Category Archives: Spirituality

Rest…

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“Come to me” he said

“If the turning wheel has broken you”

So I staggered in his direction

 

“Sit with me” he said

“And we will sip tea

And soak a careful biscuit while

Occasionally raising a listening eyebrow

And enjoying that communal space

When words find rest

In silence.”

 

And perhaps our dreams will dance in the firelight

For a while this room will be the universe

And it will be possible to believe

In starflight

 

“Or perhaps it is enough,” he said

“Just to rest.”

For he was gentle

And humble

Of heart

 

Matthew 11:28-30

 

 

 

Relational tithing- a new take on small scale community action…

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Michaela and I watched this the other day- a small American group that have decided to do something simple and rather profound with 10% of their income.

I have always had a bit of a strange relationship with tithing- by which I mean the Evangelical Christian use of the word- giving your ten per cent to the great Agent in the sky (via your local church of course.) Laying down a ‘seed offering’ so that you might get so much more in return.

Giving money to the church to enable redistribution and support for people who are working with the poor- I can get that, but tithing has of course a whole different lot of baggage that goes with it- usually associated with those who need this to be a Biblical instruction so that the machinery of their institution might be oiled- salaries paid, roofs mended.

Churches do need to be funded, but if all our resources go into buildings and hierarchical salary structures then what might be left to use for things outside the establishment?

There are all sorts of potential problems of doing the things that this group have done- but I think it is really interesting…

 

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The spirituality of log stacking…

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So here is my little ten part sermon based on the stacking of logs.

You can make your own analagous links.

  1. Stacking logs can not be rushed
  2. There are no machines that can stack them for you- bend your back and get stuck in
  3. Beginning carefully is very important- you will be building on these foundations
  4. Neatness is not important, but a well stocked log pile will probably be orderly
  5. Fresh air needs to circulate in, over and through the pile or the logs won’t dry, and will go stale and mouldy
  6. The rigidity and strength of a log pile comes from the closeness- the proximity- of its individual logs
  7. The big ego-bulging logs are the hardest to stack- they tend to topple and teeter and can easily bring the whole thing crashing down
  8. The smaller logs tend to be the glue that hold together the whole structure
  9. The higher you build the pile, the more unstable it will become
  10. The pile is not an end in itself- no matter how decorous. It exists to store and dry fuel that can then burn bright in service of the other

Remembering…

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Yesterday was my father in law’s birthday.

Or would have been.

To remember his death in April of this year, Mary suggested we took some flowers to a place he loved. I am not really keen on those displays of flowers tied to lamp posts and benches- the ones that droop and rot into a mess of green plastic. But Mary had a much simpler idea.

So we went to a bridge over the River Eachaig, next to the lovely Uig Hall- a fine, still place where the river runs strongly around a meander and over a weir before disappearing towards the Holy Loch then the Clyde and finally the deep blue sea.

We stood in silence on the bridge, Michaela, me, the kids and Mary. That kind of stillness that is enhanced by the gentle noises around, and the feelings of pain and loss within. The whole world folds in for a while.

Then Mary threw her flower, along with a little note, into the river.

Taken by the current it moved off. Followed in line by Michaela’s, William’s and mine. It was unbearably sad, but lovely at the same time.

Emily was last to throw in her flower, and as she was standing nearer to the bank, the current took it around the meander and almost out of sight, before it snagged on the bank- a flash of yellow amongst the floating leaves.

This upset Emily- so much so that she wanted to go and fetch it somehow, although this was not practicable.

For me, this spoke volumes.

The river moves on and by, to a distant destination. But no matter how strong the flow it is hard to let go.

It is right not to let go.

Because blessed are those who mourn…

Fresh expressions, medieval stylee…

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Saw this and it made me chuckle. I think I have tried all of these options for revitalising church- before more or less settling on the last.

But lest I kid myself that I am cutting edge, lets remember that they were probably doing the same sorts of things 500 years ago.

When this video was made.
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Anthropomorphising God…

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We had a lovely evening last night with our friends Susan and Steven. Our kids a great friends, and they live within an easy walking distance. We ate, shared a few glasses of wine, and laughed a lot.

