three hares

Sermon: Sherlock & Gift

2012-01-23T15:34:00.005Z

I confess with some embarrassment that I am a late convert to Sherlock. For those of you even less with it that I am, Sherlock is the name for the recently revitalized Sherlock Holmes BBC series which reworks Conan Doyles's hero into a C21 London format.

One of the main engines of the series is the frisson of unrequited love: John Watson is struck with awe and wonder for his friend Sherlock (all first names here) and John is ever concerned for Sherlock’s welfare. Sherlock though continues to process case after case, with all the emotional intelligence of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, oblivious to John's affections or indeed the interest of Molly Hooper, a plain Jane forensic scientist.

Sherlock's intellectual powers place him far above other mortals enabling him to see through the schemes of his enemies, but this same gift unwittingly separates him from human company too.

(Spoiler alert) Last week's episode, the final in the series, saw Sherlock facing his nemesis Moriaty with Sherlock unwittingly falling into a trap of his own creation. Moriarty succeeds in making Sherlock alienate public opinion by his arrogance, and persuades the police that Sherlock himself has all along been the mastermind behind the crimes he has apparently so miraculously solved. Sherlock’s powers of deduction are shown to have taken him into a dead-end: he is stuck.

It is the plain Jane character, Molly, who notices Sherlock's hidden anguish. 'If there’s anything at all, anything you need, you can have me...’. Sherlock is baffled: 'what can I need from you?'.

But later in the story, when the web of his own arrogance has drawn tight around him, Sherlock finally realizes his need of friendship and recalls her offer:

‘If I wasn’t everything that you think I am - that I think I am - would you still want to help me?’ he asks her. ‘What do you need?’, Molly replies instantly. ‘You’ says Sherlock.

Here is a moment where the gracious offer of one person to another, where deep gift, breaks through an impasse to bring liberation. And in the rest of the episode Molly’s gift cascades on through Sherlock himself to the point where the detective gives himself, apparently dying so that John can be spared from the threat of death.

To reinforce the theological territory the series has strayed onto, the writers even furnish us with a final scene featuring John (Sherlock’s beloved disciple?) visiting a garden tomb.

Christians ought to recognize what’s being alluded to: Generous, unexpected, unmerited gifts by one person can bring transformation and liberation to others. This is how Christianity interprets Jesus and the way he did his living - and dying - for others.

My long digression into Sherlock is not entirely self-indulgent: for the theme of transforming gift is found in today’s readings.

First we have that peculiar passage about Abram: Abram has just returned from a battle having rescued his nephew Lot from captivity. The story is unique, for Abram is otherwise never described as being involved in warfare (good to know the ancestor of the world’s three great monotheistic faiths is not a war-monger).

Here the story seems to intimate that only reluctantly has Abram intervened into a squabble among local kings in order to extricate a family member, and in the process he has liberated stolen possessions and taken prisoners. One of the protagonists, the King of Sodom, gleeful at the result, offers to carve up the spoils of the recent war with him: ‘you keep the loot,’ the king offers, ‘I’ll have the slaves’. Abram though will have none of it, coldly refusing to become part of the economy of balance-sheet conquest.

It is the mysterious visitor Melchizedek’s easy-to-overlook gift of bread and wine to the (probably) exhausted Abram that captures the story-teller and Abram’s interest. An unexpected gift of thanks, a moment of generosity, engages Abram so much that in return he offers a tenth of all he has. It is a gift that brings his change of heart.

It’s no surprise that early Christians, like the author of the letter to the Hebrews, saw in Melchizedek a fore-taste of that other generous gift-giver who offers bread and wine: Jesus himself.

And so again in John’s symbolic Cana story we also find the theme of gift and transformation. Jesus’s rich and unexpected, overflowing gift of intoxicating, delicious wine, fills to the brim the cold, empty stone vessels, relieving the stuck awkwardness of life and bringing joyful release. This happens on the ‘Third Day’ hints John: this story is symbolic of all that Jesus is and does: his self-giving resurrects us, raises us up, liberates us from being stuck.
Gift transforms.

We glimpse this mystery in our ordinary lives: even at the smallest of levels. Haven’t we all had moments when we have felt lonely, useless or neglected: but then the gift of someone else’s attention, their interest in us and what we’re doing, can suddenly transform and revitalise us. I suppose the mystery is found at its most obvious in romantic love: we may roll our eyes at those who are ‘in love’, but what we’re seeing is how the gift of one person’s being to another can bring intoxicating transformation, and with it self-confidence, liberation and joy to the one who is loved.

The gift of self, transforms.

But - but as much as we know this can be true: it is not always so. I wish this mysterious transformation always happened, but it does not. Sometimes a gift of love is rejected; sometimes the gift is abused or taken advantage of; and sometimes the gift is withdrawn.

One of the hardest moments in my ministry so far, was in supporting a woman who was contemplating leaving her husband who was an abusive and violent heroin addict. Should she continue to offer the gift of her love in the hope of his transformation, despite the many times he had relapsed, or should she get out?

Yes, there are these difficult ethical questions about how we are to live our lives as gifts. They remind us that this power is ultimately God’s, while we are fallible humans with limited choices...

Nevertheless in the end the truth about the transforming power of gift remains. The call to follow Christ, is the call to explore how we can live our lives as gift to others can be signs in the world of God’s glory.

Surah 114: Humans

2011-12-19T22:53:00.000Z

I'm having another go at Arabic. Here's an attempt (by a Christian) to translate the final chapter of the Qur'an followed by a commentary. Arabic and other translations here.

In the name of God, the compassionate and merciful one.

I seek refuge in
the lord of humans
the king of humans
the god of humans
from the evil of the whisperer who hides, who whispers in the hearts of humans,
from spirits,
from humans.

Commentary:
This is the Qur'an's final surah, a nicely turned piece notable stylistically for its three-stage chiasmus.

There are rising levels of divine description lord > king > god that psychologically encourage increasing trust in God. These levels are matched by declining stages of evil the whisperer (traditionally Satan) > spirits (jinn) > humans. The effect is to create deliberately asymetrical pairs: god trumps whisperer; king trumps spirits; lord trumps humans.

There is a superb example, too, of onomatopoia: the whisperer in Arabic is al-waswasi. There is also evidence of internal assonance/rhyme: the whisperer is one who hides (al-khannasi), this recalls the word for 'humans' (an-nasi)

Spiritually the whisperer might be recognised in the voice in the heart that brings crippling self-doubt or anxiety. As many would recognize, this voice is a far more powerful enemy than external 'spirits' or other humans. The surah envisages finding refuge from such inner anxiety in God.

The surah is commended in various in traditional interpretations (tafsir), together with the previous chapter (113: Dawn) as a strong prayer against spiritual attack.

Image and Glory

2011-11-04T12:21:00.001Z

I've been thinking a lot recently about 'image'

Recent events at St Paul's Cathedral have been reported in the press in terms of the image of the Church as a whole being 'tarnished'.

'Image' is a central concept now in out culture - for politician, celebrities - and even the Church.

But the task of projecting a 'good image' is a hard master, a dominating idol. Get it wrong and you commit public suicide (like the clergy at St Paul's).

Keeping an image involves for celebrities surgery and botox; for politicians it involves constant looking in the mirror of polls and newspapers editorials.

But where in the securing of 'image' is there space to be human: to be wrinkly, old, sometimes wrong, eccentric, undecided?

In religious language there is a word: 'glory'. When I hear it I think of golden haloes, Christmas cards and a warm feeling... But what glory really means in the Greek of the Bible is 'image' (actually it means 'rumour' - what people say about someone else).

When Christians and Jews say that we should not glory in anything or anyone but God - that should mean that we let go of 'image', that we are to be freed of its domination.

The chasing of image makes us less than human, glory is for God alone.

Creation stories

2011-10-21T13:44:00.000+01:00

In our first Bible for Bluffers session, we were looking at the Creation stories in Genesis and contrasting them with the Babylonian creation story (notes on our blog here).

Familiarity breeds contempt and it's possible not to realise how radical the Jewish stories are. Stick them next to the Babylonian myth and the effect is astonishing. The Enuma Elish is full of violence: the Earth is made from the blood of murdered gods (I'm awaiting the ITV adaptation) and humans are created at the end as mere slaves.

By contrast the ancient Jewish stories want to persuade us that the world is a place of relative order and safety that can be trusted and enjoyed, and in which we have freedom to join in the creation process.

The Jewish (and Christian) stories imagine that God is not someone to be feared, to be enslaved to (or to rebel against), but rather someone who approaches us generously with an offer of friendship.

Several thousand years later the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote: 'He who is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is also lowliest and meekest, most friendly and most gracious'.

I'm rather thankful that the ancient Hebrews got us off to such a good start...

Christian Students

2011-10-11T15:02:00.001+01:00

Some very interesting research here about students and Christianity...

More initmacy from Julian

2011-09-28T11:05:00.001+01:00

For truly our Lover desires that our soul cleave to Him with all its might and that we evermore cleave to his goodness, for of all things that heart can think, this pleases God and soonest succeeds.
(Showings, ch. 6)

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A Point of View

2011-09-18T19:35:00.002+01:00

John Gray is writing/broadcasting some interesting stuff.

I don't quite agree with everything he has written here, particularly his final conclusion that it doesn't matter what you believe. I don't think he's recognised that there's a difference between 'belief that' (which he rightly wants to avoid as a fundamentalistic fallacy) and 'belief in', which is more open to his valuation of myth.

Unless there is some sort of 'belief' (i.e. some sort of semi-/conscious acceptance of a mythical framework to make sense of the world) than it seems to me it is impossible to do 'practice'. Belief enables action... Nevertheless, knocking Frazer's view of religion on the head is a sensible thing.

Review of Anathem, Neal Stephenson.

2011-09-11T23:19:00.004+01:00

Several years ago a science PhD student virtually compelled me to read Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. I think it followed a discussion about how to get scientists to enjoy reading novels, and whether serious scientific ideas could find expression in good fiction. Despite resembling a brick, and containing not a few dense paragraphs about WWII code, the plot was good and Stephenson’s unashamedly nerdy-but-keen style had me intellectually hooked, too.

I’ve since ploughed (I choose this verb advisedly) through two of the three volumes of his Baroque Cycle that mix an evocation of the world of seventeenth century philosophy, the rise of capitalism and piratical swash-buckling. In the first two novels in the sequence I have to admit that I think that the balance of educative lecture-to-entertainment ratio is rather skewed towards the former – but hey: it got me thinking about global economics and the flow of money... In Anathem however I think he’s achieved a better balance.

On the intellectual side Anathem melds together a number of themes, particularly platonism, mathematics, quantum theory and consciousness. (In simple form: do mathematical formulae have a reality outside of our heads? Would they take the same form in parallel universes? Could such ideas be shared between universes by sentient beings?).

Stephenson also plays with ideas about how different forms of thinking deposit socially and culturally. He sets his pure scientists within monastic communities playfully reversing the historical relationship between science and religion (think what the Church would look like if Moses were replaced by Pythagoras, Jesus by Plato).

Carrying all this is a rip-roaring plot. I found echoes of older sci-fi (notably Clarke’s Rama novels, and Greg Bear’s The Way series, for example): an alien ship turns up and disturbs a planet’s culture; questions arise about how they will relate etc.. Well-worn it may be, but I think it works – especially when you factor in the kung-fu, some sympathetic characters, and a fair dose of humour. Stephenson’s invention of a whole new language, particularly when applied to philosophical ideas (‘Occam’s razor’ becomes ‘Saunt Gardan's Steelyard’), also helps to avoid the novel becoming too didactic.

Readers from a faith perspective will quickly pick up an antipathy to various expressions of religion, several of which bear an uncanny resemblance to American evangelical Christianity and others to Catholicism. However there are hints of a more sympathetic treatment of liberal forms of faith. The treatment of religion in the novel has presumably been the subject of several reader comments, as I note that Stephenson’s own website issues something of a clarification, reminding readers that the views expressed are those of the narrator, not necessarily the author. Stephenson also mentions the more liberal Christianity practised by his parents (embracing evolution and non-fundamentalistic ways of reading scripture) which he commends, noting that the book was dedicated to them.

In all, a thrilling and often funny page-turner that also got me pondering the philosophy of maths. Someone who can write a book that does both things, is clearly one talented guy.

Review: The Stature of Waiting

2011-09-11T14:17:00.001+01:00

This is a book that was recommended to me, I believe 14 years ago, by the former archbishop of York on some kind of preordination retreat. Only now have I got around to reading it.

It is a fairly short book-length meditation on passivity: the condition (the author argues) we are all likely to experience at some time, and which is perhaps increasingly prevelant in our time.

By passivity ('passion', or waiting) Vanstone means that uncomfortable condition of being made subject to something beyond our control - illness, unemployment, frustration at work, old age. These are things that rob us of our power and independence, and thus potentially of our dignity and self-worth.

Indeed Vanstone predicts that technology will not necessarily increase our independence and sphere of autonomous action, but in many cases instead make us even more susceptible to to frustration as we depend on even greater systems beyond our control.

Being made a 'patient', being rendered a passive subject by illness or unemployment is clearly a bad thing. And yet Vanstone notes that the passion narratives in Mark and John speak of almost nothing but Christ's passivity. (There a particularly nice study in ch. 2 of how verbs describing Jesus shift from active to passive in Mark, and in John how the images of energetic work and day give way to night and inactivity/powerlesness).

Western culture has typically mostly come to value production, creativity and those who can do active things. Vanstone offers a nice critique of any assumption that this is natural, pointing out that prior to the nineteenth century 'idleness' or 'leisure' was the mark of civility, not work. Rather, he argues, the valuing of activity (the work ethic) can be seen as the necessarily ideological myth that enables the growth of capitalism.

Vanstone notes though that we may be moving out of the capitalist phase and its need for producers, and instead we are perhaps moving towards the need for consumers (i.e. for passivity, once more). If so we need to reclaim the value of being rendered passive (and Vanstone gives some interesting examples of how even the ill or the weak can sometimes hold a key and powerful role in a society.)

Nevertheless the myth of activity remains, and Vanstone suggests it may ultimately be rooted in the Christian tradition of describing the God in whose image we are made as 'pure act' and all powerful creator, as impassible.

And yet are we to say that anyone who is inactive, reduced to dependence or passivity is less than human, or less fully made in God's image? Here Vanstone's careful exegetical work on the latter part of the Gospels revalidates 'passivity/dependence' by suggesting that the primary purpose of the Passion stories is not to show that Jesus death sacrificially atoned for us, but rather that his passion as a whole (his acceptance of being 'handed over' and loosing his freedom) gives dignity to all such experiences. 'Glory' is found as much in God's acceptance of passivity in Christ, in his waiting in love for a human response (will Israel's rulers turn to him?), not just in his actions.

Vanstone thus fundamentally modifies the view of God's impassibility. God is certainly not, by nature, dependent on the world, not manipulable by us, and thus is indeed impassible. However God voluntarily adopts passibility - God makes space for the other (us) to respond freely - in the loving hope of relationship. There is a wise insight that the lover is often depicted not as the active one, but as the one who patiently (passibly) waits. So it is shown to be in God, when the supreme moment of the revelation of God's glory in Jesus is his surrendering of himself into the hands of men.

