Living Wittily

A reflection on Seamus Heaney: "Poetry is like the line Christ drew in the sand...."

For most of my grown up life I've known of Seamus Heaney, and for years now have read him and considered him a poet sage. His view of the world was shaped by memory, sharply considered experience, and critical but compassionate attentiveness to human nature. He had a keen eye for beauty and an inner radar finely tuned to detect emotional movements such as longing, sorrow, joy in embryo, and exquisite sensitivity to the chronic human hunger for transcendence frustrated by transience and human finitude.

The death of a poet is attended by its own poignancy; a distinctive voice silenced; visionary eyes closed in unwaking sleep; ripples of words and cadences which have emanated outwards for so long, slowing, finally, to stillness; a way of construing the world which opened the eyes of many to see that world differently, but from now onwards, dependent on the poetry which first gave form and expression to his vision. What we are grateful for, however, is the large ouevre Heaney has left us. And yet the more powerful impetus to gratitude is what we have known of the poet as we read him, his humanity, individuality, and just this; the fact that he lived and found his voice, and spoke to the world, and in doing so spoke into being a richer, more complex world in which the very fact of existence, and the pervasiveness of the ordinary, and the miracle of being, challenged and challenges our superficiality, carelessness and self-absorbtion.

So when I think of Heaney, of course the poems are obvious. But in this post I want to mention Denis O'Driscoll's Stepping Stones. Interviews with Seamus Heaney. Here the poet talks frankly and revealingly about his roots, his role as poet in Irish culture, the ethical and artistic challenges he faced during the nightmare years of the Troubles, his own development as a poet and celebrity representing the highest levels of artistic achievement. And in each of the interviews, chronologically structured around his most significant published collections, Heaney opens his mind and shares from deep places the things that matter to him, the energy sources of human thought and expression. I mark many of my books as I read them, in pencil, and with my own code for easy reference later. Reading this volume again, a kind of tribute and In Memoriam for a favourite poet and fine human being, the phrase from Hebrews is confirmed, 'he being dead yet speaketh.'

Discussing his relationship with Czeslaw Milosz he alluded to the Troubles, and his own aesthetic ambivalence and ethical dilemma as a poet: "Deep down the question about obligation in relation to the Troubles persisted. The old Miloszian challenge was unavoidable: What is poetry that does not save/ Nations or people?"  Reading Heaney's prose there is a passionate exposition of poetry as a transformative gift which articulates human experience from anguish to zeal and all else in between, including love and hate, violence and peace, grief and joy, loneliness and community, despair and hope. Poetry is neither pastime nor aesthetic luxury, its true work lies outside the academy, more likely in pubs and public libraries, and intended to change attitudes, dispositions, worldview, moral perception. Poetry sensitises human beings, offers pardigm shifts in consciousness, says in oblique fashion truths we would otherwise refuse to hear.

"Poetry is like the line Christ drew in the sand, it creates a pause in the action, a freeze-frame moment of concentration, a focus where our power to concentrate is concentrated back on ourselves". I don't know a better explanation of why it's important to read poetry. In relation to the Troubles he goes on to say "a good poem holds as much of the truth as possible in one gaze", and the call to poets in Northern Ireland  was "to hold in a single thought reality and justice."

And finally for this post, this, reminiscing about his time as Harvard Professor: "A populace that is chloroformed day and night by TV stations like Fox News could do with inoculation by poetry. Obviously, poetry can't be administered  like an injection, but it does constitute a boost to the capacity for discrimination and resistance".

Of course there are many other strands in Heaney's work - but the moral seriousness with which he took his role as, Nobel Laureate, Ireland's foremost poet since Yeats, and as academic celebrity, meant that he wrote out of deep wells, water that is living and life-giving. 

Seamus Heaney 1939 - 2013.

Just heard Seamus Heaney has died.

A great human being, poet and humane opponent of violence.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

'I've never stopped believing that something new can always happen.'(Heaney)

We need makers of newness.

Requiescat in pace.

White Water Discipleship

One of the great blessings of reading is knowing where to find those writers who speak to our condition. And within the work of a favourite writer one or two lines which say more in few words than we could say in an entire volume. Mary Oliver is a good companion just now. And the poem below speaks of many things, but particularly the risk and cost of love; the temptation to play safe; the fear of commitment; and then the reckless rushing towards joy that may only come once in your life.

And the command, for that's what it is, to row towards the waterfall, is one of the most telling metaphors I know for the precarious risks of life's ultimate commitments. Risk aversion is the way to loneliness and diminishment in human relationships; even risk assessment betrays a caution that avoids the white water rapids in favour of drifting with the safer currents. When it comes to following Jesus, I could well hear him say, when you hear the roar and rumble and taste the mist, "Row, row for your life towards it!"

West Wind #2

You are young.  So you know everything.  You leap
into the boat and begin rowing.  But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul.  Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me.  There is life without love.  It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe.  It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied.  When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.

~ Mary Oliver ~

In our lives we should be witnesses of "letting be".

Letting be is a way of living according to which we no longer view things, persons or events in terms of their usefulness but accept them in their autonomy.

