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Self Indulgence is OK occasionally

You take two modest sized fair trade bananas and place them in a dry covered pan, skins on. Five minutes gently griddled and the bananas are warm but not cooked. Meanwhile chop almond, hazel and brazil nuts into big chunks and put them in another wee saucepan to gently roast them, and then add a generous helping of maple syrup (a gift from New England friends over for a visit) and turn off the heat.

Nice long desert dish and place a peeled warm banana on each side, a not small scoop of ice cream in between, and then pour over the roasted nuts and maple syrup, and sprinkle with cinnamon.

No idea what it’s called cos it came out of my head – but as preparation for the Euro-Final I had two portions of fruit, some sugar, carbohydrate and protein. Balanced diet, balanced indulgence, eh?

29 June 2008
Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Politics and Prayer
Like most other folk who hope for a world where everybody gets a decent life chance, I’ve watched the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorate in a process of unravelling from corrupt oppression, through violent intimidation, to what is now a tangled mess of human misery, fear and suffering, and the very real possibility that Mugabe is there to stay for the foreseeable future. My emotional responses move from visceral outrage, to impotent rage to headshaking disbelief at the lack of international machinery capable of removing such a brutal threat to the lives and wellbeing of an entire nation.

Discussions, arguments, negotiations, opinions, resolutions, – there is a very real danger in our world when there is no international forum capable of withstanding the defiance and violence of those who seize power and use it against their own people. The United Nations once again presents as an instituiton so administratively cumbersome, so politically timid, so addicted to rhetoric, so crippled by the impossible expectation that it can perform balancing acts capable of meeting the vested interests of the key actors, that it has been marginalised in a process that has gone on now for years. And the South African President who has favoured quiet background diplomacy is now identified with an election that wasn’t only dishonest, a sham and a mockery of the people of Zimbabwe, but an election which has also become a dangerous focus of polarised enmities and intimdiation. Neighbouring states and African para-national organistations will have their own reasons for non-intervention – but whatever else those reasons are, it is hard to consider them humanitarian or motivated by any balancing concern for political and social justice.

I’ve never pretended that this blog is a place of political expertise, and on serious matters it is more important to be wise than clever, reticent than outspoken.The contemporary political complexities of Africa are so tied up with colonial history, imperial legacies, economic inequities, tribal hostilities and nationalist and political ideologies, that it is is hard to see past them to the human tragedy of a continent rich in resources, so vibrant with human life in its diversity and possibility. So I’m not looking for, becuase I’m not sure if they are there to be found, quick, painless or even painful solutions.

But as a Christian theologian I am not prepared to back off as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no relevance, as if our calling as ministers of reconciliation has no practical purchase in such an unreconciled world, and as if our bearing witness to Jesus as the one in whom the Kingdom has, is and will come, was and is merely wishful thinking. So I am spending a while today thinking about Zimbabwe; wondering what crucifixion and resurrection, love and reconciliation, mercy and judgement, as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, might lead me to conclude and to pray –
- for the people of Zimbabwe
- for Robert Mugabe
- for the United Nations
- for Africa and its future
I invite you to join your voice with all those praying for justice, peace and reconciliation.

Update

Just watched the Andrew Marr show and heard Desmond Tutu followed by John Sentamu. Two Anglican church leaders, with deep, deep roots in Africa, speaking truth to power and doing so as those with moral authority. Their right to speak on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, and the influence their words have, give further strength to the international community. Off to church now, to pray and imagine a hopeful future for those who live in fear and despair.
29 June 2008
Speaking truth to twaddle

Browsing through the recent issues of First Things (The March 2008 Issue), I came across this interestingly no nonsense observation on what the Lord requires of us today:

It’s always an encouragement to see a bishop speak truth to twaddle.
The National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry chose as the theme
for its meeting in San Antonio “Paradigmatic Changes in Hispanic
Ministry.” The archbishop of that fair city, Jose Gomez, said in his
address to the council, “The Scriptures don’t talk much about paradigm
change. Instead, the Bible talks about kairos—the time of
decision. . . . . The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real paradigm
that matters. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. The
decision each of us has to make every day is this: Will we repent and
believe? Will we continue our daily conversion to Christ? Will we try
every day to more and more conform our lives to Christ and to his
teaching?”

I couldn’t say it better.

