Living Wittily

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  • ‘Forgiveness…the language where we have to live.’

    Anger, pity, always, most, forgive.

    It is the language we surrender by.

    It is the language where we have to live… (Elizabeth Jennings).

    Today’s world, contemporary culture, current social realities – whatever collective abstract nouns we use to describe where and when we live, one feature of it that increasingly troubles me is an unforgiving spirit that extends from personal, to social, to international and even global relationships. The words of Elizabeth Jennings are spiritually wise, but they are also politically necessary. Events in Pakistan and Kenya are merely the latest occasions for simmering hatred and repressed suspicions to erupt in violence and legitimised retaliation. Reading  Christopher Wood’s tome, Victorian Painting the other night, and turning over in my mind a definition of forgiveness written years ago, in the Apostle Paul’s Elizabethan English, "I am persuaded….". I am persuaded that forgiveness is the language where we have to live. And retaliation, recrimination, litigation, compensation, satisfaction, strict justice, confrontation, payback, is the language where usually something, or worse someone, has to die.

    Yhst30479181885695_1978_153395172_4 So. A second generation pre-Raphaelite artist, whose piety was inspired and formed by the example of John Henry Newman, and whose religious imagination conceived some of the most telling works of religious art; and a mid-20th Century Secretary General of the United Nations whose personal diary reveals the sacrificial nature of Christian commitment and who died in circumstances still unexplained. Two men from different centuries, one from England and one from Denmark, one a Victorian artist the other a political diplomat, one who trusted imagination as the way to truth, the other insisting on the world of real human affairs as the place where truth is to be lived. But two men of such integrity that their different ways of embodying the truth that commanded their conscience, became for them another art form expressed in the ultimate human art medium – human life portrayed with accuracy and beauty through the demanding artistic discipline of vocational obedience to Christ. Both were skilled in the language of forgiveness, ‘the language we surrender by. The language where we have to live’.

    Burnjones Burne-Jones’ painting, The Merciful Knight represents the Victorian fascination with medieval chivalry and honour. But what is portrayed in the picture is the subversion of the knight’s code of honour by a higher call. The kneeling knight has earlier forgiven another for the murder of his kinsman. He has stopped at a wayside shrine to pray, and finds himself embraced by the wooden crucified Jesus whose hands are unpinned in order to reach out to the one who is forgiven as he forgave. The helmet is removed revealing the face of the knight as he faces the crucified Christ and is fully and deeply known. The sword is laid down, on the left hand side, the hilt not easily accessible to his right hand. The symbols of power and worldly status are thus surrendered, at the feet of Christ crucified. In a reversal of Jesus prayer for his crucifiers who were oblivious of the eternal consequences of a routine execution, the painting shows that same eternal love reaching out, without the protection of armour, from an instrument of inhuman cruelty to affirm, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

    Interestingly, and just perhaps intentionally, The Merciful Knight is an alternative portrayal of atonement, in which the medieval code of offended honour requiring satisfaction, is subverted by a Knight who forgoes the cultural norm of satisfied honour and in an act of counter-cultural foolishness, forgives the offender. And it is this unreasonable, indeed unchivalrous act of mercy which brings him into the embrace of the Crucified God, as his individual act of forgiveness is drawn into the redemptive suffering of Christ.

    225pxdag_hammarskjold Dag Hammarskjold’s slim volume Markings, is one of the 20th Century’s most intriguing spiritual documents. Notes, quotes, thoughts, prayers, complaints, jotted in a diary found only after his death, revealed a man whose interior world was profoundly influential in how he construed the world of political action. It was in this lean and spare volume of political spirituality and personal longing that I first encountered Hammarskjold’s childlike definition of forgiveness. Childlike isn’t the same as juvenile or reductionist. The word is used in the ‘Except you become as little children’ sense of what the kingdom of God is about. "Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle, by which what is broken is again made whole, and what is soiled is again made clean." The most childlike wish when faced with the harsh reality of the broken favourite toy, is that it be made like new, made whole as if the brokenness hadn’t happened. And when newness is soiled, or beauty spoilt, the same childlike longing is for someone to make it clean. The decisive word is ‘again’, because what is described is renewal, restoration, a process of healing and repair that is costly but enduring.

