The Beginning of the World As We Know It

It would appear that we are all still here, after all. It won't have gone unnoticed that much internet and general press hay has been made over claims by a certain Harold Camping, who was completely convinced that May 21st was to be the day when everything came to an end. The apocalyptic starting gun, in the form of a chain of earthquakes, was to be fired in New Zealand (that probably makes up for the fact that they are always first for the good stuff like Christmas and New Year) and then spread around the globe. Meanwhile, avoiding all the mayhem, the Rapture would take all the true believers from the earth. And that, as they say, would be that. But it wasn't. And I can't help wondering what Harold must have felt waking up that day of days, not in heaven, but in his own familiar bed in his own familiar house in his own familiar street. CBS news has him quoted as saying that he was 'flabbergasted'. That's an understatement of epic proportions.
It is easy to make Harold and his followers a target for ridicule, but the whole idea of the end of the world got me thinking about the beginning of the world. Not in the sense of Genesis and creation, but in the sense in which the world is renewed each day. We share a deep resonance, I believe, in which we know or feel that the world is always ending and always beginning. Within this general feeling there are epiphanies which make such endings and beginnings more tangible. These moments occur throughout our lives, and it seems to me that to keep our eyes open for those times and seasons is what offers the true apocalypse, the true lifting of the veil. And it is such a revelation which provides us with the resources, regardless of the changes and chances of this life, to live more peacably.
It's the beginning of the world as we know it.... and that essence of life is captured exquisitely by REM in their ironic homage to the subject....

Dancing about architecture

Last night I joined a small group from the Mothers' Union in the Ayrshire Region of our diocese. The evening was devoted to the subject of Prayer. Spelling it as I just have with a capital 'P' in a sense is a reminder to me of what I was trying to get across last night. In our imagination, prayer can very quickly become something big. On the strength of this leap of the imagination there quickly follows the temptation to regard prayer as something we aspire to. It becomes something we must learn. Subconsciously it becomes something always a little bit out of reach. I discovered the other day that Amazon has over 200,000 books devoted to prayer! I'm reminded of the line from Elvis Costello who said: Writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to do. 
Of course, there's nothing wrong about writing or reading books on prayer, and it clearly implies there's a market out there for this devotional material. But I wonder if, in the face of all this verbiage, one can be left with the false impression that there is some thing we are not getting when it comes to prayer, some esoteric technique or talismanic form of words. It strikes me that when Jesus was asked by his disciples to teach them to pray, he offered no such technique. Even though we now regularly repeat the Lord's Prayer, I have the feeling that all Jesus was trying to get across to his friends was to simply pray.
The Incarnation, if nothing else, surely shows us that a sea change has come about in our relationship with God. Certainly we cannot be flippant in our attitude to prayer, but I have the feeling that the abiding sense God wishes for us is that prayer is the expression (whether in words or without words) of an already existent reality. We needn't dance about architecture when it comes to prayer. We just need to dance.

Refusing to be Enemies

Today I had the privilege of attending a meeting at St Aidan's Episcopal Church, Clarkston, where I heard an inspiring account of the life and work of Daoud Nassar, Director of Tent for Nations. I don't have the space to tell his full story so, if you watch the video, I will leave that to Daoud and his colleagues....

Speaking to Daoud after the meeting, I was struck by his insistence upon the fact that political solutions, whilst clearly important, are not particularly relevant for him. What is of far greater significance is the seemingly insignificant gesture of Refusing to be Enemies ( a statement written in numerous languages on the huge boulders which mark the entrance of Tent of Nations). Daoud seems to be engaged in what can only be described as an attempt to end the politics of estrangement. The only way he can do that is to refuse to be the fall guy, i.e. to refuse to play the part of the enemy, and refuse to see the Jewish settlers, who are seeking to take his land by whatever means, as enemies themselves.


Daoud's approach reminds me of the image of the kingdom that Jesus offers us where he talks about the yeast that leavens the bread. It's an innocent sounding metaphor, but there is something quietly, spiritually, subversive about it. Gandhi must have had people like Daoud in mind when he said: Be the change you want to see in the world.


