Living Wittily

"we don't solve our deepest problems just by better discipline, but by better discipleship"

"The body of Jesus Christ is our flesh. He bears our flesh. Therefore, where Jesus Christ is, there we are, whether we know it or not; that is true because of the Incarnation. What happens to Jesus Christ, happens to us. It really is all our poor flesh and blood which lies there in the crib; it is our flesh which dies with him on the cross and is buried with him. He took our human nature so that we might be eternally with him. Where the body of Jesus Christ is, there are we; indeed, we are his Body. So then, Christmas for all people runs: You are accepted, God has not despised you, but he bears in his body all your flesh and blood. Look at the cradle! In the body of the little child, in the incarnate Sone of God, your flesh, all your distress, anxiety, redemption, indeed all your sin, is borne, forgiven, and healed."  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom, 449)

"The one great purpose of the Church's existence is to share the bread of Life...to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus and be channels of his free, unanxious, utterly demanding, grown-up love...Once we recognize God's great secret, that we are all made to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call to see one another differently."

"The Church of the future, I believe, will do both its prophetic and its pastoral work effectively only if it is concerned first with gratitude and joy; orthodoxy flows from this, not the other way round, and we don't solve our deepest problems just by better discipline, but by better discipleship, a fuller entry into the intimate joy of Jesus life." (Both paragraphs from Rowan Williams, Enthronement Sermon, quoted in Rupert Shortt, Rowan's Rule, 260-61).

Two different ways of expressing an incarnational theology - both centred on Jesus Christ, whose active and redemptive presence in the world is embodied in the Church, the Body of Christ. To live out that redemptive love, in generous gift, courageous witness, persistent hope and attractive joyfulness - that is Christ's call and demand - accompanied and enabled by the promise of his presence, his real presence.

Thanks to all of you who have stopped by here in the past year, to share, read, think, and pray. The consensus of the commentators seems to be that 2009 is going to be harder than 2008. Maybe so. To go into that future as a Church called to reconfigure its structural life in a post Christian culture; requiring to repent of past self-concern and learn again the way of sacrifice; urged to reconsider how to follow after Christ more faithfully, and thus to depend more trustfully on the God who has come to us in Christ - well there's enough to be going on with. But wherever we go, and whenever we gather in Jesus' name and scatter in his service, there we find the Risen Lord, and the love of God, and life whatever it brings, to be lived in the power of the Spirit of Christ.

One of the highlights of my year was the vist to Edinburgh to view Caravaggio's calling of Peter and Andrew. Against a dark background a young Jesus calls older disciples to come after him, into a future to which he points - but which they, and we, can't see. Scary stuff this discipleship.

Rowan Williams, - highly intelligent and/or Holy Fool?

Just been listening to a podcast of Archbishop Rowan Williams being inteviewed about his recent study of Dostoevsky. Discussing one of the readings from The Brothers Karamazov in which the devil / atheist case is being made, Williams  in a characteristic tone of affectionate dismissiveness describes such contemporary populist atheists as "second rate intellectual journalists". Nothing second rate about the range and depth of Rowan Williams own thinking, theology and spirituality.

As a deep dyed Baptist I'm one of Rowan Williams' critical admirers from the outisde. He is complex, and can sometimes propose and promote impractical solutions to problems of serious import in the world Church. He adopts ethical positions with which I differ, but never lightly and never without learning much - both about the arguments, and how to argue as a Christian. He can be theologically difficult because in his own theological reflection and his commitment to work within the great ecumenical Christian tradition, consistency isn't allowed to hinder legitimate and therefore necessary development of thought. In his list of the sins of the life of the mind, inconclusiveness isn't as dangerous as closed certainty.

Set me wondering about 20th and 21st Century Archbishops of Canterbury I rate along with Rowan Williams. Two really. William Temple whose social theology and grasp of both Gospel and society had considerable promise cut short by an early death; and Michael Ramsey whose oddity of character never seemed to obscure the sanctity and ecumenical persistence of one committed to the the world Church. Both these previous Archbishops have numerous entries in my stored quotations and references gleaned over years of reading and which used to be called commonplace books- and maybe each should get a post to remind us of their achievement, and remind us too why Rowan Williams is an important presence on our national stage. 

As for Rowan Williams himself, I hope that despite the heavy criticism he has received, some of it more or less to the point, but even more of it unfair and uninformed, he is able to go on encouraging Christians to think and to care about God, the Church and the world. My sense of the man is that holiness in him is real to the point of tangibility. That by the way, may be why he is such an uncomfortably innocent yet shrewd pastor of souls, and why he gets into trouble for adopting provisional positions and being unembarrassed about uncertainty.

