Living Wittily

Autumn, Compost and Living Towards God

Autumn is one of the hinge seasons of the year, a turning from summer to winter through the slow process of maturation, fruitfulness and letting go. As a boy I helped my dad run a market garden sized greenhouse, growing and selling pot plants, many of them grown from cuttings. The compost was home made, a combination of soil (often collected from molehills in the spring), river gravel from the Nith, peat and finally leaf mould.

The leaf mould came from one of the woods within walking distance of our cottage, that layer of rich, rotted humus accumulated over years and years of shed leaves, which felt like the richest pile carpet you ever walked on. With a hessian sack, a small riddle and a pair of old leather gloves I would happily go and collect a bag of leaf mould, riddled under the branches of beech, lime, oak, sycamore, elm and rowan trees. The smell of rich composting vegetation still creates for me images of a boyhood spent in fields, woods, by riverbanks, hills and small lochans.

This time of year is an evocative month or two when, despite all the changes to the countryside, I walk in a state of moderate wonder-looking, or in the words of John's Gospel, 'beholding', 'gazing' and 'contemplating', the range of colours in trees on the turn. Leaf mould is a benevolent legacy, a gift from previous years, a store that nourishes and gives life beyond its own life. Each autumn, another downpayment to the fertility of our earth and its soil. One of the lessons learned in boyhood, but not realised till later life is the slowness and hiddenness of those layers of leaves, gently decaying into a medium for new life.

In my mind perhaps a similar process takes place. Ideas that years ago seemed so gripping, real and certain, mellow into a maturing compost of thought, memory, experience and a restfulness no longer needing such gripping certainty, and content with a wondering thoughtfulness I take to be wisdom. Not the resignation of 'all passion spent', as if nothing mattered much any more. Rather, an intellectual steadiness and spiritual humility that looks on the world not as a competition to be won, but a game to be played, a play to be performed, a score to be improvised using as much of ourselves and our gifts and our hard learned skills as we can bring to it.

It's over half a century since I went for sacks of leaf mould. I trust that over those intervening decades my thoughts and feelings, ideas and emotions, decisions and choices, words and silences, tears and actions, have settled like falling leaves onto the compost that is my life. And year on year that topsoil supplemented by the rich materials of a life lived so far as grace and love allow, towards God.

Give us this day our daily bread - Aye, But Who Is Us?

Lots of Harvest Services going on today. Following on yesterday's thoughts on the Lord's prayer and daily bread and food banks, here's Walter Brueggemann on bread as both life essential and telling metaphor of a human and humane life.  The metaphor of banquet and bounteous table, he argues, is both spiritual motive and ethical imperative, because the sharing of food is a transformative social action in human relations.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies"...an engagement of the metaphor of food is fundamental. There is no gesture as expressive of utter wellbeing as lavish food. Thus the feeding miracles of Jesus and the Eucharist are gestures of a new orientation, which comes as a surprising gift and ends all diets of tears."  (Praying the Palms, page 29)

As Nikoli Berdyaev pointed out, "Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbour is a spiritual one". Now that struck a chord, not least in this harvest season with all the fields either yellow or already cropped, and many of them decorated with those large straw swiss rolls. "Give us this day our daily bread...." That secon person plural is itself a spiritual and ethical imperative - who is us, if you'll excuse the grammar? That urgent question needs an answer. In my concerned but trusting prayer to my heavenly Father who do I mean when I say "Give us...."?

As I've been pondering this question and studying the Lord's Prayer, and wondering about that loaf stuck right in the middle of this cry for the Kingdom, I nearly did my back in lifting Hans Dieter Betz's commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, down from the shelf and on to my desk - I exaggerate. But this massive commentary, 768 pages of double column exegesis, is the epitome of historical critical scholarship, and not the most likely place to find a determined rooting of the biblical text in the daily disciplines of following Jesus, you might think. You'd be wrong though.

Here is Betz at his best applying the text to the practicalities of following Jesus with the spiritual urgency and ethical demand of a preacher pastor:

"The bread becomes "ours" only through the collaboration of many people who in fact "give us" our portion. This fact is most vividly demonstrated by the ritual act of breaking the bread and handing the pieces around the table. If this giving depends so much on human givers, one is always uncertain whether they will in fact give it or deny it. If hunger occurs the reason is most often that those who are expected to "give" refuse to give. The giving, therefore, depends not only  on the production of the bread but also on the willingness to share it. Given the experience of human stinginess, one has every reason not to take human generosity for granted. God is therefore also asked to see to it that human providers are disposed in their hearts and minds to share what has been produced."

