Living Wittily

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  • When funny money isn’t funny

    A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million last year
    A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million last year

    A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million in salary, shares and bonuses last year and owns stock in the group worth nearly £65 million, it has been revealed.

    …

    Bob Diamond, head of investment banking at Barclays, became one of Europe’s highest-paid bankers after receiving the multi-million pound pay package, which dwarfed even chief executive John Varley’s salary and bonus scoop.

    …

    Barclays, which is currently in merger talks with ABN Amro, said in its 2006 annual report that Mr Diamond was paid a basic salary of £250,000, with a £10.4 million cash bonus on top, plus £4.5 million in deferred shares, topped up with £7.7 million in cashed-in shares.

    It also emerged that Mr Diamond owns shares in the group worth £64.9 million accumulated over his 11-year tenure at Barclays and is in line for a further bonus of up to £15 million next year, not including the 2.3 million shares he is set to gain in the group as part of an ongoing performance-related deal.

    The above piece of nonsense (I mean in the sense of not making sense on any scale, register, or list of values I can find) is taken from here. The explanation given by Barclay’s is that Mr Diamond (the name’s appropriate anyway, is it no’ just? Well no actually, the whole story is not just!) – well anyway, Mr Diamond makes them a lot of money. Oh, that’s all right then. Now I could be accused of the politics of envy, and right enough, I didn’t get £22 million last year. But I can see no valid moral or socially responsible case that can be made to justify such institutionalised inequity. This one man’s salary would build a well equipped if modest sized school. Or is Mr Diamond’s contribution to our society really worth the equivalent of a year’s salary for 1000 trained nurses? And what would even half that salary achieve applied to any number of essential-for-life projects in developing countries?

    I’m away to read Amos again – not that I don’t know what he says – I just want to read it out loud and hear him say it, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.’

    Then I’m going to read Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount and consider the lilies……..and the birds….and then Luke’s much more in your face version, ‘But woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort.’

  • Reading Books: a substantial world both pure and good

    Books02619x685 “Dreams, books, are each a world;

    and books, we know,

    are a substantial world,

    both pure and good. Round these,

    with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

    Our pastime and our happiness will grow.” (Wordsworth)

    Margaret (an education and motivation for learning specialist) is wondering about the different ways of reading we have all developed. She is especially intrigued by how some people (me included) read several books at once – not all together, but moving from one to the other and back again. It’s an interesting question(s) – how do we read and why do we read as we do? Thinking about it, I do usually have several books going at the same time, but that can be governed by a number of considerations.

    I have set times in the day when I am likely to be reading – they aren’t the only times I read, but reading is about the only thing I do at those times. Those who observe the details of my blog have noticed the early posting times – I’ve even had a row for it from Graeme. But because my mind is active and alert early, for an hour in the morning I tackle the substantial book on my desk. 080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz__2 Substantial means intellectually demanding, taking me to new ideas, challenging my comfortable assumptions. That’s when I’m reading John Swinton’s, Raging with Compassion, at present for example. So I always have an early morning brain workout!

    Alongside that I’m likely to be reading at least a couple more. Functional reading for my teaching is mostly done throughout the week at times 0814658113_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ wrestled free of other responsibilities that can often seem more ‘essential’ than the reading that informs a lecture and keeps it current. Currently Migliore’s Faith Seeking Understanding, Joy Macdougall’s book on Moltmann (on sidebar), and a couple of Galatians commentaries, are lifted and laid around my desk.

    If I’m writing something, then material is chosen by the subject and the reading clusters around the writing time – whenever that too can be extracted from the routine of academic admin and teaching. Recently baptist stuff (small b in deference to Stuart) and George Macleod have cluttered my desk.

    0099459051_02__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ Novels,( a good murder story – Henning Mankell just finished), poetry, biography (and philosophy I’m afraid) and other reading-what-I-like-when-I-feel-like-it, type books is usually at night -often the book preferred to the telly. Not always though – I can’t read a book and watch the telly. I have a friend whose daughter can read a book, watch the telly and listen to her Ipod without blowing any mental fuses! And for as long as I remember I’ve read in bed – but I am getting more and more like those dolls whose eyes are weighted to close as soon as they lie flat!

