I travel  a lot on buses and seven out of ten people travelling on any one trip are looking down, engrossed by the images on their iPhones or Blackberrys. The culture of the book is being replaced by the culture of the image. And we are not making our own images, either– mental or artistic. We are fascinated (some say controlled) by looking at countless images that are machine made and mass-reproduced.

This morning I was at a workshop where we contemplated images created by several artists working long ago. One of them was Giotto who is considered one of the greatest painters of the 14th Century. In Italy I saw several paintings of his in Assisi at the Bascilia of St. Francis. In Italy religious paintings seem to fit the landscape as the Starbucks’ logo does here in the Pacific Northwest.

One of the paintings we looked at today was a reproduction of “Ascension” by Giotto. Our task was to go off by ourselves for 30 minutes and write about the thoughts that came up for us.

I found it helpful to look at one small detail in the painting and concentrate on it.

 I saw that there was biggish space between Mary and the Apostles. Mary was alone, but not lonely. She also seemed to to be pulling down into her own sphere the sight which filled her eyes.  The Apostles on the other hand were looking at the risen Christ as if they wanted to follow Him. The movement in this painting was going in two these two different directions, though this might be difficult to discern on this small reproduction.

The thoughts began to come, quite rapidly, and I wrote these words:

MARY

She pulls spaciousness down

to surround her,

as a blue mantle

that is poured from beyond.

The Apostles, astonished

have emptied themselves.

They reach up

to what is higher

and their journeys

will never

be over.

She fills herself

with the end

of all beginnings.

Her space is open and free,

as the big sky

which ever

draws us

inward.

What a pleasure to write from an image by a gifted painter. It is true that I worked from an image that has been mass reproduced but it was initally done by a great artist, not a machine.

 I think that this painting will be with me forever in some small way.

I regularly visit Rob, a United Church minister, who is dying from a cancer which has nestled into his sacral region. He has times of extreme pain and a few weeks ago he was in hospital for surgery to fill the cracks in his sacrum with some substance in an attempt to control the pain.

One night he woke up in tears, fearful and lonely in his hospital room with pain that was almost unbearable. Rob told me he reached for his bible and opened the book at Psalm 91. He recited by heart for me the lines he read:

He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence, he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge…you will not fear the terror of the night.

Somehow these words gave him peace and he was able to fall asleep.

Next morning he witnessed a miracle of sorts!  He looked out his window and saw a very ordinary sight. Some Canada geese had congregated on the roof of the hospital next to his window.

“Do you know,” he asked me, ‘what geese represent in Celtic mythology?” He went on to explain that they are a symbol for the Holy Spirit, wild and uncontrollable. Geese make a lot of noise and they bite the hand that tries to contain them. The Holy Spirit also cannot be tamed. God in the form of the Spirit will present himself in the most unexpected places and make things move. For Rob this display was reassurance from a God that cares and that he is close by and Rob is “under his wings.”  Somewhere his suffering will be made of use by a higher power that cherishes him. This thought gives him peace and the courage to carry on with the remaining part of his life.

Is the Holy Spirit at work in this story? I like to think so.

This story reminds me of something wise I heard once: “Once you start to read the bible, you begin to feel that the bible is reading you”.

Seems to be the case here.

"Eye of God" : NASA photo of the Helix Nebula

Even though I come from a family of tepid believers, my faith in the presence of God has always felt strong to me. I have wondered if a belief in God starts from a feeling-thought that there is something larger than oneself. And I have wondered if we are born with such a belief. From my own experience of having tried to argue for such a belief to atheist friends, it is impossible to try to convince people of God’s existence through debate. Eyes are immediately rolled and the conversation stalls.

How shall we talk about God?

It seems right to start from the Bible on this point: “God is love” ( 1 John 4:8). This seems so basic yet these words are a gift that keeps on giving.

Recently I read a translation by Robert Alter of Psalm 30:

 You have taken off my sackcloth and bound me with joy (from The Book of the Psalms, NYC: Norton, 2007) .

