Mystery

Over the last week my spiritual exercises have focused on contemplation of the Trinity. Around this eternal community of 3 persons in one God who live in mutual praise and companionship and devotion to one another. And around Jesus as the second person, of his role in both creation and recreation. The embodied Word which spoke everything into being.

Ignatius asks us to contemplate the world, firstly to spend time with what we see, then what we hear and then what actions we see in the world. That in itself was very powerful. Then to contrast this mystery with the simple story of Mary. There were some verses to read from the Gospel of Luke.

And the words I can't get away from are - "God sent".

This loving God, who is relational to the core of his being, his response to the brokenness and to all that he sees, hears and to the actions of people is to act in time and space. To send to a young girl, a word, which became, literally, embodied through her "Yes" response; in order to draw his creation back into this loving companionship and mutual love which God experiences all the time.

He is, always was, and always will be, drawing us right into the centre of himself until we can hardly spot the join.

Living attentively in Advent

It is easy to rush around so much at this time of year, living distractedly, and that's a shame because we miss out on a season which is so rich in symbolism and where, if we can find time to slow down and live a bit counter-culturally, we become much more aware of the incredible power and mystery of Christmas.

"We need Advent because everything in our culture tells us that this season is about buying - and we need more than anything to be reminded of God's perfect gift to all of humankind.

We need Advent because everything in our culture tells us that Christmas begins sometime in October when the shops start to fill with Christmas merchandise - and we need to be reminded that we are waiting, that God's time is not our time, that the world waited a long time for a saviour.

We need Advent because everything in our culture tells us that our lives should be built around our jobs, our purchasing power, and our frantic schedules - and we need to remind ourselves that we belong to God. We need to tell and hear the story of a God who chose to become poor and vulnerable."

In Advent we think of the God who came, the God who comes to us now and the God who will come. Some of the very things we get caught up in can be the things, if we live attentively, that can help us to become more focused.

Here are some ideas;

Light - we celebrate the return of the light - that's why we light more candles on our Advent wreath as the weeks go on - anticipating the conquering of the light over darkness as we reach the shortest day and the days begin to get longer (not sure of the date this year but it's normally around the 22 or 23rd of December) - live aware of the light around us - the sky and how it looks as we travel into work or look out our windows or go about our last minute preparations, or light a candle at night.

Evergreen - we bring evergreen branches and trees into our house and decorate them with symbols of fruit - they're called Christmas trees. Instead of seeing this as a chore, we can do this attentively realising that this symbolises the fruitfulness of the previous year (sometimes we collect ornaments from our travels) and as we place them on our tree, we can reflect on the previous years fruitfulness and the promise of fruitfulness to come. God's mercies are not all behind us - they are new every morning.

Giving gifts - intentionally seeking to bless someone with something thoughtful and well chosen as a way of symbolising the importance of that person to us and saying something about our relationship - sending cards can be the same - seeking to bless someone, writing a small blessing on their card. These become sacraments - they are symbols of something much deeper - signs of grace.

Eating together - whether with family or friends or serving someone who is homeless or without friends and family, there is something that seems to be in the heart of God about sharing hospitality and love through sharing a meal.

Among the poor, among the proud, among the persecuted, among the privileged
Christ is coming

In the private house, in the market place, in the wedding feast, in the judgement hall
Christ is coming

With a gentle touch, with an angry word, with a clear conscience, with burning love,
Christ is coming

That the kingdom might come, that the world might believe, that the powerful might stumble, that the humble might be raised
Christ is coming

Within us, without us, among us, before us, in this place, in every place, for this time, for all time
Christ is coming

He is coming to make all things new

Advent

Waiting Prayer for Advent

God of the watching ones,

give us Your Benediction.

God of the waiting ones,

give us Your good word for our souls.

God of the watching ones,the waiting ones,the slow and suffering ones,

give us Your benediction,

Your good word for our souls,

that we might rest.

God of the watching ones,the waiting ones,the slow and suffering ones,

And of the angels in heaven,

And of the child in the womb,

give us Your benediction,

Your good word for our souls,

that we might rest and rise

in the kindness of Your company.

In the name of the Father,

And the Son,

And the Holy Spirit

Amen.

Advent is my favourite time of year – we focus a lot on the death of Christ on the cross but for me there is amazing power in grasping the full implications of the incarnation of God. God come in the flesh. God, putting himself in a position of complete vulnerability and dependency on his own creation. To grasp this is to begin to understand something of the absolute love of God for us.

Advent comes from the Latin word meaning ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’ – a time of preparation for the coming of Christ into the world – it looks back to the first coming of Christ and forward to the return of Christ. The spiritual disciplines are of repentance, fasting and waiting and Advent is characterised by attitudes of longing, anticipation and hope. A time to prepare for the re-birth of Christ in our lives. The word itself implies a drawing near or immanence as God sets in motion the process by which he draws near to all people in the person of Jesus.

“A time of waiting in contemplation for the presence of Christ within us, we are called to bear Christ, to live Christ for others.” Taize

There is something of mystery – waiting with Mary: just as Christ is forming in her body, so we reflect on Christ being formed in our lives.

Christmas is a season not a single day and so we can live over the next few weeks in anticipation of God breaking into our world. Becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

John 1
In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (The Message says – But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves.) They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.”

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

So, with eternity in mind I seek to be more intentional in my watching for the coming of God in and around me

Isaac the Syrian

Contemplative prayer is an interesting thing. It is different. Looking back on the last 10 weeks covering the preparation period and beginning the Spiritual Exercises, I am finding this type of prayer to be very powerful. I came across a very good quote in a book I was reading which helps to describe it. It's a quote from St Isaac the Syrian, a 7th century Christian scholar and ascetic and hermit. He said,

"Stillness is a deliberate denial of the gift of words for the sake of achieving inner silence, in the midst of which a person can hear the presence of God. It is standing unceasingly, silent, and prayerfully before God"

I think this describes the process very well. It is a discipline; and some days it is easier than others. But to deny ourselves words for the sake of hearing God is powerful and I have found that God constantly meets me, and surprises me and there is a deepening awareness of "gift" as I contemplate different aspects of faith.

On Sunday I was leading worship and started by stopping. Encouraging people to take some time to become aware of the God who is already present. Sometimes the problem is that we are absent. It doesn't take too much time to stop and become aware and experience the Father who runs to us as we make our way home.

Cryptic Blog Entry #2

Well last night there were 2 new moons at the same time which was really spooky. As with reading, seeing it, I was briefly swayed towards team Jacob but I just can't sustain it - it is Edward all the way. This is not the feeling in the whole household as I have a near and dear one who is team Jacob, and even more so since last night. The house is divided.

(To make more sense of this you possible need to read Cryptic blog entry 1!)

Lessons from Qoheleth

What has become clear is that retreating in daily life can seriously effect one's blogging ability(?)/time(?).

One of the scriptures that I've been reflecting on in the last week or two is in the book of Ecclesiastes; Qoheleth (the Teacher) is reflecting, philosophically more than religiously, on the absurdity of life and how, therefore, we should live. The verses I was particularly drawn to are in chapter 3.

"What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end."

It's this tension we live in - God has placed eternity in our hearts - there is the pull to something more - we recognise a connection, some greater calling on us as human beings, but in spite of this we can never understand the full extent of what God is doing. Now I believe in "the prophetic in the every day" - where God underlines something from a common or garden experience that illustrates something that he is speaking to me about. So I had a couple of examples of this in the last week.

The first one - I was at a conference staying in a hotel beside the sea. I was taking some time out before dinner to do my daily contemplative prayer - it was dark but I could still see the waves crashing on the beach - which is something I love - so kept the curtains open. As I was meditating I looked out of the window and saw the moon begin to rise above some clouds on the horizon, a huge, pink, full moon - it was an amazing sight. I heard the invitation to be attentive to this, to watch it unfolding. And as I watched I was aware of people driving cars, I could see the lights fanning out in front of them on the road; people going about their everyday lives, rushing home from work; I was aware that some people were sitting behind the closed curtains of their hotel room or inside their houses, perhaps making dinner, distracted by other things; who weren't aware of the beauty of what was unfolding in the sky above them.

