Living Wittily

marking, grading and handling other's work with care.

That time of the year when all the work has to be marked, graded, collated, data accurately recorded, scripts sent to Externals, paperwork generated for a years coursework. Important to remember that these exam scripts and projects, Journals and essays, represent hours and hours of work, hard pushed effort to meet looming deadlines, so no shortage of anxiety and hopefulness. Such work and costly labour, so much read and written, revised and submitted -  All of which prompts the following Haiku (Typepad's new software does daft things with indents, font size and stuff - I'll practice)

Advice for Anxious Students
Marking and grading-
wood or straw, gold or silver?
Do good works- and hope.

Ideal Essays 1
Write a good essay-
well wrought words capture ideas
in structured syntax.

Ideal Essays 2
Clear intro, conclude,
make sense in the middle, plus
Bibliography

Motto for Markers
Judge coursework with care -
assume honest long labour,
and assess intent.

Beatitude for Students
Blessed are those who
read the question carefully
and answer it well.

Beatitude for Markers
Blessed are those who
make allowance for effort -
but not for short change.

Haiku NT Introduction - Final Call

The Haiku New Testament Introduction is two thirds complete - that is, 18 books of the NT have been Haiku'd! As Catriona will be relieved to note, my NT has returned to being a 27 book canon.

The nine that are still to be rendered into Haiku are:- I Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude.

Below is my own contribution - on I John. I have immersed myself in this short letter over the years, because of the profundity and possibility of its theology, because of its importance in the formation of Christian character, because of its importance in the spirituality and theology of John and Charles Wesley, and because it has been treated by some of the best commentaries on my shelves. Robert Law's Tests of Life, a hundred years on is still a beautifully written theological reflection to be reckoned with, and from the pen of a Scottish scholar greatly admired by James Denney - nuff said; John Stott's Tyndale NT Commentary, still in my view his best NT Commentary; Howard Marshall has never written a better commentary for preachers than his volume in the NICNT; Raymond Brown's massive Anchor Bible is much too detailed, and posits a convoluted history of the Johannine community, but I've still spent hours fascinated by eight hundred pages of lexical, grammatical, historical, textual, social, rhetorical, theological, spiritual comment on this short occasional letter to a wee community under a bit of pressure.

1 John

Walk in light and love!

Holy love will cast out fear

from hearts made perfect.

Jim Gordon

Andy Jones was beginning to develop a dependency on this project so some of you others help him out by distilling the essence of the remaining NT books to 5x7x5 Haiku form. Hope to have the whole NT available for Christmas. Some have been done more than once so an editorial decision will be made as to which is accepted into the haiku canon. I may then publish the others as non-canoncial literature, but important alternative perspectives!

It will be the shortest, most accessible, NT Introduction available, a kind of biblical studies concentrate - probably not sufficient for exam purposes, but with allowances for the Scottish traits of self-deprecation, and understated achievement, some of them are nae bad! 

The simple pleasures of big learned books!

As promised here are some Haiku verses I wrote to celebrate the beautiful, critical commentaries publishes as the Hermeneia series. They are also a tribute to Sean Winter who shares my enthusiasm for the aesthetics of book production, who like me gloats without conscience in the visual and tactile pleasure of handling and reading a beautiful book in which the knowledge it contains and the form that contains it are equally important. And near the end a three line tribute to a three volume masterpiece, Luz on Matthew.

Hermeneia  Haiku

Hermeneia, is

An ancient Greek speaking word

For hermeneutics.

.

Hermeneutics, the

Modern term for biblical

Interpretation.

.

Sumptuous volumes,

Book-buying extravagance

So hard to resist.

.

A thing of beauty,

Aesthetics and scholarship

A joy forever.

.

Luz’ magnum opus,

Winter’s desideratum

Matthean triptych.

.

Haiku PS

.

Lesser mortals ask

‘What is wirkungsgeschichte?’

Is it important?

Autumn Haiku

Decided to play around with inner feelings of being on holiday in autumn. The profusion of yellow, gold and brown, the windy wet drizzly day, the crab apple tree in our front garden, and the increasing irrelevance of harvest thanksgiving as a liturgy for local, rural agriculture in a globalised world - all combine to create a mood mostly playful but with an elegiac hint of Autumn's annual reminder to us all! I've always liked autumn in a kind of sorry to see summer go sort of way - the changing colours of trees and garden, the sense of season's coming and going, the rhythm of vitality in spring, maturity in summer, fruitfulness in autumn and dormant rest in winter. And maybe also because my roots are in country rather than city. In any case, here's some of the inner conversation going on just now.

Autumn Haiku

Windy autumn rain.

Showers of yellow falling leaves;

trees prepare to sleep.

.

Like much too early

frosted scarlet Christmas balls,

crab apples hang down.

.

Harvest fruit gathered;

winter storage, dated since

globalisation.

.

A fruitful autumn,

like ripe middle aged people,

well preserved wisdom.

.

A fruitful autumn,

like well preserved people,

middle aged wisdom.

