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jazz, tapestry and Moltmann

Years ago I stopped giving up things for Lent, and started taking up things for Lent. One year I asked a friend who is an expert on Jazz and the Bible to compile some music for me to listen to throughout Lent. I still struggle to ‘get’ jazz, but I do understand its passion, its rhythm’s, its re-construal of the world, the place of improvisation and collaboration and inspiration in music that celebrates human longing and creativity. The long track of Duke Ellington’s ‘David danced before the Lord’ I played endlessly in the car to my great blessing! I still think the drummer was a genius.

Another time I read through the poetry of Emily Dickinson and discovered a whole world of grace expressed in the oddity and precision of one who told the truth and told it slant. Another year I took up the telephone – as they say in cooking programmes – ‘you literally just’ take up the phone – every night of Lent I phoned someone for no other reason than to speak with them and wish them well in their lives. Since then I have seen the phone as a conduit of friendship, conversation, fun, comfort, and if occasionally an interruption, even these can be moments of grace.

After a long hiatus I have ‘taken up’ my tapestry frame, again. I am working on a new tapestry which will be my project through Lent, Easter and beyond. Working a tapestry is, amongst other things, a way of finding out how stressed you are! Doing it right and well, you mustn’t pull the thread too tight (so unclench the teeth and relax the shoulders); working on small guage canvas (26 to inch) you can’t work either mindlessly or rapidly (so rememebr, there is no deadline). Controlled gentleness and contentment with slowness gets it done……………………… eventually. I wish I could always believe and practice in my life, the observation of can’t remember who, ‘Snails do the will of God slowly!

I don’t do ‘kits’, I prefer to design my own tapestries, or work freehand from a picture. This one is a Celtic cross made up of five squares,(and made up out of my head!) with the interior of each showing intertwining celtic knots depicting the Trinity. It is being done in stranded cotton, the bright colours ranging through the rainbow, and the colours chosen randomly apart from the strong outlines of the Trinity symbols. (I’ll post a photo once it’s recognisably what I’ve described!!) Tapestry is the creation of a picture or image from thousands of intersecting stitches – no wonder it has been used as a metaphor of human life, its textures, colours, patterns, shapes and overall theme.

Not sure what it will look like but it is an attempt to show the relations between the suffering and crucified love of God in Christ, and the eternal loving relations of the Triune God. We had a class last year on ‘Rediscovering the Triune God’ basing much of our discussions around the theology of Jurgen Moltmann. His contribution to contemporary thought includes profound meditation on the crucified God, and the effect of the crucifixion on the eternal relations of Father Son and Spirit. As a Lenten theme it cries out for meditation and prayer.

16 February 2007
Worship is……?

Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same, sincere and spiritual worship.

For worship is the submission of all our nature to God.

It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of mind with his truth, the purifying of imagination by his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of the will to his purpose; and all of this, gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable….

William Temple,

Archbishop of Canterbury, 1942-44.

Anyway I stopped going to churches

and got myself into a different kind of religion. That’s what being in a rock and roll band is, not pseudo religion either…

Music is worship.

Whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, whether it comes from that ancient place we call the soul or simply the spinal cortex, whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire….the smoke goes upwards…to God, or something you replace God with…

usually yourself.

Bono (Paul Hewson), U2

15 February 2007
Missing voices
In a couple of days I will post a list of commentary writing by women. Remember I asked if anyone had any suggestions, favourites? Several replied – I’ll include your suggestions but as I rummaged around in my head I decided to make a fuller list. Further Suggestions can be posted in the comments and I’ll update it as and when. Why bother? Two reasons.
1. I think commentary writing needs to open up through, but beyond exegesis, as a genre of theological and spiritual reflection. The reason for the series of blogs on Hauerwas – apart from the man’s own appeal as a ‘burr under the saddle’ – is the freshness and challenge of writing that is in conversation with ancient text and contemporary church.
2. My own exposure to women’s writing on Scripture and theology has been far too limited – but that isn’t only my fault – the entire industry of biblical studies has been dominated by male authors. That is slowly changing, but scheduled lists of commentaries projected by publishers are not encouraging. Despite this, several commentaries by women have demonstrated for me the critical (in both senses of the word) importance of hearing women’s voices in conversation with the biblical text and the contemporary church.
More whimsically here are some commentaries that were never written, but which I wish had been –

The Cappadocian Mother, Macrina on Colossians and the Divine life in Christ

Julian of Norwich on the Passion Narratives as Revelations of Divine Love

Teresa of Avila on Hebrews and the Way of Perfection in Christ

George Eliot* on Ecclesiastes and the Eclipse of Faith

Emily Dickinson’s poetic take on the Creation stories of Genesis

Dorothy Day on the prophet Amos and social justice for the poor.

Annie Dillard on the Psalms of Lament and Praise

Anne Tyler on Ruth as a story of love, friendship and the happenstance of life and the providence of God

* Perhaps she could revert to her own name of Marian Evans, in the hope that she would now be taken seriously as a writer without a male nom-de plume!
14 February 2007
and a lover of souls….

