Living Wittily

The Slaughter of Innocents.

President Obama has acted with great dignity and compassion in the days following the Newtown school massacre in Massachusets. Words are always necessary and seldom adequate, to express those deep longings and searing anguishes that can tear the heart out of us. Amongst the words he used was his rhetorical question about not allowing such tragic occurences to become routine. In addition to words, he came to visit, to offer his presence, to share the tears and the unanswerable questions of parents and colleagues and children. 

One of the most underplayed episodes in the Christmas story is the slaughter of the innocents. It rightly finds no place on our Christmas cards, though there are many older carols that describe and try to find a theological sense in a minor political atrocity which in Herod's day would have been 'routine'. Here the King launches a pre-emptive strike against children, and the political expediency of the action justifies the collateral damage, ensuring his power remains unchallenged. Death comes openly and irresistably, and human life laid waste.

The news this morning tells of ten young girls aged 7-11, killed in Nangahar province Afghanistan, because one of them accidentally hit a landmine with an axe while gathering firewood. No one set out to place a landmine amongst the children, but landmines are made to kill and maim, and planting them under sand and soil, they are simply death camouflaged and waiting. That no one planned such a tragic event is not the point. Somebody made that device and made it well - it did its job, with terrible efficiency and guaranteed results. Someone else planted it with lethal intent, and landmines have their own pre-set circuitry, and the lethal intent was realised in its murderous obedience.

All of which leaves me wondering about the President of the United States' heartfelt wish that mass murder of children must not become routine; the truth is, it has, and in more places than America. Weapons and devices manufactured for the explicit purpose of efficient, accurate, quantitative killing of human beings will always find fingers to pull triggers and hands to set detonators. Our own experience in Scotland and the lovely town of Dunblane means we have some understanding of the consequences of inexplicable violence visited on the innocent.

So I sit here wondering what the real human connections are between those weeping women and men in Massachusets, and those weeping women and men in Nangahar. Parents have lost their lovely children; innocent precious young human beings taken from us and from our world. I passionately believe in the precious uniqueness of every child; I cherish the human capacity to love and give our deepest commitments to children; and I utterly hold to a view of each human being as made in the image of God. As a Christian I am left today reflecting about the dangerous world we live in, and the paradox that human beings begin life in a place of great vulnerability, and depend on the love, safekeeping and provision not only of parents, but of their community. And into such vulnerability came the Son of God, a child whose birth triggered the power paranoia of Herod. And into, and out of, that maelstrom of violence a family fled for their lives - and God came close to us, Emmanuel.

So whether a military grade assault rifle and two highly engineered automatic pistols stolen from a mother's cupboard, or a cunningly concealed fully armed landmine detonated by a child gathering wood to keep her family warm, mothers weep. And the prophet's immense sorrow lingers in our hearing, "A voice is heard in Ramah wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be consoled."

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

Aye, that's whit you think! - this is the Word of the Lord.

 ‘Aye, that’s whit you think!' 

 L  Distressed and hungry they will roam  through the land; when they are famished  they will become enraged and looking upward will curse their king and their God. (8.21)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!

 L  They will look towards the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness (8.22)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

 L  The Highways are deserted, no travellers are on the roads, the land mourns and wastes away, Lebanon is ashamed and withers (33.7, 9)

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus it will burst into bloom

 L  Look brave men cry aloud in the streets, the envoys of peace weep bitterly. The treaty is broken, its witnesses are despised, no one is respected ( 33.7-8)

 R  Aye, that’s whit you think!

Unto us a child is born…and the government will be upon his shoulders.

 L  The treacherous betray. With treachery the treacherous betray. Terror and pit and snare await you O people of the earth

 R  Aye that’s whit you think!

He will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

"Aye that's whit you thin!' This is a West of Scotland hoot of derision, usually provoked by dogmatic assertions from some upstart who only sees their own point of view. To the doom and gloom merchants of Israel’s exile, so assured in their pessimism and despair, Isaiah said, probably in Hebrew – ‘Aye that’s whit you think!’