    One of the most cited lines from Markings asserts, ‘In our era the road to holiness necessarily runs through the world of action’. Hammarskjold knew, as our own age must rediscover, that forgiveness is more an activity than an emotional stance, a making whole and a making clean by acting mercifully and as peacemaker. Burne Jones spent much of his creative energy painting themes and images which celebrated a world where ‘beauty is beautiful’ and where the highest norm is not displayed by personal honour defended by shedding blood. On the contrary, The Merciful Knight, is one who in the world of necessity and action, enacts forgiveness, is embraced by the crucified Christ, and speaks the language where, if our own world is to have a future, we have to live.

  • Death of a footballer – Phil O’Donnell, Motherwell FC

    Now and again something happens which exposes the superficial levels at which we sometimes conduct our mental and emotional lives. Take football. For football supporters the team dominates their worldview. Local economies react to the fortunes of the local team; the morale and hopefulness of whole communities is responsive to the results, the way the season is going, how well the team is playing.Like everyone else the least bit interested in football, I have my opinions, more or less informed, as biased as any pundit, and just as likely to exaggerate the cosmic significance of 90 minutes of grown men huffing and puffing up and down the park.

    1627016 But as I said at the start, sometimes we are all reminded of how fragile life is, how precious and unique and irreplaceable a human being is. And we were so reminded last Saturday, when Phil O’Donnell, the captain of Motherwell Football Club collapsed and died during a match which his team won, and for once the result was an irrelevance.

    Bill Shankly’s famous quip, ‘Football isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s far more important than that’, remains a humorous piece of over-stated rhetoric. But even the most famous of Liverpool managers knew that was exactly what it was, and all that it was. No game is more important than life. The Motherwell manager Mark McGhee, in a statement on behalf of the Club, made it clear that for now, no one was interested in the training pitch, the football pitch or anything else to do with football, till due respect had been paid, till their friend had been remembered and his family cared for. Alongside such sudden tragedy and its human significance, football is relegated to its rightful place.

    So yes, football can give rise to some of the silliest, overblown claims about the game’s importance. And sometimes listening to those involved in ‘the game’, you wonder if the real world ever gets a look in. But countless football supporters live out their inner struggles through the ups and downs of their team. Their identity and sense of who they are is mortgaged to the team, the stadium, the colours, the names and numbers on the shirts. And that became so obvious as I watched the devastated groups gathering around Fir Park. Football has its problems alright, but when you witness the sense of loss, the genuine grief and sorrow of a community at the death of a young family man, you become aware of the social and humanising importance of sport when it is exemplified in such popular, respected and decent players; and when it evokes such humane and genuine affection.

    With apologies to Bill Shankly, football isn’t a matter of life and death; rather it is one way in which many people celebrate the life they live in their community, and live through the joy and sorrow that are the changing colours of every individual life. The current practice of a round of applause in appreciation of a footballer who has died is both moving and an important reminder, that life is irreplaceably precious, and that at its best, for football players, football is one expression of that hunger and vitality to achieve through effort, to excel in skill, to express the reality of who they are, through a game that when played both fairly and skillfully, and with all my prejudice admittedly showing, is a beautiful game. Phil O’Donnell was a player who graced the teams he played for, and who gave back in dignity and sportsmanship, easily as much as he earned.

    One extra fragment of evidence to add to widespread testimony and appreciation – outside Fir Park there are scarves left in tribute from many different teams, including both Celtic (whom Phil O’Donnell played for) and Rangers. In sorrow and loss of such a good man, sectarianism is transcended, blue and green on the same side – no bad tribute in itself.

  • Is counting your blessings a form of spiritual spin-doctoring?

