Living Wittily

Flitting - the approval of upheaval for removal to our new home

This is the week of the flitting. Now that all is said and all is nearly done, and the papers signed and the removal van booked for Thursday, we are just about packed up and ready to head for Westhill, Aberdeen. A previous post explained what we were about and why. You can read it over here in the February 10 blog post. 

You do these things with mixed feelings, maybe more so because in my first 15 years I was in 13 houses and the school count also hit double figures. Since leaving home I've lived in Scotstoun, High Blantyre, Stirling, Partick, Paisley, Aberdeen (2 houses) and Paisley again and about to be Aberdeen again. By my count that means I've lived in 21 houses and am moving to my 22nd. The reasons for my identity crisis, inferiority complex, manifest insecurity, reserved and retiring nature, competitive disposition and general readiness to adapt to chronic change as life's norm, are surely not unrelated to such habits of migration.

I now sit in a dismantled study, boxes of books towering both sides of me; bubble wrapped pictures stacked against the walls now bare; the computer still connected but only for a couple more days. Then this blog is going to experience a first - a lengthy hiatus interrupted only by those occasions when I can get access to the internet. So those who are regular callers, you need to be patient, understanding and supportive, and normal service will return. For now sporadic updates, harrowing cries de coeur, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth alternating with whoops of delight, discovery or relief, will have to suffice to let you know I is still alive.

The worrying thing is, the boxes of books represent less than half my library - my College study has the same again and more, but they are staying put for a long while yet. Biblical stuff and some of the hefty theology / dogmatics, along with most of the poetry, biography and literature go up the road. Church history, theology, pastoral studies, philosophy, ethics, spirituality and other miscellanea are in the College study. The inevitable frustration will be wanting the books that always seem to be in the other place just when you want them. Mind you, these are my idiosyncratic worries - Sheila is much more to the point  and wants to know where the pictures will be safe, where to put the kitchen stuff so it will be easily accessible at the other end, could I check I know how to plumb in the washing machine, and could I make sure the removers bring mobile wardrobes to transport clothes to the other end where they will still be wearable. Right enough - who needs the Church Dogmatics when you can't find the kettle, or the washing machine is spraying the walls, or the clothes are a fankled mess of tortured textile? Well... all I can say is if the washing machine does spray the walls, I want to know the whereabouts of my set of Barth to make sure it isn't remotely within range. And as for the kettle, no need for either/or choices, however much attracted to dialectics - find the blessed thing, make the coffee and settle down with CD IV.1 and enjoy the mountain scenery of theology on an alpine scale.

Should members of the BNP be allowed to teach in our schools? No!

The link at the end of this post is to the recent report by Maurice Smith (pictured) that says the prohibition on teachers being members of the BNP would be "a disproportionate response", a "very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut." Right.

The report also suggests there is no causal connection between being a member of a political party, holding certain political views, and the influence a teacher has in a classroom. Oh, and just to be clear, a teacher's politics has no place in the classroom. Right.

Now when I use the word right, I don't mean I agree; and it is not used as explicit (or implicit) moral approval. Actually just to be clear - I am using it with a full measure of West of Scotland irony reinforced by well informed scpeticism, as in the phrase, "Aye right"!

Let's not play silly word games by which we are meant to think that politics and political opinion, political conviction, political judgement, political values are all reducible to private ways of viewing the world. Or that such inner orientations of thought, moral judgement, political vision and social organisation never impinge on how we actually relate to the world and the people in it. Politics if taken half seriously, and a member of a political party should be assumed to take their party's policies and manifesto seriously, politics is the way we describe and work towards the way we would wish the world to be.

And if a person's politics are about a racially based approach to social structures, a narrow definition of nationalism, a resistance to multi-cultural presence, an insistence on Britishness (whatever that is) as critierion of welcome, then there is overwhelming likelihood that such political views will indeed influence the way those people relate to other people. A BNP member who is a teacher in a multi-ethnic school, in a multicultural society, with several asylum seeking children in the class, is not going to pretend, surely, that policies of exclusion which he or she upholds as conviction, somehow do not exist in the day to day dealings with a socially, culturally and racially diverse class. Sorry - I don't believe such convictional conjuring tricks are possible - and if they were they would be even more dangerous for their two faced janus-like deception.

