Living Wittily

In praise of thin books

Well . Been away to Manchester on a staff retreat which was a mixture of important discussions we needed time and space for, meeting with colleagues at Northern Baptist College, (including a shared meal at one of the local restaurants on Curry Mile), and time for shared conversation and friendship. In the intervening couple of days some of you have upheld the virtues of the thin book. Thansk for all the suggestions, and maybe worth offerinf some responses.

Trevor, since the Bible is a book of books you could probably choose any one of them as a thin book. Printed as a Penguin paberback I doubt if matthew's Gospel or isaiah would go much beyond 60 pages. So it isn't that the Bible doesn't count as a thin book - it counts as 66 of them.

Kate - not sure where I said suggested thin books need to be theological - so in case I gave that impression, it wasn't intended. Amongst the non theological nominations for my thin book shelf would be Saint Exupery's Little Prince, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, and Dag Hammarskjold's Markings (which if it is theological, isn't defined by its theology).

Gavin - Dissident Discipleship has 245 pages, which makes it a rather thick, thin book. But Augsburger's earlier books are nearly all within the 160 page limit. But thanks for pointing out a book that doesn't reduce discipleship to a ten quick steps programme, but affirms discipleship as a following after Jesus which is characterised by life practices which bear witness to who Jesus is.

The Manse Cat is a veritable thin book enthusiast, and it was good to have amongst others, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. I once witnessed this wee book lift the spirit and strengthen the hopefulness of a wonderful Christian lady at the time pushing 80. I still have a letter from her in which she quotes Brother Lawrence and Evelyn Underhill with the surprised gratitude of someone who had just had their medication changed and it was doing wonders. And Nuttall's slim biography of Richard Baxter is like all that Nuttal wrote - discretely erudite, written in restrained and elegant prose, and quietly taking its place alongside weightier works as the one that portrats baxter with affection and authority.

The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass gave me indigestion after a Christmas dinner years ago, when I read the entry on the bearded man shouting in church with the riposte, 'he shaved others, himself he could not shave'.

Bonhoeffer's Life Together is as Graeme says, one of those books which is thin only in the sense of its pagination. I've found that it's a book people either love or hate - its demanding, uncompromising, exposure of spiritual psychology and human dynamics as they are worked out in a close-knit, intensely focused community seldom make for comfortable reading. Yet like many others I've read it several times - each time wincing at the accuracy of his observations, at times resentful of such astringent exhortation, and having to own the painful truth that few church fellowships would be prepared to take this thin book as a year's experiment to test the too easy assumption that if all the world were Christians all problems would be solved!

John Colwell's The Rhythm of Doctrine is both a very good brief systematic theology based on the Church Year, and, I hope, an outline of what could become an original and valuable series of larger books expanding on the theological approach John has opened up - and I hope he does them! Few books claiming to be systematic theologies manage to be both brief and sufficiently rigorous - along with this one, Nicholas Lash, Believing Three ways in One God and Kathryn Tanner's Jesus Humanity and the Trinity, being amongst the more obvious. 

Right. I'm off to read one of the thinnest books in the Bible. I'm preaching on Jonah tomorrow. I know the story well, and the way it destabilises safe theologies and possessive spiritualities. In less than four modest chapters this story turns worlds upside down, changes worldviews, forces a revision of how its readers think of God, and ends with one of the most wonderfully funny lines in the whole Bible. In fact, going back to Trevor, and his search for a thin Bible, raises the question of thin books in the Bible. Ruth is a masterpiece in the same tradition of revising theologies built on unexamined assumptions about God. Lamentations expresses the darkness of the darkest hours - or decades, yet with an adamantine determination not to let God go. Philemon isn't a book - it's a letter, but I have a commentary on its 24 verses that is 550 pages long - and the incongruity of such a hefty commentary for such a brief occasional letter, is only felt if we haven't recognised the mustard seeds of Kingdom revolution implied in all the courtesies and gentle nudges woven throughout. A thin book, thick with possibility, eh?

