Longing for Repetition

One of my favourite novelists and literary critics, the Czech, Milan Kundera, once wrote: ‘Happiness is the longing for repetition’. On the face of it, such a definition could imply a rather dreary form of existence. Surely happiness is to be found in variety and not monotony? Surely happiness is multi-coloured and not monochrome? I’m not so sure. The postmodern drive toward a multifarious experience of life can, if we are not careful, lead to disappointment and anxiety. Successive governments have unfortunately jumped on to this particular philosophical bandwagon and have trumpeted the importance of choice, without having any clear idea of when or if that choice can actually be exercised. Choice in and of itself is, of course, not a bad thing, as the Arab Spring reminds us, but  when choice becomes an end in itself, then the question of meaning is not far behind. What is the point of all this choice?

This is why, I reckon, Kundera touches on a fundamental aspect, perhaps the fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. If nothing else, the exercise or experience of repetition relates to a desire for security. And though Kundera would not describe himself as a Christian, this leads naturally to the area of faith. Terry Eagleton, the Marxist and recently un-lapsed Catholic literary critic makes an important point about  the relationship between faith and choice:

Faith - any kind of faith - is not in the first place a matter of choice. It is more common to find oneself believing something than to make a conscious decision to do so - or at least to make such a conscious decision because you find yourself leaning that way already. This is not, needless to say, a matter of determinism. It is rather a matter of being gripped by a commitment from which one finds oneself unable to walk away.

    Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate 

 Without getting into any kind of rarefied or protracted debate about freewill and predestination (which would be to miss the point anyway), Eagleton reminds us that our choice for God is not a choice in the same sense as  the choice of side dish I’d like with my steak, or even, dare I say it, my choice of life partner. He is suggesting that somehow or other we lean towards God (or indeed lean away from God). And it is this ‘leaning towards’ which I would connect with this fundamental desire for security – if you like, the desire for home.

This is all the more evident when we realise that the Latin root of our word ‘repeat’ is ‘repetere’ which means ‘to seek again’. There is a sense that our relationship with God is always inevitably ‘a seeking again’. And this is the irony about this particular repetition, this seeking again—it is always new. We can never claim to have ‘made it’. Our seeking after God is a seeking for security in the sure knowledge that it is a journey that is never completed and it is one that offers us ever-changing insights into who we are as individuals, and as a church.

A good example of this would be the St Margaret's Vestry Away Day which was held recently on Cumbrae. It would be difficult for any of us who were there to say that we learned anything that was obviously new. But it was in the rehearsing, the repetition of the already known (and therefore so easily taken for granted) which made the two days we spent together so memorable and worthwhile. It is in the rediscovery of the obvious that we find ourselves renewed.

So at the risk of repeating myself, repetition is no bad thing. After all, it would appear that this is part of the Spirit’s work in us:

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

                                                                                          (John 14: 26)

Song of Songs

At St Margaret's this morning, we had the great pleasure and privilege of welcoming Revd Maria Ottensten and the choir of Örgryte Parish in Gothenburg, Sweden. Maria very kindly offered to preach and the choir sang a couple of pieces for us. It was especially moving to hear Swedish songs which obviously meant so much to the choir themselves. It provided evidence once again of the power of music to transcend barriers of language and nationality. We were all Swedish this morning. Which is another way of saying that we were all one. It's good when that happens occasionally in church, where, on Good Shepherd Sunday, we are reminded that there is to be one flock and one Shepherd.

New Year, New Church and the Academy Website

Not Karl Barth

For those of you who might not know, I'm involved with a group known as the Church and the Academy (no, it's not a cult!) We meet monthly during term time in the Theology Dept. of the University of Glasgow to hear and discuss what is going on in the multifarious aspects of the theological world. I see it as not just an important therapeutic tool to keep the brain ticking over, but an important reminder of the connection between the disciplines of pastoral and intellectual endeavour. It is far too easy to say that what we learned at theological college has no substantial bearing in the 'real world'. Such an attitude (which I confess, I have been tempted to indulge) merely betrays an unmerited suspicion of the critical aspect of theological study. In its extreme form the argument runs: We ought to know what we believe (2 Timothy 1: 12) and any attempt to critique that belief is tantamount to replacing faith with rational argument.

