It is a grey mizzly day here in Aberdeen. Not cold, but a day of vague vision, no horizons to give perspective, no sense of distance and space. The view from our bedroom looks across to the line of hills that sweeps round to Bennachie. But not this morning, The view ends within a few hundred metres and fades into a gradual opacity, like flying through grey clouds.
A good metaphor mizzle,(collation of mist and drizzle) for those times we live with opacity, lack of perspective because of restricted horizons, when life has no comforting clarity of view. Does anyone know any good modern praise songs / hymns that deal with the spiritual experience of mizzle? Having seen the view from here on a sunny day, I know what lies beyond the mizzle. But long term mizzle would be a different story. And the Christian response is also a different story.
Just been reading Moltmann's Theology & Joy. The title is not an oxymoron but a blessed juxtaposition. And here's Moltmann's antidote to the grey mizzle that can descend overnight on us, and can have many a cause.
"All liberation movements begin with a few people who are no longer afraid and who begin to act differently from what is expected by those who are threatening them.
That would suit many a Lord just fine...
But a resurrection is coming
It will be quite different from what we expect.
A resurrection is coming which is
God's revolution against the lords
And against the lord of lords, against death,
wrote Kurt Marti. Here already we find ourselves right at the centre of theology, the liberating game of faith with God against the evil bonds of fear and the grey pressures of care which death has laid upon us. For resurrection faith means courage to revolt against the 'covenant of death' (Isaiah 28.15), it means hope for the victory of life which will swallow up and conquer life devouring death." (Theology & Joy, London: SCM, 1973), pp. 37-8.
Mizzle, and "the liberating game of faith". The idea that faith is a game, not trivial but serious play, with rules but freedom of expression, with purpose and uncertain outcome, to be played with skill, co-operation and initiative, and finding in such a way of life liberation for ourselves and the liberation of others. That is what resurrection faith means. Wonder if Moltmann during his months in Ayrshire after the war, experienced a damp mizzly Scottish day or two? A kind of West of Scotland summer school in theology? And how about a course entitled, "Theology, Mizzle &Joy?
The bronze is "Christ Rising, by Frederick Hart, 1998. The cruciform shape combines the sense of liberation, welcome and openness to the future that the resurrection guarantees, and yet recalls the suffering love that enfolds a broken creation in the redemptive intentionality of God.
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