Surrunder, passibility, suffering, receptivity are all, according to Vanstone, modes in which the world is endowed with meaning and significance. The world needs us to be more than just creators, we need also to be receivers: those who value life in their being made subject to it, who notice its value, beauty, even its terror. In doing this mere existence becomes endowed with grandeur.

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Trinity

2011-09-11T08:49:00.001+01:00

The Trinity is really a very simple practical teaching.

The aim of religion is to point by its rituals beyond them to the truth that the universe is a gratuitous gift (Father/Creator), showing us how we should best respond to it with gratitude (Son), which manifests in changed lives (Spirit).

(thoughts on retreat)

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More from Julian of Norwich

2011-09-01T15:29:00.002+01:00

Like many keen Christians, Mother Julian says she desires a supernatural revelation of God, and so she asks for three things:
1) a 'memory' of the Passion, as if she were actually a witness of the crucifixion
2) (bizarrely) she desires a life-threatening illness, so that afterwards she might be more grateful.

Both of these desires fade away (although she does receive them).
It is the third that remains:
"I conceived a mighty desire to receive three wounds...
the wound of true contrition
the wound of natural compassion, and
the wound of earnest longing for God...
This desire dwelled with me constantly".

How curious - when we naturally seek wholeness and independence, Julian asks to be lamed by God, so that she might become helplessly open to loving herself appropriately, loving others and loving God.

(Revelations, ch. 2)

Reading Julian of Norwich

2011-08-31T11:48:00.002+01:00

A lovely description here from the fourteenth century English mystic Julian of Norwich describing the way from day to day our experience of life includes both positive and negative things:

'the seventh showing is a frequent experience of well and woe - the experience of 'well' is grace-filled touching and enlightening, with true certainty of endless joy;

the experience of 'woe' is temptation by sadness and annoyance of our fleshly life...

Even so we are protected safely in love - in woe as in well - by the goodness of God.'

(taken from John-Julian's 2009 translation, ch. 1)

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Conflict and the tongue

2011-06-17T17:01:00.000+01:00

One of the most difficult things in life I find is dealing with conflict.

I wonder if anyone else finds that they have an argument with someone, and then spends the next few days re-running it in their head, rekindling the anger and emotions?

Sometimes I really do wish I had a better control on my temper and my tongue. It was with some recognition that I read this morning 'How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire' (James 3.5). Yes quite! How easily the 'tinder' of life can catch and blaze.

My mind wandered to another passage in the Bible about 'tongues' and 'fire' imagery: Pentecost (indeed last Sunday was Pentecost).

When the 'gift of tongues' is spoken of it is usually in a charismatic sense (or with very naughty risqué humour...). But I was rather taken with the idea of the work of the Spirit being about giving us better ways of communicating, less destructive ways...

Well, I wish I knew how that happened, but I can't see any other way than the daily offering of oneself to God in prayerful humility asking to be changed. And then, doing one's best: biting the tongue, taking a few breaths before replying to the challenging statement, letting go of the argument.

Ah, yes, and humour too: a sense that may be it doesn't really matter as much as we think it does, and we're not all that important after all.

'All of us make many mistakes' writes James (3.2). What a relief to be reminded, and how fortunate that God is so forgiving.

Friend of God

2011-05-26T19:10:00.001+01:00

How does an acquiantance become a friend? What changes in this process?

In the Letter of James, during a discussion of the importance of 'action' accompaniying 'having beliefs' about God, James states that Abraham combined these two elements and thus became a 'friend of God'.

There seem to be plenty of people who hold opinions (beliefs) about God, but fewer who practice a faith. Might good evangelism thus have something to do with helping people move from acquiantance with (the idea of) God, to becoming friends with God?

Friendship of course involves matters such as noticing an initial commonality between me and another (beer-making, a love of art...); it them builds upon this by making time to discover more about the other (both the differences to me as well as the similarities). Finally it grows into common goals and decisions (small or large) about sharing a future, journeying together.

This final stage is essential. An aquaintance may have much in common with me, but unless our stories are somehow voluntarily allowed to interact with each other, such that we are mutuallly changed, then I think genuine friendship has not yet come to fruition.

If James is correct all of this would be transferable by analogy to the growing of relationships with God, too.

The Letter to James is, of course, not the only place in scripture when friendship with God is mooted. Famously John's Gospel describes Jesus as saying 'I do not consider you servants, but friends'.

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In the desert

2011-05-05T15:31:00.003+01:00

There are times when things are going swimmingly...and then there are times when they are not. I notice that fairly often these 'not so well' times correspond to things being taken away from me:

Perhaps my work seems less interesting, and consequently this 'lack' has a knock-on effect on my identity: I become bored or listless.

Perhaps something I have been doing has finished or (even worse) been taken out of my hands by someone else. My resulting frustration is only matched by my sense of failure and loss.

Perhaps a friendship has ended in an argument, or maybe it has just slowly evaporated. And so I am left with a sense of hollowness, anger and disappointment.

These 'loses' take various shapes, but they all result in my diminution, my becoming smaller.

The natural tendency is (I suspect) to interpret these loses as weakness and failure on our part; something we could have avoided if we had been stronger.

However there is a different way to view these moments. These are the 'desert' times; times of stripping-away. They leave us emotionally naked and vulnerable, yearning for protection. And yet perhaps these are the very times when we might come closer to God, when we cast ourselves upon God because there is really nothing else we can do.

It may be that these ‘desert’ times provide for us surprising springs of grace. The weak and lonely times become the times of strength and solitude. A time of loss might just become the moment for growth in God.

“And the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness and he was tempted for forty days ... He was with the wild beasts and the angels looked after him”. (Mark 1 12:13)

Feminism

2011-04-29T01:13:00.001+01:00

I keep coming across people who refuse to call themselves feminists as if the term were some dirty word. I even know a number of younger women who will roll their eyes at the sound of the word and claim it has nothing to offer them, that they are equal and need no 'special treatment'.
And yet day on day much of my ministry is among women mistreated by men.
Certainly I see men, too, but their needs are in most cases rather different: not the result of being 'used' or abused, but about their failure to find their place in the power-struggle of life's rat-race. Their suffering is often the quiter one of isolation; for many of the women though the problem is more obvious. It is still about bearing the brunt of harsh treatment at the hands of brutal men.

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Poem

2011-03-02T11:25:00.005Z

Walking to Lauds
sun rising, and
the misty veil lifting
from bare trees.
The Office of Readings has been
done; silence endured, wrestled with,
emerged from.
Through lips comes opened breath
smoke of embers rekindled.

(Written at Worth Abbey)

I have a new phone.

2011-02-01T11:36:00.001Z

I'm very excited. I'm not like this normally. Honest. It's just so addictive.

There are all these apps on it: I can link up my facebook account, my email account and my text in-box. There's this natty thing that I can press and when I point the camera at something the phone automatically clicks to the internet, finds out what it is, and where I can buy one.

There's even this great setting where I can make my location known to all my friends. I'm contactable and locatable 24/7. I really need never be on my own again. Not ever!

No more boredom. No more loneliness. Never have to be on my own.
No more moments of wondering what to do, or why.
Fully occupied. No more awkward stillnesses.
Total distraction whenever I'd prefer not to look inside and see what's there.

Never have to be alone with just myself. Never have to be still. Never have to look inside...

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” Mark 1.35.

The Third Advent

2009-12-07T11:31:00.002Z

Advent is traditionally the season when the Church remembers the coming of God in Christ, and also looks forward to the final coming.
However some words from St Bernard of Clairvaux made me sit up and think. For he spoke of three advents...

"We have come to know a three-fold coming of the Lord. The first two are clearly visible, but the third is not. The third coming takes place between the other two.

In the first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men.
In his last coming 'all flesh shall see the salvation of our God'.
But the other coming is hidden. In it the chosen see him within themselves and their souls are saved.

The first coming was in flesh and weakness.
The last coming will be in glory and majesty.
This intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power.

This intermediary coming is like a road leading from the first the last.
In the first coming Christ was our redemption.
In the last he will appear as our life.
In the intermediary coming he is our rest and consolation." (Sermon 5 on Advent)

Thomas Taherne

2009-06-11T16:53:00.003+01:00

There's a superb new introduction to the Seventeenth Century English poet and priest Thomas Taherne by Denise Inge.

Among other gems two so far stand out from Thomas's mix of theology and poetry:

Heaven surely is a State and not a Place
To be in Heaven's to be full of Grace
Heaven is wherere we see Gods face.
(All Things, 9, p. 79)

and also his agument for why there must be life on other worlds:

The Earth is too poor a Cottage, too small a centre, to be the Single and Solitary object of his [God's] care and Love. For him that is Omnipresent and Eternal, to confine his Contentments to one little Spot, and leav all the Rest Empty and Desolate is unworthy of his Majestie and not very answerable to his Infinit Greatness.
(The Kingdom of God, ch. 22, p. 76-7)

There's a shorter version of Inge's introduction here.

Summer Poets - John Donne

2008-08-18T15:37:00.003+01:00

CS lewis once referred to his conversion as 'reluctant', and many other Christians too have worried that their acceptance of faith might in some way rob them of their freedom. Critics of faith sometimes refer to conversion as 'intellectual suicide' or 'brain-washing'.

John Donne (1772-1631, a late convert from Roman Catholicism and ultimately Dean of St Paul's Cathedral) was a famous versifier of sex, death and religion. Perhaps reflecting his own complex experiences, his sonnet here picks up St Paul's strange imagery about being at war with oneself and seeking freedom.

Contrary to today's popular notion, Donne echoes St Paul's paradoxical conclusion that 'perfect freedom' for the Christian is in fact not autonomy, but service of God. Embracing faith can sometimes - for some - involve 'intellectual suicide', but others find that a strange freedom in being 'possessed by God'.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Summer Poets: Anon

2008-08-05T16:54:00.002+01:00

Adam Lay I-Bounded is a pretty simple Christmas carol. But it has a strange twist – it gives thanks for Adam’s sin:

Adam lay I-bounden, bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerks finden written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne had never our Lady aye been Heaven’s queen.
Blessed be the time that apple taken was,
Therefore may we singen, “Deo Gracias!”

No, not a bizarre Satanic perversion. Instead it has its roots in the concept of the ‘happy fall’ (felix culpa). As Thomas Aquinas put it ‘the Incarnation wouldn’t have happened if sin hadn’t first existed’ (although he quickly adds ‘even if sin hadn’t existed, God could still have become incarnate if God wished.’).

On a day to day level, in our experience of sinfulness the truth is that after a while, any early glamour wears off. Sin becomes rather tiring and ultimately life-denying.

For example, nursing a grudge against someone begins to hurt me more than the person against whom I’m holding the grudge. And the same is true of other sins: just think of over-consumption and the effect that is having on our bodies and our environment. All sins ultimately back-fire and cause us more harm than the ‘good’ they initially seemed to promise.

Then there may come the moment - a tipping point – when we say, actually I’d be far better off just admitting I’m in the wrong. And with that an enormous liberation can come. What a relief! And so a new life starts, freed of the earlier boundaries, deeper and more aware of the forgiveness of God, more conscious of the Grace that brought us through.

And yet, true to say, had we not been limited by that prior sinfulness, we might never have appreciated quite the extent of God’s grace and what a life set free could be like. St Paul was aware of this paradox (and he was very careful *not* to say ‘let sin lots so that we can be forgiven more!’).

But still we may say, after we’ve admitted some self-deception, some sin, and been delivered from its grip: ‘I hope I never have to go through that again – but I’m glad I’ve been through it now, because it’s brought me closer to God’.

Summer Poets: PJ Kavanagh

2008-07-28T13:16:00.004+01:00

Educated in a monastery, poet, author and journalist P J Kavanagh’s early thoughts of becoming a monk were thwarted because he 'liked girls too much'. The Catholic influence though remains (he once appeared in Father Ted).

Kavangh said in an interview: ‘I want to express, without frightening the horses, that there is something about. It would be treason to deny it. Not something religious, that is a slippery word. Or spiritual. There is joy or hope. I think it's joy.’

The death of Kavanagh’s first wife, Sally, forms the backdrop to this poem’s description of finding grief mysteriously contained – and yet not removed. It is a wonderful, funny, poignant, but also hopeful piece about being met by this ‘something’.

Beyond Decoration

Stalled, in the middle of a rented room,
The couple who own it quarrelling in the yard
Outside, about which shade of Snowcem
They should use. (From the bed I'd heard
Her say she liked me in my dressing-gown
And heard her husband's grunt of irritation.
Some ladies like sad men who are alone.)
But I am stalled, and sad is not the word.
Go out I cannot, nor can I stay in,
Becalmed mid carpet, breathless, on the road
To nowhere and the road has petered out.
This was twenty years ago, and bad as that.
I must have moved at last, for I knelt down,
Which I had not done before, nor thought I should.
It would not be exact to say I prayed;
What for? The one I wanted there was dead.
All I could do was kneel and so I did.
At once I entered dark so vast and warm
I wondered it could fit inside the room
When I looked round. The road I had to walk down
Was still there. From that moment it was mean
Beyond my strength to doubt what I had seen:
A heat at the heart of dark, so plainly shown,
A bowl, of two cupped hands, in which a pain
That filled a room could be engulfed and drown
And yet, for the truth is in the bowl, remain.
Today I thought it time to write this down,
Beyond decoration, humble, in plain rhyme,
As clear as I could, and as truthful, which I have done.

(From Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 2001, and reproduced from here)

Summer Poets: Mary Oliver

2008-07-28T11:58:00.003+01:00

I have no idea of the religious adherence of this week’s contemporary American Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver (b. 1935), but the first time I read her poem The Journey I was deeply impressed.

I particularly enjoy the imagery of adverse climate, terrain and time (wind, earthquake, night…). This powerfully re-imagines in natural ways what the Desert Fathers would have called ‘the demons’. These are the adverse voices that attempt to sway us off our decisions, to prevent us from making any progress in our journey of discipleship.

In particular, one of the most powerful of these voices - and the most subtle - is the one which apparently calls on our compassionate desire to make others ‘whole’.

Oliver instead reminds us – as many others have, too – that Christ did not say ‘love your neighbour before yourself’, but ‘as’ yourself. While some of us have no problem focusing on our ‘selves’, others of us devote little attention at all to the most precious gift we personally have: our lives.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Summer poets: George Herbert

2008-07-11T15:31:00.005+01:00

After an abortive career in what we would now call PR, and a short time as an MP, Herbert (1593-1632) left the heady world of politics for the role of rector in the countryside near Salisbury. During the three years before his death from TB he was known as a devoted pastor.

Here in one of his most famous poems, and climax of his work The Temple, Herbert combines the Old Testament story of Moses eating with God on Mount Sinai, and Jesus' hospitality to sinners, with the imagery of seventeenth-century courtly romance. Most strikingly, and in somewhat erotic imagery, God seems to be described in female terms encouraging a timid lover to take his given place and receive the intimacy offered.

Herbert gives voice to all those who feel unworthy of receiving divine love:

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.

(This post is part of a series or weekly thoughts over the Summer)

Summer poets: Bono

2008-07-11T15:24:00.003+01:00

The songs of U2 have reached millions of people, and Bono’s own faith permeates much that he writes. Here in ‘Miracle Drug’ he recalls a school classmate, Christopher Nolan, who had been deprived of oxygen for two hours when he was born, and so was born paraplegic.

