Category Archives: Spirituality

Life is precious…

Posted on by
Reply

I did some real social work the other day.

It has been a rarity of late- mostly I just go to meetings. But on this day I was the duty mental health officer for Argyll, and was called into the Psychiatric Hospital to interview someone in order to decide whether to grant consent for their detention in hospital under our Mental Health Act.

For obvious reasons I will reveal no details, but suffice it to say that the person I then spent the next few hours speaking to and about was living in the shadow of a terrible bereavement and had decided to take their own life. In many ways these kinds of conversations are run of the mill to me- I have been having them for 20 years. But each and every one of them is real in a way that most other conversations are not.

Despite this person’s lack of initial success in bringing about their death, they were in no way convinced that life was worth giving another try. In fact they were determined to leave the ward at the first opportunity, and to go on hunger strike until then.

My role in this process is a legal one- in that I have all sorts of legal obligations and duties- but it is also a very human one. And in many of these conversations I have found myself praying as I searched for ways of connecting- ways of opening up some kind of bridge over which we can travel together.

And in the mess of it all, in the shabby soon-to-be-demolished psychiatric ward, there can be these transcendent moments.

I can not easily describe how or why they happen, unless I use these words-

Grace will fall

On these broken places

Strength may fail

But weakness

May become our beginning

Hope may have been crucified

But the story is not yet over

The tomb now lies empty

But none of these words can be spoken.

It would be unprofessional. It would be patronising and would lack respect. The words would also not be believed.

But there was a moment when the person challenged me to give a reason why their decision to die was not a valid one- why this choice was one that people like me would use the force of law to declare invalid.

I could of talked about the nature of mental illness, and how depression steals our joy, then our energy, then our colour, then our light, then our reason, and finally all of our hope- but how also these things are temporary, and may yet return.

I could have discussed too the effect that such a choice has on those we leave behind. The generation who are condemned to years of guilt and pain in the wake of such an aggressive, final act.

Or I could have discussed my qualifications, legal obligations and the nature of mental health law (which I did a little- it is part of what I am obliged to do.)

But after the question was asked of me, I was silent for a while. And we stared at one another.

And into the silence I heard myself saying

Because life is just so precious.

And because you too are precious.

And for a while the air crackled with the Spirit.

I hope this time in a broken old hospital ward is a turning point, and a little more light is let in. We may never meet again.

Aoradh meditation- renovation…

Posted on by
Reply


 

It is already Thursday- and still no mediation this week.

It is my fault.

But by way of explanation, I offer you some thoughts on renovation. You see, the beginning of this week was dominated by work on Paul’s new kitchen. Taking an empty, barren space, and starting to create a place of sustenance, of hospitality and creativity.

Which is, of course, a very spiritual thing. Here are a few things that Paul and I came up with as we were working-

  • Houses are essentially simple things- dig a hole, pile some stones, and frame them with wood. But we make them so complicated, and invest such power in them
  • Of course, it all starts with the foundations
  • Renovation requires destruction of some of the old, and preservation of other bits
  • It also always takes longer than you think- and will test you in ways you did not expect
  • It goes a lot easier if you have others who will work with you- particularly those with skill and experience.

But we are called to live in a way that stands in both celebration and in critique of our culture- and to do this, we have to also understand the Zeitgeist– the spirit of our age.

To understand how we came to idolise property acquisition- and to seek an empty lifestyle whose meaning was found via Ikea. All those makeover programmes which would have us believe that happiness is found in a tin of expensive paint and a new bathroom suite.

 

These things are good. But there is so much more that is better.

 

And in case you ever doubted it- the challenge this week is to take a look at where you live, and to deliberately re-imagine the spaces in which you spend much of your life.

 

There are lots of ways to do this-

  • To consider how they might be used in new ways
  • To be grateful for shelter and comfort again
  • To take an aspect of the space you live in and use it to deliberately turn to God
  • To consider whether it might be time to clear out, and perhaps to bless others
  • To consider whether it might be time to bring people in, to share the space

 

Take one room at a time.