And as ever, we discussed religion a little. Susan is a Buddhist, and it has been really interesting to share stories and perspectives. Sometimes it seems that we share so much, whilst at other times, the differences are stark. Michaela and I have often described how good these conversations feel though- neither of us are trying to win the other to our own perspective- rather we feel a respect and a pilgrim-companionship.

Because neither of us have all of this sorted. Perhaps the adjustment was greater for us in this regard- as we have been schooled in a kind of religion that has to pretend to have all the answers, lest we miss an opportunity for someone to come a realisation of the error of their ways. And of course, there is the spectre of hell waiting for those who do not grasp the ‘truth’.

Hmmm- am I sliding still towards syncretism and universalism? Whilst I may have a lot of difficulties with the narrow way of thinking that I describe above, I remain a Christian.

Last night, Susan commented on her experience of reading ‘The shack‘. Not one of my favourite books, I have to say- I found the extended images too laboured, and the writing a bit too overblown. However Susan’s perspective on the book was shaped by her starting point as a Buddhist- and the fact that the ‘person’ of God is not part of her experience. She would not necessarily see God as an entity, or a being- for her faith is a process of becoming.

Initially, I felt a sense of loss for my friend. Because my faith is driven most of all by a developing awareness of the person of Jesus, and the Father, communicated by the Spirit.

But later, I began to think again about what this might mean- to take a look at my belief from the perspective of an outsider- which is the great benefit of these conversations with people of a different faith.

And because I love words, I started with two words-

Personification

1. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) the attribution of human characteristics to things, abstract ideas, etc., as for literary or artistic effect
2. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) the representation of an abstract quality or idea in the form of a person, creature, etc., as in art and literature
3. a person or thing that personifies
4. a person or thing regarded as an embodiment of a quality he is the personification of optimism
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Then there is this other word-
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Subjects for anthropomorphism commonly include animalsdepicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse, forces ofnature such as winds or the sun, components in games, unseen or unknown sources of chance, etc. Almost anything can be subject to anthropomorphism. The term derives from a combination of Greek ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos), human and μορφή (morphē), shapeor form.
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I am sure that it will be obvious to most of you why these words are important to people of faith. We humans have the propensity to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects, to animals, clouds, gadgets. We are geared to look for human resonances- and to recognise the human face almost before we are born. It is in our wiring (there we go- I just anthropomorphised my computer!)
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So this has to raise questions as to the effect that this has on the development of religious belief, and the shape of our personal encounters with the divine.
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Atheists might suggest that all religion grows from these human characteristics.
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There are Christian voices that also point out how modernity has become mingled with culture to such an extent that we have remade God in our own image- a western, capitalistic, rationalistic, democratic God. My own personal pocket Jesus.
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It is very difficult to take this Jesus out of our pocket. We tend to just put him in a different one.
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It is perhaps interesting to make a comparison of how the different religious faiths deal with this issue of anthropomorphism- Anthropomorphism of God is rejected by Judaism and Islam, which both believe that God is beyond human limits of physical comprehension, a view which has resonance with the Gregory of Nysa’s ‘holy darkness’. The Jewish rejection of the anthropomorphism of God intensified after the advent of Christianity.
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But we Christians, unlike our brothers and sisters in other faiths have continued to seek encounter God through the face of Jesus. Whatever this means…
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What is left in me is a conviction that God became flesh and lived amongst us. And we have seen his Glory. (John 1)
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But this incarnation is of a God who lives in us, not a personification of what we are cast heavenwards.
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Hmmmm…

There was this gay man and a fundamentalist Christian on a plane…

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I had a lovely time on recently with a couple of friends. We were meeting up to have ‘that church conversation.’ You know the one- about how we are hungry to live a life that has passion and integrity- in the Jesus kind of way- but at the same time Church is ripping us apart.

There are all sorts of reasons for this- many of my friends have gone through it. It is about relationship, theology, styles of worship, boredom, leadership issues. And sometimes just a longing for more. For a better way of living out faith.

My heart goes out to these friends, as it is a painful time.

