Living Wittily

The Theology of Emil Brunner: "the God of truth, eternally bent on encounter with his creatures..."

Yesterday I enthused about Emil Brunner, a theologian whose work I've read off and on throughout the years of my ministry. It all started with a paper I was asked to do as a young minister, on the theme of human relationships. Amongst the resources I used was Brunner's hefty volume on Christian Ethics, The Divine Imperative. I still remember diving into his discussions of human sexuality, marriage and the irrevocable nature of covenant promises. So much has changed since then, but he modelled theological ethics in the service of the church and the pastoral response to the human experiences of love and commitment. 

I started looking for Brunner's works second-hand. Reason and Revelation was bought in 1978 for 90 pence! Man in Revolt and The Mediator took a bit longer but I was looking for clean copies - and this was before the days of the Internet, Google and the world as bookshop. It was much later before I found a fresh set of his 3 volume Christian Dogmatics, one of the best systematic theologies around, I think.

Other volumes have been added over the years: The Misunderstanding of the Church is a brilliant summons away from church as institution to church as Spirit inspired community; Our Faith started out as one of those slim, eclectic but often fascinating volumes issued by the SCM Book Club, and remains a persuasive apologetic for a faith engaged and engaging; Truth as Encounter is an essential title which characterises and confirms Brunner's theological development towards a relational ontology, the I-Thou theme explored earlier in The Divine-Human Encounter bearing fruit in his later exposition of truth as encountering God in relationship, rather than truth as only statements about God requiring intellectual assent as beliefs. Brunner had no doubt doctrine and the content of belief are essential, but are to be experienced in and by the divine-human encounter with the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and those truths appropriated and applied by the regenerating, renewing and reconciling work of the Holy Spirit.

It has always surprised me how little known Brunner is, and I suspect those who read him today will be a small band of those fortunate enough to have discovered him for themselves. I think there are several reasons for the unwarranted neglect of Brunner's theological work.

1. Of course the immediacy and urgency of some of his writing arose out of the theological cultural and historical contexts within which he was doing his theological thinking and writing. Reading it now, I'm aware we are in a different world, and some of his references and assumptions sound dated, because they are. Though that is the case with most classical theological writers being read generations later. His core theology remains vital, engaged and embedded within Scripture interpreted in conversation with and drawing resources from the traditions of the church, and for Brunner, especially the Reformation.

2. During his lifetime, and even after his death, the overcasting shadow of Karl Barth was at times like a large dense tree keeping the sun from the garden. For myself, I read both Barth and Brunner, value both for different reasons, and wish to God (I mean that quite literally) they had been able to understand each other better during their lifetime.

3. By the time the third and final volume of Brunner's Dogmatics was published in 1962, the 1960's were launched with all the radical changes and challenges to cultural assumptions, social conventions, and a new intellectual ferment that would be new wine in old wineskins, with the inevitable result. The 60 years since have changed the planet, human life, and raised questions Brunner (nor Barth for that matter) would not have conceived in their scale of challenge and threat to human existence itself.

At this stage of my own life which is pretty late in the day now (!), I can make a good case for reading the theology I enjoy. I don't mean that in any superficial consumerist pleasure quest. I mean enjoy in the serious sense of a theology that addresses me and points to the God who addresses each human heart and seeks relationship in an encounter that summons us to truth, and to the Truth. The best theologians do this. Brunner is amongst those, and remains, for me and any who happen to come across him, a source of profound insight and passionate apology for the God of truth, eternally bent on encounter with his creatures. 

Here is a brief sample of Brunner at his thoughtful best:

In Christ God Himself lays his hand on me, he opens Himself to me and opens myself to Himself, He breaks through to me through the walls of my I-solation. He establishes fellowship with me and thereby at once becomes my Lord. That Christ is my righteousness is the same as that Christ is my life; the righteousness of God is nothing less than the new obedience. That I turn from self to Christ is already itself the new life; that through faith I participate in the love of God which is in Christ is already the love of God poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit. 

