Living Wittily

Prayer and the volatile money markets

Prayer for the current financial situation

The Church of England put a "prayer for the current financial situation" on the prayers page of its website and saw traffic increase by almost a third. On Friday, it was viewed 8,000 times.

The Rev Simon Butler, a curate at St Giles church in Nottingham, said he had seen more young professionals at services since the crisis began. "I would guess that some of them would be looking to things of a spiritual nature because things of a material nature are looking a bit shaky," he said.

The Prayer

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:

     across the world,

     prices rise,

     debts increase,

     banks collapse,

     jobs are taken away,

     and fragile security is under threat.

Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:

be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,

and a light in the darkness;

help us receive your gift of peace,

and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,

in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The link for this was sent to me by a friend and colleague at University of the West of Scotland. You can find it and other interesting stuff here. 

Northern Rock on not forgiving its debtors

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors...."

The news this morning featured Northern Rock - remember, the bank that was nationalised at tax payers expense? Whose debts were forgiven even if the irresponsibility that led to them was unforgiveable?

Now we hear that Northern Rock are using aggressive tactics against those struggling to pay their mortgages, that they are inflexible in helping make arrangements for people who want to pay but are struggling, and that Northern Rock is significantly increasing the number of house repossessions as a way of dealing with mortgage debt. This claim was made by Credit Action who are seeing the consequences of this for families ambushed by recent events that the Government itself blames on global factors beyond its own control.

Apart from the obvious line in the Lord's Prayer, (I prefer the Scottish version of 'forgiving debts' for several reasons) I recall there is a parable in the New Testament about a servant who was forgiven a massive humungous debt, only to be found later beating up on someone who owed him a tiny fraction of what he had been forgiven. That parable ended with oppressors being cast into outer darkness, and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

As a taxpayer, I don't want a Bank that exists because of my money to use money-power against people by defaulting to the repossession of people's homes as the quickest way to realise assets to pay off what is owed to the Government (and me). But what can I do about it? I want to think about this, because I have a feeling that as money gets tight, so will the jaws of the vice that holds people's future. (In relation to abuse of money-power, just noticed, "vice" has a double entendre)

And on a global scale, an even bigger worry, where now the possibility of ending world poverty?

Reading Poetry, and Recovering a Sense of Slow

 Slow reading of poetry is becoming a favourite way of recovering a sense of slow. Some of the most important human experiences require us to take our time, or better, to take the time it takes to listen, see, understand, appreciate, enjoy, allow ourselves to be spoken to from outside ourselves. And the time it takes isn't the time I can spare, but the time it takes for that other voice to speak. So whether that voice is Brahms' Violin Concerto, a tern diving into blue sea, the distant profile of a mountain I climbed years ago, Rublev's Icon of The Trinity above my desk, a sycamore tree aflame with autumn, food lovingly prepared and eaten in friendship, shared silence with the love of our life, or poetry - these are voices that are raoutinely obscured, obliviously silenced by the noise of undeterred preoccupations and the clatter of a life too busy to want to hear them.

Amongst those from whom I am currently re-learning the gift of slow listening, is Denise Levertov. She would have rejected the description of her work as 'Christian' poetry - rather it is the poetry of one who during her life as a poet, came to deep convictions through an inward conversion, expressed in words and ideas recognisably Christian. Not so much Christian poetry as and increasingly recognisably Christian theology giving form and tone to her way of seeing and saying the world. Here are a couple of short poems to read.........slowly.....more than once...

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

The Avowal (Recalling the 300th Birthday of George Herbert, 1983)

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-suurounding grace.

1. Texts I Travel With: On Loving God

Sometimes I need to hear a voice that doesn't mess about. Spirituality is notoriously hard to define, there's still a big argument about whether it's a subject for academic study in its own right, and often enough, even when limited to Christian Spirituality, the diversity of tradition makes it hard for us even to agree what we are talking about. And maybe we are more comfortable with an unexamined pluralism of ideas, experience and styles of spirituality, than with taking a position in which we speak with clarity and conviction about what is so. At which point Bernard of Clairvaux's astringent words are a shout for silence in this spiritual marketplace dedicated to personal choices, acting like a theological cleansing of those temples we like to build and decorate to our own spiritual specifications:

So you wish to hear from me
why and in what way
God is to be loved.
Here's my answer:
The cause of loving God -
it's God himself.
And the measure - it's to love
God without measure.