The self-confident certainties and rhetorical assuredness of the seasoned ecclesial politician would make for firmer leadership - but they aren't qualities that naturally grow out of holiness that while not otherworldly, has deep life-giving roots in the priorities of that other world. Personal holiness isn't a vote winner amongst the pragmatists and managers - but it carries a different kind of attractiveness and authority that doesn't depend on him always being right. He is a man who fully deserves the time it takes to pray for him - a complex man in a complex world, and one whose mind and heart are, I believe, important gifts to the whole Church.

Amongst the intellectual and spiritual interests of this Archbishop is a deep grasp of Russian theology; the tradition of the Holy Fool is a strong and subversive element of Russian spirituality, (think of Dostoevsky's The Idiot). There is sufficient evidence in the holiness and wisdom, the political unpredictability and otherwordly trustfulness of Rowan Williams to suggest he is not altogether unfamiliar with the cost and consequence of being a fool for Christ's sake.

I've just finished Shortt's biography, which is fair in its criticism and right in its sympathy and affirmation of Williams style of being Archbishop. Amongst its strengths I think, is Shortt's willingness to recognise and try to explain this hard to categorise combination of intellectual complexity, spiritual wisdom, theological polyphony, pastoral instinct and political uncertainty. 

So he is a man who deserves our prayers, not least because he is a man defined by his own praying.

So I pray. I feel a fool, but I pray.

The training of child suicide bombers, and the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel's towns and cities, are threats to the security and safety of the State of Israel. Hamas militants know the likely response and persist in endangering the Palestinian population who have nowhere else to go. Whatever the rights and wrongs of a cause, turning children into weapons and provoking massive retaliation against a civilian population effectively captured in a siege, as a political and military tactic, makes no moral sense and does lasting damage to the work of more moderate Palestinian representatives seeking negotiated peace.

The prolonged seige of Gaza, and the bombing of residential areas with battlefield ordinance is Israel's response, predicted by many, and deliberately provoked by Hamas. Given the siege, the  population trapped and concentrated, their are inevitably tragic consequences that seem on any reckoning I can manage, beyond the scale of morally acceptable self-defence.

I struggle with the idea of proportionality, suggesting that as long as violent death visited on the one side was not exceeded by the other, the killing itself was tolerable. But at least the principle of proprotionality is a recognition in international law that retaliatory self-defence should be in proportion to the perceived and actual threat. With the death toll already at 300 and 600 wounded, the statistics are themselves intolerable. Collective punishment and civilian targetting are war crimes - and Hamas and Israel are both guilty. But Israel is infinitely more potently armed, its military capacity ranging all the way upwards to nuclear; and the Gaza civilian population don't even have the option of fleeing as refugees away from a small, heavily populated, hemmed in danger zone.

The cynical fatalism of Hamas in firing rockets which though lethal have limited capacity is obviously intended to buy the world's attention at the cost of Israel's incrementally massive retaliation. It's a despicable tactic. But at the same time I can't see warplanes firing missiles at crowded houses in a besieged city, with catastrophic human consequences, and think it justified self defence.

What on earth can I as a Christian say to a secular Jewish State and a radical Islamic and Palestinian Jihadist movement hell bent on reciprocal violence. The history of hatred between the peoples who contest the biblical lands and cities gives every impression of immutable enmity, intractability born of decades of bad faith, and levels of poison that suggest the causes are now systemic and chronic. In the relations between Israel and Palestine it is so endemic to the religious commitments and political ambitions of both, that the violence and death it visits on both sides are seen as both predictable and normal. And how to break the cycle of hatred; how to discover an antidote to viral vengeance; how to even speak the word trust without triggering toxic cynicism on both sides? I don't know.

So I pray. I pray for peace. I feel a fool, or at least so out of my depth I'm looking for something to buoy me up. Or I'm naive maybe, uninformed probably, and so, caught in the maelstrom of my own emotions, I try to handle my inner outrage. My whole humanity revolts at the language of violent death as the language of the blind and deaf - that is those who are blind to the existence of the other, and deaf to their voice. Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is one of those chilling terms used in nuclear deterrence theory. But even without the nuclear scenario, vengenace for vengeance, death for death, leads inevitably to atrocity for atrocity.

So I pray. And I ask, how in all this do those with power and a trigger finger or push-button detonator, recover, and rediscover a sense of their own humanity. Because until they do peace is impossible.

