Well Ian has. and Bob has. My lost reference has been found. It's on page 64 of Grain of Truth. And whether or not there is rejoicing in heaven, there's a fair amount of positive and affirmative mood change going on here!
Thanks Ian – won't slay the fatted calf but I owe you a coffee. And thanks for the pointer Bob and the subsequent reference details – not sure how to send a coffee transatlantic.
My thanks to Andy and Derek (see comments on previous post), for looking at Google books and for their efforts to find that which was lost and redeem my literary lapses.
My pal Bob from New Hampshire tells me the Von Balthasar reference I'm looking for is in Grain of Wheat. Now this collection of Von Balthasar's aphorisms isn't on Google books as a preview volume, and I don't have a copy. So does anyone have access to a copy and is my elusive reference to be found there? I'm beginning to feel like the woman with the lost coin, unable to settle to those other responsibilities of life till I find the one that was lost. So I'm sweeping the house – figuratively speaking.
Here it is again – you can see why I want to place it – this is Von Balthasar at his most quotable. I don't know a better definition of that ecumenism of the heart that grows out of the love of God in Christ.
"Only in Christ are all
things in communion. He is the point of convergence of all hearts and beings
and therefore the bridge and the shortest way from each to each."
I lost it. I don't know where. I was sure I'd put it safe. But I've looked in all the obvious places and can't find it. The annoying thing is I'm usually so careful with such things. I can't even blame anyone else for taking it, losing it, breaking it, stealing it, hiding it. I was the last person to see it. The responsibility is entirely mine that I can't find it. So can any of you good and patient people who frequent this blog help me find it?
I've lost a reference. It comes from Hans Urs Von Balthasar, I think from his book Love Alone is Credible. I've re-ordered the book but need the reference, like, now!? – for an article at the proof stage.
Here's the quote I need to pin down – any Balthasarians out there who can help find this – if you could love would indeed be credible (which by the way is a more reassuring statement than the bland overstatement that love is incredible!).
"Only in Christ are all
things in communion. He is the point of convergence of all hearts and beings
and therefore the bridge and the shortest way from each to each."
By the way – the guy in the photo isnae me – cos I hivnae got a moustache. But I liked the idea of a magnifying glass on a headband with a wee searchlight as a research tool for those who mislay important references.
Been thinking about bandwagons, and the temptation to jump on them. Ever since the circus clown Dan Rice used a bandwagon to give Zachary Taylor much needed publicity in the 1848 American Presidential elections, jumping on the bandwagon has been popular as an easy approach to decision-making. If lots of other people are doing it, thinking it, buying it, it must be good so I'll do likewise. Nowadays being told you're "jumping on the bandwagon" has become a dismissive put-down, criticising the lack of independence of mind, ridiculing the crowd-following instinct, suggesting a lazy or too impressionable mind lacking individuality, initative and personal preference.
Now sometimes jumping on the bandwagon is the result of all or some of these. But supposing the bandwagon is going somewhere important? What if those on the bandwagon are indeed better informed, or have found a more interesting place to go, or are just a lot better company than I've so far found, eh? So I'm going to jump on a bandwagon currently on the make though still modestly proportioned, and already rolling. The William Stringfellow bandwagon. I first came across the name years ago in several contexts including the work of civil rights activists and early Sojourners writing. Never followed it up. Then a few weeks ago the name started to appear in blog conversations, including the ubiquitous Ben Myers at Faith and Theology. Before then Stuart had started to mention him in conversation and now features Stringfellow at Word at the Barricades.
Sunday past's Revised Common Lectionary Readings included the famous Ecclesiastes passage about time.
3:2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what
is planted;
3:3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
3:4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
3:5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to
embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
3:6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
3:7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
3:8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
3:9 What gain have the workers from their toil?
3:10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.
3:11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past
and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning
to the end.
3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves
as long as they live;
3:13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all
their toil.
So if there's a time for every matter under heaven, there's surely a time for learning insights from unusual directions. I haven't read the work of William Stringfellow. Yet. But someone who writes in the areas of political spirituality and lived faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and someone who believed his theology is best understood when visibly embodied in the story of his life – well that's someone whose bandwagon I want to jump on for a while.
A Keeper of the Word, is a reader which includes a broad selection of Stringfellow's published work. Don't know if this bandwagon will gather momentum and size, but whether or not, I want to go along for a while, for this part of my own journey, just to see.