Just as important is the qualifying adjective daily. "The basic human needs are indeed the same day after day. ...Basic human needs are not timeless, and they are not simply a matter of the future. What counts is what happens today. ...As everyone who has faced starvation knows, it is "today" that matters, and neither past nor future can compensate for it."

So Give us this day our daily bread becomes a petition for justice and our own involvement in seeking the Kingdom of God in which daily bread is made available for all people. As Karl Barth noted, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." Makes me wonder why Harvest Services aren't politically charged, economically challenging and ethical change oriented.

Christian support for Food Banks is rooted in this prayer line, "GIve us this day our daily bread"as we seek to ensure folk have their daily bread , by embodying the breaking and sharing of bread.

Christian opposition to Food Banks is rooted in this same prayer line, "Give us this day our daily bread", as we seek to ensure folk have their daily bread by challenging and contradicting the mechanisms of a world where the hunger of millions is the accepted by-product of global consumer capitalism, or economic global imperialism. That of course is another, more complicated and contested story. Who said the Lord's Prayer would make life simpler?

 

"This love encompasses the whole world of creatures...."

On the whole path from the beginning of creation

by way of reconciliation to the eschatological future of salvation,

the march of the divine economy of salvation

is an expression of the incursion of the eternal future of God

to the salvation of creatures

and thus a manifestation of the divine love.

 

Here is the eternal basis of God's coming forth

from he immanence of the divine life as the economic Trinity

and of the incorporation of creatures, mediated thereby,

into the unity of the trinitarian life.

 

The distinction and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity

constitute the heartbeat of the divine love,

and with a single such heartbeat

this love encompasses the whole world of creatures.

 

Over the years I've come to notice the last few sentences with which an author chooses to end a book. Especially a magnum opus. These are the last sentences of volume 3 of Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology. They have a liturgical rhythm to them once you allow for the translation from German, and arrrange them for slowed down reading. In which case I read these and can say, Amen. 

The photo was taken in the walled garden at Drumoak Castle, and seems to hint at the love that encompasses the whole world of creatures!

God, Cognitive Humility and Being Able to say "Wonderful!"

"Now. Which way is Africa? Think it might be south. Time to look out the passport, pack and check in."

There was a time when the miracle of migrating swallows would have made us wonder, and maybe even restore our fading capacity for wonder. But what the heck, what's so remarkable about a built in sat-nav? There's one in most cars nowadays.

Precisely. We've got so used to our own cleverness, we hardly register the wonders around us. I've been wondering about that word - wonder. It ranges from curiosity to awe, and describes mental processes that are include slowed down thought, inner questioning and that head-shaking humility that gladly confesses something is, well, wonderful.

So when I saw this swallow on the weather vane at Pitmedden House, around 8.30 on a late summer evening, it was a gently religious moment. "Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow builds her nest near your altar...", the Psalmist pointed out to God, not that God was unaware of this. Ever since my childhood on Ayrshire farms I've admired these wee birds - their speed and agility in flight, the craftsmanship of a nest made of hundreds of mud balls, held together by woven straw and lined with feathers, built into eaves, and with an entry door the size of a 10p piece. And it flies to southern Africa, 200 miles per day, at speeds up to 35mph. Makes you wonder - well, doesn't it.

We begin to lose an intellectual naivete essential to the health of our souls when we are no longer easily moved to wonder, when the surfeit of novelty and stimulus from elsewhere dulls the ears and blurs the eyes, and when our inner selves become so self-absorbed that the selfie matters more than the landscape, and my image displaces my substance. The irony of the photo lies, perhaps, in the fact that it's we postmodern sophisticates who are unsure of who we are, where we are, and where we are going, not the swallow - she knows, she just knows. In that sense, as a follower of Jesus, this photo gives food for thought, and I get the Psalmist's wise naivete - "even the swallow builds her nest, feels at home, takes up residence, near your altar."

"Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God." (Heschel) And in the end, worship leads to wonder just as wonder leads to worship. Charles Wesley loved the word wonder, it occurs all over the place in his hymns. Perhaps the most famous speaks of the fulfilment of that cognitive humility mentioned earlier, when in the beatific vision we are "lost in wonder, love and praise."