Don’t get me wrong- I am not advocating leaving church, neither do I think that the hurt and pain we go through in this process is good, like a partially healed wound that we pick at. But the transition to new things often means a process of separation from the old- even if later we are able to find ways to reconnect with the rich traditions that are part of our DNA.

Both of my friends described their own struggles and hurts. Many of them were familiar to me. One of them was not however- because one of these good people was gay.

And as a gay person, their connection to church was always going to be filtered through a different set of experiences. I hope that this person gets the opportunity to tell their own story in full- I have no right to do this on their behalf.

It set me thinking again about how we hurt one another in the name of ‘truth’. And of Joseph Nicolosi and his quasi scientific religious exploitation.

Then this evening, by chance I came across this. A story told rich in grace and humility. From outside the Church.  A voice from the margins that we need to hear.

Notions of a Holy Nation…

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A few days ago someone commented on a post I wrote about Jean Darnell’s ‘fires from the north’ prophecy- you can read the post and the comments here. It set me thinking about the whole charismatic thing…

The original point of my post was to record something of my internal struggle with my previous experience of all things charismatic, and my relationship to prophetic utterances like the one that Jean Darnell made about Scotland. I think my feelings can best be summed up as ‘Sceptically ambivalent, but also trying to remain respectfully open.’

I suppose my position is post charismatic. I have been around a lot of these meetings- as a young man, alienated and captivated by the wierd wonderfulness of it all in equal measure. Then later as a worship leader.

There was a lot of mad nonsense. There may even have been some of God in the mix.

Along with the pursuit of experience however there was also a lot of associated converging belief, or world view. This increasingly have been driven by American televangelists. So along with convictions about the power of healing came ideas about how certain sins might get in the way and so if you were not healed then this was some how your fault- your sin or your lack of faith.

And then there was all the spiritual warfare stuff. The temporal world- politics, disasters, HIV or almost anything else- all had a deeper subtext in the spiritual world- that required ‘discernment’ to fully understand. And a lot of this is mixed up in ideas about the ‘end times’, and the role and place of Israel.

Sometimes it seems as though these ‘discernment’ goggles  all sorts of dreadful things and terrible suffering can be overlooked, and understood only on the basis of spiritual warfare or escatological implications.

Finally, there is a triumphalism often present- God is mighty, all powerful and will come in power and judgement, and revival is always just around the corner, if only we can somehow make ourselves receptive and worthy.

Coming back to the comment made on my earlier post, some of the themes above were present in the things that were said. I do not mean to criticise or judge this perspective- it is a very familiar one to me, and contains much that still fels precious and right- but one that mostly I am no longer personally comfortable with. Particularly the world view that seems to come along with it all.

So in this case, the comment was pointing to particular issues in Scottish history-

Just yesterday, the Lord prompted me to revisit the Scottish National Covenant of 1638 (a Covenant that makes Scotland unique, as the only nation on earth, outside of Israel, to make a solemn Covenant with Almighty God)…

…That was the day that Scotland married God and, although she has long since walked away from her husband, he does not forget or forsake his covenants…

…Do you suppose the fires of Revival that God himself will light in Scotland are the lamps of the Hannukah menorah? – The lights of Rededication of the Temple – A Temple which is now his holy people…

Rather against my better judgement, as I do not think that we were ever going to find common ground on this one, I replied. I suggested that I did not believe that the New Kingdom would ever have an earthy location, nor that the Jewish people would ever be replaced as a Holy Nation by the Scottish or the Americans.

And I also have a problem with any spiritual understanding that builds it’s legitimacy on the ways of the Covenanters, who were fighting and killing in the name of Jesus at a time of great political and religious upheaval. The legacy of these troubles in terms of the Catholic/Protestant divide continue to be a stain on Scottish life.

Is it admirable to die for what you believe? To resist the imposition of a book of prayer, and a way of religious observance that belonged to a distant foppish king? Possibly. But how about to kill and slaughter to prove your point? And can we overlook this, even forgive it, if it suits our particular religious agenda, or spiritual understanding?

It is not a fair question of course- the 1640’s were different times.

And such discussions are rather pointless.

