Living Wittily

Blog

  • Urban Warriors

    Cimg0443500x375_2  Sitting at Cardonald pedestrian traffic lights two pigeons flew over the car and landed on the road island, standing on the road studs for visually impaired folk. Green man comes on, bleeper bleeps, and they start strutting across the road,the arrogant saunter of ornithological neds, just making it before the lights flashed and the traffic started moving. Last I saw them they were plundering the remains of someone’s discarded takeaway.

    Rock_pigeon_dove_thumbnail Pigeon’s – not the Mary Poppins, ‘Feed the Birds Twopence a Bag’ kind; and not the biblical or liturgical dove of peace either; but the hardened urban warriors who work part time as the auxilliary co-opted members of local authority cleansing operatives. And as evolutionary survival tactics, they do us the service of eating our throwaway rubbish and set an example by waiting for the green man before crossing.

  • ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft agley’.

    Thumbnail6 The title of the post is from one of Robert Burn’s best known poems, ‘To a Mouse’. In the aftermath of the Scottish Election debacle, Radio Scotland, Radio Clyde and other local stations had all kinds of informed pundits, public commentators, academics as political apologists, apologies for politicians but few apologies from politicians, all giving there take on what went wrong. With a court case threatened about one seat where a majority of 48 is a figure only 1/20th of the number of spoilt votes, the scale of the scandal is put into some perspective. And yes, whatever went so badly wrong – was someone’s responsibility, and needs sorted. The number of spoilt votes now exceeds the combined turnout for three constituencies!

    But my day was made by one of the presiding officers, responding to email and phone-in suggestions that if people filled the voting forms in wrong it was because they were stupid. Not trying to hide her serious no’ pleasedness, she put aside the protocols of public discourse and suggested such people got right up her nose, made her blood boil and should be neither seen nor heard, and she’d like to have a (private and probably unrepeatable) word with them. After which she resumed her public persona and said. ‘People aren’t stupid. It was a new system. They simply made a mistake. And that can happen to anyone.’

    Later, when the debate between stupid or mistake was taken out onto the streets, we got the definitive answer from someone whose career path, probably to our considerable loss, didn’t take him into politics. Asked whether he felt stupid, or had just made a mistake, one of the public declared with considered solemnity and self deference;

    ‘Naw. Ah juist made a mistake. (Momentary pause…..) It wis a stupid mistake, but!’

    I love the wisdom, and forbearance of the Scottish public – and the creative use of grammar by putting a conjunction at the end of a sentence for emphasis. Guid rhetorical strategy, is it no’ juist? And I admire the ability of Scottish folk to spot patronising questions coming at them like a Henman passing shot, and returning them with the ego-deflating sharpness of an Andy Murray cross-court volley. Unfortunately as the answer above was delivered, the limitations of radio became obvious – it was unable to capture the millimetre or two movement of one eyelid. Guid on ye, pal!

    But a country whose folk are hungry for change, with a history of political engagement and enlightened inventiveness, conscious of the opportunities that our own Parliament makes possible, – deserves better than the standards of political discourse and leadership so far shown. And for the next five years of Scottish Government to be reduced to horse-trading about who and which party’s interests can be preserved, is not only embarrassing, it is to reduce the expressed political will of the Scottish people to personal and party political ambition.

    Tartan_shirts_ I think the message of the Scottish voters is neither fudged nor surprising. The message is – on track records so far, no one party is to be trusted with our future – maybe a hung Parliament with all its frustrations, is still an effective corrective to party interest, personal ambition, and narrow non negotiable agendas.

    Going back to the man in the street quoted earlier, one of Burns’ most potent political poems, celebrates him and his answer. And the third verse of ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ should give the Holyrood power mongers serious food for thought – and who knows even repentance!

    Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
    Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
    Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
    He’s but a coof for a’ that:
    For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
    His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
    The man o’ independent mind
    He looks an’ laughs at a’ that    .

  • Songs for Life’s Journey

    When it comes to devotional books, the Victorians knew a thing or two about sentimental feelings, emotionally loaded poetry and idealised botany! Amongst the books I recently rescued from threatened oblivion in Voltaire and Rousseau’s, is just such a devotional book.(V&R are the kind of second-hand booksellers, near Glasgow University, where there are heaps of books arranged in heaps- that teeter on the brink of avalanche – making a bookshop browse into a kind of outward bound course for booklovers). The book in question is called ‘Songs from Life’s Journey’; it’s a combination of well known Sankey type hymns, illustrated with scrapbook impossibly arranged flowers, thick gilt edged paper and all arranged in a highly stylised coffee-table format.