28 June 2008
Still Living Wittily – The 500th Post

When I started blogging it was an experiment in thinking, writing and conversation all in one. I do some of my best thinking with a pencil, pen or keyboard – in any case through writing. This isn’t for everyone, and plenty of folk think better than I do without all the in between stuff. But writing involves a process of word selection, sentence construction, self-expression through the discipline of articulation, and is an important way in which I theologise, ruminate, laugh at myself, pin down experience long enough to have a better look at it.When this is done with a pencil, pen, paper in the absence of a keyboard, it’s also a way of making sure at least some of the significant stuff that flows through my stream of consciousness doesn’t float away unobserved, unregarded and unappreciated.

A number of folk comment either on the blog or by email – and some who know me pick up conversation around the themes and idiosyncracies of Living Wittily. I’d never put myself in the same universe of spirituality, theological fervour, lucid expression or obsessive writing as Richard Baxter – but he said of his own humungous output, ‘I was but a pen in God’s hand’. My own claim is that ‘I am but two index fingers prodding a keyboard, to my heart’s content’; whatever blessing it might otherwise produce for those who happen by Living Wittily is just another reason to prod on. The portrait of Thomas More links to the words at the head of my blog page, because I am still persuaded that living faithfully for Christ, thinking Christianly and looking on the world with a sense of the purposefulness and mercy of God, requires of us that we “look humanely forth on human life”, and recognise that we are called to “serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds”. Christian wisdom might be another term for such intentional effort to know, to understand, and to live faithfully after Christ.

27 June 2008
The Pastoral Care of People with Mental Health Problems

This post is an unashamed advertisement for a good book written by a good friend and colleague. The Pastoral Care of People with Mental Health Problems, by Marion Carson, has just been published by the SPCK Library of Pastoral Care. Marion trained and practised as a psychiatric nurse, is a theological educator at International Christian College where her research and teaching span the bridge between New Testament and pastoral care, she is an active member within her own church community and serves on the Board of Ministry of the Baptist Union of Scotland. This book is therefore a coalescence of professional experience, theological scholarship, pastoral engagement and personal reflection on the nature and impact of mental ill health on the quality of human life, and also on the ambivalence and uncertainty of Christian communities to welcome those with mental health difficulties with 'radical friendship'. (John Swinton)

The book is not intended to provide technical medical information, nor is it an attempt to provide a detailed and conceptually advanced theology of disability. This has been done by people like Hauerwas, Swinton and most recently Thomas Reynolds' courageous and moving book which is a profound theological reflection on disability and hospitality informed by the experience of caring for a son with complex learning difficulties. (I will review and give details of this book later). Marion's book is more specific in its aim; it is an informed and informative book that covers several major human conditions, offering enough information to provide an undergirding awareness of the condition and the issues it raises for the person affected, their carers and the professionals who seek to help. As such it combines clear description of certain conditions, provides suggested practical responses, relates the process of understanding and care to an underlying theology that is pastorally rooted in the expereinces of those of whom she writes. Each chapter is therefore an important resource for pastoral response, theological reflection and better understanding.

The seven core chapters deal with mood disorders; anxiety, phobias and stress; schizophrenia; addictions; dementia; eating disorders and self-harm; personality disorders. Listed like that they are an intimidating list of human conditions which can seem like the extreme end of human difficulty in negotiating the complex world of relationships, perceived reality and self knowing. Marion Carson is well aware that the Church often makes unhelpful responses to the presence of people with mental ill health – either shunning them because of their capacitry to be disruptive, or intervening in ways that can be dangerous or ill informed. The book is therefore intended to help communities and individuals to befriend, support and care for those who suffer and their carers. There are case studies and explanation of the condition; theological reflection on what pastoral care would look like in this situation; and practical suggestions to ensure that care is appropriate and responses constructive.

I've been a pastor for many a year now, and met and walked with people who have suffered from the kind of conditions considered in this book. The treatment here is sensible, compassionate, practical, informed and above all rooted in an expereince both professionally skilled and theologically alert, and therefore pastorally responsible and responsive. At 168 pages, chapters around 23 pages long, a writing style that is never talk down but is nevertheless deliberately practical and at times didactic, this is a book that fills the important space this side of the technical diagnostic or theologically advanced books, which remain important but are less accessible. I wish such a book had been around at some of the times when in the context of church life people in such difficulties found their way to our doors.

I finish by quoting the last two paragraphs which are written in such a way that those of us who know Marion, can hear the ipsissima vox Carson!

It is precisely in recognizing our own vulnerabilities that hope springs. Only thus are we led to build communities in which our collective and individual dependence on the triune God is acknowledged. In such communities we can admit when we get things wrong, support each other as we learn from our mistakes, and forgive one another – all the time looking to God for guidance and wisdom. In such communities, we will be enabled to follow the incarnte Christ and serve those whom society considers 'inclean'. In such safe communities, radical friendship can flourish.

