Living Wittily

A New Collective Noun: A Friendship of Theologians

Today was a Zoom meeting of the Aberdeen Theological Circle. Each of those present at today’s meeting offered a few minutes of reflection on a chosen poem, book or Bible passage. Here are some brief notes on what was shared between us. :

 – W H Vanstone’s book, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense and its concluding poem, “Morning glory, starlit sky.” Kenosis as a key concept in Christian theology, particular mention of Inhabiting the Cruciform God, Michael Gorman (Eerdmans: 2009)

-The connection of land, people and liturgy in poetry. Read God’s Grandeur as a poetic vision of human activity overshadowed by the Spirit of God.

- John Betjeman’s poem, ‘The Conversion of Paul’, a serious exploration of the religious experience of being righted by being turned round the other way.

- the complexity of choice, and the unforeseen consequences of choices made and ways not taken. Robert Frost poem, ‘Two Roads’, (The Road not Taken).

Quotation from In Living Colour: An Intercultural Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling, Emmanuel Lartey. Recognising there are needs everyone has, needs only some have, and needs no one else has. Pastoral responsiveness seeks to be sensitive to those distinctions.

- Two quotations; the first from William Penn on true spirituality as engagement with the world of action, the second from Kahlil Gibran on reason and passion, and the need for a proper equilibrium between these in dealing with human complexity.

- A recent TV programme on Ian Crichton Smith, Consider the Lilies. During the clearances the church was so close to the established order and status quo it was unable to support the powerless. It is hard for the Church to speak truth to power when it is allied to the power that needs spoken to!

- Psalm 30.5 as a statement of trust and hope, for those times when life is overshadowed and overburdened. Sorrow is finite, hope and joy are promised as realities embedded in the faithfulness of God.

- Poem by George Mackay Brown, ‘The Harrowing of Hell’, narrating the spiralling downward journey of the crucified, clothed in his five wounds.

- In response to the Ukraine crisis, the use of social media to bring people together and to hear from Ukraine “your intercessions are imperative. Reading of Psalm 46, a powerful mix of hopeful and reassuring metaphors, and faith as both trust and defiance – much circulated on social media these past few days.

Read as a continuum these reflections are a richly textured testimony to our diversity and unity, and the gift we each are to the other. While the research paper and exploratory discussion will always be our primary way of  engaging in thought, discussion and learning together, perhaps once a session there should be a smorgasbord approach much like today’s experience. It was a good way to spend 75 minutes. 

Pastoral Letter: "The Bible is a book that’s familiar with empires and dictators, armies and invasions, allies and enemies,..."

Yesterday morning, as news was breaking of the invasion of Ukraine, I read Psalm 46. It seems the place to go at dangerous times. The Bible is a book that’s familiar with empires and dictators, armies and invasions, allies and enemies, violence and oppression, and all the other inhuman ways that human beings treat those they consider as a threat, or ‘other’, or an obstacle to political ambition.

The starting point of this call to courage, trust and hope is God. “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Whatever the threat of conflict and political collision, God is not going anywhere, other than where God is – in the midst of the conflicting ambitions and military power-plays of nations and people.

This verse is not a way of saying keep your head down, God will deal with it. We are right to be concerned, to fear war and to defend peace. But in all our worrying and working remember this. God is ever-present, a place of refuge and strength whatever happens. As often in the Bible, one of the most important words is “therefore.” Precisely because God is a place of refuge and safety for our souls, and the source of strength for the life we are called to live, “THEREFORE we will not fear.”

We wouldn’t be human if we were not afraid of the outbreak of war, wherever that is in the world. Perhaps especially when war begins to feel near to us, literally too close for comfort. It’s then we come back to those words, “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…”

What difference does God make to the geo-political earthquakes which shake our confidence and undermine the foundations of our lives? How are we to think about tanks and missiles, fighter planes and attack helicopters, hundreds of thousands of heavily armed and intensively trained soldiers focused on simply taking over another country?

This Psalm writer has seen these tragedies and outrages before. He shows us the way to hope, to believe in justice, and the possibilities of peace. “Come and see the works of the Lord…he makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth, he breaks the bow and shatters the spear.” God’s purpose is a kingdom of peace. Whatever else the cross of Christ stands for in our world, it is a declaration of God’s opposition to sin and his redeeming purpose, a demonstration that God’s ways are justice, forgiveness, mercy, peace, and reconciliation.