“Bound me with joy” —what a curious way for God to express this love, which he is! Compare this to the NRSV version of “clothed me with joy.” How much more visceral and powerful and (almighty, too!) is the word bound instead of clothed. Yet it made immediate sense because I could link this verse to a memory I have of my own father.

One summer, long ago, he was at the airport waiting for me when I came home for holidays. He was a big powerful man and he strode towards me, clasped me in his arms and embraced me with such love that I felt bound with the kind of joy that this psalm writer speaks of. His hug was not an expression of the love that shackles but a great love that frees. Because I was, am loved, then I am free to love others.

Can one speak of God the Father in the same terms that one speaks of one’s own father? The great theologian Thomas Aquinas thought so (from his Summa Theologica):
 

All words used metaphorically in relation to God apply primarily to creatures and secondarily to God. When used in relation to God they signify merely a certain likeness between God and the creature.

It would seem then that the love my father had for me is analogous to the love God has for the created world. In fact, to give even more power to the analogy (and to bring it back to 1 John 4): all of creation is an expression of God’s love.

Walter Brueggemann

I am auditing a class at the Vancouver School of Theology on the post liberal imagination.

My first question before registering was: what does post liberal mean? I learned that it means that there is no longer a “God’s eye” point-of-view and no privileged frame of reference for talking about religion. If you want to understand Islam, for example, don’t go first to the religious studies department of the local university and take a course.  Go instead to a nearby mosque and meet some of the people and listen to the words that are spoken in their prayers or listen in on one of their study sessions.  Postliberalism is: theology “from the ground up”. I like this approach of finding out about another religion; the journey starts — not in books, but in the local community

Now for me, my interest is not Islam in the moment but the post liberal imagination and so I have had my nose in plenty of books and articles recently. One author, Walter Brueggemann, has written a book entitled “Texts Under Negotiation: the Bible and Post Modern Imagination.”

Now there’s another term: post modern (it’s a good thing I have a theological dictionary because I would be lost at VST without one). Post modern is a term very close to the meaning of post liberal. There is a rejection of “objective  truth;” our knowing is contextual and  that what one knows or sees depends on where one stands. In fact, the more one generalizes about “truth” the more one fails to notice context.

I’ve done a little investigation (on the internet) and find that Walter Brueggemann  (born 1933 in Nebraska) is  an Old Testament scholar and universally admired by theologians of all stripes and ages.  He is congenial to the post modern perspective of not using one text to judge or evaluate another. He is sympathetic to the Jewish way of reading of the Bible that delights in texts that are disjointed, contradictory, and even scandalous. A new world can be imagined and a voiced with texts that seem odd or irrational. To enlarge upon this idea is another post.

Bruggemann writes about the “extravagant generosity of God” and it is enough to be awed by God: we do not need to give reasons for God’s intentions. We can imagine the astonishment of what has been:

…my frame was not hidden from You,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth… (Ps. 139)

The entire language in this psalm (which needs to be read in its entirety) speaks of the wonder and hiddenness of new life. Our personal point of origin is filled with indescribable mystery, yet how often do we really take the time to dwell and linger on this?

We modernists would rather focus continually on personal achievement: am I effective in my life? Or: what more could I be doing to gain the admiration of my family and peers (which is probably what we really mean when we desire to be more effective).

The flip side of this is the despair that we feel when we think we are not accomplishing very much. Or perhaps more truthfully put:  I do not seem to be getting much attention from other people therefore I am a hopeless case.

Brueggemann is suggesting that we change our paradigm.

What would happen in our lives if we spent 15 minutes one morning reading and rereading Psalm 139. Then we could linger over the thought that our lives are filled with people and events given to us from a “generous God.” We could then live as if we believed this thought and then spend the day looking for evidence that this might be true.

“Gee,” you say, “that is all a bunch of nonsense. I do have something to be depressed about. My kids all live in the same city and don’t seem to care about me at all. They hardly ever phone and when I do talk to them they don’t say very much and seem to want to get off the phone. Since I retired I find I spend too much time alone. No one cares about me; it’s a dreary life!”