Secondly - a few mornings ago I was driving over the bridge, under a steel grey Scottish, November sky, and in the middle of it was a huge complete rainbow, with a lighter reflected rainbow next to it. The thing was that it was at the back of me and I couldn't glimpse the whole thing - just glances as I drove; a partial view in my wing mirror; another in my rear mirror - but the symbol of God's love and grace was right there - I just couldn't see it all at once.

Two examples of God's work continuing on while we can only see a glimpse or where the cares of the day crowd in on us and we miss God doing something amazing. But the comfort is that God is in control, that the Creator is always at work directing his creation.

The passage continues

"So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labour, for these are gifts from God."

I guess that brings us back to the whole attentive, grateful and prayerful thing again - being conscious of the everyday things that we do - working or eating or drinking - God has made even these beautiful and we should do them with pleasure, recognising the bigger work of God which goes on always whether we witness it or not.

Living the Day Well

Well I have completed my 6 week preparation phase before beginning the Spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola - (see here if you want more info on what that is but it is basically a retreat in everyday life - a period where you put aside time for around 9 - 12 months to particularly seek God and to contemplate the movement of God in your life). I'm actually now in the first week of the exercises proper and this week the focus is on the mystery that is "sin".

It was really good to recover the discipline of spending time each day in prayerful contemplation of scripture. It is very much praying with what God gifts to you rather than the more familiar prayer as thanks and asking for stuff. Spending time coming to a place of stillness and allowing God to bring something to my attention from the scripture passage and then just staying with that and allowing God to unfold some meaning, revelation, something fresh; is very powerful.

The preparation phase left me in an interesting place. An accumulation of passages left me with a strong sense of slowing down, of wanting to be much more aware of the day. The bible talks about God's mercies being new every morning, Jesus asks us to focus on one day and not to worry about what tomorrow will bring. Each day is a gift and we can live distractedly or attentively. We can live in a blur of activity, eating, driving, at meetings etc. or we can live aware of the food we have and how it tastes, aware of the countryside, the colour of the leaves, the light, the sky, as we drive along. Partly I think it's a result of the stilling and the contemplative nature of the exercises. The "examen" asks us to be aware of the different feelings during the day - to pay attention to what brings life and movement towards God and what brings desolation and a movement away from God. In one of the passages I was praying with, Deuteronomy 30.15-20, God invites us to choose life and the sense I got was very much of God's joy and exuberance and gift. God invites us each day to choose life and whatever situations we face we can ask "What is God's invitation in this?"

So I am seeking to live each day more attentively, more prayerfully and more gratefully. I'll let you know how it goes.

"Stillness in a Hectic World"

My sister got me an early Christmas present, Ludovico Einaudi was performing in Edinburgh after 3 years absence appearing again at the Usher Hall. So Sunday night, bad back and all, we headed off to Edinburgh.

If you have never heard Einaudi then I suggest you remedy this right away and get one of his CDs. I've used Einaudi's music in worship and prayer events; as background to multimedia presentations; I think actually that on a Sunday morning we could do away with some of the mushy nonsense that passes for contemporary worship music and just play some Einaudi pieces instead; he is also brilliant if you are seeking to come to stillness before prayer. His music is very difficult to categorise and has been variously described as classical; ambient; chamber music; this time the programme described it as "the sound of stillness in a hectic world", which is perfect.

To actually be at one of his concerts is on a different level altogether. The sense of peace and stillness which pervades the place when he plays is profoundly spiritual. I've seen him 3 times now and it is an experience that is like no other. I've seen him with just himself and his Steinway and with a cellist. This time like last, he appeared with his Steinway, 2 violinists who also played guitar and percussion (brilliantly!), a viola, a cellist and "live electronics". He opened the concert with a piece from his latest CD, Nightbook, The Planets, and as we sat in the darkened auditorium the music from the piano played and the violinists and viola player slowly walked from the back of the stalls through the audience. The music is haunting and uplifting and pierces your spirit. I find it difficult to not smile throughout the whole thing.

Two (not one - two) standing ovations later; that could be it for another 3 years; he's got no more dates in Scotland this time around but you can still catch him in Birmingham (tonight!!), Basingstoke, Poole, Gateshead and next year in London, Leicester, Brighton and Coventry - if you live near any of these places - get a ticket.

So when Christmas day comes and I don't have a present to unwrap - who cares - (my lovely sister also bought me the CD cos I wasn't well) I'll just put that on and let my mind drift back to experience the concert at the Usher Hall and rekindle that incredible stillness. Ludovico Einaudi - you are a legend!

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Saying Grace

Blog has been a bit neglected over the last few weeks - partly because of difficulty sitting - too sore!!

I came across a site recently called live simply - it's a site which challenges us to think about consumption, climate change, justice and poverty. It is good to reflect on God's goodness particularly as this is One World Week. Our food and other material goods are sourced from all over the world, many people are involved in producing it and we are exceptionally blessed. We really don't lack anything. We live in peace, we are free to worship, we eat more than one meal a day, we own shoes (you might want to check out the Tom's Shoes site on this issue). There are many ways we can get involved in global justice, but we might also want to start to really think about saying grace. We've always said grace before our evening meal but it's very easy to let it just slip into words and routine. The live simply site has some example graces and I particularly liked this one

Generous, loving God
Creator of the world we share
We ask you to give us today our daily bread

And as we store the crops
and fill the barns
stack the shelves
pile high the tins
and wander the aisles
of supermarket choice

Show us how to see the world
through the eyes of the hungry
Teach us how to share with all
Our daily bread
Amen

Meditation; Psalm 139; and a Herniated Disc

Life is never dull is it?

I just started into the 6 week preparation phase before making the Spiritual Exercises.

(For those who don't know too much about this - I'd decided some time ago that this was what was next for me on my Ignatian journey and have been looking forward to getting underway - they start in September to roughly parallel the liturgical year.

The Spiritual Exercises are really a form of retreat and were created in the sixteenth century by St Ignatius of Loyola based on ordered, scripture-based meditations and contemplations. St Ignatius believed that the Exercises needed extended time to unfold and that retreatants (me) needed individual guidance. Initially the exercises lasted over a 30 day retreat period, however, St Ignatius must have been prophetic because he made provision that the exercises could also be made in 'everyday life' over a period of around 9 - 12 months.

The Exercises are divided into four sections known as 'weeks' (these obviously aren't actual weeks when making the exercises in everyday life)­ separated by 'rest days'. In each 'week' you are invited to become more fully aware of an aspect of God's call, and to begin the process of co-operating with it. Different kinds of prayer are explored and there is an emphasis on praying with scripture, opportunity for stillness and use of the 'examen' of consciousness. The Spiritual Exercises involve a process which aims to help you to reach inner freedom in responding to the personal call of Christ to help build the Kingdom of God. They are orientated to mission, and rooted in contemplation.


The purpose of the exercises is to develop characteristics which then become part of daily life. Firstly, better able to discern your inner desires and to see how God is working in your life and in the world; secondly, how to bring together contemplation and action; and thirdly, increasing awareness of the presence and activity of God in all things.


There is an initial 6 week preparation period, daily prayer of around an hour which involves coming to stillness (very hard for me with my butterfly brain!); speaking to God about what it is I desire from the time; reflection / contemplation on a specific passage - which is the bulk of the time - allowing the passage to sit with you and becoming aware of what particularly strikes you; then dialogue with God; a short break; and journalling, paying particular attention to feelings. Each week I meet with my Spiritual Director to reflect on prayer and other experiences since the last meeting, and to agree material for the next week. My Spiritual Director is fabulous and she really helps me to reflect at a much deeper level and draw out God's movement in my life.)