Simple really - and such a hard call. Not as easy as I thought, this spirituality stuff! Nobody said anything about absolutes! But then Bernard pre-dates postmodernist sensitivities. Actually, Bernard doesn't go much for any sensitivities that depend on letting us have our cake and eat it. His booklet, On Loving God, is one of a number of Texts I Travel With. And one of its strengths is that it recognises some essentials are precisley that - non-negotiable goals and practices of Chjristian living.

You can find the text of On Loving God online, here. I prefer to use the Classics of Western Spirituality Edition, edited by G R Evans - I suppose I'll always prefer book to screen.

Anxiety levels and doing the Good Samaritan thing!

So the Priest and the Levite passed by on the other side. And ever since we have assumed those two patron saints of the Don't Get Personally Involved Society, represent the way people other than oursleves might react to a man lying hurt on the road. The Good Samaritan, however, is the one we imagine ourselves to be, faced with a similar incident.

Yesterday on the way to church I came to the junction with Glasgow Road and as I checked the traffic to my right, 20 metres away, lying in the middle of the road, holding a bunch of pink balloons, was a young black man. Cars were passing by on the outside lane; that piece of road is on a hill and at a bend, and is where speed limits are routinely ignored. I didn't know if he had been hit, or was ill, or drunk or what - but what was obvious was his life was in serious danger. None of the cars were for stopping; several walkers on the other side of the road looked curiously but kept walking.

I left the car, ran towards him, waving to traffic to stop or slow down, and when I reached him he was lying looking vacantly at the sky, till I spoke. He focused his eyes, and it became clear he was returning from a party and had decided he needed to sleep. I pulled him up, he stumbled to the pavement, asked where he was, said he needed to get to Glasgow. Refused a lift, made it clear he didn't want company, was clearly disoriented but determined to go, and so he made his uncertain way back along Glasgow Road. I watched for a while till he was safely out of sight, and then went to church.

I still wonder if he made it. If I should have called the police. If it was drink or drugs that had rendered him not only helpless, but life threateningly careless. I sat in church wondering, and worrying. Which raises the interesting question about that Good Samaritan parable. If you have compassion, if you care, if you get involved, it isn't just the use of your donkey and the settling of someone else's expenses; the care itself has some cost attached to it. Worry for the other, even if that other is someone you've never seen before and might never see again, is the inbuilt cost of compassion.I have the uncomfortable feeling I should have done more but don't know what. Now if I'd taken my normal route and gone down our street instead of up the street - I'd never have seen him and saved myself unnecessary worry. Hmmmmm - not sure about that. Hope he's OK though.

Uox Faz - feline linguistics

uox faz - if you're wondering what that means, it's the result of Gizmo padding across my keyboard on his way to the kitchen to demand, require, insist on being fed. Ever since he spent a week in the cattery during our recebt Cornwall holiday he's been acting like a spoilt feline, alternating between sychophantic purring and feed me now caterwauling. So I suppose "uox faz" might be feline-speak for "ban sabbaticals and or holidays".

                        “Uox Faz” –

Feline Haiku for Humans Slow on the Uptake

 

Walk circumspectly

across the keyboard, touching

just the right keys.

…….

Ban sabbaticals!

when feeders and cuddlers just

abandon their cat!

…….

"uox faz!" also means,

in feline complaint language,

"Please Stop Stravaigin!”

 

Surrounded by a cloud of great witnesses: Mrs Jeanette Simpson, (nee Rigley), 1914 - 2008.

