Not normal service yet but an improvement on the previous 10 days of sporadic silence. Thanks to all those who sent good wishes on the move. I survived, apart from some creaky shoulders and a body that protests albeit mildly at having to shift endless boxes, apply numerous coats of paint to the room whose colour scheme made the abomination of desolation seem aesthetically pleasing, lay a couple of carpets and reconstruct the study with all books reshelved and in their appointed places.
The aerobic exercise involved in celing painting (which was also previously coloured in bright pink with a blue one foot border!!) has put me in fine condition for a session of energetic charismatic worship, complete with the requisite arm movements when words like glory, power, praise, honour exalt and other words from the semantic domain of charismatic liturdgy occur in the praise / worship / songs. The swinging motion required to apply a smooth coat of emulsion, and in my case the rising on tip-toe and stretching forward at a dangerously destabilising angle, provided practice in a new repertoire to be used when ever I am singing songs in which passionate expressions of spiritual longing or fulfilment are called for :))
More seriously, I am now at College and started a new way of working away from home three days a week and working at home two days a week. No idea what this will feel like until it has been road-tested for a while. Meantime, after a hiatus of over a week, I am back in the melee of the Spring semester, preparing teaching and meeting with students, staff meetings and planning, marking and feedback, liaising with colleagues on campus, and generally reminding myself of what it is I do, am and am for!
This morning spent nearly an hour with a University colleague discussing the connections between Schopenhauer and Richard Dawkins and their shared interest in biology not as science but as philosophy, the furore surrounding Philip Pullman's new book on Jesus and the scoundrel Christ, the capacity of Christianity to turn toxic and embody the opposite of all that Jesus stood for and died for, and the implications of each of these for a church that is so busy trying to work out the meaning of mission that it seems oblivious of its core task - embodying all that Jesus stood for and died for!
Not sure about how it is for others, but I find such a conversation a liberal education in why Christian apologetics is an ultimately futile project of trying to win an argument. What is needed is more than winning the argument - much more important to win the assent of the heart, to work for the liberation of the spirit, to encourage the renewal of hope, to welcome the dawning of an understanding deeper than the mind but not dismissive of intellect and thought; by which I mean, what is needed is a church that lends credibility to its own message of peace, reconciliation, love as the bottom line, hope and hopefulness as rooted in God's mercy in Christ, and the offer of forgiveness, new beginnings and those gestures of compassionate self-giving that are redemptive and attractive and, finally and persuasively, Christ-like. Not even a Schopenhauer could out-argue a witness less interested in argument than in the integrity of a life lived in consistent faithfulness to the radical demands and gifts of the Gospel.
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