The definition of a good book - from a wise, learned man

One of the hardest working students in my time at College, had come later in life after working amongst other things in merchant shipping. His enthusiasm was for ministry, his vocation to serve Christ in the church, and if that meant doing academic work, and developing different intellectual muscles so be it. I happen to believe that intellectual ability, intelligence, learning isn't only about academically tested standards and intellectual testing.  Life is a highly efficient educator, work of whatever kind - manual, mental, skilled craft, administrative - they all require the learning of new skills and developing established skills, interpreting situations before or while applying knowledge, negotiating a way between the demands of work and people and our own resources of ability time and energy. To successfully do that year on year makes for a degree of learning every bit as impressive as any Degree obtained from learning.

So when such a student as mentioned above comes to College, they don't come to start learning - they come to begin learning differently, and they do so with considerable wisdom, knowledge and know how already in the bank. So when it came to meeting with our denominational Board of Ministry, our student was asked if he had enjoyed the academic work. His answer 'No'. 'But it's been good for me'.
When then asked for one particular thing he had learned that was important he replied,'The definition of a good book'.
Pressed further what that might be, his reply lives on because of the laughter the truthfulness of his reply generated: The definition of a good book? Here's the reply, delivered in a broad West of Scotland accent and with considerable conviction: 'A thin one'.

I've thought often about that answer - and the wisdom and honesty of a man for whom reading isn't the be all and end all of learning. I never thought it was - I've worked in a brickwork setting bricks, ploughed fields with tractor and multi-blade plough, done the best part of an apprenticepship as an electrical engineer, shared in the management of a small market garden. And I've known many learned people whose learning didn't come from hours spent reading, and for whom reading was a necessary precondition only for learning what they needed to know, in order to know how to do what they wanted to do. The connection between knowing and doing was central to who they were, how they lived their lives, and just as important, was a key component of the accumulated wisdom and learning that comes from a life well lived

A good book is a thin one. It doesn't try to intimidate you with its learned bulk; it won't take chunks of your life to plough through assiduously assembled arguments, nor spend zillions of words telling you what is interesting to the writer rather than what is important for you the reader; it will get to the point, say the essentials with minimum fuss, and because it is a thin book, will say it well in order to make the most persuasive case in the space available. And if you are lucky and blessed, it will change how you think, how you look at life, and make you thankful for thin books.  Preaching for 50 minutes takes less time to prepare than preaching for 10 minutes. Somewhere in 50 minutes there will be things worth hearing, but what a lot of other stuff you have to live through to get there. But in ten minutes, to say what is worth saying, and worth others hearing, is a bigger ask. And if it is pulled off, it saves folk a lot of time and tedium.

Likewise books. Now I've read my share of thick books - big, bulky brieze blocks of Barthian dimensions. But I've also read thin ones - under 200, even under 150 pages, and could argue that what I learned from them could never have been as persuasively, effectively, life changingly accessed in a book two, three or even four times the size. So I'm going to do a series of posts soon in praise of thinner books, as a tribute to a man who once told us something wise about learning, and showed us he had used his time well in College. A definition of a good book - a thin one.

I'm hoping to have a few guest posts from those of you who wish to write a piece in praise of a thin book - no more than 160 pages - the odd choice of maximum pages is because one of the books I want to write about is 156 pages. Post a comment with your suggestion if you have an offer, and meantime I'm asking one or two to think about doing one.

Blogging milestones.

Statistics aren't always misleading. Sometimes they simply state facts.
So.
I've been blogging now for exactly 500 days.
During that time I have written 479 posts.
Goodness knows how many words.
Reckon that makes me a blogging addict, or an incurable writer,
or a conscientious contributor,
or a vocationally driven literary exhibitionist whose love of words is now confirmed as a lifelong dependency,or someone who needs to get out more (true), but not wearing that hat (oh go on, says Margaret).

