Living Wittily

Thomas Merton: Warnings for careless theological bloggers

Thomas Merton on integrity and care in writing. I've broken his two paragraphs into six guidelines that should help quality assure hastily posted blogposts - or at least raise embarrassment levels amongst the pious but careless.

And in fairness to Merton, some of his strictures were directed at several of his own early overcooked spiritual writings.

"We who say we love God: why are we not anxious to be perfect in our art as we pretend we want to be in our service of God?

If we do not try to be perfect in what we write, perhaps it is because we are not writing for God after all....

It is depressing that those who serve God and love Him sometimes write so badly when those who do not believe in Him take pains to write so well.

I am not talking about grammar and syntax, but about having something to say and saying it in sentences that are not half dead....

The fact that your subject may be very important in itself does not necessarily mean that what you have written about it is important.

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book...there are many who think that because they have written about God they have written good books."  (From The Sign of Jonas, Harcourt Brace, 1979, pages 60-61)

A strange mixture of a day - of funerals and laughter

Yesterday was a strange mixture of a day. Made up of attending a funeral standing for over an hour in a packed church; being at the afternoon session of our Baptist Assembly; having a meal out with friends between Assembly sessions; and then the evening Assembly session through most of which I was by then exhausted.

At the funeral met people I hadn't seen for anywhere between 35 and 5 years - some of them thought I'd aged. Is it that obvious 35 years on.....? The funeral itself was for Linda. We've known Linda and Jim for, well, 35 years, nearly all our married life, and been friends all that time. The funeral service was an experience that even this experienced pastor found heartbreakingly comforting, emotionally overwhelming in a way that seems even the day after, both inexplicable and right.

You see Jim presented the eulogy for Linda, preceded by a Visual Tribute of family photographs showing Linda as she was from baby to this year. And in what Jim said, he ministered to those who were there sharing in his love and gratitude for the life of his wife and lifelong friend. Then this man who couldn't sing, told of how during Linda's illness he took voice coaching so he could sing at her funeral, the love song that had meant so much to them as a couple down the years and in these past months. Being their friends for all these years, knowing the two of them, and hearing a non singer singing so well in leading a congregation, is simply one of the most moving events I've ever shared. And this was no exercise in denial - we all knew the reality of what was lost, and along with the promise of comfort within that loss, the deep human bonds of recognition that lie at the heart of love and loss, joy and grief, life and death - and how in the best friendships, these are shared.

May Sarton the poet once warned against wasting life's deepest experiences by being so busy in life we move on without assimilating and understanding what they have done to us. So maybe sometime later, when all of this is assimilated, I'll want to write something more - and only with Jim's permission. For now I am simply humbled though not puzzled, by how the love of these two people was made so astonishingly evident and then given as a gift to Linda, and us.

And the rest of the day went by in a haze - except the moment at the evening Assembly Session when, sitting with my friend Catriona of Skinny Fair-Trade Latte fame, the hymn THESE ARE THE DAYS OF ELIJAH was announced.

That was a moment of clarifying mischief, electrifying accidental providence, belief-defying coincidence (or did I pre-arrange it - no honest, I didn't!!) Eye-contact with Catriona came dangerously near irreverent guffaw. Instead I sang it with triumphalist gusto! If you read this Catriona, you can explain the metaphysical implications of your least favourite Assembly hymn being chosen at your first Scottish Assembly.

A strange mixture of a day.................

Induction, covenant and celebration - Catriona has arrived in Scotland!

Every induction of a minister to a pastorate is an event to be celebrated, a covenant to be sealed by promises, a confirmation yet again of the surprising call of God to all too human people to serve the Body of Christ, the Church. As Baptists we gladly hold to the practice of making covenant. A church is a gathering of believers who in their membership of the local church, embody the promise to walk together, faithfully, after Christ. And the call of God is to do so together, and to persevere and work at it even if at times it exhausts patience and breaks the heart. And to do this while also knowing that in the shared fellowship of the journey, they have discovered joy, the understanding of others, the generosity that humbles, and that one surprise, repeated so mercifully often, that one surprise of being loved.

