Living Wittily

Why we write the way we write...

The other day I got a lovely letter from a friend, expressing appreciation for something I'd written. What makes the letter more special is that it was typed, not word-processed. It's perhaps entirely a matter of perspective, or maybe there is an aesthetic of the technologically obsolete, but a typed letter feels more personal, takes more effort and care when there's no delete button, conveys a generous intentionality as trouble is taken.

My friend Stewart, whose funeral I shared on Friday, gave me a gift two days before the stroke from which he eventually died. The Naked Now. Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, is now one of those books twice treasured - for what it is, and from whom it came. Inside it Stewart wrote in a characteristic hand, with his fountain pen, his own greeting and appreciation of friendship - neat, firm, legible and instantly recognisable as Stewart.

Typewriter and fountain pen - it's not that I undervalue all the other ways we keep in touch with each other these days - email, text, facebook and all other forms of maintaining and repairing relationship. But the typed letter, and the handwritten flyleaf re-present the faces and the voices of two dear friends. Emails and texts are transient, often enough informal chits of chat. But a typed letter and written flyleaf are artefacts of friendship and lasting fingerprints of touches on our lives.

 

The Beatific Vision and the Funeral of a Soul Friend

And That Will Be Heaven

and that will be heaven

and that will be heaven

at last   the first unclouded

seeing

         to stand like the sunflower

turned full face to the sun    drenched

with light     in the still centre

held     while the circling planets

hum with an utter joy

                        seeing and knowing

at last     in every particle

seen and known     and not turning

away

     never turning away

again

(Evangeline Paterson)

I shared in the funeral of my friend Stewart today, and was given the privilege of trying to explain the mystery that is the human life, precious, unique, surprising, the gift of presence, and communion, and inward companionship. The poem expresses the breathless wonder of our earthbound eyes seeing through the eyes of God to the face of God, and how in the end God will be all in all.

Amongst the words borrowed and used in the service were these from Julian of Norwich, Stewart's favourite theologian, and fro m Paul, who understood the limits of human thought and experience to comprehend the infinite mystery of eternal love, stooping to redeem and renew:

Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning.

And I saw quite clearly in this and in all,

that before God made us, he loved us,

which love was never slaked nor ever shall be.

And in this love he has done all his work,

and in this love he has made all things profitable to us.

And in this love our life is everlasting.

In our creation we had a beginning.

But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning.

And all this shall be seen in God without end.

In the end the beatific vision is to gaze with joyous wonder on the brilliant dazzling darkness that is the mystery of Love Divine:

When I was a child,

I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

Now we see things imperfectly,

like puzzling reflections in a mirror,

but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

All that I know now is partial and incomplete,

but then I will know everything completely,

just as God now knows me completely....

and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Social Justice and the Complicated Complexities of VAT on Pies!

Amongst the anomalies and curiosities of the recent Budget, is the decision to apply VAT to heated pies and pasties to bring them into line with cooked food as served for example in restaurants. The Chief Executive of Greggs the bakery company has dubbed this the Pie Tax. The  subsequent debate has covered issues such as the clientele who buy such hot food being those who can least afford a hiked price in food. But the most bizarre part of the debate focuses on what constitutes 'heated food'. It seems this is based on a comparison between the ambient temperature outside and the temperature of the food being heated! So on a sunny day in summer lukewarm food might not count, whereas in a snowbound winter...... Here's a quote from the debate:

"With the weather as it is today, a lukewarm pasty from Greggs is not VAT-able because the ambient temperature outside is the reference point, whereas if it is the middle of winter and freezing cold it is VAT," Mr Mann said. "It is an extraordinarily complex situation when you are having to check with the Meteorological Office on whether or not to add VAT on pasties in Greggs, which is what your consultation paper does."

Off course there are two sides to this debate - but I can't help wondering along with most sensible people, whether the leaders of the Coalition have any idea what the real world feels like, and whether they have the moral imagination to recognise the real and the symbolic impact of choosing to tax food at a time when austerity measures are supposed to be balanced by the mantra 'we're all in this together'. The tax-payer subsidised restaurants at Westminster versus the queue for taxed hot sausage rolls at Greggs. As an own goal it is as spectacular as Peter Crouch's real wonder goal against Manchester City at the weekend.

For that reason I'll resist submitting that particular Budget proposal to the more searching moral scrutiny that a prophet like Amos might have carried out. He had something to say about the luxuries of the the rich and the poor being ground into the dust for the price of a pair of slippers....for contemporary application read 'a hot pie'.