“Come and see the works of the Lord…” Faced with military aggression against another country, and threats against other countries including our own, what are we to do? It is one of the most frustrating and perplexing experiences in any of our lives when huge events that cause suffering, disruption and death for others, are so far beyond our power to help or heal. What can we do? While world leaders agonise over decisions and consequences, risks and dangers, there seems very little left to us to influence events, or make any real difference to what is happening and what will happen, regardless of how we feel about it.

But then there’s this. “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.” Twice the emphatic statement, “I will be exalted.” Christian faith is embedded in our experience of God, our refuge and strength, who breaks bows and shatters spears. We rest in Him, our shield and our defender. A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

These are words we sing because God has revealed himself in Christ. The resurrection is God’s no to death, and God’s yes to life; God’s no to violence and God’s yes to peace; God’s no to hate and God’s yes to love; God’s no to despair and God’s yes to hope.

So, what to do? Be still and know that God is God, and pray. To think about the world situation as one who knows God is God and Christ is risen. Someone has said, “Prayer is the slender thread that moves the muscle of omnipotence.”

To believe and confess that Jesus is Lord, and to pray in His name, is to bring to bear on even the most frightening situations, all the resources of Eternal love poured out in merciful purpose, divine power and redeeming intent.

Be still, and know that. Be still, and acknowledge that God is God. Be still, because God is our refuge and our strength, therefore, we will not fear. Be still and pray for peace in our time. Don’t do nothing, pray, and when you pray you’re not doing nothing. Remember the words of our Lord, and finish your prayer with them in full assurance of being heard, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…for Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory – and You will be exalted among the nations.”

“God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Amen.

The Reverse Side of the Weaving: The Frustrations of Being a Work in Progress.

I've been designing and working tapestries for a long time now. My first serious attempt was maybe 30 years ago. There was a long chunk of time in the period since then - 15 years, when I had other things to do and came back to doing tapestry again maybe 12 years ago. I'll do another post soon with some of the older ones that I still have around.

For now, I'm intrigued yet again at how appropriate and theologically sensible are the sayings that surround working tapestry as a parable, metaphor, or narrative imagining of how the presence and activity of God is woven through the texture of our days and years. It's a commonplace to compare the back of the canvas with the front, with the intended encouragement that the messiness has a pattern; be patient and wait until the work is complete. God weaves the varied strands and colours of our lives into a unique pattern that cannot be achieved any other way. You know the kind of thing.

Here is a quotation that is a classic example of trust in the providence of God, and persevering trust despite only seeing the underside of the tapestry:

 “It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn't seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand. In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God.”   ― Maria von Trapp

As one who designs tapestries, I know that improvisation and ad hoc decisions mean that the finished work can vary considerably from what was first conceived and planned. I must also say that I have done several tapestries, beginning with an idea, and starting from the centre allowing the shapes and colours to develop in what feels like a random process of choosing to do what I feel like, what I think might work, and that can reflect the mood at the time as much as anything else. The point is, each tapestry is a creative process, an evolving concept in which the final form becomes clear quite late on in the process.

Years ago I learned a verse that has stayed with me and has in turns reassured, disturbed and even annoyed me. But I keep coming back to it. The lines come from the poem 'Regret' by Jean Ingelow:

This life is one, and in its warp and woof

there runs a thread of gold that glitters fair,

and sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet

where there are sombre colours. 

I bring the words of Maria von Trapp and Jean Ingelow together in this activity involving needle, stranded cotton and canvas in a work of art that becomes the visible consequence of inner thought, prayer and imagination - these three. The current tapestry is one articulation in colour and form of Revelation 21.9-21, John's vision of the New Jerusalem. His description is a verbal symphony, geometry set to music, an imagined place of universal welcome, a home for a broken and now redeemed Creation, illumined by the Love dwelling at its precise centre. To take in any literal sense John's words of how the Ineffable might appear to eyes dazzled by the light of eternal truth, divine goodness and love in purest holiness and redemptive purpose, is as wonderfully futile as standing beneath Niagara with a bucket hoping to capture and contain the essence of a power that annihilates all presumption and preconceptions.

Yet John wrote to be read, and understood, and with pastoral purpose and spiritual imagination about what he saw when he saw heaven opened. And near the end of the drama, there is the crowning vision of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, with its twelve gates where all who would might enter, and no one was denied. It is a vision of redeeming love, eternal purpose, and is intended to comfort, strengthen and give hope to those who can make no sense of the underside of the tapestry that is their life. So in this tapestry, without intending it there is the messy underside and the changing and evolving pattern that emerges from the continuing work of the needle-worker.

The second photo is the upside of the tapestry - but at a quite early stage. When it's finished I'll post again and try to explain a bit more what I think I'm playing at! Theology is often more free when not confined to words, even if, as in John's Revelation, words with all their limitations are all he has to describe the indescribable and communicate the incomprehensible. John's geometric precision conveys the exactitude and detail of a city whose builder and maker is God. Incidentally there are several pieces of music I have listened to while doing this work - that will be another post perhaps.        

The Sacrament of Creation.

One reason why I take photographs when out walking. "When Psalmist or Prophet calls Israel to life their eyes to the hills, or to behold how the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unbroken tradition which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers: it is nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments --they are sacraments." (George Adam Smith, The Book of Isaiah, Vol. II, p. 90)

If the Cap Fits: "his character remained untinctured by the virtues..." (Tacitus)

William Rees Mogg, on the Prime Minister's morally bankrupt ad hominem attack on Sir Keir Starmer, an attack that is as scurrilous as it is dangerous ( as subsequent events have proved) “It seemed to me a perfectly fair point to use.”

 

Such morally vacuous cynicism and ignorance is now the natural and habitual recourse of a Cabinet, Party and Government unwilling "to do the right thing", a phrase David Cameron made a Conservative manifesto mantra. "Perfectly fair" is a judgement that presupposes moral values in which truth, justice and goodness are key components. Nothing in that whole disgraceful episode leads to anywhere near such virtues.

 

Speaking of virtues, this in a text from a good friend last night, who actually reads the classics and learns from them: referring to one of Nero's henchmen, Carrinas Secundus - "He was a very well educated outrageous rogue who pillaged the provinces for cash. In translation Tacitus describes him as 'a master of Greek philosophy but his character remained untinctured by the virtues.'"

 

And as my friend commented, "This reminds me of Boris."

"The human situation is disclosed in the thick living." Review of a New Biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement. Julian E Zelizer. (Jewish Lives), (New Haven, YUP, 2022)

Here's a sample of why Abraham Joshua Heschel deserves some of our time, and why his words and legacy remain important as inspiration, guidance and warning for people struggling with the realities and unrealities of the 21st Century.

"Modern thinking has often lost its way by separating the problem of truth from the problem of living, cognition from the human situation...Reflection alone will not procure self-understanding. The human situation is disclosed in the thick living. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power of evil." (p.227)  

In a long evolution that started in Warsaw amongst Hasidic Jews, and took him to Berlin to study philosophy, then to America in 1940, Heschel matured into one of the leading religious thinkers and most significant political activists in mid century Jewish and American public life. To a remarkable degree, Heschel integrated devout love and learning of the traditions of Judaism, attentiveness to religious practices of worship, prayer and festival, and an increasing commitment and passion for social activism in pursuit of justice, compassion and radical resistance. It is a particular strength of this well organised biography that Heschel emerges as one prepared to live with the tensions such a paradox represented in his own times, as he plunged into "the thick of living."

When he came to America he did so as a refugee, and within 5 years worse than his worst fears were realised as to the fate of his family and people left behind in Hitler's Europe. His mother, aunts and sisters all perished amongst the millions of his murdered people. Like Elie Wiesel his friend and companion, Heschel never forgot, and never allowed the world to forget what happens when nations expel God from the policies, ideas, values, goals and practices of political power linked to military capacity and motivated by national, racial or ideological self-interest.

Zelizer's biography has narrative energy, and provides careful and informed contextual information about such influences as Hasidic thought, Heschel's own tradition of Reformed as distinct from Orthodox Judaism, his passionate investment in the Civil Rights movement and personalities, his pivotal role in Vietnam War protests, his unceasing highlighting of the plight of Soviet Jews. We are given important insights into the institutions in which he taught and where he was admired by many, resented or tolerated by some; and Zelizer traces Heschel's roles and initiatives in the social activists organisations which swallowed so much of his time and energy.

The reader is guided with enough information to understand and appreciate the complexities and demands Heschel faced as one whose driving passion was to "advance the drama of redemption, and...reduce the power of evil." And to do so in mid 20th Century America, as an immigrant Jew of Hasid origins, and as a poetic and persuasive teacher, an inspiring if demanding mentor, or persistent and annoying gadfly who wouldn't just fly away when politicians tried hard not to listen.

But Heschel was a poet theologian. He wrote philosophy of religion in a spirit of adoration of the God who calls the human being to a life of radical amazement, self-emptying awe in the presence of the Holy, and wonder and gratitude for the gift of life every day. So some of his more academic and rigorous colleagues thought his writing and teaching too poetic, vague lacking scholarly credibility, a style of writing which was devotionally woolly rather than rationally elegant. But many, many more readers, found in Heschel's writing a passionate invitation to live the faith, to taste the wonder, to risk the disciplines of a life whose goal is to repair the world, redeem human failing, renew the social and moral fabric of a dangerously self-absorbed culture.

Zelizer is persuasive in defending Heschel's style of writing and goals in his teaching. He wanted Jewish thought to be embodied in life practices and social values that demonstrate truth in action. Nowhere is the integrative force of Heschel's life of the mind, soul and body more clearly demonstrated than in his decision to march from Selma to Montgomery, arm in arm with Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights Leaders. With every step his theological anthropology was lived, enacted and publicised. Likewise his near obsessive focus on highlighting the moral indefensibility of the Vietnam war, and his prophetic outrage at the use of napalm, saturation bombing, proxy militarism on foreign soil, and caught up in the catastrophe, millions of innocent civilians whose value and lives are measured not as collateral damage but as uniquely treasured human beings created for the joy of God. 

"Philosophy cannot be the same after Auschwitz and Hiroshima...Philosophy to be relevant must offer us a wisdom to live by--relevant not only in the isolation of our study rooms but also in moments of facing staggering cruelty and the threat of disaster." (Heschel, p.151) 

What drove Heschel, was the moral passion of an Old Testament prophet. Writing his classic study, The Prophets, he had been infected by their moral outrage, penetrating critique of the rich and powerful, compassionate concern for the poor, oppressed and vulnerable, and above all their adamantine certainty that such pervasive and structured injustice is blasphemy, and subject to the holy anger and judgement of God.   

I have long studied and admired Heschel. There is a (slowly) growing literature exploring further his ideas, legacy and the importance of voices like his for times like ours. This is now the most accessible, dependable and readable biography of him I've read. Beautifully produced and reasonably priced, it comes with a well constructed and user friendly index, and with endnotes full enough to anchor the scholarship, and selective enough to make them an excellent road map into further study of Heschel. 

I finish with a personal response to this book. Heschel once urged people of faith to defy despair. Here are his words, near the end of his life, written by one deeply wounded by humanity's capacity to inflict wounds and suffering on others. And in the face of humanity's worst, they summon humanity's best as service to God, in words of defiant hopefulness:

"And yet God does  not need those who praise Him when in a state of euphoria. He needs those who are in love with him when in distress, both He and ourselves. This is the task: in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song. To know the monster's rage and, in spite of it, proclaim to its face (even a monster will be transfigured into an angel); to go to Hell and to continue to trust the goodness of God --  this is the challenge and the way." (Passion for Truth, pp. 300-1) 

First photo above is of MLK and A J Heschel on the Selma March

Second Photo above is MLK and AJ Heschel at Arlington in shared prayer at a silent protest against the Vietnam war.   

Making Friendships Out of Perseverance.

Today I sat for a while chatting with two of our Iranian friends who are currently in hotel accommodation awaiting processing of their applications for asylum. With a mixture of body language, minimal words, Google translate, and the kind of patience and laughter that makes friendships out of perseverance, we managed to talk about some important things - like family, welcome of strangers, our shared faith in God, and football.

Using Google translate I promised my friend I would pray for his wife and family back in Iran. He was typing something to me at the same time. He went first, and his sentence was - "Please pray for my wife ---------." I showed him what I typed, "I will pray for your wife -------"

There are times when you just shut up, don't overthink it, and be grateful for the nudging of the Paraclete, the One who comes alongside as the ultimate translator.

The photo is of someone who was having fun with my name and my often understated proficiency at five a side fitba.