In Bono’s own words 'his mother believed he could understand what was going on and used to teach him at home. Eventually, they discovered a drug that allowed him to move one muscle in his neck. So they attached this unicorn device to his forehead and he learned to type. And out of him came all these poems that he'd been storing up in his head which won a load of awards and he went off to university and became a genius. All because of a mother's love and a medical breakthrough'.

Sometimes religious thinking confines God to the supernatural, or to the so-called ‘spiritual’. Bono reminds us that Christians ought to remember that God is active in every act of goodness – from medicine to a mother’s love. Everything which is good is a miracle. And so everything in our lives – at work, at home, at rest or in play -which is good, is of God. And nothing which is good should be overlooked.

Miracle Drug

I want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there…

To hear the things you haven’t said
And see what you might see

I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape
And walk right out.

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby’s head

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I’ve had enough I’m not giving up
On a miracle drug

Of science and the human heart
There is no limit
There is no failure here sweetheart
Just when you quit…

I am you and you are mine
Love makes nonsense of space
And time… will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love…

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I’ve had enough of romantic love
I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug

God I need your help tonight

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It’s whispering
In science and in medicine
“I was a stranger
You took me in”

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I’ve had enough of romantic love
I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug

(Miracle Drug comes from the album How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb [2004]).

(This post is part of a series or weekly thoughts over the Summer)

Summer poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins

2008-07-11T15:07:00.006+01:00

Hopkins (1844-1889), an Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism, wrestled with his sexuality, depression and physical ill-health, and burnt all his early poems on entering the Jesuit order. Only later did he have the confidence to explore poetry again, rediscovering a pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon ‘sprung rhythm’ and employing an idiosyncratic vocabulary.

Hopkins’ poetry can be hard to enter. Here, in one of his most famous poems, he explores the concept of ‘inscape’ – the idea that there is a profound revelation of God’s immanent presence in the un-forced self-awareness of each living thing: 'each mortal thing … / [cries] What I do is me: for that I came. … / … - for Christ plays in ten thousand places … / … through the features of men’s faces.'

The poem encourages us to attend gently to God’s presence: in nature (dragonflies and wells), in human craft (church bells) in our fellows, and in our own selve. When we do this in awe and gratitude we live gracefully (i.e. full of Grace).

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

(Poems. 1918).

(This post is part of a series or weekly thoughts over the Summer)

Summer poets: William Blake

2008-07-11T14:58:00.007+01:00

William Blake (1757-1927) was a self-taught poet and artist, a revolutionary, visionary and eccentric whose work was largely ignored in his own day.

Like the man, Blake’s religion could be fairly strange, too. He was viciously critical of the corruptions of major institutions of his time including the Church, the State, marriage, slavery and urban capitalism. He also evolved his own (not always orthodox) view of Christianity.

Here in two short poems, Blake reflects on losing faith and finding it again. In the first poem a child loses sight of a ‘Father’ figure who turns out to be non-existent anyway (‘vapour’). In the second, the child is found again by a renewed sense of a God who is instead ‘ever nigh’.

In these little poems Blake speaks to us about how we grow as people of faith. Often we find we have to move on (by choice, or forced by circumstances) to leave the earlier forms of our faith behind, and to discover God afresh. Blake assures us that though we may leave ‘God’ behind (and feel lost), God is in fact really present and in a new and more intimate way.

The Little Boy lost

Father, father, where are you going
O do not walk so fast.
Speak father, speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost,

The night was dark no father was there
The child was wet with dew.
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
And away the vapour flew.

The Little Boy found

The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand’ring light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeared like his father in white.

He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, thro’ the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought.

(This post is part of a series or weekly thoughts over the Summer)

More mushrooms

2008-06-13T16:48:00.003+01:00

Wonderful pleasure to come across these Shaggy Parasols on campus. They made a fine couple of lunches... Best cooked with butter (beware: some reports of non-fatal allergic reactions!).

St George and the Egg Yolk

2008-05-05T13:01:00.003+01:00

One of my hobbies is mushroom hunting. There are plenty of St George's Mushrooms around campus at the moment (they are named after St George's Day around which they appear). They were very tasty fried in butter. Now they've been out for about a fortnight and the heavy rain and maggots have got to them.

I also found a surprising little luminous yellow mushroom which goes, unsurprisingly when you see it, as 'Egg Yolk Fungus' (Bolbitius vitellinus - a nice Australian version here from which the second photo comes). But not edible.

One always has to be very careful what one eats. I was very pleased to find that the superb Roger Phillips guide is now free on line and even includes recipes.

Grey water and kids fun

2008-04-27T22:33:00.002+01:00

We've just fitted a grey water pump to syphon off out bath/shower water and recycle it for the garden. It's proving a great way to encourage our eldest child to wash!

The Lives of Others

2008-04-23T21:31:00.004+01:00

Thanks to my colleague, Sabine, for lending me her copy of the beautiful The Lives of Others, a treatment of how the life of one person can be changed for the best, by witnessing the lives of others - even as a spy (wiki here).

Rather disturbingly the lead actor who plays the Stasi spy looks rather like my bishop...

A love of stones

2008-04-18T10:40:00.003+01:00

Just finished Tobias Hill's enchanting historical thriller, The Love of Stones. Perhaps a little slow to start, but I was soon sucked in by the remarkable details of the jem business and the unfolding story of the addiction to the relentless pursuit of an acquisitive goal.

Curiously a key turning point in the novel picks up the epic of Gilgamesh, quoting a very moving passage about the loneliness of Gilgamesh's journey (through death?) in search of immorality. I'll post it some time....

Poem: Lizard and Cloud

2007-12-10T12:17:00.000Z

(Poem written on student retreat at Douai abbey drawing on imagery from Isaiah 35).

King of this dessicated wasteland,

parched brittle, cactus dry,

wreathed in ill-whispering wind,

the cracked-skinned lizard's slow blinking of one eye

perceives the cloud.

From first scarce whisps

she slowly grows, swelling, darkening,

bellying generously until one fat

drop forms and

falls, and then another, wet-thudding life

into the dust. The earth gasps.

Whole-healing seeds and takes.

Shocked fingers shoot green

and spread forth grateful hands of colour

to the sky.

Lizard flicks it's tail and flees

this return of Eden.

these are the days

2007-06-14T22:59:00.000+01:00

Just getting back into 10,000 Maniacs.
'These are the Days' is a great track - moving listening as I watch young undergrads come up to their graduation, looking back over the 15? years since leaving University myself and remembering how good life can be at that age...

Listen & watch here.

These are the days you'll remember.
Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be warm as this.
And as you feel it, you'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky.
It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

These are the days you'll remember.
When May is rushing over you with desire to be part of the miracles you see in every hour. You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky.
It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break.
These days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face.
And when you do you'll know how it was meant to be.
See the signs and know their meaning.
It's true, you'll know how it was meant to be.
Hear the signs and know they're speaking to you, to you.

The Heresy of the State

2007-06-14T21:33:00.000+01:00

Just begun reading the superbly invigorating Theopolitical Imagination by W.T. Cavanaugh.

In it he exposes the heretical theology at the heart of the nation state.

This false theology holds that the state 'saves' us as individuals from our violent 'nature' - a nature displayed in our presumed innate tendency to competitively vie for autonomous control over the limited resources of the world. The state subdues such competition and creates a false unity by monopolising violence and placing it the hands of the sovereign.

By contrast Christian theology begins with a different vision of human nature: comprising an interpersonal society made in the image of the interpersonal Trinity. The marring of that image through the erroneous belief in individual autonomy is rectified in the Christ event.

This alternative theology therefore concludes with a story of genuine social peace (salvation) being established through the recreation of a society based upon the principle of the giving of self-for-other. This is achieved in the free self-giving of Christ to the Father, in our participation in that self-giving via the Eucharist, and in our self-giving to others.

The Church is thus intended to be a true interpersonal society based on mutual self-giving, whilst the State merely offers a pale reflection of this based on atomised individuals.

As Cavanaugh puts it himself:

"In exposing some of the false theological imaginings of modern politics, I hope to give hope to the reader that the iron cage of modernity does not inevitably hold us in its grip. I focus on the Eucharist as an alternative imagining of space and time which builds up a body of resistance to violence, the body of Christ. This is a body that is wounded, broken by the powers and principalities and poured out in blood offering upon this stricken earth. But this is also a body crossed by the resurrection, a sign of the startling irruption of the Kingdom into historical time and the disruptive presence of Christ the King to the politics of the world."

Sonnet 31

2007-05-14T22:54:00.000+01:00

The Shakespeare's Sonnet's page comments on Sonnet 31:
"On thinking of his friend, all sorrow for former loves vanishes. Now he supposes that this is because the parts of all the former lovers, and his share in them, is diverted and migrated into the heart of his beloved. Therefore there is no loss at all, for all is stored up within that one gentle heart, and his former love for others was but a prelude to the love he now feels for the youth, and the accumulated devotion he felt for them is now transferred to his beloved's heart."

But the Christian might also read this as about finding all those one loved who have indeed died in God, the Beloved:

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I lov'd, I view in thee,
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

Sonnet 29

2007-05-11T12:39:00.000+01:00

I'm slowly reading through Shakey's sonnets. This one caught my eye from a spirituality point of view: how do I secure my self-worth in relation to others, if not by finding myself valued by God?

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Gift

2007-04-26T16:53:00.000+01:00

Some ask the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me

only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.

(RS Thomas, Collected Poems, 1945-1990)

RS at Easter III

2007-04-13T12:23:00.000+01:00

The final in our series of R S Thomas poems over Easter is ‘The Kingdom’. Here he holds over the conclusion of each sentence deliberately disrupting the reading of each line. The effect is to underline the paradox of the Christian life: we await the coming of the Kingdom, dreaming of it, but not yet seeing it fully...

To my mind it’s one of his finest poems and often reminds me what faith is all for…

The Kingdom

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

Taken from RS Thomas, Collected Poems 1945-1990.

RS at Easter II

2007-03-30T15:31:00.000+01:00

The second in the series of RS Thomas poems over Easter is ‘Aftermath’. Thomas often alights on the image of ‘the machine’ as a malevolent description for a fallen world denuded of compassion. Here, at Easter, an innocent – the child – delivers the goodnews that even the machine (a car wreck?) is redeemed.

Aftermath

Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us how a stone has been rolled
from the mind and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.

There are travellers on the roads
who have heard music blown
from a bare bough and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack of
petrol, is covered with flowers.

R. S. Thomas, 1997.

Taken from “6 poems (1997)”, a signed limited edition produced for the Stratford upon Avon poetry festival. (With thanks to Ian James)

RS at Easter

2007-03-30T15:04:00.000+01:00

For the next four weeks of the Easter break I’m using for the chaplaincy newsletter some poems by RS Thomas, an old curmudgeon of a Welsh priest, sadly dead, whose austere spirituality occasionally glints with real insight.

This week a poem about the Incarnation – God’s ‘coming’ to us in ‘a scorched land of fierce colour’.

Look out for the typical blending of evolution and religious myth (the serpent / river / slime complex) and the nod towards mysticism (Julian of Norwich’s vision of creation as a nutshell in a hand), alongside stark images of human suffering, culminating with just the hint of ultimate hope…

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

Taken from RS Thomas, Collected Poems, 1945-1990

The Page Turner

2007-03-13T21:58:00.000Z

Just been to see The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de Pages). Precise, cold, revenge served as nouvelle cuisine. A perfect study of 'an eye for an eye'. Guardian review here.

2007-03-13T21:51:00.000Z

Leafing through my old Bible I came across a quote I had written across the first page as a kind of warning. It still resonates with me. I can't recall who said it - I think it was at Greenbelt in the early 1990s - so perhaps the late Henri Nouwen, but I have an American voice in my head, too, so maybe (the also sadly deceased) Mike Yaconelli:

Religion is not to be believed, it is to be danced.

Review of God Delusion

2007-01-08T16:37:00.000Z

I've heard rumours about Terry Eagleton's review of Dawkins' latest work, but it proved even funnier than I'd expected. Read it here.

Does faith stay the same or does it change?

2006-11-07T17:55:00.000Z

I've been reading a book on the spirituality of the Psalms recently. It's writer, Walter Brueggermann, uses a three-fold classification to speak about the faith of the psalmists which I've found helpful.

First, he claims, there are the many simple psalms of trust. In them the writer/ singer tells of God's safe ordering of the world. In those psalms the world appears a safe place where God is in total control. Such psalms could be said to represent a 'pre-critical' stage of faith where everything is taken on trust, no questions are asked.

But then there are those Psalms which accuse God of being absent or asleep or of not caring. These are a second group: the questioning psalms, 'where are you God?' The writer/singer feels unjustly abandoned. The world is not fair. We might say that such psalms represent a 'critical' stage of faith.

Finally there are those psalms which involved a reconciliation of those two earlier stages. Yes: in the world dreadful things happen, God's power is indeed questionable. But through the storm the psalmist has come to a deeper trust. We could call that a 'post-critical' faith which both contains and surpasses what has gone before.

As I was reading I began to think about my own journey of faith and, indeed, I could see those different stages: naive faith, angry questioning, a deeper acceptance. And it has not happened once but, like a spiral, I go through those processes and (hopefully) find myself ascending in faithfulness.

I found the book's observations helpful. Faith is not static. To have faith means to enter on a journey, not to arrive at a destination. And on that journey both the simple trust and the angry denial have their place...

Gift

2006-11-07T17:47:00.000Z

The more I explore faith, the more I come to see that the concept of 'gift' is an essential one.

If I were to put that into an image, I think it would be a picture of a pair of
outstretched hands, palms held upwards (a gesture, appropriately, many use in prayer).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'gift' as 'something, the possession of which is transferred to another without the expectation or receipt of an equivalent'.

Gift resonates with me at many levels:
the gift of the universe,
the gift of my own life within it - for a brief time (who knows how long?)
the gift of those who have loved me.

I have not asked for these things, they have come to me freely, often with an element of surprise. A response of thanks from me has often been forthcoming - but not expected.

Not surprisingly 'gift' seems to be written into the very nature of God:

God, the one who 'gives' space for creation to be,
who, in the Christian tradition, 'gives' God's self in the Incarnation sharing our precarious tragically-beautiful existence,
who 'for-gives' the murder of Christ,
and who returns Christ to the world with the 'gift' of the Spirit.

My wife was in a Bible study group recently discussing the motivations for
sharing faith with others which led us to ponder our feelings on this subject.

On reflection what ultimately drives me as a Christian is the desire to put others in touch with their 'giftedness' so that they may feel and know again the surprise and joy again of their existence.

And beyond that, to encourage them to return 'thanks': to live out their giftedness in such a way that others, too - whose lives may be limited by health, wealth, outlook and environment - can more fully discover their lives as gift.

It's summed up for me at the end of the Anglican Communion service, when after receiving the 'gifts' of bread and wine we pray:

Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ, through him we offer you our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. Send us out in the power of your Spirit, to live and work to your praise and glory. Amen.

Billy Bragg, Patriot

2006-10-25T21:03:00.000+01:00

I got to see a folk hero of mine, Billy Bragg, speak about his new book The Progressive Patriot, A Search for Belonging tonight.

Billy talked about the origins of the book in his disgust at the election of a BNP councillor in his home town of Berking and Dagenham in Essex.

Since his previous album, England Half English, Billy has been trying to reclaim a sense of Englishness from a right wing agenda.