So I pray. For peace. Praying that those whose aim is the death of the other whom they don't see and won't hear, may be healed of blind hatred and blind deafness - that they may see, and hear, and turn. Blessed are the peacemakers - I so want to make peace happen. Wish I knew how. So I pray.

Gifts, blessings and Greetings

A red Cashmere sweater that makes me look soft, cuddly and slim. (not many people look cuddly AND slim).

A new 2 CD production of Haydn "The Creation" which I intend to leave a couple of hours for some afternoon when everyone else is doing much less civilised stuff around the telly.

Coldplay, James and the Beethoven's 7th Symphony wrapped together as a gift package of eclectic music.

A book of the Duke of Edinburgh's politically incorrect gaffes and hilariously witty put downs which makes the Duke sound like a lot of fun to accompany.

Chocolate laced with chillies, and a large bar of chocolate with caramelised hazelnuts and praline.

A box of three bottles of rather fine selected red wines.

A hand cast metal paperweight in the shape of the dove of peace now sitting on my desk beside several other important objects of spiritual import to me - (including my holding cross, a 19th century brass light switch, a framed 1940's postcard of Izaak Walton's window in Winchester Cathedral).

So I've had a good Christmas - enriched further by good company and some surprise emails, phone calls and other people stuff. I'm just off to phone Bob and Becky - Becky is the much loved minister of the church in the gloriously Chirstmassy photo above. So if you read this Becky, leave a comment as kind of literary footstep in the snow!

Peace to all and joy forbye!

Happy Christmas and a Nativity Fib Triptych

The picture is by one of my favourite contemporary artists, He Qi. His work on biblical image and narrative has a texture and colour reminsicent of both  needlework and stained glass. indeed some of his work is done as needlework.

The art of He Qi is both simple and complex - but the results are pictures with an inner vibrancy, familiar story-lines but unexpected combinations of colour and shape.

No I didn't do the Fibs on Christmas morning. These are some I prepared earlier. Thought I'd try the extra line on the Herod one.

Peace and joy to all who come by here regularly, occasionally, or even just today. May you know the great tidings of comfort and joy, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

Mary
Poor.
Pure.
Virgin.
Young Mary
pregnant with scandal.
The least of her worries!
What about mothering God, and not losing Joseph?

Joseph
Take?
Love?
But how
forgive if
betrothal's betrayed?
Conception by the Holy Ghost?
Thank God angels interrupt even our worst nightmares!

Herod
"King?
Where?
Find him!
Bethlehem?
Send in the soldiers.
Call it preventive massacre!
Warn Egypt to expect bogus asylum seekers."
But by reversed Exodus, Israel's hope finds refuge in the land of the Pharaohs.

Before there was a world to redeem, a world was made.

Decided to keep the Fib Fest going for a few days to allow time for festive preparations and recovery. Anyone fancy doing a Nativity Fib though, for Christmas Eve?

Here's a few more offerings that stand to the side of the Christmas story, but not too far off. The birth of Jesus starts the story of the New Testament. I've always felt that Christmas is a good time to reflect on the way the Old Testament starts the story of all things. Before there was a world to redeem a world was made. Long before the birth of Jesus, God made flesh, human beings were formed and wrought by the creative impetus of a Love incapable of self-absorption. That seems to be something of what John's Gospel is saying in chapter 1. And out of that Eternal Love came all that is made, including human beings, with all the risk and cost that would entail. And God still did it. Whatever else we make of the omniscience of God, that strangely technical word refers to that universe of deep and eternal knowing that we call the Love of God.

Creation
Let
there
be light!
Creation,
from first to last, an
imperative fiat of love,
as Benign Being invites a universe to be.

Rest
God's
peace!
Sabbath
observance.
God's recreation.
Well done good and faithful God.
Now our harder task. Curators of God's masterpiece.

Incarnation
First
word
becomes
final word.
What else could God do,
but wrap words in flesh, be born as
God whose love exhausts whole lexicons of spelled out words?

A Fib Fest of Bible Stories.

One or two of the blogs I visit have started exploring the fun of the Fib. Gave me the idea that it might be fun to have a Fib Fest of Bible Stories. Would help to keep your mind active and attentive to more serious things than the usual Christmas pastimes. If there are enough it would be fun to compile them into a Collection of Bible Fibs - to go alongside the Haiku Introduction to the NT. (If you missed this you can view it on the September 8 posting. )

Just to be clear, a Fib isn't an untruth! It's a poem of 20 syllables in which the number of syllables in each line is the total of the two previous lines  - thus 1,1,2,3,5,8. You can of course continue upwards so that the next line is 13, then 21, after which it gets too silly I think. Fib poems are based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence and you can find a fuller explanation here. 