    Scan0002_2 The front page announces the publisher as Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster Row, London, one of the publishers of quality productions from early in the 19th century. The picture I scanned shows the cover page, and gives an idea of the extravagant use of images on sepia paper, suggesting an impression of colourful profusion. It’s cheesy – ( but by the way, how will folk a hundred years from now judge our taste in praise songs, purpose driven paperbacks, and lack of emotional rootedness in vital doctrinally informed religious experience)? Hmmmmm.

    Anyway, I love the way the Victorians were unembarassed about cheesiness – and there is something quite poignant about a book that who knows who, took trouble to buy, and use or give to someone – and for what occasion? Wedding? Bereavement? Conversion?

    Don’t know – but enjoy one of the pages with its hymn, its pictures, and its connection with some unknown Christian from a hundred and something years ago. And if the hymn strikes you as sentimental – good – the sentiments of the hymn are timeless – and timely.

    Scan0001_3   

  • Providence, Books and Richard Baxter

    Baxter I’ve bought more books. Not from Amazon – from those second-hand places where books are piled precariously and the one you want is at the bottom, and to get it you have to risk the whole Babel tower of them landing on your head like a judgement from heaven. One of the books I saw, seized and rapidly paid for, was by Richard Baxter the Puritan – not a killjoy, not a censorious policeman of others’ behaviour, not as someone once defined Puritans, a person who lives with the constant worry that someone somewhere is enjoying themselves.

    It was an edited version of his Autobiography, an account of the Civil War, his pastoral labours in Kidderminster, and the trivia of domestic gossip that makes an autobiography of a human being interesting. So, keeping in mind I had to remove it from the bottom of a perilously leaning pile of miscellaneous literary curiosities, here’s his take on why we should believe God watches over us bibliophiles, to keep us safe when we walk through valleys of deepest darkness, and books precariously heaped around us:

    Books02619x685 Another time as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books broke down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down on every side of me, and not one of them hit me save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight and the greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, one of the shelves right over my head having the six volumes of Dr Walton’s Oriental Bible, and all Augustine’s works, and the Bibliotheca Patrum and Marlorate etc.

    I love that picture of Baxter lost in writing the  several million words he wrote with a quill and ink, late into the night burning the midnight candle, and getting the fright of his life as his 17th century IKEA bookshelves collapsed and nearly brained him! As a pastor he is legendary for thoroughness and psychological precision in spiritual direction; as a controversialist he feared no argument if it was about the freedom of the Gospel and the independence of the church; as a writer and a fellow bibliophile he wrote exhaustively.

    And when asked to assess the worth of his writings as he lay dying he said, ‘I was but a pen in God’s hand, and what credit is due to a pen?’

    Such great spirits are undeservedly neglected today. It was Baxter who gave C S Lewis the title of his bestseller, Mere Christianity. The same C S Lewis in one of his best essays, urged contemporary Christians to read old books at least as often as we do new books, otherwise said Lewis, we are guilty of chronological snobbery, a phrase he might have offered as a definition of overstated postmodern prejudice against premodern wisdom.

  • Disturb us Lord

    Maggi Dawn quotes part of the prayer of Sir Francis Drake. I like the word disturb even if I usually resent the experience – but now and again, and more often than not, we all need the experience of being disturbed.

    Sw70031 I want to be attracted more to risk than safety, to prefer trust to certainty, to question reality with a little dreaming – and yes, to see if when push comes to shove, I talk a better faith than I live – or live a better faith than I talk. Pentecost is getting nearer – and amongst the ministries of the Holy Spirit is the power to disturb. The great liturgical invocation, "Veni Sanctus Spiritus", is not a prayer for protective peace but for faith to take risks! With aplogies to Latin purists, it could be re-written with one added word

    "Veni Spiritus Sanctus, Disturbus!

    Remove from our souls – complacency – predictability – routine – defensiveness – laziness – ennui – comfort – familiarity – mediocrity – the whole lexicon of undisturbed tedium, from apathy to zonkedness." (by the way this word is in MY lexicon, cos I couldn’t think of another).