 

Ask God to open it up for a while as a temple.

 

 

 

Aoradh meditations, Psalm 55- Sunday…

Posted on by
Reply

SUNDAY

But as for me, I trust in you.

I made a choice to hope-

Despite all evidence to the contrary

To believe that despite the pain of birth

Life is just so beautiful

That despite our capacity to kill and maim

There is still such tenderness in your touch

And despite my lack of grace

Grace remains

Walk with me

Through the mess of my uncertainty

And whatever this life will lay down

I am no longer afraid

I am for you Lord

Aoradh meditation- Psalm 55, Friday…

Posted on by
Reply

FRIDAY

12 If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
I could hide.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
at the house of God,
as we walked about
among the worshipers.

.

I tried anger for a while

But in the end

I am just diminished

Empty like a dirty city street

On Sunday morning

.

Because those things that we planted together

Those places where good things grew

They now lie barren

.

And you my friend, became my judge

Sitting high on a bench before your hanging jury

And the verdict was never in doubt

I am convicted by every word I speak

It is as plain as the pain

In my face

.

Blessed are those who dwell together in unity

It is like dew in the desert

Like anointing oil on stormy waters

Like yesterday

Now gone

Aoradh meditations, Psalm 55- Thursday…

Posted on by
Reply



THURSDAY

I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.
11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets.

.

The windows have locks

The doors have bars

The blinking eye of the PIR

Scrutinises me from the corner

.

This house became my castle

But behind my high ramparts

My flesh is pale and soft

For I am afraid

.

Every pool of light

Serves only to better expose me

To the telephoto cross hairs

Of snipers

.

But what quality of life is this

That would sacrifice humanity

To preserve an illusion

Of security?

That would wall the mess of me

From the mess of you?

.

Because love is dangerous

Start me on this pilgrimage

Called risk

Aoradh meditations, Psalm 55- Wednesday…

Posted on by
Reply

WEDNESDAY

6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
7 I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm.”

.

There are days when I would exchange my world

For a cave

Wrap me up in shadows

For darkness put out

My light

.

Carry me away

Over these monochrome mountains

Why would I stay?

What more could you want from me?

Dave Andrews on violence and the Beatitudes…

Posted on by
Reply

Is it possible to turn from violence?

It is there in all of our interactions. As Dave says- plan A is usually to repay violence with violence. To take what injury we feel, and look to make someone else pay- either as an individual, or as a group.

I have been thinking about this in relation to the place of my work. Those people who treat me badly- whose interactions are characterised by hard, angry and overly rigid attitudes. Or at least it seems that way to me and those with whom I confide.

And I find myself carrying this violence into my own responses- it shapes the way that I defend, then set up my own small plans of violent resistance.

Sometimes I manage to carry the beatitudes into these interactions- not just outwardly, but actually in the way I think and feel. But not often.

So that is my prayer. To be Christlike.

To measure victory not in terms of overcoming by violence- but in overcoming by something far deeper- called (for want of a better word) love.

God grant me the serenity to not want to change the people that I want to change…

That word- ‘Faith’…

Posted on by
Reply

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1-3

I think the word ‘faith’ is one that I overuse.

This is possibly because it can be a rather generous, non-specific word with which to describe personal, private belief. I use it in this way more as a badge of introspective spirituality rather than a declaration of religious conviction.

Because conviction, certainty and clarity of belief have simply never come easy to me. The words of Hebrews above easily rang out as evidence of my failure- my lack of faith. Others seem to have no such spiritual weakness. They are like St Paul. I am like St Thomas.

Today however, an analogy came to me.

I was thinking about another noble human characteristic- courage. Most of my generation have never had their measure of courage tested by war or extreme adversity- but we are all stirred by stories of those who have.

