Living Wittily

The Harvest of Doing Good and Making a Difference.

Just over the hill, a granite built cottage with the date above the door, 1958. The tracks through the barley, green against gold, tyre tracks toward home. Distilleries throughout Grampian depend on the hundreds of barley fields ripening now to be harvested soon.

 

What the photograph misses is the visible movement of the breeze across the field, the symphonic dance of millions of seeds sown four months ago, now multiplied ten fold or twenty-fold, even a hundredfold. Harvest thanksgiving will come once the harvest is in, which always seems to suggest a certain lack of faith, a hard-headed wait and see rather than that hopeful risk that trusts the rhythms of nature and the one to whom we pray "Give us this day our daily bread."

 

And then my mind turns to another harvest, the fruitfulness of a life careful of the good, alert to moments when kindness is called for, sensitive to injustice and the wounds of others, so that we will neither be complicit by silence, nor ever think such occasions are 'not our concern.'

 

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6.9. I would like to leave my tyre tracks in the harvest fields of our world.

Ambushed by Bach and Classic FM.

On a recent Sunday journey to Montrose, at the Stonehaven peripheral junction and roundabout, the driver on the outside ignored lane discipline and changed lanes, forcing me off the designated lane for turning right. In a burst of self-righteousness I chose not to be angry, and moved back into position after the offending driver had passed. After all, I was heading to a church to preach about Jesus as the inspiration and model for our lives.

Going through Inverbervie a car was waiting to join the traffic at the junction near the Co-op, and he waited till I was much nearer then slowly pulled out in front of me forcing me to brake. Once again I tried, I really tried, not to be annoyed. At which point Classic FM started playing 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.' Including the following words:

Jesu, joy of man's desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.

 I defy anyone to sustain annoyance and keep muttering angrily under their breath while listening to that piece of heaven anticipated. Like an all-knowing back seat driver, the Holy Spirit knows just how to tell us to slow down, and grow up! Over the years I've come to recognise that driving is one of those fast track training grounds for the fruit of the Spirit which Paul tells us is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

That morning I was having a road test of at least three areas with room for improvement: patience, goodness and self-control! Learn these and we grow in maturity, and the roads will be safer.

What do we think we are doing when we say 'The Grace' to one another?

Monday

2 Corinthians 13.14: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

These words, often used as a closing blessing at the end of worship, were the last words Paul wrote in the letter that caused him most personal pain. Misunderstood, misrepresented, his heart open and vulnerable to the Corinthians, many of whom had closed their hearts to him. And he writes this! These are not words that say “Everything in this church is fine!” Rather, they are written to remind them, and us, that it is the grace, love and communion of the Triune God that holds us together, nourishes our shared life, and guides and guards our relationships with each other.

Tuesday

2 Cor. 13.11a: “Finally brothers and sisters, rejoice! Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace.”

When we say the Grace together, it helps to look at what Paul wrote just before writing this benediction. “Rejoice” is the Christian attitude that contradicts all the other self-indulgent nonsense we get up to! Whatever the problems they (and we) have with each other, God is at work to bring reconciliation. Aim for perfection more literally means, “Mend your ways.” Paul’s prayer and hope for each of the churches shines through these two phrases, “be of one mind, live in peace.” When we close a service with the Grace, that is what we are saying, and praying, and working towards.

Wednesday

2 Cor. 12.11b: “And the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Before we get to the Benediction, which is a wish prayer, we have a promise prayer. It follows from all Paul’s urgings to sort things out that he mentions earlier in this verse. When we work at love as agape, as “indefatigable good-will”, God who is love is with us. Where we seek peace and reconciliation, the God of peace will be with us. To say the Grace to each other, then, is to acknowledge and renew our commitment to all that those words of grace, love and communion bestow on our life together. 

