Living Wittily

My true name

  There is a passionate integrity in the lyrics of this album. Carrie Newcomer's writing is human, humane and humanising - passionate love, reverence for the mystery of human joy and longing, controlled but targeted questioning of the way things are, unembarrassed use of words like tenderness, try to be kind, no shame in asking for help, the importance of our true name, and as she admits - love is too hard to figure. I've found myself listening to the lyrics and sensing in myself an answering inquisitiveness about what matters - the relaxed almost conversational singing, the gently interrogative mood of several of these songs, the affirmation of life's limitations and the need to accept that mistakes, regrets and loss are balanced by possibility of joy, undeserved gift of love and an experienced eye for what is hopeful and worth striving for. I've chosen a song as an example of what makes her lyrics(and her performance of them), human, humane and humanising - it's about our struggle to know and love who we are, and how that's connected to who loves us.

My true name

Let me call you darlin', maybe call you sweetheart
Don't you hate it when they call you Louise
But isn't it scary, when they want to call you Mary
A whore, or a saint, or a tease.
But you came here in summer, you'd been living in Manhattan
You caught me wide eyed and half sane
But you saw to my center past every imposter
And you whispered My True Name

_
I have been Betty, Eleanor and Rosie
I've been the shamed Magdaline
And if the truth be known I've attempted Saint Joan
Donna, and Sarah, and Jane
For we all have our heros and we all have tormentors
and we'll play them again and again
But you saw to my center, past every imposter
And you whispered My True Name
_

And if you see me standing on the banks of Lake Griffy
Throwing white bits of paper to the wind
I'm just throwing the shards, of all my calling cards
And I'm speaking My True Name
I'm just throwing the shards, of all my calling cards
And I'm whispering My True Name.

Identity depends on being recognised, on the perception of others as well as that inner awareness of who we are and who speaks our name. I have little difficulty theologising this song - but only after I've heard its human longing for recognition from the other, ....and from the Other.

Have you ever.....?

At this time of year, for an hour in the early morning, the sun streams into my study onto the computer screen. Why pull the blind, or move the screen - instead I move myself into the window chair, and sit reading in the sunlight. It reminds me of this beautiful poem by a favourite poet, whose love of the world, and whose attentiveness to its nature as gift, reminds me of the liturgical ecology of the ancient Psalmists.

The Sun

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

_

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats towards the horizon

_

and into the cloud or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone---

and how it slides again

_

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

_

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance---

and have you ever felt for anything

_

such wild love---

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

_

that fills you

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

_

as you stand there

empty-handed---

or have you too

turned from the world---

_

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1, pages 50-51.

Blog makeover

Decided the design of the blog was tired and needing a makeover. I like the space and the clearer, larger font, the colours, and the butterfly heading out the top corner for freedom. I'ts called Art Nouveau Red - I think it's the smartest I've had so far. I had a wee problem getting the blog to accept the changes, emailed Typepad help at 6.45 and had an answer an hour later - and the answer solved the problem.

Letters mingle souls, for thus friends absent speak

I spent a wee while this morning, reading in the small chunky maroon buckram volume of The Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, my copy published in a fourth edition, 1884. It's one of a small collection of 'devotional books' I turn to regularly. The inverted commas around devotional is a hat tip to C S Lewis who disliked the marshmallow niceness of devotional writing, and preferred hard books you had to read with a pipe gripped in your teeth. Apart from the pipe, I'm with CSL - his essay 'On the Reading of Old Books' is anthologised all over the place; written sixty years ago, it's still a wise dissuasive from our 'chronological snobbery', by which we think the latest, newest, shiniest, easiest is best. The old has lasted till now - the newest still has to be tested - that's CSL the pragmatist!

Thomas Erskine was one of those Scottish Christian leaders during the first half of the 19th Century, who fell under the criticism and at times manipulative severity of those who saw themselves as defenders and upholders of Westminster orthodox Calvinism. Thomas Erskine, John Macleod Campbell of Rhu, near Helensburgh, and James Morison of Kilmarnock who formed the Evangelical Union of the Congregational Church, were three Scottish theologians who taught that Christ died for all, and not for the elect alone; they challenged particular atonement and proclaimed a universal and free Gospel, to be offfered to all, that all might hear the good news of Christ and respond in repentance and faith. 

