Books Books Books

I said I'd come back and let you know what I am reading just now.

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They are all worth a look and although from very different Christian traditions - are remarkably in tune with one another. I am about to start "Foundations of Christian Faith; Introduction to the Idea of Christianity" by Karl Rahner. I'm looking forward to this as I've just finished reading one of his more devotional books, "Encounters with Silence" which is interesting as, although quite profound (he is a philosopher and theologian), is very much rooted in the everyday and our experience of God within this context. Now that I've read a bit about Rahner through the SPCK introduction, this seems to be very much his concern, and the Ignatian influence in his work is very strong.

His work also appears to be notoriously difficult to read, but I like a challenge, so I'll keep you posted as to how I get on!

Bells and Buchanan Street

Had an interesting experience - I was walking down Buchanan Street towards Central Station at lunchtime and the Tron church bell was ringing. It really struck me as quite unusual - you don't really hear church bells that often, particularly in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day and it rang for quite a while. I thought my reaction was interesting. I became aware of the church, and the sound caused me to look up - up to the bell tower and beyond that, up to the sky. And it made me think - I was conscious of this sound breaking into the day and into the consciousness of hundreds of shoppers and business people as they walked through Glasgow. When the bell stopped everything returned to normal - the noise returned and the momentary sense of being aware of something different and unusual, passed.

It really stayed with me - there was something about it. To take a moment to look up and recognise a reality outside of yourself and the everyday. To become aware of a church and all that that might signify of God, of something transcendent. I know that seems a lot to get from just a bell ringing but it reminded me that the church can create something different, change the usual atmosphere and cause people to look outside of themselves and become aware of the sky, of some higher reality. Maybe it was just a tiny bit prophetic.

"The Flying Monkey Loves the Cinemarrr"

The great thing about Sky+ is that you can pause the telly for a few minutes and then fast forward the adverts, because lets face it, most of them are absolutely rubbish. However, recently I've found myself surfing the channels for a particular advert which I love, it's a bit surreal, clever and makes me laugh like a wean.

YouTube - Orange Wedensdays: Vicki and The Witch and Flying Monkey

Enjoy!

So Many Books - So Little Time

Had a number of books that I had lined up for these holidays - a couple I needed to finish and 4 new ones. So far I've completed one of my "finish off" books and couple of my new ones.

What I found quite interesting was that I was reading books from quite different Christian traditions but in fact they were dealing with pretty much the same territory. It's the "more than" gospel. Christian belief and practice are more than "getting saved - going to heaven" - it's about Christ's life, death and resurrection "for us" but also his ongoing work "in us". It's about what we believe and how we behave. It's about being better "for" our communities and our world, rather than better "than". It's about the "done" and the "continuing". Christ continues to form us. We're not loved because we are Christians - we are loved because we exist, because we have been created. It's not personal salvation, it's never been personal salvation, it's about salvation for the entire universe, the whole of creation being brought back into harmony with it's Creator. And we have a part to play in that. It's a way of life, me living more and more in harmony with God, which goes on forever. We are returning to what we were originally created to be, we are returning because the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

And to live there we have to trust that what God says about us is true - we are the beloved of God. We are "first fruits".

It reminds me of a couple of Annie Dillard quotes

"All day long I feel created. I can see the blown dust on the skin on the back of my hand, the tiny trapezoids of chipped clay, moistened and breathed alive."

and

"We have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?"

Maybe we're asking the wrong question - not "How am I saved?" but "Why am I saved?"

Gym or not to Gym?

I had to decide whether to renew my gym membership recently, which I really could not justify as I'd hardly gone at all the previous year, in spite of being in pretty intensive fitness training so I could trek along the Great Wall of China!! Then when I came back from China, I was determined to keep my fitness up - so much for that notion.

Anyway had been chatting to a friend and he was extolling the virtues of the Wii Fit - so I decided that there was more chance of me using that than using the gym membership (and it was cheaper) so took the plunge and now once I get through my programme of yoga and muscle stuff I love to play on the step and the hoola-hoop and snowboarding and ski jumping. But my favourite thing of all time is the jogging.

The best dog to follow is the one just as you're coming off the first bridge - I love to run after this dog cos then you get to run along the beach, waving at all the Miis, with the tide sweeping in and out and when I see my daughter's Mii it gives me an incentive to go faster and overtake her!! Wii Island - where the sun always shines, people are friendly and the scenery is extremely cool.

Philosophically Speaking

One of the great things about being a mother is to watch and participate in every age and stage of your children's lives and development and to enjoy and stress over, to varying degrees, the challenges each one of them brings. I've loved every stage of my kids lives, the hugs and the new discoveries that they make, the milestones. My new milestone involves reading and discussing my son's philosophy essays (and his politics and Scottish history essays too), which is a completely brilliant experience. Recently he has been looking at 'The Problem of Evil' in relation to belief in God.