So I was about a week and a half in - very excited - when 'ping' (or something) - excruciating pain and massive agony. Just at the point I was meditating on being 'so wonderfully complex' on God making 'all the delicate inner parts of my body', being loved and cherished, never away from God's presence. It's an interesting juxtaposition to find yourself in. The things that had stood out for me from the passage was the sense of God 'knowing my anxious thoughts' and 'placing your hand of blessing on my head'. I felt very clearly the absolute love and care of God. So at 2 o'clock in the morning as I was pacing my dark livingroom (yes and weeping in agony - I'm so dramatic!), draping myself over the back of my sofa in an effort to find any relief, I had a lot to meditate on.

The question I come to - 'Is God still with me?' - 'Yes'.

'Does he still love me the same way he showed me very vividly a few hours before?' 'Yes'.

The question I begin to ask is - 'How is God there to me?'

'As healer?' - ah - there's a tricky question. I'm surrounded by people who are really into healing and it's fab - every blessing on them and their ministry - seriously - but there is a big hesitation on this one for me - I don't believe that God sends suffering to test us or for any other reason. I don't believe that God even 'allows' suffering, but I do believe that we suffer - heck I could testify to it!! I also believe God can heal and does; but I also believe that not everyone gets healed and it's not because he doesn't love us, or because of our technique or because we used the wrong words or because of lack of faith etc. So how am I to understand God - how is he here to me? I also believe that when we seek God first we're doing the right thing - and I do think there is a difference between seeking God and seeking healing.

So for 10 days of sleeping on my livingroom floor suffering, pacing, spaced out on pills that would floor a horse, (yes there was even a bit more weeping and the odd sweary word), all the while doing my preparation passages meditating on God's care for wild flowers; the fact that he sends rain on the desert places where no-one lives in order to satisfy the parched ground and cause tender grass to spring up; how he crowns me with love and tender mercies; how he draws me into a good pasture; how when I go through deep waters, rivers of difficulty and fires of oppression, he'll be there in the flood and in the fire; even how the ostrich is a bit lacking in wisdom but still has a gift to be able to run like the wind!

What is the nature of the 'How'? He is my Creator, he named me, he is always with me, he knows me, he is God, he delights in his creation and it brings real joy to him to care for it; that's just how it is and it is no less true when I'm in pain than when I'm not. And there is a security in knowing this.

Can suffering have any element of 'gift' in it? Yes. St Ignatius began his 'retreat' because as a soldier, he was wounded by a cannonball in the leg - it was an enforced confinement - probably not particularly pleasant (no horse pills in those days!). There is something to having to live differently, even in your own house, no bed, making a space to sleep, having to think about the position you adopt to sleep that brings comfort. But God is in it. He is no less creator when I suffer than when I am fully fit.

"When you go through deep waters, rivers of difficulty and fires of oppression - you won't drown or be consumed because I will be with you."

So What? (Warning: this post is controversial and also quite long!)

So I read a bunch of books over the summer - nothing new there - I'm always reading and thinking - after all my summer book reports the big question is - So What ? How does it change me? What are the challenges? And what am I going to do about them anyway?

The big thing I understand, is it is all founded on relationship (I know that doesn't sound very radical after all 'personal relationship with God' is the mantra of evangelicalism) but bear with me...

Maybe the realisation started a few years back when I really began to study the Bible in a lot more depth - looking at differing views of really fine scholars - and finding that there are competing opinions across a whole range of Christian thought - there isn't one version of the truth (controversy #1). Christianity is a broad church - literally!

Actually - what I have come to understand, is that Christianity is more like independent travel than a package holiday where you accept the whole thing whether you like it all or not. I have become aware that actually what I am looking for is a different skin - one I feel more comfortable in. It is still absolutely a Christian skin, but there are lots of Christians who understand their faith very differently from each other. I guess the branch I've been in for quite a while, and have over time begun to find an increasing dissonance with, is much more certain than I am comfortable with. (you're either in or you're not; you're either saved or you're not; you're either going to hell or heaven; you have to believe the whole Bible is literally true, not myth or story or narrative and other types of literature - Jonah was definitely swallowed by a big fish, there was literal garden with 2 trees and a serpent and actually that serpent was the devil etc.)...and I'm honestly not saying this to disrespect others who believe this (and OK I'm maybe exaggerating for effect!) But honestly, there is a liberation in discovering that you have a valid choice about the kind of journey you make, and that you can make choices about the elements of belief that make sense to you and that you wish to journey with.

You see I do have problems with the Bible (controversy #2) (I agree with Scott McKnight on the emergent podcast) - it doesn't really make any difference to me that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not literally true; I really have no problem that there is such a thing as evolution (no actually that doesn't negate God - that's a category error as John Lennox points out); I have some real questions around some Christians' behaviours - (most of what is on the God Channel; Todd Bentley and his ilk, and what appears to me to be cynical manipulation and a particularly iniquitous brand of "superstitious christianity"); I have problems with hell; I don't care if the Bible is contradictory, that there was more than one Isaiah and that Paul was sometimes expressing an opinion; but I do have real issues about the immorality and the depiction of a god who is a mean, petty, war monger; I'm happy to ask the question about what kind of truth can be found in scripture. I understand that some of this is socially located and not universal theology; that some of this is down to partial revelation and narrow nationalism. The Bible, (unlike the Muslim belief in the Qu'ran or the book of Mormon, didn't pre-exist, wasn't handed down to us complete, by an angel) it is a product of the cultures and people in which and by whom it was written over many hundreds of years. (controversy #3) You have to understand that in order to make sense of it!

The relationship between the Bible and Christians has become significantly different in the last couple of hundred years; it has become individual, not located in community any more; it has completely mediated our understanding of God replacing our "felt" and "lived" experience; speaking into a specific time and place to a particular group of real people. It mirrors our move to "personal" salvation (and yes - as I tried to explain to the housegroup - to nonsense like the rapture - we are individually OK cos we're leaving anyway) (yip I know - controversy #4); no longer is the gospel about the transformational impact on society by a living, believing community.

That's why I like Rob Bell, Shane Claibourne, Emergent, Peter Rollins, Jamie Smith (and even Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard) etc. - it's about fundamentally redefining church as a transformational community; it's about permission to become a Christian traveller and not a package holiday maker passing through without touching the culture, living in my own personal Christian bubble eating at the tourist snack bars which sell egg and chips and show football on satellite TV. (does this make sense?)

What has become important to me is to search for understanding; learning to practice my faith in ways which come from many Christian traditions; which help me make sense of the world and God.

I do believe in a loving Creator and in the full revelation of this God being incarnated in Christ; I do believe that Jesus life and resurrection are just as important as his death; I understand this to be about love and showing a better way; I don't understand it to be legal, transactional or about assuaging God's wrath; I understand much better that theology is a conversation and that the gospel is always incarnated in a cultural context; and at it's heart is about a relationship, in fact the ultimate relationship.

On a final note (and in no way controversial I think), my daughter has started attending youth housegroup, run by a fantastic couple, and she's really loving it. She came home the other week and said - "Christianity has so many rules to follow" (the discussion had got around to going "up the town" on a Saturday night drinking and clubbing and what the Christian thing to do is). I said to her - "I don't understand God like that - Do you have a set of rules that you follow living in this family?" She thought about that, "No" she said. "Actually" I said "how we understand each other is through our relationship, living in the context of mutual love and acceptance. We love each other, and so we seek to understand one another and live together in a way that makes sense to us and honours the relationship". (that sounds a bit pretentious and I probably said it more simply - but she really got it)

I honestly understand God like this now. We find our journey in God completely mediated by his loving relationship with us. But our Christian lives are also mediated in community - in some senses it's never just about "God and me".

Small Graces and Blogging

What do you do when you've had the busiest, most frenetic 5 weeks at work, culminating in a 2 day event which you've been responsible for, with an overnight stay; when you've been up half the previous night with a migraine and when you are just knackered?