This argument (if it is an argument) ignores verses 13 and 14 of the same chapter in Timothy which eloquently speaks of guarding the good treasure, i.e. sound teaching, of the faith. Some people take this guarding to the point where the treasure is invisible to all but the one holding it. They become like Gollum holding on tightly to his 'precious' and prepared to kill any who would dare even look at it the wrong way... Okay, that does sound kind of cultist, but you get the point. It is far too easy to hold on tightly to what we believe to be the fundamentals of life (creating, by the way, a fist in the process) thinking that we are doing God or the Faith a favour. The reality is that God is big enough to look after God. Wasn't it Luther who said, "Defend the Bible, I'd sooner defend a lion!?" The 'guarding' Paul is asking of Timothy is grounded in the experience of sharing the faith by the help of the Holy Spirit in us. We are to be channels rather than curators of faith. And that is where theological reflection has a vital role to play.

Faith and Moby Dick

Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab

In Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick, Ishmael wanders into a chapel in New Bedford and examines all the memorials to past sailors and whale-hunters. Overcome by a sense of the sorrows of the past and made more than aware of the forebodings of future peril, Ishmael stirs himself:

‘But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.’

It is an arresting image. To describe Faith in such graphic and fleshly, if not downright menacing terms leaves me wondering about the nature of Melville’s faith and the nature of my own. There is a temptation to think we know definitively what certain words actually mean. We even have the temerity to think this about theological or metaphysical words. The truth is that very often we are simply winging it or, to change the metaphor, we are paddling at the edge of a vast ocean of meaning. Take the word, Truth, for example. Pontius Pilate is often portrayed (perhaps understandably) as the nasty character at the trial of Jesus of Nazareth. But at one point, in response to a comment of Jesus, Pilate asks the question: ‘What is Truth?’ (John 18:38). Pilate has, in some quarters, never been allowed to live that one down. He has become in the minds of these folk a kind of whipping boy, who represents all that is wrong with relativistic, woolly or simply lazy thinking. I think that this is unfair. I say that because I don’t believe (and never have) that there is any such thing as a stupid question. And to ask the question: What is Truth? appears to me to be a pretty good one. To ask that particular question sincerely is to open oneself to the more than obvious possibility that we don’t know all the answers.

And that brings me back to the word that Melville uses – Faith. It, too, can become familiar, like an old pair of slippers. It takes someone of the calibre of a poet or a novelist like Melville to pull us up short and ask us what we mean when we use the word. The poet throws in the bit of grit which makes those slippers feel a little less comfortable. Instead of describing faith in terms of metaphysics, Melville turns to the law of the jungle. He turns to the scavenger picking up the scraps. He adopts the image of the opportunistic hunter surviving among the dregs of life itself. Melville’s faith is not the cosy faith of the church or chapel, but the rougher, hard-bitten faith that is born out of genuine experience. Faith becomes then, not a pleasant feeling, or a quality to be admired or a trophy to be displayed on a pedestal. It is the means by which we survive or perish. Melville’s own upbringing may have contributed to this outlook, but regardless of any autobiographical slant, what he says chimes with me.

One of my many heroes, Søren Kierkegaard once wrote:

‘Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.’

Faith cannot be anything but passionate. Less than that and it is mere polite interest in the subject known as God. Faith was never intended to be the window dressing of life, but its mainstay. Faith is its own raison d’etre. And our lives are the poorer when we try to tame that particular jackal.

New to be Old to be...

Yes, it's been far too long! Summer has come and gone and I have been more than a trifle lazy about posting. Quite a few changes have happened since my last offering. Paul Romano has moved on from St. Margaret's to serve as the new Rector of St Ninian's Pollokshields and I wish him well. It seemed, though that, no sooner had Paul left than we discovered that we were to receive a new curate, Maggie McTernan. She was ordained last week and is settling in very well to her new church family. So the sense of newness carries on (for me, at least). New can be overrated of course. The technological drive that seems to be hard-wired into our culture (I sense the irony here as I type) has a tendency to leave us idolising the latest thing. But in some areas of life, the latest thing may be the last thing you want. Last night I was chatting with another ordinand (that's someone soon to be ordained, in case you didn't know!) about the feeling I have that theology is one of those subjects about which it is hard to be trendy because there is a sense in which it has all been done before. That's not to say that I'm a reactionary, theologically speaking. I'd like to think I'm far from that. But there is a tradition. And it is only when one recognises that tradition can one sensibly and constructively transcend it in some tiny way. To be new means to be old.

