Living Wittily

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  • If the salt has lost its savour…….

    Letters in The Times on Monday

    Sir, I once had a tube of sea salt which had a long and lovely description how the salt was formed over 200 million years before. At the bottom of the container was a "use by" date. ANDREA RITCHIE.

    Well as Jesus said, "Salt is good, but if it’s past its use by date………………….".

    .

    Sir, Back home in Glasgow once I went into a shop and asked for a dod of cheese. "Certainly Sir. A big dod or a wee dod", was the reply.

    Ye cannae beat customer service and precise instruction, eh?

  • I confess but without repentance….

    First, one of my favourite quotations from Thomas Merton, quoted in Shannon’s biography:

    But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions – because they might turn out to have no answers. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society [ and also in the church] comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.

    09feature1_1 Back in the 80s and 90s I read the five volumes of Thomas Merton’s letters, borrowed for long periods from the University Library. Merton has been like a benevolent virus in my bloodstream ever since I read The Seven Storey Mountain. I struggle to identify with his monastic expression of Christian life, not because I disagree, disapprove or have any right to question the way another follows Jesus – and how Merton followed Jesus. At the same time few writers put into words the spiritual value of the interrogative mood, the maturing power of good questions, and at the same time expresses in beautiful words, the joy of the search for god – and the joy of knowing God seeks us.

    So. In the Old Aberdeen bookshop, I bought the four of the five volumes on the shelf. My spiritual reading for a while is going to be an exercise in reacquaintance – and I’ll still be uneasy about the monastic preoccupations – but I’ll also find my own faith and my own way of following Jesus probed by a consultant on the inner life. The letters to friends, the letters to fellow religious, the letters on social justice and the letters on war and peace are likely to intrigue, frustrate, inspire, annoy, educate and certainly edify (build up) the faith of this baptist bibliophile – who readily confesses to yet another capitualtion, and is so saisfied it would be hypocritical to profess repentance.

    Who else is a Merton fan?

  • Follow, follow, we will follow Jesus……..

    Strachan_gordon_cel_2005 Sectarianism. First Saturday of the Scottish season and a minority of Rangers fans embarrass Scotland again. The chanting of hostility from the terraces, directed at rival fans, is endemic in football. It isn’t only the Old Firm of Rangers and Celtic; Edinburgh and Dundee have their share of poison, and Aberdeen and Rangers can generate their own unique brew of historically specific rage (the tackle of Neil Simpson on Ian Durant that blighted a brilliant career).

    I read some newspaper responses to the behaviour of the small minority of Rangers fans chanting their ridiculous but dangerous version of history at Inverness. Stephen Smith of the Rangers Supporters Trust laid in to the offenders.

    We don’t want a situation where 30 or 40 half wits ruin the relationship between he supporters and the club. These people are idiots who don’t give a monkey’s  about Rangers. They think they can do what they want because they are at a football match. We would back Rangers in identifying  any idiots who bring disrepute to the club.

    Smithwalter070110getty Now I support the courage and bluntness of that. But the truth is, the problem isn’t only lack of education, ill-informed history, ignorant prejudice – it is all of these fuelled by hatred. Let’s use the word. Those ‘party tunes’ and the ‘sectarian chants’ aren’t mildly offensive, or ignorant – they are howls of hate. A sectarian song, whether Rangers or Celtic, mixes the following ingredients. History revised to ensure that the enemy is known, defeated and humiliated; religious affiliation linked to the myth that somehow the present generation is part of that tradition of hate; a liturgy, of hymn and chant, sung in unison, articulating the emotional intensity of a perverted faith that survives by hating the OTHER; and all this complete with the liturgical colours of red, white and blue – or green white and orange – or whatever. The two current managers are pictured because they head up the teams – to my knowledge they are on public record as deploring sectarian behaviour and supporting every effort to stamp it out.

    But lets not talk of idiots and stupidity – lets name sectarian chanting as hate. We aren’t dealing with a problem which is solved only by more information. This isn’t an offence committed by certain people below a certain IQ level. This is a matter of ethics, an issue of moral values, a question of how we view other human beings, an expression of socially shaped character in a sub-culture where hating the religiously other is the norm. Sectarian songs and sectarian language are abusive, corrosive, latently (at times blatantly) violent, intended to provoke and demean; and they are sung just as zealously in Glasgow whether the fans are waving Union Jacks or Irish Tricolours.

    Now here’s a historical curiosity. As far as I can tell, the original refrain, "Follow, Follow", comes in the (horticulturally sentimental) Sankey hymn, ‘Down in the valley with my Saviour I will go’. (Check it out in Sankey’s Hymn Book, number 529). Irony of ironies it’s been hijacked by certain fans of a certain football team, for whom peacemaking is an activity that takes place in a separate universe. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God’. As Jean Luc Picard used to say, ‘Make it so!’