Morison and Campbell were tried before their church courts and deposed - though before the end of the 19th Century their theology of God's universal love, Christ dying for all, and of the evangelistic imperative of a free gospel offered to all, had become the dominant position. P T Forsyth (Jason will concur!), described Macleod Campbell's book, The Nature of the Atonement, as 'a great, fine, holy book'. His endorsement is for some of us as near an imprimatur as Forsyth himself would allow!

.

Now that I think of it, a number of books of letters are important in my own understanding of what it means to follow after Christ - The Selected Letters of Baron Von Hugel, the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, the five volumes of Letters of Thomas Merton, The Spiritual Letters of Fenelon, The two volumes of Letters of Principal James Denney, Collected Letters of Evelyn Underhill, Cardiphonia of John Newton, the Letters of John Wesley (much more interesting than his Journal), William Cowper (one of the best letter writers in the language). (A Roman Catholic intellectual, a Scottish Covenanter, a trappist monk, a French Catholic spiritual director, one of Scotland's finest biblical theologians, an Anglican laywoman, an ex slaver turned Evangelical leader, the founder of Methodism, and England's finest rural poet) - quite an impressively varied crowd - and what brings them together in my story, is their careful correspondence, their taking time to 'connect' by snail mail, and someone taking time to gather, edit and publish them.

If Baron Von Hugel had lived today, would we have his posthumous Selected E-mails, Blogposts and Text Messages of BFVH'@Typepad.com?? - instead of some of the wisest, most convoluted, but most spiritually patient guidance anywhere. Not only history, but biography and sheer human artefacts, and spiritual theology as lived and written, seem threatened by the transience, occasionality and excess of electronic communication.

For example the above scanned letter is from P T Forsyth about a letter in his coat pocket he'd forgotten to post!

Off to get ready for church...............................

live these Holy Scriptures from the inside out...

I'm reading two books on the Bible. One by Brian Brock on Singing the Ethos of God, is really hard work. Parts of it are a dense and detailed exposition of Augustine and Luther on the Psalms. The whole book is an attempt to find a way of using the Bible in Christian Ethics without 'using' the Bible as support for ethical positions arrived at independently of the will and nature of the God encountered in the Bible. To live within the ethos of God, for the presence of God to be the environment we breathe, the affective centre of our lives, the emotional and spiritual expression of doxology and gratitude, is very different from a utilitarian handling of Scripture as a collection of principles, values, virtues or any other set of abstract extrapolations to be taken off the shelf as need requires. Brock is arguing for a much more interactive, dynamic and theologically responsive and responsible use of the Bible. So his book is important, carefully argued, at times lucidly persuasive - but overall I've found it hard to follow, and wonder if that's because it's too long - some of the exposition of Augustine's exposition of the Psalms makes its point - but takes too long to do it.

By contrast Eugene Peterson's Eat this Book, is an uncomplicated appeal for christians to stop playing around with the Bible and eat it - let its words be embodied in blood cells, nerve endings, joints and sinew, muscle and bone. Peterson targets the self sovereignty of contemporary Evangelical Bible readers, who use the Bible for their own spiritual projects, their personal doctrinal choices, to win arguments, settle ethical controversies. This is vintage Peterson as encountered in some of his earliest (and best) work.

One quotation from each of these authors shows why I'll persevere with reading both.

...for love to be rightly directed we need "God with us". Humans are in need of consolation, not because they have difficult experiences, but because they have lost God and thus no longer know how to love aright. Doxology is the point where the lost meet God...because doxology cries for and dares to enter God's presence. The Psalms are God's way of opening doxology to us, and thus they play a crucial role in Christian ethics: they are God's offer of himself to us, and the promise and the form for our renewal. The new humanity has been renewed in order that they may be entirely given over to good works. (Brock, page 167.)

                                                         ...

We are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible but, instead of submitting to it, use it, apply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how and where and when we will use it. One of the most urgent tasks facing the christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by reasserting what it means to live these Holy Scriptures from the inside out, instead of using them for our sincere and devout but still self-sovereign purposes.(Peterson, page 59).

