Bog standard poem

I wrote this poem myself. It's an ode to a toilet, proving there's poetry in everything. You'll have to decide for yourself how serious I am.

Ode de toilette

There's beauty even in the humble bog,
it's whiteness, and the whiteness of the brush
offering its handle patiently.
                                               And stood
like sentries in their red and gold, wait two
bleach bottles, calm before their call to war,
to battle with our secret enemies.

Two rolls of paper on the other side
with equal patience wait behind the bin,
whose plastic collar splays out like a ruff:
how noble those whose whole call is to serve.

Black tile meets white wall with yin yang
accord and perpendicular precision.
Black the holy backdrop for the white;
the toilet's double's mirrored in the light.

Pax

Troubled by an upsetting situation and worried about the future it may lead to, I paced my way home, trying to pray.

I used to be good at prayer. Back in those rose-tainted days that probably never existed. But these days prayer is hard and can feel like a kind of fraud. Like I'm pretending to be spiritual. Someone has said 'Why is it that when I talk to God they call it praying, but when God talks to me they call it paranoid schizophrenia?' Well, frankly, I find even the former can feel schizophrenic (and the latter impossible).

I managed, however, to order my thoughts and present them to Christ, whom I trust was listening - realising at the some time (as often happens) that my concerns are slight indeed compared to Syrian refugees, the Ebola victims or myriad other real sufferers.

Petition mixed with penitence; my usual spiritual procedure.

It wasn't life-changing. Yet I arrived home with an approximate peace.

Then, after dinner, I read a poem by DH Lawrence (I like his poems better than his prose, partly because Last Lesson in the Afternoon is such a brilliant depiction of an experience all teachers will recognise!) as part of my poem-a-day Lenten discipline:

Pax
All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire. 

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

I like this 'hymn to contented creatureliness', as Janet Morley calls it, combining something very down-to-earth - a snoozing cat - with mystical ecstasy. It reminded me that prayer - in fact, life itself - is not a call to resigned drudgery, but to contentment with the peace of present and full enjoyment of the wildfire that is life: 'yawning at home before the fire of life'.

There's plenty to worry about. Always. But permit me to stretch out like a cat full-length, long-bellied, exposed and ecstatic and hope for a better day - because I'm at one with the master of the house and I can still feel his fire.

Goodness doesn't know

Yes, goodness knows
The Wicked's lives are lonely
Goodness knows
The Wicked cry alone
Nothing grows for the wicked
They reap only
What they've sown…

Last week I went with my family to see the musical Wicked.

It has some fab tunes (by Stephen Schwartz of Godspell and Prince of Egypt fame) – and, more than that, a thought-provoking story. The musical is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, which is in turn a subversion of L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the iconic MGM movie that has taken audiences over the rainbow and along the yellow brick road since 1939.

Avoiding major spoilers, let’s put it like this. The story takes that gloriously 2D baddie, the Wicked Witch of the West, and tells her story in a way that turns it on its head. Villainess becomes heroine. The witch, Elphaba, is a sparky, inventive and idealistic young woman with a gift for casting spells. But she is rejected for being different (in this case ‘like a froggy, ferny cabbage…unnaturally green!’) Sealing her fate, Elphaba falls foul of Oz’s corrupt political masters who play on general ignorance and fear to spin her as an enemy of the people – hence the version of the story we see on our TV screens every Christmas Eve. The way the plot manages to twist and turn all those familiar motifs – from scarecrow to broomstick to ruby slippers – is truly, well, wonderful.

The show opens with a spectacular musical ensemble as the citizens of Oz celebrate the witch’s recent death. (You can listen to it here, with lyrics here.)

