Living Wittily

Losing It then Finding It!

Was down here on campus today for a quick visit to the library. Last time I returned four books, but the receipt only noted the titles of three, the fourth was listed as unknown. I emailed the library and noted I had returned four books, explaining the failure of the system to list the fourth one.

 

Email back, last word in courtesy. "Yes you returned four books Rev Dr G. One of them is not our book, though it is discarded from the library of another institution. It is on floor 1 awaiting your collection."

 

Now, one of the more telling signs I am losing it, may well be when I start returning my own books to the library!

 

Collected it today and the Librarian on Floor 1 commented, "Don't worry people do this a lot. We get this all the time." So I'm not the only daftie entrusted with a library card! The earlier non-judgmental email, and the reassuring comment - what's not to love about Librarians? Their customer services skills are second nature. Let's hear it for Librarians. (I use the upper case Librarian as an honorific title).

George Herbert and the Seasons of the Heart.

 

"How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;"

 

These crocuses come up every year within three feet of our front door. The corms lie dormant from summer to late winter when in defiance of frost and snow they announce the coming of Spring.

 

Late afternoon the sun finds them, and they begin to open. George Herbert's lovely poem, 'The Flower' asks the deeper question about the rhythm of the seasons in the life of the soul and life in God.

 

"Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown."

 

These crocuses are an annual reminder of God's renewing grace and gift of life. They are a sacrament in colour, a prayer in purple. An assurance that even when much in life seems fruitless and gone, there is the promise beyond this season, of 'recovered greenness'.

 

George Herbert's honesty (today we might say transparency) and wise learning from his own heart's journey, make him a reliable guide and trusted companion along the harder miles on our own road. Or so it has seemed to me.

TFTD: Fasting from Anger Is a Discipleship Thing.

Years ago I read The Gospel of Anger, by Alastair Campbell. It combines biblical reflection, practical theology and applied psychology. It was an eye-opener. Anger was not described as 'a bad thing'. Nor was Campbell arguing that 'righteous anger' is always right. For the first time I encountered someone who had taken time to think out an ethic of anger, and the importance of anger in human experience and relationships. Anger has the potential to create or destroy, to energise or depress, to get good things done, or to make bad things happen. This week's TFTD explores the various expressions of anger and the part it plays in our daily lives. 

 

Monday

Matthew 5.22 “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

It’s true enough. There is such a thing as righteous anger. But here Jesus has in mind unrighteous anger. All anger is subject to judgement, that is, examining whether our anger is justified or malicious, aiming at putting things right or intended to wound, intimidate and damage. Anger towards people who have annoyed us, hurt us, or offended us is part of being human. How we deal with it is part of what it means to follow Jesus. And on that path lie possibilities of control, forgiveness and mercy.

Tuesday

Proverbs 29.11 “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise person keeps their anger under control.”

“Wise people turn away anger”, says Proverbs 29.8. One of the ways of doing that is not to give vent to our own anger. De-escalation is one of those lazy made-up words that nevertheless describes something useful and positive. When tempers are lost, so are friendships. Keeping our anger under control is one of the first steps of peace-making. Anger isn’t wrong. Anger can give the energy and resilience to work towards putting wrong right! There is a discipleship of the affections, a training of our inner responses so that constraining and directing our emotions is part of our inward obedience to God.

Wednesday

 Proverbs 15.1 “A gentle word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

The relationship between our anger and our words is often immediate. Expletives have their uses! But words that insult, ridicule, and aim at silencing the other, are incendiary. What’s more, harsh words create resentment, bitterness, and lodge long in the memory of those hurt by them. Gentle words are not mere giving in. Gentle doesn’t mean weak. Restraint requires strength, and there is wisdom in seeking conciliation rather than confrontation. Fasting from anger makes space for peace.

Thursday

Mark 3.5 “Jesus looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.”

“Gentle Jesus meek and mild…” Aye, right! This is an important moment in any reflection on Christians and anger. Blindness to another person’s suffering, failure to see that mercy is more important than the rules of any power game, lack of compassion and simmering resentment at Jesus – and trapped in this vortex of callous disregard is a man who couldn’t work for a living. No wonder Jesus was angry! But his anger was for healing. And out of it came the question we all have to face in our angriest moments – is it lawful to do good or to do evil? Which means sometimes doing good requires us to look evil in the face, and defy it.