    PS. Rangers have just qualified tonight for the final knock out stage in the Champion’s League. I want them to do well – but more importantly, I want to not be embarassed as a Scotsman, by UEFA having to act against them because their fans were singing sectarian and offensive chants. As Solomon might have said, had he been Scottish, and from Glasgow, ‘Gonnae no dae that? Juist gonnae no?’

  • Pre-emptive confession?

    Off to Aberdeen where I’m preaching on Sunday. Catching up with a number of friends, out for an evening meal with some of them tonight, and then making and taking time to worship together at Crown Terrace Baptist Church tomorrow. Amongst the other friends I’ll catch up with, will be Chris, who owns Old Aberdeen Bookshop.Whenever possible I try to encourage my friends by supporting them in whatever they do that matters to them in life. I don’t often leave Chris’s shop without buying – it’s what Dr Johnson used to call the wise habit of ‘keeping your friendships in good repair’. One way or t’other, a few inches of my shelfspace is about to fill – this is by way of pre-emptive confession.

    And yet – Chris is a friend, and I want to support his business, so that’s all right then. Aye, but what about motivation – is buying books from him further unnecessary self-indulgence, masked by alleged goodwill? So good consequences for the other person, don’t rule out convenient excuse for me. Isn’t life complicated if you think about things too much – maybe that’s why the wise spiritual guides of the past warned against scruples. Evangelical Christians are not immune to this spiritual obsessive compulsive disorder. It takes the form of self-centred wallowing around in our own souls, supposedly concerned about sin when all the time we are self importantly putting our little selfish moral sensitivities at the centre of God’s attention as if God had nothing better to do than monitor our personal guilt thresholds.

    In which case I’m going to just enjoy burrowing for an hour and happily and innocently buy some good books, from a good shop, at a good price, for a really good guy?

    Or is that me rationalising – is that ethical spin doctoring –

    aye probably, but there’s worse things than buying yet more books. One elderly lady we came to love in Aberdeen used to say dismissively to people going on…and on… with their moans and complaints, ‘Aye well – worse things happened at Culloden’.

  • Evangelism as benevolent barrage?

    Aehrenleserinnen_hi John Stackhouse is one of the most stimulating and clear-thinking theologians writing on mission, culture and evangelical theology. His recent article in Books and Culture says important things about gospel faithfulness, cultural relevance, legitimate and effective innovation, and intellectual and theological humility. He is reflecting on what needs to be learned, and unlearned, by a church seeking to embody the call of Christ responsibly and with gospel integrity. The whole article can be read here.

    I’ve quoted the last couple of paragraphs because (for me) they confirm my own underlying uneasiness at the increasing dependence on programme, technique,and ‘resourced mission’ where the resources seem increasingly dependent on human agency. Evangelistic fervour channelled into pragmatically driven activity and missional aspirations which sound more dependent on human energy than the divine work of the Holy Spirit invading and converting, calling and transforming, can easily replace that humble recognition that when allis said and done( by us), there is more to be said and done (by God). This is not to minimise the church’s missional imperative – it is to remind ourselves that it is God’s mission, in which we are invited to share – and the resources are God’s too, which we are invited to offer.

    We have to unlearn, however, our tendency to rely on technical skill and relentless pressure, as if we can manufacture conversions by dint of expertise and enthusiasm. We especially have to discard the dangerous dictum, "Pray as if it all depended upon God, and work as if it all depended on you." That is simply nonsense—or, much worse, a recipe for arrogance, burnout, frustration, and finally hatred of both missions and the neighbors we are supposed to love when they do not yield to our benevolent barrage.

    Conversion is the hardest work in the world, since fundamentally it means to change someone’s loves. (Have you ever tried to change your child’s values? Have you ever tried to change your own?) Such change is literally a miracle of transformation each time, and thus the special province of the Holy Spirit. Yes, let us marshal all the tools and skills and energy we can, but let us use them not anxiously nor proudly, but in the humble confidence that comes from doing God’s work in league with God’s Spirit, under his direction and in his own good time, in his truly global mission.

  • Prayer through sound, but without words

    Paisley1 Last night went to a music concert in Paisley Abbey. The music was unfamiliar, but the New Cologne Chamber Orchestra played to a good crowd, in a building brightened by evening sunlight, and it was a good place to be at the end of a busy burst of work in between holidays. I was able to listen without much visual distraction because we couldn’t see the performers! A level church nave, a seat well back, and some big people in front of me, ensured this was a primarily auditory experience. And the pew seats were clearly designed to prevent sleeping through anything going on at the front!

    Explore6 The flute concerto was the highlight. I’ve always found the flute a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love. Looking down to the magnificent stained glass window, brightened by a sunset, and hearing the sound of flute accompanied by strings – it was prayer through sound, without words. Not unlike my description earlier, prayer as ‘a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love.’

