Living Wittily

Michael Ramsey and the centre of theology

One of the most holy, if often misunderstood figures in the 20th Century Church of England was Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury. The biography by Owen Chadwick is characteristically elegant, sharply and humanely observed, and a good example of theology being done through biography, faith lived in the lapidary tumbling of relationships, circumstances and human activity, that eventually give shape and definition to who we are.

As a student Ramsey wanted to buy a couple of pictures to give some interest to the bare walls of his undergraduate room. He bought a print of the crucifixion by Perugino. The significance that print took on with passing years is described in a moving paragraph that shows Anglican spirituality at its best - theologically sensitive, sanctifying the ordinary, at ease with contemplative wonder in the presence of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen. Here is Chadwick's gently observed comment on the private devotion of an Archbishop for whom time and again, prayer took precedence over politics:

'He hung the reproduction over the mantle-piece in his room at Magdalene. Slowly it came to be something more than an ornament. It hung in the same central position in every house or apartment where he lived; so that it hung during his life on nineteen different walls, but never, so to speak, changed its place. 'At the time of purchase', he said,'I thought it a "nice picture". It soon came to be the centre of theology, doxa.' 'It is for me a great picture, because it wonderfullyshows a large part of what christianity means. christ is seen suffering, suffering terribly, and yet in it there is triumph; because love is transforming it all'.

Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey. A Life, (Oxford:OUP, 1990), 369.

Prayer distilled to the essentials

'Lord, let me not live to be useless'.

This one line prayer explains something of the devotional intensity and driven pragmatism of John Wesley.

'Lord give me life till my work is done, and work till my life is done'.

The epitaph of Vera Brittain, expressing that longing so characteristically human for our lives to have meaning and value.

'For all that is past, thanks - for all that is to come, Yes!'

Dag Hammarskold's formula for spiritually respopnsible and responsive living.

And then this, which I found today, another one line prayer from Albert C Outler, Wesleyan scholar, Christian gentleman, and ecumenical enthusiast:

'Keep us Lord from the love that deceives, and from the candour that wounds.'

As a succinct statement of Christian hospitality to the views of others, that is hard to beat for its generosity tempered by integrity.

Comments open for your favourite one line prayer.

....stoops heaven to earth....

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!

"...the hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical..."

'Get yourselves into a relation of indebtedness to some of the great writers of the present and the past.....' The advice of Principal Alexander Whyte to New College Students, in a lecture on Thomas Goodwin, a Premier League Puritan, later published in Thirteen Appreciations. I am an admirer of Alexander Whyte for many reasons, though well aware he may be too Victorian for some tastes; psychological moralism, occasions when sentiment and scolding get in the way of persuasive insight, and all the time his fascination, in almost equal terms, with both sin and grace.

But at his best Whyte has the dazzling, glimmering presence of Scheihallion, (his favourite Scottish mountain) covered in snow. In his sentimentality there isn't a whiff of insincerity, and in his scolding there is the unmistakable solidarity of pastor with people, of scolder with scolded. And one of the main reasons I admire this Victorian Free Kirk preacher, is because he explains why I have long valued the writings of the most famous 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. And if you think a Free Kirk minister, who was Moderator of his church, who was Principal of its most influential College, and who for decades filled the pulpit of the Free Church's most influential Edinburgh church, might raise a hoary eyebrow at a Baptist minister who is also Principal of a Denominational College claiming his support for such a reason - you'd be wrong and you'd be surprised.

In the volume referred to Alexander Whyte wrote appreciations of thirteen Christian writers. As a Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist you'd expect Samuel Rutherford and William Guthrie the Fenwick Covenanter, and the New England Puritan Thomas Sheppard, to be 'appreciated'. And Thomas Goodwin the Puritan was Whyte's theological and spiritual mentor-in print - he read Goodwin so much the books had to be rebound in leather to withstand the wear and tear of a reader who lugged such tomes around with him while on holiday in the Highlands. But Whyte's appreciation reached much further afield - he wrote one of the most penetrating reviews of the sermons of Cardinal John Henry Newman, and as a younger man visited this celebrated Roman Catholic Convert at the oratory in Birmingham. His appreciation of Teresa of Avila was reviewed in The Tablet and read in religious communities as the lunchtime sacred reading. His review of father John of Kronstadt took him into the Russian Orthodox tradition where he sensed the importance of bowing to mystery, gazing on the beauty of holiness and lifting the heart in passionate and unembarrassed devotion to God.