Thursday

2 Cor. 13.12-13: “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send their greetings.”

What is intended here is the exchange of a visible sign of fellowship, forgiveness, an open recognition that we are all guests in God’s house, entitled to be here, each of us equally honoured by our host, the Triune God of grace, love and communion. The modern practice of ‘exchanging the peace’ is our cultural version of this. It’s worth remembering that the kiss of peace lies at the heart of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The Father’s kiss is the public sign of reconciliation, love and acceptance. “All the saints” send their blessing; not those who felt like it, but all the saints, share in this practice of demonstrating the holy grace and love that infuses Holy Communion.

Friday

2 Cor. 13.14a “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.”

And so, against the background of a troubled church emerging from self-inflicted wounds of hurt and blame, we come to each of the three elements of a Christian Benediction. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor…” “By grace you are saved, through faith.” “My grace is sufficient for you.” At the heart of our own heart’s experience is the grace that loves us, found us, saved us, and keeps us. To say the Grace as we look around at each other is an act of wondering praise for the amazing grace of God in Christ. Inexhaustible grace pushes us towards greater maturity as Christ’s Body.

Saturday

2 Cor. 13.14b “May the love of God be with you all.”

God’s love for each of us doesn’t depend on us just wishing it were so for each of us. God’s love is already “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit”. John the Apostle of love went on and on about the love of God in his letter: “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God.” When we look into the faces of our brothers and sisters at the close of worship, we are wishing them, and ourselves, a deeper sense of ‘the love that drew salvation’s plan’. Together we are making a shared response that we will love God more, and love each other more, because he first loved us.

Sunday

2 Cor. 13.14c “May the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

‘Communion’, or ‘fellowship’, only capture some of Paul’s meaning. Spelled out more carefully; “Your common participation in the life and power of the Holy Spirit.”[1] Fellowship can sound a cosy word. Not in Paul’s dictionary! This is about partnership, sleeves rolled up, the whole self in and shaken all about! In other words to say the Grace to each other is to commit ourselves to working together, supporting each other, being good colleagues and dependable co-workers in the Kingdom of God.

 

[1] Murray Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, page 962. Harris has spent a lifetime in the Greek New Testament, and is a leading scholar on 2 Corinthians. I don’t usually do footnotes in TFTD, but this one is a worthy exception, to pay tribute to a man whose academic work and meticulous scholarship have always been in the service of the church and its ministries. Like many ministers, I thank God for such vocational excellence.

The Nature and Purpose of a Christian Society.

A gem discovered in the Voluntary Services Aberdeen Bookshop, for £2! I already knew about the annual Swarthmore Lectures sponsored by The Society of Friends - previous lecturers include Rufus Jones, W C Braithwaite, Elton Trueblood, Henry J Cadbury, John MacMurray, and Gerald Priestland.

I've long been an admirer of the Cambridge scholar Terrot Reaveley Glover, Baptist, classicist, essayist and author of a compact, illuminating and at times amusing small book on Paul, on some pages a preacher's godsend. It was called Paul of Tarsus.

 

T R Glover, a dyed in the wool Baptist, was invited to address the annual gathering of Quakers in the 1912 Swarthmore Lecture. These lectures are intended to expound, disseminate and showcase Quaker Principles. Glover's Preface is an explanation of why he chose to accept the invitation, and set out "The Nature and Purpose of a Christian Society."

 

He is not referring to society in general and its Christian cultural expressions. Rather his lecture is about the nature and purpose of each local meeting of Friends, and indeed each gathering of Christian believers for worship.

 

Glover was a lucid, warm and attractive writer when he wrote of Christian experience. I'll do a second post later with a few extracts once I've finished reading it - like Victoria plums on the cusp of ripeness, good writing like this should be taken in slowly enough to savour. Speed reading words written from the heart is spiritual rudeness

Singing hymns, humanness, and our lives played out in the presence of God.

I've lost count of the number of books Walter Brueggemann has written. Most of them are his particular brand of Old Testament theology, a blend of exegetical and social hermeneutics of Old Testament texts, honed in his unique process that cuts through our long established defences against the disruptiveness and subversive energy of these words from God. I have a shelf full of them, read most of them, and I probably only have about half of what he has put out there.

