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  • Trump not used to being trumped?

    Alex Salmond is furious! The SNP Government have called in Donald Trump’s planning application after it was rejected by a local infrastructure committee. Now just to be clear, the SNP is the party committed to independence, and when it suits, becomes vocal about Scotland‘s beauty, its capacity to be self-sustaining, and the Scottish character trait of independence of mind.

    Photo_contact_3 How dare a local authority committee thwart corporate America? Sure the planned site up at Balmedie (see photo) is an area of outstanding beauty. And yes it is recognised as an area of special scientific interest on a world scale. Oh, and yes, it is the stopping point for thousands and thousands of migrating birds. And then, it’s surely too much to ask Mr Trump and his corporate executive go-getters to adjust the plans, to make concessions to local concerns. And then again, having failed to get planning permission because of a casting vote by a single committee convener, Mr Trump magnanimously declines to appeal, leaving the next move to a Scottish Government as independent as a struggling cash-strapped business afraid of losing the big contract.

    But a Government isn’t a business – it is an elected body accountable to the people, and required to respect the decisions of democratically elected and locally devolved expressions of government. But Mr Salmond is furious! So let’s move the goalposts and change their dimensions; and let’s add on as much extra time as it takes; and we could show a couple of red cards to the opposition for something or other; oh, and what about ensuring the referee knows who’s paying his match fee. In other words, let’s call this decision in, even if it isn’t appealed, and since Mr Salmond is sidelined cos the proposed development is in his constituency, let’s have an impartial discussion that gets the decision right this time so that Mr Salmond can stop being furious.

    If independence means anything other than defining ourselves by who we are not, then there is a serious political and moral-philosophical problem here. The political problem is who owns the word independence and who has the right to define its content and meaning? Is local government allowed to act independently and reflect the local concerns and context in their decision-making; or should every local committee now see its more significant decisions as provisional, hanging on the approval or say-so of Ministers more influenced by dollar-toting developers than local opinion, ecological concerns, or matters of Scottish heritage? Can local committees be treated in such a way that Martin Ford, convener of the offending committee, says unequivocally that members of the committee have been bullied? Will there be a public enquiry we wonder, where wider questions, local voices, and informed discussion can take place? And if there is, will Mr Trump’s spokes-people do the courtesy of attending, listening, and perhaps even modifying plans as requested previously? Or is it a case of money talking, one of the most powerful weapons of economic imperialism, and best resisted with that Scottish character trait – independence, of mind and nation.

    The moral-philosophical problem arises when the interests of economic development conflict with the interests of natural heritage and ecological concern. That will always be a complex and contested discussion – as it should be. What is not so clear is whether the SNP Government have any interest, at least in this particular debate, in giving any serious consideration to what such a development would do to a significant and beautiful part of Scotland‘s natural heritage. What chance tern colonies, visiting waders, unique ferns and mosses, 4,000 year old sand dunes, long windswept white sanded beaches and some of the most attractive coastline in Scotland? Just what price would we put on natural beauty?

    Then of course there is the question of footprints. I don’t mean the intriguingly lingering prints of beach walkers who have walked these beaches in their thousands for centuries without worrying about yells of ‘four’. I mean the carbon footprints of thousands of golfers jetting in, playing golf and jetting off. I mean the cost in energy and materials of building the project, maintaining it, creating the infrastructure. Again all complex stuff. But how much weight will such issues carry in discussions and decisions once the Ministers ‘call in’ the decision?

    Mr Salmond is furious. I’m not too pleased myself.

  • More Blessed E-mails

    Selected Incoming Emails over two days.

