Living Wittily

When being bold is hard to be, and being scared is ok

You know how now and again, at church, you find yourself invited to sing something you don't want to sing.

It isn't just to be awkward. And it isn't because you don't want to sing something you don't much care for, or it's a duff tune or one that is unsingable. It's more fundamental than that.

You are being asked to sing what isn't true in your experience. The last place to pretend is in a service of worship. And amongst the most corrosive forms of pretence is emotional insincerity, which isn't far from spiritual self-deceit.

You see, the Catch-22 of congregational singing is that while you want to share the faith of the community, sometimes you can't without being untrue to yourself. Because how that faith is expressed, and what it is declaring to be everyone's experience right now, may not be at all congruent with where your own heart is, what is so in your life, and may wrongly presuppose that it is well with every soul gathered in this place, with these people, for worship, now.

Some time ago ( and it is a while ago) I was standing alongside someone in her own church, who was going through the most horrendous experience of their life. The details don't matter - what matters is that this person was inwardly broken, clinging to whatever faith might have enough buoyancy to stop her from drowning. And she was afraid, scared of the future, her inward defences dismantled by what had happened. And we stood to sing

Be bold, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you!

Be bold, be strong for the Lord your God is with you!

I am not afraid. I am not dismayed

For I'm walking in faith and victory

Come on and walk in faith and victory

For the Lord, your God is with you.

Now I know it's biblical, it's the spirituality of Joshua, its the confidence of the conqueror and a declaration of assurance. But there is also the spirituality of the Psalmist in lament mode, and of Isaiah who understood broken hearts and bewildered spirits and people's deep fears for the future. And allowing for that, I wonder if we could just occasionally take time to sing, to each other, same tune, much less strident:

Though scared, though weak,  Still the Lord your God is with you;

Though scared, though weak,  Still the Lord your God is with you;

Yes you are afraid, Yes you are dismayed,

Because you're walking in deep uncertainty,

We know you're walking in deep uncertainty,

But the Lord your God is with you.

This is a plea for emotional honesty, and emotional inclusion, so that we recognise in each gathered community, the experiences of joy and sorrow, laughter and lament, of confident faith and struggling faith, healed hearts and breaking hearts. I too like a good sing when my spirit is singing - but I need different words when I'm inwardly crying. Worship is honest when the declarative mood is sometimes muted by the interrogative mood, and worship that arises from the real experience of the life I live is more likely to have integrity. And whether I am going forth weeping or rejoicing in the homecoming, it is one of the great gifts of the worshipping community that the content of our services enables us to laugh with those who laugh - and weep with those who weep.

I offer this not as a rant, or a hobby horse - I think these are trivial forms of complaint. I'm more interested in making an observation of pastoral consequence, and spiritual sensitivity, and human solidarity, all of which are inherent in the practices of Christian fellowship.

The etching above comes from my personal canon of artistic exegesis - I guess at some time in our lives we are the one clinging to the mast, or holding on to Jesus for dear life!

 

 

 

 

Learned Optimism and the Gospel of John

Optimism is not the same as hoping for the best but not sure if it will happen. It isn’t a kind of philosophical crossing of the fingers behind our backs either. That kind of uncritical optimism mean we’re simply not being realistic. The relationship between optimism and realism is very interesting for people who take Jesus seriously enough to trust Him. For people of faith, is their trust optimism or realism?

An important insight comes from an unusual book entitled Learned Optimism. It sounds complicated, but stay with me:

 “I have always prided myself on being realistic, and still value that quality. What I learned is that being realistic should be combined with feeling optimistic about creating ways to improve the realistic situation as I understand it.”

It is one of the subtle and creative techniques in John’s gospel that he sets you up, to hit you with truth, an ambush of the intellect. His gospel is about learned optimism. Repeatedly he says, if you believe in Jesus you can combine being realistic with feeling optimistic, because He will create ways to improve the realistic situation as He understands it.