This book is a bit different. On the publication in 2013 of the new Presbyterian Hymnal, Glory to God, Brueggemann was involved in some of the launch events. Writing this book comes out of those experiences and his conviction that "Congregational singing, along with forgiveness and thanks, marks the church as a very different community in the context of a culture that is, for the most part, unforgiving and ungrateful." This is vintage Brueggemann, looking for the countercultural practices that bear witness to an alternative and God-given way of seeing and being in the world. 

The result is a book that takes some of the hymns from Glory to God, and expounds them as precisely the sung texts that practice awe and wonder, that remember the goodness of God, and acknowledge our own waywardness and recalcitrance to follow in the costly ways of Jesus. Such hymn singing, aids our expression of gratitude for grace, strengthens faith in God's faithfulness, and alerts our responsiveness to those occasions and opportunities in the life of discipleship when we are called to bear witness to the transformative energy of the Gospel of newness, life and flourishing.

The first four chapters are on Psalms are 104-107, praises of Israel and the church which are "definingly human when it is remembered that our humanness consists in our lives played out in the presence of God."  Taken together these Psalms evoke "praise, readiness for obedience, readiness for rescue, and thanks." These are the reasons WHY we sing. The rest of the book explores 15 hymns and expounds in considerable pastoral and exegetical detail, WHAT we sing, and what such singing does to the singer, and to the singing community. 

This is vintage Brueggemann, observant of our cultural context as Western consumers trained to see all of life as marketable, and everything of worth as money-indexed commodity. In doing so he is attentive to the text of the hymn and its rootedness both in theological tradition and in the spiritual experience of a pilgrim people who have been travelling together for centuries, from generation to generation. His interpretations, even of a hymn like "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult" is neither mawkish nor sentimental, two bogey-words for Brueggemann. His exposition of each hymn renders the poetry and theology in terms that are astringent, searching, bracing, and always but always, pointing the way to a deeper faithfulness, a truer repentance, and a rebirth of hope and daring in every reminder and rediscovery of the fidelity and steadfast love of God in Christ.

A good example of Brueggemann's hymn exegesis might help you decide if this book is for you, and worth your time. "Love Divine, all loves excelling" is Wesley at his lyrical best, and on the theme that brought him to raptures of praise: the Love of God in Christ. Each verse undergoes literary analysis by a writer who has been immersed in the Psalter all his long life. Some of Brueggemann's finest writing is on Psalms, and who can forget his framing of Psalms as texts of orientation - disorientation - reorientation; once you get it, you can't get away from it!

Take Wesley's line, 'Alpha and Omega be!' After some biblical digging around you get this:

"In Revelation's anticipatory vision God now declares in a loud voice from the throne a new governance that totally redefines the shape of reality. There is nothing before the rule of Christ; there is nothing after the rule of Christ. There is nothing other than the rule of Christ who says, "I am making all things new."

One of the most enriching qualities of Brueggemann's writing is his familiarity and facility across the whole canon of Scripture. This is Scripture interpreting Scripture, and Scriptural allusions in hymns being repristinated for those who might have forgotten how brilliantly such truth shines. His comment on 'Pray and praise Thee without ceasing': "Such prayer, we imagine, is not an endless torrent of words, but rather an unmitigated mindfulness of living always in the presence of God." That should be on a poster above every office desk - as well as every prayer desk!

Here is Brueggemann the scripture jazz pianist, and here is his riff on the word 'finish' in "Finish then Thy new creation." 