    Now all that said – the question of how you read several books at once isn’t really answered. It probably isn’t timetable or routine or technique that’s the main issue – but the way different minds work. Some folk simply don’t move easily in and out of alternative worlds of fiction, biography, history, theology, poetry, psychology or whatever our different interests are. Concentration and afterthought aren’t easily preserved if too many things are going on at once, and there can be a feeling of superficial non-engagement:

    The elephant is a bonnie bird

    it flits from bough to bough

    it makes its nest in a rhubarb tree

    and whistles like a cow

    So is it a habit that can be learned; or a difference in how our minds process and assimilate what we read?

    Who retains most – the one book at a time reader, or the several on the go at once reader?

    What do the rest of you think?

    Why do you read as you do?

    Are you a one book or a several book reader?

    Do you retain what you read and manage to keep the plots / arguments / worlds / of each book separate?

    And isn’t the question of purpose important – Why I’m reading what I’m reading – for information, formation, recreation, inspiration?

    One closing thought at this stage (cos I’m going to post a bit more on this) – having several books on the go at once, is that a multi-disciplinary way of learning, or is it pretentious dilettantism? Hmm? Come on Jim – own up – how much of that suff actually sticks?

  • Whodunnit as a study of sin

    0099459051_02__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ Just finished Henning Mankell’s Firewall. The crime genre of fiction is an education in the experimental theology of sin. I heard Mankell interviewed on the radio, when he discussed his take on contemporary life, particularly the dissolution of moral disctinctions in key areas of human development and technological advance.

    This novel is about murder, eco-terrorism, the power of the internet and the dependence of global financial and business institutions on computer security and integrity, the impact of global banking on the poorest nations – and at the centre is Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander, a flawed, fallible, likeable loner. That’s as near to cliche as Mankell comes – he writes with psychological subtlety,convincing detail, narrative knowhow, and a refreshing lack of gratuitous expletives! This is narrative theology that IS readable!!

  • Play it again

    Playitagain_jobrand200 Just watched Jo Brand on the new BBC programme Play it Again. She accepted the challenge to learn the organ in four months, and play Bach’s Toccata on the five manual organ at the Royal Albert in London, in front of 8,000 people at the Christmas carol extravaganza. Along the way she played on the Blackpool Wurlitzer for some ballroom dancers,(see picture), and played Ave Maria at a wedding – and re-connected with her mother through the music.

    As good a reality celebrity programme as I’ve seen – human and humane, funny and moving, and a fine example of how TV can provide insight into people’s loves and fears and hopes and vulnerabilities, their loveability and annoying traits. And all without being either vulgar or voyeuristic, and leaving me at least with a feeling of admiration and contentment that, but for a couple of wobbles, she pulled it off!

  • Conference on Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition

    Macleod Yesterday we held our first half-day conference at the Scottish Baptist College to discuss and explore the Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition. Thanks to those who came and encouraged the work we’re trying to do.

    The theme, ‘Perspectives on George Macleod and the Iona Community’ gave us the chance to talk together about one of the most colourful and determined 20th C ministers of the Scottish Kirk. His two primary parish ministries were in the contrasting contexts of the West End of Edinburgh and then in Govan, Glasgow, though he is now associated in people’s minds with the restoration of Iona Abbey and the foundation of the Iona Community.

    Abbey2 Anne Muir, the official Oral Historian of the Iona Community has just completed the Oral History up to 1969; 86 Interviews now located at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. Using recorded audio material, she introduced us to a number of witnesses and testimonies, and we heard the voices of people who ‘were there’ at the beginning – with memories that were clear, impressions and opinions that were personal, specific, at times partial, but entirely authentic. Some of these we found deeply moving, as people spoke of their childhood and early years in Govan, or on the Island. Others remembered, not uncritically but always with respect, the personality and influence of ‘George’. Some skilled tradesmen, apprentices at the time, spoke of giving up their jobs for the summer to go to Iona for the restoration work, and had to go back home and find another job 4 months later. Who says vocation is only (even mainly) about clergy / ministers? 

    Anne spoke of her methodology and of the main themes of her research, including early years, Abbey restoration, women, worship, community. The result is a thorough, fascinating collection of slices of personal history told as story and testimony. A fascinating discussion about the merits of oral history, as people’s owned personal history and self understanding articulated from their own expereince – quite different from any official or authorised account. Raised for me interesting questions about the earliest memories, that became oral history and story and then became our written Gospels.