The rules for this Fib Fest of Bible Stories are simple and three:

The Fib

1. can only have 7 lines, on the pattern explained above, the last being 13 syllables.
2. must encapsulate a story from the Bible.
3. leave your Fib in the Comments Page.
   

To illustrate I've chosen two of my favourite stories. Try to choose a story no one else has attempted so far, so that we can have a wide range of biblical stories. A later Fib Fest may focus on one story, from the multi-perspectives of the contributors. Cumulatively that would be communal exegesis!

Oh and have fun - much in the best Bible stories makes for laughter, food for thought - even prayer!

Sarah

Sarah

laughed!

Why not?

So would you!

Old age child-bearing,

even when announced by angels

with straight faces; a cruel joke, or God’s promise. Which?

.....

Jacob

Dark

night.

Jacob

fast awake,

conned into wrestling

for his life, then hirpling into

the breaking dawn, learning to lean on integrity.

 

Advent, Guantanamo and the witness of cup poetry

The debate about poetry and politics, and the difference between poetry as propaganda and poetry as articulation of human hope and hunger, is much, much more than a hermeneutical conversation piece between academics. I came to this conclusion by reading "cup poetry".

Cup Poetry is a way of crying, an attempt to find purpose in years of weeping. Cup Poetry gives voice to the unlistened to, even if that voice is heard only by the speaker. Cup Poetry tells of terror, dread and loss of self, in the hope that another human being will hear - and care. Some cup poems are the condensation of human anguish into tears, then used to inscribe and describe despair. Cup poetry is the name for poems scratched on styrofoam cups with pebbles; poems written in toothpaste; poems passed in fragments from cell to cell to preserve as much of them as possible. Anyway, poems written out of unimaginable suffering, composed under atrocious conditions of deprivation, each one demonstrating the capacity of human beings to face the disintegration of life, relationships and personal identity by ordering word and thought into a poetics of suffering.

That is the best I can do to describe the experiences out of which the volume Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, was born. This volume and these poems created the term, "cup poetry".

The very existence of Guantanamo calls in question the moral principles and political rationale for our way of life, which claims to be based on such foundations as freedom, justice, rule of law and respect for persons. When these foundations are subverted by the actions of military power driven by political rage, the victims are stripped of those defining rights to life and status as human beings without which human community isn't worth the candle, and our own moral principles turn toxic. It is one of the tragic ironies of the past few years, that the "fabric of cruelty" out of which Guantanamo has been tailored, has enmeshed untried detainees who demonstrate in poetry written under such conditions, the nature and beauty of language shaped to human suffering. Poetry as articulated suffering serves to highlight the moral diminishment of their captors and torturers. Cup poetry has captured the captive voices of those detained without trial. The poems are spoken with fading hope into the deafening maelstrom of counter-terrorist rhetoric, illustrating why poetry has its own non-violent potency when faced with the savage consequences of dehumanising others in the interests of national security and the myths of Empire.

Cup poetry exists as protest, and exerts both moral and political claim upon a world that has tolerated the obscenity of Guantanamo. But more than protest - cup poetry is an affirmation of human dignity and worth that has miraculously survived the most systematic and mechanistic attempts to erase the humanity of the detainees. Cup poetry as protest and affirmation of human worth creates a further impetus towards understanding the role of poetry as a conversation with theology. Whatever else Guantanamo means, it represents an offence to any moral theology of justice; it boasts a degradation of human values and a refusal to countenance any limit to the exercise of power over the powerless. Any redemptive vision is hinted at, not in the ideology of the Guantanamo regime - but in the poetry of its prisoners.

What does all this mean for Western Christianity confronting global Islam?

How does a poetics of suffering compete with the rhetoric that spawns slogans such as "war on terror"?

Here is a poem, etched originally on smuggled fragments of a styrofoam cup, words against the powers.

..............................................................

Is It True?

By Osama Abu Kadir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?

Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?

I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.

To be with my children, each one part of me;

To be with my wife and the ones that I love;

To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.

I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.

But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?

We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.

Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still

Justice and compassion remain in this world!

"Shortly after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651."

.......................................................

The fuller story of this remarkable book can be found here at The Independent, and here at Iowa University Press. And yes. I recognise that we live in a world of terrorist atrocities beyond any scale of moral justification, from Ground Zero to Mumbai. And I understand that extraordinary threats require extraordinary response. And that undeserved pain and innocent suffering inflicted on victims of such atrocities are themselves a negation of the deep principles of human moral existence. As such they are to be condemned, opposed, and overcome - but surely by means which do not undermine those fundamental principles of justice and humanity which every terrorist atrocity diminishes.