You can read more on this at the link below - and smile - but then reflect, because the title of this post is not entirely playful!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/osborne-touch-greggs-boss-060141772.html

 

Justification for buying yet another new book on Vermeer!

This morning a book arrived in the post, yet another book.

This is an all but weekly occurrence that whether it puzzles others, frequently puzzles me.

Whence the imperative to read, and to own and handle the word made matter?

Is it self-indulgence, or sacrament - means of survival or means of grace?

Philip Toynbee said books were his royal road to God.

Not all books that lead to God are books about God.

But

To confer with and consult minds other than our own.

To see what others point out to our limited sight.

To feel the impetus of those who push us beyond the restrictive horizons 0f what we know.

To revel in the intellectual humility that provides the humus out of which good learning grows.

To keep alive curiosity and pay attention to the world and listen to our own lives.

To take and read, and to wonder and ponder on goodness, beauty and truth.

To nurture imagination, refresh the wells of thought, replenish our emotional capacity.

Books do this, and much more for me.

And in that sense they are a means of grace, constant sources of new understanding, encounters with minds different from mine and no less valid.

As a matter of interest the book that arrived is an updated classic of art investigation. Beautifully written, it explores the intricacies and complexities involved in establishing the provenance and authenticity of paintings attributed to Vermeer.

But it is Gowing's analysis of Vermeer's temperament and character, and of how these inevitably influenced his technique and artistic expression, that makes this a profound study of genius. When much has been said about cultural milieu, historical context, social influences, and political background, there is still the mystery of temperament and personality, and the complex intertwining of accident, circumstance and personal intention. These may be all but insoluble, but in the attempt, much comes to light that otherwise would remain hidden. Gowing as noted above, is an impetus pushing the reader towards new horizons, teaching us to pay attention to our world, itself a sacrament of creation.

Few artists paid more detailed attention to the sacrament of the ordinary than Jan Vermeer.

Buechner Week IV The Coincidences that Add Up to Vocation

Who knows where those life changing moments come from - the ones where we finally decide, 'This is what I want to do'. Not everyone sees a glowing bush over in a corner of the desert compelling us to turn off the beaten track of the routines and habits of our comfort zones. I doubt many hear that voice in the small hours insistently waking us up by saying our name, and even fewer think to say, Speak Lord, your servant is listening.

 

No. Usually the voice of God calling us, (which is what vocation is), sounds most clearly in that coincidence of opportunity and circumstance, our own heart's desires, and that decisive act that enables us to put our lives where our best desires are, and to affirm who we are by putting ourselves in the place of new possibility. 

 

I know of nobody who says that better than Buechner, in one of his finest pieces of applied theology and spiritual direction, reduced to essentials:

 

 

"The kind of work God usually calls you to

       is the kind of work that you need most to do

              and that the world most needs to have done…

The place God calls you to

       is the place where your deep gladness

              and the world’s deep hunger meet."

– Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking" - his definition of 'vocation'.

Buechner Week III Betting your life that God is Love.

Yesterday one of my dearest friends died. We first met 28 years ago, and from our first meeting we sensed an affinity that is hard to explain and requires no explanation because friendship is gift, grace, goodness and gratitude all bundled together in a congruence of mind and heart.

In due course I'll say more. I mention my friend here because this is Buechner week, and I've been re-reading and re-thinking Buechner's wisdom. There is a spiritual family resemblance between my friend's and Buechner's take on God and the graced life. In 28 years we had countless conversations about the meaning of God, and love, and what it means to be human, and how to reach out to the other, and who Jesus is for us and our broken world today, and why blessing is the default setting of any heart openly receptive to the love of God that is always there before us, and behind us. When I read Buechner, I think he has been reading my friend's diary, overhearing many of those conversations, wishing he could interrupt and agree or disagree by saying, 'But have you looked at it this way?'

Here is Buechner on love, words that coincide exactly with my friend's theology, and mine.

Of all powers,

love is the most powerful and the most powerless.

It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer

that final and most impregnable stronghold

which is the human heart.

It is the most powerless

because it can do nothing except by consent.

To say that love is God is the most romantic idealism.

To say that God is love is either the last straw,

or the ultimate truth.

Wishful Thinking, 50-54

The photo was taken a stone's throw from my friend's house. An exuberant garden was one of his delights, probably because such profusion of colour, variety and vitality answered to much in his own inner world.  