Well - you come home, you walk through your empty house and go out to your back garden, you sit yourself down on your door step, look out over your garden, hear the silence, turn your face to feel the warmth from the last heat of the early evening sun, and feel a sense of peace as you contemplate life while joined on the step by the undemanding companionship of next door's cat; you scarf down 2 bags of weightwatchers cheesy puffs (only 70 calories a bag) and you become aware that God's grace comes to you in all sorts of ways, some of which seem small and seemingly insignificant.

That's been a whole year of blogging and it's a funny old thing. I guess I started because it seemed like an idea - spurred on by my maladjusted friend. An online journal that people can follow, or read from time to time, or stumble across as the case may be. I hadn't been on my blog for a couple of days and when I looked there had been hits from a couple of places in the States, quite a few places across the UK, Paris, Germany and Turkey all in the space of 48 hours. Some people come from my friend's blog, others follow some obscure search to do with Doris Day, or flying monkeys, or Foucault. You get to share big ideas and small blessings and it's a lot of fun.

Whichever way you came to it - thanks for reading!

Summer Reading #s 3 & 4

This is taking me ages so I thought I'd do the last 2 books together. They are both from the same series anyway, edited by James K A Smith called "The Church and Postmodern Culture".

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism - Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church - James KA Smith

What Would Jesus Deconstruct - The Good news of Postmodernism for the Church.

Those of you who know me well, know I've been looking at this stuff for years but having been listening to and doing a bit more reading about emergent - Derrida is featuring large and I wanted to get to grips with this continental philosophy stuff in a bit more depth. Also who could resist a book with the title "What Would Jesus Deconstruct"? - (WWJD) - (yip that's the kind of thing which really appeals to me)

Jamie Smith looks at these 3 philosophers and deconstructs their "slogans" in a way which opens up their arguments really helpfully showing the applicability and benefit to the church. He also argues that to be relevant the church needs to look back at her traditions and reclaim them for the 21st century.

The "slogans" are
"There is nothing outside the text" Jacques Derrida
"Postmodernity is incredulity toward meta-narratives" Jean-Francois Lyotard
"Power is knowledge" - Michel Foucault

His agenda is clear - he wishes to shift from modern Christianity "where the base 'ingredient' is the individual"; Christianity as a system of truth or ideas; an intellectualised, commodified private faith affair between the individual and God where the role of the church is to provide a place of fellowship with other individuals who have a private relationship with God; the church then is simply a collection of individuals. Instead he argues for a living community embodying its head; genuine community; resisting talking about Christians as individuals; the notion of the "holy catholic church"undoes modern individualism; there is no Christianity apart from the body of Christ which is the church. The church does not exist for me; the church is the site where God renews and transforms us.

If you think that's quite radical then wait till you hear this bit - "What I a sinner need is not so much answers, as reformation of my will and heart...practices of friendship and being called to get along with those one doesn't like..the church for instance is a place to learn patience by practice"!!! (help!)

"Nothing is more countercultural than a community serving the Suffering Servant in a world devoted to consumption and violence."

It's actually quite hard to summarise this book because the arguments taken out of context can be misconstrued - which is ironic given, as Derrida says - "Everything is interpretation - i.e. there's nothing outside the text!". Let me give it a bash very briefly.

If everything is interpretation then we are free to interpret the world differently, the church becomes more prophetic while retaining its humility; it becomes countercultural and prophetic by its deeds; stops being apologetic in both senses and puts its interpretation openly into the marketplace. That's Derrida's bit.

Lyotard helps us to realise that "scientific knowledge, which considered itself to be a triumph over narrative knowledge, covertly grounds itself in a narrative; they are the false appeals to the universal, rational, scientific criteria - as though they were divorced from any particular myth or narrative. For the postmodernist every scientist is a believer...the postmodern critique demands not that modern thought relinquish its faith, but that it own up to it... the notion of reducing Christian faith to 4 spiritual laws signals a deep capitulation to scientific knowledge whereas postmodernism signals the recovery of narrative knowledge and should entail a more robust, unapologetic proclamation of the story of God in Christ."

Foucault talks about what counts as knowledge being constituted within networks of power - social, political and economic. "He sees through the neat and tidy claims to objective truth, seeing them as only masks of power. Many people are defined by the primary goal of consumption, they stake their identity on their material possessions...their ultimate goal is to be faithful consumers...we need to recognise the antithesis between the dominant culture's understanding of the human calling and the biblical understanding of our ultimate vocation...this must be cultivated by practices of sanctification."

OK - this is a huge post but I'm determined to finish - then in my next post I'll deal with the question on every one's lips - So What?

WWJDeconstruct - here's some quotes and you can make your own mind up

"I am still looking for the text that supports the idea that "Christians" means people who should be free to accumulate as much wealth for themselves as they possibly can under the law, while letting the needs of the poor be met painlessly by "charity"- by people of means who will voluntarily give of their overflow - so that they do not have to share any more of their wealth than is unavoidable"

"A politics of the kingdom would be marked by madness of forgiveness, generosity, mercy and hospitality. The dangerous memory of the crucified body of Jesus poses a threat to a world organised around the disastrous concept of power, something that is reflected today in the widespread critique of the concept of "sovereignty" - of the sovereignty of autonomous subjects and the sovereignty of nations powerful enough to get away with acting unilaterally and in their own self interests. The crucified body of Jesus proposes not that we keep theology out of politics but that we think theology otherwise, by way of another paradigm, another theology, requiring us to think of God otherwise, as a power of powerlessness, as opposed to the theology of omnipotence that underlies sovereignty. The call that issues from the crucified body of Jesus solicits our response, for it is we who have mountains to move by our faith and we who have enemies to move by our love. It is we who have to make the weakness of God stronger than the power of the world."

Both books are great - I'd probably recommend Jamie Smith's book as being more accessible but both challenged and broadened my understanding of God and made me reflect again on what it means to be a Christian.

Summer Reading #2

"Jesus Wants to Save Christians - A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" - Rob Bell

I really like Rob Bell's books - I think he's a great communicator, he's honest, he's challenging and he's scholarly. If you haven't read anything by him before I would definitely recommend him. I've read "Velvet Elvis - Repainting the Christian Faith" and am currently reading "Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering".

In this book he focuses on "empire", charting the whole history of Israel in relation to both the empires they came up against and the empire they became; and how this corrupted what God had originally intended through the covenant; the consequences and the legacy of that; and the current application of "empire" as it relates to the church. His approach is scholarly - his books usually bring a great deal of the historical and cultural background into play giving a much clearer understanding of context and place, and I always get some insight which I never noticed before. All good. His books however are very very accessible - not a daunting read at all. I found it all really interesting but this book also packs a punch and the chapter entitled "Swollen-Bellied Black Babies" really challenges and brings the whole issue to a head. I'm going to quote from it, although I'm a bit afraid that it might diminish the impact of what he says - because he builds his picture and constructs his challenge in a really great way then socks it to you;

"Imagine the average youth group in the average church on the average Sunday. Imagine visiting this youth group and having the pastor say to you "I just can't get my kids interested in Jesus. Do you have any suggestions?"

How do you respond?

To begin with the church has a youth group. This is a brand new idea in church history. A luxury. All the babies and older folks and the men and the women and widows and students aren't in the one room, but they've gone to separate rooms?

And there are resources for this? People and organisational structures and a budget? Let's imagine that in this case, this pastor, this youth pastor, is paid a salary for his or her work. A church with enough resources to pay someone to oversee the students. Once again, this is brand new, almost unheard of in most of the rest of the churches in the world, and in church history, a brand new invention.

This salary can be paid and this building can be built because people in the congregation have surplus. They have fed themselves and their children and bought clothes and houses, and now, after these expenses, there is still money available. And this money is given in an act of generosity to the church, which disperses it to various places, among them the bank account of the pastor.

In many, if not most of the churches in the world, immediate needs simply don't allow for such luxuries - too many people are hungry, too many don't have a roof, too many are sick - and so any surplus is spent immediately on the basic needs staring them in the face, people dying here, right now, today.