    2g1099_preview So the prayer of Sir Francis (not St Francis – whose prayer is also disturbing but in a different way) is one I want to pray for my own life and its next stages, for the faith community to which I belong (Scottish Baptists), and for the Church in our country. Not moribund peace but creative hassle; not the shoreline but the open sea; not the safe strategies of sensible safe religious behaviour, but the disturbing turbulence of following in the slipstream of the Spirit. Do I really mean this – well I’m praying it anyway, in the words of the world’s first circumnavigator, and if God answers it, God help me and us – as He has promised to do!

    Disturb us, Lord,
    when we are too well pleased with ourselves;
    when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little;
    When we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

    Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly –
    to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery;
    where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

  • Politics is for People

    Williamsshirley_2  Years ago Shirley Williams (remember her?) wrote Politics is for People, a carefully reasoned, socially compassionate and morally intelligient plea for political processes and institutions that served rather than exploited, that gave due weight to social justice, that aimed at increasing and sharing more equally, the opportunities that arise from a country’s wealth and work. Some would say she was a failed politician – failed to get elected on two occasions, went into academia in Harvard, and is now Baroness Williams of Crosby, retiring from the House of Lords as leader of the Lib Dems in 2004. But that book was visionary in a reasoned and morally cogent way.

    Politics is for people. Indeed. It seems a long way away – and I don’t just mean a long time ago – over twenty five years. It seems a long way away since politicians could write such a book and find that the public bought and read it as if its contents were genuinely meant. Contemporary political realities are more often junk food standard than organically sound.

    Copy20of20386220big20ben20through_2 The degree of self interest, party self-preservation, power at any price maneouverings, patronising spin, wheeling and dealing with large corporations and global companies,  – oh and the odd military adventure based on balsam wood moral foundations to spread the gospel of democarcy western style in places where democracy has no cultural or religious roots. Politics is for people would now sound like spin, another polystyrene promise, used once and thrown away as disposable.

    Thumbnail6_2 So what keeps us Christians from becoming cynical non participants in the political processes intended to make governments accountable? Why do we as people, bother about politics which seem to be less about people like us, and more about the politician, the party, the bottom line, whatever terminology best describes the dominant public perception of self-interested, not to be trusted politicians?

    Why will I vote in our elections on May 3?

    1. Because I believe in our capacity to do things right, to make fair decisions, to at least want a fairer society, even if it doesn’t always work out that way no matter how hard we argue and try.
    2. Because I don’t believe every politician is in it for themselves, as if good people who want to make a difference were somehow absent from the hustings, and allergic to public life.
    3. Because though a lot of political life is manipulative, unprincipled, power-mongering and at times exploitative – there are people in there who care, who want the voice of ordinary folk to be heard and their life desires given a chance. I’m with them – if I can spot them!
    4. Because I don’t think I can claim to be a follower of Jesus, and ignore the possibility that my ballot paper, along with those of others, can make a difference to who become the decision makers.
    5. Because I will pray for guidance, and I’ll use the commonsense and ethical passion God has given in casting my vote.
    6. Because what I’m looking for is the candidate nearest to the values that underpin human flourishing and social compassion – and if they are good politicians – good as effective operator and good as principled person, then they have my vote, my support, my prayers.

    And the question of which party they belong to will be largely secondary. The party manifesto is less important to me than the personal track record of getting stuck in on behalf of the people – listening to our voice, speaking our case, caring about local outcomes, and displaying unashamed bias towards those pushed to the edges.

    And yes all the above is idealistic, even generalised, and lacking political sophistication – which is ok with me, cos I’m dead unsophisticated so I am.

  • God is the expert on theology

    Sometimes learning is fun. Sometimes learning is boring. Sometimes learning means unlearning. And nearly always unlearning is inconvenient, disruptive, disturbing, scary. And learning theology, which is learning about God, can be all of the above and a blessed lot more.

    Hubble_1_2 Fun because theology deals with a subject area that drives to the core of life’s biggest questions; boring because sometimes we have to do the hard stuff before we experience the benefits, and we are used to instant benefits, as if the work needed to possess knowledge could be put on some intellectual credit card. And theological learning can be inconvenient because it gets in the way of our comfortably familiar take on what we call our faith; disruptive because when you’re dealing with God and who God is you shouldn’t expect life to be a tidy, predictable routine which includes worship, fellowship and the odd bit of witnessing; scary because God is – I mean both God is scary, and God IS.

