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Responsible recycling and life-instruction on my birthday

Nice paper eh?

Was used by a distant member of the family to wrap my niece's daughter's birthday present last week. (can't bring myself to say grand-niece).

But there was half of it left.

So it was used to wrap my birthday present as well.

Said present was a limited edition cartoon print of a laid back cat, whiskers in non twitching mode, relaxing and sleepy, – and with a matching birthday card with the clear instruction to go ponder and change my ways. Wonder if there's a night school where you can learn laid backness; would need to be a beginner's class.

22 February 2009
Utmost Art. George Herbert and the proper reticence of “Prayer (I)”

PRAYER. (I)

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

***^^^***

Is there
anywhere in the poetry of our langauge, a richer meditation on what prayer could, or might be? No
cutting of mystery down to size here. Instead an opening up of
theological possibility and spiritual option. The absence of the verb
to be, and therefore the reluctance to define, mean Herbert is not
saying what prayer is – instead he links a catena of images, suggestive
rather than definitive, biblical and classical, allusive and elusive,
but each of them hinting at why, in the words of one of Herbert's greatest fans, when it comes to devotion, "You are here to kneel / where prayer has been valid." (T S Eliot, 'Little Gidding', The Four Quartets)

I have a
copy of this sonnet, written out in calligraphic script by a friend, since died, who
learned calligraphy as a Japanese POW, sharing the same prison compound
as Laurens Van der Post. That sheet of paper (along with another by R S
Thomas, 'The Musician', worked by the same artist which I posted earlier), are the nearest I
possess to literary Icons – combining disciplined skill and art of
production with the crafted literary beauty of content. The Herbert sonnet I've looked at, read and re-read, know by heart, and its depth and range of reference to human longing and frustrated spiritual reach, still astonishes, and reassures.

Then some years ago
I published a paper on "Prayer (I)", exploring the subtle and complex
imagery Herbert has woven together, doing my level best to appreciate
Herbert's utmost art. At no stage did I do more than skim the surface.
Which is to be expected when studying a supreme exponent of
metaphysical poetry, whose passionate goal was to write verse worthy of
the One whose praise was beyond human words, yet whose Love made silence
impossible. So I keep coming back to this poem, heartened by its power to resist the solvent of critical analysis, and encouraged that it frustrates overly curious theologising. Reminds me again of Eliot's words:

You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity,

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid.

21 February 2009
Is peacemaking creative intervention or unwelcome intereference
Speaking with a good friend yesterday about one of those situations common in the life of any community, organisation, or church. The new minister does things differently. My friend's dad is a long-standing member, previous officebearer, but doesn't like the changes. And as well, in the first year of ministry the minister has only spoken to him once, and hasn't visited. You can see both sides – probably nothing deliberate, or intentionally hurtful on the part of the minister, but on the part of the elderly member an understandbale sense of rejection, a lost sense of significance and belonging.

My friend who is as fair minded and courteous and responsible a person as I know, with a good sense of humour and a high ethic of loyalty, feels torn both ways – the minister is doing a good job in a hard place all things considered, but dad isn't happy, and has started going elsewhere most Sundays. With some justification he feels he's now like many of his age, unnoticed and surplus to requirements nowadays. How to sort this before dad leaves. How to alert the minister to something they really should have noticed and recognised for themselves – it isn't that big a congregation.

So my friend says she wants it sorted – "but it isn't my place to tell the minister there's a problem." She's not being deliberately difficult or unhelpful – she genuinely feels interference would be wrong.

Which raised for me the following questions we went on to discuss
- If not her place to intervene, then whose place?
- When is it "our place" to become involved in a relationship breaking down and try to sort it?
- Is peacemaking ever possible without some third party being willing to risk the initiative, and isn't that each Christian's "place"?
- And if efforts at peace-making, seeking to be a bridge of reconciliation, is seen as unwelcome interference, isn't that the risk worth taking?
- Scaled up to the level of community and nation, isn't such a breakdown in communication and the resulting looming breach of relationship, something that calls out for third party risk taking?
So two further questions
- Is peacemaking creative intervention or unwelcome interference?
- Are there times when even if it is seen as unwelcome interference, conciliation is a Christian imperative that can't always be risk managed?
20 February 2009
William Stringfellow and “What befits Christian witness?”

William Stringfellow asks at the end of his essay on 'Discernment', "What befits Christian witness?" In a world as dangerously broken as the one we now inhabit, sense-surrounded by the life denying noise of Babel, how is Christian witness to be evidenced? Here's his answer:

" In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with truth and potency and the efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death's works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience." (A Keeper of the Word, page 305)

18 February 2009
Dorothy Sayers, Trident submarines, and the Triune God?

Yesterday I posted the delightful poem of Dorthy Sayers, a form of compline in verse, gently urging gratitude as the defining disposition of life. I also posted on the nonsense of nuclear subs colliding because they were too good at hiding from everyone, even their friends. An evening prayer of thanks for friendship, forgiveness, laughter and wisdom, contrasted with a road traffic accident on the ocean floor. The irony of two cloaked submarines colliding, is matched by a further irony in my juxtaposition of a post on gratitude for life's blessings and a post on weapons of mass destruction

And here's another ironic twist. Dorothy Sayers near the end of The Zeal of Thy House, one of her plays, has one of the characters compare the creativty of the Triune God with human creativity which is the mirror image of divine activity – (forgive the gender exclusive 'men' – Dorothy would have been front of the queue to have inclusive language set as the gold standard in communication).

