Living Wittily

Advent, Isaiah, and facing the things we are afraid of

Rebecca Elson's Diaries contain fragments and notes for future poems. Here and there a few lines are enough to indicate the trajectory of a thought:

When sleep won't come

And your whole life howls

And words dive around your head like bats

Feeding off the darkness.

What prompted those lines? The howl of rage, or fear? Those familiar with overanxiety will recognise that hyped up inner chatter in which we either rehearse our own reassuring speeches, or hear the imaginary criticisms of others niggling away at our self-confidence. Feeding off the darkness indeed - despair feeding despair, anxiety replenishing itself, and that prolonged state of inner red alert that induces exhaustion. Here and there, especially late into her last illness, Elson shows in these diaries an honest facing of the things we are afraid of. At one point, refusing denial as a coping strategy, she chooses instead defiance - "The thing is not to let the doctors take the poetry out of your body, your life".

And then this beautiful image of life still to be lived, and the sense of one not yet ready to relinquish life's flow, the middle line a hinge of refusal, "I'm not like that..."

"You think the river knows when it's getting near the sea?

Wide and slow & begins to taste the salt

Well I'm not like that

I still feel narrow, quick and fresh

Still somewhere in the mountains."

There are few more poignant poems than those in which the poet confronts their own mortality with dignity, reluctant resignation, and a deep knowing of those insights that define and exalt our humanity. Denise Levertov's late poems have that same quality of writing - there's a case to be made for the poetic fragment as a valid literary form, expressing life's transience and acknowledging the instransigence of that process of relinquishment we call dying.

If that seems too low key for Advent, then maybe that's because somehow we have lost that sense of the precariousness and preciousness of life, the utter giftedness of our own existence, and the great poetry of an Isaiah who recognised that all flesh is grass, but had also discovered theology in the declarative mood, "Thus saith the Lord, Fear not, I have redeemed you, I have called you by name....you are mine....

The Incarnation of God in Christ, and convictional contentment

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
in the Body and the Blood
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of Light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph;
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,

"Alleluia, alleluia!

Alleluia, Lord Most High!"

Just listened to Christian Forshaw's arrangement of "Let all mortal flesh keep silent", from his CD Sanctuary. Each time I read these words, listen to them sung, and especially the last Sunday in Advent, I'm left with a sense of wonder, awe and a feeling of convictional contentment. The Incarnation rightly understood, and properly expressed in beauty of image and precision of language, is a doctrine profound in its truth of the self-giving Triune God.

Convictional contentment is light years away from convictional certitude, or faith as ideological imperialism, or faith that as the complacency of the dominant has lost its sense of historic humility and rootedness in the nature of the God who comes. By using the phrase I mean an inner sense of fittingness, a way of thinking about God that is inexhaustible in truth and inexpressible in words, and thus yields a profound allegiance of heart to that glory which is full of grace and truth.

Content to live my own life on the conviction that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us

Content to be a practitioner of reconciliation on the conviction that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

Content to live in the joy, the peace and the hopefulness that is in Christ, on the conviction that joy, peace and hope are the will of God for the fractured reality that is our world.

Content then to embody the conviction of God incarnate in Jesus, in a life that likewise reaches out in love, resists injustice, models forgiveness, pursues peacemaking, encourages laughter, accompanies the lonely, welcomes the other, receives in grace the service of others, and is open to the will of God in trustful hope.

Content to live the conviction, to follow after Christ by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit who pours the love of God into human hearts as unreliable as my own, and as unworthy.

The words above are from the Liturgy of St James, and carry within them theological immensity. The image is from the Hubble telescope and give a sense of vastness as beauty. The track from the CD combines organ, human voice and saxophone, three sounds in triune harmony. Coming at the end of the Daily Office of the Northumbrian  Community they leave me with what I have tried to describe, the contentment of faith, rooted in the conviction that the God who comes is the one known in Jesus Christ, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

Christmas and remembering that the giver is the gift.

End of Semester. Marking and grading, composing feedback that builds up rather than tears down.

Meetings. The kind that make you want to live longer with more energy, and the kind that sap the will to live.

To do lists. Unrealistic in length, unhealthy in guilt production, so unlikely to be done.

Too much sitting, talking, desk addiction, computer and mouse attachment like umbilical cord or intravenously administered information.

Need exercise. So last night spent a while on the exercise bike listening to a Christmas CD with some wonderfully therapeutic music. One track in particular, Gesu Bambino, sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Made me slow down.