 And so to Hillhead Baptist Church on Saturday October 3rd, and Catriona's induction. Most people who visit this blog will know Catriona as the skinny fair trade latte blogger (see sidebar), minister till recently of Hugglescote Baptist Church (aka Dibley). I met her the year before she went to Hugglescote, and then several times more recently as she came up to Scotland to meet those who will now be the congregation amongst whom her ministry will be. The Induction service was built around the theme and the experience of making covenant. Catriona told her story, the Church told theirs, and we sensed how these stories coincided. And of course the church from which Catriona came, Hugglescote Baptist Church, they too are part of the story and they were there too. Then Catriona and the Church made promises, and in our prayers we laid hands not only on the new minister, but on representatives of the congregation, so that they set out together on their journey, in covenant with each other, and looking to God to lead, accompany and hold them true to themselves and each other. All of this gathered together by Ruth Gouldbourne, preacher for the day, under the deceptively simple command, "Be kind to one another". Except that kindness is patterned after the kindnes of God, who in Christ chooses to be kind, to come close, to empathise, to walk the way of human life.

Then there was the biblically mandated buffet meal. This is one of my favourite icons, depicting an early buffet meal, complete with angels unawares. The fact that the icon images the Trinity and the Triune communion of love and perichoretic purpose, enriches further the idea of hospitality. Food, good talk, laughter, the shared satisfaction of being together, the courteous recognition of the other, the welcome that makes the presence of another both wanted and felt to be wanted, - and all expressed with good food, the mutuality of serving, and the fun of not knowing everyone who is there, providing opportunities to reach out with the offer of our name and the gift of their name.

So the day closed around 8.pm and we made our way home. But only after taking time to acknowledge the spiritual potency of those occasions when you know you stand on the brink of new possibility. And however hard we try, and no matter how much we think we ourselves achieve, we know that those possibilities come to be, not merely or mainly through our energy, but because when it comes to kindness, God takes the lead. He is there long before us; his generosity has no inbuilt limitations, and time and again we discover to our embarrasment, his grace second-guesses our needs.

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John Bunyan on the proper "status" of Baptist ministers

Most Baptists, including myself, claim John Bunyan was a Baptist in the best and most important senses of that ecclesial descriptor. By 1669 his Bedford congregation were described as Anabaptist. Whether he would own the modern denominational term or not, he held in classic Baptist terms to a profoundly unclerical non hierarchical view of the church and her ministry, and has some uncompromising correctives for all those in whatever tradition, who want to link ministry with authority rather than service, and for whom office and status seem more important than gift and privilege.

The quotation below comes from The Minister's Prayer Book. An Order of Prayers and Readings, ed. John W Doberstein (London: Collins, 1964). This book is a wide and eclectic gathering of orders for daily devotions, shaped around aspects of ministry, supplemented by an anthology of readings. I bought it for 75 pence second-hand years ago and it has travelled most places with me as a focus for reflection and prayer.

The following extract from Bunyan is on page 191. Unfortunately it was culled from another anthology so I can't give the precise reference to Bunyan. It's from Solomon's Temple Spiritualised and you can find it online over here.:

"Gifts and office make no men sons of God; as so, they are but servants; though these, as ministers and apostles, were servants of the highest form. It is the church, as such, that is the lady, a queen, the bride, the Lamb's wife; and prophets, apostles and ministers are but servants, stewards, labourers for her good."

"As therefore the lady is above the servant, the queen above the steward, or the wife above all her husband's officers, so is the church, as such, above these officers."

R S Thomas and the heart of pastoral care

"Preach the simple gospel. Make sure the old woman who sits at the back of the church can understand you". That kind of comment is patronising nonsense not far away from uninformed arrogance. So forgive me, but I've just heard it or something like it one too many times.

On a par with thinking visiting older people is a chore rather than a privilege, or an inefficient use of a dynamic church leader's time, a task for ancillary ministry rather than strategic leadership. As if accompanying friendship, pastoral companionship, available presence, attentive conversation, weren't a privilege, a gift and an opportunity to share in richly textured experience.

Some of the finest practical theologians I know sit in the back seats at church, or at their tea table, and I've coveted their nod of approval for the truth I've tried to speak, framed in words with maybe half the depth of their experience of life with God.