Buechner Week II Forgiveness, the Church's Mission and the Moral Credit Crunch

Forgiveness is one of the hardest won and easiest forgotten hallmarks of Christian discipleship. You'd think in an era obsessed with branding, marketing, celebrity, fame, the product, that the church might have taken time to ask what it is that the world most needs, and how to offer it at an affordable price. If the 21st Century church is serious about mission, has a rudimentary let alone a strategic grasp of the Gospel, is 'missionally engaged' with the surrounding culture of debt and recession, entertainment escapism, technological idolatry, social fragmentation and relational maliase, then you'd think that the connection between a debt ridden world and a Gospel of debts forgiven might be an idea worth considering, demonstrating, practising, and embodying.

Grace has to be one of the most ridiculously straightforward bargains a market idolising culture could ever be offfered, you'd think. Instead of buy one get one free, the invitation to come buy bread without money would be a game losing own goal for Supermarkets, but the ridiculously obvious life disposition of those who follow Jesus.

After all at the heart of the prayer shared throughout the entire Christian tradition we pray 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors', and do so in a civilisation where bank bail-outs are a self interested emergency to prevent indebtedness engulfing the world economy. More outrageously still, in moments of the greatest agony and personal grief inflicted by others, Jesus prays 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do'. It isn't as if the ideas of grace and forgiveness are radically new. They are in fact radically old, they lie at the originating centre of Christian faith in the heart of God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

Forgiveness is a fundamental responsibility of the Christian heart, a life-changing gift to be to be given and received freely. The coalescence in our hearts of responsibility and gift, and the life shaping power of forgiveness, should be eye-openingly obvious. The argument goes from the greater to the lesser - if God in Christ forgives me, I am a forgiven sinner, now a willing conspirator of the Kingdom, a grace inspired subversive, a forgiven forgiver.

Buechner puts it more prosaically, but sometimes that's exactly what is needed for us to grasp what the Grace of God both demands and gives, as we try to faithfully follow after Jesus, whose harshest words were sometimes reserved for those who harden their hearts and refuse to be reconciled.

When somebody you've wronged forgives you, you're spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.

When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you're spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.

For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins, and to be glad in each other's presence.

Forgiveness is the word we live by, says Elizabeth Jennings in her poem, 'Forgiveness'. There would be more life and less death, more peace and less violence, more love and less hate, more joy and less anger, more gift and less payback, and therefore more grace and less retribution if in the world there were more live demonstrations of forgiveness. Now there's a missional imperative for a faith community called to be reconciled reconcilers, or in Paul's words, words far too often given their soteriological weight at the cost of their transformative ethical urgency, Jesus has given us the ministry of reconciliation.  

Buechner Week I - One of my Literary Angels

Frederick Buechner is one of the angels in my life. I don't read him all the time, months can go by without me taking one of his books from the shelf behind my study chair at College. 

In my life as in most lives, there have been moments of annunciation when I've been told I'm blessed whether I like it or not, times when good tidings of great joy have lit up my life around me, encounters when I've wrestled with my own struggles and found somewhere in the wrestling that I had a grip on God but God had a stronger grip on me, times too when I've sensed a guardian angel when walking through valleys of deep darkness. Most times those angels are people sent by God to be a friend and companion, and to voice in their actions the love of God. But now and again that angel comes in the holy words that speak heart to heart, and come from the writer to the reader through conduits laid by the Holy Spirit.

Not many writers do that, and just as well. But when I turn one of those scary corners on my journey, find the wind constantly in my face and trying to push me back the way I came, or begin to find the upward road just far too upward, Buechner comes from the shelf, and time and again speaks the kind of sense I'd hear from very few others whom I read. Buechner's sense is uncommon sense, because he is unafraid of pragmatism so long as it's laced with grace, celebrates each precious moment of life not because they are all extraordinary but because they are possible at all because I am alive, shows me again and again that the most important gift is the gift of seeing and embracing the grace that is already there, of perceiving the goodness and mercy that dogs my steps, of discovering in the friendship of those closest to me the faithfulness of God, and in the company of strangers the friendship of God.

So this week is Buechner week. He is now 86 years old, and the wisdom of those years has been generously and prodigally shared in novels, essays, sermons and autobiography. A very good friend introduced me to Buechner's work in 1985 - that was one of the annunciations I referred to above, and the friend, one of the angels.

 

"Listen to your life.

See it for the fathomless mystery it is.

In the boredom and pain of it

no less than in the excitement and gladness:

touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it

because in the last analysis all moments are key moments,

and life itself is grace."

Now and Then

 

"The world is full of dark shadows,

to be sure both the world without and the world within ...

But praise and trust him too

for the knowledge that what's lost is nothing to what's found,

and that all the dark there ever was,

set next to light,

would scarcely fill a cup."