In the process of following Christ's example, we may have to change our
ideas about what it means to be human beings in relation to others. We
may have to rethink how we should go about providing pastoral care. But
if we open ourselves up to our own and others' vulnerabilities, if we
are willing to take the risk, we will go some way to providing a safe
place for sufferers and those close to them. The relationships we find
ourselves in may not be conventional, but we will be enriched by them,
and we will see God at work in ways we could never have imagined. (pages 147-8)

25 June 2008
Church History as keeping memory alive… Henry Chadwick, 1920-2008.

“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church
which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.”

The words are by Professor Henry Chadwick who died yesterday. Chadwick, with his brother Owen, represent between them some of the finest written scholarship in Church History in the 20th Century. The Early Church, the first of the Penguin History of the Church Series, was the preferred undergraduate text book when I was in College in the early 70's. The Church in Ancient Society, a massive volume in the Oxford History of the Christian Church series, is written with that elegant, deceptively effortless authority you can almost inhale from the pages. His translation of Augustine's Confessions and his short study of Augustine in the Oxford Past Masters Series combine to present Augustine as both attractive and unsettling as a mind massively learned, passionately engaged, and theologically alight.

It could be argued, and I do so argue, that it is the duty of church historians to keep the church's memory alive, alert and interested in its own story. Only as that story is known, reflected upon, learned from, absorbed as both inspiration and correction, only then is the church in a position to think of its life here, now. Impatience with the past arising from a dangerous privileging of the present, creates a know it all culture, that undervalues what it never tried to understand. In that sense I think reading history, reflecting on the insights of previous generations, learning lessons from past experience, is an important expression of humane reflection on human life – it is humanising. The church historian, a category in which I include all those Christians not so obsessed by contemporary experience that they ignore the historical roots and shoots of our faith, is someone who is interested in receiving the faith humbly though not uncritically. Those with a sense of the history of our faith, and who enquire how people down the generations have tried in their time and in their way to understand who God is, the meaning of Jesus, and how to follow after him faithfully and well, wisely refuse to hijack the story in order to tell only their part of it as if the rest didn't matter.

Confining the list of honours only to Britain, and to those who happen to be on my shelves, Henry Chadwick, Owen Chadwick, R W Southern, Gordon Rupp, Frances Young, Jay Brown, David Bebbington, Tom Torrance, Michael Watts, Gillian Evans, Adrian Hastings, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Rowan Williams – are people who help the church keep its memory alive – lest we suffer from historical senility.

One more thought. Several of us heard the same TV interview with a rather pedantic self appointed guardian of the english language. He was infuriated (not annoyed, upset, angry) – infuriated, when BBC announcers and sports commentators misused the word "oblivious", as in 'Fabregas was oblivious of Van Nistelroy's run into the penalty box'. The word oblivious does not mean totally unaware; it means, so our semantic purist argued, 'to forget that which we used to know'. It would be a pity then, if we were oblivious of those things by which the church has lived and grown down through the centuries. It would also be a pity if we were ignorant of the same, and had never taken the trouble to know them in the first place.

Which brings me back to Henry Chadwick, whose scholarship, sympathy and curiosity about the past, enabled him to help us understand and learn from the great cloud of witnesses who surround us, so that we can run our race with patience….and due humility.

24 June 2008
Millport, Ministry and fresh cooked doughnuts

Off to Millport with the Ministry Resource Team, to think about, well, ministry! Looking forward to discussion, prayer, a bit of time on a beautiful wee island, good conversation with good friends – and out of it fresh ideas, recovered vision, renewed enrgy, clearer strategy – or any two of the above as a start. There's something different happens when a 'committee' shares food, spends time in the one place for a couple of days, allows ideas to form and kites to fly, and so makes available the time and space for God to be heard.

And the sun is shining, I've packed my wee overnight bag with such essentials as toothbrush and a couple of books, and there's this wee cafe at Largs that sells sublime coffee, newly cooked doughnuts….

23 June 2008
Reading Job as Theological Education

In the biography of his father B F Westcott, the Bishop's son recalls the great NT scholar arguing that he would rather assess a student by their ability to set a first class exam paper than to sit one! Westcott believed the ability to identify the significant questions demonstrated a more thorough knowledge of a subject than the ability to mug up satisfactory answers.

Like much else, the motivation behind a question reveals something characteristically human – curiosity needn't be mere – curiosity can have the urgency of life and death, or be driven by an inner imperative to know in order to understand. Or the question asked may have an answer that is necessary in order to know what the next question might be, in that endless sequence of exploration that underlies all education – including theological education. And the book of Job is a profoundly disturbing course in theological education – if having the truth of God drawn out of us by having our very humanity questioned, counts as theological education.