Hence the prophetic edge to this entire treatise in pastoral theology distilled into just over 60 words. An R S Thomas prose poem, written late in life, that tells us why we might never be near good enough to preach up to, let alone down to, the level of "the old woman who sits in the back pew".

'The holiness of the heart's affections.' Never tamper with them. In an age of science everything is analysable but a tear. Everywhere he went, despite his round collar and his licence, he was there to learn rather than to teach love. In the simplest of homes there were those who with little schooling and less college had come out top in that sweet examination.

(R S THomas, The Echoes Return Slow (London: MacMillan, 1988), 62.

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An Aberdeen wedding and a wee reflection on Christian marriage

Just back from Aberdeen where I was conducting a marriage ceremony for a family I've known for many a year. The groom was 10 years old last time I saw him before he emigrated to Australia (16 years ago). Came back to Scotland to get married though - Australia doesn't have a University founded in 1495, nor a University chapel with oak carving older than the Reformation!

I still think a Christian marriage service bears witness to a way of living that at its best is a demanding critique of our throwaway, serial relationship, obsessively individualist culture. Faithfulness gives love its discipline and its joy; covenant promises have no inbuilt guarantee they won't be broken, but they are a clear and public statement of intent to which each is accountable.

Amongst the extraordinary privileges of being a minister, is being invited to turn water into wine, to take the hopes and desires and loves of two people, and through their promised faithfulness and incredible courage of trust in each other, produce that intoxicating joy of knowing, against all the odds and to their endless surpise, not only that they are loved - but that they say so in public, and bear witness to their intention to live the rest of their lives cherishing and exploring the mystery that is this other person who out of all other possibilities, said yes to them, on that day, and in front of all the people who matter most in their lives. I never cease to wonder at the sheer crazy hopefulness that informs that kind of risk taking - and thank God that still, there are those like John and Julie, who do so.

Not to serve but to be served is also a biblical principle

Just back from a 24 hour meeting of our denominational Ministry Resource Team. As committee's go this group is about as good as it gets. Different perspectives, wide experience, the right combination of frankness and courtesy, a safe place for adventurous thinking and the contemplation of risk, newness and different possibility.

One of the times of prayerful reflection was around John 13. We were asked to sit quietly and read it, reflect on what it might have to say to us in our work together, or in our own journey towards a deeper grasp of what it means to be a minister of Jesus Christ. I've read this passage so many times - its cadences in the RSV are like footprints in my textual memory. Again and again it surprises me. And did so again.

It's that discordant note that Peter can't help sounding, his habit of not getting the point, of wanting to  set the terms of every relationship. Evelyn Underhill, one of the finest spiritual directors the Anglican communion ever produced, pointed out the hard work of unselfing the self, the humility to make space for the other. And there it is. Peter won't wash feet so Jesus does. Jesus washes feet but then Peter doesn't want his own feet washed by Jesus. Then he wants to be washed all over, hands, head and all.

John 13 is often seen as a depiction of ministry as serving others, just like Jesus. But this embarrassing exchange is also yet one more time when the self gets in the way. Peter isn't prepared to be served, unless it's on his terms. Underhill also spoke of the claimfulness of the self, the issue of status, rights and reputation. And so, maybe the hardest thing about ministry isn't the serving of others, which may or may not require of us a healthy humility. The more Christlike attitude may be that degree of humility that accepts service from another, that is humble enough to have our feet washed without complaint or sensed diminishment.

And, subversive thought - before Jesus washed the disciples feet, his own feet had been washed, by a woman's tears of gratitude. And again everybody else had an opinion about it. Whereas Jesus received the gift of service with the grace and the mercy of the gracious and merciful - and both he and she were blessed.

This ministry thing - not as straightforward as we'd all like to think.

The sketch by Vellatton as always says multum in parvo. "She has covered my feet with perfume and washed them with her tears."

Jigsaws and broken stories

For years now I've written a Saturday Sermon for the Aberdeen Press and Journal. It's one of the few papers left that preserves some column inches (400 words to be precise) for comments and perspectives that express Christian values and derive from Christian teaching. Not a good idea to overcook the occasion by proselytising or pushing party lines. No problem about overt Christian comment, just an assumption of courtesy and respect for a readership that is multifaith, multicultural, and may or may not be interested in a Saturday Sermon, whatever that is! Here's the script for the one published in Aberdeen today.

