Living Wittily

Haiku, Isaiah, and cultural fatigue syndrome.

Preaching this Sunday on Isaiah 40 and on the theme of weariness. I often explore Scripture text by reframing its themes into the disciplined focus of Haiku. Sometimes it works better than others - but most times it allows a serious playfulness, and invites an alternative approach to exegesis - contemplative exegesis. The three Haiku below acknowledge the soul fatigue and body weariness we often experience in the stampede of the Gadarene swine that we call daily living, in a culture built on an unquestioned assumption of constant economic growth and now facing the realities of an eaually unqestioning recession.

Isaiah 40 is a text for a culture like ours, which bought into the worship of finance and lost heavily when it's god began to dissolve by acid of its own making - a culture that now needs to find a less exhausting deity, a different liturgy and a new vocation as stewards of a fragile creation. One way Christian's witness to the Gospel in such a culture, is by a life less driven by acquisitive competition, and more impelled by agapaic generosity. But that will mean Christians like me learning to see the world differently, because from the heightened perspective and with the precision sighting of the eagle. But such a radically different worldview only comes when we wait, and are ourselves upborne by strength beyond our own, by the one Isaiah describes with defiant confidence, as the Creator and Redeemer.

Three Haiku on Isaiah 40. 29-31

Unable to run,

weariness weighs down the soul

unwilling to wait.

...

To walk and not faint;

yet the body has limits

we cannot transcend.

...

Borne on eagles wings,

resurgent strength uplifts me,

changing my worldview.

Two Haiku: Looking at the Sea from Crail Harbour

Two Haiku: Looking at the Sea from Crail Harbour

I

Sea, sky, stippled light,
faint pencil-line horizon,
fading into haze.

II

Surface sunlight, gleams
like hammer-beaten silver
on liquid landscape.

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

 

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

 

Invading Spirit,

Gatecrash our solemnity

With holy fervour.

The Church that’s drinking

Intoxicating Spirit,

Never lost for words.

 

Rushing mighty wind,

hurricane force holiness,

mission impelled church.

 

Searing tongues of flame,

“Inextinguishable blaze”,

purify our hearts.

 

Speak in other tongues,

Of love, of peace, of pardon,

People reconciled.

 

     Tower of Babel,

    Communication breakdown,
    New hermeneutic.

 

Pentecostal Gift,

As Given, Giving, Giver,

“The Go-Between God”.

                                                       Jim Gordon

Scottish Weather Forecast in Haiku

Dreich heavy drizzle
insinuates, and slowly
seeps through your Berghaus.

Raindrops in trillions,
the same amount down the drain
bailed out RBS.

Scottish May Forecast:
mist, mizzle, miserable,
wind driven soggy.

J.W. Turner, Haiku and a Walk by the Firth of Clyde

Yesterday was a beautiful day. We enjoyed the hospitality of Ardarden Walled Garden Tearoom, and then went further down and walked along the Firth of Clyde for a while. The hazy Spring sunshine, crisply cold with enough of a breeze to need the thick fleece, and the play of light on water and mist, softened all the definitions of the further away scenery. The result was magical. Tried to capture some of the beauty and mystery in a few Haiku - but it's a bit like trying to describe a Turner seascape - using only one half of a keyboard! No substitute for seeing it. Going to have a special day in Edinburgh soon to see the new Turner and Italy Exhibition. In preparation I'm going to read some John Ruskin whose prose is as luminously vague and suggestively beautiful to read as the best of Turner's work (which he championed) is to behold.

Walking by the Firth of Clyde

Eye-watering light

forms colour, shape and shadow;

misty, mystic Clyde.

.....

Yellow, white, ecru;

watercolour masterpiece,

nature paints Turner.

.....

Horizonless view,

palimpsest of filtered rays,

coalesce in gold.

.....

In cold light of March,

promised warmth behind the haze,

nature's optimism.

.....

Opaque crystal glass

charged with amber liquid.

God toasts early Spring.

Manchester, Obama celebrations, Pre-Raphaelites and Bookshop dissonance......

Just returned from my say cheerio to Sean trip to Manchester. Turned out to have all the most important ingredients in abundance.

Met with Catherine (married to Sean), Sophia and Lucy ( two delightful daughters) and so made three new friends. They are a family skilled in welcome, and where hospitality includes inducting the guest into the delights of CBBC. Then there was the bonfire and fireworks party (actually a mini street party chez Winter) doubling up as both Guy Fawkes commemoration and Obama celebration, (complete with pre-printed Obama badges universally distributed to all attendees by Sophia) and sustained through the cold by Sean's gourmet pumpkin soup and piles of rolls and sausages, apples and tangerines.

Good conversations with Sean and others about the next stages of life, the logistics and the plans, the new job and the new country. All very exciting, only tinged with the (slightly selfish) sadness that distance might be a factor in future opportunities to sit, talk and enjoy.

Had a varied cultural day on Thursday on which I'll post later. Just to say I went to the Holman Hunt and Pre-Raphaelite exhibition and the Manchester City Gallery and saw several versions of Hunt's 'The Light of the World.' I also saw paintings I hadn't known about, and a couple I did and was so pleased to see - not least 'The Scapegoat', a painting of powerful imaginative pathos.

Part of the day was a visit to the John Rylands Library. As I walked in I thought of F F Bruce, that great Scottish Evangelical NT scholar closely associated with Manchester and the John Rylands Library. Bruce did so much to erode the bulwarks of academic suspicion that all but excluded evangelicals from the higher echelons of academia. Some time it will be important to properly assess the influence of people like Bruce in redeeming evangelical scholarship from its own defensiveness. And the John Rylands building! What a masterpiece of Gothic showing off! But my main mission was to see Papyrus 457, that tiny fragment of the earliest part of the NT we have - itself a work of art, painstaking strokes of ink painting on papyrus, words about the Word. Just realised that works as Haiku.

Painstaking strokes of
ink, painting on papyrus,
words about the Word.

As a piece of spoil-sport reality crashing in on such cultural peregrinations, I also found Wesley Owen Bookshop and the Catholic Truth Society Bookshop just round the corner. I, the patron saint of impulse book buyers and incorporating those who will buy a book to mark any occasion that serves as excuse, bought nothing in either of them. They are two examples of what happens when bookshops stock only what is theologically congenial to the dominant clientele. I am left wondering what the underlying message is when a shop only sells what certain sales managers think is congruent with the true gospel message, as they see it, from their perspective, as represented by their company / branch of the church, over and against those who, when it comes to key essentials, are, by and large, more or less, wrong!

In one I could buy Banner of Truth and in the other Ave Maria Press; I could have Raymond Brown on Hebrews in one, or Raymond Brown on John in the other - the first was a Baptist minister, beloved expositor and Principal of Spurgeon's College, the second a Jesuit NT Scholar who was a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Both shops had music playing,  - one a gently insistent Benedictine chant, the other was a hymn compilation that happened to be playing Amazing Grace - and as I listened to Newton's hymn, I smiled at the subversive activity of the Holy Spirit - the Benedictine chant had been playing in Wesley Owen bookshop, and 'Amazing Grace' in the CTS, - perhaps a gesture of impatience from the One who urges the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.   

Time spent in the MLK Library was mainly given over to reading a particular book I want to finish, and burrowing in unfamiliar journals like a manic truffle hunter. Came away with several heavily annotated slips of scrap paper with references to articles, books to go looking for and various other fragments of data that, like the jars of screws, nuts, ball beairings, clips, clamps and nails in my father's shed, are captured and kept because 'they might come in handy some time'.

Tomorrow I preach in my own church in Paisley - Remembrance Sunday. And Isaiah 25 which begins with a hymn about a dangerous world, and the acts of God that 'silence the song of the ruthless'. In Congo and Darfur, in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Gaza and Israel, in the US and the UK, the song of the ruthless has drowned out the cries of complaint for long enough.

Watch and pray!

 My worry about having three watches has evaporated. My Skagen stainless steel watch of three years is indeed seriously indisposed. Second opinion led to regretful head-shaking, shrugged shoulders and the consoling comment, 'Ye've juist been unlucky, pal'. The cost of repair, postage and its out of guarantee status means it's consigned to that timeless resting place for overwrought watches. But my old one (the 36 year old Rotary, is still chugging on) - how many people reach my age with a 21st birthday present that still works, eh? And how many congregations have silently praised God for the faithful nagging of a watch face reminding the preacher to be merciful? And I'm told it could be fitted with a new glass and have its face cleaned without me having to trouble the mortgage lenders, much.

Meantime here's a Skagen watch Haiku and a Rotary watch Haiku, and a wisdom type Haiku! Not a reflection on either make - more the disappointment of the new, the comfort of the old and an autumny thought! 

Slim, sleek, steel time-piece,
transient chronometer,
discontinued time.

Old, scratched, over-wound,
decades-old familiar face,
keeping time, again.

Skagen? Rotary?
Neither lengthens life nor years;
best to watch...and pray!

marking, grading and handling other's work with care.

That time of the year when all the work has to be marked, graded, collated, data accurately recorded, scripts sent to Externals, paperwork generated for a years coursework. Important to remember that these exam scripts and projects, Journals and essays, represent hours and hours of work, hard pushed effort to meet looming deadlines, so no shortage of anxiety and hopefulness. Such work and costly labour, so much read and written, revised and submitted -  All of which prompts the following Haiku (Typepad's new software does daft things with indents, font size and stuff - I'll practice)

Advice for Anxious Students
Marking and grading-
wood or straw, gold or silver?
Do good works- and hope.

Ideal Essays 1
Write a good essay-
well wrought words capture ideas
in structured syntax.

Ideal Essays 2
Clear intro, conclude,
make sense in the middle, plus
Bibliography

Motto for Markers
Judge coursework with care -
assume honest long labour,
and assess intent.

Beatitude for Students
Blessed are those who
read the question carefully
and answer it well.

Beatitude for Markers
Blessed are those who
make allowance for effort -
but not for short change.

Haiku NT Introduction - Final Call

The Haiku New Testament Introduction is two thirds complete - that is, 18 books of the NT have been Haiku'd! As Catriona will be relieved to note, my NT has returned to being a 27 book canon.

The nine that are still to be rendered into Haiku are:- I Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude.

Below is my own contribution - on I John. I have immersed myself in this short letter over the years, because of the profundity and possibility of its theology, because of its importance in the formation of Christian character, because of its importance in the spirituality and theology of John and Charles Wesley, and because it has been treated by some of the best commentaries on my shelves. Robert Law's Tests of Life, a hundred years on is still a beautifully written theological reflection to be reckoned with, and from the pen of a Scottish scholar greatly admired by James Denney - nuff said; John Stott's Tyndale NT Commentary, still in my view his best NT Commentary; Howard Marshall has never written a better commentary for preachers than his volume in the NICNT; Raymond Brown's massive Anchor Bible is much too detailed, and posits a convoluted history of the Johannine community, but I've still spent hours fascinated by eight hundred pages of lexical, grammatical, historical, textual, social, rhetorical, theological, spiritual comment on this short occasional letter to a wee community under a bit of pressure.

1 John

Walk in light and love!

Holy love will cast out fear

from hearts made perfect.

Jim Gordon

Andy Jones was beginning to develop a dependency on this project so some of you others help him out by distilling the essence of the remaining NT books to 5x7x5 Haiku form. Hope to have the whole NT available for Christmas. Some have been done more than once so an editorial decision will be made as to which is accepted into the haiku canon. I may then publish the others as non-canoncial literature, but important alternative perspectives!

It will be the shortest, most accessible, NT Introduction available, a kind of biblical studies concentrate - probably not sufficient for exam purposes, but with allowances for the Scottish traits of self-deprecation, and understated achievement, some of them are nae bad! 

The simple pleasures of big learned books!

As promised here are some Haiku verses I wrote to celebrate the beautiful, critical commentaries publishes as the Hermeneia series. They are also a tribute to Sean Winter who shares my enthusiasm for the aesthetics of book production, who like me gloats without conscience in the visual and tactile pleasure of handling and reading a beautiful book in which the knowledge it contains and the form that contains it are equally important. And near the end a three line tribute to a three volume masterpiece, Luz on Matthew.

Hermeneia  Haiku

Hermeneia, is

An ancient Greek speaking word

For hermeneutics.

.

Hermeneutics, the

Modern term for biblical

Interpretation.

.

Sumptuous volumes,

Book-buying extravagance

So hard to resist.

.

A thing of beauty,

Aesthetics and scholarship

A joy forever.

.

Luz’ magnum opus,

Winter’s desideratum

Matthean triptych.

.

Haiku PS

.

Lesser mortals ask

‘What is wirkungsgeschichte?’

Is it important?