But responses are more than extraordinary when institutional cruelty, intelligence gathering torture, and unremitting despair tighten an already vicious circle of violence and hate. That happens when principles of freedom, justice, moral accountability and the dignity of human beings are seen as dispensable in the pursuit of military and political goals. In the non-Western world, and amongst many in our Western democracies, Guantanamo stands for an unprecedented and grievous loss of human decency and moral authority. Against this place and its purpose, these poems bear witness; and against this place, and against the terrorist violence and hatred that has spawned it, as a follower of Jesus, I pray.

Advent - peace on earth and goodwill amongst all people -  is a good time to hear of the demise of such a place, and to pray for that peace which makes such places, and the terrorism used to justify them, unthinkable.

Advent, Guantanamo, and defending human values

There is a frantic search going on in and around the Pentagon these past few days. President elect Obama served notice some time ago on Guantanamo. The search is on for feasible and practical solutions to the problem of what to do with several hundred prisoners, held without charge, some of them for over five years, in conditions unacceptable by any standards of civilised policing, the significant majority of these detainees having been tried in no internationally recognised court. There is also for the Pentagon and those allied with US policy, the political problem of now trying to justify such blatant abuse of human rights and international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Because such an orchestrated closing down process will inevitably expose the brutal systemic cruelty inflicted on hundreds of detainees by means of which a major modern democracy set out to defend democratic rights and liberties. That is not only ironic - it is morally embarrassing and disabling to such a severe degree that its future consequences for political and diplomatic integrity are incalculable. If democracy can only defend itself by brutalising others, just what is it that is being defended? And why should anyone ever again trust the leaders of the "free world" (sic), enough to call them friends?

I want to reflect on this more fully, both theologically and ethically in another post, probably tomorrow. Advent scriptures abound with the cry of prisoners for liberation, are interrupted by howls of prayer and protest against the oppressor, and make much of the encroaching threat of darkness, and of the fatal threat to darkness of the surely coming light.

As a Christian, a citizen of the UK, a beneficiary of a democratic way of life which for all its shortcomings confers certain rights and privileges, and as a representative of "the West", I look on Gunatanamo with deep shame, and a deep felt urge to repentance.

The Inconceivable Consequences of the Annunciation.

I have a signed copy of Luci Shaw's book of poems, Writing the River. It occurs to me that a number of those poets whose work resonates most sympathetically with many of my own questions, and who reach deeply and disturbingly into that place within us where deep longing and spiritual perception come together, are women.  They include Elizabeth Jennings, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Luci Shaw, Anne Stevenson - and recently discovered after a nudge from a fellow bibliophile, U A Fanthorpe.

In thinking through the points of connection and collusion which open poetry and theology to each other, I suppose it's obvious that the nature of the relationship between these two ways of speaking the world, and our place in it, might be significantly affected by the gender of the writer. Or is that not so obvious? Are there insights, ways of knowing and articulation, ranges of human experience and capacities for feeling and thinking, that presuppose not only differences of personal history, but differences of gendered embodied experience?

While I want to think this through much more thoroughly, it's simply the case that some of the insights I value most into the nature of God, what it means to follow faithfully after Christ, and how this is lived out in community within and beyond the church, have come from women poets and women theologians. And I can speculate with the next person as to what that says about me, my theology, my approach to the Bible, my understanding of ministry and the pastoral and personal relationships that underlie meaningful spiritual friendships. But I'd rather consider than speculate, and I'd rather illustrate than argue.

So here's a poem by Luci Shaw. It is called simply, "Virgin". Could a man have written this poem? Leave aside for a minute all the theological conundrums that surround the Incarnation, and what James Denney once called "Chalcedonian metaphysics". How else but in the experience of embodied womanhood could we have any sense of what the Annunciation meant and felt like, its implications from the inside of one particular woman's experience? I find the "as if" of this poem utterly heartbreaking in the positive sense of that phrase. The vulnerability and the courage, the gift and the given, the tenderness that has immeasurable consequence, the patience and the urgency that enables the birthing of human life - and these only some of the untold and inconceivable consequences of this requested incursion into the life plans of a young woman. And the radical surrender of "Let it be so...."

As a poem read at Advent, it places this young woman at the centre of the mystery of Emmanuel.

Virgin
As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was - he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works: as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if one day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room

Luci Shaw, Writing the River, (Pinon Press, 1994), page 27.