Living Wittily

Scots Pine, Kings College, Blue Sky and a Good Day

Today was a busy day with several appointments to see people, do stuff and have stuff done to me. Coming out of the doctor's surgery facing me was a ridiculously blue sky and two trees that looked made for such an azure background. And not 50 metres from Tesco's car park!

 

My day also took me down to the University and King's College. On a frosty sunny morning it's difficult to believe that this is a modern University campus, so I sat in the quad for some minutes, chilled but cheerful, and watched the world amble past slowly. I love the old crown on the chapel, and in the sunlight it looked its best. Then a cappucino to go, a walk up the high Street, and an impulse buy of three books for the price of two. Work done, folk met, several important conversations, and then tonight five a side football, that spiritual stress buster in which there is an entire absence of the fruit of the Spirit!.

Greeting Death by Celebrating Life

Last week I took the funeral service for my brother-in-law, Sheila's brother. We all have our ways of coming to terms with loss. I had been best man at Ian's wedding 40 years ago, which added to the poignancy, and the fittingness of conducting the funeral of a good, gentle, man.

Inevitably when death comes close we are wise to think about that word inevitable. And to prepare for what must surely come nearer as day passes day. That isn't a morbid, unnatural negative thought - it's simply the truth that needs to be faced so that life can be enjoyed for what it is, precious unrepeatable gift. A human life is a succession of giftedness, each day a miracle of consciousness that we are, and wonder that we are at all. And as a Christian that miraculous wonder borrows the rhetorical prayer of the Psalm writer, "What is a human being that you care for us, mere mortals that you the Eternal pay attention to us?"

Mary Oliver is one of my canonical poets. Her reflection on how to greet death, is an exuberant celebration of how we greet life. I love this poem.

When Death Comes

 

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

 

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

 

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

Living the Justice of the Triune God

A candidate for Baptist ministry was asked if he had enjoyed his time at College.

"No" he said, "But I learned stuff."

"Can you give an example of something important you learned", he was asked - the usual open question on the hunt for evidence.

"The definition of a good book", the wary reply.

"And what is that", the obvious follow up.

"A thin yin", the reply in unadulterated colloquial Scots!

And faur frae bein' wrang, he wis dead right!

I'm reading a thin book - Living the Justice of the Triune God, D Power and M Downey, Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2012. It is a good book, by any definition.

"The book offers a fresh vision of the justice of the Triune God to a world anguished by deprivation, division, ecological degradation and the loss of a sense of purpose and direction. Their praxis theology of the life-giving Word and love of God made tangibble  in the particularities of cosmic and human history speaks to the crises and sufferings of our time."

And so it does.

The Early Church Fathers and the Cure and Care of Souls

I recently had to write something on the pastoral theology and practices of the Early Church Fathers. Much of what they thought, wrote, did and understood now seems strange, from another world, unenlightened in the view of post enlightenment minds! And yet.

The pastoral heart is evident in many of the Church Fathers. The inevitable tensions between compassion and discipline, the intellectual and spiritual wrestling over the relationship between the life of grace, the struggle with sin, the holiness and mystery of the Triune God, and the nature of prayer, worship and Christian living as the proper response to the love of God in Christ.Their primary goal and foundational value was growth in the love of God, towards the perfect love of God and all inclusive love of neighbour.

The route to this love was a long training, an instilling of spiritual disciplines to train the personality in the fruits of the spirit, to educate the soul in self-critical ethical scrutiny, to co-operate with God in the restoring of the image of God, which though marred remains the defining truth of every human being. To be made in God’s image is to be able to know God choose the good and learn to love – it is to have the capax dei, to train the passions by spiritual discipline in order to love God with that balance of mind, heart strength and will.

Reading some of the Fathers today is an exercise in strangeness, but sometimes that's what a church which is now overfamiliar with God needs; and a church confident of the can do approach to theology can be reminded that living for God isn't about our can do, but about God's enabling grace; and a humbling corrective to theological and pastoral practitioners, that in the end we are all unprofitable servants, and what we seek to practice is a life rooted and grounded in the eternal love of the Triune God, seeking to know and make known the love that is beyond knowledge.

So we ignore the Fathers to our loss. In the history of the cure of souls they had their own spiritual psychology, their unique sense of the sacred, a profound sensitivity about sin but matched by a diamond edged view of grace sufficient to cut and shape character towards Christlikeness.

Haiku, the Sea, and Grace Sufficient

You know the bit in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist finds peace beside the still waters and the green pastures? Sometimes that works for me too. But more often when I need a place of solace, silence and solitude, I find it on the edge of the sea.