For John the Evangelist (nickname for Good News Disseminator!) optimism is not only a matter of temperament. It is a worldview, a considered view of how the world is. In John’s Gospel, to believe in Jesus is to have a radically different worldview.  Jesus, says John, is God’s radical intervention who redefines all other reality. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh…..in Him was life and the life was the light of all humanity…the Son came that you might have life….if the Son shall set you free you shall be free indeed”.  Reality is reconfigured, the way the world looks changes forever, when Jesus’ presence, purpose and power are presupposed.

So, says John – Jesus is the life-giver, the light bringer, the liberator. And in chapter 11, Jesus’ friend Lazarus is dead, buried, locked in the grave, decomposing in the darkness, confined by embalming bandages; that, says John, is the reality. And John says to you, the reader, faith is learned optimism, faith is feeling optimistic about God improving reality, your considered view of how the world is, is about to be reconfigured.

 John says, ‘Watch Jesus and learn’.  ‘Take away the stone’, says the Life-giver; ‘Lazarus come out’,  says the Light bringer;  ‘unbind the grave clothes’ says the Liberator.  And Lazarus walked out, into the light, back into life  and out into the freedom Jesus both commanded and gifted.

“Learned optimism”, it’s the worldview of those who have seen Jesus at work, and who believe that he still works; that the light shines in the darkness of every death confirming, life threatening grave. But says John, the darkness can never get the better of Him, cannot comprehend Him, never but never has the last word. And that says John, is the learned optimism of resurrection faith.

 I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

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

The second picture is by Corrinne Vonaesch and can be seen along with a series of illustrations of John's Gospel over here. They are a form of exegesis in their own right, - simple and complex, the language of colour expounding both text and story.

Why the Daily Mail should be read - with critical scrutiny and moral vigilance

It all depends on the words you use. And the words you use betrays your attitude. And attitudes expose ethical convictions, our view of what's right or wrong. And of course there are always different perspectives, contested worldviews, and varied ways of thinking about the other human beings who inhabit our planet.

So yesterday the daily Mail once more showed it ethical (sic) convictions, betrayed its attitudes and used words intended to persuade us to think like its editor and writers. Not a chance.

The headline was UK DOLES OUT MORE AID THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

The problem is with the word "dole". Used in Daily Mail discourse it means handout, soft indulgent and spineless philanthropy ( a word that means love of human beings).

Now what difference would it make to the moral meaning and ethical purpose of the fact that Britain gives more to aid for development than any other country, if we said the same thing but changed the wording to reflect a different attitude and an alternative set of ethical convictions.

Suppose the headline had read UK IS MORE GENEROUS TO OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

That's more like it - and nearer the truth.

Divine Humanity - in defence of Kenosis

A while since I wrote a post in the category Confessions of a Bibliophile. And this is a seriously embarrassing confession. David Brown's book on kenotic Christology has just been published. The price is outrageous, and email correspondence with SCM merely confirms that as an academic book with a limited market it has to be fixed at a viable price. no apology, no compromise, no sympathy. So. No guessing games. The paperback copy of 273 pages cost £50. That's 5.5p per page.

If you are regularly around this blog you'll know my interest in Trinitarian kenosis and kenotic Christology. To buy this book you need a kenotic wallet, self-emptying! I'm not sure what response to make when a publisher produces a book that has this kind of price tag. I understand the need to be competitive. I recognise that academic books have a smaller circulation and thus a narrower margin for profit. I also acknowledge the quality and importance of good academic theology being published and flowing out into wider peer discussion. But the price has got to be affordable, the book accessible, and have some sense of value for money - I don't mean cheap, I mean fair.

