Living Wittily

Khalid Dale and the Death of the Righteous

The righteous of the world aren't those who claim to be righteous, but those who do righteousness. That religiously motivated followers of God believe they act righteously, and in the name of their God, by murdering another human being is one of the tragic ironies of religion contaminated by the toxins of hate, greed, cruelty and self-validated violence.

But to brutally behead a Red Cross worker, qualified as a nurse, and working in the killers' own country to bring help and healing to the people, and under the auspices and for the medical and humanitarian ends of an organisation committed to humane and humanising behaviour - there are those who would say such blind hatred and religiously inspired cruelty is beyond words. But it is not beyond words, and must not be allowed to be.

Khalid Dale was a human being, whose humanitarian values and humane compassion, led him to a place of opportunity to help others, and knowingly putting himself in a place of personsal risk. But his presence as a Red Cross Worker, and the universal recognition of Red Cross neutrality and goodwill, should have been sufficient to guarantee his safety and dissuade opportunist or ideological kidnapping. It didn't, which is one of those events that corrodes the foundation pillars that enable the Red Cross to sustain and protect that most fragile but essential attributes of a human being - a humane humanity. That is not a tautology - it is an intensive adjective. Few things diminish the value of human life more rapidly and fatally than war, conflict, hatred, grievance, or any of these combined with religious or political ideology which eclipses all other moral concerns and itself becomes an idol.

We can guess at the motives of those who killed Khalid Dale - but it would illumine little. Some enactments of evil are beyond such explanatory analysis. They are best understood by the act and its consequences. Whole communities will suffer as a direct result of Khalid Dale's murder. People whose lives would have been saved by his experience and influence, his commitment and expertise; people struggling to survive and whose humanity is further diminished by the killing of a trusted and resourceful Red Cross Commission reprersentative. But above all that, a good man was killed by those who show little evidence of that humanity which Khalid Dale cherished, revered and died for in the name of his God - who, whatever the theological complexities, it is hard to believe is the same God as that owned so violently by his killers.

This was not an action beyond words - it was an action beyond understsanding, but not, and never, beyond condemnation. Such acts gave the original impetus to the magnificent work of the Red Cross, and they will not discourage that deeper and more resilient human motive of love, compassion and humanity. To believe otherwise is to give in to the darkness - and I for one believe "the Light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it". Khalid Dale converted to Islam, and therefore he, and not his killers, is the benchmark of that great monotheistic faith and its ethical imperatives.

The Day Thou Gavest Lord Ended Very Well!

Last night I didn't die and go to heaven. I went to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and found a piece of it there. The performance of Monteverdi's Vespers by the Dunedin Consort was a very rare experience, and one that would be hard to repeat in just that way and just that place at just that time.

It started at 8, at which time the setting sun was blazing through the gallery windows, illuminating the organ pipes and chandeliers. And as the music progressed the light mellowed, blended with shadow and bathed the interior in breathtaking benediction. To sit there and listen to a performance that was professional in the sense of a performance that is careful and cared for by the artistes, and to do so in the magnificent Kelvingrove Main Hall illuminated by sunset, and listening to music intended for high spaces, exacting acoustics, and for end of day, was more than memorable.

It was an experience absorbed into those fibres of our being that are not for mere remembering, but for taking away beauty, peacefulness, gratitude and wonder, as part of who we now are. It wasn't just the music; it was more than the glorious building; it was more than the passionate professionalism of the performers; it was even something other than the setting sun and encroaching peace of night. It was all of these, which taken together, allows the Spirit of God to insinuate into our deepest selves that longing and yearning that is love for all that is, for all that we are or can be, and for the Divine Love rarely more powerfully voiced than in the harmonies, aural and visual, of certain rare experiences in our lives. What someone called the unattended moment, a glimpse of glory, and for me, an evening when inner concerns of every human heart, are transcended for a while, by an encounter with that love 'that moves the sun and other stars.'

Other can write a review - I am simply content to acknowledge a debt.

 

The joy of new words

Just learned a new word - "inconcinnity" - which apprently means 'lacking congruity or harmony; the quality of unsuitability'.

It would help my self esteem if any of the readers of this blog were also able to acknowledge their semantic deficit in relation to this word! I thought it was a typo at first :(

 

 

Ultimate Grace for Our Ultimate Concerns

John Donne is one of the greatest English prose writers. He was also one of the most accomplished and metaphysical of Seventeenth Century poets. His sermons and poems are richly embroidered with imagery and allusions, classical and biblical, theological and philosophical, many of them obscure and at best enigmatic to those less familiar with Donne's cultural and intellectual worlds. He treated the big themes of human existence and the overwhelming questions posed to the guilty conscience by a God whose love and justice he saw as absolute, and therefore absolutely decisive for the destiny of each individual soul, including and especially his own.

Anguish and ecstasy, fear and joy, guilt and forgiveness, desolation and consolation; such are the poles of human experience between which Donne composed his sermons and poems. And when allowances are made for the rhetoric and discourse of Seventeenth Century divinity, many of the poems still speak with universal relevance to those deep inner turmoils of conscience and those serial disappointments that can so dishearten us when we would be better than we know we are.