This has been a week of sadness following a family bereavement. By the end of the funeral yesterday and then the journey home I was tired and inwardly out of sorts. No surprise there.

But this morning I knew what I wanted to do. Sheila and I went down to the front, bought a capuccino to go, and walked awhile. Then I stopped, Sheila walked on and i sat awhile listening to the rhythm of the waves, watching the play of sunlight on water, sand and stone. Few things for me, reconfigure the mind and restore the rhythms of the heart more gently than the sounds and sights of this ancient toing and froing of the sea. I almost never come away from the beach without a stone - shaped and smoothed by the faithful monotony of wave, after wave, after wave - patiently, persistently and playfully rolling rocks against each other, the lapidary friction defining the grain and structure of each stone. 

And maybe, just maybe, minds overtaxed and overtired learn again the significance of slowness; hearts carrying excess baggage lighten up in the sunlightl; and that fragile reality we call the self recovers equlibrium and the soul is restored. I often find that the presence of God becomes more tangible, or discernible, in those places where you can lose yourself - by which I mean, for a short time let go of that self-preoccupation that silences other voices and obscures the reality of the God who, as Nicholas Lash says, 'does not shout'.

Haiku, The Sea, and Grace Sufficient.

PRAYER

Not our neat rhythmic prose

but sunlight on sand and stone

speaks our heart's true need.

 

HOLINESS

The gentle rumble

of stone on stone; the sea's gift

of polished granite.

 

HEALING

The liquid mercy

of waves, the sand's kind friction,

grace that heals, and saves.

(C) Jim Gordon

I took the photo while finishing a wonderful capuccino to go from The Pavilion Cafe.

When the Aim is an Ethos and a Discipline: Further Thoughts on the Order of Baptist Ministry.

While at the Second Convocation of the Order of Baptist Ministry we spent some good time reflecting on the aim of the Order. I had come to the Convocation because the intimation and invitation seemed a good way of creating space to gather my thoughts and allow the sediment of a too full life to settle a little. Too much sediment and water becomes worryingly opaque.

What follows is a personal reflection shared with the others, and providing a basis for further reflection. During the discussion of the aim of the order the sediment settled enough for me to see that such an Order would provide and important alternative to other understandings of ministry prevalent within our own communities of faith. That is, the Order would  provide an alternative living out of Baptist Ministry that, with intentional seriousness of purpose, seeks to pay close attention to both words, Baptist and Ministry, thereby offering a framework of relationships which will enable, encourage and enhance ministry in a self-consciously Baptist way.

Not that Baptist is the only way, or even the best way. But if we take our identity under God seriously, then we are called to be Baptist in those essential convictions and practices which are inhabited, and lived out, in the gift and calling of our varied but shared ministries within Baptist communities.

This means that the Aim of the Order would be neither critical of other expressions of ministry, nor satisfied with our own ways of living out our vocations. Ministry is too rich, varied and expressive of the diversity of the Body of Christ to be captured or constrained by any particular model or embodiment. Baptist however is a term we consciously own, as the talent entrusted by the Lord to our particular communities of faith. While the name Baptist is rightly contested, and understood in Baptist communities in different ways, the Order seeks to give lived expression to the theology, practices and spirituality that are quarried from the rich seams of our own historic and theological peculiarities.

By being faithful to our own Baptist particularity we remain alert and obedient to God who called us to follow and serve Christ in ministry. We do this precisely by seeking to sustain authentic Baptist ministry as a gift to the whole Church of Christ. Calling is always a gift, and the Aim of the Order, it was felt, ought to articulate the specific peculiarity of what we believe is God’s gift to us. Therefore we commit ourselves to walk together under the rule of Christ, faithfully following after the Great Shepherd of the sheep, as Baptist Christians encouraging and accompanying each other in fulfilling the vision of service we believe is entrusted to us.

Nevertheless, and that word is a decisive caution and qualifier – nevertheless we recognise humbly and gratefully the richness and necessity of other forms of ministry, which have their own validity, and which are God’s varied gifts to the Church as the Body of Christ. As Baptist we gladly acknowledge our dependence on the insights and resources of the Church Catholic, and seek to sustain and enrich Baptist ministry by appropriating the gifts and spiritual resources of the wider ecumenical consensus of faith in the Triune God. The Order aims to explore and enrich Baptist pastoral spirituality by conscious indebtedness to the rich catholicity of Christian thought and experience: building upon disciplines of prayer in the Daily Office, developing and sustaining a pastoral disposition that is both attentive and contemplative, and pursuing in prayer and study, a humble receptiveness to the knowledge and wisdom of the Triune God.    