" 'Finish' is not unlike the final delicate act of completing a new building - the close finishing work that requires attention to detail and aesthetic beauty...The hymn's verb 'finish' is reminiscent of the report that God finished creation (Gen.2:1), the finish of the tabernacle as God's new dwelling place (Exod. 39:32;40:33), and Jesus' declaration on the cross, "It is finished" (John 19.30). God can and will make the new creation complete."(p.118)

Coming to the end of seven pages of reflection on Wesley's hymn, he ends as he usually does, as a scholar and pastor who cares deeply for the church and for all of us who try to live faithfully within and beyond our Christian communities: 

"The singing assemblage itself can be and sometimes is a transport into another world of 'wonder, love and praise' that invites us and permits us to redefine our lives so that fear, anxiety and responsibility are are made at best penultimate. When we are fully enveloped by "love divine all loves excelling" we may relinquish, for the sake of a different life, the destructiveness of seeking to live beyond the reach of Alpha and Omega." (p.119)

The combination of favourite hymns that could do with some unpacking, and a seasoned exegete of scripture who is also a prophetic critic of culture and our social and contemporary context, makes for a book that is by turns intriguing, inspiring, surprising and an education in what, at its best, the singing congregation can get up to!

The Works of the Lord and the Mercies of God as Hidden Clues.

Chasing something else, I came across this from the 17th Century Puritan Thomas Goodwin on looking for evidence in our lives of the love and friendship of God - he is commenting on Psalm 111.2 "Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who have pleasure in them."

 

(This, may partly explain why photography doubles as a form of contemplative and grateful seeing!)

 

"The LORD is gracious and full of compassion. This is the grand discovery of all the searching, and therein lies the glory that is the conclusion of all. As in searching into any experiments in nature, there is an infinite pleasure that accompanies such a study to them that are addicted thereunto; so to [each] that hath pleasure in the works of God, and is addicted to spy out his kindness in them, there is nothing so pleasant as the discovery of new circumstances of mercy that render his work glorious and honourable. Get, therefore, skill in his dealings with thee, and study thy friend's carriage to thee. It is the end why he raised thee up, and admitted thee into friendship with him, to show his art of love and friendship to thee; to show, in a word, how well he could love thee."

 

Thomas Goodwin. Holiness in the Heart and Life. Works Vol. 7. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863) p.213.

 

Photo from the walled Garden at Holthill Gardens near Windermere

Thought for Each Day This Week: "Prayer is the Christian's Vital Breath."

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
  Uttered, or unexpressed;
The motion of a hidden fire
  That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
  The falling of a tear;
The upward glancing of an eye
  When none but God is near.

Prayer is the simplest form of speech
  That infant lips can try;
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach
  The Majesty on high.

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
  The Christian’s native air;
His watchword at the gates of death;
  He enters rest with prayer.

The saints in prayer appear as one,
  In word, and deed, and mind;
While with the Father and the Son
  Sweet fellowship they find.

Nor prayer is made by man alone;
The Holy Spirit pleads.
And Jesus at the Father's throne,
For sinners intercedes.

O Thou, by whom we come to God,
  The Life, the Truth, the Way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod—
  Lord, teach us how to pray.

This hymn was written by a journalist who amongst other things campaigned for the abolition of slavery and against the exploitation of children chimney sweeps. Born in Scotland in 1771 in Irvine, James Montgomery was a member of the Moravian Church, became editor of The Sheffield Iris, a poet of mixed success, but also writer of some of the best-loved English hymns.

This hymn on prayer is one of the finest English hymns on prayer. Almost every line has its biblical echo; he touches on a wide range of human experiences, showing a deep understanding of the human heart; and lines of theological beauty take us deep into the places where God and the human heart meet in trust and love.

Monday

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered, or unexpressed;
The motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.

Prayer engages our whole self – body, mind, heart and soul. Indeed when Jesus spoke of the first commandment as loving the Lord our God, it was a call to such complete self-giving of all that we are. To pray is to speak our longing, to put our heart into words; but it is also to know that our deepest desires are already known by God, spoken or not. Whatever goes on deep within us, God already knows. Prayer is the movement of the heart towards God who first comes to us in grace, a flame of answering love kindled by the Holy Spirit – “we love because He first loved us.”