    1. A courtesy reminder from Glasgow Uni Library about books now due, with the gentle threat of draconian fines. So I returned them
    2. Suggested arrangements from my pal Ken, coming over from the States and wanting to meet up. Where else, out at the Fort, in Borders, at Starbucks, near Christmas.
    3. A friend informed me that a mutual friend has died suddenly, and my sadness is immediate and heartfelt. I pray for her and her family.
    4. Amazon inform me that Jurgen Moltmann’s Autobiography, In a Broad Place, has just shipped from the US and will be with me by New Year. It will displace all other reading as soon as it arrives.
    5. Confirmation a meeting is cancelled leaving space for other things that also need doing. The tyrranny of the diary occasionally broken.
    6. Extra papers arrive for a big all day meeting on Monday. I refuse to open the attachments till early Monday. The tyrranny of the immediate, the urgent, the allegedly essential is also occasionally broken.
    7. A thank you from the University nursery for sending now obsolete Paisley University headed paper to the nursery where children will ‘recycle’ them.

    Email002 It’s too easy to moan and grump about email, the work it creates, the administrative nagging it represents, the impersonal tone and blunt instrument prose. But it also allows all kinds of social exchange – and can usually be humanised and made people friendly. On balance, I wouldn’t have wanted to not receive any of these emails – except maybe the late papers. But even then – why not make allowances for those times when people’s work is done late? How do I know the hassle, the late working, the impossible workloads, and the normal failings and mistakes of ordinary folk trying to do their job? Have I never missed a deadline, overlooked an important detail, failed with the best will in the world to get through the day’s ‘to do’ list? Course I have – and so have you.

    Blessed are those who receive emails, and the wisdom, humour and patience, to see the humanity of the person who clicked ‘SEND’.

  • …. as the darkness clears away….

    Whirlpool_2

    .

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    Mortal Flesh

    Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
    And with fear and trembling stand;
    Ponder nothing earthly minded,
    For with blessing in His hand,
    Christ our God to earth descendeth,
    Our full homage to demand.

    King of kings, yet born of Mary,
    As of old on earth He stood,
    Lord of lords, in human vesture,
    In the body and the blood;
    He will give to all the faithful
    His own self for heavenly food.

    Rank on rank the host of heaven
    Spreads its vanguard on the way,
    As the Light of light descendeth
    From the realms of endless day,
    That the powers of hell may vanish
    As the darkness clears away.

    At His feet the six wingèd seraph,
    Cherubim with sleepless eye,
    Veil their faces to the presence,
    As with ceaseless voice they cry:
    Alleluia, Alleluia
    Alleluia, Lord Most High!

    Web_5

  • Hopeful Imagination and Advent

    Today I posted over at hopeful imagination Advent is an important time for me, and I’m already well launched on Advent Reflection after my week-end up in Inverness. There is a daily posting at Hopeful Imagination so go looking each day during Advent.

    O Come, O Come, Emmanuel…….

  • Hilton Hospitality and Advent Worship

    Churchlife Back in circulation after returning from my jaunt to the Highland city of Inverness. New friendships, renewed friendships, thinking together with folk as we move into Advent, sensing and exploring the spiritual and pastoral life of another Christian community – all made it a great week-end.

    Highlights other than the in-church activities included supporting Ross County as they tried to smite the Raith Rovers Amalekites; the steak pie at half time; an evening meal with friends from way back which included Morag’s chicken, cooked by Iain; Sunday lunch at the manse where hospitality is warm, generous and the home made chocolate sauce sinfully more-ish. I know cos I sinned!

    150pxcandleburning Advent is an important time of waiting – perhaps in a culture which worships instant, we need a place in the practices of our faith where we learn again to wait, to anticipate, and to recognise that while patience is a virtue, impatience can sometimes be an indication of how important whatever we are waiting for is!

    So morning by morning, with my advent candle lit, mind and heart and will turn towards the great promises of Isaiah, and I pray for an Isaianic vision of how what is can be renewed, how the status quo is rendered provisional by the God who has seen it all before. And so the light of Christ shines, and the darkness cannot comprehend it. I love the double meaning of that older word – the darkness can neither understand, or engulf, the light of Christ.

    Thechurch_2 Thank you Hilton congregation for having me as your guest – and may Advent draw you into the future where God awaits you, and into which God accompanies you. And by the way, the photo of the Hilton Church, with the cross above the cherry blossom, is a rich symbol which carries with it a sense of the abundant, extravagant fruitfulness of life lived within all the promises and purposes of God. I know it’s a Spring picture – but Advent is about anticipation of light, growth, life and the renewal of creation by the Creator. Just look at the profusion of blossom, like a garland of grace – dead Advent that, so it is!