So my wallet has self emptied, and I've already used a large gulp of the book allowance. That said - this is an important book, an elegantly written and openly positive defence of kenotic Christology. Nearly half way through it and have enjoyed the careful clearing of the ground through context, historical theology and constructive proposals. What is most impressive is that in defending Kenosis as a viable theological category in Christology and Trinitarian theology, Brown doesn't overstate the case or overlook the theological difficulties with kenotic theology - but neither does he gloss over the theological difficulties and serious questions raised by the Nicean and Chalcedonian definitions. The orthodox position is not itself so rooted in biblical categories and exegetical foundations that it avoids serious questions of adequacy and sufficiency as a Christological definition persuasive to contemporary minds.

One of Brown's major contentions is that a kenotic trajectory is not dependent on the classic text of Philippians 2.5-11. The Synoptic Gospels in narrative drive and plot portray Jesus in terms that are not incongruent with a kenotic motif. Once I've read it all, and thought some more, I'll post again.

Another research interest is the hymns of Charles Wesley, whom brown quotes - and here the kenotic imagery is made to bear the full Christological weight:

Emptied of His majesty,

Of His dazzling glories shorn,

Being's source begins to be

And God Himself is born!

Theological adventurousness is not inimical to Evangelical orthodoxy, it seems.

Theological Education is more than the Diploma or Degree.

  The last couple of weeks we have been completing the marking and grading of papers in preparation for the end of the session. Every time I do this I'm aware of the work and worry, the learning and writing, the thinking and re-thinking, that is part of that great humanising process we call education and to which our students commit themselves. Leaving all the usual quips aside, the truth is a theological paper is an attempt by one mind to grasp and understand, then to articulate and communicate, something they have come to know about God, their self or the world, and how to live and grow as the person they are. That's what is meant by learning that is informative, then formative and finally transformative.

For that reason, a theological essay is a statement of what one person believes and tries to argue. Their can be little point in simply writing what they think the marker wants to see, if at the same time they don't affirm the validity of what they write. Authentic learning is where we risk writing, saying, speaking out, what we believe to be the case - how much more then when dealing with those things we say matter to us as ultimate, primary, perennial concerns of our lives, and expressions of our deepest commitments.

So when I read an essay on the Triune relations of Father, Son and Spirit; or a Journal of personal discovery in ministry and responsiveness to others; or a review of a tough book that demands critical thought tempered by intellectual humility; or a sermon written out of a wrestling match with the text when like Jacob the preacher won't let the text go 'except you bless me'. That's when the academic discipline of marking is sanctified by the awareness that these assignments are about more than the grades - and to be sure the process of grading is rigorous, fair and open. But alongside the academic achievement, is a process of shaping and forming a mind, nourishing and nurturing a heart, encouraging the spirit to expansiveness, receptiveness and hospitality to new ideas and experiences.

So when people ask how the marking is going, there are two answers. One is about the process of confirming the achievements in learning; the other is being alert to that deeper process of growth and change towards maturity of theological understanding, enrichment of spiritual life, and development of gifts and skills which become the source and resource of the Church's mission and ministry in the world. That's what makes theological education crucial - and that's what makes being a theological educator a crucial ministry in the life of the Church.

Bob Dylan - the latter day Ecclesiastes?

One of the signs of age is when you see Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in concert in the 1960's and remember the excitement and passion of discovering they sang about things you cared about as a teenager. Last night on BBC4 I watched the first part of Arena: No Direction Home, a biography of Dylan's early years. The footage of him singing Blowing in the Wind, evoked more than nostalgia - a kind of pride that my generation used music as a medium of political protest, moral exhortation and ethcial censure of cynical power structures. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace movement and CND, the ruthless greed of corporate business, the unequal  lives of the powerless poor and the powerful rich - these were issues of critical importance for humanity, and they were being sung with rhetorical power, or iconoclastic sarcasm, or blunt poltical incorrectness long before politcally correct means what it now means.

And Pete Seeger all but in tears remembering how it felt to know a singer as genuinely committed to political protest had taken up his torch, and Joan Baez reminiscing about the discovery of Dylan the soon to be phenomenon and prophet for his generation - these were significant moments of cultural history. Dylan is both perplexing and fascinating, complex and enigmatic, passionately humane and incapable of indifference, deeply religious but despising religiosity.