Tuesday

Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear;
The upward glancing of an eye when none but God is near.

Another hymn puts this as a question: “Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?” The answer is yes, sometimes. Not all prayers need words, and there are experiences in life that make words hard to find and prayer all but impossible. But then, prayer has never depended on us finding the right words, or even any words. God is nearer to our heart than we know, and his love is deeper than whatever happens to us. It’s just hard to know that at the time. At such times, “The Spirit makes intercession for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans.8.26)

Wednesday

Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try;
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.

When Jesus was overheard in prayer saying “Abba, Father”, the disciples heard Jesus using the language of intimate trust and family belonging. Christian prayer is like the conversations, requests, laughter, fears, and imaginings of a child chattering with the One who loves her most! And yet. Prayer is also music to the ears of God, whether symphonies of praise, concertos of gladness, or the virtuoso playing of the heart expressing the whole range of human emotion and experience, and all of it gathered up into the music of heaven. Prayer can be simple or sophisticated, the language of the trusting child or the full tonal range of needs played by mature human hearts.

Thursday

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, the Christian’s native air;
His watchword at the gates of death; he enters heaven with prayer.

When God created humanity he breathed life into those creatures made in God’s image, those created for loving obedience and trusting fellowship with the Creator. Prayer is the oxygen that sustains the Christian life. Another poet speaks the same thought: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth…” Prayer is the natural, native air of home. Prayer, like breathing is the vital, essential and energising source of life. And as each life comes to completion, the breath God first gave, becomes for all of us, the trustful yielding of the Christian heart to the One who first gave breath, the one who holds us within the eternal purposes of a loving Creator Redeemer: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth…”

Friday

The saints in prayer appear as one, in word, and deed, and mind;
While with the Father and the Son, sweet fellowship they find.

The phrase ‘corporate prayer’ makes shared prayer sound like a business! Even ‘prayer meeting’ sounds a bit functional. When people pray together there is an orchestration of the Spirit, what Charles Wesley called a harmony of hearts. Or as Paul wrote to a dysfunctional church; “be like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.” (Phil. 2.2) To share in prayer is to enter communion with each other and with the Triune God of love. It is in praying together that a true deepening of fellowship takes place, and loving care for each other grows, displacing all those other responses which get in the way of ‘the fellowship of believers’.

Saturday

Nor prayer is made by man alone; the Holy Spirit pleads.
And Jesus at the Father's throne, for sinners intercedes.

Romans 8.26 again. “The Spirit makes intercession for us with sighs too deep for words.” God’s Spirit is the best interpreter of our heart, and our words. But then there’s Hebrews 7.25: “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” Every time we pray, we are accompanied by the Comforter, AND our prayers are underwritten by the Ascended Saviour. Few hymns condense so much Gospel truth into the theology of our praying. By grace God is in our praying, present to us even as we pray.

Sunday

O Thou, by whom we come to God, the Life, the Truth, the Way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod—Lord, teach us how to pray.

Perhaps the most important prayer we can pray: “Lord teach us how to pray.” This is not about technique, or set rules – prayer is learned as we come to God the Father, through Jesus the Son, in the power of the Spirit. The first motion of our minds and hearts towards God, and we come under the tutelage and support of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, we come to God through Christ in whom we have experienced new life. By prayer we come to know the truth of God as the Holy Spirit teaches us. Through prayer we come to know the sustaining grace of God, and grow in the knowledge and wisdom of God, and so are able to walk in the ways of God.

Prayer, George Herbert: Something Understood.

Prayer', b y George Herbert: I've lived under the tuition of this sonnet for a very long time. I've written about it, read it in public and private, gone back to it as to a favourite painting, prayed it and memorised it. Such a beautiful cluster of images, none of them an attempted definition, each of them suggestive and evocative of scripture or the heart's longing, all of them singly and together, inadequate.