The spitfire pilots of the Battle of Britain who took to the skies against overwhelming odds. The men steeling themselves to climb a wooden ladder to almost certain death as the whistle blew to start an attack in the Somme.

And if these images are a little too martial for your tastes, then we might also mention the man who stood before a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square armed with nothing more than a flower, or those who push themselves beyond the outer limits of human endurance in the high Himalayas, or the polar icecaps.

Some of these people seem to be over blessed with courage. Or perhaps under concerned with fear.

And this courage can be like a force of nature- it can be transformative, inspirational and raise for us an ideal that we can all aspire to. Or at least admire from afar.

At the same time though, this kind of courage can be blind, foolish and self seeking. It can be abused by others (and ourselves) and is easily allied to causes far less noble. In this way, perhaps courage can be dangerous.

And it can also be deceptive- because courage is an entirely subjective experience. Who knows what measure of fear was overcome by the people who achieved such admirable feats in the face of adversity? Were they naive and uninformed? Dulled by some kind of narcotic? Driven by deeper demons?

Or was their courage merely a front- a means to force down the fear, and despite all their lack of confidence and self belief- to press ahead anyhow?

Does this work for you as an analogy of how faith might also be an active force in our lives?

In his book ‘How (not) to speak of God’ (which I loved) Pete Rollins talks about (a)theism. Contained in all our ideas about God is also the fact that what we know is incomplete, imperfect and error strewn. He would contend that the only honest way to approach God is to start from the point of (a)theism- where our theories about God are confronted with our unknowing.

I too have come to believe that belief in God is an amalgam of all these things-

Our faith and our doubt

Our knowledge and our uncertainties

Our crowning confidence and crippling fears about the future

Our theology and the place where theories fail

Our transcendent experiences of the divine and our plunges into Godless darkness

Times of declarative joyful certainty, and nights of lonely doubt

Times when the fragrance of the presence of God hangs in the air, and times when all is meaningless and barren

Times just to hold on to the hem of hope

And after it all, there is still

God.

‘Test of Faith’ film and evolution…

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of years ago I blogged about the then up and coming film ‘Test of Faith‘. Here is the trailer-

I had forgotten about the film until reminded recently by Pauline A, and have still not watched the whole thing- although there are lots of clips now on you tube as well as the link above.

The science/religion debate is an old itch that I keep having to scratch. I am not entirely sure why… this was the subject of long discussions with an old friend, no longer with us, and his voice still forms part of the debates in my head.

But I have no interest in ‘proving’ or ‘disproving’ anything- and most of the technical debate just passes me by. However, I am driven to grapple with what it all means– how it relates to the bigger picture.

And also- how we people of faith can remain open and honest when faced with apparently challenging and oppositional science. This has been a subject of some recent conversations, so I thought that a fresh post on this issue might help me (and hopefully  you) to have a chew on this issue again…

In another previous post I said this-

I believe that the poem of life that has been given to us in Genesis is true. I am not a scientist, or a theologian – I am a poet. For poets, truth is given not as a blue print, or a mathematical equation, although these things are wonderful and creative in their own right. Poems bring meaning and beauty in the abstract, in order to make clear the obvious. They are often far more concerned with the ‘why’ questions than the ‘what’ or the ‘how’. Poets should have no fear of scientists, who speak a different language.

As for those of us who have faith in the Creator God, I think we should also have no fear as we read the poem of life from the beginning of Genesis. We do not need to defend, or to stand against the scientific community. It makes us look stupid. Think of those folk in an earlier age who found their world view challenged by those who said that the world was not flat, and that rather than the sun turning around the earth, in fact we seemed to orbit the sun. This was the theological dynamite of the medieval age, and as such, was an idea suppressed by the religious powers of the day.

But God is not defined or limited by science – his was the art that birthed the science in the first place.

There remains however, the issue of evolution- a grand theory that has been used and misused for 150 years to try to make sense of the science. (There is a list of broad positions that Christians appear to have taken up in relation to this issue here.)