The tortured uncertainties of Romans 7 describe Donne's oscillation between regretted sin and longed for holiness. "For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do....O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Few poets have faced death with such honest human terror balanced by a faith "troubled on every side but not distressed...perplexed but not in despair,...cast down but not destroyed..." And he often finished his most searching poems with recovered assurance resonant with Paul's great sigh of relief - "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord...."

Here is one of my favourite Donne poems - for those not familiar with it remember Donne's name was pronounced "Dun" - and so the wordplay becomes a playful dialogue with God in a prayer about Donne's ultimate concerns.

 

HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
by John Donne

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
    Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
        And having done that, Thou hast done ;
                    I fear no more.

Charity Book Shops, Machiavellian Tactics, and the Mess We Are IN!

The other day I was in a charity shop having a good natured exchange with one of the staff who was trying to get me to buy books. You'd think that would be easy. Getting me to buy books is like encouraging me to eat chocolate. But it was gardening books she wanted me to buy, and I'd asked about art books, then it was celeb biographies when I asked about poetry. Eventually I found something, having decided she had tried so hard it would be discouraging for her if I walked out without buying anything!

A pocket sized mordern edition, mint condition, of Machiavelli's, The Prince! Now this isn't a book about spirituality I know - though that week I was preparing a sermon on Jacob the self-interested cynical manipulator, and there seemed something appropriate, if not meant! No this is a book about bare-faced cynicism in the application of tactics of power, political survival, and developing skills of manipulation and getting your own way. It combines wisdom and ruthlessness, calculated risk with playing the percentage shots, distilled study of power, how it is gained and lost, while at the same time forming the inner habits, even an instinct, for personal advantage. Actually if you wanted a description of Jacob before Jabbok that just about does it!

The book is an education in self-interest, cynical exploitation of those least able to resist, acting ruthlessly against those who might resist in order to preserve a personal power base, anticipating an opponent's next moves and subverting them, using power to make the powerful stronger, and generally excluding or eliminating anything that might hinder the exercise and retention of power, including considerations of compassion, justice, and overriding moral imperatives. I'm thinking that much of that mentality is abroad in the political and economic attitudes of recession haunted Governments.

The word Machiavellian, which sums up all this ruthless, cyncial power hunting, is a bit unfair on Machiavelli. He was a Renaissance humanist. His book was written as a Power for Dummies,intended to win the favour of Renaissance Princes seeking to cling to power in the dangerous courts and corridors of 15th Century Italian Courts. But, as I say, it does raise for me the question of how far the word Machiavellian applies to the approaches and policies of the current Governement. 

That's another post perhaps - but Granny Tax I, the mooted Granny Tax 2, the pastry tax, the capping of charitable donations, the rhetoric but non-action against Tax avoidance by the wealthy, the comprehenesive and unsympathetic re-configuring of criteria for Benefits but little progress on reining in bonuses and extravagant salaries, the change to VAT criteria for churches.These are the mere headlines of an approach that seeks economic prosperity by risking being morally bankrupt. Alongside The Prince, I suggest a reading of the Prophet Amos, who had a few things to say about Machiavellian politics - I know, the anachronism is blatant. But the history of power as morally ambiguous and dependent on the moral character of those who exercise it, is a history that cannot be dismissed so easily. Whether it's the privileged rich selling the poor for the price of a pair of sandals in ancient Israel, or the privileged powerful of a Renaissance Court doing whatever is necessary to cling to power, or the social impact of the policies of a modern democratic Government hard-wired to an economics of global growth, the result is the same and the same two non Machiavellian questions remain. Compassion? Justice?

 So anyway, I asked how much? Which side of the shelf was it on, she asked. I showed her the gap and said 'There'. That OK she said. That's 50p - if it had been further along it would have been £1. Then in true Machiavellian fashion she said, But you could just pay the £1 - which I did!! Oh, and inside the front cover is a label that says Happy Birthday - now was the gift intended to cement a friendship, bribe a colleague, a veiled apology, an act of crawling......oh stop it! And get a life...

Reeds blowing in the Wind and the Word of God

I I know I'm not very tall, but this photo was taken standing up in high reeds and exuberant gorse.Whenever I'm standing with things growing all around me ( and sometimes above me) I often think of the Sermon on the Mount - about the grass of the field, the flowers, and the pretensions of all those Solomons who think they are eye stoppingly glorious!

More seriously - yesterday I was chasing a number of biblical themes and passages and came across several suggestions that certain biblical texts are particularly fitted to where we are now, in our time, at this place in our history as a world in a mess. Suggestions included Qoheleth (the fatuity and vanity of so much contemporary culture), the Tower of Babel (the power of the Web and Social Network), Amos (inequity and injustice pushed to extremes of social situation). It made me wonder about how we each find a canon within the Canon, selected Scriptures that seem really to 'do it' for us! And one of the ways that might happen is when certain Scriptures seem to have a deep moral and human resonance with our contemporary history - personal  social, global. Those Scriptures may bring hope, warn of judgment, describe and analyse our fears and anxieties.  Which means that Christians who claim to be biblical in their thinking, ethics, world-view should perhaps stop insisting loudly on their own view of what the Bible says, means. And as an act of obedience to God listen for the still small voice of a text that bears witness to Christ, and like Him will always call in question our assumptions, challenge the closedness of our certainties, undermine and expose the toxic roots of our prejudices, open our eyes to the blind spots we can't see because our cultural lenses have visually impaired our insight.