So what's the connection between Alexander Whyte and my appreciation of Thomas Merton? Quite simple - Whyte urged those who would preach and pastor others to be a "true Catholic...a well read, open-minded, hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical", and to be "in a relation of indebtedness" to those who on the journey with God are further down the road than I will ever be. At many important turns in my own journey, Merton has been one of those who knew the road better than me. As a guide he has helped me map some of my own inner geography, that changing landscape of the soul where psychology, spirituality and the reality of God provide the raw material of my own humanity in Christ. Over many years few writers have taught me better than Merton, the importance of knowing myself known, loved and called by God, to serve Him open of mind and heart to the truth and the presence of God in all of life.

Whyte understood as few others in his age did, the damage done to the Gospel of Jesus, the mission of the church, and our personal spiritual development, by misguided and exclusive loyalty to the one narrow strand of the Christian tradition to which any of us happens to belong. Evangelicalism has been a tradition that, perhaps as a defensive buffer zone, developed strands of intolerance, its own list of no go theological areas and traditions, its in-built hermeneutic of suspicion that simply does not trust other traditions to be as 'sound', as 'biblical', in their understanding, interpretation and living of the truth of Christ. My own heart has never settled for such exclusiveness. Instead, like Alexander Whyte, A W Tozer, Thomas Goodwin, John Wesley, Richard Baxter and many, many others who stand either in Evangelicalism, or in the earlier traditions from which it emerged, I have put myself 'in a relation of indebtedness' to great souls of the Christian tradition, and been taught so much by those guests I have made welcome companions on my own journey.

This Baptist then, has learned a lot I needed to know about loving God without pretence, from Merton the Trappist. But I've also learned how not to limit the range and depth of the love of God in Christ from the medieval Julian of Norwich and the Methodist Charles Wesley. The studied devotional precision of Anglican George Herbert, the astringent but healthy questioning of the Welsh priest R S Thomas, the verbal virtuosity in service of spiritual certainty and uncertainty of the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, continue to teach me the importance of words in conversation about God, more especially in conversation with God. But these are other stories, for other times.

For now, over Christmas, I'm re-reading The Seven Storey Mountain, surely one of the 20th Century's genuine spiritual classics. Not least because it is a frank, flawed and distilled account of spiritual emptiness and hunger, and of the remorseless mercy that pursues us with gracious and loving intent.

'till by turning, turning , we turn round right

This is a Shaker community house - symmetrical, precisely crafted, ingeniously practical from the kitchen utensils to the foldaway beds. I mentioned the other day these remarkable people called The Shakers. Below is probably their most famous community song. You can find out more about them easily on the web.

My interest isn't in telling their history, but in trying to make sure such a radical community-oriented Christian sect isn't simply forgotten. They are categorised by sociologists as a utopian sect - maybe they were, but sociologists also need to learn the word eschatological - because they were forward looking in hope of the return of Christ, and for them utopia would be the community gathered to God. Their worship drew its energy, originality and movement from that hope - gathering to God. They still have important things to teach us - about simplicity, about community, about delight in practical things made into spiritual occasions, about choreographed worship (liturgical dance long before it became recently fashionable), and about going against the stream as an act, indeed a lifestyle, of witness, obedience and communal otherness.

When we were in New England for a holiday some years ago we went to the Shaker Revels. Every summer local people re-enact the life and times of the local Shaker community. Up on Mount Pleasant, which was reached by taking us in an open, horse-drawn hay-cart, in period costume a full cast act, sing and tell the story. The preacher was magnetic, electrifying and utterly convincing as he roared and pleaded and warned about judgement; the haymakers had their scythes and rakes in rhythm to the work song; families enacted the simple communal life, and the whole evening ended down on the meadow where a fire was lit. Then the cast walked round it singing, while each took a branch, or some hay, or some other fuel, and added it to the fire. Then we were invited to come and joine hands with them, bring our fuel, and share the making and the warming of the fire - and all to the music of the song Simple Gifts.

This was community performed before our eyes; this was symbol, fire and fuel, warmth and togetherness, heat radiating at the cost of being consumed, each with their gift of fuel for the fire and hands to hold. Whatever else church is - it is this. Only a couple of other times I can think of, was my heart so thrilled with the possibility of human closeness, to each other, to the hill, the stars, the fire - such an elemental, can I say sacramental, and simple gift - and that hand held dance around the fire, so that evnetually, we turn, and turn, and turn round right - how's that for enacting repentance, turning round - and conversion. A beautiful event, commemorating a beautiful people....and here's their beautiful theme song:

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Refrain:

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right

'Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
'Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we'll all live together and we'll all learn to say,

Refrain:

'Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,
'Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of "me",
And when we hear what others really think and really feel,
Then we'll all live together with a love that is real.

Refrain: