Luther King House, Sean the Baptist, Fireworks, Barack Obama and Bonhoeffer.

Going to Manchester for a few days to visit our friends at Luther King House Manchester, home of Northern Baptist College. Looking forward to good conversation with Sean, Richard, Anne and Glen (and anybody else who feels like a good blether with a sabbaticaling Scot).

Bloggers  and blog readers will be up to date with the promised departure of Sean the Baptist to sunny Ozzie in early 2009. When I heard the news it seemed like a good reason to spend a while in good company before distance becomes problematic! (According to mapcrow.info Sean will be 10,496.09 miles excactly from Heathrow!) As an added bonus I get to stay with Sean and his family, and share the fireworks party, which is to double as a victory celebration for Barack Obama. Tonight I mean to stay up way, way, way, beyond my bedtime (usually 10.30'ish - but then I'm up just as other bloggers are going to bed.), at least till it becomes clear that the polls are near enough right.

Amongst the good things I have in common with Sean is indebtedness to the thought and life of Dietrcih Bonhoeffer. I'm going to post a couple of times over the weekend on some of what Bonhoeffer has had me thinking and praying about as, reading some of his work, I've tried to wrestle with the question that centred all his theological and ethical explorations - Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Amongst the many responses he offered to this searching and sifting question:

'God revealed in the flesh', the God-man Jesus Christ, is the holy mystery which theology is appointed to guard. What a mistake to think that it is the task of theology to unravel God's mystery, to bring it down to the flat, ordinary human wisdom of experience and reason! It is the task of theology solely to preserve God's wonder as wonder, to understand, to defend, to glorify God's mystery as mystery.
(Quoted in G Kelly and F B Nelson, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990), 472

Comments

[Margaret]

Give my love to Sean. Mx

[Catriona]

Have fun! Just make sure Sean is not burning effigies of his (for a bit longer yet) doctoral students...!

[Sean]

Hi Margaret
Love back! Hope you are well.

Catriona, no effigies at all - and no dancing round the fire either

[Peter]

Did you stay up. Once Colorado came in we all knew it was all over. Obama mentioned people all over the world; what a difference. Let us hope for peace now. At last someone smart and articulate who really cares for the poor and the rest of the world. But it won't be easy! Let's keep praying for the man.

[Margaret]

How was the fireworks party?

[Jim Gordon]

Peter, I didn't need to stay upp all that late to know that the right result was pretty well secured. So I slept easily and well.

Margaret - the fireowrks were modestly effective against the backdrop of the huge display by the local rugby / football team just over the back of the house. But Sean and his pal Rich did a heroic job of setting said fireworks off with due diligience about health and safety - accompanied by a dozen children yelling the countdowns.

The food was plentiful and included dr Sean's gourmet pumpkin soup, as accompaniment to oven roasted sausages with home made fried onions. All told - a really good Obama party - complete with Obama badges handed out by Sophia and Lucy - who had clearly declared a republican free zone!