Quite apart from all the above, education is not politically neutral, and teachers are not politically colourless. A teacher is entrusted with tasks of social education, humane learning, instilling values of civic responsibility, enabling and encouraging relationships of co-operative working, mutual respect and preparation for a life of responsible contribution to our society. I simply don't accept that such a vision of educational purpose is compatible with BNP policies and manifesto statements. And because I believe members of the BNP sincerely hold the convictions and values of their Party manifesto, there can be no congruence between political views and a social vision so wildly out of line with the values of an educational system whose underlying assumptions are inclusive, mutually respectful of cultural difference, and embedded in a civic code that does not diminish the humanity or value of other people on such dangerous grounds as race, ethnic origin, faith tradition, or that morally (and rationally) dubious benchmark of Britishness.

Lest I haven't made myself clear; as a follower of Jesus Christ, a lover of people in God's name, a citizen who recognises the rights and worth of others who come to live amongst us and who believes in a society that is just and compassionate, I think the report is wrong. Membership of the BNP should indeed disqualify someone from teaching in our schools. Maurice Smith the former Chief Inspector of Schools is simply wrong in his conclusions. Worse still, he has produced a report lacking in moral seriousness, for which he has substituted risibly strident rhetoric that makes little reference to the realities of teaching, the ethic of education, nor the responsibility that comes with living in a democracy, of discerning with care the fundamental obligations and human values that ensure real freedoms.

http://news.aol.co.uk/racism-report-backs-teacher-freedom/article/20100312012850152666193?icid=mai

West of Scotland Wisdom on the Down Escalator

Getting on the escalator behind a bunch of cheerful young people out shopping with their carers.

Two of said carers on the step behind me

Conversation as follows

"Freezin' the day eh?"

"Aye. Ye no got gloves."

"Ah've got a pair, but ah cannae wear them."

"How no?"

"They're white gloves. Well, they were white gloves."

"Ye lost them or somethin'?"

"Naw. Josie wore them on the motorbike. They're no' white noo!"

The sympathetic and philosophically sound and anatomically precise advice of her pal as to what to do to Josie to make sure he didn't mess up her gloves any time in the near future, could not possibly be repeated on this blog renowned for its linguistic good taste - but it was so uproariously wicked...........

l

Positive attitudes, Beatitudes and Discipleship in Modern Culture

Spent last night with the folk at Newton Mearns Baptist Church, doing one of the talks in their Spring Break series on the Gospel and Culture. The talk was the second in the series, and the theme was "Positive Attitudes to Culture".

Decided to talk about how Christian attitudes, rooted in the Be(atitudes) lead to a positive critique of some of the worst excesses of current cultural experience. Peacemaking in a confrontational culture; mercy in a ruthless culture; meeknes in an ego drenched culture; justice in a systemically unequal culture. But not only critique - the Beatitudes point towards alternative dispositions of character that enhance rather than diminish human life. Meekness, righteous actions, peacemaking and mercy import significant moral and social responsibility into cultural expressions, and so characterise the attitudes and practices of those who claim to follow Jesus, that they constitute a transformative expression of the Church's mission.

Passion for peacemaking expresses the Gospel value of reconciliation; it is evidenced in discipleship practices such as forgiveness, welcome and hospitality, and is exemplified in the lived practice and experience of people like Desmond Tutu. Thus positive Be(attitudes) rooted in gospel values and expressed in discipleship practices becomes a process of salt and light interacting with their cultural context. Likewise hunger for righteousness, commitment to mercy and the disposition of meekness.

Seemed to work and led to some good discussion on the timelessness of human nature's capacity to turn creativity, social exchange, economic activity, moral norms and other cultural expressions either towards human flourishing or towards human diminishment. Sin is as imaginative and banal as it ever was; likewise, goodness and humanising creativity. What seems unarguable is the rapidly increasing pace of cultural change, and the exponential development of technology as an ambivalent nexus of social forces within which we now have to live our lives - as witnessing communities to a life that is cruciform in shape and resurrection oriented towards hope.