The Order aims to give faithful expression to a vision of Baptist ministry and therefore the aim could be stated:  To embody, encourage and enable ministry that is intentionally Baptist, vocationally pastoral, and spiritually faithful, under the rule of Christ.                       

Ancient texts and Digital Photos

 

He leads me beside still waters: He restores my soul....

Devotions by photograph often works for me! Especially when the photo carries with it memories of significant moments.

In more reflective moments of whimsical "what ifs" I wonder what the Gospels might have looked like if they had been illustrated with photos taken by Peter or Mary. 

How good would a time delay photo series have been in those key moments at Cana when water became wine, huh?

Or if one of the Magi had taken a few holiday snaps of the living conditions of ordinary people in Bethlehem?

Then, what if Mary Magdalene had used her smartphone to snap the gardener early in the morning?

More seriously, the juxtaposition of personally taken photos with personally significant texts is just one other possibility for a contemplative hermeneutic.

As I look for ways of slowing down, paying attention, thinking thoughtfully rather than rapidly, I am finding music, paintings and now photos provide occasions of prayerfulness.

Google - and a moment of unexpected and accidental theological insight!

Looking for a poem online ( because my own collection of Elizabeth Jennings' poems is at home) I Googled the line "Forgiveness - the word we live by". Still the mighty Google couldn't give me the poem I want. So it made a polite suggestion that maybe I meant something else. "Did you mean 'Forgiveness - the world we live by'?"

Oh well, yes! And no. But Oh my Lord, Yes! The insertion of one letter magnifies the entire idea of forgiveness into one that has global consequences, worldwide opportunities to begin again, intimations that at last, spears might yet become pruning hooks.

So I said the Lord's Prayer in the Office this morning ( the prayer cycle not my College study - though I say the Lord's Prayer there too) with knowing smirk at the subversion of that word, 'forgive', its potential to change a world, whether my inner world of resentments and walls of remembered hurt, or that big world out there where Gaza, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, and  any other elsewhere where dividing walls of hostility still contradict the peace made by the blood of the cross. 

Your will be done...our daily bread...as we forgive our debtors....deliver us from evil....for thine is the kingdom, and your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. No wonder that prayer holds countless gigabytes of the truths and realities by which the world lives.

Forgiveness - the word we live by. Forgiveness - the world we live by. So that forgiveness isn't the occasional giving in to our better nature and letting go the odd grudge - it is a way of life, and the way to life.

The photo is from Minsteracres Retreat Centre - "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself."

The Book Pyramid is an Architectural Triumph.

As a bibliophile, one who prefers a library to a shopping mall, and who believes libraries should attract the most creative and sympathetic architects, this is a beautiful place. As a statement of the continuing importance of books, it is a resounding rejoinder to the digitalisation of everything. And this is a public library, a place of beauty, quiet, learning, light and culture, housed in glass, like an educational greenhouse where people can grow.

Follow the link here for a guided tour of The Book Pyramid, a building of hope where the love of possibility and learning are made into a statement of intent. . e

 

The Second Convocation of The Order for Baptist Ministry.

I spent the last couple of days at Minsteracres Retreat Centre near Consett at the second Annual Convocation of the Order of Baptist Ministry. It came at an awkward time for me, half way through Semester but I wanted to be there to explore and discuss the purpose and motivation for such an Order. The members of the Order can explain best what it is all about, and why this particular way of following faithfully after Christ in ministry has commended itself as a significant expression of pastoral spirituality today.

The background and the plans for the future are explained here.

The climax of the time together was when a number of members took vows and entered the novitiate, a way of exploring if this way of ministry is right for them. This was both solemn and informal, taking place within a communion service, and affirmed and supported by others who were there. One of the strengths of the Order is the Daily Office - you can see the text for these on the website, and you are free to experiment and try them for yourself. I now use them and try to be faithful in observing the Office, in fellowship with others.

I guess I have some questions and hesitations, but I also find something compelling and attractive and urgent about a group who wish to root their ministry in the spirituality of a Daily Office, to journey in the supportive company of fellow travellers, and to explore for themselves a contemplative and attentive approach to ministry that is resourced from the wide and cathholic tradition of Christian theology and spirituality. I am both a critical and sympathetic friend, but the word critical is not in any sense negative or carping. It is encouraging and curious, humbly inquisitive and gently excited by the fusion of Baptist ministry with contemplative reflection, and the combination of Daily Office and spiritual welcome to insight and nourishment from across the Christian traditions.

I met up with people I love and respect as friends of some time, and others I hadn't met before who were immediately friendly and welcoming. I came away with food for thought, and with a spirit already nourished by the food of shared vision, hopes and struggle. It was a good time.

The self portrait was taken standing inside concave steel mirrors - I took the photo:)