I've enjoyed being part of that invisible community of folk who drop past, sometimes comment, or email. So long as interesting things happen in the world, as long as theological study remains both intellectual fun and context for prayer, as long as there's stuff to laugh, weep, shout about or celebrate, I'm likely to find time to blog.

The unholy trinity of 'Money, Football Dominance, and the Cosmic Scale Ego'.

Don't know how many regulars to this blog have any interest in football. But I think most probably have considerable interest in issues of justice, human flourishing, use and abuse of power, and the dangers of globalised capitalism and consumerism when they are made the absolute standard by which human activity is judged. So from a weekend of action and news - some reflections.

Queen of the South, a wee team from Dumfries, played in the Scottish Cup Final against one of the two the wealthiest clubs in Scotland. The final score of 3-2 to Rangers points to a close game, and the sheer romance of a rural town virtually emptied as 17,000+ went to support the local team. David and Goliath it wasn't - cos the big guy won this time. What was recognisable was the sport, the human experience of competing, trying, and knowing that though there can only be one winning team - played the right way for the right reasons, everyone comes away with more than they took.

Hull City played Bristol City for the final place in the Premier League. The winning team would find its finances boosted by around £60 million. So Dean Windass, 39 year old striker with the build of a slightly out of condition rugby player, hit one of the best timed volleys of his career, and netted the club £60 million. No pressure then. With that kind of money, how many of the current squad who worked to get the team into the Premiership, will be there after the start of next season, when that kind of money is around to buy some security and success. How far should money count in a sport, in the life of a sports player?

Which brings us to Chelsea, whose owner is one of the richest men in the world, who spends millions the way the rest of us spend 10p pieces, and who has injected hundreds of millions into the Club. That explains the quite astonishing arrogance of their Chairman Bruce Buck speaking after Chelsea sacked Avram Grant:


We have had a great season," said Buck. "In the four competitions we were in, we were runners up in three of them. But we have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second place finishes is just not good enough for us."

He added: "Although we never would have thought in September when Jose Mourinho left that we would be able to make it into a Champions League Final - as we did, and that is fantastic - Chelsea is here to win trophies so, although it was an excellent season, we are still disappointed."

Now I'm not naive enough to think that a huge, lucrative, ego factory like top flight professional football should by some miracle show the slightest display of such human virtues as altruism, due deference to the excellence of others, fairness, or even at a push evidence of actually enjoying the game itself. But there are levels of irrational expectations behind that statement that border on religious fundamentalism rooted in worship of a God named ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego'. (Buck is pointing to said deity in this photograph - note the open mouthed worshipper on the left). The ruthless disposal of a failed manager, after 8 months having inherited a club in crisis, and on a definition that counts three runner's up places in four competitions (one of which was lost by the captain of the team slipping as he took a penalty that would otherwise have one the biggest of them all) as not good enough, is an act that betrays a truly scary worldview. Some of the most ruthless military leaders in human history would struggle to compete with such expectations after 8 months in charge. Alexander the Great took a bit longer......

All of which means what? Football is a major global industry, increasingly used as a shop window for the world's most powerful global capitalist interests, and now the sport itself has become the means and not the end. Left me wondering if my deep moral repulsion at such power seeking and financial muscle flexing in sport is only one of scale. The two Scottish teams in the final need money, and money and status are at the centre of professional sporting motivation, so they play the same game. But equally I'm quite sure players on £200,000 a week!!! is a moral issue of another order. And the sacking of a manager in such cirucmstances as Avram Grant, explained with the liturgical solemnity of a High Priest spokesman of ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego', demonstrates with brutal clarity, that when money speaks, some people hear it as the word of god (small captials intentional). They also live under the quite irrational belief in the divine right to win.