Tonight he spoke about his first stirrings of an English identity when, ironically, hearing Simon & Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair played to him at school (S&G drawing on the English folk scene when they visited Britain).

Billy related how his political roots solidified in the Rock Against Racism carnival of 1978 when 100,000 people 'just like me' had the courage to challenge racism and - as Bragg found himself standing under a gay liberation flag and finding himself listening to Tom Robinson's 'Glad to be Gay' - he also realised the connection between racism, homophobia and sexism.

Since then he says he has had a faith in popular culture to change the world (something reflected in his recent song 'I Keep Faith') and the ability of a performance to change the perspective of an audience's thoughts.

His new book apparently sets out counter arguments to contemporary racist nationalism and puts forward instead a new agenda for patriotism based on the concept of belonging.

Halfway through writing the 7/7 bombings occurred and this is reflected in the book, he said. He commented on how, externally, the bombers were thoroughly 'assimilated' to British culture (in one of the suicide bomber's videos he noted how the bomber was speaking "with a flat Yorkshire accent") but in fact all of the bombers lacked any real sense of belonging.

Typically Bragg rejects the Telegraph/Daily Mail call for a return to 'British values', claiming that they are meaningless, and instead he alights on the concept of 'fair play', tracing it back through various popular historical rejections of arbitrary power (Magna Carta, the Civil War, the Luddites, Chartists and Suffragettes, and the Second World War.)

The celebration of that - in particular through creation of a Bill of Rights - rather than the current identity of "Brits being most famous in Europe merely for getting arse-holed and falling down at 3am..." will be more useful for creating a unified sense of identity, he said.

"Fairness is the great social engine of change"

He's now urging that Britain should spend the new year (the 300th anniversary of the creation of the UK) discussing how to create a new written Bill of Rights setting out popular freedoms and responsibilities and that this he believed would help reengage people politically.

His bottom line was, "I don't care what you believe, I just want to know how are my kids going to get on with yours?"

The Book of J

2006-09-27T11:07:00.000+01:00

Outside of theological departments few Christians will perhaps have ever heard of 'the Book of J'. One of the interesting products of nineteenth century Biblical scholarship was a close attention to the composition of the Bible.

Julius Wellhausen first systematized the theory (called the Documentary Hypothesis) that within the first five books of the Bible (the Torah/Pentateuch) at least four different textual strands can be seen.

He (and others before him) began by noting that the Pentateuch contained strange repetitions. The most obvious of these is the two creation stories.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a stately ordered sequential narrative with God as the majestic unseen architect of Creation. But it is followed by an entirely different telling in Genesis 2:4-25 which is wonderfully idiosyncratic and down to earth. In the second tale God is shown in a far more hands-on manner, getting God's hands dirty in clay and walking in the garden.

Thereafter by separating all the different versions, and clumping together texts with common vocabulary and themes, Wellhausen came up with his four different documents. He named them J, E, D and P (follow the links to learn more about the different hypothetical sources) and assigned different dates, authors and locations to each of them.

Of course none of his theories can be proven and some more recent scholars (and most Christians) are content to simply work with the text as it stands and pay no attention. After all, all we have is the Pentateuch - everything else is conjecture!

However even though remaining agnostic about JEDP, Wellhausen's theories can still be useful. They can work rather like a pair of glasses through which the messiness of Genesis-Deuteronomy can come into focus and potentially explained.

Personally I have come to find it helpful to understand parts of the Bible, like the Pentatuech, as composite and thereby to explain so-called contradictions as different 'voices' within Scripture. I prefer to do that than to follow the other route which is to harmonize out all the differences.

Wellhausen believed that 'J' (a text which names God YHWH throughout - Jahve in German) was the earliest. Since then various people have tried to look through the Pentateuch to find J and to see what the earliest Hebrews believed about God. Harold Bloom's book, which I've recently been reading, is an attempt to create an edition of J.

Bloom is a literary scholar and a poet, and he allows his imagination to flow free. His J is a female poet in the court of Solomon telling a tale which is not specifically theological. According to Bloom, J is to be read more like an early Shakespeare than a Hebrew Saint Paul - just for the beauty of the text.

One might choose to disagree with all sorts of comments Bloom makes. To my taste he is too rabidly averse to traditional Jewish and Christian readings of Scripture. But what he does achieve wonderfully is to let the humour of some parts of the Pentateuch come to the surface.

My favourite is the quite simple observation that the second Creation story is full of gender irony. There J tells of YHWH messing around and creating a man out of clay, more or less like a child with play-dough. Human Mark 1 (male) is an imperfect crude thing. After various experiments looking for a partner YHWH hits upon the idea of making Human Mark 2. This time YHWH's design specifications are more sophisticated and 'Woman' comes to be constructed out of a rib.

The result in J's creation story is a contrast between Humans Mark 1 and 2 which points all the way to the superiority of the newer version. With irony J sheds a bright light on the differences between male and female and the relationship between the sexes.

The Book of J is an curious read. For my money though, an easier more sympathic entry to the world of reading Bible texts both faithfully and critically would be Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?.

Though some might find it threatening, and others unhelpful, there will be some Christians who will find the JEDP theory (and other theories like it) useful in showing that there may be many ways to read the Scriptures with care and faithfulness.

New Cockburn Album

2006-09-03T21:49:00.000+01:00

Just working my way through the new Bruce Cockburn album: Life Short Call Now.

I got into Cockburn's music back in the 90s at University when I heard a really old album, Stealing Fire (1984). I was struck by the power of his lyrics. I think it was the song Lovers in a Dangerous Time which ultimately got me hooked (listen here - press the play button):

Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you're waiting for the sky to fall
The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste
When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight
When you're lovers in a dangerous time...

Desert Wisdom VII

2006-09-03T21:17:00.000+01:00

Amma Syncletica said, 'Just as one cannot build a ship unless one has some nails, so it is impossible to be saved without humility'.

We've had lots of comments from Desert Fathers - this week a comment from one of the less well known Desert Mothers, Syncletica.

Her little saying is a tiny gem of wisdom. We probably don't naturally twig that the 'ship' metaphor is a reference to Noah's ark and how he and his family were 'saved' from the flood. Humility therefore, she says, is the way we are held together spiritually, like nails keeping stubborn planks of wood tight against water.

Many Christians might scratch their heads and say (with Martin Luther) isn't it grace that saves us, rather than anything we do?

I don't think Amma Syncletica would have disagreed. But she would have seen salvation as more than getting a free ticket into heaven. For her 'being saved' means being transformed. God's saving of us is a life-time's work of construction. And here the 'nails' metaphor of course also resonates with the Crucifixion story, and indicates that being humble about ourselves can be a painful thing as God tries to pin the planks of our identity back into their rightful place.

Of course, God unconditionally loves and accepts us. And more, God also wills humankind to be fully transformed so as to be like God.

Our response then is precisely as Syncletica says, to be humble about the ways we need to be re-formed and honest about our areas of stubbornness that threaten to sink us as we make our journey into God.

Review of The Stripping of the Altars

2006-09-01T16:54:00.000+01:00

Eamon Duffy's major tome on religion in Pre-Reformation England is no mean read - and not just from the point of view of its length. The Stripping of the Altars is a major argument with previous historians of the English Reformation. But it is riveting and enlightening stuff.

Other writers had held (and it still has some degree of popular acceptance) that the English Reformation swept away a decadent and degenerate Roman Catholic English Church which was failing to bring the Christian faith to the masses.

Duffy (a Catholic himself) sets out to argue that the Catholic Church was vibrant, reforming and above all popular. He argues, along with many others, that the English Reformation was the unexpected result of Henry VIIIs political machinations, the largely unpopular dominance of his successor Edward's Protestant clique, and the early death of the Catholic Mary.

For those who have no idea what Pre-Reformation English Christianity looked like, in the first half of his book Duffy explains the role of the Mass, prayers for the dead, pilgrimages and the like. What emerges is a Christianity that seems gloriously colourful, often very piously focused on images of the suffering Christ and, with its cult of intercessary prayer to the Saints in some ways visually similar to Hinduism (for example statues decked with beads and clothing).

Some Christians might grit their teeth at this, but the first part of Duffy's work is simply a reminder of how other Christians have lived their faith. At points I found myself moved by the popular piety of the prayers many lay Catholics would have said and was led to reopen my copy of Julian of Norwich. At other times I was made to feel uncomfortable: indulgences for Purgatory are a difficult concept even for many Catholics.

In the second part Duffy looks at what really happened on the ground: how much did people really want to become Protestant? Historians now have the benefit of local documents, such as church wardens' reports, which can shed light on how individual church communities behaved. Though a few congregations did undeniably welcome royal decrees to, for example, remove images, most of these were urban churches in ports with connections to continental Protestant populations.

Many of the more rural churches dragged their feet when ordered to reform, hid images and crosses (which promptly reappeared when Mary revived Catholicism), and bent the rules as much as they could. Duffy reminds us that one has to bear in mind the significant fines and punishments that existed for disobeying royal orders to destroy Catholic relics and objects. But he also shows how much congregations valued their images, crosses and relics, often having paid large sums of money to purchase them, indicating the popular nature of much Catholic ritual.

Duffy's reading of history is a 'we was robbed!' one (as described by the Oxford historian, Christopher Haigh). According to Duffy few wanted the English Reformation, but with the length of Elizabeth's reign people and communities simply forgot what the past had been like: the memory was lost. Inevitably there are issues he skates over - he doesn't major on the effect of the Marian burnings, or the popularity of the Bible in English, for example.

Duffy's work then is something of a paean for a lost world. And reading his narrative of religious destruction (though he doesn't even treat the destruction of the monasteries) it's difficult not to feel wistful. How would churches look if they still had popular art all over their walls, if pews didn't clutter naves but left them open for communities to hold public events?

It is undeniable in hindsight that some of the aspects of the Reformation impoverished Christianity, slimming it down to a narrow focus on words only and no pictures (something we are gradually climbing out of again - how many Protestant churches now use art in Powerpoint displays to accompany sermons?). Many of the alternative worship events I have been to over the past years implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) draw on Pre-Reformation rites: lighting candles, using icons, going on pilgrimage, using water, wood and stone to pray with.

Ultimately the post-Reformation period under Elizabeth bequeathed a State Church which papered over the cracks of Protestant and Catholic, that left wiggle room for high and low alike. At this time, as an Anglican, it still seems clear to me that the ambiguous after-effects of the English Reformation and the deep psychological trauma it engendered are still very much a live issue.

(For those who might feel daunted by his tome, Duffy has written a shorter study of the effect of the Reformation in one tiny Church, called Voices of Morebath).

And the Word Became Ink

2006-08-31T21:54:00.000+01:00

Lou's comments on thinking about type-faces and God resonates with some work I'm currently doing on English translations of the Bible. As an aside I've been noting how different type-faces are employed to help communicate different things about faith, and how they implicitly say certain things about the theology of scripture.

Tyndale's 1536 New Testament (the first English Protestant New Testament) was radical in its down to earth translation ("Tush, ye shall not die!" says the Serpent to Eve) and for the first time introduced paragraphs for ease of reading. But it lacked chapter and verse numbers and was set in blackletter type face which still made it more difficult to read, somewhat undermining Tyndale's hopes of making the Bible accessible to plough-men.

By 1560 the Protestant Geneva Bible had added chapters and verses for the first time, and it reset the text in a Times font which made it much easier to read. They also added marginal notes. The Geneva Bible was a very accessible Bible study tool and during the English Civil war it was issued in a pocket book form and became known as the 'Soldier's Bible'.

ultimately its type face, its translation, and its notes proved too radical and so the 1611 King James Bible conservatively returned to blackletter types, cut out the notes, and toned down the translation. Here once again was a view of scripture as venerable religious object.

The use of different type faces to help nuance the meaning of the Bible is by no means a Reformation concept. Anglo-Saxon monks at Jarrow deliberately used newer Carolingian miniscule type faces to communicate something about their connection with the latest religious learning on the continent, in contrast to other Biblical texts in Anglo-Saxon England and in Ireland which were dependent on older Celtic script forms.

One could continue the comparisons in modern translations...

For the nerdy there's a great site here with lots of facsimiles for comparison.

And on the earlier use of type faces by the Anglo-Saxons there are some useful pointers on the Carolingian Miniscule Wikipedia entry.

Greenbelt Gems

2006-08-30T12:07:00.000+01:00

Just back from Greenbelt and here are a couple of small gems I have come away with.

From Timothy Radcliffe's talk and book, What is the Point of Being a Christian?:

'A Christian sexual ethic must start from the last supper: "This is my Body given for you"' When we start with this, Christian sexual ethics is governed not by rules, but by issues of grace, reciprocal self-giving, vulnerability and covenant.

And a great quote from Seamus Heaney on joy:

We are made to share in God's happiness, which is not the same as 'the fixed smile of a pre-booked flight to paradise'.

And on morality: draw a small box, imagine in it are all the moral rules. Now draw beside it a much bigger box. The bigger box is freedom. God isn't really interested in the small box but in what they might enable us to create in the much larger box: 'For freedom Christ has set us free' (Galatians 5:1).

Desert Wisdom VI

2006-08-30T11:54:00.000+01:00

While yet a child, Abba Ephrem had a dream and then a vision. A branch of vine came out of his tongue, grew bigger and filled everything under heaven. It was laden with beautiful fruit. All the birds of heaven came to eat of the fruit of the vine, and the more they ate, the more the fruit increased.

I don't know what Ephrem made of his dream. Later on he became a famous hymn-writer, so perhaps that is how he interpreted it: that from his lips would come forth choice hymns of praise...

When I read about the dream, I tend to think of much simpler things: about how the words we speak have an effect upon those who hear them.

Let me explain. I have a friend with a rare gift: she knows how to say 'thank you' when someone pays her a compliment. Usually I (perhaps you, too) tend to 'cut down' the 'tree' of praise from another's lips:

'That was really well done', says A.
'No, it's nothing really', replies B.

Not only has B lost the chance of receiving a (probably much needed) compliment, A has also been put down in the process. Perhaps A will go away and pay fewer compliments in the future...

If we are able to speak good things to others (and to keep on speaking them, even when they are chopped down as saplings), I am convinced that good nourishing fruit comes of it.

I know how much I have been fed by the good, generous, patient words of others; and I know too how I have been crushed by harsh, critical remarks.

One of the things 'salvation' means is that the seed of God's life takes root in a person and sprouts forth in goodness and life for others, in words (and actions) and not just in beliefs.

Desert Wisdom V

2006-08-21T23:27:00.000+01:00

Abba Daniel used to tell how when Abba Arsenius learned that all the varieties of fruit were ripe he would say, 'Bring me some.' He would taste a very little of each, just once, giving thanks to God.

The desert fathers and mothers were often notoriously austere with their food. The unfortunately named 'Abba Arsenius' (accent on the -sen-!) was said to be able to survive on only a basket of bread a year.

Some have wondered whether such behaviour represented a form of anorexia caused by extreme hatred of the body. Indeed, many of the sayings of the desert hermits might lead us to think this.

And yet, as Christianity rightly understood celebrates bodily existence (after all Christians believe God chose to 'take on' a bodily existence as Jesus) such a treatment of the body could only be considered mistaken.

But could there be a more positive understanding of fasting in general? What value is there in the story Arsenius tasting a little bit of some of the ripe fruits and giving God thanks?