But this particular church is blessed, and we should be clear about this - it is blessing, it is good. It is fortunate that this particular church doesn't have those issues. This church has enough resources to hire a pastor who had the resources to get training to gather these students in the student room to teach them about the way of Jesus. Many Christians around the world would simply stand in awe of that kind of blessing.

And the students in this church, these are good kids. They are from families who just want to see their kids become good Christians.

Imagine just how much is available to them. They have more at their fingertips than any generation in the history of the world - more information, more entertainment, more ideas, more ways to kill time, more options.

Many of them own more than one pair of shoes.

There are even some among them who have eaten at least one meal every day of their lives.

So we are talking about a minuscule minority of kids in the world

At the exit off the highway near their church is a Best Buy and a Chilli's and a Circuit City and a McDonald's and a Wal-Mart and Bed, Bath and Beyond much like the other towns in their state and in their country. The music they listen to is distributed by one of 5 major corporations, which also own the movie studios that create the movies they watch, which are also connected to the corporations that create the food they eat and the commercials they watch, which also have significant ties to the clothes they wear and the cell phones they own and the ring tones on their cell phones.....

So each week they gather to hear a talk from the pastor.

The pastor tells them about the Jesus revolution.

About Jesus resisting the system.

About the blood of the cross.

About many Christians getting arrested.

About Jesus having dinner with prostitutes and tax collectors.

About people sharing their possessions.

About Jesus telling a man to sell everything.

About the uniqueness of their story in the larger story of redemption.

How do children of the empire understand the Saviour who was killed by an empire?

How does a 12 year old who has never had hunger pangs that lasted more than an hour understand a story about a 12 year old providing fish and bread for thousands of chronically hungry people?

How do kids who are surrounded by more abundance than in any other generation in the history of humanity take seriously a Messiah who said "I have been anointed to preach good news to the poor?"

How do they fathom that half the world is too poor to feed it's kids when their church just spent 2 years raising money to build an addition to their building?

They gather, they sing, they hear a talk from the pastor, and then they get back in the car with their parents and they go home; the garage door opens up, the car goes in, and the garage door goes down.

This is the revolution?

This is what Jesus had in mind?

And so the youth pastor turns to you and says, again, " I just can't get my students engaged with Jesus. Do you have any suggestions?"

What do you say?

How do you respond?

Your only hope, of course, would be to remind him or her that there is blood on the doorposts of the universe"

He goes onto talk about the Passover and the Eucharist

"What if Jesus ...was talking about our actually enacting what the ritual is all about over and over, again and again, year after year? What if the "do this" he primarily meant wasn't the ritual he was leading his disciples through at that moment. What if the "do this" was his whole way of life?...the "do this"part is our lives. Opening ourselves up to the mystery of resurrection, open for the liberation of others, allowing our bodies to be broken and our blood poured out, discovering our Eucharist. Listening. And going.

Addendum...

Was really trying to get my blog entry finished and on my blog last night and forgot to add another quote from Rollins that I particularly like;

"Instead of offering a scientific explanation that would convince, or publicizing the miracles so as to compel his listeners, Jesus engaged in a poetic discourse that spoke to the heart of those who would listen. In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food we cannot provide. We are people born from a response to hints of the divine. Not only this but we must embrace the idea that we are called to be hints of the divine...God is not revealed via our words but rather via the life of the transformed individual."

Summer Reading #1

I think what I’ll do is just talk about each of the books and then do a final blog to sum up and look at the big “So What?” question.

First up - "How (Not) to Speak of God" Peter Rollins.

Peter Rollins is a lecturer in philosophy and founder of “Ikon”, a community of spiritual practice in Belfast. The book reflects both of these aspects and is in 2 parts – the first a more philosophical discussion about God and the second outlines 10 Ikon services. Ikon are working to create a space for people to explore issues of faith and encounter God and they employ "Christian narrative" working from the principle that "only God can give God". They seek to deconstruct ideas of God in an effort to "rediscover the place of mystery in faith". They also deal with subjects such as uncertainly, absence and transcendence. The services outlined are interesting. What is also interesting is that all the books I read have an element of dealing with the big philosophical issues of God, but seeking to relate this to actual practice - "what does/would it look like"

The first half of the book deals with how we think and speak about God -

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking".

Rollins looks at this issue that "God" is unspeakable, that we try to "colonize" the name God with concepts. The tension we deal with is between faith and theology;

"Our fragile faith is fanned into life in the wake of what we believe to have been the incoming of a life-giving encounter in which we feel connected with, and transformed by, the source of everything that is...such faith cannot be reduced to the mere affirmation of religious dogma, a regular visit to some religious institution or the reciting of mechanical prayers. For Christians testify to being caught up in and engulfed by that which utterly transcends them".

"Theology...is that which attempts to come to grips with this life-giving experience...here the source of our desire is rendered into an (intellectual) object that we can reflect upon"

Rollins talks about looking to the Christian Mystics as part of the solution to this dilemma;

"Instead of viewing the unspeakable as that which brings all language to a halt, they realized that the unspeakable was precisely the place where the most inspiring language began".

The book is challenging and thought provoking, using parables and stories to illustrate points. It's the kind of book that I can get very excited about because the book begins to create space for me to engage with what I believe about God but in a way that is not dogmatic. I think part of this journey I'm on is to deconstruct myself as a Christian. I want to be a different kind of Christian, I don't want to be inauthentic. I think some of the attraction of the books I read over the summer is that they give me permission to feel more comfortable in my own skin - it's OK to ask questions and maybe view some things differently from the mainstream. Not the kind of Christian that is completely certain, but someone who can live with uncertainty and ambiguity. Again this is not an intellectual exercise because what I found fascinating is that I had this exact conversation with Matt on the streets one Saturday night along the lines that Rollins outlines

"The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God"

That's pretty much what Matt said and actually, I agreed with him, how can the finite mind grasp the infinite? All of our talk of God can only be mediated through our limited intellect; we do reduce God to a set of propositions. That’s the way our minds work – we categorise things. which makes it very difficult for us to see things with fresh eyes, but Rollins (like Rahner - I know I keep going on about him!) helps us to do just that. He illustrates it with the rabbit duck illusion - you can either see a rabbit or a duck but we can't just see the lines devoid of the rabbit or duck.

One of the things I'm not comfortable with as a Christian is doctrinaire approach to evangelism - I liked the following quote;

"The dialogue replaces the standard monologue of those who would wish to either clone the other, making them into a reflection of themselves, or exclude the other, making them into a scapegoat who embodies all our fears and insecurities. ...The alternative is not relativistic acceptance of every position but rather a dialogue in which we treat everyone we meet as an individual who we can learn from and perhaps teach..

(We) can engage in a genuine dialogue in which we are prepared to rethink in relation to what the other says (instead of inauthentic dialogue in which one pretends to be open to the insights of another, but in reality one is not prepared to place one's own thinking into question). Rather than being a sign of weakness, this powerless approach is a sign of strength, for one is committed to the idea that if we genuinely seek truth from above, we will not be given a lie, for God will not give scorpions to the one who seeks bread."

A last thought from Rollins

"How many of us have learnt too late that our initial idea, that by serving the world we will help bring God to others, has eclipsed the wisdom that in serving the world we find God there."

That's something I am coming to understand more and more.

Fundamentals (not to be confused in any way shape or form with fundamentalism) and Summer Reading

Just to recap - cos it's good to reflect and restate what you're about sometimes - I talk a lot about this journey I'm on (all-be-it with a few detours along the route to discuss cats, moonwalks, Twilight, David Tennant and other less obviously related issues - although to my mind it's all part of the whole and it's not a linear journey anyway) after all this blog is about being Christian in the culture and time in which I find myself and it's about asking myself the question about what therefore "church" means in this context. It's about trying to work out how being a person of faith intersects with people around me who are not people of faith...