Much to ponder as a once football player, a lifelong football fan, and a follower of a different God, who speaks a different discourse, whose goals are very different, whose criteria for excellence are not centred on universal domination, and whose view of human beings is, apparently, not as ruthlessly exacting as those held by Bruce Buck. But then the God I refer to never finishes in penultimate place - indeed hear the Word of God, (capitals intentional this time): - the last shall be first and the first shall be last - no place then for the penultimate or the ultimate then. Winning isn't everything, thank goodness.

Theological education, writing, and an ethic of words.

Here is Stephanie Paulsell on 'Writing as a Spiritual Discipline', one of a number of very fine essays in The Scope of Our Art. The Vocation of the Theological Teacher L. Gregory Jones & Stephanie Paulsell (Eds.), (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 17-31.

It matters what words we choose, what voice we speak in, what tone we take. It matters both for the quality of our own thought, and for the quality of our invitation to our readers. The intellectual and aesthetic choices we make when we write are also moral, spiritual choices that can hold open a door for another to enter, or pull that door shut; that can sharpen our thinking or allow it to recline on a comfortable bed of jargon; that can form us in generosity and humility or in condescension and disdain. (page 24)

One of the courses I teach involves introducing students to writing as a moral and spiritual practice of slowed down thinking, that is intellectually generous and curious, while also providng a framework for trying out ideas, developing mental agility, and learning to love and value words. To preach, to lead others in prayer, to speak into situations of human experience where what is said can be transformative, creative, supportive, redemptive, communicative of love or hope or peace; and also to know when words won't work and wordless presence is the gift we must offer - these require facility with words, but also a practised ethic of choosing our words with care - care for those who will read them, hear them, be touched and affected by them.

Writing this blog is one way of practising the moral and spiritual choices that are part of the vocation of those whose calling involves the use of so many words - may the words of my mouth, pen, keyboard, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

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.

Birmingham, Women Ministers and the liberty of Christ

Just been to Birmingham for a meeting with the Fellowship of British Baptists which met at the International Mission College of BMS World Mission. Baptist leaders from BUGB and Welsh and Scottish Unions meet each year to share ideas, stories and discuss together important aspects of strategy and development within our felloship of churches. It isn't an easy time to be a mainline denomination and there are fairly constant and demanding pressures of finance, cultural change, expectations both valid and unrealistic, and throughout it all a sense of urgency about how best to bear witness faithfully in our following after Christ.

Our visit coincided with Women in Ministry Day and I caught up very briefly with several friends including Carol, Ruth, Clare and Catriona - I met them in that order and had far too little time to talk about their ministries and how life was in the churches where they serve. But it did my heart no end of good to be amongst so many gifted and significant people whose ministries are expressed in creative faithfulness. I hope their time together was a time of mutual encouragement, shared expereince, renewed faith, replenished enthusiasm, and anything else that could in the generosity of God be given for their blessing and for the church's edicfication. The experience of women serving within a still male dominated leadership in our churches remains a pressing issue of justice, stewardship and fellowship, requiring biblical, theological and pastoral debate about the nature of the Gospel, the witness of a Gospel people, and the meaning of the liberty we have in Christ, and the liberty of Christ - to call to ministry those whom he calls. I've heard arguments for and against women in ministry - even to the point of stating what Christ can and cannot do as if the call of Christ has to answer to our theological scruples. At that point the issue becomes one of humility and obedience as key inner principles in any such responses, discussions and conclusions.

Then tonight watched the Champion's League Final - which Manchester United won. There are levels of emotional expenditure in football that come as close as anything else I've witnessed to relgious fervour - whether desolation or elation. I'm doing a paper later this summer on sport in general, and football in particular, as forms of secular spirituality. Tonight's game had some of the key elements of religiously generated expereince - prayer and cursing, praise and blame, fellowship and isolation, liturgical chants, and a sense of the absolute significance, even the cosmic implications of, THE RESULT. More on this later - time for bed.