What was evident in last night's programme is the power of a life story to shape and direct the way others live their lives. It's going too far to talk of Dylan having disciples - but there are millions who now span at least two generations, for whom Bob Dylan has articulated what we want to say about the world, our joys and fears and loves, to tell of the things that outrage us, to sing the causes that matter because they are about human flourishing - both what hinders and helps human beings live in peace and freedom. It takes a troubled soul who looks unflinchingly at trouble to interpret what troubles, or ought to trouble, each generation. In that sense, Dylan is a prophet - flawed, enigmatic, sometimes wrong, quite often right in the diagnosis of the self-inflicted wounds of our humanity.

"Human beings are born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward..." "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, says the Preacher". "Let justice roll down like waters...." "Now abides faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these...." Job, The Preacher, the Prophet, the Apostle - in secular terms Dylan weaves those strands of human experience (the tragic, the skeptic, the ethical and the romantic), into a corpus of music that is profoundly spiritual, and which for 50 years has resonated with those who question the status quo, who are restless for change, and who are looking for an exegete of their own lives' experience. It's only a thought - but if the preacher of Ecclesiastes had been looking for a way to communicate with the Western World of the 1960's, he could have done worse than being a singer song-writer who composed Blowing in the Wind....

As a coincidence of serendiptious proportions - the picture of the young Dylan above, which I saved to my picture file, is next to a photo of David Cameron used in an earleir post. Now there's a conversation I'd like to overhear - Dylan and Cameron, on the things that matter most!

Dr Garrett Fitzgerald and the Jigsaw of Peace

The words "rest in peace" (RIP) are part of a familiar tradition of respect and remembrance when someone dies. Few deserve such respect, admiration and remembering as much as Dr Garrett Fitzgerald whose death is announced. Head of the Irish Government for two terms during the 1980's he was a profoundly influential presence in the peace process, a trusted voice on both sides of the divide, and a politician who gives politicians a good name. The current Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny has expressed very well the moral and political significance of a leader for whom humanity and peaceableness were moral imperatives - and for whom indeed peace is the categorical political imperative.

"Garret FitzGerald was a remarkable man who made a remarkable contribution to Irish life," he said.

"His towering intellect, his enthusiasm for life, his optimism for politics was always balanced by his humility, his warmth, his bringing to public life of a real sense of dignity and integrity, and his interest being focused entirely on his people and on the country."

Mr Kenny also said his former Fine Gael party leader would have been happy to hear the Queen address Ireland on Wednesday night as part of her state visit.

"To see the work that he had done over very many years, and indeed his father (Desmond) before him, have played their part in putting the jigsaw of peace together."

Mr Cameron, who attended the Queen's speech at a state dinner in Dublin Castle, said he watched Dr FitzGerald when he was a student of politics, rather than someone involved in politics.

"He always struck me as someone who was a statesman, as well as a politician, someone who was in politics for all the right reasons and someone who made a huge contribution to the peace process and bringing reconciliation for all that had happened in the past,"

No wonder political friends and foes alike referred to him as Garrett the Good. May his tribe increase, and may this patient peacemaker rest in peace

Maria Boulding - and the reverse side of the tapestry

Maria Boulding was one of the finest exemplars of the Benedictine monastic life, and a Christian spirit of quite rare depth and insight. I first came across her in the 1980's when I was reading avidly around the Rule of Benedict, and writing a paper on "Baptists, Benedict and the Blessing of Community". Her autobiographical essay in the volume of edited essays, A Touch of God, is a carefully considered and honest estimate of her own formation within monastic community. She writes of the life we live and know as the reverse side of the tapestry, a metaphor I fully understand. My own tapestries are likewise viewed from two sides, and it's a matter of care to keep the reverse side as neat as possible - but it never shows the real beauty, subtlety and definition of the true side. We all have our twisted threads, unintended knots, evidence of short-cuts and partially hidden flaws.