My own (small) experience of dietary austerity and, most useful of all, some time spent talking with a modern hermit, has lead me to wonder whether there might be a more positive way of seeing the fasting traditions.

To go without something, by choice and for a brief time, can be the avenue by which something taken for granted can become valued again. It is after all a truism that 'familiarity breeds contempt'.

Is that perhaps what Arsenius's little story tells us? While others might have taken for granted the plentiful harvest, did this desert-bound old man each year find the goodness of God in a few pieces of fruit?

As the global population for the first time now contains more obese persons than undernourished ones, I find myself wondering whether the human race now values the things that sustain it more - or less?

Desert Wisdom IV

2006-08-14T14:49:00.000+01:00

Abba Anthony also said, 'Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside we will loose our interior watchfulness'.

Though none of us are solitary hermits (for which some of us may well thank God!), is there still anything we can learn from Anthony's strong warning against monks loitering outside their cells?!

Perhaps.

I recall a time some years back when prayer and worship had become particularly arid. I had lost the 'intensity of inner peace' that Anthony talks about. And that was due, largely, to my rushing around.

I went to a spiritual director and told him about this, and he asked me a surprising question: 'What have you *really* enjoyed doing in the past couple of weeks?'

Rather guiltily, I responded that the most enjoyable thing I could remember doing was going to an Italian restaurant on my own, having a pizza and a large glass of white wine, and slowly eating it, whilst I watched the river pass by and the sun glint off it.

Just in the process of describing it again to my director brought back the intensity of the moment - its rejuvenating calm.

The spiritual director clapped his hands together with the glee of a doctor who has diagnosed his patient. 'Right,' he said. 'That's what you're to do once a week. Find something you really enjoy and treat yourself'.

I doubt any onlooker - or even Abba Anthony! - would consider my solitary lunches to be moments of prayer. But they became key moments when I slowed down, and reentered God's presence.

In a sense, those weekly meals became the 'cell' into which I retreated and where my 'intensity of inner peace' was restored.

It is a salutary lesson: rushing around in the busy world does gradually take its toll. We all need a 'cell' - a safe, quiet place to be with God. For each of us this will be a different place. Without time in God's presence we become like fish out of water.

Madonna's Blasphemy?

2006-08-11T10:50:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday I was asked by Radio Berkshire to comment on Madonna's latest antics - appearing on stage hanging on a mirror-ball cross whilst wearing a crown of thorns. Apparently there was 'unanimous condemnation' by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups.

I replied, much to the interviewer's surprise, that I wasn't particularly offended and that it was probably just another silly publicity stunt (which has succeeded again). But I did say that I would be rather curious to know what song it was that she sang whilst imitating Christ, as I wondered whether it would turn out to be something religious.

I learnt the details this morning that the song was her 80s track Live to Tell (lyrics here).

According to one report: "With silver cuffs holding her arms in place, Madonna sang while images of third-world poverty and numbers representing the 12 million children orphaned by AIDS in Africa ticked by on a screen."

I've always rather liked the track (ok it is a bit sentimental): its mysterious 'secret' which the singer hopes to communicate having had a prior 'fall', and which now 'burn[s] inside of me'.

'I know where beauty lives
I've seen it once, I know the warmth she gives
The light that you could never see
It shines inside, you can't take that from me'.

I've no idea what Madonna originally intended but in true reader-response form, I'm quite happy to see this as an allusion to the work of the Spirit.

I've implicitly felt the song fits rather well with the idea of hanging on to the subversive message of Christianity, and coupled with the images she had projected whilst she sang it, I wonder if Madonna wasn't trying to say something similar...

Just to be a bit theological about it, the issue causing offence is apparently Madonna's blasphemy in abusing a divine image.

My response would be: shouldn't we be as (or, even, more) offended by the abuse of humankind, God's image-bearing creatures (Genesis 1:26)?

The news of an interfaith condemnation of Madonna's blasphemy might make some feel pleased, but I'm more concerned about faiths turning in on themselves thinking their purpose is to protect themselves from criticism.

I'd have thought that for Christians, God's 'Incarnation step' was a free giving of God's self into the world's hands, voluntarily risking abuse (even the ultimate blasphemy of the crucifixion), in order to achieve the renewal of the Earth. I wonder whether God really needs us to protect God? If Madonna's peculiar reimaging of Christ turns her fans into people who are affronted by poverty and AIDS, isn't that congruent with the work of the Spirit in the bringing about of the Kingdom of God?

If Christians really want to question Madonna's actions, perhaps they should openly ask what percentage of her record sales profits go to charity, or whether Madonna's stage-show depictions of poverty and AIDS are just compassion-chic window-dressing.

It's not the only religious element in her Confessions tour. For more details about Muslim and Jewish symbolism see here

Tour website here.

Desert Wisdom III

2006-08-07T11:55:00.000+01:00

Abba Anthony said, "Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother or sister, we have gained God, but if we scandalise our brother or sister, we have sinned again Christ."

I've just come back from the wonderful treat of four days on retreat. Anyone though who thinks that a retreat is about simply putting your feet up has got the wrong end of the stick!

When you find yourself stripped away of the distractions of work, family, friends and entertainment, the effect can be to make yourself pretty vulnerable.

After the fun of the new experience wore off I was left simply with myself, and I began to notice the sorts of thoughts and emotions that naturally arise.

I have to say it was quite shocking! Memories of past hurts and slights surfaced, old unfinished arguments reemerged. I even found myself rehearsing future conversations - what would be a knock-down comment? how can I win in that encounter?

Am I this kind of person? Yes, sadly I am. And it seemed that most of it stemmed from insecurity. It was a salutary experience.

On returning I resolved to keep a journal where I can try to honestly reflect at the end of each day what sorts of emotions and thoughts I have been carrying around, and then to offer them to God.

Abba Anthony here reminds me that I cannot 'ascend' to God without my neighbour. If I am often in the position of being in anxious rivalry with my neighbour (my fellow Christian, my family member, my colleague) then I have missed the point of the life of faith.

Quite simply I am called to ask God to help me to find healing in myself
and my relationships.

(PS the image on the book cover is of a 1992 sculpture called I It Am by Olivia Sanders. It perfectly images my experience of prayer - I'd love to see a full picture, or the real thing - has anyone ever seem it?)

Desert Wisdom II

2006-07-30T15:55:00.000+01:00

A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked.

Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him, 'Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.'
So he did.

The old man then said, 'Shoot another,' and he did so.

Then the old man said, 'Shoot yet again,' and the hunter replied
'If I bend my bow so much I will break it.'
Then the old man said to him, 'It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure they will soon break. Somtimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs.'

When he heard these words the hunter was pierced by compunction and, greatly edified by the old man, he went away.

As for the brethren, they went home strengthened.

How much is there to say about this?
It is quite simple: even hermits in the fourth century need holidays. And if they do, so do we, living with our taught, tense and 'highly strung' life-styles.

Let us listen and learn so that through rest we too may be strengthened.

Desert Wisdom I

2006-07-25T18:15:00.000+01:00

We have a weekly email going out over the university holidays based upon the sayings of the desert fathers, a fascinating group of fourth-century Christians who fled the newly Christianised Roman Empire and it's civilized life for the adversities of the desert, here's one of the excerpts...

A certain brother came to Abbot Silvanus at Mount Sinai, and seeing the hermits at work he exclaimed: 'Why do you work for the bread that perishes? Mary has chosen the best part, namely to sit at the feet of the Lord without working'.

Then the Abbot said to his disciple Zachary: 'Give the brother a book and let him read, and put him in an empty cell'.

At the ninth hour the brother who was reading began to look out to see if the Abbot was not going to call him to dinner, and sometime after the ninth hour he went himself to the Abbot and said: 'Did the brothers not eat today, Father?'

'Oh yes, certainly,' said the Abbot, 'they just had dinner'.

'Well,' said the brother, 'why did you not call me?'

'You are a spiritual man,' said the elder, 'you don't need this food that perishes. We have to work, but you have chosen the best part. You read all day, and can get along without food.'

Hearing this the brother said: 'Forgive me, Father'.

And the elder said: 'Martha is necessary to Mary, for it was because Martha worked that Mary was able to be praised'.

Often I find myself giggling when I read the desert fathers. Like many monks I have met, something about living in community brings out and ripens in them a keen sense of humour (Jorge in Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose - currently serialized on Radio 4 - would not have approved!).

Abbot Silvanus gently deflates the young brother's misunderstanding about the 'spiritual life'. The truth is, that none of us can be detached from our bodies and their needs - or our neighbours - and imagine we can enter some form of nirvana privately in our 'souls'.

This is too inhuman - and also too unholy - a path. The message of the Incarnation is basically that 'matter', 'work', 'food' and so on, are good. (Indeed, 'very good', as the Creation story in Genesis puts it - not just necessary).

Though occasionally the hermits did experience strange 'phenomena' (visions of angels etc), the concept of 'spiritual' was really about becoming more fully human. If you like, in this last desert these hermits hoped to return to the first Garden - to an original harmony.

Those who have watched the recent series The Convent, or it's predecessor The Monastery, may have noticed that the vocation the nuns/monks are pursuing is not about achieving some personal 'spiritual' ecstasy. It is much more basic: it is how to live together as God intended, being the person each has been called to be.
I wonder whether the question I ought to ask myself more often is not 'how spiritual am I?', but 'how fully human am I?'.

Who gets the kids?

2006-07-11T23:27:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Maggi Dawn for the pointer to Dave Walker's all too true cartoon about the potential break up of the Anglican Church.

More letterbox angels

2006-07-04T19:45:00.000+01:00

Yet another odd collection of unbidden donations was posted through our door (this time at 11.30pm) with no indication of the sender. Aside from a well-thumbed copy of Pope's Rape of the Lock and a peculiar local amateur dramatics video, there was also an essay on Jonathan Swift and scatology.

Nosing through the essay, I learnt that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was only one method of revival favoured in the Eighteenth century. Fumigating the rectum with tobacco smoke was thought of equally highly...

I'm sure Abraham didn't have this trouble with his celestial visitors.

The Convent bites back

2006-06-25T22:26:00.000+01:00

Victoria, one of the women in the current series, The Convent, takes me to task for suggesting she was not serious about her time with the Sisters and chosen only for 'entertainment value' (alas my words...).

So public apology time: here is her own site, and also her poetry page on her own Press which adds her side of the story, part of which deals with a past miscarriage. Victoria has published a book of 40 poems based on her time in the convent, Fragments.

She also has links to two other of the women's sites: Debi's and Angela's.

The series continues to be extremely good viewing. In the last episode, the programme focused on Debi hearing God speak to her through the story of Jesus healing a little girl, with the implicit and poignant parallel between the age of the girl in the story and Debi's own age when her mother left her. In both cases, a resurrection is evident...

Art Finalists's exhibition

2006-06-20T23:24:00.001+01:00

This was one of my favourites - on the theme of colour. Very simple, really: coloured water(?) in little glass vials hung in a rainbow sequence from the ceiling.

Whatever else the artist may have intended (and on the glasses in the background each vial had a curious personally critical, Alice-in-Wonderland, type message attached), I thought her work was just quite beautiful.

This outdoor installation - balloons attached to concrete blocks - also caught my eye. Platonic spirituality - spirit wanting to escape matter? - or dreams tied down by reality?

The Convent

2006-06-19T22:09:00.000+01:00

A new series, The Convent, has just begun on BBC2. It runs for the next 3 Wednesdays at 9pm, following the stay of four women at a Roman Catholic convent for 40 days. I find it a fascinating watch - as I did a previous series focusing on five men who similarly stayed in The Monastery. It was filmed at Arundel, and has a great site here which even includes personal pages for each of the sisters.

What has been so brilliant about the two series is the way in which, surrounded by a Christian community, many of the deeper issues of human existence have come to the surface for the particpants. Each have sought to find God at work among the building blocks of self-worth, moral failure, ingrained personality traits, foundational memories and questions of life direction.

In this version one of the women is a recent evangelical convert and ex-alcoholic running on the spiritual equivalent of cocaine. Another is a deeply emotionally-scared woman abandoned as a child who thinks God is punishing her. A third is a successful single, driven business woman who feels her life is shallow and can initially only see time as a utilitarian resource for achieving surther success. And the fourth - obviously chosen for entertainment value by the producers - is an atheist hippy who lives in an open marriage.

It sounds like ecclesiastical big brother, but I think it avoids such crassness.

What I really love about these programmes is that they show that the heart of Christianity is about the remaking of whole people in Christ's image (as opposed to the car-salesman view of Christianity where the aim is simply to succumb to a "do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour?" pitch or risk a roasting in hell).

I've not seen the full series yet, but going on the press reviews The Convent seems to be able to weave its healing magic to varying degrees for its inmates, just as The Monastery did for the men.*

It's well worth a sympathetic meditative viewing (in between the football, that is).

[*For those who missed the first series, in the case of The Monastery, filmed at Worth Abbey, one guy said his encounter with God caused him to leave the soft-porn industry; another revisited the idea of a vocation as a priest; an ex-paramilitary gave up his job to work in prisons; and even the toughest of the group decided his high-pressure high-income career was no longer his life's calling. Only an older poet seemed not to be changed much...]

Angels and Nipple Cream

2006-06-14T19:39:00.000+01:00

Ever since we became a clergy family people have taken to leaving things on our doorstep. They are usually unlabelled, so we never find out who our angels are. But judging by the items, I'd say they must be pretty weird.

Here's a short list from memory:

black PVC maternity trousers (for a woman of under 5' 6" - my wife is 5' 10")
6 fresh cream chocolate profiteroles
a half-full box of breast pads
half a chocolate Easter egg
some nipple cream
and, an oversized maternity bra

And just last week, prompting my musings, there appeared on our doormat:

a medium-sized bag of chopped red, yellow and orange peppars and a small pot containing more of the same, labelled 'traffic lights'.

Of course I could mention other bizarre consequences of being public property: the time we came home to find our next door neighbour had mowed our lawns for us, and the other time we found they had run their washing line from the middle of our garden over the fence into their garden...

Problems with photos

2006-06-14T19:19:00.000+01:00

For all those having problems with uploading photos (as I have had) here's a lovely trick - delete all cookies before each and every photo upload. Seems to work fine.

If God were a biscuit...

2006-06-13T17:43:00.000+01:00

I was a guest at a 'grill a Christian leader' event a few nights ago at my church's youth group, Elements. Lots of very profound theological and philosophical questions: did God create us because he needed us - was God lonely? Does God love angels more than humans? Is God like me [the questioner]? Does God watch us like Big Brother? (And to kick it off: if God were a biscuit, what kind of biscuit would God be like?).

One of the questions that we thought longest about was on the subject of intercessory prayer (doesn't God know already? why does God seem to intervene only intermittently?)

One insight we ran with for quite a while was the realization that in Hebrew the word for 'prayer' (tephillah) is reflexive. It technically means 'to pray to oneself'.In this sense one might argue that part of the power of prayer is that it changes the person who prays.

There's an example of this when Christ prays at his most extreme moment of mental agony, in Gethsemane. There he seems (as the Gospel writers tell it at least) to reuse parts of the prayer he earlier taught his disciples. "Let this cup pass from me, but not my will but your will be done" (cf. "may your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven...").