Don't want to comment on this for now – I've simply posted it for further thought. I'll come back to it later. It raises ( I hate the word) "missional" questions for the Church, for theological education as preparation to engage with life as it's felt and lived. Above all it raises questions of how a consumer obsessed society can recover a capacity to see human beings as loveable, and see themselves as lovers of others. Now that takes me to the very heart of the Christian Gospel – but as I said – I want to let this seep into that place where thinking, theology and love for God coalesce in a prayer for wisdom and courage.
The following is from AOL and can be found here.
One in 10 young people believed life was not worth living or was meaningless, according to an "alarming" new report.
A survey of 16 to 25-year-olds by the Prince's Trust found a
"significant core" for whom life had little or no purpose, especially
among those not in education, work or training.
The poll of over 2,000 showed that more than a
quarter felt depressed and were less happy than when they were younger.
Almost half said they were regularly stressed and many did not have
anything to look forward to or someone they could talk to about their
problems.
The trust, which aims to help vulnerable young
people, said its study revealed an increasingly vulnerable generation.
Chief executive Martina Milburn said: "Young people tell us that family
is key to their happiness, yet too often we find they don't have this
crucial support."
The survey, described as the first large scale
study of its kind, showed that young people who had left school but did
not have a job or a place on a training course, were twice as likely to
feel that their life had no purpose.
Relationships with family and friends were
found to be the key to levels of happiness, although health, money and
work were also important.
Paul Brow, director of communications at the
Prince's Trust, said the study showed there were thousands of young
people who "desperately" needed support. "Often, young people who feel
they have reached rock bottom don't know where to turn for help."
A spokesman for the Department for Children,
Schools and Families said: "The Government wants to make this the best
country in the world to grow up and the Children's Plan sets out how we
will do this with more support for families, world class schools, and
exciting things for young people to do outside school, and more places
for children to play.
"We want all young people to play an active role in society and gain
the skills they need to succeed beyond school. The number of 16-18 year
olds in education or training is at its highest rate ever and since
1997 we have halved the number of young people leaving school with no
qualifications, while the proportion gaining five good GCSEs has risen.
"This is evidence that we are successfully engaging some of our most vulnerable young people in learning."
Saturday was a full day. Up at 5 a.m. to deliver Andrew to Glasgow airport bound for the furthest extremities of England to carry on the fish management studies. Which meant back in the house at 6.00 a.m, bright eyed, feeling skeich, ("in high spirits, animated, daft", according to the Scots Dictionary!), and wondering what to do with a day that the weather woman said would be bright, cold and clear.
By the time it was daylight we were in the car and heading north west. The sunrise in the rear view mirror was a glowing orange advert for the new day, a dazzling copper gold diffused by low mist – the kind of effect Turner strove for but only now and then came close – which is saying a great deal. By the time we were crossing Erskine bridge the sunrise was a far too beautiful distraction from driving, so I only glimpsed it. Decided to go via Helensburgh, then Rhu (a favourite place forever associated in my mind with John Macleod Campbell, one of Scotlands greatest theologians).
Then up the loch. Gareloch's beauty is now permanently disfigured by miles of metallic link fence topped by razor wire, boasting our capacity to look after our weapons of mass destruction, and keep them safe – just in case we need to use them! The incongruity of such natural age-old beauty as those Scottish hillsides and glens, co-existing with state of the art weapons techonology, concealed and incalculably lethal, is a parable of our lostness; an admission that pushed far enough, our fears might prove more decisive than our hopefulness. For surely the decision to use nuclear weapons could only betray the distorted preference of those who would risk no future for any of us, rather than the future they don't want – a form of moral and political nihilism. Of course I know there are complex arguments justifying all this. But they aren't where I've chosen to stand – and they don't make me less outraged by what all that razor wire is for.
But with that ugliness behind us, parts of the drive to Arrochar were sublime – the beauty of hills carpeted in shades of brown, green and those colours on Scottish hills that seem only to come alive in a bright winter sun, and all of this reflected on the mirror surface of the loch – disturbed at one point only by a seal breaking the surface to breathe, eat, bother the seagulls, or just admire the view. Inveraray as always was set against that kind of background that looks like a shortbread tin cliche – but which on a morning like this is the real thing. Brambles was open for business by 10.30 and we had near perfect coffee and the just out the oven rock bun, while I read the Herald Supplements. How hard does life get?