Pray for the life and ministry of Daoud and Tent of Nations, that they may continue to quietly leaven the loaf.

The Old in the New in the Old

Over the last couple of days, I've attended two conferences - the first, on Saturday, marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, held in New College, Edinburgh - the second, held today at St Silas Church in the West End of Glasgow, covered the topic of Ministering to those with Dementia. Both were excellent events and both illustrated for me the importance of recognising the old in the new in the old. One of the startling things about the KJV is that it was such a radical event in the life of the Church and, indeed, the country. We, of course, tend to look at a text from 1611 and glibly dismiss it as simply.. well, old, with all the concomitant negativity normally associated with age - crustiness, irrelevance, incomprehensibility. In our reflection on the KJV we don't tend to think of words like 'radical' or 'ground-breaking'. Such prejudice, I believe, is fuelled largely by an ignorance of history, but also by a more subtle modernist agenda (which is alive and well in our so-called post-modern world). This agenda consistently strives for definition and seeks to classify the life out of life. Function comes before Form in the modernist agenda - so the argument runs: 'It may be beautiful but if we can't understand it...' Yet, surely that is at least part of the reason why we should continue to not only honour but read the KJV. We should grapple with Scripture rather than using it as a tag-line or a slogan. I guess what I'm hinting at is that the KJV leads us to respect the mystery of faith. In this sense the old becomes new insofar as it reminds us of the daily challenge to live out this mystery. But it also offers us the lesson that newness is to be found in the old, if we choose to look for it.
The same thought occurs to me in our interaction with those with dementia, or indeed with the elderly more generally. The one lesson I learned today was to see, truly see, the person before me, and to realise the revelation (the old in the new in the old) that can be traced in the most unlikely of places. This is summed up so beautifully in a poem by Christina de Luca:



The wilderness within you has been stripped:
only the graininess is left.
Yet so much intact,
despite erosion of that sense of self;
so much remaining
which can cross the chasms
when words get in the way of knowing
a touch, a smile –
with your engrained benevolence
you make me mindful of what humanness entails.
You have no cogent thought, and yet
your muddled words
are full of thoughtfulness.


I sing for you, and wonderfully
you join in, add harmony.


          Then shall the tongues of the dumb sing
          for in the wilderness shall waters break out,
          and streams in the desert.


I feel as Moses must have felt
striking the rock.

Welcome to my world

Welcome to my Understandababel World!

To be honest, I've often felt blogging to be a somewhat ambigous activity, particularly for someone in my line of work. The better angels of my Presbyterian upbringing whisper in my ear that it merely serves to promote a dodgy culture of self-aggrandizement. I've certainly come upon much that falls into that category. Ego issues aside, I've often simply wondered whether I have very much of interest to share with Cyberworld. Frankly, I would rather not waste your time and mine. But here we are and so, once again, I bid you welcome to my world, such as it is.

And what is it? Well, I've decided that it can only be my Understandababel World. The picture above is, of course, The Tower of Babel, (1563) by Pieter Brueghel, the Elder, (one of his two Babel paintings). It vividly captures the hubris of the engineers who seek to design a structure which would match anything the gods could come up with. Unfortunately, according to Brueghel's depiction, they clearly haven't built it very well, and the whole enterprise seems on the point of collapse. But nonetheless the structure remains fixed, as it were, in Brueghel's canvas. This painting is really telling us that humanity has the unique knack of consistently kidding itself that it is all-conquering. We consistently misinterpret our ability to master our universe. We overreach. The irony, of course, is that the painting, itself, remains. Brueghel's picture in my mind at least represents the Understandababel World - a world of contradictions and ambiguities, a world where all of life can be appear permanently on the point of collapse, but nonetheless, remains. This is the world in which we live and love and struggle and grow. We try to understand it but are reminded daily of the tremendous challenge that such a task involves. But we don't stop trying. The Understandababel World is my world and I'm more than happy to show you around and let you see what I've found so far...