 

Which is the effect the poet intended. The mystery of prayer refuses the control and constraint of definition. Instead of saying "Prayer is...", the poet turns a kaleidoscope, a changing continuity of colour and shape, each image valid, and none of them sufficient. Mystery remains mystery, but it is the mystery of love, a relationship between the human heart and God, in which intimacy and transcendence, mercy and judgement, peace and yearning, come together by the grace that is always there before us.

 

Prayer (I)

By George Herbert

 

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,

God's breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

TFTD Aug 12-18: Blessed are the Meek - Yes, Seriously!

Monday

Matthew 5.5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The mental picture of Jesus the passive, untroubled and untroubling Teacher, with a wistful smile and a calm demeanour, pictured like a benign hippie, is a country mile from the reality of Jesus. The well-known words “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” are so one sided they obscure and distort the Jesus of the New Testament. Yet Jesus says of himself, “For I am gentle and lowly in heart.” Yes, but that just means somewhere along the line what Jesus said is lost in translation! Meekness is not weakness, it is strength harnessed to purpose, the steel that supports each choice a person makes in favour of obedience to God, no matter what.

Tuesday

Matthew 11.29 “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

In an abrasive and aggressively self-promoting culture, meekness is unlikely to be the smart way ahead. Or so we’ve been conditioned to think. The word Jesus used for meek has inner resilience within its meaning. Oxen yoked to the plough demonstrate meekness, that is, strength harnessed to purpose, and power under control. We come to Jesus for rest, he gives us a yoke! But that implement guides and controls, enabling the obedience that comes from learning from the One who promises rest instead of weariness, and the yoke of learning in place of crushing burden.

Wednesday

Matthew 21.5 “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, meek and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

The triumphal entry was a different kind of triumph. Not an all-powerful ruler, leading a procession of victorious soldiers followed by long lines of conquered prisoners. He came gentle, meek, humble – three words used to translate the original Greek adjective. The triumph is not in the conquest, but in the purpose of his coming as the one called Jesus, “because he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus’ coming, sets in motion the triumph of God, the victory of the Crucified – “Ride on, ride on, in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die…” Meekness and strength harnessed to purpose, redemptive purpose.

Thursday

Ephesians 4.2 “Be completely humble and meek, be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

This is Paul’s definition of what meekness looks and feels like. It means putting up with people, being patient with their problems, and not giving up on them even if they are the problem! This pastoral imperative comes after Paul’s urging them, “to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Meekness is Christ-like, and we are called to be those who live in Christ, and in whom Christ lives. Many a church squabble breaks out because there is a deficit of meekness, a refusal to bear with one another in love. In short, our failure to take the meekness of Christ to heart.

Friday

James 3.13 “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the meekness that comes from wisdom.”

We learn from experience. When someone does something stupid, wrong or unworthy of them, we say, “You should have known better.” Actually, we don’t always learn from experience, unless we become reflective practitioners of our own discipleship. Wisdom is accumulated from lessons learned in meekness. You can’t be a know-all and a disciple of Jesus. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me” is the command and demand that follows the invitation, “Come to me all who are burdened.”

Saturday

Colossians 3.12 “Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.” 

You can tell a lot about a word’s meaning by the company it keeps. And Paul’s metaphor of being well dressed, clothed with Christ, describes in colourful terms the Christian as a non-fashion-conscious follower of Jesus. The clothes we wear make a statement, a visible message about who we are, the colours we prefer, even the impression we want to make. To be clothed in the meekness of Christ is to have taken his yoke, learned from him, and found rest. That’s identity statement enough.

Sunday

Matthew 5.5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The meek are blessed because they have come to Jesus. They have meekly taken his yoke and learned of him as commanded. The result is that they shall inherit the earth. What on earth does that mean though, really? The meek are the powerless, those who don’t make claims of their own self-importance; those who can look on the world without feeling they have to grab and possess as much of it as they can. They shall inherit the earth, not the material stuff of influence, but the reward of God who satisfies the hungry and thirsty soul, comforts the mournful, calls peacemakers his children, and opens a world of blessing to those who seek first God’s Kingdom.