We no longer wish to possess or subvert things to our own projects; we wish only to restore things to themselves and persons to their own freedom.

In our lives...we should be witnesses of 'letting be'.

To the extent that we are, we are truly countercultural, for letting be attacks the very roots of a culture hell-bent on possession, productivity, and domination. Donald Buggert (Carmelite Friar)

The buddleia was growing beside a river near Stonehaven - and the butterflies are enjoying their autonomy!

John Wesley on Christian Perfection: Attractively Annoying and Annoyingly Argumentative.

John Wesley warned against excess enthusiasm. As a revivalist he witnessed spiritual enthusiasms which ranged from ecstatic excess to anguished wailing to physical collapse. He developed criteria for discerning what was of the Spirit of God and what was countetrfeit, what was exaggerated and self-serving and what was genuinely a work of God. This most balanced of rationalists sought to balance reason with experience and both with Scripture, a further check being whether these were congruent to the theological tradition of the Church.

I am a Wesley enthusiast. I have a Victorian framed print in my College Study, where Wesley looks smirkingly over at the small original Victorian bust of C H Spurgeon the Calvinist, who glowers sternly back at the diminutive Arminian! I love them both! This small methodistical man is far too easily overlooked in the theological traditions and in the history of Christian spiritual traditions. I first studied Wesley's life and thought when writing Evangelical Spirituality, and I found him attractively annoying, annoyingly argumentative, and in key points of controversy singularly persuasive. Who else would write a treatise called "Predestination Calmly Considered"? Can you think of a better way to wrong foot an opponent in a heated debate that to calmly consider the matter, and tell the opponent to calm down? Or who would entitle a tract "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection", penned in the heat of doctrinal controversy, as he threaded through the theological complexities and ducked the pejorative rejoinders of his opponents?

But what persuaded me then, and still holds my loyalty, though with significant qualifications is the Wesleyan approach to holiness embedded in their theology of grace, which is profoundly biblical, doctrinally passionate, intensely practical and everywhere celebrated in the whole Wesleyan oeuvre. I include Charles' hymns as one of the two primary sources of Wesleyan theology, along with John's Standard Sermons. And then there are John's Treatises, Controversial Tracts, Letters and Journal. But it is John's theological writings that are the reason for this post.

Lest readers of this blog forget, I am an unrepentant bibliophile. Amongst the books I own, read and cherish for what they are, are several volumes of the high quality production of the Bicentennnial Edition of John Wesley's Works. And Abingdon have just announced the publication of Volume 13 which contains John Wesley on Christian Perfection and on Predestination and controversies with the Calvinists. See picture below.

Here's the blurb:

The second of three volumes devoted to Wesley’s theological writings contains two major sets of material. The first set (edited by Paul Chilcote) contains writings throughout Wesley’s ministry devoted to defense of the doctrine of Christian perfection, including "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection." The second set (edited by Kenneth Collins) collects Wesley’s various treatises focused on predestination and related issues, often in direct debate with Calvinist writers, including "Predestination Calmly Considered."

To have the "Plain Account" in a critical edition, accompanied by all the other relevant writings on Christian Perfection has been a desideratum for Wesleyan scholars for ever and a day. I can't finish this post without a quote from John Wesley, one I consider a consummate practical theologian:

It were well you should be thoroughly sensible of this—the heaven of heavens is love. There is nothing higher in religion; there is, in effect, nothing else; if you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way. And when you are asking others, “Have you received this or that blessing?” if you mean anything but love, you mean wrong; you are leading them out of the way, and putting them upon a false scent. Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all sin, you are to aim at nothing more but more of that love described in the thirteenth of the Corinthians. You can go no higher than this till you are carried into Abraham’s bosom.

And there you have it. Plainly stated. Told you. Argumentative, and persuasive!

Harvest Moon, the Sense of Wonder, and a Place called Trinity

Harvest Moon

Last week driving up the East Coast I stopped at a place called Trinity. That isn't the opening line of a not very good novel; there is a village of that name north of Brechin. I stopped to look at the moon, rising over harvest fields and took this photo.

The word magic has debased currency as an adjective for anything enjoyable - they were, however, a few minutes of wonder at the serene beauty looking over several fields of half-lit harvest under a rising moon.

I drove home with the moon on my right, and over Stonehaven reflecting on the North Sea, a vivid precise paintbrush stroke of creamy white rippled by a gentle sea. It isn't a road where you can easily stop, so that particular image is captured in memory rather than digital chip.

I got home at 9.25 and took this picture - a souvenir of an evening where wonder and stillness retain the power to lift the heart in thanksgiving for a beautiful world.

 

 

MLK the Preacher, Orator, Prophet and Martyr.

Wednesday August 28 is the 50th Anniversary of the greatest speech of the American Civil Rights Movement, and in my view the most powerful piece of oratory on behalf of justice, peace and human flourishing during my lifetime. There's plenty on the media on the significance of that speech, and the long echoes of the refrain, "I have a dream....."