    Any meaningful review of what my life has been through 2007 should balance negatives and positives. But if I gave an accurate review I would probably have to indulge in a bit of spin, to make this past year sound better than in fact it turned out to be. "Count your blessings" is one of those Promise Box type of exhortations that is devotionally valid but not always emotionally feasible. Of course a positive spin on how we tell our story doesn’t need to mean that the good stuff is invented or misleadingly told; just that emphasis is laid, attention is paid, capital is made, out of those experiences and circumstances that, in memory and mind, evoke positive feelings. So I count my blessings, name them one by one…..it’s just that there is another list of ambiguities that’s just as long, and often not as obviously beatitudinal. And my journey with God has involved both experiences I thank God for, and other happenings and experiences I wish hadn’t happened.

    But the hard stuff also has its value. Life enriching experiences aren’t always counted as blessings at the time. Often those that enrich most initially seem emotionally expensive, relationally demanding, requiring that we grow in new directions, perhaps taking us through valleys of deep darkness where the presence of God might be felt more as absence than nearness. Which means even our hardest experiences can be beatitudinal. That’s twice I’ve intentionally, and with theological awareness used this clumsily precise word – ‘beatitudinal’.

    When Jesus spoke of those who were Blessed, he wasn’t referring to those who could ‘count their blessings’ in a process of positive spin. He was talking about the meek and materially disadvantaged, the mourner coming to terms with loss and sorrow, the unjustly treated who hungers for the right to be done and seen to be done, the peacemaker who exists in relation to conflict, the merciful who confronts wrong with forgiveness, the persecuted whose sense of being threatened is subsumed beneath a sense of being held. A beatitudinal life is one in which, whatever happens, we need fear not, for it is our Father’s good pleasure to give the Kingdom.

    So as a statement of honesty, for many reasons that don’t need to be told here, this has been on balance, a hard year. That isn’t a negative statement meant to evoke sympathy, it’s as factual and physical, and as significant as if I said the road from here to where I was born passes through some of Scotland’s bleakest moorland – it’s part of the journey from here to there. But it has been a beatitudinal year,in the kinds of ways Jesus declared blessed. Joy and sorrow, peace and anxiety, trust and doubt, companionship and loneliness, healing and hurt, gain and loss, fun and frustration, achievement and failure – and between these poles of human experience, enfolding us within purposes beyond our knowing, the purifying love and merciful constancy of the Triune God.

    I suppose what I feel more than anything else on this first day of 2008, is that, year on year, I confess with more attempted humility but also more trusting hopefulness, that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, are the fundamental blessings that make my life beatitudinal no matter what. And counting them is easy – they come to Three in One!

  • Broccoli, growing older and globalisation

    Broccoli is good for one, so I am told. So like medicine I take it sometimes cos it’s good for one.

    Broccoli2 That’s probably why the elderly pensioner I met at the vegetable counter in our local supermarket was looking to buy some, but grimacing at the price. She had a broccoli head in her hand, and was wringing away at the long thick stalk, trying to break an inch or two off, her face still a grimace of frustration. I would have offered to help, because I thought myself the stalks were too long, and the purplish green floret head too small. Half the weight was in the part you throw away. What’s more, I thought, if broccoli is shipped from Spain should it not be mainly the edible part that’s transported and thus responsible for the carbon footprint? In any case, as my senior friend was discovering, the stalk was bendy and lacking in that crispness that is a sign of fresh harvesting – and would have made it easier to break!

    Made me think about globalisation and growing older. A conversation with another senior citizen (I like that term, especially if it preserves a non-patronising respect for age, and acknowledges affectionately the value of cumulative wisdom and years of human experience) – this other senior citizen was pointing out that her favourite butter spread, Lurpak, has rocketed in price, (30%) as has milk and bread because, as she informed me, there is a global grain shortage. Indeed there is – and for many older people, and others on fixed or low incomes, such price fluctuations compel hard choices. In a society where disposable income is high amongst the haves, maybe globalisation is a blessing all but unmixed.

    But disposable income, that income buffer-zone that absorbs price variations with minimal disruption to quality of life, is all but extinct amongst the have-nots. So limited and fixed income can make a significant difference to quality of life, erode morale and a sense of independence and personal hopefulness, and undermine the confidence that ordinary things are still affordable. I’ve little patience for those retail emotional health bulletins that agonise over consumer confidence. They are not ususally referring to the pensioner who can’t now afford Lurpak, or who wants to break the neck of the nearest broccoli head.