Walt Whitman, someone who witnessed at first hand the horrors of untrammelled technological advance during the American Civil War, captured in a few lines what I'm trying to say:

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work, 

After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, 

Finally shall come the Poet, worthy of that name;

The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.

Those songs have been sung throughout human history, but we often have to slow down to hear their radical melody.


Meanwhile, here's Maggie really enjoying the newness of her situation...

Hello Moments

We are, as you know, in the season of Pentecost - the season of the Spirit. One of the things I find myself tempted to lose sight of is what being re-connected with the Spirit means. I reckon I'm not the only one. Too often (if we think about it at all) we are tempted to associate the experience of the Spirit with the extra-ordinary rather than simply realising that to be connected to the Spirit is to be more fully connected to the ordinary…and it is that connection which makes the ordinary extraordinary. I call these experiences of connection or re-connection ‘hello’ moments.

 My oldest son, Stephen and I are Liverpool fans, and a good example of a ‘hello’ moment was when Liverpool were 3 – 0 down at half time in the Champions League Final a few years ago. Everyone thought that all was lost (including me I have to say). The second half duly got underway and within a few minutes of the restart Liverpool got a goal back. The rest, as they say, is history… they went on to win 4 – 3 and it became probably the greatest night in Liverpool Football Club’s long list of outstanding sporting achievements. I mention all this (yes there is a point!) because when that first Liverpool goal went in, the commentator made the immortal remark, ‘Hello?’ It was a single word, but it held within it a whole world of possibility.

That’s what ‘hello’ moments are. They are moments of revelation where a whole world of possibility is open to us. They are moments when we become aware of the extraordinary in the ordinary. The Spirit’s job is to get alongside us and gently nudge us in the direction of consistently saying ‘hello’ to life.


Here is that great 'hello' moment.. if you don't like football then just listen to the Liverpool Anthem, 'You'll Never Walk Alone', which, if you've ever heard it sung at Anfield, you'll recognise as another 'hello' moment.

Loitering Without Intent

The ascension has been described as the last of the Crises of the Christ – moments of dramatic illumination or dramatic change, (his birth, baptism, temptation, transfiguration, crucifixion and resurrection being the others).

But in many ways the crisis of the ascension is a crisis not just for the Christ, but for us. And this is illustrated in the way the disciples behave – In the account in the book of Acts, Luke has the disciples asking a question. They ask what seems to me to be the most parochial of questions – "When will you restore the kingdom to Israel?" I don't know about you, but if this was the last time I was going to be able to ask a question of someone like Jesus, it would have been something a bit more profound than that - 'Why do people suffer?' seems a good one to start with. Despite everything they had witnessed, they still saw Jesus as some kind of local hero, instead of the king of the universe. And the second thing the disciples do, as Jesus is glorified before their very eyes, is simply to stand there, mouths agape. "Why do you stand there (looking gormless?!)" says the angel. 

For me the disciples' question and their standing around represents our crisis. We in the church can often find ourselves wondering, ‘Well what now?’ We metaphorically stand around looking gormless. In some cases metaphor doesn’t enter into it! The absence of Christ can lead us to be persuaded that the church has an absence of leadership or purpose. As a result, we end up looking at the small picture; we end up asking the small questions, we end up standing around waiting for something, anything to happen. 

And yet, in all of this God is patient, and we are quietly but consistently reminded to think bigger, to ask the difficult questions, to look beyond the obvious and to live our lives in the glorious knowledge of Christ’s victory. Cardinal Newman (not the kind of bloke I can ever imagine having a pint with) describes what the ascension ought to mean to us rather well:

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared. 

Cardinal John Henry Newman