"Despite the wide ranging theories of what the defining characteristics of God would be, the majority, including the Judaeo-Christian faiths, can settle on these seven central features of God and the world he created…
1. God is perfectly good.
2. God is omniscient (knows everything).
3. God is omnipotent (all-powerful).
4. There is evil.
5. If God is perfectly good then he will prevent all evil that he knows about and can prevent.
6. If God is omniscient then he knows about all evil.
7. If God is omnipotent then he can prevent all evil that he knows about.

However, these seven characteristics go on to form a paradoxical contradiction, known as ‘The Problem of Evil’. If God is omniscient then he must know about all evil, therefore, because he is all good he would wish to eradicate all evil and he can achieve this due to his omnipotence. Thus the conclusion can be made that there is no evil, which is a direct contradiction to point 4"

Phew! We had a really interesting discussion around this because it relates to some stuff I'd been thinking about anyway (see previous post - Is God really sovereign? How does that fit with 'free will' does God set self-imposed limits). It is a really interesting topic and I would highly recommend reading his essay (although he hasn't had a mark back yet!?)

Actually the issue comes back to what we believe about transcendence, immanence and incarnation funnily enough, and the thing which reframes many of the arguments for me is that God did not simply sit back objectively and take no part in his creation and never experience the evil of the world. God came as a baby, put himself into the midst of his creation and suffered with those who suffered and wept with those who wept. God experienced evil personally.

"Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross."

This is the creator of all we see and don't see, this is the God who held the oceans in his hands, who sits above the circle of the earth, who created the stars - this God.

He wraps his essay up by saying

"Albert Einstein once famously said - “God is subtle but he is not malicious”, suggesting that God can be enigmatic and lack of human understanding may cause a perception that God can be distant or cruel in allowing evil, but it is no more than a misunderstanding of God’s logic."

In this Lent and Easter season we can see and experience again the God who didn't walk away.

Things I'm Reflecting On

I've been on an interesting spiritual journey for a number of years now - very influenced by Ignatian spirituality. This forms around some ways of living my everyday life and being open to

• Discovering who I really am
• Directing myself towards God
• Noticing God's actions in my life
• Responding to the movements of my heart
• Discovering the nature of my deepest desire
• Seeking God's will
• Becoming free of all that distracts me from my deepest desire
• Making choices in line with my truest self
• Connecting my lived experience with the life, death and resurrection of Christ
• Responding to God's love for me
• Finding God in all things

I'm hoping to do something called 'making the exercises' later this year when the liturgical year turns. But all of this coupled more recently with my experiences on the streets as a Pastor has led me on a theological journey. It's to do with lining up my theology and my 'felt experience' of God. I'm not where I was in my understanding of God, of how The Creator works in the world. So I'm asking some big questions - I know they might not be the things that other people might grapple with but they are real for me;

• Does God really have 'a plan' for our lives? Don't have any problem with God having a purpose.
• How transcendent is God and how immanent? What level of involvement does God have in my life?
• How much is God working and active in the world and what does that look like, how does it feel to people and how do God and I co-create?
• Is God really sovereign? How does that fit with 'free will' does God set self-imposed limits (which I will come back to in a subsequent post)
• How do I reconcile the God of the Old Testament to the God revealed in the New Testament?

In all of this the incarnation is the touchstone, the place I anchor myself - Christ, God making himself as vulnerable as any one could possibly be, born as a human infant, subject to torture and a harrowing death.

At my meeting with my Spiritual Director as I discussed all of this particular theological journeying, she suggested I read the theologian Karl Rahner. Did the 'google' thing and came across this;

"Rahner believed that the polarity between "transcendence" and "immanence" was false, being imposed upon Christianity by secular world views. Human experience is unintelligible unless it is interpreted in light of the transcendent mystery of God... Humans transcend themselves in every act of questioning and thinking, by which they demonstrate themselves to be both part of the natural world and yet simultaneously oriented towards the mysterious horizon of being that Christians know as God, the infinite horizon of hope and love. The dilemma of immanence or transcendence of God must thus be overcome without sacrificing either. Due to the ability of humans to discern the transcendent element of their situation, there is an implicit knowledge of God latent within humanity, which it is the function of transcendental reflection to identify. The sense of relation to God, a natural knowledge of God, he terms "transcendental revelation," but is inadequate in itself and needs to be supplemented by a supernatural knowledge of God, or "categorical revelation." This revelation reaches its climax and fulfillment in Jesus Christ."

That pretty much sums up where I'm at, but much more articulately, and I've bought the book - the really big thick one called "Foundations of Christian Faith: Introduction to the Idea of Christianity" and now I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Here's another quote from Rahner

"Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God's, that God's silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here.”