdom…your will…give us…forgive us…lead us not… but deliver us…for yours is the Kingdom.

    On a day when another wee boy's murder is national news, and child protection provision and overloaded social workers come under scrutiny yet again; when international cricketers are attacked and seven people, six policemen and a bus driver are killed; when Obama and Brown talk about how to prevent global meltdown without reconfiguring the model of global capitalism; on a day like this, I've said Our Father…give, forgive, deliver….for yours is the Kingdom. And done so as a follower of Jesus.

  • Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense – yet again!

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    Today I'm doing the Lenten post over at     Hopeful Imagination. This year contributors introduce a book that is important in their own spiritual story. My choice is Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense by W H Vanstone, a book I've already mentioned a few times on Living Wittily.

    The sub title is The Response of Being to the Love of God. This book taught me so much about the love of God, and flowing from that, so much else. You might think my comments on the book are the excusable exaggeration of the enthusiast, or sales talk inexcusable in academic criticism. Just read the book – still in print 33 years after it was published -  then decide which is the right response, enthusiasm or criticism. Neither word quite covers it for me – the word I would choose is admiration – for the man, and for the ability to write a book like that. If biography is theology, here's the real thing. And if pastoral theology has first principles, they are embedded in the mystery of that self-giving Love that risks, creates and redeems in the willed vulnerability of the Triune God.

    I've got an elderly friend whose approach to his faith is much more straightforward than mine, who now and again signals part of a conversation is over by stating with all the authority of a Benediction, "Well, that's whit ah think onywey". Ditto me! 🙂

  • Fix your eyes on Jesus………

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    The truth of Jesus frustrates the best intentions of the greatest artists.

    No one tradition, no one perspective, no one theological construal, no one telling of the Gospel story, can hope to reduce to canvas or syntax, the reality of the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

    Fix your eyes on Jesus….consider him…. (Hebrews 12) 

  • The Lord’s Prayer: The difference between repetition and mere repetition

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    Simon and Tony in the comments on a previous post reflect a fairly pervasive resistance to the regular use of the Lord's Prayer, whether in Sunday by Sunday services, daily or even three times daily as private or personal prayer. Coming from a non-liturgical tradition, Baptists are almost inherently suspicious of anything that sounds like vain repetition. I hope you don't mind Simon and Tony, if I quote some of your words from your comments in order to explore them here:

    "I sensed that she was suggesting the mere repetition of the words had value – something I instinctivly recoil against. (Simon)

    "…fear of this prayer being a mindless mantra rather than an expression of a real desire to see God's kingdom come….. Perhaps, for some, constant repetition reduces Christ's words to meaningless mumbling. (Tony)


    I think it's worth qualifying those hesitations, even subjecting them to some gentle criticism -as in fact Simon and Tony acknowledge in their comments. So these few observations are not so much directed at Tony and Simon's hesitations. Their comments provide an opportunity to say more about why I think regular use of the Lord's Prayer is an important and specific formative practice for those whose life goal is following after Jesus.

    1. My experience of extempore prayer in many non liturgical services (in Baptist churches and other traditions) doesn't persuade me that they are a more spiritual, sincere or worthy offering in worship than prayers carefully crafted, formed into language that has beauty and rhythm, and read or spoken from memory. To speak from memory, or read from a text doesn't preclude the heart's responsive love to God nor the mind's thoughtful adoration. Conversely, extempore prayers can themselves become mere repetition of phrases and cliches shared in a particular evangelical sub-culture.

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    2. The Lord's Prayer in particular is placed in the Sermon on the Mount precisely in the context of contrast with mere repetition. A double irony is possible here. Either we refuse to use the Lord's Prayer lest it be mere repetition; or we use it unthinkingly and make it mere repetition. Both I believe misrepresent the meaning of Jesus' command – "after this manner pray ye….". To pray the Lord's Prayer regularly and meaningfully is nearer the stance of intentional obedience.

    3. I trust the instinct of the early church where early on, daily praying of the Lord's Prayer was a formative practice.

    "…this was a tradition maintained in the living liturgy of community worship (as the first person plural strongly suggests). Almost certainly, the early Christian disciples did not know this tradition only because they had heard it in some reading from a written document. They knew it because they prayed it, possibly on a daily basis." J D G Dunn, Jesus Remembered. Christianity in the Making, Vol. I, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 227 (Italics orignial).


    The phrase Dunn emphasises, "they knew it because they prayed it", along with that important clause earlier, "the living liturgy of community worship", (Baptists like me take note – liturgy can be living), surely provides sufficient safeguard against reciting the Lord's Prayer from an empty heart and bored mind.

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    4. I trust also the practice of the church catholic through the centuries, across the world. As a Baptist I belong to a tradition that honours scripture – but then ironically balks at repeating the words of Jesus because they are liturgically embedded. But surely in approaching God as a forgiven sinner who is a follower of Jesus, I also do so as a self- concerned, earth-bound, horizon limited, ethically challenged, trying to be hopeful human being. And at such a time I confess I am more helped by the Lord's Prayer than the ad hoc meanderings of many an extempore pray-er.

    5. As a young christian I learned the Sermon on the Mount by heart. I can still recite chunks of it in the Authorised Version! Amongst the benefits of repetition and regularity in reciting Scripture, especially the Lord's Prayer, are the slow absorption into mind, heart, conscience and will, of those essential values that define our discipleship and the way of the Kingdom of God.

    These are just some of the reasons why it's important not to devalue repetition of scripture and prayers by prefacing them with 'mere'. Nor is it the case that such repeated enunciation of prayer and praise need be meaningless – in any case, meaningless to whom? It's God who sees most clearly into the hearts of those who mumble prayers – and whatever residue of meaning and genuine longing is there, midst the mumbling, we can be sure will be noticed, and blessed.