    Durrow20cross_2  Stuart demonstrated the craft and care Macleod took in preparing and in preaching his sermons. A broadcast sermon on ‘Why the Cross’ began with human experience and took that experience to the biblical passion stories. In his preaching, powerful integrating streams colaseced: his shrewd compassion for human nature, his deep hopefulness about the love of God, his passionate faith in the Cross as the place of new creation for humanity and for the Creation itself. The result was a man embodying truth through the attractive power of personality submittesd to the Word of God – and words he often used in his prayers, such as ‘pulsate’, ‘vibrate’, ‘radiate’ became true of this preacher who was clearly an accomplished performer of the Word.

    0947988017_02__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ My own paper was based on the written prayers now held at the National Library of Scotland. A number of these have been collected and edited for the slim book, ‘The Whole Earth shall Cry Glory’ – but there are many others, written in scrawled ballpoint or pencil, or typed with a ribbon hammered to near inklessness, the text itself littered and disfigured with corrections, insertions, deletions etc. The result though, confirmed by an interview Anne played for us, were prayers that, when offered in the place of worship, brought people to a knowledge and experience of the holiness and mystery of God they have never known since. When the prayers are read alongside his CND and peace addresses, it becomes clear also, that a theology that was Trinitarian and incarnational, informed the prayers and provided a profound theological rationale for protest against the military applications of nuclear technology.

    Stuart’s piece and mine will be available on the College Website later, and I’ll post a wee reminder then.

  • Raging with Compassion 5: The place where all questions are askable

    Following the Omagh bombing in August 1998, John Swinton went to church – and with no reference having been made to the previous day’s atrocity during worship, came away thinking

    ‘our church had no capacity for dealing with sadness…because we had not consistently practised the art of recognising, accepting and expressing sadness, we had not developed the capacity to deal with tragedy. In the wake of the tragedy of Omagh, our failure to publicly and communally acknowledge such a major act of evil within our liturgical space demonstrated our implicit tendency towards denial and avoidance. Evil was not resisted by our community, it was simply sidelined…’ (pages 92-3)

    This is a disturbing story of how some expresssions of Christian faith and pastoral response do not deal well with suffering, whether outrageous violence or its victims’ suffering. Inability to cope pastorally is not unrelated to a theology that is uneasy with human anguish and divine suffering … itself strange for a faith in the One who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with the grief of the cross, albeit followed by the resurrection. So Swinton devotes a long chapter to lament as a way of asking the question ‘Why me Lord..Why me?’ – questions which if asked have potentially destabilising vibrations which reach to the inner core of our faith, and the kind of God we say we believe in.

    _42035844_scream_body  By way of a persuasive interpretation of Munch’s masterpiece The Scream, Swinton explores the silent scream of the suffering, and moves on to the silence of Jesus on the cross and the voicelessness of pain. There is in the deepest suffering a resistance to language, a loss of confidence in the normalising of events that articulating them brings. That means that many forms of pain are unsharable. This whole section, pages 95-101 is a rich and rewarding reflection by a theologically and medically informed writer seeking appropriate pastoral response. One of the most helpful and crucial insights he considers is that the silent suffering of Jesus places God unreservedly alongside those who suffer or are victims of evil.

    Jesus’ silence in the presence of evil acknowledges the full numbing horror of suffering and legitimises every sufferer’s experience. Jesus’ sense of alienation from God, which paradoxically was a mark of his experience on the cross, echoes the sense of alienation and disconnection that many people people go through when they experience evil and suffering. The silence of jesus is a statement  that God not only empathises with suffering ‘from a distance’,  but also experiences it in all of its horror. (page 100)

    Not the kind of God some might want. Perhaps we prefer a God who intervenes, reaches into history and sorts things. But the cross is God’s intervention, where suffering is borne in order to be redeemed, and where evil and suffering are experienced as that which ‘wrings with pain the heart of God’. Swinton’s point is – only if we acknowledge the reality of evil and suffering, and the reality of its being borne upon the heart of God,  will we than take evil and suffering seriosuly enough to resist them in that place where all questions are askable, the place of worship; and using biblical forms of prayer, the prayers of lament.

  • the sun shines also on me!