Commencement Address at Union Seminary, Richmond.

 

Books, Bread and Blessings!

Yesterday I bought two things with a combined price of £10 The first was the book in the picture, Paddison's monograph in the Society of New Testament Studies Monograph series, on Theological Hermeneutics and First Thessalonians. The copy was hardback in mint condition, was probably a review copy, and is currently priced at £65 - so when I saw the price was £4.50, I felt like a certain farmer ploughing in a field when his arms are jarred by the blade of the plough hitting treasure. I didn't buy the field but I grabbed the book and handed over my £5 note and fled rejoicing.

As a lifelong bibliophile I am still like a child in a toyshop, or a chocolate factory, when I'm in a bookshop. And a Cambridge or Oxford hardback monograph is still a delight to hold, read and be able to afford to buy! I bought it in my favourite second hand bookshop, having stopped by on impulse, and the whole compexion of the day changed as my faith in providence was shored up by yet another coincidence of circumstance more theologically defined as a blessing!

Later on the drive back I was an hungered. I lapse into King james language when still glowing with recent blessing, and I stopped at the Little Chef beyond Dunblane. I ususally sniff disdainfully as I pass and keep going to Baxters. But by now they were closed. Another good decision. I ordered scrambled egg on brown bread and a pot of tea well, to be exact toasted wholemeal bread and butter, and organic free range eggs, and a three cup pot of tea. For nourishment of mind and body it's hard to beat a good book and crusty brown bread!! .

One of my favourite brief poems, which should be read occasionally at the Lord's Supper, is a reminder of the sanctity of the ordinary. Through the Incarnation of our Lord all matter is made sacred; at the centre of the Lord's Prayer is that petition that shakes us out of our spiritual reveries by addressing our most basic hunger, 'Give us this day our daily bread'; and on the night when Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and broke it....... and we call that, Eucharist.

Be careful when you touch bread.

Let it not lie uncared for – unwanted.

So often bread is taken for granted.

There is so much beauty in bread;

Beauty of sun and soil,

Beauty of patient toil.

Winds and rain have caressed it,

Christ often blessed it.

Be gentle when you touch bread.

~Anonymous

You can find the picture and the recipe for cider bread over here.

 

A Philosophical Theology of Prayer.

I don't enjoy many books about prayer. That doesn't mean there aren't any good ones, just that I'm not sure one ever helped me to pray more, or better. I'd rather have a book of prayers that have been composed, written and prayed in language rich with those human experiences out of which prayer erupts, or is dragged, or writes itself in word and emotion that is the human heart seeking encounter with the heart of God.

When a renowned philosopher whose works on Theism are mind stretchingly challenging decides to explore the basis of Christian prayer, then I don't expect another how to manual, nor another here's my experience, it was great and I'd like you to have it too bestseller. Which is good - because this book is quite different. Owen is unafraid of the theological and philosophical questions raised by our praying - telling God what God already knows, asking for what is in our own interests, establishing any causal connection between our praying and whatever happens that we perceive as an answer to prayer. The main thrust of the book is that prayer is best, perhaps only, understood, in the light of our doctrine of God and our theological conception of what a human being is, and what the relations between God and humanity are, should be and perhaps must be.

I learned so much from this book - The Basis of Christian Prayer, H P Owen (Regent College Pubblishing). Not about how to pray but about what prayer is, about the One to whom prayer is offered, and about the relational interchange that takes place between God and those who dare, and who desire, to address the God who first addresses us. "Prayer validates a personal, as against a non personal view of God. In prayer we address God as Thou." A page later (p.111) Owen quotes a most moving prayer of Anselm, from the Proslogion:

O God, I pray, let me know and love you

so that I may rejoice in you.

And if I cannot in this life fully,

let me advance day by day

until the point of fullness comes.

Let knowledge of you progress in me here,

and be made full there.

Let love for you grow in me here,

and be made full there,

so that here my joy may be great with expectancy

while there being full in realisation.

If there is such a thing as an eschatological spirituality, Then Anselm has gifted to the church a prayer that holds the Christian heart in that creative tension between now and then, here and there, Thou - and I.

Durer's Praying Hands (above) suffers from over-exposure on Christian kitsch products fro m wall plaques to plastic models. But in the original etching the artist combines beauty with beseeching, peace with tension, surrender and expectancy - and few images are more evocative of our humanity than our hands, with which we make and caress, hold and relinquish, clench and open, embrace or exclude. To lift up holy hands in prayer, is therefore no straightforward spiritual exercise.