Friday

James 1.19 “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

The blessings of being quick and slow at the right time! Whether in the politics of Parliament, of the church, of the family, of the office and other work places, this advice holds. The new dance step in human relations, is quick, slow, slow. But James’ point is serious. When it comes to righteousness (which includes justice and doing right and good) quick anger doesn’t cut it – it just cuts people. Quick to listen, slow to speak, that way tempers have time to moderate. That too is fasting from anger.

Saturday

Luke 15.28-32 “The elder brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

 ‘“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”’

Not much comment from me. Let the text speak about anger, love and reconciliation.

Sunday

Ephesians 4.26 “In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry…”

The other day I spoke with a friend who remembered her late husband for the way he lived the second part of this verse, for nearly 70 years of marriage. Anger is not wrong. There are right reasons for being angry, just as there are right ways and wrong ways of expressing our anger. But as Paul says elsewhere, “So far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Peace-making is to fast from anger.

Inhabiting the Values and Practices of Jesus.

Have you ever wondered where those inner nudges come from? Why a memory interrupts you like one of those annoying pop-ups on websites?

Unplanned, you think of someone and decide to text, or phone?

You've had enough of other folk and need a wee while on your own.

What triggers an impulse buy in the shops?

Why did you say something that as soon as it was out, you wished you could press delete, or at least edit before clicking send? 

Why do we do what we do?

Oh, I know, there's a real danger of overthinking everyday experiences as if we could explain the machinations, complexities, unpredictabilities and inconsistencies of a human mind relating to the world, itself, other people, and God. Yes, God. And not just the mind as intellect and cognitive awareness; but our moods and emotions, memories and wounds, longings and disappointments, all swirling around every day in the realities of our everyday.

The above cartoon is a helpful corrective to that process of overthinking. But in the life of faith there are also dangers of underthinking; living without reflection so that we never come to know ourselves better. Or underusing the human capacity for curiosity and the adventures hidden inside the questions how and why. Or looking on a broken world with disinterest because the worst cracks don't affect us, and we can find easier things to think about.

Somewhere between overthinking and underthinking is responsible and responsive thinking. As a Christian who tries to be a thinking Christian I've always taken seriously the discipleship of the intellect, the Christian mind, or as Anselm called it "faith seeking understanding." It's true you can overthink some of the sayings of Jesus. Those words about turning the other cheek, or walking the extra mile, or forgiving 70x7 as a disqualification of all calculations about when forgiveness runs out of patience?

Ever since they were spoken people have either tried to explain them away, dilute the demand, reduce the ideal to what is thought to be feasible, practical, humanly possible. Or, on the other hand, there are those who take the words literally, and seek to live out the radical demands of Jesus in whatever contemporary context they inhabit.

I use the word inhabit deliberately. Christian faithfulness is the result of cumulative choices, some of them anguished and even conflicted. But gradually, choices become consistent, behaviour begins to reflect character, and character reveals the characteristics of the follower of Jesus. We inhabit the values and principles of the Kingdom of God. When that happens much of the thinking is done, and the decisions we make as Christians become habit. That's not to say following Jesus becomes merely a habit; it is to say that as those called to participate in the life of Christ, through the transforming grace of Christ crucified and risen, enabled by the energising of love of God, we are drawn into the communion of the Holy Spirit and into participation in the mission of the Triune God of love. 

So neither overthinking or underthinking, we are called to know and live in the mind of Christ, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices which is our reasonable worship, to love God with all our heart, and soul and body, and yes, our minds. An old hymn retains the hold it first exerted on me as a raw convert and a teenager with a heart intensely engaged and a mind both curious and hungry for understanding of what following Jesus involved:

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
live in me from day to day,
by His love and pow'r controlling
all I do and say.

May the word of God dwell richly
in my heart from hour to hour,
so that all may see I triumph
only through His pow'r.

May the peace of God my Father
rule my life in everything,
that I may be calm to comfort
sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me
as the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing:
this is victory.

May I run the race before me,
strong and brave to face the foe,
looking only unto Jesus
as I onward go.

Viewpoint Needn't Be Permanent Standpoint.

 

Came across this wee experiment with a camera from autumn 2021. After rain, in watery sunlight, I lay beneath a rose outlined against the sky. One of those daft moments that worked, I think!

 

It's a gentle education on perspective and viewpoint,

that what we see and believe to be the best or only view,

is nearly always because we are in the habit of looking at things the same way.

 

Sometimes it's important to lie down on the wet grass and look up into watery sunlight and see what otherwise we'd have missed!

 

Or so it seems to me

Persian Fire. The First World Empire and the Battle for the West.