    Today has been a full day – the Waterstone gift tokens are gone, (3 novels and 2 CD’s, of which more in a later post), I’ve done a 10k training run (modest pace), read The Independent over a very fine Latte , (a kind of 10k for the mind!), bought a book and a CD for Sheila, finalised my paper on George Macleod’s prayers for our Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition Conference tomorrow, given the grass its first cut for the Spring – clocks change tomorrow too –

    Smile3t and today to frame all this in unexpected joy, the sun realises its payback time for a miserably dreich winter and is reminding me that the sun shines also on the unrighteous! So today I’m not remotely scunnered – books, sweat, latte, prezzies and sunshine – I’m juist that chuffed so ah am. Or in a more literary vein

    "The adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and poetic spirit."

  • Scunnered

    Scunnered. (Definition and illustration below).

    I’ve heard this word several times in the past few days. It’s one of those to be cherished Scottish words whose meaning is almost onomatopoetic – just saying it, with the right inflection, and the precise balance of vehemence and resignation, communicates its meaning.

    demotivated

    frustrated

    disgusted

    nauseated

    sick of it

    had enough

    I’m outa here

    The synonyms are like downard steps towards that point when scunneration (noun: a state when demotivation process nears completion) reaches crisis point and we are ready to walk away.

    65938277_1e031f0ab7 For one person, who works for a big organisation, the scunnered experience is caused by a relationship at work that’s just so draining, the colleague so negative that there seems neither willingness nor point in persevering with ideas, encouragements, suggestions, offers of help, support, all the positive things that come naturally. Someone else is scunnered because the most important relationship in their life is beginning to crumble, and with it the sense of life’s structure, purpose and direction as a shared project of faithful love and mutual accompaniment. The third person wants to buy their first home, nothing more than a wee flat, but even with a good salary, the prices are just getting further away month by month. Saving for a deposit is an exercise in proximate futility – you nearly always nearly have enough.

    Scunneration is a problem then. Being scunnered isnae funny. It feels like emotional defeat. It describes what Jesus called ‘burdened and heavy laden’. To be scunnered is to detect that depleted feeling of having run out of one of the essential fuels for creative, purposeful living – ideas linked to self-confidence, linked in turn to a trustfulness that despite it all, life is good, precious and to be endured as well as enjoyed. It’s going a bit far to call being scunnered the equivalent to the dark night of the soul, but it does feel lonely, unaccompanied and emotionally arid.

    Dechaunaclatejuly3 At the same time it becomes an act of faith and a gift of grace to recover our balance, re-establish our equilibrium, adjust the persepctive, and recognise that perhaps after all the universe does not work for the purposes of our personal fulfilment. And I wonder if being scunnered can become a mild form of the prayer of lament – asking God ‘how long’ this particular scunneration will last, describing said scunnered experience in the clearest terms to God, but defiantly finding reasons still to praise and give thanks, because goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives…and thank God the divine patience never runs out, and God never gets scunnered with us!

  • Kirkin o’ the tartan prayer

    Tartan_shirts__3 Came across this fine prayer while visiting some other theo-bloggers (HT to http://shadowsofdivinethings.blogspot.com/).

    Was taken with the honest acknowledgement of human weakness alongside the confident sense that we are made in God’s image, and in Christ, redeemable.

    KIRKIN O’ THE TARTANS

    In the morning light, O God,

    May I glimpse again your image deep within me,

    The threads of eternal glory

    Woven into the fabric of every man and woman.

    Again may I catch sight of the mystery

    of the human soul,

    Fashioned in your likeness,

    Deeper than knowing,

    More enduring than time.

    And in glimpsing these threads of light

    Amidst the weakness and distortions of my life,

    Let me be recalled

    To the strength and beauty deep in my soul.

    Let me be recalled

    To the strength and beauty of your image in every living soul.

    J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction

  • Tartan_shirts_ I am posting today at hopeful imagination – about the importance of staying awake – politically, ethically, spiritually, theologicallly ….awake!

    Finished the paper for the first meeting of the Centre for the Study of Scottish Christian Spirituality, this Saturday at the College (Block K University of Paisely – need to enter from Storie St past security). From 10 a.m. -1.00 p.m. we will explore the early days of the Iona Community when Anne Muir, the oral historian of the Community, will be our guest speaker. My own contribution is an exploration of George Macleod’s prayers – the title is taken from one of his recurring phrases;

    ‘When the whole thing becomes the whole blessed thing’.

    Stuart will do something on Macleod’s radio broadcasts from Govan, dating the 1930’s. If you are free come along. If you want any other details email me from the email address on the sidebar of this blog.