  • Hidden graces and glimpsed generosities….

    ‘The most complete novel I know in the English language is….’ Now that’s a sentence that has an almost ulimited number of possible endings, depending on who is saying it. Some would say Middlemarch, by George Eliot. No doubt whatsoever, Middlemarch is a sumptuously long, intricately contrived, precisely plotted novel richly populated with characters whose inner lives are narrated and monitored by a knowing narrator. Others may stake a claim for Henry James, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and we could all compile our listmania recommendations.

    51kbbsnupwl__aa240_ But the person who said to me, ‘The most complete novel in the English language is….’ was referring not to the great tradition, but to a novelist long out of fashion, and to a novel not recognised as her greatest. Yet The Dean’s Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge was passionately advocated by my friend while she was in hospital, and during a conversation ranging from Wordsworth to Ruskin ( we were both reading the latest biographies, she of Wordsworth, me of Ruskin), from Dickens to Manley Hopkins. So I read it, and I haven’t read enough novels to make the same exclusive claim that it is the most complete novel in the English language; but it is one of the most satisfyingly resolved novels I’ve ever read.

    It is gentle but sharply observed, sentimental in a way that affirms emotion as an essential barometer of humanity, it avoids the unlikely coincidences that drive Charles Dickens, the fateful providences of Thomas Hardy, the mature and serious playfulness of George Eliot. Instead it draws you into a story where the characters are people, but also a city, and a cathedral, and a community that like a finely calibrated clock runs reliably until something jumps out of synchronic movement, and then needs repairing.

    4193 I’ve read it four times – and would have read it again this December but instead have leant it to a very good friend who will be the richer over Advent for reading it. The story revolves around the last months of a year leading up to Christmas, the plot centres around the Dean, his watch, the clockmaker, the apprentice, and the cathedral and city. And it does indeed, meander and twist and move towards completion until the entire story is resolved. Goudge constructs characters who are uncomplicated, lacking the ambiguity and complexity of  the modern ‘literary novel’. But her aim is to tell a story, to create place, people, circumstance within a providence that is merely hinted.

    Eliot’s Middlemarch it is not. But a woman whose father, H L Goudge, was known for carrying the bags of local tramps up the hill to the vicarage and offering them a bath, or sitting on the pavement talking to travelling people, is someone who understands the hidden graces and glimpsed generosities of ordinary human lives. The Dean’s Watch is a tale of redemption, told within the ordinary, where sin is sin, and grace is grace, but grace abounds, people change, where life is told as a story framed in the goodness of and mystery of a Love both pervasive and elusive.

    By the way that last sentence could stand as a good description of Advent… " a tale of redemption, told within the ordinary, where sin is sin, and grace is grace, but grace abounds, people change, where life is told as a story framed in the goodness of and mystery of a Love both pervasive and elusive". I am at Inverness with the good people of Hilton Church – some of whom regularly call by here. So I’ll return the compliment and go visit to share an Advent weekend.

  • I press God’s lamp close to my breast…..

    A0000730_2Ever since R E O White, previous Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, mentor, friend and occasionally ascerbic critic, brought a lecture alive with these last lines of Browning’s Paracelsus, they have expressed for me that defiant hopefulness that is part of faith when it is at its most desperate.

    Advent is coming – arise shine, your light has come…

    O come, O come Emmanuel….., – God with us. The presence that pierces the gloom – that is what Browning means in these lines which fully recognise that the danger and the darkness are real, but yet know, that in that place where knowing matters most, what is really real is the light of God, as it shines in Christ, and the darkness cannot comprehend it, or overcome it.

    If I stoop

    Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,

    It is but for a time;

    I press God’s lamp

    Close to my breast;

    Its splendour soon or late

    Will pierce the gloom;

    I shall emerge one day.