Balentine's commentary on Job is written into that deeply human activity of questioning and being questioned. For those who desire a faith bolted down in certainties and unambiguous answers, 'the gain of certainty has to be measured against the loss of debate'. But for those for whom life is riddled with ambiguity, and faith and trust are tested by extremes of loss and pain, the loss of debate imposes a n unacceptable and dehumanising silencing of that voice through which the question "Why" is and must be spoken. The question "Why" searches the soul, and confronts God in both protest and prayer, both curse and blessing, seeking meaning more than consolation, and articulating in question and argument that which defines a person's humanity – the capacity to suffer, the yearning for love, and the longing to understand.

When it comes to suffering "for no reason," this book seems intent on reminding us that questions about the world, human existence and God necessarily remain open ended. To settle for anything less is to deny the pain that punctuates every faith assertion with a question mark. (Balentine, 33)

22 June 2008
The occasional inconvenience of providence

Danny was having a bad day. The morning I met him he was sweeping the gutters outside the Prince Regent Hotel. Every 20 yards an impressive heap of rubbish to be shovelled into his bins and carted away. But most of it was green leaves and new twigs, ripped from the trees in the high winds of the previous night. He swept with determined anger, as if these leaves were each a personal offence. Our eyes met and I stopped to commiserate.."Don’t expect to be doing this in May… usually September before you have to sweep up leaves".

Took out his map, showed me the streets in highlighter pink that were his patch, then showed me the patches in fluorescent green where he was to help the next squad. Asked how he was supposed to get all this done? It didn’t seem like the time to tell him it was Pentecost week… you know the Holy Spirit…like the wind of God, blowing through the world. Nor the words of John Newton, Amazing Grace, in a storm every leaf (and snowflake) falls by the will of God at the appointed time and in the ordained place. Instead I said thanks for what he was doing…it was appreciated…made a difference, he was a bit embarrassed and said he wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t need the job. So he got stuck in again, tidying up the world, tackling the chaos, bringing order to those parts of the world he was responsible for, picked out in a couple of inches of fluorescent pink.

People who tidy up our world…You know how Genesis begins, "In the beginning…." Think of it, the Spirit of God as the wisdom and purpose of God tidying up the chaos, making sense of the messiness. Proverbs 8.30 refers to 'the craftsman at [the Lord's] side'. The one who takes raw material and the right tools, who works with skill, experience and flair so that something is manufactured, created, brought into being. And the Spirit delights every day, rejoicing in this whole world and delighting in human life. This is a view of God that is playful, the relaxed leisurely joy of the artist with her gifts in full flow. The Holy Spirit as God’s craftsman, God’s artist, working in the world.

It is this God who works in our lives. Proverbs 8 is about the wisdom of God. This is a view of the universe that has God at the centre. When you think of the God who watches over us think of one whose wise delight iImagined oceans into being, touched the depths of the earth to gush springs of life-giving water, settled the mountains in place like an interior designer arranging the furniture, spreading soil like fitted carpets, arranging the dust of the world, speck by speck. Tell that to Danny, whose two inches of fluorescent pink mean hours of back-breaking work.

But this is poetry, this is truth, deep truth about the world we live in and the life we live in the world.

‘ Earth’s crammed with heaven

and every common bush afire with God:/

but only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

And the deep truths are all here. The heavens set in place; the Lord rules the stars, and so the Lord, not the stars, rule our lives. The horizons are measured, all our possibilities fall within the wise love of God. The clouds are established, ‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds you so much dread; are big with mercy and will break, in blessings on your head.’ We all have our clouds, those experiences that come between us and our happiness, the job we hate, the job we can’t get, the row that hurts, the illness that lays low, the depression that won’t lift, the lost chances that don’t come back, but they are part of life, and in the miracles of our lives this craftsman God can turn clouds to blessing.

The sea boundary is set and it can’t overstep God’s command…"when you pass through the waters they shall not overwhelm you"… "he marked out the foundations of the earth." Foundations give a structure its integrity, its durability, and the integrity and durability of God’s creation is in his hands. This isn’t science; it’s a way of looking at the world that sees beneath the surface, that senses God at work. All these words are work words, from architects and builders vocabulary. This is God at work. Set in place the heavens… marked out the horizon, established clouds, fixed the deep fountains, set the boundaries of the sea, measured out the foundations. The world isn’t a chaos and neither are our lives. John Newton knew perfectly well that he was exaggerating when he speaks of God ordaining the shape, the precision timing, and the exact location of each falling snowflake and every wind-driven leaf. But he was trying to find pictures for the grace that brings us safe thus far, and the grace that leads us home. Just as Proverbs is trying to give us pictures of a God who doesn’t leave us to our own devices, but who is working in us and through us, in the details and the dailiness of our lives

And if the wind blows, and the leaves fall, then still,in this vast mystery of generous creative yet sometimes fristrating and wounding place we call the world, God works at working things out, according to a purpose established in love deeper than thought.