 I heard yesterday of the death of a special friend who has been part of my life journey since 1967. As a teenager whose life was all over the place I encountered the Rev Charlie Simpson. The result was my first raid into Carluke Baptist Church where I met several remarkable people. And maybe with their permission I'll tell you about them, and why they are landmarks in my own faith journey. One of them was Mrs Simpson, "the minister's wife". Jeanette Simpson and her husband Charlie took an immediate interest in me, despite my unenviable reputation in the town as a teenager. When I was converted on April 16, 1967 it was Charlie Simpson who spoke with me, prayed with me and led me to Christ. And amongst those from whom I learned the significance of hospitality, and I mean welcome into heart as well as home, was Nettie Simpson.

Down through the years of responding to God's call to ministry, my training, and my ordination and induction to my first church in Partick, Mr and Mrs Simpson (I never called either of them by their first names when I spoke with them- then or till now) they were supportive, encouraging and wise guides. When in 1979 Charlie died suddenly, aged 56, I conducted his funeral service, and we have remained close friends of Nettie all these years. Amongst my treasures are some of Charlie's books, including most of my P T Forsyth collection - something else I owe to these two wonderful people.

And so on Tuesday I will conduct Mrs Simpson's funeral, for me an act of gratitude, love and admiration, as well as pastoral care and support for her family. Nettie's time as a minister's wife coincided with a time of narrow exclusiveness in relation to the ministry of women in our churches in Scotland. But I would want to say that the two of them were God's gift to the church, and their ministry of spiritual nurture, open hospitality and willingly borne inconvenience, gave me time and space to grow into the reality of the decision I made. And I have never thought of them as anything other than ministers of God, whose love and understanding made the grace of God credible to me. 

How can we ever second guess God? Or know where the road of our life together takes unexpected turns? That night, in a small vestry, on my knees, saying yes to Jesus and to a different future. And beside me the man who was my first spiritual director, and the one who baptised me - and in due course, this young upstart would become a minister, and take the funeral service for him, and thirty years later for his wife. I look on these two people as amongst those whose faith in me has give substance and reality to what I believe about the generous and persistent love of God, who believes in us and redeems us to the depths of our being.

I thank my God for every remembrance of them......

 

Sabbaticaling on the beach

Today Sheila and I did a longish beach walk at North Berwick - around 6 miles. Blue skies and unbroken sunshine for several hours, later fluffy clouds reflecting on a blue sea, a chain of islands offshore and in the distance a humungous container ship. As we walked we saw a cormorant diving, a golden plover running and olympic sprint, yellow wagtails bouncing across the rocks, oyster catchers sounding like feathered smoke alarms when we got too near, and several small shore flowers we need to look up in the book.

Not only so. But North Berwick has a string of charity shops a couple of which have good second-hand book sections. I celebrated a good day by spending four pounds on John Batchelor's biography of John Ruskin. This strange, opinionated, erudite, humane social reformer, art critic and writer of some of the best prose in the English language, has fascinated me ever since I discovered a book of excerpts from his writing. I'll make a space to read this when I'm away on a reading week soon.

If sabbatical is about getting in touch with the world around then today made for good sabbaticaling.

Pencil Notes in the margin: Kathleen Norris

"The operation of the church is entirely set up for the sinner, which creates much misunderstanding among the smug".
(Flannery O'Connor, quoted in Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me, page 54)

"We are not our thoughts. Thoughts come and go. Unacompanied thought pass quickly. Thoughts that are thought about become desires. Desires that are thought about become passions".  (Mary Funk, Thoughts Matter, Norris, page 91)

Dr Ted Herbert : For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.....

Yesterday I attended the Thanksgiving and celebration service for the life of Dr Ted Herbert, Vice Principal of International Christian College.

The service expressed some of the deepest realities of Christian faith - hope through Jesus Christ, gratitude for a life so fully and fruitfully lived, celebration of a life given to the service of Christ and His Church, and a recognition of the loss and sorrow that inevitably accompanies the death of someone so deeply loved and widely held in high esteem.

Amongst the qualities Ted brought to his work at ICC was an energy and interest in bringing people and resources together in partnership within the Kingdom. He actively encouraged links and relationships between Colleges and across denominational lines. That is how I first met Ted, and in recent years he has been an important link between ICC and ourselves at several levels of co-operation and shared resources.

Our acknowledgement of Ted's ministry can be found at the SBC Blog.