Much to ponder.

What a teacher ought to be - Benchmarks according to the Desert Fathers.

One of my favourite definitions of the character and calling of a teacher. And an ideal worth persevering towards in daily practice and vocational accountability.

A teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire

for domination,

                vain-glory,

                             and pride;

one should not be able to fool her by flattery,

               nor blind her by gifts,

                             nor conquer her by the stomach,

                                           nor dominate her by anger;

but she should be patient,

        gentle,

             and humble

                as far as possible;

she must be tested

      and without partisanship,

              full of concern,

                    and a lover of souls.
     —Benedicta Ward, The Desert Christian (Ref details lost - sorry - need to do some more CPD on referencing :)

The hermeneutic of great art - "The Magdalen Reading"

Yesterday Ruth asked about the picture of Jesus and Mary. No idea where it came from or who created it. This one I didn't know either till a friend gave me a postcard print of it. "The Magdalen Reading" painted by Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464), is one panel from and altarpiece probably six times the size. Late medieval art is one of the treasure stores of biblical reflection and theological imagination. When all the exegesis is done, and all the hermeneutical suspicions are counted, and we are quite sure we have sufficiently de-cluttered the text of distorting presuppositions and power-laden superimposed agendas, there is still something powerfully persuasive about great art expressing a not so naive piety.

Here the idea is expressed that Mary Magdalen was so transformatively changed by Jesus, that it is she who is not wearing red, (except the colour of the seat cushion as a reminder); instead she is wearing green and a bejewelled underdress, her clothes telling the recovered richness of life. The alabaster jar is the symbol of a love once poured out, of one who loved much because she was forgiven much - and there it is again, miraculously unbroken but ready to hand.

And she is reading; the third person singular feminine is not to be overlooked - she is reading. Female literacy was rare except in privileged circles - Van der Weyden was painting around the same time Julian of Norwich claimed to be unlettered, a disclaimer her own work disproves. Mary Magdalen reading one of the Gospels, modestly but beautifully dressed, beside her an alabaster jar, and off-stage in red, the foot of John the Evangelist whose Gospel captured the grief of Mary and her last encounter with Jesus on Easter morning. Forget the hermeneutic of suspicion and engage the hermeneutic of great art; trust the exegesis that flows from devotional imagination, and contemplate sympathetically a way of telling truth that is itself transformative.

The sound of silence interrupting our words....

Preaching later today on the Lenten theme in our local church which is about listening to the sounds around us. My theme is "The Sound of Silence", which I chose from the menu of other options. Preparing for this particular sermon has taken on for me the sense of a minor epiphany. Early on I decided not to explore the contrast of noise and silence - I'm actually doing a bit on that at another occasion later this week. Likewise the cultivation of a contemplative disposition I have long practised, but for just as long I've recognised how hard such centering and attentiveness is to practise well. So not a sermon on contemplative prayer. And yes there is the Elijah story about earthquake, wind and fire and God being elsewhere, namely in the whispered quietness. But I'm not thinking of silence as the context for my own spiritual reflection and theological struggle.

In one of those co-incidences of thought, memory, familiar text, life circumstance, emotional climate, human longing, and imagination, I decided to do something else. Because I instinctively yet intentionally refer questions of theological and pastoral significance to the defining centre of my Christian life, I asked,"What does the theme "The Sound of Silence" evoke when considered in the lived actions and spoken words of Jesus of Nazareth?" What are we to make of the sound of silence, the role of silence, in the stories of Jesus' encounters and conversations with those many people whose lives he touched, healed and loved back to wholeness? Those of us who revere and live by Jesus' words, what are we to make of the sound of Jesus' silences? And that's when (for me) epiphany happened.

Bonhoeffer and the self evident truth about Christian community

"Christian community is not an ideal we have to realise, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate."

D Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, Works vol. 5, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 38

 

Logo of United Methodist Church which you can find here.