Children of
men, lift up your hearts. . . .

Praise Him that He hath made man in His own image,

               a
maker

And craftsman like Himself, a little mirror of His

               Triune Majesty.

For every work of creation is threefold, an earthly

           Trinity

to match the heavenly.

So the Creator God makes the multitudinous creatures of the sea, and calls them good; and we make submarines with Trident capability and the powers that be try to tell us they are good – but just what kind of God does Trident mirror?

17 February 2009
Nuclear Tag – or the deadliest game of hide and seek!

Two nuclear powered submarines, carrying an unknown number of nuclear warheads.

One British, one French, both allies in the NATO nuclear deterrent strategy.

Both equipped with the latest state of the art sonar detecting technology.

Both equipped with the latest state of the art anti-sonar detecting technology.

Both in the same part of the Atlantic ocean, at the same depth, at the same time.

They are travelling in opposite directions towards each other.

The techonology works brilliantly – neither detects the other.

Collision!!!!

Is this funny

           OR

                   Ironic

                              OR

                                       terrifying

                                                         OR WHAT?

16 February 2009
Dorothy L Sayers, “To view the whole world mirthfully”.

This playful and life loving poem is one of the reasons I like Dorothy Sayers. Hard headed common sense, intellectual curiosity, love of language and story and formidable Christian intelligence makes her one of those people it would have been fun to meet, even if you were a fool – whom, according to this poem, she would nevertheless have suffered gladly. The poem is about friendship, love, laughter – and the foolish wisdom that brings a sense of perspective to life. Not a bad late night prayer – compline in verse.

Lord if this night my journey end,
I thank Thee first for many a friend,
The sturdy and unquestioned piers
That run beneath my bridge of years.

And next, for all the love I gave,
To things and men this side the grave,
Wisely or not, since I can prove
There always is much good in love.

Next, for the power thou gavest me
To view the whole world mirthfully,
For laughter, paraclete of pain,
Like April suns across the rain.

Also that, being not too wise
To do things foolish in men's eyes,
I gained experience by this,
And saw life somewhat as it is.

Dorothy L Sayers, Op 1, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1916)

16 February 2009
Stony the road we trod….remembering James Weldon Johnson

The portrait is of the black activist, poet, diplomat, educator and musician, James Weldon Johnson. (d. 1938). Not so well known as MLK and other civil rights campaigners but I came across references to him recently and went chasing. In all the euphoria surrounding Obama, such great men as Johnson are too easily and conveniently forgotten.

Amongst the most interesting things I found out:

Johnson qualified for the bar but found the law boring, not least because it functioned within the way things are…and he wanted to be a catalyst for change.

He composed 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' a song that eventually became a national anthem for American Blacks, and with his brother composed music and lyrics for many Broadway shows.

He was a leading influence in the Harlem Renaissance, a resurgence of black cultural and artistic activity in the 1920's, and a vocal supporter of black artists struggling against white prejudice in the publishing houses.

He lived to see the first all African American orchestra formed, a symbol of collective creative energy, disciplined harmony and human co-operation that transcended socially contrived discrimination.

And not least, Johnson was a poet, whose poetry was unashamedly political because he knew the power of words to frame a different reality, and shape political vision. MLK used one of his poems in the great landmark speech 'Where do we go from here?' in 1968, 30 years after Johnson's death in a rail accident.

Men like Johnson created the context, set out the paramenters, exposed the issues, modelled the tactics, that would later coalesce and radicalise into a full civil rights movement.

The words MLK quoted are from "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chastening rod

Felt in the days

When hope unborn had died.

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place

For which our fathers sighed?

We have come over the way

That with tears hath been watered.

We have come treading our paths

Through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

Till now we stand at last

Where the bright gleam

Of our bright star is cast.

15 February 2009
Finally Comes the Poet 2. Through (most of) the Year with Walter Brueggemann

There are theologians whose thought we try to understand; and then there are theologians who shape the way we understand.

Put another way, there are those theologians whose way of thinking about God is attractively coherent, intellectually and spiritually satisfying in a demanding way, whose vision of God and the world deserves our serious attention.

But then there are those other (but few) theologians, whose vision of God and the world is lived in such a way that they draw a deeper response of personal engagement, they demand our attention. In that sense their theology becomes transformative for us, working our deeper soil to a more fertile tilth, out of which the fruit of our own theology begins to grow and bear the fruit of the Spirit of Christ in performative and transformative Gospel practices.