In other words, Jesus does ask God to bring about a change in the world, ("take away this cup...") but at the same time he offers up a change within himself to God ("but not my will..."). He is both attempting to 'change' God, but in the process he brings about a change in himself.

To those who ask, are Christians being optimists when they pray? The answer should be no: an optimist would only pray the first part of Jesus' prayer and assume that it will be accomplished ("I expect God to change the world, if I but ask!"). But neither are Christians pessimists: that would be to pray only the second part of Jesus' prayer ("I expect God to change nothing except me!").

Rather, Christians are people of hope. They are people who both dream of, and cry out for, a changed world. But they also accept that if that change is not presently able to occur, all is in God's hands anyway and our loving trust is to be offered regardless of the wider outcome. The answer to our prayer may - at least in the short term - be about us changing, not the situation we directly prayed for.

It was not just Gethsemane where this insight is realized. It is also witnessed to in the old story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in the book of Daniel. As they are cast into the fiery furnace for not worshipping Nebuchadnezzar, they reply to the king's threat with words of hope (not optimism):

'If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods...' (Daniel 3:17-18).

That kind of prayer (and that kind of faith) seems to me to be a long way from the triumphalism that often accompanies Christianity - and leads to disillusion.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

2006-06-01T18:49:00.000+01:00

Aside from an excuse to escape for two hours into fantasy violence, my interest in a possibly deeper value in X-Men 3 was piqued by an interview I saw of Ian McKellen by Jonathan Ross. "It's all about how society deals with people it thinks are different," McKellen said. And then with a slight raise of the eyebrow and a look into the camera reinforced his comment with an ironic self-reference. Most people in the audience clearly knew of his homosexuality and showed they had got the message by laughing knowingly.

As I saw the film McKellen's interpretative key was in my mind. He was right, X-Men 3 really is about diversity and conformity. For those who don't know the basic series plotline it's this: some people are born with so-called 'mutant' genes which give them superhuman powers; society distrusts this hidden social element and wishes to control it; the 'mutant community' splits between moderates who aim for social inclusion and a violent fringe who want to dominate the non-mutant human population.

With the swiftest of glances one can see resonances between the fictional 'mutants' and various real-life 'outsiders' in the history of the West: Jews, women, Catholics/Protestants, blacks, Asians, gays, immigrants - most recently Muslims - and in every age the mentally ill. Moreover, one can trace this particular film's plot-line, the discovery of a 'cure' for the mutant 'X' gene, in various attempts to 'cure' both homosexuality and mental illness by psychotherapy or genetic manipulation; to 'treat' the 'problem' of the Jews through ghettoisation, sterilization or murder; or at the 'softer' end of the argument to tag, impound or deport illegal immigrants. There are plenty of possible allusions one could chase down.

Perhaps one shouldn't expect much more from a comic-based Hollywood fantasy than easy allusion, but the film does also surprisingly hint at part of a Christian response. Admittedly this is heavily overlaid with the usual myth of redemptive violence (in this case the apparent self-sacrifices and resurrections of Wolverine and Xavier which have nothing to do with the stories of Christ and the martyrs and their self-offerings [tip: watch right to the end of the credits for an extra scene]).

Halfway through the film though, at a key juncture, when the 'mutant community' has to decide how to respond to the invention of a 'cure', a meeting takes place in an abandoned church building. It's curious as to why this set is chosen, and why the building is shown in ruins. What's even more fascinating is the name of the church. A shot of a poster advertising the meeting reveals it is 'Holy Trinity'.

For much of Christian history, Christians have lost sight of the Trinity, assuming that Christianity was simply another (better) form of monotheism. Though heresies like Arianism were rejected (one virtue of the dreaded Da Vinci Code is that people have now at least heard of Nicea!), Christianity has long tended towards a monarchical view of God. The 'Father' is at the top and is pure God, 'Jesus' is a bit lower down the scale obedient to his Father but confusing everyone by being half-man/half God, and the Spirit sort of floats around and is just everywhere in some vague inoffensive way. With such a view of God, a version of society based on hierarchy, order, obedience and conformity is easy to legitimise.

Naturally I overdraw the matter, but any real sense of the Trinity as an inter-penetrative dance of equals has until recently been lost. (It was the Greek Fathers in the fifth century who first used the image of dancing to draw out the fragmentary treatment of the Trinity offered in the New Testament). Consequently any alternative model for a society incorporating diversity has had no real theological justification.

In the past century Christianity's ideology of a monarchical single authority which must be obeyed was taken over into the philosophy of Modernism. With the rise of Modernism's fascist, communist and capitalist children an all-powerful Father figure was supplanted by their own all-powerful father figures: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao, or more nebulously by capital itself.

Ironically then, though some Christians habitually criticize the advent of Post-Modernism, it has precisely been the rise of skepticism toward unique authority figures that has allowed a rediscovery of the Trinity.

God, we are slowly beginning to discover again, is not perhaps a divine dictator who requires our obedience. God is more like a community of difference and equality into which we are invited. Indeed with the Incarnation of the Word as flesh and then the later bodily Ascension of Jesus, God succeeds in incorporating the Creation into the divine dance: humans are 'slaves' to God no longer, we are siblings, children or friends (indeed could we say we are one flesh with God?).

It its own tiny way, X-Men 3 nods towards the Trinity as one possible answer as to how people of difference can coexist. Obviously that needs some serious teasing out in its social practicalities, but it does at least begin to admit the acceptability of a model of diversity-in-unity.

Christians will want to unpack the ramifications of the Trinity through careful study of the way the Persons of the Trinity interrelate and how God's own mutual self-giving might be reflected in our own lives. And though we might feel we are stepping out into new places, St Paul's own treatment of racial, gender and social differences (Galatians 3:28) ought to remind us that we are really only continuing an earlier project: the attempt to realize Jesus' final prayer (John 17:22) that we 'might be One' as God the Trinity is, paradoxically, 'One'.

The Gospel According to Myers-Briggs

2006-05-23T21:09:00.000+01:00

The insights of Myers-Briggs into how human personalities fundamentally differ in quite interesting ways, has radical implications for preaching.

Below is a scanned-in section of a Myers-Briggs inspired commentary on the Gospel reading for Pentecost (John 15:26-7 & 16:4b-15). As someone who has been preaching for a fair few years it is humbling to think how what I consider to be a good sermon may mean nothing at all to someone else...!

What follows is taken from Exploring Mark's Gospel, An Aid for Readers and Preachers Using Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary, by L. J. Francis & P. Atkins (pp. 224-7).

Context

At the supper table immediately prior to his betrayal, Jesus promised his disciples that, after he is taken away from them he will send to them the Spirit of truth, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. The promise was fulfilled on Pentecost Sunday.

Sensing

Sometimes a good picture can say so much more than a whole book full of words. On that first Pentecost Sunday, the church was given a profound picture concerning the nature of God the Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit came to those eleven disciples like a mighty rushing wind. Forget the words, and for now just live for the picture.

The Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind, and the wind is right here. Open your eyes and look for the wind. At first you see nothing. Then you remember how you see the wind blow the washing on the line, how the clothes hanging there are brought to life. You remember how you see the wind pick up sheets of paper and blow them along the street. In the same way, you can see the effects of the Holy Spirit on the lives of people.

The Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind, and the wind is right here. Stretch out your hands and touch the wind. At first you feel nothing. Then you remember how you feel the wind blow you along the promenade on a blustery day, transforming your whole experience. You remember how the wind blows sailing boats through the sea and tugs the child's kite into the sky. In the same way, you can feel the effects of the Holy Spirit on the lives of people.

The Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind, and the wind is right here. Prick up your ears and listen to the wind. At first you hear nothing. Then you remember how you hear the wind rustle through the trees and give voice to the voiceless branches. You remember how you hear the wind slams doors shut and rattles the dustbin lids. In the same way, you can hear the effects of the Holy Spirit on the lives of people.

Sometimes a good picture can say so much more than a whole book full of words. Forget the words, and for now just live the picture.

Intuition

Sometimes a good image can stimulate the imagination and spark ideas so much better than a whole book full of words. On that first Pentecost Sunday the church was given a profound image concerning the nature of God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to those chosen disciples like tongues of fire. Now what ideas does that image start running in your mind?

Imagine the ancient world without the discovery of fire, for fire gives light in the darkness. Without fire, when the sun goes down, the world is left in darkness. Does not the Holy Spirit bring light into our lives? Then pray that this fire may illuminate the whole world!
Imagine the ancient world without the discovery of fire, for fire brings warmth in the coldness. Without fire, when the snow falls and the ice sits thick on the lake, the world is left shivering in the cold. Does not the Holy Spirit bring warmth into our hearts? Then pray that this fire may warm the hearts of all people!

Imagine the ancient world without the discovery of fire, for fire cooks our food and kills unwelcome bacteria. Without fire, bread cannot be baked, fish cannot be grilled, vegetables cannot be transformed. Does not the Holy Spirit feed our souls with the food of immortality? Then pray that this fire may feed the spiritual quest of all nations!

Imagine the ancient world without the discovery of fire, for fire refines the metals from the rich deposits in the earth. Without fire gold and silver cannot be fashioned into artefacts of beauty; iron and bronze cannot be forged into objects of utility. Does not the Holy Spirit refine the base metal of our lives for the greater glory of God Then pray that this refiners' fire may transform the human race!

The Holy Spirit came to those chosen disciples like tongues of fire. Now what ideas does that image start running in your mind?

Feeling

Jesus offered his disciples many different images through which they could explore their experience of God the Holy Spirit. The image of the Paraclete is one of the most encouraging and enheartening. Sometimes translated as 'Advocate', the word Paraclete means literally 'the one who is called to stand alongside'.

Ever since that first Pentecost Sunday, Christian men and women have been very conscious of God the Holy Spirit being called alongside them as Paraclete in their time of need. Listen to the accounts of the early disciples in the Acts of the Apostles. Remember how, when they were in prison, the Paraclete came to stand alongside them. Remember how, when they were on trial for their faith, the Paraclete came to put words into their mouths. Remember how, when they were martyred, the Paraclete brought them comfort.

Ever since that first Pentecost Sunday, Christian men and women have been very conscious of God the Holy Spirit being called alongside them as Paraclete in their time of need. Listen to the accounts of Christian disciples across the world today. Hear how, when followers of Jesus are imprisoned for their faith, the Paraclete still comes to stand alongside them. Hear how, when they are on trial for their faith, the Paraclete still puts words into their mouths. Hear how, when they face death for the sake of their faith, the Paraclete still brings them comfort.

Ever since that first Pentecost Sunday, Christian men and women have been very conscious of God the Holy Spirit being called alongside them as Paraclete in their time of need. Listen to the accounts of Christian disciples in your own congregation. Hear how, when followers of Jesus are under stress and fatigue, they become aware of the Paraclete called to stand alongside them. Hear how, when they are sick and in great pain, they become aware of the Paraclete called to stand alongside them. Hear how, when they face the hour of death, they become aware of the Paraclete called to stand alongside them.

The image of the Holy Spirit as Paraclete is both encouraging and enheartening.

Thinking

Jesus offered his disciples many different images through which they could express their understanding of God the Holy Spirit. The image of the Spirit of truth is one of the most challenging and controversial.

Throughout the ages, from that very first Pentecost Sunday, the church of Christ has been committed to truth. The danger is that we sometimes imagine that we have got it right from the very beginning, that all truth has been established and communicated in the past. But listen carefully to the words of scripture.

Listen carefully to Jesus' promise to his disciples. Jesus said, 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.' The verb 'guide' is of extreme interest and great significance. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the Spirit of truth plans to reveal or to present all the answers complete and final for human acceptance. A guide may show the way, but nonetheless still expects us to make the journey of discovery for ourselves. It is worth taking the verb very seriously.

Listen carefully to Jesus' promise to the disciples. Jesus said, 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.' The future tense 'will' is of extreme interest and great significance. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the Spirit of truth intended to have retired from the appointed task as guide shortly after the first Pentecost Sunday. A guide who remains active in the church is day by day leading the people of God to grasp new insights and new truths of the kingdom. It is worth taking the tense seriously.

Listen carefully to Jesus' promise to his disciples. Jesus said, 'When the Spirit of truth comes 'he will guide you into all the truth.' The qualifier 'all' is of extreme interest and great significance. The church continues to struggle with issues of huge significance, issues of doctrine, issues of practice and issues of morality. On many of these issues, is it not arrogance and foolishness to claim that our view of the truth is complete? Our guide remains with us as the quest for all truth goes on. It is worth taking the qualifier seriously.

The image of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth is one of the most challenging and controversial.

Prayer and Personality

2006-05-18T23:35:00.000+01:00

IS_IT_EJ	IS_IF_EJ	IN_IF_EJ	IN_IT_EJ
Inspector	Protector	Counselor	Mastermind
IS_ET_IP	IS_EF_IP	IN_EF_IP	IN_ET_IP
Crafter	Composer	Healer	Architect
ES_ET_IP	ES_EF_IP	EN_EF_IP	EN_ET_IP
Promoter	Performer	Champion	Inventor
ES_IT_EJ	ES_IF_EJ	EN_IF_EJ	EN_IT_EJ
Supervisor	Provider	Teacher	Field Marshal

After chatting with Lou tonight I was inspired to go search for useful stuff on the web which deals with Myers-Briggs typology and prayer preferences.

This is a lovely site with practical examples of how different people do prayer.

Sometimes MBTI can be as refreshing (and unnerving) as looking in a mirror - at other times it can be constricting and unhelpful. Personally I find my INFJ (or possibly P) to fit pretty well and to help me realize why life is so frustrating... (Though there can be a bit of fruit-cakery as here!)

For a while we have been talking in the Chaplaincy about offering a Myers-Briggs and prayer workshop. Maybe there would be enough interest to put one on, or do one in collaboration....?

(Crucifixion) RED

2006-05-17T21:51:00.000+01:00

I don't often like Damien Hirst, but his front cover for yesterday's (Independent) RED was very clever and played - as he has done before - with Christian imagery (see his Luke here). (Product) RED is, by the way, a brainwave of Bono to get corporate capitalism involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa - companies donate some of the profits from their (Product) RED branded products: mobile phones, shoes, clothes etc.

On the front page of the paper, various symbols form a cross-shape: the skull, tablets and needle tell the AIDS story and the fight against it. Combined with them are the clasped hands in prayer and the dove with the leaf in its mouth: a nod both to the Ark story in Genesis 8 (v.11), but also to U2's song Beautiful Day).

There is, then, death and enslavement to tortuous routines of treatment; there is an allusion to the destruction of the world by flood/disease; but there is also prayer and hope...

Putting the skull at the base of the cross is a nice trick - it picks up the placing of Adam's skull at the foot of Christ's cross in Orthodox Icons - a way to make the story of the cross relate to every(wo)man.

Placing the Bible reference at the top is also very perceptive. When Christ was crucified a titulus (a charge-sheet) was placed above his head ("this is the King of the Jews"). The titulus here is from Genesis 1:27: "God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God they were created: male and female God created them".

In other words the image means (to me) that ordinary Africans, God's children and bearing God's image, are being crucified by the AIDS pandemic. We are invited to feel as outraged at this scandal as at the murder of the Innocent One. The death of millions of people with AIDS is a scandal since AIDS is, as the footnote at the bottom of the page puts it, "a preventable, treatable disease".

