On Wednesday, 21 Feb, my birthday, I spent the day doing several things I enjoy. Early morning I was on my way to Glasgow University Library chasing material on George Macleod of Iona for the paper I am doing on him in March. Needed a quality coffee to start the day and went into the Hunterian Museum which has a small, light, corner cafe where I enjoyed a latte with Almond syrup, and a chapter of my new book.
When I asked for the Almond syrup the woman serving me asked if I'd seen Masterchef Goes Large, the night before.
'Aye', I said.
'Whit aboot that eejit that put ground almonds instead of parmesan in the pesto?', she asked me, obviously still astonished at such ignorance of elementary cuisine know-how.
'And the pillock served it, tae', she added.
I know what she meant - meatballs served with a sweet almond sauce????? If you make a mistake, you acknowledge it and start again; if you are in a hole stop digging; two wrongs don't make a right. Did leave me wondering though....marzipan flavoured meatballs!
Then, still sipping and reading, I overheard fragments of a conversation - but before I recount a couple of snippets, you need to know I was reading The Cross Shattered Christ by Hauerwas, a gift for Lent. As usual, Hauerwas was on about peace, the cost of peacemaking, and the dangers of pious sentimentality leaching the tragic mystery from that pivotal moment in the life of God - the death of the Son. And in the light of such tragic mysterious triumph, the determined opposition of Christian hearts to all that makes for unjust death and dehumanising cruelty, morally reinforced by an abiding suspicion of politically motivated violence.
Now the fugitive pieces of conversation rendered into phonetic Scots - the meaning still more or less transparent.........
'Ah didnae want tae hiv a row wi' her. A didnae mean tae fa' oot wi' her. She juist went ballistic.'
'Ah'm that busy ah'm gonnae be aff the planet next week - ah cannae look efter her.'
'See whit ah huv tae pit up wi'? God love her - ah love her tae bits so ah dae.'
A mother, complaining to her friend, about her teenage daughter's perplexingly challenging behaviour, in the language of the heart.
What's the connection between me reading about the cross and peacemaking, thinking about George Macleod, sipping an almond latte, and hearing these snippets of genuine humanity and the costly tensions and tanglements of human love.
It's the word ballistic - used to describe a family row, a euphemism for other euphemisms like 'losing it', 'chucking a wobbler', 'doing your nut'. Ballistic - it means a projectile travelling by its own momentum when the engine is switched off. So when I hear the word I think of other semantic connections - Intercontinental ballistic missiles - silent unwinged harbingers of mass death, the terror of our enemies, our peace founded on the ultimate blackmail play of the 'other's' threatened destruction.
Connections?
The cross and its intercontinental embrace.
Peace as the goal of God.
Lord George Macleod, passionate Christian pacifist, kirk minister, and CND's most eloquent orator.
The love of a mother and the love of God.
And that scary euphemism; when did the word ballistic enter the popular vocabulary of the West of Scotland as a description of self-propelled anger? I ask the question as a West of Scotland man, sitting at a keyboard, 20 miles from Faslane, hoping none of the people with power ever feel compelled to go ballistic on an international scale.
And I sit here affirming still, 'Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand';
and praying still, 'O cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee, I lay in dust life's glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red, life that shall endless be'.
And, more whimsically, but just as seriously, I wonder if God looks down on this planet and says something like........
'See whit ah huv tae pit up wi'? God love her - ah love her tae bits so ah dae.'
Cross shattered Christ!
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.......................
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