I like the work of Tom Holland. He writes history as a narrative, with character development, understanding the plot as it unfolds, creating that frisson and tension in the reader who wants to know what happens. Holland has the ability to set the big picture, and then to paint in the necessary interpretive detail. I'm just finishing Persian Fire. The First World Empire. Battle for the West (on Kindle 99p again).

 

Persian Fire reads like a historical novel, and though he hardly mentions Ezra and Nehemiah, or the history of the small territory of Judah and Israel and its beloved and fated city of Jerusalem, he describes the massive geo-political forces that shaped Israel's future and decisively reconfigured her theology and self-understanding.

 

As background to the stories of Esther and Daniel the book is a fascinating exposure of absolute power tied to religious claims enforced by the biggest military build up in human history to that point. Herodotus first told this history - Holland makes it accessible without sacrificing the ambiguities of historical interpretation.

A true fast is a quite intentional lifestyle of being a sacrament of the welcome of God.

Monday

Matthew 6.16 “When you fast do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show everyone else they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have their reward.

There’s a name for it in our social media age; it’s called virtue signalling. Telling everyone else how good we are, how angry we are at someone else’s faults, or how kind we’ve been and would like people to know it. Why do we need other people’s approval? God sees what we do, and that’s enough reward. What are you giving up for Lent? How about us giving up telling others what we are giving up? Live for the approval of God and give up self-advertising. Not as easy as it sounds!

Tuesday

Matthew 6.18 “Your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you openly.”

For myself, I have to keep remembering that God sees it all. The words I thought of saying, and then thought twice. The compassion felt and the kind act that followed. Those transactions between the homeless veteran I sometimes pass when I go to the Oxfam book shop. God sees, God knows, and it’s no one else’s business! Giving up chocolate for Lent might be easier than denying our hunger for other people’s praise. A true fast is to act kindly in secret, and leave the approval ratings to God!

Wednesday

Isaiah 58. 6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Fasting is an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of making space for God in lives too preoccupied with our own concerns. Isaiah lambasts the hypocrisy of looking after my own spiritual life and inner righteousness, if at the same time I do nothing for those who cry for justice. The single mum at the food bank, the asylum seeker feeling lost, elderly lonely folk who haven’t spoken to anyone for days, the exhausted carer unsupported in bearing the cost of love. Fasting is to take a break from my personal piety and discover that I meet God much more readily in the face of these others.

Thursday

 Isaiah 58.7 “Is it not to share your food with the hungry, and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –when you see the naked to clothe them, and not turn away from your own folk.”

These words are embedded in Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats: “Forasmuch as you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25.40) It isn’t that our own righteousness, holiness and devotion to God are unimportant. But our inner justification before God finds its validation and outer justification in being agents of that same grace-filled love in the lives of others. A true fast is a quite intentional lifestyle of being a sacrament of the welcome of God.

Friday

Acts 13.2 “While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Worship and fasting are two self-forgetting attitudes before God. In praise and prayer, and the discipline our own appetites, there is space for God to speak. Worship, fasting and prayer are important ways of paying more attention to God by leaving aside, for a while, our usual self-concern and preoccupation. In this sense, fasting makes space for God to speak, and for us to hear. Spiritual disciplines have the same function as any other work-out; they energise and keep us healthy!

Saturday

Isaiah 58.9-10 “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,  and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

The true fast is for us to hunger and thirst for justice, and not only for ourselves. “If…Then…” Those two words are God’s conditions for blessing. The old apostle John said all that needs to be said here; “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need and has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (I John 3.17) When our fasting takes the form of generous compassion, God’s light shines.

Sunday

Matthew 6.17 “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to anyone else that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen; and your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

God of justice and grace, unseen yet seeing everything. Teach us the blessing of a true fast is to refrain from self-praise and practice generosity; to do good in secret, to be kind to strangers, to use our words, our money and our actions to break yokes that burden and crush others. Father in heaven, we can’t fix everything, but may we be faithful, persistent and caring in all our efforts to repair what we can, making space within us to be attentive to your call and receptive of your grace. Amen

Tears of the World.

Kathleen O'Connor's reflections on Lamentations and the Tears of the World; and a copper beech leaf, photographed yesterday in the rain, which seems to capture an image of those tears, and the immense sadness of a world broken by human action and inaction, causing fellow human beings to suffocate for lack of hope.

 

O'Connor writes with telling wisdom: "Tears can give watery birth to hope. They can wash out space once occupied by despair, fury or sorrow, and in that space hope can emerge uninvited. Hope comes apart from human will, decision, or optimism. It comes as a gift out of despair...And God honors tears, preserves them, and records them in a book says the Psalmist: You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record." (O'Connor, p. 130)

 

And so, out of lament comes the hope that one day those who have caused the tears of others will be held accountable by the God who counts tears, and who in Christ wept.