Andy (Goodliff) promised to blog on Brock later - I'll be interested to see if my making heavy weather of chunks of it were due to my reading most of it while on holiday, or a sign of intellectual atrophy, or just the cost of trying to understand someone who is trying to say something significantly new. Either way reading the two books together makes for an interesting trialogue.

The Spiritual discipline of other people.....

Multipurpose trip to Edinburgh yesterday - research for a couple of things I'm working on was the primary draw. I wanted to check up on the Special Collections holdings at New College - they hold the papers of one of my other spiritual heroes, Alexander Whyte. Of all the Scottish preachers I'd like to have heard, he is in the Scottish Premier League, and in the top six!

Two encounters with folk I've never met and probably won't again. Since I was going to retrieve my car loaned to Aileen during our holiday, I only needed a one way fare. Spoke to the Ticket Man Behind the Glass and asked,

'What's the difference between a cheap day return and a single one way?'

'Wan brings ye back, and wan disnae', he said, smiling disarmingly but with the sub-text 'Ya pillock'.

The difference in price was 10p - but it seems the 10p part of the Journey wasn't transferable to the outward leg. decided not to ask him to confirm this!

.

Later, in the National Museum cafe, having ordered my Mozarella, cherry tomato, fresh basil leaves and pesto Ciabata (how Scottish is that??), I was reading, minding my own business. When my Ciabata arrived, and I was poised with knife and fork ready to begin the delicate operation of not eating it like a sandwich, a polite voice from the next table asked,

'Excuse me, but what is that you have ordered'.

A senior citizen with a non-spray on tan, serious bling attachments to both wrists and her neck, smiled at me over her must have cost a packet tinted specs. So knife and fork poised I described the contents of my anticipated lunch and showed her on the menu where it was.

'And is it nice', she asked, before I'd even tasted it.

So I cut off a chunk, chewed it thoughtfully (and it was really good), nodded affirmatively, at which point she said to her friend, 'No. I think we'll just have the soup'. Was it the way I ate? Or did Scotch broth appeal more than eating Italian? Or was she an undercover quality control visitor satisfied that the punter was satisfied?

Dinna ken. But what I did discover is you can't eat a Ciabata with a knife and fork and read a novel that snaps shut if you try to lay it flat on the table. So do I pick up the Ciabata and eat with one hand holding the book with the other? Or do I concentrate on enjoying the taste and nourishment of the meal - as well as eat in a more civilised, good mannered way? Happy to have advice on such nutritional multi-tasking, feeding body, mind and emotion (it was an Anne Tyler novel).

Women, spirituality and (un)intentional obscurity

A  while ago I posted a couple of times on the relative absence of women in the biblical commentary industry. However I was able to muster a reasonable number of biblical commentaries written by women from the academically superb (Margaret Thrall on Second Corinthians, 2 volumes, International Critical Commentary), to the theologically and pastorally alert (Beverly Gaventa on Acts, Abingdon Biblical Ccommentary, and Kathleen O'Connor on Lamentations), to the devotionally evocative and spiritually penetrating (Joan Chittister on Ruth).

When it comes to asking which women have featured prominently in the development of the Christian Spiritual tradition I suspected a similar sense of absence, of cultural and traditional marginalisation. Yes - and no. The roll call of women whose lives and writings have influenced the ongoing Christian Spiritual Tradition has some impressive entries but is certainly not represented across all the traditions.

Macrina, sister of Gregory of Nyssa has until recently been on the margins. I still remember the great historian Jaroslav Pelikan in his Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen, quietly dismantling centuries of prejudiced silence about this mother of the church, pointing out that to talk of the Church Fathers was to use vocabulary betraying either ignorance or chauvinism! Quite so - the Cappadocian "Fathers" owed a considerable intellectual debt to this woman - just as Appollos did to Priscilla.

Julian of Norwich - whatever we think of medieval mysticism, the cross centred, passionate theology so richly and profoundly explored in The Revelations of Divine Love, ranks with the finest atonement theology in the entire Christian tradition. Julian's theology is a medieval precursor of Moltmann's Crucified God (to my knowledge Moltmann has never significantly engaged with her work), and at times her writing soars to heights even Moltmann's rhetoric fails to reach.