Because I think my commenter would say that he and I are seeing on different dimensions- his the deeper spiritual one, mine the limited one that lacks discernment and spiritual awareness.

He may well be right.

Happiness and the making of daisy chains…

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There has been more in the media this week about happiness. An old theme on thisfragiletent- see here and here.

The latest interest followed the release of a report suggesting the following-

A survey of 1,000 Americans found that happiness rose in line with salary, but only until people earned $75,000 a year, the equivalent of around £50,000.

Earning more than this did nothing to boost how happy people were, according to Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2002.

Kahneman teamed up with Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton, to analyse 450,000 responses to a daily survey on happiness and life satisfaction run by Gallup in 2008 and 2009.

The survey asked people to rate how happy they felt each day, based on their experiences of emotions such as joy, worry, sadness and fascination. They were then asked to rate their overall satisfaction with life, on a scale where zero was the worst they could imagine life to be and 10 being the best.

The researchers found that life satisfaction rose steadily the more people were paid. Happiness rose with income too, but plateaued when people reached an annual salary of $75,000. For those on more, happiness appeared to depend on other factors.

Interesting.

It raises lots of issues for me-

Why do we keep using MONEY as a measure of happiness? Sure, there is point at which poverty (our ability to meet basic needs- including those relative to those around us) will impinge on our humanity, but beyond this, sooner or later we all come to realise that accumulating wealth is simply a distraction from deeper stuff. In this instance, only 10% of the population earn more than £50K pa, so clearly this level of attainment is not a realistic or sustainable goal for wider society.

There was a great programme on Radio 4 this lunchtime inviting comment and discussion on this issue. The whole range of issues came up-

The millionaire who was adamant that his money DID bring happiness, and freedom to live the life he wanted.

The person living on £5K pa on benefits, who found every day a struggle.

The person who gave up her £50K job as she was unhappy- and returned to doing simpler things.

Happiness is a difficult concept for introspective mercurial types like me. I am happiest when I do not need to think about happiness. When I am at rest with people I love, or doing something creative, or catching a echo of the voice of the Spirit…

I am pondering again  how we as Christians are called to a different way of being- living to the agenda set by Jesus. Lives of Spirit-fruitfulness, including that word ‘joy’, which is not the same thing as happiness.  Not sure I can define exactly how it is different though, or claim to a complete experience of joy.

But I do worry about how we Christians get seduced by the same selfish consumer-oriented agendas. I think that rather than a life style enhancement (do you remember that term moralistic therapeutic deism?) learning to live as a follower of Jesus seems to me to be about seeking to live in an open way, connected to others, and to find ways of giving/graciously receiving.

All this striving for more stuff, and the chasing after experiences that give life shape and meaning- it just does not fit well with the the ways of Jesus that we learn from the gospels.

And because faith without works is dead, then Jesus calls us on an adventure- a mission. Fulfilment and happiness may be discovered along the way, but they are not the object of life, rather they might be encountered as a by product- in the midst of all sorts of other things perhaps? Suffering, persecution, friendship, pain, joy, etc etc…

On the radio 4 programme, someone said this-

Happiness can be understood as like making a daisy chain with flowers that are close at hand

A bit trite, but I liked the simplicity of this.

You are where you are, surrounded by the people you are surrounded by, and equipped with the gifts and talents you are equipped with.

In this mix, is it possible there are also seeds of great happiness?

Pooh sticking the summer…

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Just had a lovely time at our Aoradh family day.

We share a meal, then someone leads some worship. Today Paul got us telling stories of  our summer, then thinking of what we want to keep, and what we would prefer to throw away- in the the form of a Pooh stick.

Brill.

I found this bunch of berries- one of those that used to be a stamen of some interesting lilly thing, but is now rotting quickly away.

Like the summer.

As might be inferred from my earlier post, the black dog has been stalking me a little. And the approach of the dark season makes me apprehensive.

So my berry poo stick became a prayer for all of us whose mood is mercurial, and easily shadowed by winter.

A prayer that the decay of the old might still be followed by a time of new birth…

And in the meantime- my your fireside be shared with good friends.

As mine is.