St Deiniol's 3 : Psalm 119 and Theological Education

What's the longest chapter in the Bible? The longest Psalm? It's that remarkable piece of textual cross stitch, Psalm 119. A 22 stanza acrostic going through the hebrew alphabet, each verse in each stanza beginning with the same letter - it is a tour de force of artificially structured thought, but to great and serious purpose. My own study of the Psalm goes back years - I once preached six sermons on it, touching on wisdom, guidance, spiritual longing, hard times, trustful learning and leaning, and so on. The Victorian pastoral theologian Charles Bridges wrote a devout commentary on it: Thomas Manton the Puritan a long series of sermons which dissected and examined it in exhaustive and exhausting detail; Calvin's commentary on it is a masterclass in restrained, focused devotion; Spurgeon ransacked the expositional tradition to produce what is a vade mecum on Christian obedience to the Law of the Lord.

At at St Deiniol's this Psalm was brought to my attention again by reading Bonhoeffer's Discipleship. He quotes one verse that picqued my interest, and resulted in a careful rereading and rehearing of this Torah Concerto in 22 movements! It was then I came across verse 56: 'This has been my practice; I obey your precepts'. None of us really know why certain phrases of Scripture trip us up, slow us down, make us listen - the Holy Spirit interrupts our reading, silences otherwise sound questions and puts on hold the discoveries that drive the intellectual quest. And for no reason other than unlooked for gift, words are transformed to Word, Bible study becomes personal address, and the Word of the Lord has finally been heard. Sitting in a sunlit Victorian library, mellow oak book shelves on three sides, aware of countless others who had sat in this place in pursuit of divine learning, my soul already stirred by the pointed and potent writing of Bonhoeffer, I sensed the passion and longing of the Psalm writer who so long ago tried to express the ordered purposes of God, in well ordered words, as a way of recreating a disordered world - through saintly practices in obedience to divine precepts.

The result is an outline of an essay on psalm 119 as theological education. More about this later. It's time I took the psalmist's advice:
I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.

St Deiniol's 2. Walking the walk and not forgiving our tresspasses

One of the enjoyable features of a time at St Deiniol's is you meet a number of people even more interesting than yourself! Sean's well meant advice about the resident scholar pursuing the identity of the young man in Mark came far too late of course. I did indeed meet this tireless scholar and one of my first questions was, 'What are you researching?' And yes, some time later I was still sat there receiving a deep education on exegetical options I'd never have imagined possible or plausible. I threw in a little twist of my own and asked if the young man in Mark was the first gospel's equivalent of the Beloved Disciple in John - that took us to Bauckham and back some time later.

Then there was the afternoon conversation over earl grey tea and chocolate cake with an elderly Philadelphian doing research into the family history and theological ancestry of Hannah Whittall Smith, Keswick, perfectionism and much else. She gave us a sharply observed run down on US politics, particularly scathing on the patronising President who's giving up golf to avoid offending parents whose sons won't be home from Iraq to play golf. Her views on Hillary and Obama were clear, informed, slightly prejudiced (which she acknowledged), and hoped to see the first black President of the US before she died, and so she would die happy. After a tour of Wesleyan perfection, Dubya Bush's imperfection, and Obama's near perfection, she took her leave from the table, raising her hand outward in the sign of peace, pronouncing the rarely used benediction, 'Keep the faith, baby!' An utter delight.

Then there was  (and is) the chaplain for the month, The Rev Arderne Gillies from Chorleywood Free Church (Baptist). First spoke with Arderne on Monday night, when she suggested we take a walk in the grounds of Hawarden castle (see later this post for the consequences of this pastoral advice!) As chaplain, Arderne celebrated the pre-breakfast Eucharist with the guests during our stay. Now you read it right - Arderne is a Baptist minister, chaplain for a month at St Deiniol's, and she celebrated according to the liturgy of the Church of Wales - which allowed me the rare privilege of being ministered to in a worship service thoroughly ecumenical, overtly egalitarian, and movingly personal as we received the bread and wine with the affirmations and blessings which express the mystery and gift that is the Body and Blood of Christ. And the service was conducted with such care as requires personal preparation, the intercessory prayers earthed into the hurts and hopes of a broken world, and the solemnity of the service tempered by the engaged presence of one spiritually at one with both congregation and her own role as minister. Thanks Arderne.