Isaiah’s vision of God at work in the world to bring about justice, peace and new community is his response to the dogmatic assertions and assumptions of a culture sickening for lack of hope. It is the Bible’s response to terrorist violence, political cynicism, consumer driven injustice, loss of moral direction. The vernacular refrain should be said with an unmistakable tone of (good natured) ridicule.

Though I may stumble in my going, thou dost not fall....

As the rain hides the stars,

as the autumn mist hides the hills,

as the clouds veil the blue of the sky,

so the dark happenings of my lot

hide the shining of thy face from me.

Yet, if I may hold thy hand in the darkness,

it is enough. Since I know that,

though I may stumble in my going,

thou dost not fall.

(Celtic, unknown)

The dark night of the soul is an experience of stripping away the assurance of the senses. Disorientation, uncertainty, loss of impetus, mean that absence is more real than presence, and the unfamiliar displaces the familiar. A spirituality fixated on the positive, and in which dogmatic assurances silence those important murmurs of dissent, is for all its triumphalist note, a spirituality of denial. Not self-denial to be sure, but a more toxic form of refusal, a denial of that mysterious withdrawing of God's sensed presence by which we grow beyond adolescent claimfulness.

The above prayer doesn't express the classic experience of the dark night of the soul. The last line of it is reminiscent of Isaiah at his most pastorally poetic, and as the theologian who best describes the rhythm of feeling forsaken by the one who promises not to forsake. This is a prayer I now use regularly because it allows me to be both honest and modest about my experience of God. Honest enough to confess that sometimes God's presence is not felt; modest enough not to think my own sense of God or lack of sense of God makes any difference to the reality of things, that God remains actually present even in acutely felt absence.

"Though I may stumble in my going, thou dost not fall." Since I know that, I know the most important thing. And even if I am overcome at times with doubt, uncertainty, and the pain of unknowing, more important than what I know, is that I am known, and by whom I am known. And one day I will know as I am known. And until then prayers like the one above are, in Eliot's word, valid.

A Milestone for Living Wittily: And Hoping to Keep Travelling

Some time this week this blog will pass the 250,000 visits mark. I'm not sure what that statistic means. Six years ago I started writing regularly here for faithful visitors who keep returning, and occasional visitors who drop in now and then, and maybe those who happen by accidentally or Google guided, find something interesting or helpful and disappear again into their own world.

If you want to know why I do this, what I hope to achieve, and why I think it's a worthwhile form of ministry and discipleship, then look at my original explanation of the name Living Wittily here. I don't trawl much through the archives, but I have a sense of how my own life narrative has flowed through the landscape of these six years, and the posts provide a rough cartography of the road travelled. Much has changed and much has stayed the same. New experiences question past opinions, in some senses I know more about God, and in more senses I know less. At times the process of writing, the act of articulation, takes thought where I never imagined it would go. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a theologian, but have always wanted to dive into and explore the kind of theology that reminds me I am always out of my depth.

I love poetry, and the arrangement of words with precision and beauty is, for me at least, a spiritual discipline in obedience to the Word who became flesh and made his home amongst us ("tabernacled amongst us" is the older phrase, beautiful in its precision).

In recent years I have discovered how painting and sculpture, icon and calligraphy are valid forms of exegesis, and why it is wise theologians who were there long before us believed passionatelt that beauty, goodness and truth are the three transcendental virtues that underlie humane and humanising activity.

And music - on the way down the road today I played Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and realise that when it comes to music I am a mere amateur, but that doesn't stop my heart thumping in synchopated sympathy with sounds that are persistently subversive of complacency, and measured intimations of the beauty and brokenness, but also the redeemable loved-ness of God's creation.

All of this comes tumbling down on this poor keyboard more or less at random. It allows me to hold on to and savour, and reflect more critically and appreciatively on the immense mystery in the ordinariness of a life, and to fail once again in computing the infinite value of each human being to the God who chooses to notice us, cherish us, and to need the love and possibility of each imago dei, to seek fellowship with each human being, trying to live in the responsive freedom of children of God. It is in the living and dying that is our lives, the flourishing and suffering that makes us aware of our humanity, the joy and the pain of union and separation in love, the prayers and praises and pleadings and passions that speak out our fears and desires our losses and our gains, it is in such kind or cruel places that God is encountered. And it is also in such places that we are compelled to face ourselves, but in the presence of a Holy Love that judges us with mercy, and forgives us with a Grace infinite in range and depth.