Well, that is one paradigm –“It’s a dreary life”. Another paradigm:  ”It’s a ‘generous’ life. My kids have all grown up and are happy and busy with their own lives and they know how to make themselves happy.  I am lucky because some of my friends have kids that can’t seem to stand independently and keep coming home asking for money. I have a lot of freedom in my life now. I have always wanted to learn to draw and now I can take classes. Sometimes, I do get a bit lonely so I go ahead and invite an old friend over to my place for dinner and we laugh about old times.”

So, with the click of one’s mind frame, it is possible to step out of an old paradigm and imagine a new one.

This is the imagination at work in post liberalism.

St. Augustine (detail) - Botticelli

There are so many biographies out there. Should I start the new one of Steve Jobs that everyone seems to be reading?

What about getting the recent one of Catherine the Great, instead ? I’ve always wanted to learn more about her. Or what about reading the new Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a book which has been called “groundbreaking” by the NY Times)? I begin to feel restless and distinctly unwell.

 Perhaps I should get organized with my biography-reading. I should start with the ancients and read chronologically; this way I could ground myself in history and broaden my education. Now there’s a life plan (and I calm down). But — where to start?

Well, now it’s obvious. Go back and start with the first biography every written. Many people would say that this would have to be St. Augustine’s Confessions.

 I downloaded a free Kindle version of this work and found the translation had too many thees and thous and other archaic words (very distracting!) and I was almost ready to give up. Then I learned of an audible book club with a 30 day free membership and I ordered Confessions – very positively reviewed, as it is read by an actor who uses a new translation. Within minutes I was at the start of thirteen hours worth of listening.

But then another problem rears its ugly head. An audio Confessions is a difficult listen because the spoken ideas of Augustine follow one another so densely that there is no space or time for personal reflection. Pretty soon my mind had been amply overfed and I was sound asleep.

I realize now that there is no way that I can avoid a trip to the library. Luckily the Vancouver central library is a pleasant stroll away. The building itself is beautiful and a destination in itself.

Soon I had a copy of the Confessions (trans. by E.M. Blaiklock) in my hands and I am very happy because the first ten books included in this translation are all broken into sections with subtitles. This makes it very easy to read one section at a time and ponder it before moving on.

I find that Augustine’s conversation is directly aimed at God, though he has also the reader in mind and wants to instruct the reader.  He does not, however, want to pile up theological truth claims. He wants to show his journey to the truth, as he sees it and he invites the reader to do likewise.

Well, I couldn’t resist!

 Today –on a cloudless sunny afternoon in Vancouver (rare in February) I was not out walking the seawall cherishing the warm sun’s rays on my face or looking for crocuses in Stanley Park. I was reading Confessions. It was as if I had jumped headfirst into a pool of water and was swimming towards lovely news ways of thinking. There were Augustine’s thoughts and my own now intertwined with his – like plants growing together underwater. Every once in a while I came up for air – made myself some coffee or watched a few minutes of a Sean Connery movie taped on my PVR (oh, the joys of retirement!).

Book ten of Confessions is all about the memory. So I dip into one small part of it and try to understand Augustine:

I arrive at the fields and broad mansions of memory, where there are laid up thetreasures of countless images, brought there by all manner of experience. There is stored away also whatever we think by way of enlarging or lessening, or in any way modifying, what sense has encountered, together with anything else approved and put away, which forgetfulness has not yet devoured and buried.

 When I am there I order what I wish to be brought out, and some things appear right away, others require longer search, as if they are produced from remoter storerooms. Some things rush out in a heap, and while something else is sought and looked for, they crowd forward as though to say, “Perhaps we are what you want…”

 This is so beautifully written.  Augustine’s memory is a kind of pantry where he goes in search of things in much the same way that a cook looks for ingredients for dish to be made and then served. 