So why does it matter? Because I do believe that there is a God who loves and communicates with us all and that people are not necessarily thinking about God or asking the big questions of life and meaning; that there is a call to live differently to eschew consumerism, superficiality, celebrity obsession and to live justly and righteously; that how we live does have an impact on the world for good or evil; that the Kingdom of God is a reality that we need to live; that the Kingdom was and is and is to come; that God's invitation rather than narrowing our lives and making us petty and unthinking (we just accept everything 'by faith' right - which means we've never had an intellectual thought in our heads - we're actually just people who are still living in the dark ages before the enlightenment and science set us free from all this superstitious mumbo jumbo - OK maybe I'm taking Ian Bell, Ian McWhirter and Alan Taylor in the Herald too seriously - maybe I'm just being defensive) God's love and self communication invites all of us to something better, individuals, communities, nations, all of creation. God's love is transformative and that puts a responsibility on the Christian to live like it's true. Christianity was always a challenge to empire and power, it was always prophetic in the biggest sense, counter cultural and counter intuitive - (see the Sermon on the Mount if you need that confirmed).

The point of this blog is to challenge me, to make me accountable; it's thinking out loud and sharing the journey in case anyone happens across it and is maybe is in the same place, struggling with the same issues. It's not an intellectual journey (cos it's too easy to dismiss it as that) more a thinking journey but with some very clear issues of practice which for me are highlighted by conversations with people like Aaron and Matt and Stephen on the streets.

I'm going to have a look over the next few blogs at my summer reading so I'm getting the stuff about intellectualism out of the way first because it might look like that at first glance.

Here are the books - I'll be back.....

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Christian Ethics

So I have found myself pondering some deep spiritual questions while I've been on holiday and I guess the one which is exercising me most at the moment is - "what is the moral and ethical stance one needs to take as a Christian, when one is in receipt of (what my husband terms) "a free cat"". That is to say, a cat which has adopted you, which hangs out with you all day and evening, a cat which has miaowed conversations with you where you swear you can actually tell what it is saying, which you really like having around but - and this is where the "free" bit comes in - you don't have to feed or pay vets bills for and who actually belongs to someone else.

Cat - cos that is what we call him, not actually knowing his real name, is now a permanent fixture. He's there first thing when you wake up and come down stairs, he likes to sit on the couch beside you and snooze when you're reading, he follows you around, he sits on your lap when you watch telly. Even when he goes outside it's usually to sit on your window sill watching you or on the chairs in your back garden.

The slightly difficult times are when Cat is sitting on your lap or snuggled up next to you and the neighbours, who actually own Cat, walk passed your window. We don't know these neighbours at all - and maybe that's the thing which should be exercising me as a Christian - but what do you do - go to their door and explain that their cat is now hanging out in your house from first thing till - and this is particularly difficult - you pick him up from the couch and put his little furry self out of your back door at 10.30 p.m. into the dark and cold (well it is August in Scotland) in the hope that he'll head home. We still have the back door open a lot because it is still quite muggy so it's difficult to stop Cat coming in. And what if - this is the worst thing - the neighbours object to him coming in our house and ask us to stop - because it's too late now - we are all really attached to him.

Ah well - as always, suggestions and comments welcomed!

Weeping Woman

I've just been to the excellent exhibition 'The Discovery of Spain' at the National Gallery in Edinburgh. It has a lot of fabulous paintings as well as a few really dull ones, not a big fan of some sentimentalist paintings of children (apart from the Millais which is beautiful).

I discovered a few Scottish artists I wasn't really aware of and their pictures were amazing, from Roberts with his complex drawings of interiors of cathedrals and the external ornament of the Alhambra, to Phillip and his fantastic unfinished work of small Spanish boys playing at bull fighting - which was among my favourites. The Velazquez and El Greco - some of them familiar from the main gallery. Some really incredible water colours by Arthur Melville, another Scottish artist

But last of all in the final gallery a really powerful painting by Picasso called the Weeping Woman. Apparently he made a number of studies on this theme at the same time as he was painting Guernica and it is incredibly moving. I love icons and I think this is a painting that I could pray with. It's the anguish and pain of the woman for the loss and awful destruction during the Spanish Civil War and it's all the more powerful for the fact that the woman appears to be wearing her best suit and her hat with the flower in it. An ordinary woman caught up in tragic circumstances.

If you get a chance to see it you should go.

Mysteries of the Universe

How come I work hard, have a good salary and am going on holiday to Ardnamurchan and staying in a caravan, but my son is a student and has no money and he's just back from Mallorca, looking fabulously tanned and relaxed.

Hmm - something not quite right with this! Maybe I should start an online poll - Mallorca or Ardnamurchan - which one would you opt for?

Happy Birthday Mo!!

My maladjusted friend asks the question on her blog - what do you do on a significant birthday? My suggestion would be to take some time to do an "examen of consciousness". You can do this looking back on a period of time, usually at the end of each day, but maybe also a week or a month or a year or a decade! Maybe after a significant event like a holiday. It's based on a belief that God is constantly revealing himself to us through our life and human experience.

Take some time out by yourself (or you can do this as a small group or as a family), light a candle, take some time to become aware of God's loving presence and look back over the day , taking time to think what you were doing at specific times, and ask 2 small questions;

"For what moment today am I most grateful?"

"For what moment today am I least grateful?"

Or you could frame the questions slightly differently;

"When today did I have the greatest sense of belonging to myself, others, God?"

"When today did I have the least sense of belonging?"

It's way of reflecting back on our day (or decade) and noticing consciously how we felt at different times. By doing this we can discern the ways that God is moving in our lives, how God has been present to us. What brought life - consolation - it might be small things like a child laughing or a sunrise (or a helpful doughnut person!). The things that bring us life and draw us towards God. It helps us also to be aware of when we felt further from God - desolation - a phone call or a conversation which left us feeling bad about ourselves or our circumstances, feeling disconnected from God. We might normally pass these moments by and think they are insignificant, but when we take time to reflect we can begin to see patterns in our lives. We can then bring these reflections back to God and ask for clarity or further insight. God speaks to us through our deepest feelings and yearnings.

Keeping a journal can help us to note the things which are significant, reflecting on them over a longer period.

If you click on the link here there is an examen, "Review of the Day", that you can download onto your iPod.

Doing Nothing

I was at an event on Friday. We were asked to think what it would be like to do nothing for 15 minutes during the work day and then taken through a relaxation exercise. I'm pretty good at engaging with this stuff because I've had a bit of practise in both leading and participating in Ignatian meditation. The person up front challenged us to think about whether we took time out of our day to consciously relax and unwind.

When I got home the weather was fab, hot, sunny, blue skies so I took Karl Rahner into the back garden (and the cat of course!) and started to read. I've said before that you really cannot hurry Rahner, you have to read him slowly and meditatively and let him percolate, so I stopped for a bit and decided, thinking of what was said that morning, that I just needed to notice the moment. So I stopped, closed my eyes and listened. I'm very fortunate to live in the country and there are times around our house when there is virtual silence. I listened, and off in the distance was aware of the very faint hum of cars passing on a road far away; birds singing, some little song birds, some seagulls, the odd caw of a crow; the low mechanical rotor of a small plane and then the thrum of an engine of a bigger plane way up high in the skies; I heard the papery sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze, swishing and swaying; the small crack of wood expanding in the heat.

After a bit I opened my eyes and looked around, the garden looks lovely, lots of colour in the plants in the borders; the green lawn; the swallows swooping and flying high up in the blue; I watched a big white fluffy cloud evaporate over the course of a few minutes, it changed from a skull, to a dragon, to a phoenix, to a small cotton wool ball, to some wisps of white gossamer and then just disappeared; I saw the trees, the different shades of green, the different shaped leaves; the cat sleeping under my chair with it's tail sticking out; little insects, ants, small beetles and tiny spiders bustling back and forward.

Smelled the baked earth and the hot paving slabs; the smell of sunshine and outdoors; felt the breeze on my face; my feet touching the earth.