    As we work to act a little less clumsily, less inhumanely, less thoughtlessly; to speak a little less ignorantly, less dishonestly, less inattentively, there is always much to say and even more to do. Only God speaks one Word which says everything, which makes and heals the world…

    Good learning calls, no less than teaching does, for courtesy, respect, a kind of reverence; for facts and people, evidence and argument, for climates of speech and patterns of behaviour different from our own. Watchfulness is, indeed, in order but endless suspicion and mistrust are not.

    There are affinities between the courtesy, the delicacy of attentiveness, required for friendship; the single-minded passionate disinterestedness without which no good scholarly or scientific work is done; and the contemplativity which strains,- without credulity, – to listen for the voice of God – who does not shout.

    To which I can only say, Amen!

    (The quote is from Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God, London: SCM, 1992, pages 2,10-11).

  • Throw the furniture around

    396274 Last night, at the end of a full day, I sat for a while with Dogmatics II.1 and II.2 and browsed – even browsing Barth is intimidating, but also an invitation. Here is the real thing – a mind delving into mystery and kneeling before transcendence. Time spent with this theologian who loved the church revives faith and hopefulness.

    Not long ago I finished reading Flannery O’Connor’s letters, The Habit of Being. This mildly questioning Catholic, who wrote bizarre stories about the mystery and mastery of grace that invades human lives, had a lot of time for Karl Barth’s big thick volumes. Her copy of Evangelical Theology (lectures given on Barth’s only visit to the US) was heavily marked. In a letter to her best friend she confided: ‘I distrust folks who have ugly things to say about Karl Barth. I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around.’

    Sw70031 Not long to Pentecost. Are you allowed to have favourite doctrines – if so, mine’s the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I think of the Holy Spirit as the One who throws the furniture around, breaks up the comfortable sofas and routines, rips up the well worn carpets, heaves the telly and the Sky tuner into the corner, even out the window, goes in for some serious Feng Shui to maximise the space in mind and heart and life, for the presence of God to be acknowledged and the worship of God freed from the competing claims of an over cluttered life. As a metaphor of spiritual change, the Holy Spirit doing a makeover of our intellectual and spiritual furniture is worthy of longer consideration – and touches nerves in my own spirit.

  • “NO” is a charistian word

    Thirty years ago in an article called ‘The Nerve of Failure’, published in Theology Today, Leonard Sweet anticipated some of the themes that have captivated his readers in a stream of his recent bestsellers. My favourite quote is the one at the start:

    "The quality that should mark the Christian church is not goodness, but grace, not merit, but mercy, not moralism, but forgiveness, not the enshrinement of success, but the acceptance of failure . . . Lacking the nerve of failure, we have suffered a failure of nerve-to dare to dream dreams, venture visions, and risk getting splinters that come from cutting against the grain."

    And then there’s the wise reminder from John Oman, an unjustly forgotten theologian, "NO is a Christian word". By which Oman meant, not ‘NO’ as negativity and withdrawal, but ‘NO’ as positive engagement against whatever diminishes, demeans or dismisses our humanity – NO as cutting against the cultural grain….and to hang with the splinters. The book from which it comes is called Grace and Personality – now there’s two interesting criteria for a church – a place demonstrating, embodying, performing, the grace and personality of Jesus.

  • Composing, conducting and performing a human life…

    Rost2_161619a_2 The Russian cellist, composer and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has died age 80. One of the finest cellists of the 20th Century, his playing so accomplished and passionate that major composers were prepared to compose pieces designed for his playing. In his own view, of all that he wrote and composed, the most important was the letter he sent to Pravda in support of Alexander Solhzehnitsyn in 1970. He campaigned on behalf of Andrei Sacharov, and publicly criticised the authorities of the old Soviet regime. He was persecuted and banished for that – but this noble, humane, composer, cellist and conductor embodied the spirit of freedom and resistance to totalitarianism and the abuse of state sponsored power. In 1991 he even joined Boris Yeltsin in facing down the Communist pusch and defending the pro-democracy movement as the old regime crumbled.

    For me there is an almost metaphysical connection between the gifts of composition, conducting and performing music, and the gifts of composing, conducting and performing a beautiful and humanising life. As one young Russian said, ‘may his soul rest in peace and glory.’