Now I truly understand why the man had such a prodigious intellect; he catalogued his memories in storerooms within vast mansions and could retrieve them fairly easily at will!

a modern memory

My experience of my memory is so different from his. Their substance is more like the subject of this painting by Martha Wakefield:

Memories of Home

 My memories seem glow in a kind of dim light just below my conscious mind and they seem to “rise up” when I open a kind of floodgate. I don’t go in search of memories the way Augustine does. It has always bothered me that I do not have many vivid memories of my childhood. I rather remember more my feelings around events.

Augustine says far more about the memory and a whole lot of other things, but I need to stop.

As someone said to me yesterday, you could easily spend your whole life revisiting Confessions.

A few years ago I read about Bonhoeffer’s ideas around “cheap grace.” Church life can become safe and comfortable. So many of us attend church every Sunday, enjoy the service and coffee hour together, but these pleasures are a “cheap grace” when there is little else done together other than worry about finances periodically. So often sermons are about truths in general and usually not particularly memorable.

Dorothee Soelle quotes Bonhoeffer: “the church may not teach timeless principles, however true, but only commandments which are true today.”[1] She goes on to say in her own words that what is “always” true may not true today in particular and speaks against a tendency to celebrate “proclamation as a substitute for discipleship.”[2]

This makes me think because I do want to leave church each Sunday a changed person. The sermon, as Daniel Migliore points out, needs to be: “proclaiming the same words the apostles proclaimed, but proclaiming it in different words in a different time and place.”[3]

William Willimon cautions about the “therapeutic culture” where we want not so much to be saved or changed, but rather to feel better about ourselves. He also warns ministers to be on the guard against acting  as a  “free-floating carping social critic.” He says he “regrets the loss of the pastor as instigator of holy discontent, righteous indignation and dis-ease with the powers.”[4]Here I would agree and add that there is a fine line between “carping” and expressing “righteous indignation.”

Recently I was at Christ Church Cathedral and heard a sermon by a visiting minister who walked this fine line and succeeded admirably in all the ways listed above.

First of all, he did not stand behind a lectern but walked right out in front of the altar with such warmth and intention. He was “among us” and not preaching from some holier-than-thou place. There was even something Christ-like about his countenance (Willimon states that preachers do take Jesus as a model for their ministry[5] ). The minister  spoke without notes on the reign of God where we could all live peacefully though this did not mean that we were all going to adopt the Christian religion. God’s plan for us was more inclusive than this. He also spoke about our need to care for one another, the homeless in particular. He went on to explain that the feed the homeless in Vancouver would only take for the rest of us to pledge a loonie a year. All of us in the congregation walked out feeling that the reign of God was within our reach and that we in our small ways could contribute. It did not always take a radical change to be a disciple of Christ.

I came home inspired that I would do my share. It would cost a little, but not break the bank. I went ahead and sent in a cheque to the Union Gospel Mission.

This past New Year’s Eve I was at the Eiffel Tower with a friend, Ruth, who is my age.  She had journeyed all the way from California because it had been on her bucket list to spend New Year’s near this lighted tower (the most visited monument in the world!)and  to watch the fireworks at midnight. I was with her and, with my new iPod, I took this (blurry) picture:

I sent it to friends thinking that this picture was telling a story that was a bit “stretched”. It might look to some as if we are having the time of our lives but the truth is that at the time we both did not see it quite this way.  At 11 pm rain was pelting down and we were standing by the Eiffel Tower in the muck. I told Ruth I was not having much fun and wanted to go home (to spend New Year’s at the Eiffel Tower has never been on my bucket list).

I left on foot pushing through crowds and spent an hour looking for a metro.  When I found one, it was surprisingly  empty of traffic except for roving gangs of what looked like hoodlums to me (they were drinking and shouting). But I also observed some families with children on the train so I guessed that this was typical New Year’s behaviour and I didn’t need to be alarmed. It took me two hours to get home.

My friend faired similarly. She left the Eiffel Tower soon after I did because she was told that, for the first time in many years, there were to be no fireworks this night. “Well,” she said to me on the phone the next day, “if I’d known this, I wouldn’t have come to Paris!”

Here it is two weeks after this event and the memory of it is gathering veils of glamour as I retell the story to friends.