So on slowly to Crianlarich, Ben More (Photo not mine – a freebie), and then the packed lunch simply looking while we ate. The drive back down was pleasant enough but by then the sun was going down, we were on the shadow side of the hills, and everybody else by this time was up and about and in a bigger hurry than me. So home by 3'ish.
Decided in the absence of a long walk I'd do the exercise bike for a while listening to my new CD of Beethoven's 7th Symphony.
I defy anyone to cycle slowly during the last two movements of this raucous celebration of dancing sound and orchestral frenzy. By the finale I was approaching knackered – but what a madly generous piece of music. No wonder some of the critics suggested Beethoven had had too much to drink when he composed the final movement. The argument between the brass and the strings is one of my favourite musical shouting matches.
The rest of the evening was good food, a read at the book, preceded by a long hot soak. All of which is a way of saying that the Sabbatical is now all but done. Back to College on Monday and ready to try to remember what it is I do there……!?
In 1974(!), in a wee second-hand bookshop in Woodlands Road Glasgow, I bought Emil Brunner's Our Faith, in the small SCM Religiious Book Club edition. Ever since I've valued and gone on learning from the writings of Emil Brunner. Others like to dip into Barth and come away with a recovered sense of the importance of things, and of God. I do that sometimes, and it works for me as well.
But reading Brunner is different – not only because Brunner is usually easier to read, but for myself there is a stronger sense of being personally addressed by this writer, of being taken into the confidence of someone for whom to encounter the transcendent God is to find oneself identified, defined and called into a new being.
Here is a long sentence (typed out on that old manual typewriter – and the punctuation is Brunner's) describing the self-discovery of each individual called into being and purpose by the Creator God. This is theology not quite rising to doxology, but certainly embedding anthropology and the human future in the eternal election of God. In Brunner's hands, divine election (predestination) is not the negation, but the context of human responsiveness to God's call and offer of grace. Has a theology of assurance ever been more warmly stated and rooted in the good purposes of God?
Emil Bruner, Man in Revolt, (London:Lutterworth, 1957), page 283
The Lectionary Readings for New Years day include Psalm 8, with its poignantly surprised question, 'what are human beings that you care for them?' In a world that has so many suffering places, and where some of them, like Gaza and Israel, Zimbabwe and Congo, are places where it is other human beings who give occasion for the suffering of others – the question 'what are human beings', takes on theological urgency.
Violence is caused by the breakdown of dialogue – it thrives on the willingness to treat the other person as less than a human being. To do violence is to deny the God instilled glory of each human life. It is to stop speaking until only the voice of the strongest can be heard, because the other has been forcibly silenced. The correlation between manufactured human suffering and mutual wordless enmity is both obvious and tragic. Language enables a meeting of minds, hearts, wills and ultimately of people – but language also accuses, provokes, encases the hated other in rhetoric, and defines the speaker as the righteously and legitimately enraged.
Elizabethg Jennings poem For the Times, goes back to that line in Psalm 8, at least in its recognition of the breathtaking wonder that is a human being – and thus points us to language, that most human of gifts, as one of the life or death issues in our personal, local, national and international politics. If there is a Christian ethic of language, then Jennings' poem gives strong hints at the framework within which such an ethic operates – risk and trust, peaceableness and anger, fear and love, and the insistence of Psalm 8 on the glory and tragedy of human being, and the precious premium God puts on each uniquely created human being.
For the Times
I must go back to the start and to the source,
Risk and relish, trust my language too,
For there are messages which need strong powers.
I tell their tale but rhythm rings them true.
This is a risky age, a troubled time.
Angry language will not help. I seek
Intensity of music in each rhyme,
Each rhythm. Don't you hear the world's heart break?
You must, then, listen, meditate before
You act. Injustices increase each day
And always they are leading to a war
And it is ours however far away.
Language must leap to love and carry fear
And when most grave yet show us how to play.
"The one great purpose of the Church's existence is to share the bread of Life…to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus and be channels of his free, unanxious, utterly demanding, grown-up love…Once we recognize God's great secret, that we are all made to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call to see one another differently."
"The Church of the future, I believe, will do both its prophetic and its pastoral work effectively only if it is concerned first with gratitude and joy; orthodoxy flows from this, not the other way round, and we don't solve our deepest problems just by better discipline, but by better discipleship, a fuller entry into the intimate joy of Jesus life." (Both paragraphs from Rowan Williams, Enthronement Sermon, quoted in Rupert Shortt, Rowan's Rule, 260-61).
