On Sifting and Filleting Back Issues of The Tablet.

Over the years I have subscribed to and read a number of regular papers, journals and magazines including: The Listener, The Guardian Weekly, The Church Times, The Cistercian Quarterly, The Expository Times, Third Way, Life and Work, The Tablet, The British Weekly, Scottish Journal of Theology, Sojourners Magazine.

 

Some of these are now defunct, and nothing similar has replaced them - I so miss The Listener. The wide range of subjects, book reviews, cultural comment and the model of excellent journalism supported by lucid and sharp writing made it a weekly tonic for jaded spirits.

 

While doing a long term research project on Benedictine and Cistercian spirituality I subscribed to the Cistercian Studies, which at that time was distributed quarterly from Caldey Abbey, administered by a Brother with whom I was in regular correspondence for some years. Reading it  was a deeply enriching and hearty shove out of my evangelical comfort zone! I read articles on Aelred of Reivaulx, William St Thierry, every issue with commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, and in one editorial scoop newly edited lectures on contemplation by Thomas Merton. I eventually cancelled my subscription when it changed its format and content. But ever since reading Esther de Waal's, Seeking God, The Way of St Benedict, I've continued to drink from the rather deep wells of Benedictine spirituality, .   

 

Then there was Third Way, one of the best reads around for all the years it was produced - I miss that intelligent, culturally alert mixture of intellectual curiosity, faith commitment, generous enquiry and affirmation of the arts and humanities, science and technology, and a constant willingness to open up avenues of ethical and biblical engagement. Its Evangelical ethos was never "cabined, cribbed, confined", but open to truth and to new ways of thinking, exploring and engaging with cultural changes as they inevitably impacted on church life, Christian experience and traditional norms of behaviour and moral understanding.

 

I could write in praise of all those magazines, papers and journals. But what brought all this to mind has been today's time at the desk. I have a friend who passes on his back issues of The Tablet. I haven't seen him since March 23 and lock down. We had coffee the other day and he handed me a carrier bag full of Tablets!

 

The last day or two, on odd half hours and occasional longer periods, I've browsed, skimmed and filleted through the thirty plus issues looking for whatever might bring sustenance, new perspectives, spiritual and mental stimulus, and just the pure enjoyment of a well written article - of which there are plenty. For example, an article flagged as, "A Catholic moral theologian and former law enforcement officer from a midwestern culture seeped in racism, reflects on his own personal experience of white privilege." Where else in rural Scotland would I find an article of personal testimony, rooted in raw experience i  the United States, by someone who has lived within, that is, inhabited racist culture as a law enforcement officer, now a Professor of Christian ethics?

 

Ever since reading W E Sangster's advice that pastor preachers should always be reading biography, I've more or less done just that. Over the years I've read quite a few shelves' worth. The Tablet regularly reviews some of the latest biographies and my current list now has some new suggestions: Dorothy Day, Graham Greene, Martin Buber, Seamus Heaney. and the reflective memoir of Dr Amanda Brown, "Prison Doctor: Women Inside." 

 

In one issue a two page article by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on his new book Morality (essential reading as a map out of our cultural despair); a full length interview with Jurgen Moltmann, his disposition and theology as hopeful as ever - who when asked the secret of his remaining energetic, theologically engaged and physically active life now into his 94th year, gives a shrug of the shoulders and the one word answer "God"; a brilliant review of Hilary Mantel's final part of the trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, in which the reviewer takes the novelist to task for airbrushing the character of Cromwell into something less than the hardened and self-preserving ruthless political operator he was; and much else.

 

Then modestly placed in the middle page, a small picture of the current Editor, Brendan Walsh. I only met Brendan once, for a lunch in London when he was a senior editor with SPCK. We corresponded for a while afterwards, and then life moved on for both of us. But seeing him again, 28 years later I still remember the animated theological discussions and the warm, urbane, generosity of mind of someone I remember being genuinely interested in and appreciative of faith traditions other than his own.