    Robert Browning, Paracelsus

  • The limitations of arithmetic in theological discourse

    Those reading the comments on the NT Haiku Post will have noticed that my normally reliable arithmetic suffered a recent lapse. However, though this might have undermined my theological confidence, I appeal to Basil the Great to put such a marginal lapse in arithmeticality in its proper persepctive.

    704 When the Lord taught us the doctrine of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he did not make arithmetic a part of this gift! He did not say, ‘In the first, the second, and the third’, or ‘In one, two and three’…The Unapproachable One is beyond numbers, wisest sirs…There is one God, and Father, One Only Begotten Son, and one Holy Spirit. We declare each Person to be unique, and if we must use numbers, we will not let a stupid arithmetic lead us astray to the idea of many gods.’

    Basil the great, On The Holy Spirit, (New York: St Vladimir’s seminary Press, 1980), para 44.

  • Haiku NT Introduction Update

    St_markgospel_tm The Haiku NT Introduction is coming along nicely – still some opportunities for others to share their amusing musings.

    Most NT introductions are 486 pages – if you use the 5x7x5 model for Haiku we will have a NT Introduction of 486 syllables! (28×17)

    I think I have all the correct names beneath the compositions so far, but let me know if I have wrongly attributed a work of genius to the wrong person. By the way, not allowed to do the Pastorals or the Johannines or the Thessalonians as composite correspondence – must do each book – all 28 of them. Happy haiku!

    Gospel of Matthew

    Son of Abraham
    Brings fulfilment of Torah
    Global Commission

    Catriona

    .

    Gospel of Mark
    Good news! Here’s a tale –
    starts with mid-life crisis, then
    stops before life starts.

    Andy Jones

    .

    Gospel of Luke

    Good News! For the poor,
    ‘Sinners’ and tax-collectors:
    Healing salvation.

    Catriona

    .

    Gospel of John

    The Word became flesh.
    Uncomprehending darkness
    eclipsed by the light.

    Jim Gordon

    .

    Acts

    In Jerusalem

    The Word in gracious power

    To all the world’s end.

    Jason Goroncy

    .

    Romans

    Saving God seeks… you:
    sin-spoiled, grace-gained, destined. Die
    to self, live to love.

    Andy Jones

    .

    Galatians

    In Christ free at last
    They try to re-enslave me
    Glory in God’s Cross

    Jason Goroncy

    .

    Ephesians

    God (who called you to
    the skies) fill, gift and grow you;
    live in light as one!

    Andy Jones 

    .

    Philemon
    Neither slave nor free!
    Since bound together in Christ,
    Free Onessimus.

    Jim Gordon

    .

    Hebrews

    Spoken by the Son
    Lo, our great high priest has come
    Grace be with you all

    Jason Goroncy

    .

    James

    Oft misunderstood
    Harmony of faith and deeds
    Practical wisdom

    Catriona

    .

    Revelation

    Valour in suff’ring
    The Lamb who opens the scroll
    Making all things new

    Jason Goroncy

  • Derek Adams, Ross County and Christians in Sport

    Derekadams Derek Adams appointed head Coach at Ross County. Well, you might wonder what that has to do with most of the folk who click in and out of my life on this blog. I met Derek Adams in 1984, when he was 9, and wanted to be a footballer like his dad, George Adams. Derek with his family were in Crown Terrace Baptist Church in Aberdeen, and he and George remain active in Christians in Sport. They are also good friends, so why not mention them – anyway I’m up in Inverness next week, and they are playing Raith Rovers at home, so I’m going. Probably be freezing, but that’ll let me sample the pies and the hot chocolate. Salad, apple or grapes don’t do it for me at a fitba match – need the calories, the heat and the frisson of guilt that accompanies a pie with broon sauce.

    It makes me feel my age that Derek is now a football manager with his playing career at the later stages. Today in his first game in charge as head coach at Ross County, they won 4-0. I used to play five a side with Derek, and occasionally got past him! Learned some of his skills from us amateurs whose talent remained undiscovered. Och aye, the boy’s done good, but.