Two different ways of expressing an incarnational theology – both centred on Jesus Christ, whose active and redemptive presence in the world is embodied in the Church, the Body of Christ. To live out that redemptive love, in generous gift, courageous witness, persistent hope and attractive joyfulness – that is Christ's call and demand – accompanied and enabled by the promise of his presence, his real presence.
Thanks to all of you who have stopped by here in the past year, to share, read, think, and pray. The consensus of the commentators seems to be that 2009 is going to be harder than 2008. Maybe so. To go into that future as a Church called to reconfigure its structural life in a post Christian culture; requiring to repent of past self-concern and learn again the way of sacrifice; urged to reconsider how to follow after Christ more faithfully, and thus to depend more trustfully on the God who has come to us in Christ – well there's enough to be going on with. But wherever we go, and whenever we gather in Jesus' name and scatter in his service, there we find the Risen Lord, and the love of God, and life whatever it brings, to be lived in the power of the Spirit of Christ.
One of the highlights of my year was the vist to Edinburgh to view Caravaggio's calling of Peter and Andrew. Against a dark background a young Jesus calls older disciples to come after him, into a future to which he points – but which they, and we, can't see. Scary stuff this discipleship.
Just been listening to a podcast of Archbishop Rowan Williams being inteviewed about his recent study of Dostoevsky. Discussing one of the readings from The Brothers Karamazov in which the devil / atheist case is being made, Williams in a characteristic tone of affectionate dismissiveness describes such contemporary populist atheists as "second rate intellectual journalists". Nothing second rate about the range and depth of Rowan Williams own thinking, theology and spirituality.
As a deep dyed Baptist I'm one of Rowan Williams' critical admirers from the outisde. He is complex, and can sometimes propose and promote impractical solutions to problems of serious import in the world Church. He adopts ethical positions with which I differ, but never lightly and never without learning much – both about the arguments, and how to argue as a Christian. He can be theologically difficult because in his own theological reflection and his commitment to work within the great ecumenical Christian tradition, consistency isn't allowed to hinder legitimate and therefore necessary development of thought. In his list of the sins of the life of the mind, inconclusiveness isn't as dangerous as closed certainty.
Set me wondering about 20th and 21st Century Archbishops of Canterbury I rate along with Rowan Williams. Two really. William Temple whose social theology and grasp of both Gospel and society had considerable promise cut short by an early death; and Michael Ramsey whose oddity of character never seemed to obscure the sanctity and ecumenical persistence of one committed to the the world Church. Both these previous Archbishops have numerous entries in my stored quotations and references gleaned over years of reading and which used to be called commonplace books- and maybe each should get a post to remind us of their achievement, and remind us too why Rowan Williams is an important presence on our national stage.
As for Rowan Williams himself, I hope that despite the heavy criticism he has received, some of it more or less to the point, but even more of it unfair and uninformed, he is able to go on encouraging Christians to think and to care about God, the Church and the world. My sense of the man is that holiness in him is real to the point of tangibility. That by the way, may be why he is such an uncomfortably innocent yet shrewd pastor of souls, and why he gets into trouble for adopting provisional positions and being unembarrassed about uncertainty.
The self-confident certainties and rhetorical assuredness of the seasoned ecclesial politician would make for firmer leadership – but they aren't qualities that naturally grow out of holiness that while not otherworldly, has deep life-giving roots in the priorities of that other world. Personal holiness isn't a vote winner amongst the pragmatists and managers – but it carries a different kind of attractiveness and authority that doesn't depend on him always being right. He is a man who fully deserves the time it takes to pray for him – a complex man in a complex world, and one whose mind and heart are, I believe, important gifts to the whole Church.
Amongst the intellectual and spiritual interests of this Archbishop is a deep grasp of Russian theology; the tradition of the Holy Fool is a strong and subversive element of Russian spirituality, (think of Dostoevsky's The Idiot). There is sufficient evidence in the holiness and wisdom, the political unpredictability and otherwordly trustfulness of Rowan Williams to suggest he is not altogether unfamiliar with the cost and consequence of being a fool for Christ's sake.
I've just finished Shortt's biography, which is fair in its criticism and right in its sympathy and affirmation of Williams style of being Archbishop. Amongst its strengths I think, is Shortt's willingness to recognise and try to explain this hard to categorise combination of intellectual complexity, spiritual wisdom, theological polyphony, pastoral instinct and political uncertainty.
So he is a man who deserves our prayers, not least because he is a man defined by his own praying.