    So I have great sympathy with my elderly shopping colleague, and her covert assault on a bendy broccoli stem with a too heavy carbon footprint. Would it have been an act of prophetic protest and solidarity with the poor to snap off the unwanted chunk of broccoli stalk for her? Or should I have waited at the check-out and paid for an extra one and given it to her, making sure the manager knew what was going on and why?

    I did neither, and I regret that.

  • The politics of assassination and the politics of peace

    The murder of Benazir Bhutto, and its aftermath of escalating casualties, is yet another atrocity visited on a world where exponents of terrorism, political enmity and religious hatred, ruthlessly use the publicity value of random lethal violence. No political or religious goals can escape the searching scrutiny of human beings applying human values to that inhuman moral nihilism that not only sees human lives as dispensable, but considers the inflicted death of others an acceptable means to a desired end. I have no moral calculus that enables me to work out whatever mad logic or rogue religious devotion triggers such destructive hatred.

    Yet nothing I can write here, nor the familiar rhetoric of outrage and appalled condemnation from politicians, is likely to influence whatever powerfully corrosive forces fuel such outbursts of death-dealing animus. What I can do though, is take time to think and pray, to weigh carefully and consider contemplatively, how the Body of Christ can articulate the love of God, demonstrate the peace of the Gospel hopefully, embody the ministry of reconciliation practically, and give credible expression to the sorrow of the Crucified God who bears the infinite cost of redeeming humanity from our self-destructive ways.

    ‘Make me a channel of your peace, where there is hatred let me bring your love……’ That I think, is the kind of New Year resolution that will take grace to keep.

    Kyrie Eleison

    Christe Eleison

    Kyrie Eleison

  • The Church of Jesus Christ and the territorial imperative

    A retrograde step for ecumenism.

    A scene reminscent of The Life of Brian.

    An illustration of religious devotion carried too far.

    A new approach to church cleaning.

    A sign that when it comes to loving and following Jesus, the church still doesn’t "get it".

    An alternative approach to spiritual warfare.

    Or just one more reason why a Gospel of peace and reconciliation lacks credibility in an age long past skepticism and cosily habituated to cynicism.

    The story is carried by AOL. Judge for yourself – then perhaps find time to pray…..

    Priests Fight at the Site of Christ’s Birth

    Broom-wielding priests fought each other at the site of Christ’s birth after rows broke out between rival factions as they arrived to clean the shrine.

    The robed Greek Orthodox and Armenians clashed inside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

    The basilica, built over the grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities. Any perceived encroachment on one group’s area can lead to vicious feuds.

    Dozens of priests and cleaners went to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January.

    But the cleaning session turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church’s section, setting off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

    Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue.

  • …compassion and ethically galvanised sorrow for the state of the world

    Merton1 Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain is a flawed masterpiece of spiritual autobiography. But frankly, any spiritual autobiography that isn’t flawed isn’t much good to those of us who, flawed as we are ourselves, are looking for companions in realism, guides who even if they know the road better than we do, still find it hard to follow. What makes Merton’s self-told story both fascinating and moving, is that it was written by a young man who, in later life, regretted some of the faults in his book that others were quick enough to point out to him.

    With distance it’s obvious, at times embarrassingly obvious, that the book is marred by the triumphalism of pre Vatican II Roman Catholicism and by Merton’s dismissiveness, even caricature, of other Christian traditions.

    And then also, at times Merton’s memories of his own sinfulness get him entangled in explaining the machinations and intricacies of his guilt-laden conscience to his readers, but only succeeding in a less than authentic moralising and self-despising, which is hindsight at its least helpful as it hints at a still uncompleted sense of renewal through forgiveness.

    And his earlier separation of sacred and secular amounted to a practical dualism, a separation of life into categories of holiness that he later did much to oppose. Some of his best later writing provides important guidance on how to live a whole life in which such categories dissolve into a reconciled worldview, a balanced lifestyle and an openly generous spirituality that is alert to the presence and activity of God in all things. It’s this later Merton I most value, before his fascination with Eastern faith traditions pushed him towards much less orthodox interests.

