Living Wittily

Following Jesus Today: Seeing the World Transfigured Through a Resurrection Lens

I mentioned that last week I attended a three day course on Transformative Coaching, and I learned a lot. The course is designed by Youth at Risk and the overall aim of the three days is to enable participants to discover new ways of thinking. Nothing radically new, we spent a lot of time examining paradigms as master interpretive filters with the power to construct thought, form attitudes and therefore influence action; we acknowledged the importance of paradigms, and the necessity of being critically aware of our own; and then the more personal acknowledgement that our current paradigmatic way of looking at the world may distort rather than creatively interpret the world in which we live and move and have our being. Changes in our lives may only happen if there is such a radical deconstructing of a mindset resistant to fundamental change because our paradigm is not on the table for discussion.

Naturally the course itself assumes certain things about paradigms, and how we construct them, and are not always aware that we do, or that our way of looking at the world is itself open to challenge, question and critique. Every half decent training approach has to make assumptions about how human beings think and feel, the inner climate of ethics, values, convictions, and their intellectual isobars like assumptions, learning experience, cognitive awareness, conscience and the part inner environment plays in the creation of standpoint.This training course is no different in making such initial assumptions, and it is a very good course.

Another approach altogether is mentoring. Like many buzz words  mentoring carries its own cultural baggage of meaning, and becomes used so often that it becomes unexamined, and the in crowd who use it assume it means a certain way of being and practice. Amongst the strengths of  having a mentor is the benefit of learning from an experienced person, seeing how 'it is done', finding support, guidance and example in this other, more senior colleague or trainer. However I remain gently sceptical about mentoring in these terms, especially if such mentoring has a directive remit, whether explicit or through the authority and influence of someone who in the mentoring relationship inhabits the position of knowledge, experience and therefore power. Mentoring can become a way of shaping people as copies of the mentor. Admiration is its own filter, and is by definition reluctant to see that which might be open to critique and challenge. And the person being mentored is not always in the position of 'knowing better' so that the habits of thought, action and attitude of the mentor consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not, shape ways of being and doing and thinking and feeling in the mentoree - I know, isn't that an ugly word.

So whether I am at a course aimed at transforming my thinking by challenging my existing paradigms, assumptions and ways of being, or whether I am working within a relationship of learning with a mentor, I am still required to be critically aware not only of my own questionable presuppositions, but also of those who challenge them. Everyone has a position, standpoint, worldview, mindset.

Against the background of all such thinking I hear the words of Jesus:

Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me;

for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And no, I'm not making the banal point Jesus is my mentor, or Jesus is my paradigm shift. That kind of T-shirt theology is just that. Neither of those terms or ways of seeing our lives and the world are sufficiently descriptive of the disruptive and regenerative  consequences of responding to Jesus invitation.

Take up your cross and follow;

become as a little child; love your enemies;

inasmuch as you did it unto the marginalised, vulnerable, poor,

God-forsaken, you did it to me; blessed are the peacemakers;

anger and hate are murder; forgive seventy times seven.

We don't just need a mentor for such behaviour, we need an inner renewal, a spiritual invasion of grace, a comprehensive renovation of heart and mind. And yes that will indeed require a paradigm shift, not as a one off, but as a way of life in which repeatedly and continually we see the world anew and renewed. The Incarnation, Transfiguration, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus do not only renew my way of looking at the world - they have renewed the world I look at and live in. The resurrection is, for Christian theology, the ultimate paradigm shift.

   

Luis Suarez' Teeth and the Bear Trap of Commercial Sponsorship

I play five a side football every Friday night and did so lat night. Nobody got bitten. Most of us know each other well, I dedicated as babies several of the twenty somethings who play. Sometimes people come we don't know which helps us have full numbers for the teams. None of them have ever bitten another player. On display every week from the more mature players (I'm not the oldest, yet) is waning athleticism, glimpses of silky skills from a past era, energetic medicocrity, and people who still live the dream of scoring goal of the season. But nobody bites. Trampled, kicked, tripped, dead legged, hit with the ball in the face, stomach, or what Paul might call the lesser unmentionable organs, but no, not bitten.

The global furore about Luis Suarez biting an opponent for the third time, this time in the World Cup, witnessed by hundreds of millions, surrounded by up to 150 media cameras, raises all kinds of questions. Such behaviour has to be punished for the fairness of the game, the safety of the players and as a statement of human values. So I have no difficulty approving the ban, the statement made by such a sanction, and the determination of FIFA and other football authorities to uphold standards.