And I meditated on Rahner's words

"The doctrine of this grace and it's fulfillment, therefore, bids us keep ourselves radically open in faith, hope and love for the ineffable, unimaginable and nameless absolute future of God which is coming, and bids us never close ourselves before there is nothing more to close because nothing will be left outside of God, since we shall be wholly in God and he shall be wholly in us."

Doing nothing - I can highly recommend it.

Adopted by cat!

It's official - the cat next door has adopted us. We have been on nodding acquaintance with the cat for some time, but 2 weeks ago it takes to following us and then sitting on our windowsill, it miaows. The rain then becomes torrential and the cat remains on our windowsill, miaowing. We cave and let it in! Then it goes like this..

I am working from home - walk into the kitchen - cat is on windowsill, miaows and tries to get in the window. I walk through to the utility room, cat jumps off windowsill and sits at back door, miaows. I walk through to the study to work, cat sits at front door, miaows. I am working, cat starts to jump up at front door handle, miaows. I walk back through to kitchen, cat appears and sits on the windowsill, miaows - you get my drift...

I think, ah well should maybe just go into back garden and work out there before cat damages self jumping at door handle. Take all my gear outside. Cat comes and sits at my feet, miaows. House so hot that doors at the back are open. Cat decides to go into house, miaows.

I think the cat is lonely and comes and hangs out with us, miaowing, while it's owners - do cats have owners, or just people they use who feed them and give them some place to sleep? - are out. With the back door open these last few days because of the heat, cat now strolls into house, miaowing. Tried to confine it's ownership of house to kitchen but cat now feels free to wander at will, miaowing. Doesn't really like to get stroked prefers to just come and sit near you, miaowing.

Cat now appears to be in house each night I come home! usually it does eventually go home, but has now taken to sitting outside daughter's bedroom window at night, miaowing.

Did I mention that this is the miaowing-est cat I ever came across?

I couldn't have done it without David

Well Saturday night / Sunday morning found me doing the Moonwalk with my sister, niece and daughter and around 10,000 others, mostly women). My sister had the idea, lets do this as it'll be an incentive to deal with the fitness and it's a great cause. Now sometimes my sister has great ideas - it was her suggestion to do the Great Wall of China trek last year and the fitness thing has been an issue and it is a great cause...so we signed up and have been training for the past few months. 26.2 miles, starting at midnight (well actually 12.15 a.m. cos we were in the last group off) walking through the night around the streets of Edinburgh, including up to Dunsapie Loch on the top of Arthur's Seat. The castle and other main buildings around Edinburgh were floodlit in pink and there were people outside their houses in their pyjamas saying "well done girls keep going".

At 11 miles the people who were doing the "half moon" turned off with 2 more miles to do to get back to the finish. Unfortunately at that point, having signed up for the "full moon", we had another 15.2 miles still to walk! I didn't know you could do the "half moon" and to be honest it would have been a bit of a dawdle really. But no my sister thought we should just go for the full thing.

About 15 miles in walking along Seafield Road was when the knees started to really feel the pain - really wondered what I was going to do - would I make it? After some paracetamol and ibuprofen I was making it - just. Then the blisters started - 2 corkers. In exactly the same place as my sister got hers - (design issue with Asics trainers? - we were both wearing them) And in spite of my Nike blister proof socks! Then there was the half hour wait in a toilet queue while our joints and muscles stiffened up!

When we got to the 22 mile marker all of us got our iPods (and other types of mp3 players!) out. My choice - David Crowder - the man is after all a legend. I cranked up the volume and gritted my teeth and we ground out the last 4 miles. I've never been so happy to see the sign that said 500 metres to go.

We walked over the finish line at 9.40 together holding each other's hands high and stumbled up to claim our medals.

Was it worth it?

Moonwalk Edinburgh set out to raise £3million pounds, £0.5m going to Maggie's Centres in Scotland, £1.5m to the Breast Cancer Institute at the Western General in Edinburgh, rebuilding the breast cancer ward and opening a new theatre to cut waiting times, and support for the roll out of the anti-hair loss system into each hospital in Scotland.

Was it worth the pain and the exhaustion....you bet.

Generosity

Walking along towards "Life" on Saturday night about 2.00 a.m. we were stopped by a couple and asked the inevitable "What's a Street Pastor?" - so I got into conversation with L. She described herself as a 'wild child' and whispered to me what she does for a living - she's a stripper; and she talked so lovingly about her godly grandmother who "goes to church all the time" and has obviously had a huge impact on her life, she clearly just loves and accepts her granddaughter as she is and the impact of that love was obvious. L clearly admires and loves her very much. We got into a conversation about the feeding of the five thousand (L raised the issue) and she explained to me that how she saw it was that Jesus had something when other people had nothing and that he shared what he had with the people who had nothing. The whole story was about generosity - living life and never seeing someone else in need when you can help them with what you have. As she talked I became aware of God saying to me - "she's amazing isn't she, look at her heart, she's so lovely - I really wanted you to meet her because I knew you'd love her". I know that sounds a bit crazy, even maybe to some, pretentious, but in that encounter, I kind of got why Jesus hung out with "tax collectors and sinners" and how he feels about us. God doesn't just put up with us, tolerate us, accept us - he really does adore us, everyone - even, in fact especially, the people that the church might not normally "approve" of. We see Christ in the 'least of these'.

As if to underline the theme as we walked back about 2.45 we bumped into some young guys who had bought a whole big pizza and found that they weren't really that hungry, so they asked the SPs if we'd like a piece. So we munched pizza and blethered to them for a bit. Then the owner of the pizza place, who I guess is Muslim, came out with a box of pizza and handed it to us and said - "you help when you speak to people outside our shop so we wanted you to have this". So we took the pizza back to the other SP team back at base.

So I guess, whether you're a godly grandmother, a wild child, a street pastor, you never know the impact you'll make on someone else's life by being generous whether it's with your time, your attention, your love or your pizza!

"Happier not Richer"

Spent the day in Stirling considering issues around how we can create a "Greener" Scotland. What I found interesting was a graph which mapped satisfaction with life against the gross domestic product of Scotland. What it demonstrated was that although our GDP has increased steadily over the last decades our life satisfaction doesn't actually change - it's pretty much plateaued. We also thought about the government's strategic objective of creating a Scotland which has sustainable economic growth, but we considered what we meant by that, is this about more consumption? If we keep using energy at the same or a higher rate this has a consequence globally. What if every country desires to grow it's economy based on consumption and the greater use of energy? It is clear that things need to change.

When participants were asked to describe their ideal world of the future, they talked about things like being happy, having a good balance in their lives, having close relationships and connections with others, with family and with community, meaningful work and activity. Actually no-ones ideal world was about buying more "stuff". People were describing values which were beyond material wealth. Someone speculated that perhaps beyond the economic downturn people might not return to their old patterns of consumption.

We had a great input from the Children's Parliament and they said some pretty fantastic stuff like one boy's horror at people "shopping as a hobby, it's buying stuff you don't even want or need, it's over-consuming" and a girl who talked about us being less selfish and knowing the difference between "what we like, what we need and what we want" and learning to know the difference. These kids are about 11 years old!

Check out their video here.

We talked about some of the things we can do in addition to looking at our own patterns of consumption and energy use, maybe we could do some of these in the church

Create new spaces which facilitate new conversations.

Ask outrageous questions.

Articulate a vision of what we want to see.

You can also check out my maladjusted friend who's made a good start on this kind of stuff.

Emergent & Rahner

As I am reading my way through Rahner I increasingly feel that Rahner and Emergent go together - so I was having a Google on this basis and came across this article here on Prodigal Kiwi(s) blog.

Prodigal Kiwi is quoting from a paper by Declan Marmion titled “Theology, Spirituality, and the Role of Experience in Karl Rahner,” Louvain Studies, 29, 2004, 49-76 and I particularly liked a couple of quotes; Rahner

...transposes questions of God into the transcending adventure of human freedom rather than speaking of faith as primarily an ascent of truth... This means helping people to accept and recognise an immediate closeness of God within the ordinary and extraordinary drama of their own life…

I also liked this quote which ties the spirituality of Rahner back into lived theology and social justice;

...The contemporary focus on spiritual experience ... can easily fall into both the “despotism of the sacred” and the “narcissism of the self”, whereas what is needed is a genuinely personalised religion that unites affectivity, intelligence and social responsibility in the light of faith...