Which brings me to an odd observation I want to make and then think about. One of the best Christmas presents Sheila and I ever received came two or three years ago. Couretesy of our daughter Aileen. Two tickets for Pavarotti live at the Glasgow Exhibition Centre the following July. I don't mind telling you. The best part of £200 for them, and considerable online activity to get the pick of the best seats. Then we heard Pavarotti was ill with cancer, and soon the concert was cancelled. Later Pavarotti died and our chance was gone. So we never got to use the tickets. And know what? In one very important sense it doesn't matter that we didn't get to hear one of the finest voices in our lifetime. What mattered is that the gift was given, the intention was clear, a once in a lifetime chance and no expense spared. Of course we were disappointed. But these two tickets had already worked their magic; they'd said important things every parent needs and wants to hear.

So. How important is the actual gift, compared to the love and kindness and intent that thought up the idea, and made it happen? Sitting there sweating away on the exercise bike, listening to the voice we nearly heard live, not for the first time I was reminded of the sacrament of generosity, within and beyond our families.

And the quite remarkable and unsettling thought that generous intention and costly expense are themselves the gift - the giver is the gift, and the gift itself merely the evidence of that which represents value of a higher order.

Och Christmas. A lot of sentimental nonsense, just a time for rational calculation to give way to uncalculating extravagance in the good cause of the other person.

In other words, the gift of Christ was never meant to make sense in any way we can get our own heads round. A time for the foolishness of generosity, an opportunity to say things too easily left unsaid, and to do it in ways that lack ambiguity. The generous act is a relational statement - which amongst other things is why when we think of God's coming amongst us in the gift of the Word made flesh, we are confronted with self giving love, making itself real, and known, as gift.

Busy, but never too busy to welcome friends, and a new book

Been busy welcoming the six other UK Baptist College Principals to Scotland. This is an important network of friendship, collaborative planning, pastoral interest in each other and intellectual stimulus. Twenty four hours from lunch to lunch means not much time for discretionary stuff like blogging. More than made up for by good conversation and the encouragement of work owned, shared and done.

Did get time to open my most recent Amazon package though, with one of my looking forward to reading between Semesters books - Paul Molnar, Thomas Torrance. Theologian of the Trinity. Ashgate have sensibly, even mercifully, issued it in paperback at a very fair price, around £16 and high quality production - their hardbacks are usually just too expensive, though are beautifully produced, and a joy to handle.

I'm expecting the second volume of Torrance's Dogmatics lectures on the atonement to arrive soon as well. As we move into late Advent, then beyond to Epiphany and Easter and Pentecost, I expect to be in the good company of Scotland's greatest theologian of the 20th Century. Incidentally, I think the cover photo of Professor Torrance is superb, showing him in his later years, indomitable, contented, eyes open to truth and mystery, and a smile that might be quizzical or knowing.

One of those odd coincidences that make you smile, and pray thank you, and smile again.

That AOL voice with the mid-western accent, announced "You have email" - which on checking, I discover an update from Amazon. "Your order has shipped" - meaning Jurgen Moltmann's now out of print little gem, Theology and Joy, was on its way in time for Christmas.

The coincidence? I'd just finished reading, and marking in my book, the following from Dorothy Day, just after her child Tamar was born. Maybe a self-conscious echo of Mary's heart leaping at the annunciation:

"No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship and adore."

Gratitude. Joy. Worship. Adoration. And thus the connection between Theology and Joy. 

A Jesus society - where we think different

Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live;

you show wisdom, by trusting people;

you handle leadership, by serving;

you handle offenders, by forgiving;

you handle money, by sharing;

you handle enemies, by loving;

and you handle violence, by suffering.

In fact you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody. Toward nature, toward the state in which you happen to live, toward women, toward slaves, toward all and every single thing. Because this is a Jesus society and you repent, not by feeling bad, but by thinking different.

Rudy Wiebe, The Blue Mountains of China (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970), p.215-16.

Love of enemy and redemptive risk-taking compassion

Sometimes the dilemmas of yesterday come back to teach us the truths we missed first time round. In the early 1960's there was a big debate in the US on "shelter ethics". Sparked by a priest who defended the ordinary citizen's right to use loaded weapons to keep other people, neighbour or stranger, out of his nuclear fallout shelter (a more modern version pictured - attractive wee thing eh?).

Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton exchanged letters about it. Merton picked up the themes of hospitality, love of neighbour and seeing the 'other' as Christ. Three cardinal principles of Christian discipleship modelled on Jesus came to mind - welcome, love, and seeing the other as graced presence. Here Merton weaves these together in a theology of redemptive risk taking compassion:

Merton declared, "If I am in a fallout shelter and trying to save my life, I must see that the neighbour who wants to come into the shelter also wants to save his life as I do. I must experience his need and his fear just as if it were my need and my fear...and if I am strong enough to act out of love, I will cede my place in the shelter to him...It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are."