(The Divine Human Encounter, Emil Brunner, (Lutterworth Press, 1943, p.113)

Incidentally the two photos above are a telling contrast of the stern theologian sitting in front of his theological army, and the laughing theologian who finds the joy of God in his calling as witness to the Word of God in Christ.

 

Emil Brunner on Faith and Obedience.

In the 1960's candidates for Baptist ministry in Scotland were quizzed on this book, at the time still deemed one of the seminal books of 20th Century theology. Brunner is a superb writer of theology.

 

The conclusion of this book consists of six statements on Christ the Mediator which distil the long argument and explain the practical difference it makes to live a life of obedient trust in Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

 

It was first published in 1934, in a Europe overshadowed by menacing realignments of power. I've re-read the conclusion and confirmed again why Brunner's is a mind I have kept coming back to ever since I read his The Divine Imperative, oh, a long time ago!

 

Here's the last two sentences of this theologian who wrote out of passion for Christ and his Church:

 

The Christ whom we know and recognize in faith is no other than the Lord who seeks for obedient followers. The Christian Faith is not rightly understood if it is not understood as a summons to the Imitation of Christ. For faith is the entrance into the movement of God in Christ, and it must also prove its reality by making sure that this movement actually takes place." (The Mediator, page 619)

 

Prayer, Patience and That Elusive Moment of Capture.

On holiday last week we walked a lot; sometimes it took a while because I stopped a lot. In his poem happily called "Leisure", the Welsh poet W H Davies  asked the question most of us know by heart, but forget to practice: "What is this life if, full of care / we have no time to stand and stare?"

Now there's walking, and then there is walking. Every day I'm trying to stay active and the nagging little phone app tells me how many steps I've taken - and how many still to do to meet the target daily step count. Really? Well, yes, but not to be taken too seriously. Little point in competing with yourself to prove to yourself that you can beat yourself. It's a guide, a help to self-awareness.

But then there's the walk where "we go for a walk". This isn't about the daily constitutional; this is intentional, planned, something I set out to do in a particular place which can be the beach, a wood or a circular from our door. Back to last week. We were on holiday in Findochty; for those who don't know, a small fishing village on the Moray Coast, which is a great place to walk. Any amount of walking. Also a good place for stopping "to stand and stare."

When I 'go for a walk', I take my camera. I know that as well as walking I'll be looking, and seeing, and stopping. Last week I took a lot of pictures, many and maybe most of them discarded. But several of them record important moments of encounter and of falling in love again with a world far too easily taken for granted. I love the natural world of land and sea, birds and flowers, moss and trees, rocks and lichen, the close-up and the far away, the sunlit and the clouded grey. A camera can be a prayer book with the added feature of a shutter click.

Prayer can be an exercise in patient waiting, and no guarantee that what you wait for will happen; at least, not the way you want or expect it to. Last week I watched rock pipits. They're quite shy, and reluctant to pose conveniently for that guy over there who stops and stares. Those minutes standing still, watching and waiting, hopeful but not certain, alert for the right moment when my intrusion is forgiven and the bird comes into focus - sometimes prayer is just as frustrating, and rewarding. 

When the Psalmist writes "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me" he is saying exactly what I felt at the moment this rock pipit hopped on to this rock and winked at me! I suppose what I'm saying is that prayer isn't always rewarding or satisfying; nor is it meant to be. It is an encounter, a seeking for the other, a longing to see and wonder at the beauty and reality of One who may be elusive, on the move, just beyond the moment of capture, and inviting us to keep looking and hoping and longing. And now and then, we are forgiven the intrusion and we sense "He inclined unto me." (Psalm 40.1)    

    

"Righteousness as a mere tributary..."

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."

Whatever else the follower of Jesus is meant to think about the plight of migrants on the seas and oceans, it should feel like a life threatening hunger and thirst for righteousness, an inner ache and longing which we call compassion, generosity and respect for each human life. And the cry of the heart to God, is that such hunger be satisfied with the bread of life.

Let Justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.

"Righteousness as a mere tributary, feeding the immense stream of human interests, is easily exhausted and more easily abused. But righteousness is not a trickle; it is God's power in the world, a torrent, an impetuous drive, full of grandeur and majesty. The surge is choked, the sweep is blocked. Yet the mighty stream will break all dikes.

Justice, people seem to agree, is a principle, a norm, an ideal of the highest importance. We all insist that it ought to be --- but it may not be. In the eyes of the prophets, justice is more than an idea or a norm' justice id charged with the omnipotence of God. What ought to be, shall be!"   

A J Heschel, Insecurity of Freedom, (pages 99-100)

Postcard of David Hockney, "The Sermon on the Mount", sent by a work colleague years ago from the London Exhibition

Compassion as Seeing Clearly.

A macro lens function allows you to look closely, see the detail, and pause long enough to appreciate the subject.

 

That's true whether a Samsung phone is used, or a heart fitted with imagination, lit by compassion and the capacity to see clearly the person in front of us.

 

Perhaps, compassion is the macro lens through which we are to see each person, viewed with imaginative compassion, appreciating the unique miracle that is the human person in front of us.

 

"Jesus looked, and had compassion..." The Gospel writers record that look often enough - it was clearly Jesus' usual way of seeing.

 

(The photo is of sea pinks which flower in May amongst the rocks on the coastlines in Northern Scotland.)

Horizons of Possibility and Prayer

 

Three horizons, on three different days, from three different points of view; the same world, the same observer, and the same sense of poignant joy, looking outward towards what we can see, and what remains hidden.

 

It's the nature of horizons to limit our sight, and thereby awaken imagination, make space for hope, and pull us toward new possibility.

 

Maybe a horizon is an invisible line of longing, and an invitation to explore what we don't yet know, a promise that perhaps there is more to be seen than the current limits of our vision.

 

Maybe a horizon is the Holy Spirit pulling us away from familiar contentment with what is already given, to the risks and discoveries of what is disturbingly and creatively new.

 

Maybe a horizon is a call to prayer without words, when we pay attention to what we desire most, allow ourselves to care more for the tears of the world, and for once shut up long enough to listen to the voice of God whose favourite words are justice and mercy.

 

Yes maybe...

Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: Part 3. "Those driven years of apostolic joy and sorrow, labour and love, hope and disappointment..."

Years ago a man who was my mentor in ministry, explained one of his idiosyncrasies that had served him well over many years. When he went on holiday in the Highlands or the West Coast of Scotland, even in an already overloaded family car, he stuffed in the latest big book to have a good browse while he was away and had time and space to enjoy it.

The book which prompted that conversation was the newly issued New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, published in 1974, the year I became a student pastor in Cornton, Stirling, where the Rev Jim Taylor was the senior minister in the mother church in Stirling. I took his advice and have done the same on self-catering holidays in Scotland in whatever cottage and wherever. A post on previous big books taken on holidays is for another time.

The new Dictionary of Paul and His Letters is undoubtedly a book worth giving time to browse and become familiar with the contents. This final review post is a broad survey of what I've found while exploring the surrounding landscape and landmarks of recent Pauline studies.

Let's start near the middle with the overall subject of interpretation. In 1993 Grant Osborne wrote 'Hermeneutics / Interpretation of Paul', (9 pages) a wide-ranging article which tried to do too much even then. It's still worth reading if only as a snapshot taken just as new approaches in New Testament Studies gathered momentum. The 2023 revision has 50 pages on Interpretation that represents distinctive interpretive approaches to Paul: there are separate articles on Asian and Asian American; Augustine; Calvin; Jewish; Luther; Medieval; Modern European; New Perspective; Patristic; Postcolonial; Latinamente. This provides a much more rounded, representative sampling of approaches to Paul, both key historical figures and specific cultural and ethnic contexts.

The list isn't comprehensive but widely representative, and the Editors have had to make hard choices about what is included. I wondered about post-holocaust studies, or liberationist interpretations of Paul - though some comment on these can be found using the subject index. I did, however, note an omission that surprised me. There is no article on Feminist Interpretations of Paul - The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies has an entire article on Paul and feminism, acknowledging the gains from the probing questions and diverse perspectives of the feminist contributions to Pauline studies. There are some brief references traceable in the index, and a number of articles on women and their role in Paul's work. I know choices are difficult, and it is hard to be comprehensive, but I regret the absence of a summary article on how women scholars have critiqued Paul.     

The article 'Old Testament in Paul' is completely rewritten by Roy Ciampa and fully reflects the developments in recent decades, particularly relating to intertextuality.  The essay on the phrase 'In Christ' reflects recent emphases on participation and union with Christ, and is written by Michael Gorman who has been a persuasive voice in the theological recovery of a more fully participationist understanding of Paul's 'cruciform and resurrectional' gospel. Indeed the theme is part of an overlapping conversation with systematic theology and the renewed interest in theological interpretation that has been going on for some time now, as for example, in Grant Macaskill's work on Union with Christ in the New Testament,¹ and its more accessible Living in Union with Christ: Paul's Gospel and Christian Moral Identity.

'Grace' is a concept that is core and centre of Paul's gospel, and in recent years our understanding of what Paul meant and implied by the term 'grace' has been significantly redefined by John Barclay, who by a happy providence is the author of the article on 'Grace'! This is a good example of the value of reference books like this - Barclay's magisterial study is distilled into exegetical concentrate, presented in three steps - the unconditioned gift of Christ - Grace and response - Grace and generosity. This is a joy to read.

Scot McKnight was a good choice for 'James and Paul' - "The issue of which 'lexicon' James and Paul were using matters immensely." It certainly does! And Mcknight is a deep reader of both James and Paul and a sure guide through the intricacies of works of law, boundary markers, nuances of justification language and theological tensions created by confused semantics. His final sentence reads and sounds like an apostolic sigh of relief: "Where James finishes is consistent with the apostle's own framework of a grace that transforms the unworthy person into an agent of good works."

A final quick scan of highlights - 'Apocalyptic Paul' is by Jamie Davies, one of the best interpreters of this increasingly significant approach to Paul; a completely new article on 'Empire' updates recent research on Paul's stance on Rome and the question of anti-imperial undertones in his letters; 'Preaching from Paul Today' is an excellent update of the previous treatment - 30 years is a long time, and there are new and urgent questions to be asked and answered; various articles deal with the theology and ethics of human sexuality, and these are entirely updated to reflect significant shifts in how the church seeks to engage with changes in cultural and social ethics, and how these relate to Pauline theological ethics; two articles, 'Ministry' and 'Mission' account for 20 packed pages of analysis and explanation of what Paul thought he was about during those driven years of apostolic joy and sorrow, labour and love, hope and disappointment, and all because of that day he was knocked off his horse, or at least his feet, by the One he came to know as the Crucified-Risen One.   

This and the two previous posts should be enough to show how much I value and am enjoying this new Dictionary. It now sits in arm's reach along with the revised Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. As to price, the new Paul dictionary can be bought for less then the price of 3 or 4 Tyndale commentaries. It is packed with up to date scholarship, is uniformly well written in my reading so far, some articles are superb in summarising the subject, others gather material hard to find elsewhere, it is solid and well produced, lies open on the desk, and will last for years.

The Editors, authors and publishers have done an excellent job on a huge task, and those of us looking to seriously engage with Paul and his letters are in their debt - and then some!

1. Some years ago, on holiday at Crieff Hydro, sitting in the sun lounge, with a pot of Earl Grey Tea and a slice of coconut cake, I spent a while reading some of this book. The evidence is in the photo! 

Dictionary of Paul and His Letters 2. The What, Why, How and from Where of Paul's Letter to the Philippians.

One of the most significant features of the new edition of Dictionary of Paul and His Letters is that, as in the 1993 edition, there is an extensive essay on each of Paul's letters. These deal with the usual introductory questions of author, recipients socio-historical context, date and place of writing, purpose, aim and style of the letter, identifying leading theological themes, and generally making the best historical and theological sense of each particular letter.

When Hawthorne wrote in 1993 he did so as a leading evangelical commentator on Philippians - his Word commentary was published in 1983. His primary concerns addressed most of the introductory questions of the time, with considerable focus on where the letter was written, its integrity as a single letter whose author was Paul, and identifying Paul's opponents.

His treatment of the theology of the letter largely featured the Christ-hymn, sanctification as Christian maturing in Christ, and the pervasive tone of joy. The article still reads well, but unsurprisingly feels dated and thin on areas of study now deemed crucial to our understanding of what Paul was about in writing a letter like this to a church like Philippi, given the personal history between Paul and the community of believers in Philippi.

In the intervening 30 years several new questions and approaches have come in for consideration: history of interpretation, rhetorical criticism, literary structure, and overall a more rigorous examination of the social realities of the city, the Empire, and the demographics of small house churches opting out of the civic and religious mainstream. These more recent developments have reshaped the study of Philippians and guide the treatment of the letter in the new edition. 

Jeannine Brown's treatment extends to 19 columns compared to Hawthorne's 14, indicating the widening range of 21st Century biblical studies. One immediate impression in comparing the two articles is that Brown reflects the increased contemporary interest in theological interpretation. Compared with Hawthorne's treatment the theological themes she identifies are more extensive, clearly traced and give a more nuanced account of the contextual, place-specific, and rhetorical effectiveness of Paul's theological arguments in pursuit of unity in missional purpose, and communal harmony in the internal relationships at Phillippi. These are clearly connected to, and derive from, an understanding of the text as it emerges from the realities of first century Philippi. the Roman city, in which small house groups made up the local church, where questions of power and competing loyalties were causing hairline fractures that could widen into community division. 

Brown doesn't neglect questions of occasion, and the integrity of the letter as a single missive from Paul. The discussion is brought up to date to take account of new approaches and conclusions such as literary shape and structure, missional thrust, more recent work on the Christ hymn, and the underlying implications for both Christology and cruciform discipleship. Such themes as christology, eschatology, friendship, communal discernment, unity and resilience in suffering, are traced and examined in this urgently written letter.

These matters are mostly mentioned in Hawthorne as well, but Brown has more rigorously tied them to text and context. The new article expounds more effectively the rhetorical how, the theological what, and the pastoral why behind what Paul wrote to this particular church, at this critical stage of its development, reconstructing the existing and hoped for relationships of the church in Philippi to him - and to each other.

Looking over the two bibliographies demonstrates the progress made in 30 years of scholarship on Paul's letter of pastoral concern to the house church believers in Philippi. For example, in 2001 a key monograph was published by Peter Oakes, Philippians. From People to Letter. Here is the first paragraph of a review of what became a model study:

In this engaging and persuasive study Oakes models a method for investigating the social make-up of early Christian communities by focus-ing his attention on the early Pauline community at Philippi. Drawing on archaeological and literary evidence, he sheds light on the diverse range of people within the community while showing that Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a call for unity in the face of economic suffering.¹

Then there is the amount of recent work on Philippians 2.6-11, the Christ-hymn. Several names indicate the energy and range of those who continue to mine this text for its meaning and purpose in Philippians. Richard Bauckham's work on Paul's Christology of divine identity, along with the late Larry Hurtado, has opened up further seams of theological interpretation. The late Ralph Martin's edited collection of essays on the Christ-hymn has the telling title, Where Christology Began (1998).  Michael Gorman's work on Paul's cruciform theology of discipleship and missional practice is also deeply indebted to Philippians 2.6-11, a text he has explored in several publications, most exactly in his monograph Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. (2009)  In Brown's thought and writing on Philippians, you can detect the fingerprints from each of these contributions, and from the latest research and commentaries.

Finally the list of subjects cross referenced within the Dictionary at the end of each article are important sign-posts. Not everything that is significant can be included in the main article. A list of relevant associated references to articles allows a thorough engagement with the subject being pursued. For example, the cross reference to the article on Christology provides further information on Phil 2.6-11 and places it in the vaster landscape of Pauline Christological reflection ion his other letters. The theme of suffering in Paul has also been an area of recent research and a in the revised Dictionary a very full article by S F Wu reflects back on Philippians and in the wider context of Paul's life and other letters. By the way, I've read both Scot Hafemann (1993) and Siu Fung Wu (2023) on 'Suffering', and am happy to have both of them available. There are theological and pastoral implications in the human experience of suffering that are not so sensitive to changes in scholarly directions. 

In this post I've tried to compare these two Dictionaries printed a generation apart by zooming in on a single article with occasional glances aside. The overwhelming sense is that a thorough revision of the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters has been essential, and has been carried off with evident success on multiple levels. In this detailed comparison I've tried to provide a fair examination of one core sample from the overall site of Pauline excavations.²     

1. Biblical Theology Bulletin, Vol. 35. Issue 4. page 151 (Richard Ayscough) 
2. The photo of the cross was taken by my friend Graeme Clark, and shows one of the small crosses on the railings of Paisley Abbey. The photo of the cross through the trees is of King's College Aberdeen, taken by me while walking in the rain on campus in an Aberdeen summer! Please do not reproduce the photo of the cross without permission. Thank you

Dictionary of Paul and His Letters 1. Welcome the new, but hold on to the old.

"Out with the old and in with the new" is a reasonable principle to uphold only if you're impatient with the past, undiscerning about what's of lasting worth, and therefore guilty of what C S Lewis dubbed 'chronological snobbery. 

This week the Second Edition of Dictionary of Paul and His Letters landed on my desk with a near onomatopoetic 'thwump'! I've had the First Edition of Dictionary of Paul and His Letters since its publication in 1993. It has been needing revision and significant updating because so much has changed in the subject field in the last 30 years, easily a generation.

Now that both sit on my desk I wish to make clear that I will keep and use both. Partly, that's due to affection and familiarity with a Dictionary I've used at least every week of those 30 years. It's also because it will continue to be a valuable source of scholarship on areas much less vulnerable to changing fashions and emphases in scholarship - and because I have an affection for that earlier generation of NT scholars - like Howard Marshall, George Beasley-Murray, F F Bruce, Jimmy Dunn, Gordon Fee, Ralph Martin, David Wright.

The new edition brings the landscape into clearer focus as older landmarks fade and new constructions appear on the scene, several of them currently dominating the foreground. That means the list of contributors in 2023 has few of the original scholars from 1993 re-contributing. After a period of 30 years many of those writing in the new volume are now established scholars, many of them in the newer fields of study. Of the three editors only Scot McKnight was an original contributor (The Collection for the Saints) - an article replaced by one newly commissioned from D J Downs whose monograph on the Collection was published in 2016. The other two editors, Lynn Cohick and Nijay Gupta are now established scholars with an extensive publishing record in NT studies.   

The 1993 edition has 1038 pages, just over 200 articles, 107 contributors of whom 7 are women, and few outside white Western academia and church. 

The 2023 edition has 1223 pages,around 210 articles, 141 contributors of whom 20 are women, with significantly more representation from beyond white Western academia and church. 

The 1993 edition lacked this front Contents List of articles, making it difficult to easily discover what has been superannuated from the 1993 edition, and what is new in the latest 2023 edition. So the addition of this list of article contents in the new edition is a big help for easy and quick reference, providing a bird's eye view of where particular . 

Thirty years is a long time in New Testament Studies and that is reflected in the thoroughly up to date bibliographies that come at the end of every article. A number of the subjects are of special interest in my own studies so I'm more familiar with the scholarship and literature behind those articles: The Prison Epistles, "In Christ" and participation, the fundamental importance of the three virtues of faith, hope and love, Pauline christology, biblical models of prayer, and for obvious reasons Paul as preacher and Paul as pastor.

In each of these the bibliography reflects current scholarship without neglecting important classic items, inclusions are representative of differing perspectives, and the listing gives more than adequate guidance to pursue further study in and beyond the topic.

The overall style retains the original format of a substantial main article, list of related and relevant subjects, followed by excellent bibliography. The indices cover subjects and scripture texts - as an aside by far the longest lists of entries are from Exodus and Isaiah, perhaps reflecting the volume of scholarship around Paul's constructive and narrative use of the Old Testament in building the theological framework for his understanding of the church and its mission to the world. These indices help navigate around the various articles that deal with a particular text or sub-theme.

The new Dictionary happily retains the user-friendly format, the comprehensive coverage, up to date scholarship and high quality of writing we got used to in the earlier edition. The physical heft and durability of the volumes is important in a heavy use reference book. Here too comparisons are favourable. I personally miss the dust-cover in the British edition, but I can also understand that on a quality bound hardcover destined for heavy use a dust-cover wears and becomes as much a nuisance as a useful feature. Overall the quality of production seems high quality and built to last - ask me if I;m right in 30 years! 

In my next post I'll compare and comment on several of the main articles. 

No Day is Ordinary if We Pay Attention to the Extraordinary

Yesterday I was down at the University meeting up with a couple of folk, but mainly spending time on Floor Seven. Just to be clear, Floor Seven is on the top of the building - the floor numbering excludes a couple of floors for ground, basement and and administration level. 

If you've been around this blog any time at all you'll know I love this building. It's one of my happy places; a large tinted glass hub of knowledge and information, two of the basic ingredients of understanding and wisdom. The building wouldn't be out of place as the corporate headquarters of some high flying business in the financial sector of a city. That seems entirely congruous.

Inside this building there are books and journals, computers and desks, seminar rooms and a cafe, and people whose profession and expertise is knowledge and where to find it. Floor Seven, the capitalisation isn't a typo, it's a place name in my inner geography. Here there are hundreds of yards of shelves with theology and philosophy. When it comes to wealth, power, status, and making a human difference, education is ahead of finance, and the business of learning towards wisdom is one that should have secured investment towards the future.

Walking along the narrow pathways of Old Aberdeen, at eye level, is this beautiful wall-flower. They populate the cracks and seem to thrive on very little by way of care and nurture from any gardener.

The contrast between this resilient and clever flower and the spectacular glass cube visible over the wall I find agreeably disconcerting. Because as well as contrast there is connection. Whatever else we use our knowledge for, the care and curation of the world around us is, or should be, an undisputed priority. 

You can see where this is going can't you? That glance at the flower, eye-catching at eye-level, and behind it the shining glass cube, triggered the memory of Tennyson's lines:

  Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. 

Yesterday I met with a couple of friends, I enjoyed a coffee in the library browsing in the book I had bought in Blackwell's, then a couple of hours well spent amongst the Journals coming away with a number of noted clues to follow up, a visit to our only second-hand bookshop whose proprietors are our friends, and on the way there about five feet from the ground (I know this because that's eye-level for me), a wall populated with flowers, for all the world growing out of the stone. 

There are times when it pays to pay attention. To enjoy the conversation; to savour the coffee; to make time to learn new things; to wonder at the beauty waving at us before our eyes; to wonder at the amazing ordinary that is everyday life. 

A final thought, well a complaint really - despite the fame of Tennyson's lines, they read today as a graphic illustration of how the Victorians, with all their cleverness and pursuit of knowledge and curiosity about how to subdue the world to human will, gave little thought to what was destroyed in the pursuit of wealth, business, power and status - Tennyson destroyed the flower to ask his question. 

The photo of pine cones was taken three years ago, on one of our allowed walks during the Covid lockdown.

I posted it on Facebook with this Haiku, whose sentiments still hold, more than ever. 

 

Whimsical Haiku
Acknowledge beauty,
and pay attention to seeds
which hold the future.