From previous centuries also include Hildegard of Bingen,(the original 'feisty female' monastic), Teresa of Avila, (where is her reformation protestant equivalent?), Madame Guyon (French Quietist whose longing for God got her into trouble). The nineteenth century I might include Dora Greenwell, (whose theology P T Forsyth admired and learned from), Frances Havergal (poet, hymnwriter, hillwalker and milliner!).In the 20th century there are a few more women who were able to break through the glass ceiling - yes Evelyn Underhill, Amy Carmichael(doing some serious social stuff long before Mother Teresa), Florence Allshorn (community pioneer), Olive Wyon (translator of Emil Brunner!), Simone Weil (eccentric French philosopher, razor sharp mind, patron saint of those who struggle), Dorothy Sayers (translator of Dante, playwright and no mean theologian herself), Dorothy Day,( social activist, spirituality with the sleeeves rolled up), Mother Teresa; and in the past 25 years, Kathleen Norris, (poet and Benedictine oblate), Elaine Storkey ( evangelical feminist - yes it is possible), Joan Chittister (Benedictine, spiritual theologian)...but I'm struggling to make this a long impressive list. And be honest, how many of them have you read - how many have their works still in print - who has even heard of Olive Wyon, Florence Allshorn, Dora Greenwell??

And here's the Christian Blog equivalent of the pub quiz question with a bit of trivial pursuit obscurity thrown in -

name three women who have significantly impacted the development of the Scottish spiritual tradition, which is my current research area?

I will await your suggestions for other inclusions in the wider traditions; and ANY suggestion for women of obvious influence in the Scottish spiritual tradition. It isn't that they are not there - but who ever thought them important enough to write the biography, publish the writing, study the legacy, include them as essential players in the standard histories?

The infection of holiness

One of the sanest and at the same time sternest guides in the spiritual life was Evelyn Underhill, an Anglican lay woman, middle class, polite, leisured and literary, her photo portraying a not easily pleased headmistress - but a woman of deep perception, passionate honesty and gentle determination. Speaking with a friend yesterday we reminded each other how much Underhill's spirituality remains important as a corrective to our hard-nosed consumerist approaches to God that can at times seem like a series of shop till we drop expeditions of spiritual retail therapy. Here's a couple of her still needing to be pondered thoughts:

We talk and write easily about spiritual values and the spiritual life, but we remain fundamentally utilitarian, even pragamatic at heart. We want spiritual things to work, and the standard we apply is our miserable little notion of how they ought to work. We always want to know whether they are helpful. Our philosophy and religion are orientated, not towards the awful vision of that principle before which Isaiah saw the seraphim veil their eyes; but merely towards the visible life of humanity and its needs. We may speak respectfully of Mary and even study her psychology; but we feel that the really important thing is to encourage Martha to go on getting the lunch.

In the story of the rich young man, Underhill comments:

Jesus replies in effect.'Put aside all lesser interests, strip off unrealities, and come, give yourself the chance of catching the infection of holiness from Me'.

I'm going to say more about Evelyn Underhill on this blog - at times her terminology is dated, but her understanding of the spiritual life, her guidance in the search for God and holiness, represent endangered species of pastoral, ecclesial and theological skills.

The Holiday 3.

The Sunday in the middle of our holiday we were in Verona, and it was 35 degrees. It's hard to do the enthusiastic tourist bit in 95 degrees F, when you've left a Scottish July floundering in temperatures struggling to better 60 degrees F. But we did our best and we did quite well - saw the cathedral, did the amphitheatre which felt like a brick kiln as thousands of tons of marble acted like storage heaters on full power;

saw the statue of Dante the great medieval Italian poet, and the balcony where Romeo apparently invented romance while asking Juliet out.

But one of the sights every bit as worth seeing took place under the shades of a street restaurant. As we guzzled a couple of litres of sparkling mineral water, under the shades, an elderly woman made her way along the pavement, clearly struggling and near exhausted. The woman who had tended our table went quickly into the restaurant came out with a bottle of water, and we watched (rude I know) as she downed half of it in one long guzzle, and grinned with the kind of joyful wonder usually associated with the beatific vision.