Going to the Garden Centre - An Occasional Spiritual Practice?

Sometime in the early 1970s garden centres began to grow. They became increasingly common as places to go, first for the obvious reasons of gardening equipment, seeds and plants, but then came the cafe, and the restaurant, and the food hall. The places grew in size, but so did their social importance. The garden centre became the place to meet for coffee, to have a meal, to spend time (and money) with family and friends.

Where I live, there are two signature Garden Centres within 15 minutes by car, with two more less than half an hour away. They are social hubs where folk meet up, bus trips arrive on the holiday trail, elderly parents are taken for lunch and a look around, retired folk build them in as a weekly rendezvous point. They employ significant numbers of casual and permanent workers, they sell everything from garden essentials to cosmetics, from delicatessen foods to scented candles, garden furniture to walking boots. And that's just the two nearest us!

I wrote earlier about Garden Centres as places of social intersection, places where beauty can be looked at whether or not we take home a rose, hibiscus, or tray of pansies.

You can catch up with it here,

Thinking some more about this since then, one other thought seems worth mentioning. The 'Garden Centre' is an important neutral space where conversations can take place, emotional support and encouragement can be spoken, and sometimes needs no words, just the tea or coffee, the 'fine piece', and a wander around a safe place.

The other day while walking around with a friend, in the covered outdoor area, I was aware we were walking in a place of visual therapy. There were the sparrows chirping in their own pub-level of shouted conversation; there was a robin staying near enough to be noticed, and distant enough to prevent those humans taking any liberties. There was bright sunlight highlighting the colours of pot plants, outdoor plants, mature acers in huge pots, roses and fuschia, geranium and hibiscus, summer cyclamen and alpines set in gravel - to mix a metaphor, a symphony of colour. He went his way, I went my way. We met, talked briefly and walked some more. 

I've come to realise that sometimes it's the physical environment that enables those conversations when important words are said; and creates a fertile place for those conversations that require few words, if any. The beauty is what needs to be heard (that misapplied metaphor again), and the peace of a garden (centre) is a different kind of aromatherapy, which lowers those defences we've become used to holding up to obscure what we might be embarrassed for others to see.

Of course much of this happens and we aren't even aware of it. Many come and go, time after time, and may not even wonder why it is they keep coming. And, of course, many will come unreflectively and simply enjoy the meal, browsing the plants, or the in the food-hall, buying whatever meets the current requirements - for the garden or the dinner table. And why not, for many folk, blessings don't have to be spelled out to be enjoyed!

But friendship and conversations, beauty and safe space, coffee and time shared with a trusted other - these some of our inner life's important support systems, and garden centres facilitate these for millions of people living in a culture where such social exchange and mutual recognition are often hard to find. Or so it seems to me.

As a Christian, I'll take whatever comes as blessing at its face value. Not all spiritual practices have to look spiritual, or feel devotional. God has more ways to bless the human heart than we can begin to think of, and much of the time we enjoy them with no thought of how this happiness of the heart happened to to us! And perhaps, as one who is a recipients of a Love Eternal in its scope and reach, I must guard against becoming so used to God's surrounding goodness, that all is taken for granted. A garden centre is no return to Eden, but it is a good reminder of the Creator, and of ourselves as dependent creatures, and of a God-loved world eloquent in beauty, fragile and at times broken.

Which line of thought always brings me back to Julian of Norwich's parable of the hazelnut - 

“And in this [sight], he showed a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand as it seemed to me, and it was as round as any ball. I looked therein with the eye of my understanding, and thought: “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus: “It is all that is made.” I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed to me it might suddenly have fallen into nought for its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasteth and ever shall, because God loveth it. And so hath all things being by the love of God.”         

And if a garden centre can evoke that kind of faith and faithfulness, then maybe, just maybe, going to the garden centre is a kind of spiritual discipline!