My own comment is simple, and mostly in MLK's own words. One of my treasured books is a battered old fontana paperback of MLK's sermons, Strength to Love. (cost 35 pence net). From the sermon Transformed Nonconformists come these two quotations. Such wisdom, such prophetic wisdom, for our own time 50 years later.

Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men [and women] of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted!

And these words echo the wisdom of A J Heschel, one of MLK's supporters, and a radical religious leader in his own right,

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man.

 

And then go here and listen to MLK in full flow, and give thanks for words and the power of the Word.

S J Peploe Exhibition: An Uplift for a Dreich Day

It;s been a wet, wet, wete Aberdeen today. Started off tropical with drizzle and a warm breeze; The afternoon and into this evening unremitting rain. So we went into Aberdeen city this morning to the S J Peploe Exhibition at the Art Gallery. Superb! The Scottish Colourists are amongst my favourite artists, and the fact that they are Scottish adds to the pleasure of admiring, appreciating and enjoying their work.

This is a substantial exhibition with many of his best known paintings, gathered in one place, and exhibited in roughly chronological order, so that the paintings move from early, through experimental to maturity. Some of his latest art work is fabulous. The still life paintings, especially of flowers and tables and interiors are so subtle and atmospheric. Some of them I looked at for minutes on end.

I came away having had my eyes opened to how another person sees the world in the intimacy and immediacy of light and colour.

The exhibition is on till October. I'll be back - and the availability of a bright homely wee cafe with home baking, makes the visit all the more rewarding.

Theological reading Groups: Theology as the Handmaid of Discipleship.

Apology for a Theological Reading Group.

For some time now I have been thinking about the point of being a Christian. I don’t mean that it might be pointless. I mean, what is the standpoint, the viewpoint, of the Christian mind as we encounter the contemporary world, engage with surrounding culture, and work out what Christian witness might sound like, look like and live like in a world such as ours. There is a universe of difference between asking questions about world peace, human suffering, consumer greed, climate change, human sexuality, macro-economics, social justice, start and end of life questions, and all else that we live with, think about, and encounter in the daily gift that is human life, our life, - it makes a universe of difference when these issues are asked by a Christian who believes their theology!

So what happens when we think of such issues as occurring in a world which God created, where all people are loved by God, but a creation broken by sin, into which God came in Christ as reconciling love, a world in which resurrection and Pentecost are realities that shape the way we view reality? In other words, the point of being a Christian, the viewpoint and standpoint, is to bear witness to the redemptive, renewing and reconciling love of God. The standpoint is beside the manger, under the cross, beside the empty tomb. The viewpoint is to see the world through the eyes of God who in Christ became flesh, dwelt amongst us, died for our sins, rose again in the power of the Spirit, and is the one in whom all things hold together.

So what difference does it make to believe our theology, to live it, to breathe it, to think it, to confess it? It makes all the difference.  In a culture impatient of ideas, dismissive of truth claims and well shaped words, fixated on novelty, emotionally exhausted by the flickering images of communicative technology, there is now an imperative for Christians to follow after the one who said ‘Learn of me’ in a discipleship of the intellect. A discipleship of the intellect is a commitment to lifelong learning in the school of Christ.

Theology is not a tedious pastime for impractical Christians. Theological reflection is to see the world from the point of view of the God who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of our world. Theology is prayer thinking; Christian thought is never more useful than when Christian minds look out on the world, and from a Christian standpoint bear witness to other ways of being, other ways of seeing, and other ways of living out this wonderful gift that is our life in Christ.

Believe it or not, all of that is a way of saying I’d like to see our churches create opportunities for those who wonder what it would be like to really believe their theology. For followers of Jesus to come together to talk about a well chosen book or issue, and ask, “so what does it mean to look at the world, this part of the world, this human experience, from the standpoint of those who believe we are all loved by God, that the world is broken by sin, and in Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit this astonishing God is making all things new”?

So I'm hoping to get such a group started, and with their permission report occasionally on what we are about. We are going to start by grounding ourselves in the very fine one volume systematic theology, Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel Migliore (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Second Edition 2004).

The Elusive Blessing of Being Untroubled

Let my doing nothing

when I have nothing to do

become untroubled

in its depth of peace

like the evening in the seashore

when the water is silent.

Rabindranath Tagore

 

Robbing your life of charm and variety

the taste of adventure, of space, spontaneity.

How cramped are your notions, formulas, judgements,

always condensing yet hungry for content.

Don't break down my defences, accept the human lot;

each road must take the direction of thought.

Karol Wojtyla

Two very different holy men, more holy still by never claiming to be. Unselfconsciousness is an essential disposition of love, compassion, mercy, faithfulness, truthfulness, in short, holiness.

Tagore is referring to our clinging to self importance, and addiction to finding our significance in activity, achievement, embossing our manufacturer's stamp on each day.

Wojtyla speaks passionately against playing life defensively, with risk aversion as our default, busily dumbing down the possibilities of life to the familiarly safe, and finding comfort in predictable stability. Instead he urges discovery of the potential in the newness of risks taken, and thereby recovering impetus towards the will of God.

How to live out of suich wisdom?

One of my favcourite photos, framed openness with life and growth flourishing at the centre.