On the way to the Summer School yesterday I stopped to take a photo of the Library building. I remember when it was being built, being outraged at the creation of a huge fish tank on a skyline that included King's College and St Machar Cathedral! Then I became more persuaded, until finally, with some reluctance, I admitted the building is beautiful.
Some might say stunning, innovative, eye-catching, imaginative - and I'm ok with these. But only ok. Because I think it is beautiful and culturally subversive. It wouldn't be out of place in the City of London, as the corporate headquarters of a powerful financial institution. And I like the architectural and cultural statement that books and archives, learning and knowledge, wisdom and understanding, a library, the place where we go to know more and diminish ignorance, to grow and explore and imagine and give birth to ideas, a library building, is a power statement.
The Summer school is about all these things - learning and knowledge, wisdom and understanding, a time and space to know more and grow more, to meet and encounter others, to listen and to give effort to understanding and seeing things new. From the library top floor, looking out to the North Sea you have a heightened perspective, a further horizon, unexpected presences in boats offshore, waiting their time in harbour. In Summer School we have that same sense of going up higher to look at things differently, and seeing new things we previously missed in lives often to busy and downward looking to see.
Then there are the windows. Odd shaped, as much a picture frame as a window, but a picture frame that isn't symmetrical, regular and comfortably familiar. Instead you see through its narrowing perspective; as we all do through our own worldview, our prejudices, the window frame of our own limited experience and vision. So we listen to each other, and those who have come to share. And we learn stuff! We see further, things that have long perplexed us have that 'Ah' moment when we 'get it'.
John Miller talking about the immensity of Castlemilk as a parish he served for near 40 years, and the formation of a pastor's heart in the very work of forming community in a vast housing scheme;
Nick Cuthbert talking about ministry as vocation that can become all consuming and the care and wisdom needed to be faithful to the Lord who does not call to self- destruction but to self-giving love sustained by sufficient grace.
And Tom Greggs takes us to that long 8 verse sentence at the start of Ephesians which is all about that grace whose foundation pillars are in the predestined purpose, promise and power of the God who is before all else a Redeeming God.
And so we are encouraged to see. To climb the 193 stairs or take the lift, but either way get up to the top floor and look at our world, our ministry, our self, and to do so eyes open to all God is doing in our lives, and in our world.
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