Category: theology

lessons in redemption

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crucifixToday was not the best of days. A worrying pastoral situation or three… Awareness of things done and left undone. A sense of exhaustion when I was trying to prepare tonight’s bible study and a quite legitimate worry that this time I would not get away with it and could not fake my way through.

But then, God caught me off guard. Amos, unexpectedly, came as grace.

There is nothing like a bit of righteous anger, underlined by God’s deep constancy and love to unravel the knots of a bad day.

During the bible study, someone drove to the heart of it: the faith of remnant Israel is remarkable. To go through all that, to be scattered to the wind, broken and torn, and to come out proclaiming the constancy and compassion of God is a remarkable thing.

So there is grace in working through the text: getting carried away on a wave of righteous indignation, purging the need to blame, being pushed into the place where God turns the tables, and says ‘and you? are you really any different?’. And then being offered the space to grow, the invitation to seek God, the promise that God will not utterly destroy but will raise up life.

A more cowardly people would have burnt Amos’ prophesies and denied them. But somehow they realised: there is grace here. If we face our failure, our people’s failure, and learn to tell a new story: there is grace.

But to find it we need to cling together in exile; to face anger and disappointment till we can name God again.

on balance

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waiting for Jenny

Well, Jenny’s room is ready, and Molly says it passes quality control.

The rest of the family also have a place to sleep. Now I just have to clean the floors for Finn and deal with all the churchy bits (booklets, sermon; messy sacristy which may get ignored again).

The experience of preparing for this visit had taught me a lot about the balance of my life. I began cleaning on Monday so that I could get it over with and get on with the rest of the week. I seem to have been cleaning ever since. I have occasionally thought about feeling guilty for how little normal work I’ve done this week, but each time I did, I remembered that the reason my house takes a whole week to clean is because there are so many days where I let domestic tasks fall by the way side so that I can tend to other things.

But clearly, the fact that my house takes a week to clean means my life is off balance. I’m not talking about polishing silver, here. I’m talking basic cleaning, and things like putting up curtains after only two years of living here (and even then, it was done with safety pins pending a trip to Glasgow for the right sort of curtain rail.)

I’ve never been terribly good at ‘normal life’. Which is a shame, because I think that one of the things the church has to offer our overworked, under-focused society is a model of life that is worth living. Christianity offers a vision of balance: we need both Mary and Martha; compassion and challenge; celebrations and quiet places to pray. We also claim to believe in sabbath rest. Not that we do it very much…

As I walked round Tescos last night (wondering: ‘what time is the last ferry??’) I was very aware of how many people routinely do their week’s shopping at 8.45 pm. And all the more aware of how many of those people were small enough that they couldn’t see over the top of the trolley. I’ve blogged about this before, but little kids really shouldn’t have to stay up late to go shopping.

But what options do their mothers have?

I wonder if the church could just say no to it all — to the perceived needs and patterns that throw us all off balance. I wonder if we could be brave enough to find another way. Protect and defend at least two evenings a week and a full day at weekends to do simple, holy things: spend time with friends and family, prepare and share a meal, read a book, go for a walk, pray.

And then, if we could do that, could we give up an evening to enable someone else to have time off? Could those of us without families find a young working mother and say, ‘you stay home tonight. Play with the kids. Give me your shopping list, and I’ll come back once they’ve gone to sleep.’

It seems it should be possible.

And yet it so often proves impossible. Even as I write, I know that I still have a couple of hours of work to do before bed, and that some things that should be done will not get done. Time to read Benedict again. Though in fact, remembering to apply it would probably be more useful.

too easy

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One of things that has happened through blogging is that I am more regularly in contact with — and generally aware of — people from other denominations. And when the blogs take me back to my North American roots, that means there’s plenty of room for envy of larger churches, a culture of tithing, and diverse religious traditions where the grass seems green.

When I am tired, the grass often seems greenest at one of the Unitarian Universalist blogs I read. Part of the joy is the way the person writes. She is funny and sane and vibrant. But it is also the picture she paints: a world where people sit light to doctrine, believe deeply in the inherent worth of each person, see the value in community and work for social justice. The UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association) was strong in the edgy quirky town where I did my teaching degree, and I have sometimes wondered if I had stayed there longer, if I would have eventually drifted into the UUA pews.

(funny really. God became optional, but they kept pews…)

Now, as I said, when I am tired, I can feel the pull. When I am fed up with clergy shirts and a life of black and grey, I can long for the freedom of ‘other ways’. But the temptation always seems illusory when I examine it.

Could I really sustain a spiritual life that I had to build from scratch? or a set of beliefs that tried to draw on all and sundry traditions? (if this is unfair to the UUA, I apologize. I know little about it. It is just how it seems).

I am sure that I couldn’t.

When Christianity seems difficult it is tempting to jump off the liberal edge into self-chosen spirituality, and a Christ-shaped humanism, but I know I could not survive there. I might seem to for a while. It might be fun. But when things tip from difficult to seemingly unbearable, what holds you then?

I remember a time during my curacy when being a priest was exceedingly painful. Someone I cared (care) about greatly had had her life derail, and it was all bound up with conflicting concepts of God and the church. I remember the pain. I remember the helplessness. And I remember standing at the altar, blessing and breaking bread with tears in my eyes, thinking ‘this is only bearable because it is true.’

I can’t live without that truth.

And I can’t imagine a life in which all truths are optional.

So no greener UUA pastures for me, then. But I am thankful for the blog, and the occasional glimpse of how life is lived by those brave souls who seem able to live without anything solid to hold onto.

hold on

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Last night was another session of the bible study which I should have named ‘A Reckless Romp through the Old Testament’.

Reckless because we have been going too fast.
Reckless because so much depends on the overview given in week one, and not everyone was there.
Reckless because I am fascinated by the OT, but it is not really my subject, and I should have spent far more time preparing each session than I have.

Reckless because I have been cavalierly speaking of the gap between event and writing; ‘fact’, and theological retelling; generally playing with fire.

And last night, I found the flaw in my plan. If I am not careful, I’m going to deconstruct things, and then ask people to take a break for the summer. By the time autumn comes, they will all be off reading Richard Dawkins, having been driven from OT henotheism & emergent monotheism to atheism by way of despair.

So, we’ve decided on an extra session which I will think of as ‘holding onto God’.

The study of theology and scripture is exciting because it dismantles our assumptions and exposes the ways we restrict God. Confusion is necessary as we move out of our comfort zone and play with ideas that are– with the one who is — too big to grasp. But when you’re in the midst of it, it can feel pretty grim.

So, for those who are beginning to sympathize with grumpy Israelites wandering through the desert, a word of encouragement: stay with it. After a while the darkness glimmers and a flash of raven’s-wing becomes more captivating than all the bright certainties you thought you knew.

Promise.

And occasionally, you might even be allowed to catch a feather to play with and to call your own.