The bottom line would seem to be: just as Pilate washed his hands of Christ's death - do we wealthy Westeners do the same of Africa's? Indeed we wash our hands daily of it - it is no longer even news to us: "no news today".

This is a fascinating take on how Christ's crucifixion relates to the present day for Hirst. In the corner the figures "4.80N0" appear, i.e. "[This picture is] for Bono". Hirst's choice of religious imagery presumably picks up his understanding of what drives Bono (his faith).

It shows therefore one way of interpreting the Cross, emphasizing the way folk with AIDS suffer as Christ did. In doing this Hirst also implicitly gives Africans's lives the same value as Christ's life - and it points to his yearning for their resurrection, just as Christ has already experienced his.

I tip my hat to Hirst, and salute Bono's brave move out of church halls and student campaigning into the high street...

Booboo

2006-05-17T21:44:00.000+01:00

This is so funny I almost wet myself. (Be sure to watch the video clip!).

With thanks to Maggi Dawn.

Saving Power

2006-05-15T17:18:00.000+01:00

For theological geeks (ok, like me) who are interested in atonement theologies - and for those who are surprised at the plural theologies, Peter Schmiechen's Saving Power: Theories of Atonement and Forms of the Church looks fascinating.

What seems especially useful is how the writer links theology to ecclesiology:
what does that belief achieve and mean in that place?

From the Church Times review:
"He brings this out as he explores the cultural reasons why some theories have appealed to particular groups in particular ages; and he also examines some of the present divides between conservatives and liberals, and how these might be healed by a better understanding of the limits of their respective interpretations." (The whole review is here)

Contents:

PART ONE: THEORIES OF ATONEMENT

CHRIST DIED FOR US
1 - Sacrifice, The Letter to the Hebrews
2 - Justification by Grace, Martin Luther
3 - Substitution, Charles Hodge

LIBERATION FROM SIN, DEATH, AND DEMONIC POWERS
4 - Liberation, Irenaeus and Twentieth-Century Liberation Theology

THE PURPOSES OF GOD
5 - The Renewal of the Creation, Athanasius
6 - The Restoration of the Creation, Anselm
7 - Christ the Goal of Creation, Friedrich Schleiermacher

RECONCILIATION
8 - Christ the Way to the Knowledge of God, H. Richard Niebuhr
9 - Christ the Reconciler, I Corinthians 1 & 2
10 - The Wondrous Love of God, Peter Abelard, John Wesley, and Jurgen Moltmann

PART TWO: CONCLUSION
11 - Jesus Christ the Saving Power of God
12 - Christ and the Church

Publisher's info here, including a free view of the introductory chapter.

The Kingdom of God: "a pungent shrub with takeover properties".

2006-05-14T21:09:00.000+01:00

Doing Godly Play again with some kids at church. We told the parable of the mustard seed. Great fun - I'll blog some of their responses soon. Bizarrely it is one of the more disturbing parables...

'What is the Kingdom of God like?' asks someone.
'Well', says Jesus, 'it's like someone planting a tiny mustard seed, it grows, becomes a tree and birds make nests in it...'
(see the technical version here - it's in all three synoptics, and Thomas)

Not particularly profound is it? Surely harmless?

Oddly enough it would have been originally slightly unsettling. The mustard seed is an ungainly shrub that few people in their right mind would ever really want to encourage. It takes up valuable farming land and spreads like wild-fire.

The Mishnah forbade it to be be planted in anyone's garden (which, in Luke, is precisely where Jesus says it is planted). Although it can be used for seasoning, it can be poisonous in large quantities to livestock, and its relative white mustard can be toxic to the touch.

Nor is it a large plant - it only grows to a paltry 1.5m. Can this be the Kingdom?!

Commentators note that the references to the size of the plant and to birds nesting link up with several Old Testament metaphors for great kingdoms.

Funk writes, "The mustard seed is an unlikely figure of speech for God's domain in Jesus' original parable. His listeners would probably have expected God's domain to be compared to something great, not something small and insignificant."

Behind the image he notes the traditional picture of the mighty cedar of Lebanon as a metaphor for a towering empire (Ezek 17:22-23) and the apocalyptic tree of Daniel 4:12, 20-22. In Daniel, the crown of the tree reaches to heaven and its branches cover the earth; under it dwell the beasts of the field and in its branches nest the birds of the sky.

Jesus' implication is that his father's kingdom is not like a mighty cedar, or an oak, it is a deliberately counter-imperial image. There is no oppression or over bearing authority in God's realm.

Another writer, Crossan, picturesquely puts it thus: "The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed... It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses. If you could control it."

(Quotes taken from this useful source).

What Kind of Food Are You?

2006-05-11T21:39:00.000+01:00

With thanks to Jem:

You Are French Food

Snobby yet ubiquitous.
People act like they understand you more than they actually do.

What Kind of Food Are You?

New Chaplaincy Books

2006-05-09T20:43:00.000+01:00

Here's a fascinating reflection on the comparison between the Qur'an and Christ:

"The word of God in Islam is the Qur'an; in Christianity it is Christ. The vehicle of divine revelation in Christianity is the Blessed Virgin; in Islam it is he soul of the Prophet. The Prophet must be illiterate for the same reason that the Virgin Mary must be pure. The human vehicle of a divine message must be pure and unconscious. The divine word can be written only on the clean and unwritten sheet of human receptivity. If the word is in the form of a book, then this purity is symbolized by the illiteracy of the person who is chosen to make this word known among people. Both (the illiteracy of the Prophet and the virginity of Mary) symbolize a deep aspect of this mystery of revelation".

The writer is a Muslim, quoted in Understanding the Qur'an, by Anton Wessels. This book was a bestseller in Holland, presumably in the light of the murder of Pim Fortuyn and the national soul-searching and desire to understand Islam that followed it. It should be on the shelves of the Chaplaincy library, soon, along with the following other new purchases. (What follows is a copy of my weekly email).

In anticipation of the Da Vinci Code film, we have two books that take an accessible but not overly dogmatic view of Dan Brown's money-spinner. They are both very easy to peek into without getting bogged down. They give answers to curious questions such as, who were the Gnostics? did Constantine really put the Bible together? and who was this Mary Magdalene?

Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, by Bart D. Ehrman

and

The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code, by Sharan Newman (written with some help by a Professor of History from Reading!).

If by the end of term you are feeling completely burnt out, we have a new edition of The Good Retreat Guide which includes contact details of every kind of monastery, meditation centre, Creation Spirituality house etc. etc., you could possibly want to get you back on your feet (and how to do a retreat if you've never done one before).

If you've never looked into how a gospel 'works' or how they came about, and you want to find a safe place somewhere between complete skepticism and fundamentalism then Adrian Graffy's easy to read Trustworthy and True, the Gospels beyond 2000 might be for you.

Or, as is often the case, you've never been taught how to pray (or have only been taught one way which doesn't work for you) then John Pritchard's superb and simple How to Pray, A Practical Handbook has 25 different prayer styles (including using music, the arts, scripture, silence, Celtic, Franciscan and other styles - and also how to keep a prayer life fresh and how to pray in difficult situations).

Finally we now have the complete set of Brian McLaren's works. Brian is an American Evangelical who is thinking through his faith in extremely interesting (and for some, challenging) ways.

The subtitle of his A Generous Orthodoxy, Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mythical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished Christian, should speak for itself!

We also have now the full set of his A New Kind of Christian series which does theology through narrative (think Sophie's World meets twenty-first century imaginative Christianity, covering science and faith and the thorny topic of hell).

Faithful Art: Trinity II

2006-05-05T21:45:00.000+01:00

My fellow Chaplain, Sabine, and I paid a visit to Sue Batchelor this morning to look at some of her art work with a view to hanging some pictures in the Chaplaincy.
I've loved Sue's work since I first saw it hanging in St John and St Stephen's Church (seeing it was a great reason to stay - how many churches these days value the visual arts?).

This work is entitled Trinity II. There's a strange mixture of shared pain - the interpenetration of the red/blue drops between the Crucified Son and the Father (who 'lifts up' the Son - perhaps a play, as in John's Gospel, upon the dual sense of the 'lifting up' crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus). Then there's also joy - not just the wind-blown allusions in the surmounting figure of the Spirit (a hint too of those pesky minute mustard seeds that Jesus tells us are a parable of the Kingdom) but also the way the picture even looks like a figure on a slide...

Some of her work is available on blank cards here.

All Christians are Atheists

2006-05-01T22:57:00.000+01:00

Michael Buckley begins his monumental study of the Origins of Atheism with the simple (but often overlooked) assertion that atheism is 'parasitic' upon theism:

an inquiry into the origins of atheism must trace the intellectual process from god affirmed to god denied. The content of one constitutes the content and explanation of the other... Atheism is necessarily dependent upon theism for its vocabulary, its meanings, and its embodiments (p. 17).

Atheism is thus not a single phenomenon - it takes its meaning from the form of theism denied.

All Christians are therefore atheists: they deny certain gods. For example, as followers of the Way of Christ the Resurrected Victim, all gods of power without compassion are denied ultimate existence.

(This might well mean, for instance in a political working out of this, that Christians would reject ascribing worth to [i.e. 'worshipping'] nuclear weapons, a form of exercising warfare that inevitably cannot distinguish combantants from civilians).

Atheism is therefore central to Christian theology. Thinking about God not only involves saying 'yes' to some things that the concept 'God' might cover, but also 'no' to other things.

To put it flippantly, on meeting an atheist a Christian should well be able to respond, 'me, too! Which gods don't you believe in?'.

Or, less flippantly, the Christian may well learn from the atheist. For the Christian might - in respectful dialogue - discover that some things which s/he considered true about God may actually turn out to be morally abhorrent or intellectually confused.

Ironically, in that case, the atheist becomes a channel for divine revelation, an other 'Mary' through whom the Word, yet again, takes flesh...

For Peter - hope you find this.

2006-05-01T22:51:00.000+01:00

Swift

The swifts winnow the air.
It is pleasant at the end of the day
To watch them. I have shut the mind
On fools. The 'phone's frenzy
Is over. There is only the swifts'
Restlessness in the sky
And their shrill squealing.
Sometimes they glide,
Or rip the silk of the wind
In passing. Unseen ribbons
Are trailing upon the air.
There is no solving the problem
They pose, that had millions of years
Behind it, when the first thinker
Looked at them.
Sometimes they meet
In the high air; what is engendered
At contact? I am learning to bring
Only my wonder to the contemplation
Of the geometry of the dark wings.

R.S. Thomas

Installing Love

2006-04-26T23:00:00.000+01:00

I discovered this on a visit to Portsmouth University's Chaplaincy. Ok it's schmaltzy, but just occasionally one of these things gets under my radar...

Tech Support: Yes, .. how can I help you?

Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?

Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?

Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready. What do I do first?

Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?

Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?

Tech Support: What programs are running?

Customer: Let's see, I have Past-Hurt.exe, Low-Self-Esteem.exe, Grudge.exe and Resentment.exe running right now.

Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past-Hurt.exe from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low-Self-Esteem.exe with a module of its own called High-Self-Esteem.exe. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge.exe and Resentment.exe. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness.exe. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge.exe and Resentment.exe have been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?

Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error - Program not run on external components" What should I do?

Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.

Customer: So, what should I do?

Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance.exe; then click on the following files: Forgive-Self.txt; Realize-Your-Worth.txt; and Acknowledge-Your-Limitations.txt.

Customer: Okay, done.

Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose-Self-Criticism.txt from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile.mpg is playing on my monitor and Peace.txt and Contentment.txt are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?

Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes awhile, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.

Customer: I will. Thank you for your help.

Godly Play

2006-04-25T22:39:00.000+01:00

"I'd rather spend more time with my parents than go out shopping at the weekend", (local child, aged 9).

A couple of days ago I returned to one of the things I used to really love about being a parish priest - story-telling with primary school children.

A small group of us went into a local school and told the story of the Creation. We were using the Godly Play technique (Montessori-style tactile learning).

We sat on the floor in a circle and using some very basic, but well made, cut-outs we ran through the ancient story from Genesis 1 of God's gift of Creation, 'In the beginning.... On the first day... On the second... And God saw that it was all very good'.

The great thing about Godly Play is the way that over a dozen kids can sit still for nearly 30 minutes completely entranced by the meditative unfolding of a simple story. When I tell a story like this, it often feels a bit like celebrating a Eucharist there is such intensity and reverence in the room.

What's even more exciting is that after the story-telling proper, the circle is encouraged to 'wonder' about the story. Instead of old-style chalk and talk Religious education (RE), Godly Play is both faithful to the Bible texts, but also completely open to allow children to discover what the texts mean for them. It's a remarkable post-modern approach to RE.

As part of our wondering I played at removing various of the seven 'days' and asking the children what they felt. Several of the children wondered whether if the 'seventh day', the 'day to rest and remember', were removed from a week, people's bodies and minds would begin to break down. One lad suggested it might lead people to commit suicide.

In one of the other groups a similar question led one child to make the comment I began this entry with: s/he'd rather spend time with family on a Sunday than have another day out shopping with mum and dad. And all this, just as the Government's Department of Trade and Industry considers extending Sunday trading hours...

More info about Godly play and other links on this blog entry here.

Singin' Bout the Revolution

2006-04-23T21:56:00.000+01:00

On a car trip to visit friends we rediscover Tracy Chapman. Several of the tracks from her debut album are stunningly good, especially for the liberation-theology minded:

Why? (1986) (Clip here).

Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food to feed the world
Why when there're so many of us
Are there people still alone

Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they're aimed to kill
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home

Love is hate
War is peace
No is yes
And we're all free

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
Amidst all these questions and contradictions
There're some who seek the truth

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
When the blind remove their blinders
And the speechless speak the truth

and

Talkin' Bout A Revolution (1982) (Clip here).

Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs

Don’t you know
You better run, run, run...
Oh I said you better
Run, run, run...

Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ bout a revolution

Album here.

Why 'heresy' is now 'opinion'

2006-04-22T23:45:00.000+01:00

In his portrait of the Reformer John Calvin, William Bouwsma makes the important observation that a fundamental shift has occurred since the sixteenth century in the philosophy of epistemology (or, how we think we know something).

A difference of opinion in the sixteenth century among theologians, like Calvin, might have led to charges of willful and dangerous heresy and punishment by death. Today such a theological difference of opinion may be allowed on the basis of the possibility of alternative interpretations.

This shift does not lie merely in the extension of a 'civilized' culture or in changes in law, or social values. It is due to a deeper move:

'Fundamental to traditional culture was a confidence that the human mind is capable of knowing what exists as it really is: as God might know it... The mind is united and becomes identical with what is known. Aristotle had said this directly: "The act of knowing is the same as the thing known."

In this conception of knowing, the role of the knower is passive: the active role in the union of knower and known is played by the object, which impresses itself on the mind.

This conception might be contrasted with the modern notion of thinking about a thing, a notion that assumes a distinction between thought and its object and recognizes the possibility of wide discrepancies between them.

The traditional conception was ... absolutist and authoritarian. If our knowledge is of things themselves as they really are, there should be, in principle, no disagreement.
Difference of opinion in matters of knowledge could only be construed as resulting from deficiency of mind or from perversity: a difference of opinion stubbornly maintained would, from this standpoint, be wicked.

In any case the truth about things, especially in important matters, must be made to prevail. This position could lead to charges of heresy not only in religion but also in the natural sciences or even history.'