Forget ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’ – this number, with its blending of major and minor strains, is musically ingenious, and here’s why. Remember Lewis Carroll’s poem, Jabberwocky? The genius of this poem is that the first verse, complete with all its made-up words, is identical to the last verse – but means exactly the opposite. The first verse is sinister and menacing, the last verse – though using exactly the same words – is joyous and celebratory. Well, Wicked’s opening works similarly (though in reverse). The opening number is a joyous celebration of the witch’s death. The closing number is the same song – but now the minor tones come to the fore and it takes on a sinister, even tragic feel, and the words become deeply ironic.

The reason? In the interim we've ‘got to know’ the witch. We've been told her story. We understand her. We love her.

So now we cannot celebrate her death, but only mourn her as a terribly maligned scapegoat.

It strikes me that Wicked has a thing or two to teach us about prejudice and scapegoats. Those who seek power – political or religious or social – need scapegoats. They need someone to blame, someone to direct the fear and hatred of the populace toward. Hitler and the Jews is a very obvious example – but there are examples closer to home.

Fear the immigrant. Fear the gay. Fear the scrounger. Fear the Muslim. Fear the ‘other’. Et cetera. Fill in the blank according to your brand of prejudice.

It leads to soundbites and spin at best, violence and persecution at worst. ‘Goodness knows’ (that is, of course, we know) ‘the wicked deserve everything that’s coming to them’.

Until you get to know them. And then you discover that – who’d have thought it? – they’re human too. And sometimes, they might just have a thing or two to teach us.

So, my reflection for today: don’t judge others. Get to know them. Hear their story. Grow to love them and they'll no longer be ‘them’, the other, but part of the big ‘us’ that is the human race.

Don’t judge others. And certainly not by the colour of their skin – even if it’s green.

Dark night

My own Jesus,They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God – they would go through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God. In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing (Jesus, please forgive my blasphemies, I have been told to write everything). That darkness that surrounds me on all sides. I can’t lift my soul to God – no light or inspiration enters my soul. I speak of love for souls, of tender love for God, words pass through my lips, and I long with a deep longing to believe in them.…

In my heart there is no faith, no love, no trust. There is so much pain, the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted. I want God with all the powers of my soul and yet there between us is a terrible separation. I don’t pray any longer. I utter words of community prayers and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give. But my prayer of union is not there any longer. I no longer pray. My soul is not one with You, and yet when alone in the streets I talk to You for hours, of my longing for You. How intimate are those words and yet so empty, for they leave me far from You. 

…I do my best. I spend myself but I am more than convinced that the work is not mine. I do not doubt that it was You who called me, with so much love and force. It was You, I know….but I have no faith, I don’t believe. Jesus, don’t let my soul be deceived, nor let me deceive anyone.

You may be surprised to learn that this diary entry, with all its longing and despair, was penned by Mother Teresa. For many years the woman who many would regard as one of the very most Christlike people of the 20th century lived with a painful hole where her relationship with God used to be.

Yet, over time and with help, she came to see this painful absence as a paradoxical manifestation of closeness to Jesus - Jesus who at the culmination of His mission cried out 'My God, why have you forsaken me?'

Mother Teresa came to recognise this felt absence of God, not as his actual absence, but as what an earlier mystic, John of the Cross, called 'the dark night of the soul': a journey beyond our misleading senses into God who is unknowably transcendent and unbearably immanent.

To move beyond the idol we comfortably call 'God' or 'Jesus' and to journey into the real God, the real Jesus.

‘I pray God to rid me of God' prayed Meister Eckhart.

I am fifty gazillion eons away from Mother Teresa's (or John of the Cross's or Meister Eckhart's) depth of spirituality. But I do know something of the experience of 'the dark night' (an experience, by the way, that John of the Cross insisted was not just for 'advanced mystics' but part of common Christian experience as God matures us).

To authentically follow God requires, sooner or later, a kind of atheism - as we discover that the God we have enthusiastically embraced is 99% a god of our own construction. We have to abandon God in order to follow God. This is the call of the ever-challenging Jesus.

It is in the night that we are blinded - and then we can start to see. So John of the Cross sings in the darkness:

Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

(For more on the Dark Night of the Soul, real this excellent article by Mark Yaconelli in a recent Youthwork magazine.)