21 June 2008
Confessions of a Bibliophile: Sam Balentine on Job

No doubt at some stage the credit crunch will hit bibliophiles and books will increase in price, and hard choices will become cultural dilemmas, even existential crises. Now instead of thinking twice, I might have to think again before deciding that a particular book is a necessity as well as a luxury. It isn't the odd paperback that's the problem – it's those works of art, those cultural artefacts we call academic monographs, usually published in a small print run and still built as a book that's meant to last through years of reading and regular loving use. I count a high quality commentary in that bracket – serious scholarship, encased in a book that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

It's an interesting question whether we are more disposed to the contents of a book if its construction, quality of materials, format and layout are part of the way the author's writing is presented to us. Should that recognisably no nonsense navy blue buckram, the high quality paper and discreetly strong stitching, the elegant font and ungrudging space for footnotes, along with the gold crest of Oxford, give an assumption of authority and serious, lasting importance, to a book such as The Countess of Huntigdon's Connexion. A Sect in Action in Eighteenth Cenutry England? And is it worth the price? I can just hear the answers – (most of them I've rehearsed in my own head) –

What? Pay that for a book?

What's wrong with libraries?

How many times do you have to read a book to make it worth the price?

Are you sure you need this, or do you just want it?

To all of which I can construct answers which merely rationalise a decision already made somewhere deep within, in that place where personal indulgence, common sense stewardship and valid personal choice argue out in a process that eventually identifies what, for us, matters more than money. Membership of a golf club or gym, a CD collection, an upper range car, the holidays abroad, the shirt with the small telling logo (which tells others it was expensive); I can do without these if now and again I can have a book like this. See. Told you. Anybody can rationalise when they put their minds to it.

Which is just as well. Cos I've just done it again. Bought an expensive book. Possible alternative routes for the money spent give urgency to the process of post purchase rationalisation. Commentaries now come in all sizes, written for every niche market you can think of, and some of them for niche markets you would never have thought of. Just how many commentaries does any one person need on a biblical book? That is, I think a key question – and being less tongue in cheek, there is now a real danger that too many commentaries eclipse the text they are meant to clarify. For example, a niche set of commentaries with applications, illustrations, not too technical, aimed at preachers, – encourages intellectual and spiritual short-cuts, which eventually short-change both preacher and congregation. Or, on the other hand technical critical commentaries which absorb information like a paper sponge, and expand to pages and pages of information less and less pertinent to the text, merely give commentaries a bad name amongst those who need them most.

Sam Balentine is a Baptist. He is a professor of Hebrew Bible. His commentary on Job arrived yesterday. It wasn't cheap. It was worth every pound. Yes it is beautifully produced; and yes Balentine is a very good writer, deeply conversant with the text, at ease in the world of critical, literary and theological scholarship; yes, he has spent years on this volume, it isn't one of those quickly assembled cut and paste previous stuff and shape it into a commentary efforts, justto* fill the publisher's list. This is the real thing. A commentary that wrestles with text – the text of Scripture, the text of human experience, and does so in a commentary format that is in my view way ahead of the game. (* decided to leave this typo as a new word which refers to those actions of others which are justto impress others!)

The Smyth and Helwys series includes sidebars with relevant and richly sourced comment from literature such as novels and poetry, the text has windows in which important background or social comment offer further interpretive perspectives, illustrations from art and other cultural ways of conveying human responses to God. And all of this in a volume that uses several colours to highlight text, that has imaginative and user friendly layout, and that is simply a joy to read, use and work with. You can see the details of the series here (www.helwys.com/commentary)

No series is worth investing in uncritically. There are strong and weak entries in this series as well. But Terence Fretheim on Jeremiah, Sam Balentine on Job, Walter Brueggemann on Kings, C H Talbert on Romans – these I have used, and for me they are self recommending, as authors I've learned to trust – not because they are always right, but because reading their other work, they have always been important conversation partners. I'm looking forward to some conversations with Balentine and Carol Newsom (in the New Interpreter's Bible) over the summer, about this book which sits in the middle of my Bible like a great chunk of theological granite likely to outlast any question I'm ever likely to ask.

19 June 2008