But when all that is said, and done, not enough is said, and nowhere like enough is done. Where in all this media frenzy for scandal, gossip and outrage is there the note of redemption, forgiveness, hope, change, and a future for Suarez, who is a man, a human being and only then a gifted footballer?

His club, Liverpool knew and know he has a pattern of behaviour that threatens his career, and creates enormous pain for his opponents, his club and himself. What have they done for him since the last time? What have they said or done since the latest incident? Why is it only TV pundits who honestly use the terminology of help, therapy and change? To his credit the Italian player he bit thinks the punishment excessive. But it isn't the punishment that is excessive, it is the help and support towards change that is scandalously inadequate. At the very least, he is a huge marketable commodity, why wouldn't you do everything to protect your investment? And while I'm on about marketability, here is a dream scenario unlikely to become realisable.

Supposing, just supposing, the major sponsor who dropped him within 24 hours of the FIFA judgement, had taken time to think about the person luis Suarez. And supposing they had spoken with him, and were able to announce that they had put in place a programme of treatment that would enable the issues to be addressed and the player to regain the levels of control needed to continue his career. Supposing they had suspended his use advertising their product for a given but limited period, and suspended his income for that time, and given him the chance to play in the most important game of them all - the life he lives, the person he is and the possibilities of change and redemption - I use the word non theologically at this stage?

The irony is his major sponsor is a betting firm, they make their money by people gambling, taking risks, believing against the odds. The betting industry rakes in billions from the influence of people like Suarez, and they need him to be clean, admirable, an embodiment of all those dreams every gambler will recognise. I wonder, I just wonder, what would have happened if this sponsor had announced their support for Suarez the man, and their outrage at his behaviour, condoning nothing. And as a sign of their integrity (should such a quality exist at such a high corporate marketing level) and commitment to their product (the image of Suarez) they announced that this is a man with whom they have done business; he is obviously needing help to continue his career and they will support him as he seeks it? And supposing, just supposing, Liverpool had done something similarly redemptive, supportive but also addressing the concerns of sanctions, discipline and indeed justice?

The more emotional and passionate fans of Suarez, including his own national fan base, have described his treatment as being thrown out like a dog from the tournament. Their metaphor is unfortunate, but their concern for the human being is laser beam accurate. Oops sorry, laser beams are also now an issue following the one that was used to distract the Russian goalkeeper while a corner was being taken - that's another story.

But for now, I am simply saying, as a football fan, a used to be no bad footballer, a human being, and yes as a Christian; it's time Suarez' club, sponsors, and team mates recognised this is not solvable by sanctions. The man needs help, support and a framework of hope to deal with issues that are immensely destructive but surely not incapable of resolution.

Anyway, that's my take on football, biting and the redemptive imagination so absent from the machinations of a world increasingly inhumane in its responses to anything that threatens the bottom line. Feel free to disagree, but no biting comments please...

Youth at Risk Training days. And On Another Subject, Taxis and Solcitiors.

I've been away most of this week at a Youth At Risk Coaching conference. Three days 9-5 with around 40 others drawn from across the campuses of UWS. It was stimulating, annoying, unsettling, fun, tiring, intense, rigid and rigorous, and was aimed at changing the way we think, see ourselves, the world and others. In some ways it was a cross between a three day lecture, a three day argument and a three day retreat. If that sounds a bit confused it's because it's quite hard to categorise into the usual training packages. There was a lot of laughter, sometimes the nervous hide from the deep stuff humour; often genuine belly laugh, ahah, loveable laughter of human beings 'getting it' and wondering why we didn't see it before. You can find out more about Youth at Risk over here I intend to follow up the training once I've had a time to process three days of inner gardening!

.................................................

Now sometimes you're driving about minding your own business and then something bugs you. I was driving behind a taxi on the way to Braehead on Wednesday evening. Then I noticed the advert. Do remember this was a taxi, a road vehicle licensed to carry the public safely, driven by a responsible driver hopefully with a clean licence.

The advert was on behalf of a firm of solicitors called keepmylicence.com.

Now I have to say as a strap line that one tends to get your attention. But then it is surrounded by words and phrases that make most of us wary of other drivers "drunk driving - mobile phone use - dangerous driving - speeding - no insurance". Now I may be a wee Pharisee, and I make due allowance for what may be idiosyncratic and discriminatory prejudices about the common good, social responsibility and the rest; and I am absolutely committed to the fact that whatever the rime a person has a right to representation and defence.