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I once managed to so offend at least four people in one sermon, that I had to apologise for speaking of that which I did not fully understand. The sermon is now long forgotten, at least by me. But for some reason I took a good natured swipe at jigsaw puzzles and those who spend hours completing them. Why would you spend hours trying to piece together a picture someone else deliberately cut up into small pieces and jumbled up in a box?

 

With more courtesy than perhaps I’d shown, it was explained to me that ministers could learn as much from putting a jig-saw together as putting a sermon together. One of the jigsaw enthusiasts explained that time without number, through building a jigsaw with them, he had helped young people whose lives had fallen to pieces, whose hopes were reduced by circumstances or choices to fragments that needed fitting together again. Corners, square edges, a picture of what might be, and a supportive collaborative friend, created a place and a process where rebuilding could begin. That image has since entered my key moments of insight about how to live wisely and well.

 

Sir Kenneth Calman, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, and a former Chief Medical Officer of Health at the Scottish office and then Westminster, is currently studying for an M.Litt on medicine and literature. Calman began as a GP, and has always been interested in patients as people, recognising the importance of the story that was each individual life. Telling of his lifelong passion for human wellbeing he mentioned an observation that reminded me of that less than proud moment many a year ago when I scoffed at those parables of pastoral care, the jigsaw builders. Someone had said: “my story’s broken, will you help me fix it?”

And there it is again. The recognition that sometimes our own story is broken, and often enough there are those we meet day in and day out whose own story is also broken. I’ve thought for a while that compassion requires imagination, an ability to wonder what it’s like for that other person to live out their story. Or having the patience to sit alongside someone whose life is in pieces and help them look for the straight edges, the corners, the picture that can still be made. Or as Jesus said, “Do for others whatever you would that others do for you.”

Ministry as biography

 Just preached at two services over in the East Neuk 
of Fife. Despite warm comments, and genuine 
appreciation,there is still, and always, the sense 
that words cannot "stretch to the measure of 
eternal things". The last phrase is P T Forsyth's. 
Sometimes I think that other brilliant, infuriating 
genius, the one from Denmark, should be heeded 
more:

"Order the parsons to be silent on Sundays. What is there left? The essential things remain: their lives, the daily life with which the parsons preach. Would you then get the impression by watching them that it was Christianity they were preaching?"
Soren Kierkegaard, Journals, Ed. Alexandre Dru (New YOrk: OUP, 1938), p. 402.

Biography as theology - and as ministry.

A Ministry of Appreciation - why I believe in it.

Going to see a friend today. I first met him in 1971 when he was asked by our denominational Ministerial Recognition Committee to assess my preaching potential and report back. I was of course very young at the time - honest! No kidding - not yet 21!

In those days references were confidential - but afterwards I was phoned by my assessor and told what he was going to say and given the chance to discuss it with him. It was a fair and encouraging report and spoke of gift and potential, and identified obvious advantages in a full course of training. Anything I've learned about balancing honest assessment of gift and ability with personal encouragement, and about the importance of example and demonstrated support as people struggle to discern their calling, I learned from people like him. Ever since then we have been friends, he has stayed in touch as encourager, and as an example of lifelong ministry in our churches. Long since retired, he remains for me a father figure, a sympathetic critic, an interested friend who prays for my ministry, and one who reluctantly but with transparent gratitude, is acknowledging the constraints that his years now put on his activity.

Today we'll talk about a lot of things - books, people, probably a few moans about what's wrong with the church and how we would fix it (aye right!), reminiscences about people who mattered in our churches, and his plans for the next stage of life. And as always I'll come away from him with a good feeling - about the Church we complain about but love, about a Gospel we still have in common though our theological emphases and insights don't neatly coincide, about pastoral ministry as the high calling of God, as undeserved privilege, and as one of the church's essential life support systems.

And I know before I go, I'll come away feeling good about myself in the light of all of this, because this man I've known for forty years, believes in people - he has a ministry of appreciation, who loves without sentimentality but with shrewd appraisal. He is a man whose estimate of you makes you want to live up to it - which is that rare gift of affirmative affection that makes you believe again in yourself as a work in progress, and the work is God's!