All of which is to say that the blog writer receives more than they give, and providing they nearly always stay this side of self indulgence, what they write can also become blessing to others. Or so it has been with me. 

It's some time since I did consecutive blogging on a theme or a book. I have asked for a review copy of John Swinton's new book, Dementia. Living in the Memories of God, which has now arrived. In my own circle of friends and family, and in years of pastoral ministry, I have watched those for whom I care begin to lose their sense of self, and have supported those who love them through the valley of deep darkness that they have sensed ahead of them, and the one they love. The theological and pastoral questions are urgent, crucial and take us to the foundation convictions of Christian theology and pastoral responsiveness to each human being as made in the image of God. Dementia is a condition that raises profound questions about human being, human love, the sense of personal identity and ultimately the meaning and worth of each human life.

A blog is a good place to explore all this, and invite insights from others, and share and learn together something of what it means to cherish and celebrate the depths of our own humanity, and God's love beyoind understanding.

" The glory of human beings is not power, the power to control someone else; the glory of human beings is the ability to let what is deepest within us grow."

Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger, quoted in Swinton, page 153.

The photograph is a reminder of the joys of createdness, and pictures one of those creatures for whom living wittily comes naturally!

In acceptance lieth peace - Aye Right!!

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone is not out to get you.

I know - it's an old line, but recently I've wondered.

Thursday - Need snow tyres put on and swapped with the others.

Go to garage - "nae problem son" says somebody who looks younger than me.

But there is a problem, son! The alloy rim is cracked and it costs a years pocket money to replace.

But. There's a wee man round the corner does welding - so we jump in the car and the wee man hums and haws and girns (nae teeth in) - but aye, he can dae it.

Then I get my tyres on, and the bank balance falls disproportionately.

Friday - go to dentist to have a tooth seen to. A large chunk came off while chomping a chocolate covered Brazil nut.

Oops. Root not good, big filling not enough - root canal and a crown, but no guarantee either will work. See the X-Ray? Tooth condemned....

Oh, and the tooth next to it needs a large filling too.

Beginning to think I'd have been as well letting the tyre changing man deal with my molars as well.

One extraction later, and one large filling later, my bank balance falls again. Hard to say thank you without unseemly dribbling with a frozen face and a mouth which has been subjected to an archaeological dig.

Monday - 6.30am out at the car clearing ice. Driver's window down and up to clear condensation.

Except it goes down. And stays down!

A funny whirring sound mocks me at 6.40 am, in minus 4 degrees in Westhill, Aberdeenshire. Go on son, drive to glasgow with an open windae!

So along to the nice Honda people who take it to the workshop and yes, the motor is whirring nicely they agree, but to no effect sir, - it's knackered.

Book it in for Friday, when my bank balance will be further reduced.

Now just because I'm paranoid......

 

 

Francis Ashton Jackson - The Nativity.

This is beautiful.

By a little known artist, Francis Ashton Jackson, a fringe Pre-Raphaelite. 

Restored from a set of murals in a home for retired clergy.

 

Unapologetic - On Reading An Unusual Advent Book

My friend Geoff Colmer has been recommending with much enthusiasm the book Unapologetic by Francis Spufford. The sub title is Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. I got it recently and have been reading it with much laughter, much thought, and am so glad that someone has written an intelligent riposte to the lazy thinking and arrogant opinion-pushing of those who dismiss the whole religious thing. And emotional sense matters, just as much as common sense and intellectual sense.