I tell them about not being about to see my way forward in the crowds.  People didn’t seem to understand that I needed to get home and they didn’t make space for me (!) To get away from the hordes I started to walk down the dark narrow walkway through the Pont d’Alma tunnel. Suddenly I have an intuition that to walk alone in a dark tunnel would not be wise,  plus this passageway  has an unsavoury history (this is where Princess Diana met her fate so many years ago).  I backtracked and found myself surrounded by people again. I pressed forward along a busy road by the Seine and finally located a metro entrance, went down inside and waited a few minutes for the train to come. On the train a few young men were whooping it up with shouts and laughter.  I moved away from them and went to sit close to a family with two toddlers in tow. After another change of trains I was walking up Rue de Gambetta  in the 20e and before long fishing for my key to enter the little studio apartment where I was staying.  Soon after, I climbed into bed savouring the bliss of being warm and safe and sleepy.

Now that I think about it, I had a really exciting New Year’s – full of me having to navigate through disappointment then danger then on to security. What a good story!

Chagall

I don’t think so. Here is a story:

In March 2008 my three brothers and I stood by father’s body as he lay for viewing in the funeral home. One brother asked for us to do something unexpected; he asked that we say a prayer for my father. This was an unusual request because he is not the least religious. Neither was my father, but to say a prayer at this time seemed to be the most natural thing to do so the four of us recited the  Lord’s Prayer together. I am sure that my brother asked for this because he felt it would bring comfort, which it did.

When my mother died a year later the exact same events happened. Since I am the only one in our family who attends church with any kind of regularity, you would think that it would be me that would remember to say a prayer as we stood beside her in the funeral home, but no – it was this same brother who asked for us to say a prayer.

Since these deaths I have been interested in finding out more about the power of prayer and why
people pray and what prayers they use.

I came across an interesting story told by John Cassian, the 4^th Century Desert Father. He had visited a respected elder, Abba Isaac, who had told him a “formula” for prayer which is: “Oh God, come to my assistance;  oh, Lord, make haste to help me.” The person who invokes God as his protector is made aware that God is ever present and at hand.

I can’t say that I understand anything more about this prayer. By the use of his word “formula” I understand that this prayer is a sure-fire way making God feel close to you in every circumstance.

I had an occasion to try out this idea just two days ago.

I was at St. Paul’s Hospital for the second time in 3 months. I was undergoing another endoscopy
because, the first time, the doctor had found some precancerous cells in my upper duodenum. She had nipped them out at the first visit but wanted to do a second procedure to see if anything had grown back.

I lay on the hospital bed feeling grateful for the chatty, cheerful nurse who lay a warm flannel sheet over me and took my blood pressure.

I was also feeling nervous about getting the results and also about the procedure.  For one who gags at the thought of a doctor even touching the back of my tongue, let alone allowing her to lower a camera down the throat and thread it through my innards — well, let us just say that I tried to calm myself by breathing deeply.

I remembered the prayer formula and said it to myself several times: “Oh God, come to my assistance; oh Lord, make haste to help me.” I then came to the conclusion that I could handle the results. If I were free from cancerous cells I could deal with this. If (and I’m being morbid here) cancer was found raging everywhere and I needed to be given last rites soon — well, I could deal with that also. On the up-side of this latter diagnosis I would pass away happy with all the fun that I’ve had in my post-retirement years and also I would saved the trauma of watching myself grow feeble and toothless in a slow decline.

In this frame of mind I was wheeled into the procedure room where the doctor administered a sedative. I could feel the scope going down plunging left and right through my digestive system. It seemed to know just what it doing down there and where it was going. I could relax and allow it to do its work and before I knew it, the procedure was finished. The doctor came right over and
told me that she could see no trace of anything abnormal growing.

You might think that I shouted for joy at this news, but what was interesting to me was that I did not experience a huge sense of relief that I was being spared the awful spectre of treatment for cancer. My first thought was – “Oh, this is the plan for me”. I was to be healthy for a little longer.

It was wonderful to feel this sense of peace in the hospital and that my being content did not rest in using prayer to manoeuvre for a particular outcome.