So feel free to rebuke, correct or counsel me, but am I the only one who is offended by that selection of driving offences being positively linked with avoiding their consequences? Why should those convicted of these offences often enough to accumulate 12 points, or who commit an offence serious enough to be shown a straight red card and face being banned from driving, keep their licence? Losing a licence isn't only a punishment for the offender; it allows time for changes of behaviour that will make public space safer. To specialise in defending drivers is fine; and of course drivers facing prosecution for whatever offence are entitled to the best defence available to them. But I am very uncomofrtable with advertising and brand naming that inevitably suggests it's possible and acceptable to minimise the inconvenience of those guilty of license losing behaviour, by increasing the risk to the public? All of this of course is within the law and the firm is reputable, has a long experience and obviously considerable success. But then, there is the not irrelevant fact that the advert was on the back of a taxi minibus......? It's a strange and puzzling world and some of its daily observations do my head in.... so I make my own observations :)

You can Google the company and see what you think yourself.

The Lord's Supper and Other Rituals of Hospitality

Us Baptists say we don't go in for ritual. A living faith doesn't need a script, a performance, a ritual. And as for liturgy, a whole service by the book, is too near to a scripting of the Spirit, that too is a no, no! Or so we like to think.

But I've had to listen to countless extempore prayers which lack the deep down freshness of words that are both original enough to fly below our complacency and familiar enough to pull our hearts back to the One who calls us here, and in whose name we eat this bread and drink this wine. And I know of no Baptist Church communion service where certain prescribed actions are not performed; reading of Scripture to ground the 'institution of the Lord's Supper; prayers of thanksgiving for bread and wine; the giving out of bread, now nearly always eaten as taken; the distribution of wine, in little glass, or worse, plastic glasses, as if it was a free sample at a local produce market. Singing a song or two, before or after. With minor variations that is the Baptist communion ritual.

I personally think ritual is important, and good Liturgy is one of the Church's ancient and modern treasures. The question is whether the ritual is more than mere ritual; the issue is how much emotional, intellectual, spiritual and personal investment is poured into the words, the actions and thoughts expressed in this regularly rehearsed and performed ritual. There's a place for beauty, symbol, gensture, colour, music and sound tuned to worship, words carefully crafted into devotion, so that what is done doesn't just happen - it is, and is intended to be, an event.

Frederick Buechner as so often, sees through the self-righteousness of those who are too spiritual for their own good, and shows up the ignorance and poverty of Christian imagination.

"A ritual is the perfromance of an intuition, the rehearsal of a dream, the playing of a game. A sacrament is the breaking through of the  sacred into the profance; a ritual is the ceremonial acting out of the profane in order to show forth its sacredness.

A sacrament is God offering his holiness to men and women; a ritual is a man or woman raising up the holiness of their humanity to God."

Ritual is essential in human life. Courtesy is dependent on ritual, the handshake, deference and good manners at the table, introducing a stranger by name and offering the names of others; hospitality is at its best as a ritual of welcome, a well practiced enactment of pleasure at the presence of an other. 

Rightly performed, and invested with emotional integrity, ritual provides important structures to our hopes, cares, fears and delights. So yes, when I come to worship I am looking for ritual, not mere ritual, but that rehearsal of important words, significant actions, shared symbols, and the regular recalling of the why and what of our faith. So even if it's diced bread and small plastic wine receptacles, the breaking and pouring, the sharing and drinking, the remembering together and speaking Gospel words together, these rituals of a Body enacting the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, are of great importance. Ritual only becomes empty ritual, not when it is empty, but when the hearts that perform it lack the passionate love and faithful obedience of to Jesus. Such passionate love and faithful obedience seeks to turn every ritual into worship, to convert every radical action into service, tries to ensure every imaginative thought is made captive to Christ, and asks God to transfigure every routine tedium into the silver and gold of a Kingdom in which faith, hope and love are the default settings of Christian existence.

The cake in the picture was part of our family ritual for Sheila's birthday - baked by Andrew (our son). It was consumed with well rehearsed alacrity, and I have to confess, without too much deferring to one another.

Badgers, B&B, the Disruption of 1843 and a Woodpecker-fest.

Just been up the Moray Coast for a few days enjoying sunshine, looking up some friends and taking it easy.So. Booked B&B at the West Manse in Deskford, near Cullen. The Proprietors, Chris and Peter are interesting, fun, very hospitable and we had a great stay with them.