 

As Lent Approaches: Repentance always involves returning, or re-turning.

Monday

Come, let us to the Lord our God / with contrite hearts return;

our God is gracious, nor will leave / the desolate to mourn.

Repentance always involves returning, or re-turning. It means to change our ways. Repentance is both inner sorrow and changed attitudes, actions and behaviour. Why? Because God is gracious, so that even the urge and impetus to repent originate in the gracious call of God, that persistent pull of the grace of the God who knows what’s good for us, and whose mercy awaits the first sign of our hearts turning towards Him.

Tuesday

Our hearts, if God we seek to know, / shall know Him, and rejoice;

His coming like the morn shall be, / like morning songs His voice.

 The word ‘If’ is the one that keeps us honest. “You shall seek me, and you shall find me when you seek with all your heart.” (Jer. 29.13) Repentance has no ambiguities. To turn back towards God is to want to know God in the fullness of his holiness as well as his love, his judgment as well as his mercy. Repentance is a relational word. It describes the heart’s apology, and our determination to change.

Wednesday

Oh, for a heart to praise my God, / a heart from sin set free,
A heart that’s sprinkled with the blood / so freely shed for me.

Ash Wednesday is the start of several weeks of spiritual discipline. Lying behind the idea of Lent is that first couplet. None of us are perfect, and time and again we get it wrong, do it wrong, say it wrong. Often because for all kinds of reasons, our heart is wrong. Wesley reminds us of Paul’s heart-breaking words, “He who knew no sin was made to be sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5.21) Repentance is distilled into that wish, “Oh, for a heart to praise my God.”

Thursday

 A heart in every thought renewed, / and filled with love divine;
Perfect and right, and pure and good, a copy, Lord, of Thine.

Repentance is the first turn, the first step, towards renewal of the heart. Charles Wesley was brilliant at theology condensed to simple words. What would it be like to repent of all the slippages in our lives, and have a heart that is Christ-like? Not theological rocket science, says Wesley. Renewed ways of thinking, being full of love, perfect, right, pure, and good. The description is as straightforward as they come – achievement is something else. It starts with repentance for harsh thinking, heartless behaviour, and a character that settles for far less than God calls us to be.  

Friday

Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart, / come quickly from above;
Write Thy new name upon my heart, / thy new, best name of Love.

The only way our heart can replicate the self-giving love of Jesus is because Christ is in us, and we are in Him. To belong to Jesus is to have his signature inscribed at the very core of who we are. “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me…” Paul exulted. And like Paul, the life we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. (Gal. 2.20) Repentance is a lifelong journey of inner orientation towards God, our hearts renewed and filled by the presence of Christ by his Spirit. We are made new, given a new name, and its signature language is love.

Saturday

Just as I am, without one plea, / but that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee, / O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; sight, riches, healing of the mind;
Yes, all I need, in Thee to find, /  O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Ever since Billy Graham co-opted this hymn to accompany his appeal for people to come to faith, it has been associated with conversion. But the Christian life is not always straightforward, for all of us there are experiences and times when we fail, sin, go wrong, drift, lose our first love. This hymn has an important place in the Christian life, giving us words for those moments of turning we call repentance.

Sunday

Just as I am! Thy love unknown / hast broken every barrier down:
now to be Thine yea, Thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!.

Just as I am! Of that free love the breadth, length, depth and height to prove,
here for a time and then above, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Repentance is to turn, to change and be changed, and then to find that God’s love has already broken the barriers down. The love of God is beyond our understanding, “love unknown”.  But every time we turn in repentance, God’s love is there before us, and around us, and proves its power to break down all the barriers that obstruct our relationship to our Lord. God’s love is free, free to forgive in sovereign love, and free to receive in humble faith. “O Lamb of God, I come.” That is a true Lent.

When a Good Book Described by the Seller as Poor, Turns Out To Be Quite Good!

My copy of this "in poor condition suitable as reading copy only" has arrived. The title is The Enclosed Garden. The Tradition and the Image in Seventeenth Century Poetry, Stanley Stewart. 

There should be a sub-category of 'well-used but clean' used by booksellers. I've had books described as good in poorer condition than this.

The bonus for me is that it has a full borrowing history on the three labels still attached, from acquisition1967-withdrawal in 2006.

There are 62 date stamps and the librarians pen mark each year during the annual stock check.

I was 16 when it was first borrowed!