The willingness to walk in the path of another, Merton proposed, is the very essence of Christianity (and of all the world religions); and in order to see what we have in common with out enemy, "and to respect his personal rights and his integrity, his worthiness of love." He went on, " we have to see ourselves similarly accused along with him, condemned to death along with him, sinking to the abyss with him, and needing, with him, the ineffable gift of grace and mercy to be saved. Then, instead of pushing him down, trying to climb out by using his head as a stepping stone for ourselves, we help oursleves to rise by helping him to rise. For when we extend our hand to the enemy who is sinking in the abyss, God reaches out to both of us."

I believe deeply in the importance of such idealistic and principled theology. In our own age, 50 years after those words were written, the Church of Jesus Christ is called to a life of risky solidarity not with the status quo, but with those who look for shelter, for comfort, for a chance of life. In our own day we have our own reasons for fearing the other, seeing the world as populated by enemies. Copenhagen and climate change; Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror; global recession and the threat of global capitalism to the world's poorest as powerful economies plan for economic recovery; plenty of crises to shelter from.

For all our agonising about mission, its definitions and challenges; for all our wondering about what the Gospel means in a postmodern conflicted world, here are words that are uncomfortably unrealistic, ridiculously principled, devoid of that pragmatism that so often and so easily promises effectiveness. Instead, words that are devastating in their Gospel simplicity, unanswerable in their Christ mirrored grace and mercy - idealistic with ideas such as not using another's head as my stepping stone out of the abyss, but helping him to rise, and finding God reaching out to both of us, in mercy and grace.

Where are the Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton figures today who haunt and humble us by the clarity of their conviction that Jesus was serious in what he said, not deadly serious but seriously on the side of life - "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me?"

Lord grant me grace so to live, Amen

Golf and human achievement - The courage and greatness of Seve Ballesteros

I don't play golf anymore. In truth, I never really played golf all that well. But years ago, for about three years, I played often, and with enthusiasm, and to pastoral purpose. It was in response to one of the most difficult pastoral situations I ever encountered. Offering to play golf with someone who became my friend, was a way of relieving the pressure and distress he and his family were going through living with a daughter dangerously ill with a long term eating disorder.

So we played golf - every week - regardless of weather. I'd never played before. My clubs came from a charity shop - I later sold them to an antique dealer! We played the municipal course for three years. All this came back to me yesterday in the frozen fog with visibility down to 50 metres or less. We were walking past Barshaw Golf Course. In the 1980's I played some of my most adventurous golf there - in freezing fog. We played with luminous yellow or orange golf balls. Nobody else was daft enough to play in fog so we had the course to ourselves. The Course Supervisor never charged us on such days, I suppose that was his way of helping the afflicted.

Life eventually worked out better for my golfing fellow sufferer. His daughter recovered. I had accompanied her and her family through several years of anguish and fear, and eventually conducted her wedding, sharing with my golf partner in crime, one of the best days in my pastoral life.

All this came back yesterday as we walked past Barshaw Golf Course, shrouded in fog. My flirting with a career in golf never had the chance to grow into a serious relationship. But it did make me start watching golf on TV. Which brings me to the reason for this post. Last night I watched the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards. As a Scot, year on year I wonder at some of the awards - coach of the year Fabio Capello? Eh? Well anyway.

For myself, the high point of the programme was all about golf, and human greatness. The award to Seve Ballesteros provided one of those rare but unforgettable moments of TV at its humanising best. Around the time I was hacking my way round Barshaw Park, 25 years ago, Severiano Ballesteros burst onto the world stage as the most charismatic and gifted golfer for a generation. He went on to win 5 majors, over 70 titles, captained the Ryder Cup to victory - and in the past year or two has confronted life-threatening illness with enormous courage and dignity. Watching him last night, speaking with humour and humanity, accompanied by his friend Jose Maria Olazabal, it was obvious to me that we were looking at a great man. A lifetime achievement award was so completely right. Decency, passion, vision, the gift of joy and of giving enjoyment, skill and that indefinable magic that makes a great player also a great human being - qualities professional sport needs today more than ever. Seve described his struggle with illness as the greatest fight of his life, his sixth major. On and off the course, his example has enriched so many - I wish him well, and am glad to have watched him play the game, of life as well as golf, as it should be played.

Incredulity is an important element of a Christian worldview....

When I look at your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

human children that you care for them?

Psalm 8.3-4.

Psalm 8 is one of my favourite stopping places when I feel small and need to regain a sense of proportion. Incredulity is an important and deeply Christian spiritual attitude, an essential prerequisite for that intellectual humility in which wonder and curiosity flourish. I suppose there is something called an ecology of the spirit, a disposition of the heart, a mind habitually receptive, a way of seeing that is patiently and faithfully interested, and not surprised at being astonished. In fact that might be the phrase I prefer as descriptor for a Christian worldview, one who is unsuprised at being astonished.