I came across this description of teachers from one of my favourite browsing sources. It highlights a number of expectations which I think are valid, and not easy to fulfil. I’ve copied it twice, because the Desert Fathers also includes Desert Mothers!

A teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool him by flattery, nor blind him by gifts, nor conquer him by the stomach, nor dominate him by anger; but he should be patient, gentle, and humble as far as possible; he must be tested and without partisanship, full of concern, and a lover of souls.
—Benedicta Ward, Desert Christian

A teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool her by flattery, nor blind her by gifts, nor conquer her by the stomach, nor dominate her by anger; but she should be patient, gentle, and humble as far as possible; she must be tested and without partisanship, full of concern, and a lover of souls.
—Benedicta Ward, Desert Christian

13 February 2007
Hauerwas 12 – embarrassing triviality or what?

Matthew 17 contains the perplexing miracle of Peter being told by Jesus to catch a fish, find a coin in its mouth and pay the temple tax. It sounds for all the world like one of those childish miracle stories where Jesus does the odd trick with divine power. Various approaches to this story try to reduce its oddity, or its embarrassing triviality – was it a round about way of saying Peter was playfully asked by Jesus to go and do what he knew best, catch fish, and with the proceeds pay the tax. Hardly.

Hauerwas doesn’t flinch from seeing this story as an embarrassing, demanding, paradigm-shifting story. It reveals the required mindset to live in the Kingdom of God. If you can’t believe such a story of the providence of God, how will you believe the harder story of the meek inheriting the earth, or peacemakers as the true children of God. here is Hauerwas:

Christians rightly desire to do great things in service to God and in service to the world. But too often Christians think such service must insure the desired outcome. We simply do not believe that we can risk fishing for a fish with a coin in its mouth. Yet no account of the Christian desire to live at peace with our neighbour, who may be also our enemy, is intelligible if Christians no longer trust that God can and will help us catch fish with coins in their mouths. No account of Christian nonviolence is intelligible that does not require, as well as depend on, miracle. Christian discipleship entails our trusting that God has given and will continue to give all that we need to be faithful. (Page 159)

A good friend with a combative approach to most discussions, often finishes her putting of her case with an affectionately pugnacious question, "So what do you think of that then?"

Hmmmmm?

13 February 2007
Hymns, hmmmmm……

Went to a service on Sunday night to celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of Charles Wesley. All the music was Wesleyan – and the organist had just gained his M.Phil on the theology of James Denney. A night of sound theology and responsible hymn singing guaranteed!

Several observations though:-

"And can it be" should never, ever, be sung to any other tune than Sagina. The confluence of evangelical theology at its most attractive and musical dynamic at its most singable should be declared sacrosanct.

"O Thou who camest from above" remains one of the finest hymns in our langauge. The clearly expressed longing and aspiration of the human heart open to the coming of the Holy Spirit is simply sublime.

"Lo he comes with clouds descending" is an awe-full hymn. Heavy theology informs sombre reflection on the end times – but the hymn is redolent of transcendent glory and coming majesty. Sung by a full church supported by a 60 voice choir – this was hair raising praise – even for bald worshippers such as me!

This all took place in Aberdeen Methodist Church, within sight of Wesley’s chair, gifted to the Society in Aberdeen because it was a gift from someone in Huntly and he had no room in his coach to take it south. Ive sat on it, and while not being too enthusiastic about evangelical relics, this was different!

Later this year I am going to blog on Wesley’s hymns – and why it will be liturgically unacceptable, spiritually diminishing, theologically impoverishing, and pastorally irresponsible to lose such hymns through the default mechanism of what C S Lewis called chronological snobbery. Few hymn writers come close to articulating the Evangelical experience with more precision and passion, than Charles Wesley at his best.

12 February 2007
Scandalous Presence

In a very fine essay, ‘Scandalous Presence’, almost a mini systematic theology organised around the relational community of the Triune God, Cynthia Rigby gives honourable mention to the late Catherine Lacugna. (Pictured below)

Lacugna’s book, God With Us, was commended by one of our students as one of the more readable and persuasive contemporary accounts of the Trinity. I agree – she’s one of my favourite theologians, and her early death deprived us of what would have been a substantial and innovative work on the Holy Spirit. Her trinitarian thought has been praised widely and criticised extensively – but it will remain (for me at any rate) a passionately engaged expression of what it means to take the relational nature of God with theological and pastoral seriousness.

Rigby says, "[Lacugna’s] attention to the primacy of community and relationality in the life of the Godhead has been helpful in challenging us to rethink what impact God’s scandalous presence should have on the way we live. To confess that God is triune is to know that God is for us in God’s very being. To reflect God’s triune image in relationship to one another, then, is not to lord it over one another. To be God-like, when God is understood to be a community, is not to be self-sufficient but to live in relation".

Lacugna’s point is this. To understand God as a community of self-giving love, and to believe that love at its highest implies mutuality, reciprocal service, uncalculating self-expense and consistent faithfulness, will have major implications for how human life, politics and society are organised. The interdependent and mutual exchange of love within the life of God may not be easily replicated in human community, but it does provide a model which seriously calls in question the societal structures of power and self-sufficiency that drive much of social and political activity.