Theology at its best is communal, shared conversation about God, a communion of the saints through shared insight. Theological discussion is a fellowship of minds and hearts, like informal prayer when we talk about God in God's presence, but without the rudeness of ignoring that Presence. In my current ministry which is theological education and pastoral formation, I try very hard to avoid those ways of doing theology that attract the pejorative and reductionist use of 'academic' – as if talk of God could be detached from the life we live, abstract rather than livingly engaged, an inner discipline of thought without the outer performance of faith.

If my own theological reflection has been kept rooted in Christian practice, prayer, and personal conviction, I think it's because of time spent in conversation and discussion with those theologians who work my deeper soil, who have shaped the way I think of God, and whose lived theology has impinged in transformative ways on my own attempts to follow more faithfully after Christ. It's one of the responsible joys of life to share those fruits with others in a process of theological networking through pastoral friendships, personal encounter, widening circles of conversation beyond the church.

Several theologians whose writing has worked itself deeply into my way of thinking have remained frequent and sometimes awkward conversation partners. I trust them. Not because they are always right, or above criticism themselves. But because they provide reference points for my own journey, correctives to my perspective, retardants to my prejudices – and because in them I see and hear the voice of the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. (By the way there are other kinds of theologian, who might not use or own the term, but who paint, compose music, write poetry and story, embody loving practices that humanise – and in their gift they live their faith and deepen ours. But that's another story worth the telling.)

Over the next while I'd like to work out what it is about those Christian theologians I've unwittingly turned into my own canon of Christians to attend to, and why it is they do it for me. Some told their truth, made their mark, and I moved on the better for meeting them. Others have stayed around, their voices still amongst those I listen to most carefully. And then there are new voices saying things that not everyone wants to hear, too easily drowned out by the din of hyper-marketed voices hawking Christian consumer religion. But which of these new voices now to attend to, and how to decide, and what they are saying that needs to be heard, spoken and lived, here, now?

God's voice is of the heart.

I do not therefore say,

all voices of the heart are God's,

and to discern His voice amidst the voices

is that hard task to which we each are born.

One of those long time conversation partners, a voice I've found it important and demanding to attend to, is Walter Brueggemann. I've already posted on him, (on Jan 25), touching on one of his major contributions – giving the Gospel back to the preacher and the preacher back to the Gospel. In the wiriting of Brueggemann, the Gospel comes to us, individually and as the community of Christ, as both cultural critique and invasive grace. Every Friday for the rest of this this year I'll come back to him here – a kind of Through (most of) the Year with Walter Brueggemann!

13 February 2009
The picnic, the dance and the abiding tree.

I never did Higher English at secondary school. I did it at night school in a year that introduced me to three Shakespeare plays, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and Othello; George Orwell's Essays; D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers; Wilfred Owen's War Poems; and several poems by W H Auden. What I made of Auden's poems I have only the haziest notion, except I knew what I was reading was important, in that way that when you are young you just know.

Since then I've slowly read more of his poems, gleaned from anthologies, quoted in odd places from Four Weddings and a Funeral to the current Archbishop of Canterbury, who is one of Auden's best critics and most thoughtful admirers. In his review of Volume 3 of Auden's Collected Prose, the essayist Alan Jacobs considers Auden's Horae Canonicae the high point of Auden's statements on his Christian beliefs. As a mature account of what is at the heart of his Christian faith, this sequence of poems, Horae Canonicae, demonstrates the fusion of poetic art and religious experience as feeling, thought and conviction.

In my haphazard, accidental and occasional encounters with Auden's poetry I hadn't come across this cycle as a complete sequence. So I went looking for it. By which I mean, forgive me, I Googled it. And struck spiritual gold, or oil, or whatever the equivalent metaphor is for important because valuable spiritual discovery.

A couple of years ago this cycle of poems featured on Radio 3 on Good Friday, introduced by Rowan Williams and read by the actor Tom Durham. The other night I spent an hour or two listening to the poems and the introductions by Williams, and what started as anticipated enjoyment quickly became unexpected encounter.

The combination of sympathetic and spiritually attuned commentary by Rowan Williams, clear and unaffected reading of Auden's poems by Durham, the evocative beauty and religious inquisitiveness of the poems themselves, and this in the context of a Good Friday meditation, made listening a complex process of prayer, aesthetic enjoyment, intellectual pleasure, and inward surrender to events and realities at once ineluctably tragic yet inexplicably redemptive.

Reading these poems again, you become aware of Auden's patient discontent, his by now chronic longing to understand "what happened between noon and three…", on that pivotal day when the business of Empire required yet another crucifixion. This time with hidden but eternal consequence. The poem 'Compline' ends with profound eschatological hopefulness, more than a hint of eucharistic thankfulness, and a celebration of the mutual indwelling and shared participation that is the eternal movement of Love in the celebration of a redeemed creation.

….facts
are facts,

(And I shall know
exactly what happened

Today between noon and three)

That we, too, may
come to the picnic

With nothing to
hide, join the dance

As it moves in
perichoresis,

Turns about the
abiding tree.

…………………….

Williams' commentary and Tom Durham's readings can be found here.

12 February 2009