 

 

Janet Soskice on Unrealistic Spirituality

Janet Soskice is a philosophical theologian who gets to the point quickly, and has a healthy down to earth approach to heavenly discourse about spirituality, and devotional life, and has little patience with those who recommend contemplative reflection as a higher form of spiritual activity. She can even make theological reflection on overdone spirituality funny Here's a paragraph from  an essay on "Love and Attention", from her book The Kindness of God.

"There are many examples of theologians and poets who have praised the daily round and trivial task. But for the most part such things as attending to a squalling baby are seen as honourable duties, consonant with God's purposes, rather than spiritually edifying in themselves. Most Christian women, for instance, think that what they do around the home is worthy in God's service - they do not think, they have not been taught to think, of it as spiritual. And here monastic figures who, apparently found Go0d over the washing up or sweeping the floor will be called to mind,; but these are not really the point, since servile tasks were recommended because they left the mind free to contemplate. What we want is a monk who finds God while cooking a meal with one child clamouring for a drink, another who needs a bottom wiped, and a baby throwing up over his shoulder." (22-3)

You can read more about Professor Soskice in a Guardian article here.

And by the way her book Sisters of Sinai is education as entertainment as she traces the story of two Scottish women self taught in several Semitic languages, who made fabulous finds of Gospel manuscripts at St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai.

The Limitations of Reading So-called Spiritual Writing.

The poem below, Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, never fails to recalibrate my compass, adjust my altimeter, or guage my inner barometer. And at this time of the year there are large skeins of migrating geese flying over Aberdeenshire, so plenty of reminders of the urgency, movement and impulsion of life.

I've become increasingly unconvinced by that category of reading called 'spiritual reading', if by that is meant reading that is overtly, designedly and determinedly devotional, or tending towards affecting the affections by self consciously spiritual writing. More and more I am moved by writing that is authentic, alert to human longing and the elusiveness of joy to those who set out to capture it. Oh yes, I still read Julian of Norwich, George Herbert, The Cloud of Unknowing, the Hymns of Charles Wesley -  but also the poems of Emily Dickinson, R S Thomas, Denise Levertov, Elizabeth Jennings, Seamus Heaney, and yes, Mary Oliver. And though I've read Jonathan Edwards Charity and its Fruits regularly for some of the most searching sermons on Paul's theology of the transforming love divine, and try to go swimming in Karl Barth without wearing armbands, and have recently added Augustine's Homilies on the Gospel and First Letter of John to my personal canon of writing worth reading slowly, I'm aware of the limitations of even such deep water theological writing.

Poetry more than makes up the shortfall of spiritual writing. More often poetry exposes the tendency to religious cliche, reveals the lazy unreality of sentiment run to seed, confronts the religious sins of world evasiveness, challenges contentment with banalityu or manufactured guilt, and most of all requires ruthless honesty in facing up to our own capacity for self-delusion, defensiveness and giving the hard truth a body swerve. 

That's some of why I love poetry.

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.

Edith Stein, Abraham Heschel, Philosophy, and God.

While reading Abraham Heschel and doing some research on the reception of his thought today I came across a forthcoming book that compares Heschel's doctrine of divine pathos with Edith Stein's philosophy of empathy. Edith Stein was brought up in a Jewish family and converted to Catholicism after a period of overt intellectual atheism. One of her theological and philosophical gifts was a capacity to refuse the temptation of intellectual polarity. The important truths of existence are seldom either or, but more often both and. She was a spiritual ecumenist, and never lost her gratitude for, her respect for, or her supportive interest in, the Jewish people and the Faith out of which Christianity was born. She was a student of Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, and so gifted as a philosopher she was Husserl's assistant for a couple of years. The relationship between philosophy and theology was one where she was called to be a bridge between two intellectual continents, a conduit through whom philosophical theology and theological metaphysics passed creating in her a spirituality and devotional depth that remains a rich reservoir of faith.

Following her conversion she taught for a while, before becoming a Carmelite nun in 1932, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She died in Auschwitz in 1942, ironically as a Catholic nun comforting distressed Jewish children. In 1998 she was canonised by her Church.

I'm currently reading a selection of her writings, and am left wondering why it has taken so long to get to someone whose grasp of the eternally significant, and of the connection between contemplatiuve prayer and redemptive activity in the world was well ahead of its time. At the time of her canonisation Pope John Paul II described her:

"Saint Theresa Benedicta of the Cross says to us all: Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love that lacks truth. One without the other becomes a destructive lie....May her witness constantly strengthen  the bridge of mutual understanding between Jews and Christians."