Reading the poetry and diary of Rebecca Elson, whose faith commitment was more an intellectual faithfulness to truth than an identifiable religious devotion, I have come to recognise a quality of mind that is deeply congenial to a Christian Advent theology. Those who confess "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth", make the kind of statement that means that for the rest of their lives they will be unsurprised at being astonished. The amazed stargazer of Psalm 8 makes the same connections between a majestic universe and human fragility. So when I first read this from Elson's diary, it set me thinking once again about stars, the importance of perplexity and frustrated intellect as the context for thinking about what it means to speak of our fragility and the mindfulness of God in the one breath, and to speak of incarnation, the Word made flesh:

"Wind moving the branches of the trees. Strange how warm for November. Hit possible to take this for granted? What does it mean? Monday morning. Wake up, dress, eat breakfast, set off on my ratlling old bicycle, through the Grafton Centre, across the common to the black iron footbridge where the swans are waiting to be fed, past Castle Hill, through St Edmund's Gardens and up to the old stone walls of the observatory building. Put up a picture on the screen of part of a small swarm of stars seen by a telescope that hundreds of people, using the accumulated knowledge of thousands of thinkers, put into orbit around our planet. Think about what it means. What does it mean? And is it just, in the end, a discipline like anything, like building brick walls, or balancing accounts, or sitting at an altar in a pose of meditation? This is what I practise, practise it with compassion, with honesty, with dignity, with dedication to some ideals."   (Rebecca Elson, A Responsibility to Awe, page 102)

"Think about what it means." That isn't only an intellectual imperative, it is a spiritual summons, an insistent call from deep within the miracle of our own mortal humanity, an invitation to astonishment, to see what infinity might look like, if only we could see. This woman who wrote of swans and stars, of bicyles and telescopes, of balancing accounts and scrutinising the night skies, is like a secular Psalmist. She wants to know, "What does it mean?" It is a good Advent question. And part of its answer is in that other question, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them?" Unsurprisingly, I'm astonished at the answer.

Barack Obama and the Political Incorrectness of the Nobel Peace Prize

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was a serious misjudgement. So was its acceptance, compounded by an acceptance speech that required considerable semantic redefinition and conceptual conjuring. This masterclass in rhetorical agility sets unhelpful precedents in a world where truth and language are already too vulnerable to the distorting pressures of political market forces.

The award of the Nobel Peace prize to one whose political and personal contribution to date is by his own embarrassed admission "slight", put Obama in an impossible political and moral position. In the space of nine days Presdient Obama committed another 30,000 troops to "the war against terror" and received the Nobel Peace Prize. The incongruity of being a Peace Prize recipient and a Commander in Chief of tens of thousands of troops on foreign soil and sand, is so bizarre that it required an acceptance speech defending just war, and insisting, as most protagonists do, that their war is indeed just, and is an essential prerequisite for peace.

Which raises for me the most significant moral consequence of Obama's acceptance speech. Obama claims to stand in the succession of Martin Luther King not only as recipient of the Nobel Peace prize, but as one whose appointment was made possible by MLK and the non-violent stance of the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. But says Obama, armed and violent conflict will not be eradicated in our lifetime, and as a Head of State he must not be guided only by the example of Luther King and Ghandi. I agree. But in that case the wise and morally defensible position would be to decline the Nobel Peace Prize as that which cannot be reconciled with his duties as Head of State, and which he has sworn on oath to make his priority. But of course how could a US President do that?

Nevertheless, to accept it is to want the best of both worlds, the prestige and power of a Commander in Chief of a nation at war, and the moral authority of one whose life work is seen as a major contribution to peace in our time and in our world. It is not possible to be both, at one and the same time; not in any way that makes moral sense. It is dangerous to melt down key concepts in a debate and remint them in the more flexible plastic currency that enables political leaders to purchase the truth that suits already agreed agendas.

I admire Obama, but not uncritically. He is I believe a man of moral stature, but who lives in a world that requires ethical fluidity and political expediency. That is the price of power, and the personal cost is felt at the level of the moral. Whatever the political pressures on him to engage in this piece of theatre, his collusion cannot but diminish his own moral authority and the credibility of a Peace Prize that seems to have become fatally politicised.

And that is a shame. For we need more than ever a globally recognised prize for those like Martin Luther King, and in our time Shirin Ebadi of Iran, (pictured here) Recently she and her family have been further victimised by the Iranian regime - including the nonsense of announcing the confiscation of her Peace prize!. As if!

People like Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King and Shirin Ebadi represent achievements not only in a different league from Obama, but in a different moral category. They have risked personal safety and borne real hardship for the sake of peace, and they represent a way of being that is in direct contradiction to state sponsored military inytervention. And as for the Nobel nominating committee, it would surely have been a more ethically secure nomination to award the Peace Prize some years later, and for evidence of real achievements in peacemaking, than to celebrate the recipient of a premature prize based on (as yet) unrealised expectations, and while that candidate commands an army engaged with other countries, including the UK, in armed conflict abroad.