Peter showed me a book on the history of Orkney Baptists which is fascinating, full of that mixture of pious narrative and specific detail that makes up so much of local church history writing, when the history makes no attempt whatsoever to be impartial. That doesn't make it untrue, it just means you have to remind yourself of the context of the narrator and the narrative. I've come away with a loan of the book - thanks to a generous fellow historian. The book belonged to a 92 year old Orkney Baptist who was baptised in the sea 80 years ago, and who died 6 years ago.

We sat up waiting for the local badger to appear, which he did around 11.15. We talked about quilting, their time in Orkney, the story of the Manse, tapestry, the Disruption, and the fascinating details of the finance ledger of the original Deskford Free Church from 1843 to 1904 - Peter is preparing a paper for the local historical society on the entries to the book. Fascinating - including the amount this new, local and quite small congregation were prepared to contribute annually for the building of New College Edinburgh, the new training centre for Free Church ministers.

I got up early and sat in the conservatory watching the birds feeding - a great spotted woodpecker doing its ususal heid-banger thing, a green woodpecke*r likewise drilling at the peanuts, nervous shy siskins, coal, blue and great tits, and I heard but didn't see the yellow hammer, and all this while reading my holiday book, with a cup of tea, the patio doors open, and wearing sunglasses already in the early sun.

The book is a good reason to go back - but we will anyway; there is unfinished conversation about stuff.

* Just had an email exchange with Pete and he points out, rightly, that a green woodpecker would be way off its usual patch that far North. Which is a puzzle, because it was a woodpecker, and it was green, and they were on separate bird feeding tubes at the same time. So not sure what it was - a juvenile great spotted would be much less distinctive, but not green. I checked it out on my vast two volume Forrester and Andrews set on Scottish Birds. It isn't impossible but would be pretty unlikely, especially in the breeding season, for a green woodpecker to be so far north. So puzzle unsolved - I was awake, it was green, it was a woodpecker, I've seen them before, but it shouldn't have been there. Happy to hear from other twitchers about this.

Wild Geese and the Homing Instinct for God

This poem is posted because I like it.

It may be Mary Oliver's most anthologised poem. That's another reason for posting it. If so many editors choose it, it must say something important.

Living in Westhill, geese fly over and around us every year, long skeins of them. It's the season after Pentecost, and the wild goose is a Celtic symbol of the wild freedom of the Holy Spirit, the creative, urgent movement of life and the homing instinct for God. Another reason to post it.

Whatever else Paul meant by his insistence that Christian existence is to live in the Spirit, he meant to the wild freedom and the homing instinct that makes us long for God.

It wasn't written as a Pentecost poem - but I read it and wish I had wings.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in  the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.                             

Romans 1.12 and Teachers as Learners and Learners as Teachers

Bishop Handley Carr Glynn Moule was one of the most effective expositors of the early Keswick holiness teaching. He grounded the Keswick experience of sanctification as an experience of full surrender to Jesus as Lord in careful exegesis of the New Testament, enriched and guided by a moderate Calvinism, and after his own experience of a new grace and power, that theology became an articulation of his own spiritual experience. 

You can trace the transition by reading his earlier commentary on Romans in the Cambridge Bible, (1879) and comparing it with his later commentary in the Expositor's Bible (1894). I remember reading these two commentaries in parallel when I was writing about the courteous but principled disagreement between two fine Anglican Bishops, Ryle and Moule. For Ryle the idea of a final or continuing victory over sin and inner spiritual conflict was contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible and the universal experience of Christian struggle against sin as a lifetime of conflict, frustration of intention, and struggle towards holiness. For Moule, whose earlier commentary affirmed that same experience of inner contradiction, he had moved to an experience which, after his full surrender to Christ, affirmed the victory that only Christ can give to the soul which is surrendered fully to the indwelling Lord, crucified and risen, whose life is now lived through the experience of the regenerate soul by the power of the Spirit.

These were the days when Anglican Bishops argued with passion on Pauline theology, christian existence and the crucial distinctions in Christian experience that made all the difference to how we understand the Gospel. And did so with Bible in hand and with the orchestra of theological tradition and biblical exegesis in full symphonic performance.

All of which brings me in a roundabout way to Moule's earlier wee commentary on Romans. It's 270 pages, six and a half by four and a half inches, and fits nicely into an anorak pocket! Does anyone wear anoraks now? OK, a jacket pocket. Reading through it again as my daily devotions I came across the Bishop's quaint comment on Romans 1.12. This is where Paul, in full rhetorical and diplomatic flow says,

"For I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end you may be established; that is that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me."