Just as in a previous post I argued that the imago Dei was an important diagnostic theological insight, so too is the view of God as an eternal threefold relation of mutual loving exchange. I think both these theological realities have serious consequences for how we think about and do those activities we call missional. They also stand as potent critique of any ecclesiology fuelled by self-concern, or immured to the demanding presence of the ‘other’.

11 February 2007
Hauerwas 11:faithful following to Calvary

When Jesus said Peter was the rock on which he would build his church, what did he mean? Hauerwas has no doubt –

‘Peter stands within the church, charged with keeping the church true to its witness to Jesus….Peter was not called to "keep the peace", but rather to insure that the church has the countless conflicts necessary for its holiness.’

Hauerwas’ take on Peter’s ability to see and state who Jesus is, is sympathetic. What Jesus says about who he is, how he must die, and what it means to follow him, isn’t an invitation to a more satisfying life. Discipleship isn’t about self-fulfillment, but about faithful following to calvary if need be.

Jesus therefore, tells his disciples that if they are to follow him they must take up their cross. If they seek to save their lives using the means the world offers to insure their existence, then their lives will be lost. Rather, they must be willing to lose their lives "for my sake" if they are to find life. Jesus is not telling his disciples that if the learn to live unselfishly they will live more satisfying lives. Rather, he says that any sacrifices they make must be done for his sake. The crosses they bear must be ones determined by his cross.(Page 152-3)

The ethicist in Hauerwas is deeply ambivalent about the self-fulfilment motive for following Jesus. The cross isn’t an alternative way to self fulfilment – but an alternative way to live in a violent world, which requires the sacrifice of self as a witness to the self-giving love of God in Christ.

Over at faith and Theology there is a fascinating post on ‘Ten Propositions on Self Love’, which has attracted an avalanche of comments. It is a good corrective to the self-centering tendency of much contemporary spirituality, theology and ethics. Click on Ben Myers name on the sidebar.

10 February 2007
Lead-free bullets……

A friend has paid a gift subscription for me, for the Reader’s Digest, for over 20 years. The late Murdo Ewan MacDonald, pioneer in securing practical theology a place at the academic round table at Glasgow University, once referred to it as "that saboteur of the modern intellect". But now and again, by accident or intent, it gets it right. One of its snippets illustrates the ethical ambiguity, rational dexterity, logical inconsistency, dubious ecology, theological illiteracy, philosophical stupidity, social irresponsibility, technological rapacity….och I’ve ranted long enough – just read it…………. and laugh………., or weep.

A pressure group poured scorn on BAE Systems after it emerged that the defence company was developing "environmentally friendly" munitions – including lead-free bullets.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade called the move "laughable". But BAE Systems said it was not embarrassed about its efforts or by a statement on its website that "lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people".

9 February 2007
Snow big deal

Yesterday my son returned after over a year on Thailand where the temperature was never below 15 C. He flew into Heathrow to what is now rotuinely caused travelling CHAOS. There’s an excuse for him complaining of the cold, and weary after a trip via Cairo, just wanting to get home.

But two or three inches of snow seems to be a national crisis that threatens to close and disrupt airports, compromise rail lines, render roads so risky drivers are told to journey only if absolutely necessary. What happens in countries where snow is the norm in winter? Why does non-extreme weather for a temperate region cause such CHAOS in parts of Britain? It isn’t as if our traffic system is so finely tuned, so hyper-efficient, that travellers are totally traumatised by delays and timetable anomalies. Or is snow so rare that it isn’t worth tying up money and resources being prepared for it, with sufficient road salt, runway clearing equipment, experienced staff?

Don’t know. I’m just bemused by the headline grabbing importance of a snowfall. Some of my most joyful childhood memories were of feet of snow in Ayrshire and central Lanarkshire, the kind that makes it hard to walk out the door without a spade. When I was 10, four feet of snow was way over my head. Snow is one form of creation’s poetry. The fragile beauty, infinite diversity, iced diamond delicacy of each snowflake, the cumulative purity of fresh-fallen snow, the way snowfall softens hard edges, fills in and covers, till the landscape is made more gentle. Here’s one of my favourite snow poems by Jared Carter, from here: http://jaredcarter.com/poems/12/

Snow

At every hand there are moments we
cannot quite grasp or understand. Free

to decide, to interpret, we watch rain
streaking down the window, the drain

emptying, leaves blown by a cold wind.
At least we sense a continuity in

such falling away. But not with snow.
It is forgetfulness, what does not know,

has nothing to remember in the first place.
Its purpose is to cover, to leave no trace

of anything. Whatever was there before—
the worn broom leaned against the door

and almost buried now, the pile of brick,
the bushel basket filling up with thick,

gathering whiteness, half sunk in a drift—
all these things are lost in the slow sift

of the snow’s falling. Now someone asks
if you can remember—such a simple task—

the time before you were born. Of course
you cannot, nor can I. Snow is the horse

that would never dream of running away,
that plods on, pulling the empty sleigh

while the tracks behind it fill, and soon
everything is smooth again. No moon,

no stars, to guide your way. No light.
Climb up, get in. Be drawn into the night.

9 February 2007