    But reading this book again over Christmas my respect and affection for Merton is undiminished. Because with all its flaws it is a book that tackles the big question of our life’s meaning, of whether life is driven by a sense of the rights and selfishnesses of the sovereign fragemented self, or whether life’s purpose is to be discovered in response to God’s call to lose ourselves in self-surrender to the sovereign love and severe mercy of the one in whose gift is our life, and in whose healing is our wholeness. I am a Baptist, not a Trappist; yet I sense a kindred spirit in Merton, one who knows as I know myself, that the call of God is both sovereign command and self-giving love. And that in our encounter with Christ we touch the deepest reality of all, the Reality that not only enables us to be, but wills our being, eternally, redemptively, entirely, and wills our being for no other reason than love for us, and for the whole creation that awaits its redemption.

    The fact that Merton’s was a monastic vocation in the middle years of the 20th Century does nothing to reduce the relevance and very great importance of his insights into the disfigurements and diseases of 21st century existence. Indeed he believed that as a contemplative holding the world in his heart before God, he was called to see clearly, to speak courageously and to act prophetically on behalf of peace and humanity. And this is possible at all because it is the contemplative who takes time to see below the surface of things, to view the world from a spiritual standpoint, to develop and nurture resources of compassion and ethically galvanised sorrow for the state of the world.

    51ttif4gqll__ss500_ As an Evangelical, I am aware of the deep resources of intentional silence, thoughtful solitude, contemplative and compassionate reflection, which the monastic tradition instils – and of which Evangelicals are often impatient or even suspicious. But in a world that is complex now beyond description, in which ethical choices are reduced to pragmatic options, when huge issues of the human future now need addressing, there is a need for a durable spiritual resourcefulness rooted deep in the Christian tradition. Our churches need to begin forming and nurturing people trained and rooted in contemplative wisdom, communities hungry for a recovery of personal holiness formed through prayer but allied to an ethical agility unafraid of tight-ropes. Globalisation and consumerism, terrorism and militarism, pluralism and polarisation, ecological urgency and theological uncertainty, are some of the oscillating voices of a world confused by its own complexity, and bankrupt by its own profligacy.

    The writing and the legacy of Thomas Merton is for me, an important resource, empowering and articulating such politically responsive and spiritually responsible prayerfulness. I know of little in Evangelical spiritual practices which come near to such non-functional contemplative dwelling in the Reality of God so as to challenge pervasive realities such as global consumerism. Somewhere in our missiologically driven activism, there must be found place for contemplative prayer, dwelling deep in the truth and Reality of God, learning patiently to see clearly and act faithfully.

    In the coming year, I will offer occasional reminders of Merton’s gift for transfusing contemplative prayer and faithful action into a life that is Christian, explicitly and outspokenly, Christian.

  • Dr Who and Chocolate Gu

    Gu_chocosouffles I don’t usually watch Dr Who, but since our Christmas meal was around our usual tea-time and I needed an interlude between Main Course (which I cooked) and Dessert, I joined the hardened fans in our family and watched the Christmas Special. Glad I was using it more as a mere background context during which to savour and relish and generally appreciate the warm gooey Gu chocolate souffle accompanied by luxury custard, which was entertainmemnt enough and more. In contrast to the rich, life affirming inner glow created by this well conceived coincidence of ingredients, warm soft chocolate and custard you stand a spoon in, the Dr Who episode was an ill conceived coincidence of cliches that did little to divert my attention from the main feature of my early evening, the aforementioned dessert.

    Knowing the nutritional information on both the pudding and the custard it would be a bit rich to claim that the dessert did my heart good in any literal, physiological sense. But in the figurative and emotional well-being sense, it did indeed do my heart good; it was deeply comforting, therapeutically life enhancing, and spiritually formative – cos I  now know what it would be wrong to have too much of, and I’m off to knock off twice the number of calories consumed in said dessert on the exercise bike – Oh but it’s worth it, every laborious minute sat on the cycle seat…………..it is, indeed, worth it!