Here is Moule, his language that of a Victorian church statesman:

"The tact of the apostle is only an exquisite combination of sympathy and judgement; he speaks the true word, in the right place, and from the heart. It would be shallow criticism indeed which would see here only an ingenious religious compliment. To the sincere Christian teacher nothing is  more real than the reflex aid he [or she] receives among Christian learners." page 55 

Now that last sentence should be written on the door of every theological college classroom! The best teachers are learners and good learners are brilliant teachers.

Moule's stately Victorian language lends gravitas to one of the key pedagogic dispositions of the teacher - lifelong teachability. I haven't checked, but I'm not sure I'd expect to find Moule's application of Paul's rhetoric in some of the contemporary Romans heavyweights, but I'm repared to be corrected by those willing to go look. For now, I'm grateful to God for 'the reflex aid I've recieved among Christian learners.'

Trinity, Tapestry and God's Irreducible Ineffability

A couple of years ago I had a first go at trying to express theology in tapestry. I'd been reading several books on Trinitarian theology and wondered if some of the mystery and meaning of God's Triune life of love can be expressed in colour, shape and symbol. The result was this panel, now framed and hanging in our hall.

Some of it is obvious in its references and inner nudges; however overall it plays with ideas without trying to resolve them through overloaded significance. It neither seeks to explain or depict, how could words or images or sounds do that. But it does allow the play of ideas, and an expression through art however limited the mind of the artist, of the desire of intellect and heart to understand and respond as adequately as created finitude can to the One who bewilders by beauty, graces with goodness and touches the heart of all creation with truth.

"God's cognitive availability through divine revelation allows us, Irenaeus believed, to predicate descriptions of God that are true as far as we can make them, while God's irreducible ineffability nonetheless renders even our best predications profoundly inadequate" George Hunsinger, 'Postliberal Theology' in Camridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Vanhoozer, p.47

The tapestry is called Perichoresis. It is true as far as I can make it...and profoundly inadequate. Like all theology.

 

Trinity in Haiku for Trinity Sunday - The Joy of 17 Syllable Theology

Triune God

Holy Trinity!

Grace-filled life in fellowship,

Love in triplicate!

 

Father

Living Creator,

Creative adventurer,

Father of mercies.

 

Son

Reconciling Son,

Redeeming Ambassador,

Love as surrender.

 

Spirit

Comforting Spirit,

Articulate Paraclete,

Truthful Advocate.

 

God is Love

Perichoresis!

Cappadocian genius!

Love co-inhering!

  

Written as an exercise in theology pared down to the essentials of language, within the discipline of form, but with appropriate playfulness.

Moltmann and Hope: "Love looks to the as yet unrealised possibilities of the other..."

 

I am all for passion in theology. What is impressive about Moltmann is his awareness that his early theology was partial, tendentious, passionate and committed. To break through the learned complacency of a generation more interested in the anxieties of the present and ways of escaping them, than in genuine risk-taking hopefulness for a more just and peaceful future, Moltmann wote a book concerned with looking at life through the lens of hope, rather than fixing eyes only on the present. More than twenty years ago, as a man in his middle sixties Moltmann wrote in this preface, "The older and more self-critical one becomes, the more one values the ruthless radicalism of one's youth."

These are brave and wise words, indicating a theologian who acknowledges the limits of his vision, and the missed turnings in his journeys, but who does not apologise because all theologies are partial - what is important is the passion for truth, the openness to the new, and the expectations of a Christian standpoint that is future oriented towards the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit and in the eschaton when God will be all in all. And that hope far from being mere vision, is itself the source of energy, sacrifice and commitment to the Kingdom of the Crucified and Risen and Coming One, as we too seek to incarnate the love of God in Christ, in the embodied practices of those who, as peacemakers and ministers of reconciliation, are called to be and dare allow themelves to be called, the children of God.

No wonder Moltmann finished his preface with words of prophetic assurance: " 'Do not despise the dreams of your youth' says someone in one of Schiller's plays. And as I write the words I am again heart and soul in the visions of Theology of Hope, 25 years ago."

The book finishes wih these words, from a book which remains one of the great contributions Moltmann has made to Christian theology over the past 50 or more years:

 "As a result of this hope in God's future, this present world becomes free in believing eyes from all attempts at self-redemption or self-production through labour, and it becomes open for loving, ministering self-expenditure in the interests of a humanizing of conditions and in the interests of a the realization of justice in light of the coming justice of God. This means, however, that the hope of resurrection must bring about a new understanding of the world."

As regular readers will note - I'm back, new computer, and Microsoft 8.1, the mysteries and frustrations of which make it all the more imperative to have a theology of hope!!!