    On a more discordant note – the connection between flutes and drums, in military music, and in the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland, I find offensive. Whether the band is Irish Republican or Orange Lodge, I find the whole performance of marching music commemorating religious conflict inimical to a gospel of peace and reconciliation. One of the most effective exposures of the brutality and hatred that underlies flute and drum music as an expression of religious hatred is in Bernard MacLaverty’s novel, Grace Notes. There is a scene well into the novel where the philabeg drums feature as the destructive, rhythmic symbol of the violence they both foment and portray. The flute is capable of such beautiful, creative, life affirming sound, made by the shaped and directed breath of the performing musician – but so likewise the flute can be made to serve the violent, commemorative sounds of ancient hatreds kept alive by musicians performing for quite other reasons. As an expression of religious conviction – on whichever side plays them – they are a shame and an embarrassment.

    Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God – the flute music I heard last night, in the setting of a place of worship, with the sun streaming through stained glass, in a pre-reformation building, was a gentle defiance of all that would pull our human lives into discordant conflict.

  • Three perspectives on gratitude when growing older

    While clearing out a pile of stuff, I found these three observations I’d typed on a sheet of paper don’t know when –

    Lord grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference

    .

    The elderly gentleman said, ‘I have had bypass surgery, am largely deaf, and have both prostate issues and old age diabetes, and take about 40 different medicines that give me dizzy spells, but thank God, I still have my driver’s licence.

    .

    ‘Who then is God, that we must speak of Him? God is he whom we must thank. To be more precise: God is he whom we cannot thank enough. (Eberhard Jungel)

  • My true name

    41c3cvt5xnl__aa240_  There is a passionate integrity in the lyrics of this album. Carrie Newcomer’s writing is human, humane and humanising – passionate love, reverence for the mystery of human joy and longing, controlled but targeted questioning of the way things are, unembarrassed use of words like tenderness, try to be kind, no shame in asking for help, the importance of our true name, and as she admits – love is too hard to figure. I’ve found myself listening to the lyrics and sensing in myself an answering inquisitiveness about what matters – the relaxed almost conversational singing, the gently interrogative mood of several of these songs, the affirmation of life’s limitations and the need to accept that mistakes, regrets and loss are balanced by possibility of joy, undeserved gift of love and an experienced eye for what is hopeful and worth striving for. I’ve chosen a song as an example of what makes her lyrics(and her performance of them), human, humane and humanising – it’s about our struggle to know and love who we are, and how that’s connected to who loves us.

    My true name

    Let me call you darlin’, maybe call you sweetheart
    Don’t you hate it when they call you Louise
    But isn’t it scary, when they want to call you Mary
    A whore, or a saint, or a tease.
    But you came here in summer, you’d been living in Manhattan
    You caught me wide eyed and half sane
    But you saw to my center past every imposter
    And you whispered My True Name

    _
    I have been Betty, Eleanor and Rosie
    I’ve been the shamed Magdaline
    And if the truth be known I’ve attempted Saint Joan
    Donna, and Sarah, and Jane
    For we all have our heros and we all have tormentors
    and we’ll play them again and again
    But you saw to my center, past every imposter
    And you whispered My True Name
    _

    And if you see me standing on the banks of Lake Griffy
    Throwing white bits of paper to the wind
    I’m just throwing the shards, of all my calling cards
    And I’m speaking My True Name
    I’m just throwing the shards, of all my calling cards
    And I’m whispering My True Name.

    Identity depends on being recognised, on the perception of others as well as that inner awareness of who we are and who speaks our name. I have little difficulty theologising this song – but only after I’ve heard its human longing for recognition from the other, ….and from the Other.

  • Have you ever…..?

    2358179450037305645yzihkm_th At this time of year, for an hour in the early morning, the sun streams into my study onto the computer screen. Why pull the blind, or move the screen – instead I move myself into the window chair, and sit reading in the sunlight. It reminds me of this beautiful poem by a favourite poet, whose love of the world, and whose attentiveness to its nature as gift, reminds me of the liturgical ecology of the ancient Psalmists.

    The Sun

    Have you ever seen

    anything

    in your life

    more wonderful

    _

    than the way the sun,

    every evening,

    relaxed and easy,

    floats towards the horizon

    _

    and into the cloud or the hills,

    or the rumpled sea,

    and is gone—

    and how it slides again

    _

    out of the blackness,

    every morning,

    on the other side of the world,

    like a red flower

    _

    streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

    say, on a morning in early summer,

    at its perfect imperial distance—

    and have you ever felt for anything

    _

    such wild love—

    do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

    a word billowing enough

    for the pleasure

    _

    that fills you

    as the sun

    reaches out,

    as it warms you

    _

    as you stand there

    empty-handed—

    or have you too

    turned from the world—

    _

    or have you too

    gone crazy

    for power,

    for things?

    Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1, pages 50-51.

  • Blog makeover

    Decided the design of the blog was tired and needing a makeover. I like the space and the clearer, larger font, the colours, and the butterfly heading out the top corner for freedom. I’ts called Art Nouveau Red – I think it’s the smartest I’ve had so far. I had a wee problem getting the blog to accept the changes, emailed Typepad help at 6.45 and had an answer an hour later – and the answer solved the problem.