John Calvin, A Sixteenth Century Portrait, pp. 69-70.

Other ways of speaking salvation?

2006-04-19T17:31:00.000+01:00

I am in a foul mood. A little depressed, withdrawn, edgy, suspicious, tired.

My wife comes to me and I snap at her.

She does not respond by snapping back. She offers me a drink and a chocolate biscuit.

In a sudden, I am overwhelmed by her grace in the face of my behaviour. She doesn't deserve my ill temper.

My realization changes me. In graciously giving of herself, my negativity is absorbed. In an instant I am saved and restored.

I notice similar transformations involving everyday grace. Here's another:

My toddler guilelessly joins in the circle we form around the communion table in Church. I pick him up.

He comments without any concern for others' opinions that there is bread and wine being handed around. When it comes to him he holds out his hand, too.

His presence brings smiles to other faces. The mood of the circle is lifted.

Why? It is, I think, because of the grace of the gift of himself to us. His unconcern for himself - his living his life without calculation - brings a glimpse of grace.

We see him, just briefly, as a gift. And that glimpse momentarily transforms those of us around him who witness it.
There are many biblical models for salvation and atonement, all of them inadequate on their own. One of them almost comes close to this - Abelard's idea that the free self-giving of God in Christ overwhelms us and transforms us.

(There's a touching example of this 'economy of grace' triumphing over the 'economy of hatred' right at the moment of the crucifixion. A Centurion who sees the way Jesus dies - his treatment by others and his refusal to respond with hatred - is in that moment converted: 'Truly this man is the Son of God'.)

Often though such a 'moral example' theory puts the emphasis on us to choose to respond to grace, and that is its weakness: that it is too 'subjective'.

My experiences described above though involve no moments of calculated choice. I am simply overwhelmed by grace, I have no choice in the matter at all.

The Church has never given its approval to any particular theory of salvation. None of the early Creeds focused on it. Pragmatically speaking every theory is a rhetorical construction of its age whose aim is to help us recognize our salvation for ourselves.

What would the rhetoric of salvation look like today if it traded on twenty-first century experiences, anxieties and dreams?

Generous answers on a post card...

'...he is not here.'

2006-04-16T21:21:00.000+01:00

A final quote from David Cunningham's book Reading is Believing, an introduction to the Apostles' Creed via the writings of Iris Murdoch, P. D. James, Dickens, Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Barbara Kingsolver and others.

Writing about the sixth article of the Apostles' Creed ('...he ascended into heaven'), Cunningham makes the surprising assertion that our faith is superior to that of the original witnesses of the Resurrection.

'Since Jesus is not here [any longer after the Ascension] as a single, fully human, fully enfleshed being, this implies that our Christian faith is not compelled by God. God does not force us to believe by means of a physical presence that would, as it were, quiet all our doubts.

Our freely given faith is, in some sense, superior to the faith of those who, like Thomas, seemed to have little choice in the matter. (In John 20:29, Jesus says, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.")

The physical presence of another person is an overwhelming experience; no longer does our relationship to that person require much action or initiative on our parts. We are almost compelled to acknowledge the existence of the other by that person's sheer physical presence.

In that person's absence, our faith and love are put to the test; now it will require an act of our own will, a determined decision, to bring the other person to mind, and to place our trust and devotion there. Our belief in the ascension of Jesus is a sign and seal of the depth and breadth of our faith.'

Cunningham on the Resurrection

2006-04-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

A little early perhaps considering it is still Maundy Thursday, but still...
An excerpt from Cunninghams's treatment of the fifth article of the Apostles' Creed, '...On the third day rose again...'.

'The resurrection of Jesus ... is, above all, an authentication of the life of Jesus: a claim that God officially approves of his teachings and his willingness to die at the hands of the state.

The particular form of Jesus' life and death is thereby described as a good form, a divinely sanctioned form.

In addition, the resurrection of Jesus makes a statement about suffering and death--namely, that death does not have the final word. God's mighty act of raising Jesus from the dead is, as Paul puts it, a defeat of death by death (1 Cor. 15:54). "Death no longer has dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9); and, by extension, death no longer has dominion over us.'

Reading is Believing (p. 102).

The Maze of Faith

2006-04-13T22:52:00.000+01:00

A visit to the National Trust house at Greys Court yielded this surprise: a maze (the paths of which my son loved running along).

In the centre was a monument with some inspiring words from Augustine on the life of faith...

Manchester Passion

2006-04-12T21:23:00.000+01:00

As a child of the '90s I can't wait for this: the Passion story set to Indy music.

Kick off for this live event is: 9.00pm Good Friday BBC3. It will last about an hour you can go see it live in Manchester, too...

Full set list:

Jesus sings You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side (Morrissey)
Mary sings Cast No Shadow (Oasis)
Jesus sings Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division) at the Last Supper.
Mary sings Search For A Hero (M People)
Judas sings Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (The Smiths) as he is about to betray Jesus.
Jesus sings Sit Down (James) to the sleeping disciples
Jesus and Judas sing Blue Monday (New Order)
Peter sings I Am The Resurrection (The Stone Roses) when he betrays Jesus
Mary sings Angels (Robbie Williams)
Jesus and Pontius Pilate sing Wonderwall (Oasis)
Mary sings Sunshine After The Rain (Elkie Brooks)

Full details here and here

'...suffered under Pontius Pilate'

2006-04-12T13:53:00.000+01:00

Excerpt from David Cunningham's Reading is Believing on the fourth article of the Apostles' Creed (p. 83).

"The Biblical texts tells us that Jeus suffered from hunger (Matt. 4:2), from loneliness (Matt. 26:40), from frustration (Mark 8:21), from anger (Mark 3:5), and from a feeling of abandonment (Mark 15:34).

The writers of the creed could also have emphasized his sufferings under the religious authorities of his day, or at the hands of his compatriots. But by focusing on Pilate (and therefore on the Empire), the creed draws our attention to the temporal power structures that seek to dominate our lives.

These structures may be political, economic, familial, or cultural; they may draw their strength from illegitimate appeals to difference in race, gender, and other biological realities; and they may achieve their dominance through violent coercion, subtle suggestion, or the incitement of mass panic.

Of course human suffering is not limited to these particular forms, but neither should we forget that much of our suffering results from structures that are put in place by human beings.

The creed emphasizes that Jesus suffered under some of the same forms of domination that we suffer under today."

Review of 'This Thing of Darkness'

2006-04-10T23:51:00.000+01:00

Master and Commander meets Origin of Species in this superbly exciting novel. In This Thing of Darkness we follow the intellectual and nautical journeys of HMS Beagle, her Captain Robert FitzRoy, and most famous passenger, Charles Darwin.

As is well known, Darwin's time on board the Beagle furnished him with the material to compose his theory of evolution by natural selection. What Harry Thompson's impressively researched, lightly-told and frequently humorous book does, too, is to reveal the many other stunningly impressive scientific advances her crew made and the acts of heroism these involved.

Against the background of powerful natural and human adversity, under its inspirational and at times mercurial Captain, this tiny vessel's crew made incredible discoveries in disciplines as diverse as navigation, geology, anthropology, botany and meteorology.

But this thrilling novel is not just about external journeying. The 'thing of darkness' to which the title alludes refers not just to the illumination of previously unknown geographical, or even intellectual, information. We are party, also, to the exploration of the darker recesses of the human person.

Thompson makes us witnesses to the ill effects of human greed, ignorance and (with great pathos) naive idealism. And he does this with nods to the present which are, by turn, wry, poignant and savagely critical. It is these recurring allusions to the present that make this novel transcend the genre of nautical yarn and lift it to the status of modern-day parable.

Colonizing settlers are thus shown exterminating native 'terrorists' and justifying their deeds with words and sentiments cleverly borrowed by the author from George Bush and Tony Blair's 'War on Terror'. The aftermath of a tsunami is vividly rendered with descriptions reminiscent of recent news footage. The tale of an experiment to civilize Patagonian natives ultimately risks personal and tribal disaster, and a comment about modern globalization and its effects on ecologies and cultures can clearly be heard as an echo.

Throughout this, though, there is also an on-going exploration into the way scientific and religious arguments interact. Here the writer does not simply re-enact before us the clash and sparks of abstract thought, but more movingly lays bare their effect upon the darker places of the human personalities who think them. This is a tale at whose heart are two very unique individuals, whose personalities and beliefs are initially complementary, but finally irreconcilable.

In the context of the present debate about Creationism, Intelligent Design and Neo-Darwinianism which has in recent months touched schools, courtrooms, archiepiscopal pronouncements and even recent episodes of West Wing, this novel is not only viscerally gripping, but also intellectually and emotionally engrossing.

There is an ironic and final pathos about This Thing of Darkness. It was both its young author's first and last novel. Harry Thompson succumbed to his own encounter with natural selection in the form of lung cancer. It was not before he was aware though that his brilliant novel had been long-listed for the Booker Prize. A superb beach novel, particularly if that beach is a raised one, five thousand feet up in the Andes, and littered with fossils.

(c) M.Laynesmith, 2006.

'Amen'

2006-04-10T16:38:00.000+01:00

Cunningham ends his series of literary reflections on the Apostles' Creed by noting the presence of the final word: 'Amen':

'...creeds are not mere laundry lists of statements about the Christian faith. In fact they are really much more like prayers. When we say them, we are not merely announcing what we think or describing the state in which we find ourselves; we are also asking God for help and guidance in living into the faith that the creeds attempt to articulate. We are confessing our faith, but we are also confessing our unfaith...

...Our tendency to inhabit the borderlands between faith and unfaith is not new. It is not merely a recent development brought on by life in an increasingly secular age. In fact, it has been typical of the way that people have responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ through the ages....

...In his Confessions, Augustine offers a wonderful description of the long and arduous path[,] that he wandered through the equally attractive lands of faith and of doubt until he finally came to realize that "our hearts are restless until they rest in God." And what Christian has not been beguiled by the beautiful story in the Gospel of Mark, in which the father of the sick child is told that all power and possibility is dependent upon his ability to believe? He cries out to Jesus, as would we all, "I believe; help my unbelief"...

...Perhaps these stories [quoted in the previous chapters] can even help transform our perception of the Apostles' Creed (and other statements of Christian belief) from a suspiciously antiquated checklist of beliefs in to a heart-felt and life-transforming prayer--a prayer that we can utter in the spirit of a bereaved parent who cries out, "I believe; help my unbelief!" and a prayer to which we can, with confidence and joy, say "Amen."'

(Reading is Believing, pp. 235-6)

2006-04-10T11:16:00.000+01:00

A Missed Academic Career

2006-04-08T21:41:00.000+01:00

Sally found this fun tool for discerning what sort of an academic you might turn out to be. Sadly it didn't have either history or theology in it. Does that explain why I get an imperfect 85% English rating?

"You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours!

English - 83%
Linguistics - 75%
Anthropology - 75%
Philosophy - 67%
Journalism - 67%
Psychology - 67%
Sociology - 67%
Engineering - 63%
Theater - 50%
Mathematics - 50%
Biology - 42%
Art - 33%
Chemistry - 33%

Get ready for it - the Gospel of Judas!

2006-04-06T20:32:00.000+01:00

With superbly timed marketing, slap in the middle of the run up to Easter, in the wake of the Da Vinci Code book, and in anticipation of the film, the Gospel of Judas hits the streets in book, film and magazine formats!

Sadly, in the journalistic hype the overlooked details of this case are plentiful and significant. Hardly 'unknown' the text has been known about for decades (although not translated). It isn't a complete text. The manuscript itself dates to around 300. The text it contains was possibly written up to a century after the New Testament Gospels - and not by Judas. And it fits perfectly with other Gnostic texts in its complete lack of interest in the real physicality and historicity of Jesus.

I can already hear the sound of money pouring into publishing bank accounts... and the equally load groans of boredom from the poor sods who buy the thing expecting a STUNNING NEW REVELATION about the REAL JESUS who MARRIED MARY MAGDALENE!

Well sorry, no such luck.

Turns out the early church was pretty discerning in what it decided constituted a good account of the life and significance of Jesus, and what was just away with the faeries... (ok, not fair on gnostics - the text is another useful insight into second century gnostic belief, I should aim my frustrations as the publishers)

The more interesting story is the manuscript's journey through the black market and the attempt to flog it for $10 million. Thankfully the views of genuine scholars are slowly reaching the press (although always just too late...).

Speaking personally I've always been extremely moved by Judas' tragic story and his repentance by suicide. Judas is scarcely more hostile to Jesus than Peter denying his friend outside the High Priest's house. I blame Dante for popularizing the image of Judas frozen in the devil's mouth in the depths of hell.

For the interested a quick sample:

Judas said, “Master, as you have listened to all of them, now also listen to me. For I have seen a great vision.”

When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to him, “You thirteenth spirit, why do you try so hard? But speak up, and I shall bear with you.”

Judas said to him, “In the vision I saw myself as the twelve disciples were stoning me and [45] persecuting [me severely]. And I also came to the place where […] after you. I saw [a house …], and my eyes could not [comprehend] its size. Great people were surrounding it, and that house a roof of greenery, and in the middle of the house was [a crowd—two lines missing—], saying, ‘Master, take me in along with these people.’”

[Jesus] answered and said, “Judas, your star has led you astray.” He continued, “No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels. Look, I have explained to you the mysteries of the kingdom [46] and I have taught you about the error of the stars; and […] send it […] on the twelve aeons.”

Nice change to find a laughing Jesus, though.

For those who want a more extensive free peek, or a look at some of the surrounding press comments.

Reading is Believing

2006-04-05T22:22:00.000+01:00

David Cunningham has been a recent discovery over the past few years for me, beginning with his These Three Are One, one of the most accessible and relevant books on Trinitarian theology I've ever come across. (How often do you find a theology tome that includes words for a new hymn?).

Cunningham has a profound interest in the reception of theological doctrine, not just its formation (see his Faithful Persuasion).

This work, Reading is Believing, sees him trying to explore the Apostles' Creed for the general laity in the form of a book/film-club.

Interesting idea; I've just finished his section on the incarnation which (rightly) cooks a snoop at unwitting modern Christian docetism by holding up The Last Temptation of Christ as a profound meditation on Jesus' full humanity.

I'll post the best bits (as I see them). But to start with I loved his charming advert to the legendary origins of the Apostles' Creed:

Apparently, so the story goes, it began with the 12 disciples (Matthias replacing Judas) sitting together when Peter pipes up, 'I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth...', to which Andrew adds, 'And in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord'.

I fondly imagine each apostle pitching in one at a time with their reflections. Most poignant of all, to whom is the fifth article of the creed ('Descended into hell, on the third day rose again from the dead') ascribed in the legend? Why, who else but that great doubter: Thomas.

The Last Week

2006-04-04T20:42:00.000+01:00

This looks fascinating - but can it be any more gripping than the original?

The publisher's blurb reads:

"Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings."

And the Winner is...

2006-04-04T11:49:00.000+01:00

Sally has announced the winner of the Chaplaincy sweepstakes on the stats for our new baby! Thanks Sally. The winners get to change a nappy each.

April Fools

2006-04-04T11:42:00.000+01:00

I'm always falling for these. Perhaps I just take life too seriously.

My two favourites were the news about the
first woman archbishop

and this hilarious one about an really creative
alternative worship event.