I really like this so I must get back to Google and see if I can find the article. Oh yea, and I think that if I were one for labels I would now officially be a post-evangelical emergent Christian

Part 2: Lived Theology

For people who don't know - I'm a Street Pastor. The most common question we get asked is "What is a SP?" Well there are 20 of us from different churches in the town. We undertook a 12 week training course covering CPR, counselling, sociology, rape crisis etc. etc. We have 2 teams of 3/4 people out every Saturday night in the town between 10 pm and around 3 am (sometimes it can be a bit later depending whether we're involved in a conversation or an incident). We are on rota every 3 weeks. We carry space blankets, flip flops for girls who take off their incredibly high heels and try and walk home barefoot, often there is broken glass so it can be dangerous. We hand out spikeys which girls can put in the tops of their bottles to stop them getting their drinks spiked. We have sharps containers and heavy gloves for picking up glass. We put any bottles or glasses we find into the bins so they can't be lifted in the heat of the moment and maybe used to assault someone. We are there to help, and to create a safer atmosphere in the town and we're there to listen to anyone who wants to talk to us. We're not there to talk about God, although if people do want to talk about God and faith and raise the subject with us, then we are happy to do this.

It's been 6 months since Street Pastors started in Dunfermline. I haven't blogged much about it because I'm conscious that we are talking to all sorts of people and they tell us all kinds of stories about themselves and I wouldn't want to compromise anyone's confidentiality. The response from people on the streets is overwhelmingly positive we could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many negative comments we've had (all of us) in the last 6 months. Women are really pleased we are there because we're someone safe and if they need us we're here. We get hugs and banter and they tell us about their night and thank us for the flip flops and when we hand out spikeys they tell us about times they or their friends have had drinks spiked. Sometimes they have things they want to speak about and we listen and we care. They sometimes split up from boyfriends and cry on benches and we make sure they're safe and listen. Sometimes they get comprehensively drunk and need someone to lean on so they get to a taxi and safely home. Young men are interesting because they too, randomly shout to us that they think it's great or give us the thumbs up when we pass by, but we've been struck recently when we've reflected back over the time, about how many young men want to talk about things that have happened or things they are worried about. Some of them are a bit taken aback at how much they open up to a stranger. We have serious conversations, nonsense conversations, deeply spiritual conversations, conversations which break your heart.

When I think about why I do it - it's about connection. Karl Rahner talks about everyone having a "pre-apprehension of being", the mind reaching out beyond any given object towards infinite being and therefore God. That infinity which we experience ourselves exposed to also permeates our everyday activities. He calls this transcendence. "A person can of course shrug his shoulders and ignore this experience of transcendence. He can devote himself to his concrete world, his work, his activity in the realm of time and space ...a person also has the experience of emptiness, of inner fragility and ...of the absurdity of what confronts him. But he also experiences hope, the movement towards liberating freedom". People might be so caught up with the everyday that they do not reflect on this at all, or they might be aware of it but decide never to explore it. We're not there taking God to people, because as I've said before, he is already there; but I think if I'm about anything at all - it would be to prompt through an action or a word people asking the bigger question of what exists beyond the horizon of the everyday.

Part 1: Philosphical Theology

We had a discussion at the housegroup last night after listening to some inputs on "faith". So, OK, honestly I really struggled with it. I wasn't wilfully mishearing the thing - I just couldn't get it. How it sounded to me was "this is the way to get God to give us stuff" (I know guys - that's not how you hear it) how do I build faith, how do I get healing - for myself and also for others. But really it felt to me like "if you can see that the supernatural world is more real than the natural world then you can ask God for anything". I worry that this is about trying to commodify God, if only we can reduce him to a set of formulae, then everything will be fine. The trouble is God doesn't think like us. He just doesn't obey our rules and we cannot cannot cannot put God in a box.

I think my head is just in a different place ("as usual" I hear my friends shout!). One of the places my head is in is with Karl Rahner. Reading him has been interesting. It is slow going because I don't seem to have had too much time recently but also because it's not the easiest read. It is brilliant and requires quite a bit of thought and concentration, but he has taken me further down the whole philosophy track. The way Rahner sees things is just different. He talks about God in terms of holy mystery and that makes sense to me.

So I found myself listening to a podcast by Emergent Village (you can download it free on iTunes) - a discussion involving John D. Caputo and Richard Kearney, 2 pre-eminent philosophers and people of faith. Some of the comments they made were really interesting to me, here are some highlights:

80% American teens self identify as Christians but their understanding of God is as a cosmic butler, there when you call, it's a hyper individualised experience, "me and God - we talk, we have an understanding", the "fix all" God – if we call loud enough he’ll come to the rescue. They talked about how this traces its roots back to Greek philosophical thought not Jewish or Christian. God as patriarch, emperor, caretaker of the world - a god that one isn’t really involved with most of the time just, when you need him – distant and abstract – don’t think about it till you need a fix “god was born for me”, and is deeply embedded in our liberal individual tradition so prevalent in the west.

But to think about ourselves not as an autonomous individual but someone who is “laid claim to” by something that had us before we had it, then our faith becomes not about rights but about responsibilities; not about individuals but about community, about ‘the other’, the least of these.

Richard Kearney talks about Etty Hillesum – ‘An Interrupted Life ’ who eventually died in Auschwitz. When asked how God could allow the death camps to happen she replied “We must help God to be God". "One should want to be a balm on many wounds." We need to preserve within us the dwelling space for God to be and to enter the world even in the midst of hell. This is the God of the constant call – unless we open the door the messiah can’t enter. Answer evil in terms of vanquishing it – not individually but by seeing God in “the least of these” Christ enters, the humble and broken God. We need to treat each moment in time as a portal through which the messiah is trying to enter. I understand through Jesus, the vulnerable God, a God who calls modestly and incessantly.

I think that's why I struggle with both a simplistic view of God and, what feels like, a liberal individual view of God.

Now I know this is tricky and I probably haven't explained it that well and you might just think that this is some kind of intellectual exercise, but in all honesty all this grounds itself for me in my experience out on the streets on a Saturday night as a street pastor. It might seem philosophical but actually this is really about "lived" theology.

Living in Exile

I like to listen to podcasts in my car on the way to and from work and today I was listening to a podcast from Artisan Church and a few thoughts came together. I've talked before about Michael Frost's book Exiles:Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, which is excellent. How do we live authentically in our communities? Artisan were considering this passage which holds some keys about how we do this.

Jeremiah 29:5-8 (New Living Translation)
“Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

I like the bit about working for the peace and prosperity of the communities in which we live - 'for its welfare will determine your welfare' - that's an interesting thought and I'm not sure that it's one which most churches consider when thinking about their purpose. Our church statement is; “Followers of Jesus Christ; a welcoming community of people, encouraging one another to reach our potential in God, living and working in society to creatively share His message of hope for all.” , which I like (we worked hard to get a form of words which talked about us as a community of believers as well as our place in the wider community). But it's interesting to consider a church statement which simply says something like 'Working for the peace and prosperity of the community we live in' - I quite like that.

Kester Brewin in his fantastic book 'The Complex Christ' says - ‘The local Church needs to ‘incarnate’ in a specific location and a specific culture..we too often experience Church as an organisation that has absolutely no need for it’s surrounding community or area. It’s an appendage – something slightly apart and independent – not needing the neighbouring culture in order to survive'

He says, ‘Churches must aspire to become centres of gift exchange in the broadest sense ..whatever gifts there are in the community, the church should be the place where they can be exchanged or shared .. this is about engaging with the local environment and having open boundaries ..it’s about declaring our interdependence with the locality we find ourselves in’

Artisan Church here.

Kester here

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