I found one long passage one of the most original reflections on the nature of guilt, the preciousness of human life and the nature of forgiveness and grace. The honest understanding of the late in life request for the presence of a friend by Field-Marshal Montgomery is a superb piece of pastoral journalism and moral realism. Knowing he would die soon he said 'I've got to go and meet God and explain  all those men I killed in Alamein.' There follows a wide ranging meditation on the importance of taking our moral failures seriously, and recognising the human capacity to mess up life and wound those around us. It is all but impossible to quote or summarise this sustained piece of theologically astute psychology, though the book is crammed with one liners, phrases and paragraphs of cleverness distilled to wisdom.

There's something salutary and earthing about reading such a book during Advent. Christmas and nativity stories and the birth narratives in the Gospels are easy targets for those who want to debunk the Christian way of seeing and being in the world. But the significance of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth and the intersection of human history and divine purpose which underlies the birth of Jesus and the Word made flesh is about more than over-clever dismissals of religious traditions as mere legend or myth.  Because 'his name will be called Emmanuel, God with us.' And 'you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.' So there is indeed an issue for Field Marshall Montgomery and the lives lost in war and in all the brokenness of the world, and the need to face God. Except that in the Incarnation, God came to face us, with our own propensity to mess things up, and God's propensity to redeem.

The picture is of Da Vinci's drawing of a woman and child - one of my favourite images of Christmas understood with theological imagination.

The Existence of God: The Argument from Snow!

The First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fileds
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain - not a single
answer has been found -
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Mary Oliver

Reconciliation: God's Eternal Intent...

 

I continue to work a small tapestry of the Hebrew word for 'shalom'.

 

There is no intended or discernible pattern, no fixed image of what the finished work will look like. It is being worked slowly, in those odd brief spaces of time when the notion to stitch and the opportunity to do so coincide. The colours are being mixed, strand by strand, sometimes three or even four shades woven into one six strand thread - they reflect the mood I am in at the time, but they also weave into a pattern of hope. The colours are greens, yellows, blues, browns, but they are mixed, juxtaposed, blended, sometimes random, so that the overall work is open-ended; and yet.

I hear the Israeli ambassador to the EU defending 3000 more houses in a settlement on the West Bank; and I stitch some more of this beautiful Hebrew word, and its background in the mercy of God. Palestinian outrage, rockets and political maneouvering raises the anger and fear stakes further, and I stitch a few more quiet points of hopefulness. In Belfast the flying of the Union jack creates riots and police officers are injured, I want to stitch.

I guess for me this tapestry has become a metaphor for mercy, a symbol of shalom, a pitch for peace, a protest, a prayer, a promise, or at least a reminder of those great promises in Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospels and Revelation.

about lions and lambs in close but safe proximity

about spears into pruning hooks and rockets into trade agreements

about justice flowing down like rivers, and doing right by each other as natural and reliable as water runs to the sea

about loving enemies and embracing the other so that the other becomes brother

about leaves of the trees for the healing of the nations, and people from every tongue, tribe and nation praising the God who is all in all

about the New Jerusalem, over which the three great monotheistic faiths no longer need to battle and do murder, because there is space and welcome for all in a new creation and in the reconciliation of all things.

That's quite a theological load for a tapestry; but it is also the theological implicate of praying that looks to a different future because God is the God of the future whose loving purpose, just mercy, and reconciling heart, intersects with the reality of our present, but does so with Eternal intent. Whatever else advent and incarnation mean, they open up those wide doors for the King of glory.

A Jewish Golden Wedding 75 years ago.

I was in a charity shop and found this brass plaque. The inscription shows the initials of two people the dates 1887 - 1937. The relief in the centre is of Jacob and Rachel at the well. The surrounding reliefs are the story of Jacob's journey, his wooing Rachel and working for Laban. The two names are inscribed in Hebrew on the top left and right of the reliefs. My guess is this is a Golden wedding plaque, made in 1937, and featuring one of the greatest love stories in the Hebrew Bible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quality of the central relief captures the moment of encounter, a beautiful portrayal of accidental providence, those unlooked for meetings when God is at work in the ordinariness of everyday. Except with Jacob, very little is ordinary. Below is one of the scenes from the outer reliefs. I love this plate - it will hang in my study, a piece of brazen exegesis :)