Over the years I've read each of her best known books, all of them more than once. Prayer in the Easter Christ remains one of the clearest explorations of what it means to live an Easter life, and to use the word Easter as a verb that means to look on the world through the lens of the Cross and Resurrection, the realities of Divine Love and the gift of Divine life. The Coming of God is as biblical an account of Advent as there is, and again the book is replete with theological and spiritual thoughtfulness about the kind of God who comes, in Christ. Gateway to Hope is a book about failure which is pastorally sound, sympathetic, but never colludes with self-pity or the paralysis of mind and heart that failure can trigger. Her translation of Augustine'sConfessions has made that masterpiece accessible to generations now impatient with Victorian or highly stylised translations.

Dame maria Boulding died in december 2009, and in her last months wrote her final book, Gateway to Resurrection. In it she takes stock of what remained important and central in her life and faith, and for her it is summed up in her experience of the Risen Christ. I've just bought this book, which will go with me soon on a break when I don't want to do a lot of reading, but need a wise, familiar and understanding conversation partner. The obituary published in The Times is an affectionate and generous account of a remarkable woman who took particular care that the reverse side of the tapestry was as neat as patient skill and constant discipline over detail will make it. Click the link below. 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6938006.ece

Seasons of the Heart - and the complexities of our emotions

As you'll gather from the earlier post, I am an unashamed fan of John Denver.  Frankly I am puzzled by anyone who doesn't at least know or remember several of his best known songs - and those who raise their eyebrows when I wax lyrical about his lyrics, or sing his songs, or enthuse about his earth-loving people-hugging philosophy, I consider with much goodwill and sympathy as misguided souls!

The first album I ever bought was Rhymes and Reasons. The title song is about the loving and valuing of children as the source and focus of our wellbeing and the guarantee of our human future; the royalties were gifted to UNICEF in 1979. Then I bought the double album live concert, An Evening with John Denver, which I played till the vinyl was worn and I bought it again. And when vinyl was replaced by CD I bought it again and regularly play it in the car. Then Windsong was released and he moved to a different level of sound and developed from there material that expressed his deep protective love for the earth's environment, and long before environmental responsibility became politically acceptable or economically thinkable.

I still have a dozen vinyl LPs, a kind of chronology of his career. People differ on which is his best; even fans know that several albums took him as near mediocrity and inferior derivative material as someone of his talent could go. But Seasons of the Heart is the most complete and unified album he ever produced. Written out of his experience in the Far East it contains some of his most reflective, poignant and honest songs about human love and the complexities of human relationships, the mystery of the universe and human existence, and the joy and pain of human togetherness. The combination of emotionally frank lyrics and orchestral musical accompaniment gives it a depth of expression he previously achieved only in Windsong. I've just bought Seasons of the Heart on CD, and listening to it again it still has that emotional complexity, sincerity and inner knowing that gives weight and integrity to the greatest love songs. On one car journey north I listened to this album, then Brahms' violin concerto, some of The Best of James, and Abba Gold. A kind of musical ecumenicity......

Why the library matters as a humanising refuge for the soul.

Amongst the public services under threat of cuts, and a too easy target for budget trimmers, money squeezers and compulsive cost cutters, are our public libraries. You would expect me to be vocal and verbal about any threat to those opportunities and privileges of knowledge that are essential to the health, life and culturedness of - well, of our culture.

I came across the quotation below (by E B White the novelist) written to the Troy Public Library in the US in the 1960's. One hundred writers were asked to write to the children at the school and tell them what a library is, and what it is for. The library has recently posted all the letters on its website here.

I suggest you click and go read some of them - then email a couple of them to your MP, Councillor, (and the Library staff at your local library - to encourage them).

 

A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books — the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go. Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together — just the two of you. A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people — people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.