The version of the Lord's Prayer used is the traditional form with the petition, 'Forgive us our tresspasses.....' which we prayed with sincere fervour, having fallen foul of the factor in Sir William Gladstone's estate, because we were so busy blethering we didn't notice the wee private signs, and inadvertently trod on one of the recently declared non public parts of England's green and pleasant land! Comes from being Scottish where such laws of tresspass aren't so easily enforced. One of those occasions when pastoral advice about walking the walk can mean offending the world!

St Deiniol's 1. Study is slowed down prayer.......

I've just spent five days at St Deiniol's Library which was restorative, relaxing, interesting, modestly productive, and reassures me that my brain can still be kick-started given the right kick and the right fuel! What makes St Deiniol's special is the people who go there, the Library itself with its atmosphere of prayer and learning, the ethos of Victorian ingenuity and support for humane learning, and the overall concept of a residential bolt hole for those who want to pursue divine learning or whose vocation is theological education - which if we are to be adequate to the task presupposes that our own theological education and commitment to divine learning remains both an enthusiasm and a calling.

Let's talk ethos. The original oak interior of the library has been preserved, including the ingenious arrangement of shelves allowing maximum books in available space. Unlike many academic institutions, there isn't the same urgency to move older stuff to the less accessible stacks, so much of the original older library is there mingled with the new - I worked a lot on psalm 119 for reasons I'll mention in a later post. But I was happy as Larry (anyone know the origin of this phrase?) sitting at a table beside Neal and Littledale's five volume Victorian bric a brac shop of Patristic comment on the Psalter, Spurgeon's homiletic supermarket called the Treasury of David, the venerable two volume J S S Perowne, devout Anglican commentator on the Psalms, the equally imposing commentary by Joseph Addison Alexander, Reformed Calvinist and important conservative biblical scholar at mid 19th century Princeton, as well as the latest Hermeneia volume Sean enthused about earlier this year, and several of the spate of recent usable sized and theologically enriched commentaries on Psalms by Bob Davidson from Glasgow, John Eaton of Birmingham  - and a new discovery I'll blog about soon. Point is - though several recent important volumes weren't there, much that isn't so easy to find is.

But what gives working in the Library an added sense of prayerful purpose is the early morning pre-breakfast Eucharist for those who want to communicate. To join study with the wider church at prayer was an important reminder each day that theological study and theological education has its goal in a developing, deepening devotion to God. The liturgy is simple, carefully crafted, each day was conducted with the right balance of dignity and personal warmth, and is shared by people representing the diversity and richness of the Body of Christ. The quiet coolness and filtered light of the library add to the sense of being about God's business, physical reminders that study is slowed down prayer, quietened thought, and instilling a gentle awareness that to study is to want to know, and to want to know requires an inner humility that recognises there is much to learn, much to receive, and much for which to give thanks - including the gift of the work of those from whom we learn.

I read a chunk of Bonhoefer's Discipleship, a book which decisively frustrates any attempt at skim or speed reading, information filleting or desultory browsing. Bonhoeffer is uncompromising, utterly to the point about discipleship as personal response to the crucified risen Jesus. Reading him I realise how easy it has been to lose that edge of fitness and stamina, to relax that alertness and readiness for self expenditure required of cross carrying Christians. If I'd found myself on Manchester United's training field, the physical demands of keeping up with the pace might be considered the equivalent of hearing that remarkable voice of a young German pastor lay out the demands of discipleship and the costliness of responding to the grace of God in Christ. The right book, read in the right place, at the right time......