Environmentally friendly carbon footprints?

Live Earth Haiku

.

Live Earth rock concerts,

Megawatt powered protest,

Helps global warming?

.

Celebrity stars,

When not performing for Al,

Stamp carbon footprints.

.

Rivers of water

From Greenland’s melting mountains,

Make sea-levels rise.

.

The earth is the Lord’s,

His gift to human stewards,

Appointed to care.

.

Divine Creation,

Fertile, fecund friendly, place,

For humanity.

.

Save the earth, O Lord,

Renew, replenish, restore,

Lost Eden’s beauty.

.

The whole earth awaits

The final coming of God,

Greatest Gig of all!

Trinitarian Haiku

This week follows Trinity Sunday - I'm still reading slowly through T F Torrance's Christian Doctrine of God. One Being Three Persons. Just negotiated my way through one of those chunks of hard to grasp theological granite for which Torrance is renowned - all about different epistemic levels 'n a' that stuff.

Anyway the following were written for the class last Semester when I was teaching a course on Rediscovering the Triune God. They are an exercise in theology pared down to the essentials of language, within the discipline of form and playfulness.

.

Trinitarian Haiku

...

Holy Trinity!

Grace-filled life in fellowship,

Love in triplicate!

...

Living Creator,

Creative adventurer,

Father of mercies.

...

Reconciling Son,

Redeeming Ambassador,

Love as surrender.

...

Comforting Spirit,

Articulate Paraclete,

Truthful Advocate.

...

Perichoresis!

Cappadocian genius!

Love co-inhering!

...

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

Picasso's simple line-drawing, with the biblical allusion of the dove and the olive leaf, I find profoundly moving, and poignant, in a world where violence is often the preferred method of communication. This Pentecost, may the Spirit of peaceful communication enable us to find olive leaves to offer one another.

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

Invading Spirit,

Gatecrash our solemnity

With holy fervour.

.

The Church that's drinking

Intoxicating Spirit

Never lost for words.

.

Rushing mighty wind,

Hurricane force holiness,

Mission impelled church.

.

Searing tongues of flame

"Inextinguishable blaze",

Purify our hearts.

.

Speak in other tongues,

Of love, of peace, of pardon,

People reconciled.

.

Tower of Babel,

Communication breakdown,

New hermeneutic.

.

Pentecostal gift,

As given, Giving, Giver,

"The Go-Between God".

Jim Gordon, Pentecost, 2007

T F Torrance's intellectual debts - in Haiku!

Hard to argue with the dominant presence of Tom Torrance on the Scottish theological landscape for over 60 years. He is a mountainous presence, admired worldwide for his contribution to the study of Barth and Calvin, the relations of Christian faith to scientific ways of knowing, the development of a viable theological rapprochement on the Trinity between the East and the West, and all these informed by deep long reading in patristic, reformed and ecumentical theology.

But he doesn't only gather, reconstruct and recycle the theological products of others, he is also a creative and cosntructive theologian in his own right. It is that combination of creative assimilation and constructive initiative that makes this book on the Christian doctrine of God such rich, hard, rewarding reading.

In a more playful mood last night I drafted some Haiku in celebration of Torrance and his theological heroes. As always, I use the 5x7x5 haiku structure, the trinitarian structure indicating what Jonathan Edwards might have called 'the shadow of divine things'!

Torrance Haiku

...

Athanasius,
Lucid apologist for
‘The Incarnation’

...

Homoousios,
One substance with the Father,
Torrance-structured truth.

...

Calvin’s Institutes,
Reformed fons et origo,
Torrance’s benchmark.

...

Barth’s Church Dogmatics,
Everest meets Niagaran
Grammar of The Word.

...

Scottish Dogmatics
Displaying Reformed barcodes,
Geneva and Basle.

Palm Sunday Haiku

Palm Sunday Haiku

Behold your King comes

with shock and awesome meekness,

sovereign of peace.

...

Power tamed by love,

redemptive strategies, are

things that make for peace.

...

O Jerusalem!

Jerusalem, how often...

but you, you would not.

...

Cherry blossom, snowflakes and haiku

Out running in the park yesterday I passed a cherry tree while it was snowing, and blowing a minor gale. It was cold enough for me – and I was left wondering what Arctic breezes would do to the chances of cherries later.

So as I passed, around me pink petals and snowflakes were falling together – left me wondering about global warming and local winter – and thinking how unusual it was to stand watching a shower of two such delicately formed, fragile gems of natural beauty – the geometric perfection of snowflakes, and the tinted living filligree of cherry blossom petals.

What our children used to (mockingly) refer to as ‘an emotional moment’!

Un-Seasonal Haiku

Iced wind from the North-

Driven horizontally

Wet snow falls swiftly.

...

Blustery blizzards -

Seasonally adjusted

Snow, falls in springtime.

...

Late frost and wind chill-

Early blossom buds promise,

A fruitless autumn.

...

Designer snowflakes,

Early pink cherry blossom,

Winter confetti.