The day before our holiday ended we went to a wee family patisserie down the back streets. It was just as hot, and we had come for coffee and a not modestly sized portion of Italian cake - in my case three layered Tiramasu, while Sheila claimed a wedge of light rich lemon cheesecake. Well we sat down gratefully at the table, and the elderly proprietor came forward with a hose gushing water, signalled for us to lift our feet, and he hosed down the flagstones till they were cool - actually he did our feet as well! Then he brough over our orders and we sat in refreshing bliss, eating our cake,entirely oblivious of the existence of calories. The whole experience was a beautiful performance of hospitality to Scottish guests.

Don't know how much water we bought over ten days - at least a litre each in addition to other drinking water at wells and street taps. Water costs on average 2 Euro per litre, 4 at the table - so we reckon we spent £75+ on water. That isn't a complaint - it's a sign of how important water is. That's probably why Jesus chose to emphasise the importance of the cup of cold water - a life restoring, life enhancing act of hospitality. An elderly shopper treated as a guest by a waitress - two Scottish Baptists hosed down by an Italian baker - parables, reminders, of how those little acts of love and care transform the world by celebrating and consolidating neighbourliness.

And in the country of Dante, they were small indications of 'that Love which moves the sun, and the other stars'.

Double entendre - 'novel' as newness and as story

Some novels have the power to change the way we look at the world. And when that happens, if it is to have any moral purchase, something also changes in us. A good novel undermines our assumptions about what is important, how we see ourselves or think of others, calls in question the value and significance we give, or fail to invest, in the key relationships in our lives. I have read novels that have clattered noisily into my inner living room, rearranging the furniture that up to now I've put up with, switching off the telly, kicking away whatever I happen to have my feet up on, hoovering the carpet and changing the colour scheme. In other words a novel can upset the routine, change the perspective, help us to see what needs changing, and helps us to make the effort.

You see, I like the double meaning of 'novel' - story, and newness - not novel as in trivial playing around with things for the novelty of it, but novel in the sense of fresh perspective, perceived possibility, hopeful vision. The list of such novels for me is quite short - I mention only one - but I'd be very interested if others have a central canon of novels which have done for you, what I've tried to explain above.

Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev.

This story about an artistically gifted Jewish boy, growing up in Brooklyn in a community deeply hostile to artistic activity as image making, is a moving exploration of what it means to be an authentic human being, true to who you are, but alert to how who we are is entangled in our deepest relationships. And what happens if who we are (Asher Lev, the artist) collides with who we are in our relationships( the Jewish boy living between his religious tradition, his family and his gift). The novel is a masterpiece of compassionate, imaginative storytelling, sympathetic to the hurt and bewilderment of a people whose tradition is rooted in holy words rather than holy images, but sympathetic too to the hurt and rejection of the young artist whose gift captures unforgettably that ambivalence.

The scene near the end, of the artist's mother standing at the apartment window, her arms stretched across the lintels as she looks down on her son in the street, and her son looking up seeing his Jewish mother standing in the shape of a cross, is one of the most unforgettable pieces of storytelling I have ever read. So Asher paints that image of his mother in a painting called 'Brooklyn Crucifixion', to the consternation and anger of those who love him. I still read it with tears of recognition - that there are times when to be true to ourselves we have to crucify the hopes and expectations of others, and even ourselves. Never thoughtlessly, arrogantly or selfishly - but as an act of self donation to the One whose gift is life, and whose gifts give life such a terrifyingly beautiful, costly and ultimately redemptive trajectory - which is our story. For the artist, the portrayal of his mother in the shape of a cross, offends, scandalises, alienates, those closest to him - yet the painting was the artist's recognition, and articulation, of the crucifying tensions of love entangled and agonised, but persistent, faithful and refusing to become hard and unreachable.

The mother love of God has never, for me, been more poignantly, or convincingly, portrayed. Read for the first time twenty odd years ago, the book conveys still, a vision of God's love as both anguished faithfulness and costly joy, revealed in crucifixion and life giving resurrection.