Did the Abba Isaac prayer help me to be receptive to thoughts that would bring calm?  And did these thoughts come from God? I can only speculate.

The prayer needs further testing.

A friend told me a bad-luck story of his artist-friend. I found it compelling and wanted to write it down. Of course, as I did so I embellished the story and added my own details. It was compelling to me because even though the artist’s outer world became smaller, his inner world did not. He did not allow himself to be filled with despair, but instead kept hopeful and moved forward finding solutions. I hope I captured that aspect of the story which impressed me when I first heard it. 

A young artist
applied geometric shapes to painted canvases.
He sold a few.
On bright sheets that he coloured himself,
he wrote letters to strangers, which they answered.
Once
he spent a whole morning pasting coffee grounds and sand together
marveling how easily they mingled.

To support himself, he tidied and mopped, wiped surfaces,
happy because, this way, he kept his own life
free from darkness and clutter .

One day a sharp pain arrived in his right shoulder
travelled down his arm and remained.
Work was not possible.

Doctors, baffled, could offer only painkillers.
Exploratory surgery would not guarantee anything,
so
the artist waited for the pain to subside
which it did, somewhat.
But still he could not work.

Money dwindled. He used his savings and help came from friends
but there was not enough anymore to pay the rent.
One day
he woke up, opened the curtains and the window
Leaning out over the frame, he found
that the heavy heat on his shoulders
and the backs of his arms made him happy.
He hummed as he dressed, then went outside.

Later in a coffee shop an older woman,
with long hair, brown and brittle, smiled at him across the tables.
Drawn by her flouncy pink feathered shawl,
he went over to sit with her.
Giggling ,they exchanged their stories.
She laughed uproariously at his bad luck,
but he did not mind.

Then she looked serious for a moment.
She offered him the small bedroom in her apartment for free.
And he moved in.
She slept in the living room, was glad of his company.

He wrangled a small disability pension
from the government, now he pays her a little rent.

Sometimes they share a meal.
Her laughter is outlandish but he has perfected his smile.
He uses it when he needs space.
She sees it and understands at once
that the area between them must become larger,

The pain in his arm has lessened.

He has set up a working space
in the corner of his bedroom where
he can paint and move paper around.
The window faces south.
In the mid-afternoon on clear days
he stretches out on the floor
glad
to feel the sun’s rays warm his body.

Recently I was very interested to read a New York Times article (Oct. 9, 2011) about the celebrated atheist, and essayist, Christopher Hitchens, who is dying of cancer. He has written books with titles such as: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens now confesses that he cannot eat much or drink alcohol or smoke but his life is enjoyable to him in a way that was not possible before. His friend, the writer Martin Amis, says, “Hitch’s buoyancy is amazing…he has this great love of life…it’s an odd thing to say….it’s as if he’s become religious.”

I have to marvel at this. Isn’t there a passage somewhere in the bible which says: “He who abides in love abides in God and God in him?”

If this is true and that God’s substance is love, then he is at work everywhere, even in the soul of arch-denier Christopher Hitchens.

This man has a formidable intellect. Camus said that an intellectual is “someone whose mind watches itself.” My question: is there a possibility that Hitchens is so wrapped up in his own mind and the strength of his own ideas that the thought of a power greater than himself is not conceivable to him? To me there is something unfortunate about this.

I once taught a feisty six year old boy with enormous self-confidence. He could out-talk anyone and could easily convince others in the class to follow his plans.

One summer his mother took him on a trip to Europe where he visited some of the great cathedrals.  Inside these churches, her son was uncharacteristically silent. He appeared filled with awe as he cranked his head sideways, looking upwards, marvelling at the huge space above him. Her comment to me afterwards was that perhaps this was the first time in his short life that it had occured to him that there was a dominion greater than himself.

I can’t help but wonder if there are not some aspects of Hitchen’s life which are similar to this story. Of course I would never say all this to his face as the power of his rebuke would surely tear me to shreds, but I can share my thoughts about him on this blog.