It will require a deeper more disruptive encounter with Christ the Word for us to hear, and then amplify his voice, which is the voice of self-giving love, reconciling judgment, renewing mercy, the Voice of the Crucified Risen Lord of Life.

Chichester, Chagall and Visual Exegesis

The Chagall window in Chichester Cathedral is on my must see list.

It's a 20th Century Jewish pictorial exegesis of Psalm 150, created to enhance Christian worship.

It's a startling and beautiful work in stained glass, one of my favourite things to look at. Baptist churches should have stained glass windows may be a minority view of one, but I struggle to see any valid objection to visual beauty as an aid to worship.

It's an interpretation of written text in image, form and colour. Along with music, such art provides an exegesis that is neither more nor less important than written commentary or spoken exposition.

It's a picture of exuberance. I don't mean it's an exuberant picture, but that it represents worship as praise, gratitude, wonder, noise, dancing, walking, climbing, arm-waving; it represents joy embodied and laughter in movement, the human spirit doing what it does best in response to the exuberance of God, the shared exuberance of Creator and creature, of imago dei answering to our Original.

It's a psalm in glass, and in colour, and looking at it is intended to create in the heart the words it depicts - exuberant praise of God. 

Being an Ecumenical Evangelical

There was grace, generosity and humility behind this remarkable proposal adopted at the Inaugural Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846. The contemporary ethos of Evangelicalism seems less gracious, less generous and less humble given the turf wars between factions who want to define Evangelicalism by defining others out.

My own ecumenical sympathies, balanced by the convictions of a Baptist identity, are able to co-exist much more fruitfully in the kind of atmosphere out of which the EA emerged. With the chronological snobbery C S Lewis memorably scorned, we look back on the earlier years of Christian tradition uninformed of the spiritual values that gave birth to our tradition, therefore much of our thinking unformed and uncorrected by that earlier generous spirit. Or so it seems to me as I browse and ponder on that Evangelical fractiousness and fragmentation that pretends to defend the truth and merely succeeds in reducing truth to the capacities of minds lacking precisely that grace, generosity and humility in which we greet each other in Christ

"That this Conference, composed of professing Christians of many different Denominations, all exercising the right of private judgment, and, through common infirmity, differing in the views they severally entertain on some points, both of Christian doctrines and ecclesiastical Polity, and gathered together from many and remote parts of the World, for the purpose of promoting Christian Union, rejoice in making their unanimous avowal of the glorious truth, that the Church of the living God, while it admits of growth, is One Church, never having lost, and being incapable of losing its essential unity. Not, therefore, to create that unity, but to confess it, is the design of their assembling together. One in reality, they desire also, as far as they may be able to attain it, to be visibly one; and thus, both to realize in themselves, and to exhibit to others, that a living and everlasting union binds all true believers together in the fellowship of the Church of Christ."

Report of the Proceedings of the Conference, London, From August 19th to September 2nd Inclusive, 1846, page 44. Quoted in One Body in Christ. The History and Significance of the Evangelical Alliance, Ian Randall and David Hillborn (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2001) page 55.

The sculpture below is by Scott Rogers, and is called "That they all may be One".

"Each little flower that opens..." Thank God for all things bright and beautiful!

 

 

Less than a centimetre across, a single flower, and the only one I saw on the St Cyrus path through the dunes. We think it's a dwarf Storksbill - but prepared to be corrected. How could this little beauty not remind me of Emily Dickinson's playful poem, which like all her poetry, nudges us out of our mental laziness and dares us to think! Life isn't all available on Google - thank God - there is still mystery, surprise and wonder - Emily Dickinson celebrates both. 

   

As If Some Little Arctic Flower

S if some little arctic flower,

Upon the polar hem,

Went wandering down the latitudes,

Until it puzzled came

To continents of summer,

To firmaments of sun,

To strange, bright crowds of flowers,

And birds of foreign tongue!

I say, as if this little flower

To Eden wandered in--

What then? Why, nothing, only

Your inference therefrom!

(Emily Dickinson)

Patrick Kavanagh, Primrose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upon a bank I sat, a child made seer
Of one small primrose flowering in my mind.
Better than wealth it is, I said, to find
One small page of Truth's manuscript made clear.

 

I looked at Christ transfigured without fear--
The light was very beautiful and kind,
And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed
I read it through the lenses of a tear.
 

And then my sight grew dim, I could not see
The primrose that had lighted me to Heaven,
And there was but the shadow of a tree
Ghostly among the stars. The years that pass
Like tired soldiers nevermore have given
Moments to see wonders in the grass.