The cross plunged into the earth of a God loved world

A year ago I spent an enjoyable day or two romping through Wesley for Armchair Theologians, by W J Abraham. The Armchair Theologians series published by Westminster John Knox Press provides accessible introductions to significant figures in the history of Christian theology. So far such people as John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Aquinas, Karl Barth are already published. So is Bonhoeffer for Armchair Theologians, by Stephen Baynes and Lori Hale, which I'm now reading. One of the features of these books is the illustrations which range from the funny, to the didactic to the occasionally trite. But in this volume there are one or two that are deeply moving, and several others that carry a powerful ethical payload.

The text itself is accessible but not patronising, and some of the the theological chapters have surprising depth in a book intended for those looking for a starting point in their encounter with Bonhoeffer. The quotations from Bonhoeffer, placed in carefully explained context, and Bonhoeffer's own words remain some of the most powerful statements we have of Christian discipleship in a world the Church cannot and should not escape:

"There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God's reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world... It is a denial of God's revelation in Jesus Christ to wish to be 'Christian' without being 'worldly', or [to] wish to be worldly without seeing and recognizing the world in Christ."

All of which raises for me, as so often in my reading of Bonhoeffer, troubling questions about approaches to mission that tend to see Christ as present in the church, absent from the world, and therefore the Church's mission to take Christ to a needy world. Actually, Christ is already there and the Church needs to catch up with Him, and discover ways of incarnating, embodying and offering the love of the living God in Christ through practices that are themselves Christlike - such as peacemaking, brokering reconciliations, expressing imaginative gestures of redemptive love, acts of mercy and compassion as contradictions of other ways of doing business. Bonhoeffer is not only right, he is so right - God so loved the world, and the Cross was plunged into the same earth out of which humanity is made. And the Church is never more faithful to Christ, than when it finds those places in our world, and in its local communities, where in the name of the crucified Lord, it too is lifted up in loving surrender, arms outstretched to embrace the world and announce God's love - and on a cross plunged into the earth of a God-loved world.

The difference between a waste of trees and a fair price for nurturing the tree of knowledge

OK. I'm not saying I won't buy any more books. That would be like saying I'm not going to breathe for the rest of my life. But a conversation the other day had me saying something I didn't know I thought. Amongst other things, the difference between primary and secondary - no, not schools - sources. Primary and secondary sources. In mid-discussion I found myself saying the tidal wave of theological books has become wearisome. That I'd rather spend a month reading a few volumes of a really original if difficult writer than wade through serial doses of derivative, pragmatic, market hyped, Christian celebrity authored, allegedly indispensable but definitely transient stuff that has the remarkable built in capacity to make God boring. The difference between primary and secondary is the difference between original and derivative, between temporary fashion and permanent value, between a contribution to the publisher's sales figures and a contribution to knowledge, between what is a waste of trees and what might just about be a fair cost of nurturing the tree of knowledge.

Then I had another conversation about a slim book that is worth half a dozen books three or four times its length. I found myself saying that most of the really, I mean "really can't live without it" kind of books that I own, could fit in one six shelf bookcase 30 inches wide. Now don't press this too far. I'm not ready to start proving myself right or wrong about this yet. But in the past few days I've talked with College staff and/or students, University staff, and a friend on the phone about half a dozen books that are what I would call primary, original and permanent value. And none of them are big.

Life Together by Bonhoeffer is a massive book, of just over a hundred pages; it remains seminal in any discussion of what Christian community under Christ should look like. John V Taylor's The Go-Between God, written against the context of charismatic renewal and the need for a balancing statement on pneumatology, is one of the truly original and creative volumes of the last third of the 20th Century. W. H. Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense is simply the best book on pastoral theology and the nature of love that I have ever read or ever hope to. Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God is the distilled essence of modern theology, self-consciously constrained by theological tradition and responsible biblical reflection, and yet pushes the edges in order not to confine God to what we think are acceptable theological limits imposed by our ideas of soundness. Denise Levertov's Collected Poems, the textured weaving into words of the text of her life; and the two collections of R S Thomas, whose arguments with and about God, and with his own heart and many of the ways of a world both daft and beautiful, provide some of the finest spiritual writing I know. 

All of which concentrates the mind when you are moving house. Thin books are easier packed, carried and read. Thickness of book and word count, primary source of originality - interesting criteria for pruning a library.....