 Part of the excitement of the rich and varied Christian tradition, is that it is really a river system of tributaries flowing together into the mighty river which reaches the ocean in a rich confluence from diverse sources, which sprung in hills and mountains, merging and separating then coming together in a flowing triumph of life-giving water. That's why to discover new thinkers and new thought, is no threat to the integrity of my tributary, but is a contribution to the onward flow of wisdom, understanding, prayer and worship of the God who is beyond our circumscribing habits of thought, and whose wine of glory and gladness can't be contained in the old wineskins of our intellectual and spiritual comfort zones.

The Prayer of Grateful Longing

Sometimes it just works.

I took this photo in Amsterdam, the same day I saw Van Gogh's Butterflies and Poppies.

Both capture the fragility and complexity of beauty, and life.

Theological reflection seems called for but perhaps contemplation, enjoyment and wonder are themselves forms of theologically productive attention, inviting thought to become prayer of grateful longing.

 

Christian Sacrifice and Limited Liability.

The things we talk about at the breakfast table. Had breakfast with some colleagues yesterday and the conversation moved to what it means to make sacrifices for the things we think are important. Eventually we came up against one of the harder to resolve questions about Christian devotion. When  we offer ourselves to God in service, or when we serve others in the name of God and as servants of Christ in the power of the Spirit, what do we actually, and really mean, when we use the word "all"? I've thought about that off and on since yesterday.

"All to Jesus, I surrender, All to Him I freely give...." Really? Truly? Or is the word "all" a rhetorical device to express intention, but knowing that what we offer is an unattainable ideal, an exaggerated sense of our capacity to love without reserve and give without holding back?

When Havergal wrote her hymn "Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee", she of course included the couplet "Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withold". Are we sure we mean that when we sing it? Or are we assuming a limited liability, or at least a limited generosity, because to give it all would be impossibly self denying and careless of personal possession? One of the first critics of that hymn asked the question, "But what if there are children to feed and clothe?"

"It's all about you Jesus, it's not about me". No, not much! Isn't it nearer the truth that every step off the path of faithful following after Christ, is not about you Jesus, but all about me? And if we really were more self-aware of what we pray for, long for, work our hardest for, what is that all about, and who is it all about?

OK. Enough subversion for now. When Paul urges his readers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice as reasonable worship, it was always ever only going to be possible "by the mercies of God". The paradox is that I can only take up the cross and follow Christ, in and by the strength of Christ. Self giving love is only reasonable if the love of God is poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit.

Only if I am a new creation can I become a minister of reconciliation rather than a servant of self interest and prolonged, pervasive selfishness.

Only if I recognise that I need to learn stuff, will I acknowledge my burdens and wearinness and come unto Him, take on His yoke, and learn of Him.

Then, and only then will I know what I mean and intend by that word "all", when I learn of the One who "reconciles all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of the cross", and so am given permission to blurt out that word "all", in the exaggerated devotion of the consciously forgiven, unconditionally loved and joyfully liberated. And yes I'll struggle and fail repeatedly, in delivering the full content of that word "all".  But the generous, outrageous, unreasonable love of God will go on working and enabling that continuous presenting of my whole self as a living sacrifice, which is my reasonable worship - and all because of the mercies of God. For which, thank God.

The photo was taken in Glen Dye. The image of the lamb lies at the centre of Christian theological reflection on sacrifice, Agnus Dei - Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world....worthy is the Lamb....

When prayer feels like being in a half nelson!

This Sunday coming I have the opportunity to preach in our church on that mysterious and scary encounter in Genesis between Jacob and the angel of the Lord, or was it God? It's one of those incidents that makes no sense by itself. It has to be fitted into the story of a dysfunctional family where jealousy, cheating, deceit, possessive love, emotional manipulation, violence and just about every other act and attitude corrosive of good relationships between relations, has wrecked any basis for trust.

The sermon will be part of a series about struggles, one of those inoccuous words that hides a multitude of uncertainties and unpredictable tight corners on the journey we make towards God. Whatever this story means, it isn't a story of bland reassurance or blind faith. God is moved by neither.

So. We'll see! My mother used to say that as a way of not disappointing us with a straight 'No!' I have a feeling this story isn't about how to live the voctorious life, but, we'll see!

The painting by Gaugin, "Vision of the Sermon" is one of my favourite expressions of biblical art. A large print hangs above my desk, a daily reminder of the struggle and cost of living faithfully, and of the God who engages with our humanity with stern demanding compassion, severe gentle mercy and fierce creative love, bearing with our contradictions and urging us towards every new day.