  • ….stoops heaven to earth….

    Burne36 In an extended poem of mixed quality, is to be found one of the finest theologically centred verses Richard Crashaw ever wrote. The Incarnation lies at the heart of Christian faith. Yet however precisely we formulate theological statements and calibrate doctrinal definitions in order not to say too much or too little; or however much we more humbly take refuge in paradox, and contemplate the mystery of the ages being revealed in the birth of a child; it may be that poets are our best guides, with the gift of imagination both reverent and daring, and using and crafting words less concerned with metaphysical precision than with spiritual comprehension. Doxology, the expression of praise through words which themselves must always be scandalously inadequate because human, are yet deemed worthy of the worship of God and the contemplation of the Divine Love, by none other than the Word made flesh:

    Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!
       Eternity shut in a span.
    Summer to winter, day in night,
       Heaven in earth, and God in man.
    Great little One! Whose all-embracing birth
    Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

    Earlier this week marked the tercentary of the birth of Charles Wesley. He wrote many hymns on Christ’s nativity, but it is in one of his most famous hymns that he conveys the concentrated focus of God’s intention in the Incarnation.

    He left his Father’s throne above-

    So free, so infinite his grace-

    Emptied himself of all but love,

    and bled for Adam’s helpless race.

    ‘Tis mercy all, immense and free;

    For, O my God, it found out me

    Later this morning we will go to Choral Communion at the historic Paisley Abbey. I think a Choral Christmas Communion is one of those liturgical occasions when worship arises from the heart, almost against our will. Or at least thought and feeling, memory and intention, joyful Advent and remembered Easter, draw the soul upwards, wondering and mystified by a God whose love coalesces in the humility of Incarnation and the humiliation of Atonement, and yet, because we know how the story ends, humble redeeming love triumphs in reconciliation, resurrection and new creation.

    Charles Wesley again:

    Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace,

    Hail the Sun of righteousness;

    light and life to all he brings

    risen with healing in his wings:

    mild he lays his glory by

    born that we no more may die

    born to raise us from the earth

    born to give us second birth:

    Hark the herald angels sing

    Glory to the new-born King.

    Glory indeed!

    As those embarrassed people say at the moment of their sudden fame, I’d just like to say hello to everyone who knows me! and have a Joyful Christmas!

  • Tradition and Sausage Rolls

    Every family has its traditions, and Christmas is one of the best times to have them. One of ours is about home made sausage rolls for our Christmas Eve savoury supper around midnight. Now sausage rolls can represent the lower end of the gastronomic food chain. We’ve all been at those functions where you’re not sure if it’s wise to actually eat the grey paste encountered under a tube of glutty pastry. Or we may even have bought those solid little wodges of amorphous protein wrapped in a blanket of flaky but elasticated dough, purchased in bulk from the various supermarkets, and wondered afterwards if these sad objects closely or remotely resemble what any of us envisages by the term sausage roll. Now to avoid ambiguity, I don’t mean a sausage ( flat or round or link) in a roll / bap – a kind of burger or hot dog kind of thing. No. Not that.

    I mean a sausage roll, real sausage meat, mixed with bacon, herbs, mustard, Worcester sauce and spices, wrapped in puff pastry, cut into medallions and brushed with egg-yolk, and cooked for 45 minutes in the oven until the house is pervaded by the smell of cooked bacon, mustard and herbs de provencale, and the inhabitants are queueing up at the kitchen waiting for the oven beeper to beep. Ours is one of the few places I know where serving sausage rolls requires mild forms of crowd control!

    In keeping with tradition – I’m away to make the sausage rolls, which we’ll cook later. And if we can work the technology, I’ll even post a picture of what REAL sausage rolls look like. Can’t show you what they taste like though – typepad doesn’t do smells yet.

    Whirlpool More seriously, and equally joyfully, a very happy Christmas to all those who make a habit of coming past this blog, and to those who happen by over Christmas. May you know the peace of God, the love of Christ and the renewing life of the Holy Spirit. And may our world be touched again by the Advent God who comes to us as Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. Emmanuel – God with us.