A theory that has almost total support in the scientific world in it’s broadest sense. How then do Christian scientists make sense of  faith in the face of such a dominant hegemony? The film seems to deal with this really well- here are a few clips that are well worth watching-

Finally- after all the debates- lets return to the book of the Bible that perhaps above all contains the human search for the meaning behind life- the book of Job-

Interfaith dialogue…

Posted on by
Reply

Last night we had a discussion in housegroup lovely local person who is an interfaith minister. It was a chance to meet and share our perspectives, which is always such a blessing.

Check out this clip if you want to know more about the idea of interfaith ministry-

Carolyn spoke movingly of her journey through growing up in the Church of Scotland, through working with Buddhist nuns in India, and the deep spirituality she found in the practice of Yoga. She described her experience of feeling that her spirituality was being simplified and reduced to a kind of pure essence- and how she came to believe that this essence flowed through all the different religious traditions.

If you are interested in some of the services/ceremonies that Carolyn provides, she has a website, here.

I have written before about my own encounters with the concept of universalism (here and here for example. Check out the words of the George Matheson hymn in the second of these two posts.)

Last night was a chance to reflect again on what is precious to me about the faith I have found- and to do this in a spirit of generosity and openness towards other perspectives. I believe that we have nothing to fear and lots to gain from these opportunities.

Truth sets us free- it should never lock us up into theological defensive castelations. I have spent too long behind these kind of walls. Let us celebrate what we have in common, and allow our easy assumptions to be challenged by people who look from a different angle.

So here are a few of my thoughts emerging from our discussion last night- they are not intended as a critique of Carolyn’s position in any way- more a little internal mastication of my own…

Jesus. He is the personification of all that I follow. Despite all the baggage that his followers have accrued over the years, he remains the best of what we aspire to be- for both Christians and people of other faiths.

Inherited tradition. We stand on the platform built for us by people of faith that went before. And although it is right to question and wrestle with this, it is also wise to respect it, and allow it to become a means by which God shapes us and reaches for us, as we reach for him.

Simplification/deconstruction. This has been the story of my own faith journey over the last few years. For a while I seemed to be questioning everything. But I have come to believe that our theological constructs are vehicles of faith– at their best, they are ways of travelling towards (and with) God. None of them are perfect- but what use is a car with no wheels? Spanners tighten nuts as well was remove them.

Individualism. I think that we each have the right to seek out truth for ourselves- but I also believe that we always do this in community. Our faith develops through enlightenment and inspiration, but also through discussion, shared celebration, teaching and modelling by others. I am interested perhaps most in small theologies, worked out in community, in respectful criticism of the big theologies that we inherit.

Sacrifice. At the heart of the Christian tradition is the concept of sacrificial living- a life that finds purpose in serving others. Jesus constantly challenges us to reject faith is that becomes self centred. The kind of faith that is overly concerned with self actuation, self-fulfilment and personal health and healing. These things might be by products of living the Jesus way (or they might not) but they are never the object.

Difference. We had a discussion last night about the essence of faith- which for Carolyn, and perhaps for me too, is a matter of the heart, not the head. But we humans are so different- our personalities, our gender, our education, our culture- these all skew and influence the way that we explore the concept of the divine. We spoke a little too about the gender difference- how the sorts of soft spiritualities that we had in common tend to alienate men. I think that we need both and- and that we need to trust in a God who reaches for us through many different media.

Lots of questions remain for me- I think they always will. All the business of whether or not God does indeed reveal himself through different religious traditions. The implications of this for our scripture, our theology and our eschatology.

I am determined to remain open, generous and reflective- and this means being prepared to be wrong– both in terms of what I stand on now, and what I might move towards in the future. How else are we to be real pilgrims?

But equally, I remain a follower of Jesus. This is the starting point for me for any adventure.

The rest is up to the Spirit within all of us…