Ghost story

Everyone loves a ghost story, right? Especially if told round a fire, or in a tent, in the woods, at night, with a group of friends...

Yesterday a friend took me to the Staffordshire theme park, Alton Towers. Between rollercoasters, we went on the 21st century equivalent of what, back in the days of yore (i.e. my childhood), would have been called a ghost train. This ride is based on a local Staffordshire legend (classic stuff of late night campfire goosebumps): ‘the chained oak’.

The story goes something like this...

One night in 1821, the Earl of Shrewsbury was riding home to Alton Towers in his coach when a man on the roadside (in some versions an old woman) hailed him. The coach stopped and the man begged a coin for charity. The Earl harshly refused him, so the old man uttered a terrible curse: ‘For every branch on the Old Oak Tree here that falls – a member of the Earl’s family will die.’

The Earl dismissed him and carried on his way... (And this is where the campfire teller’s voice would change to a suitably chilling tone.) But that night, a terrible storm struck the old oak, and a single branch broke and fell. Later that very same night, a member of the Earl’s family suddenly, mysteriously, died. The next day, the Earl ordered his servants to chain every branch together to prevent other branches from falling.

The 'chained oak' can still be seen, not far from Alton Towers...

At the oak: can you spot the chains?

My friend and I went to see the chained oak that afternoon, and later he sent me a link to a local BBC page about the story.

Looking at it, what struck me most were the comments from large numbers of people who basically believed the story to be true.

‘Can somebody die when a branch falls off today?’ asks Darren. ‘We'll never really know if it’s true or not true’ says Stefan. ‘I thinks it’s true because when you go it doesn't feel right’ admits HK. Pete adds ‘I live near the tree, and won’t go near it, seems spooky enough for me.’ ‘I believe that it is all true’ says Sam. Dominic replies ‘I do believe in curses and the dark arts so the tree may well be cursed.’ Alexandra says ‘I think the curse is still intact. When I went to see the tree last time, I still felt this strange, dark, unfriendly presence surrounding the tree like there is someone or something there watching in anger... be very careful, be aware of the oak tree’s surroundings and don't go alone.’ Sophie meanwhile asserts ‘as a good historian’ that she thinks ‘it is true, but more research needs to be done and a test on the oak tree to see if it is really cursed.’

And on it goes.

It may be that you, dear reasonable reader, are aghast (I use the word advisedly) by all this silly superstition. Perhaps it has given you a rather dim view of Staffordshire people. Perhaps you are tutting and rolling rational eyes as you read.

But following my last post about how church decline statistics do not necessarily mean a more secular Britain, this struck a chord. Many, possibly most, people in Britain believe in spiritual things. It may be a bit of a muddle. It may be more influenced by Alton Towers than the Faith Once Delivered Unto The Saints. More ghosts and ghouls than Holy Ghost. But nevertheless: UK people are inclined to be spiritual believers.

So I repeat yesterday’s hesitant assertion: the church needs to morph, to flex, to adapt to meet this spiritual interest, this hunger for the unseen.

Never mind curses, let’s get blessing people.

More beautiful broken

Two things spoke to me this week.

First some lines from T S Eliot's poem, East Coker:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God...
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Then this:

There's a depth can only come with brokenness; a hope can only come in darkness.

Selah.

Duck church

One morning the ducks waddled along to duck church. When they got there they waddled into their duck rows and sang some duck songs. Then the time came for the duck pastor to preach to them all.

‘You can fly!’ he said, and the ducks all quacked with excitement.

‘You can fly! You can fly!’ the duck pastor repeated. More lively quacking from the duck congregation, and many now jumped up and down with excitement at the thought that they could indeed fly.

Then the service came to an end and all the ducks waddled home.

This pointed little fable was told by one of our congregational pastors yesterday and is reproduced here without permission. But I don’t think he’ll mind.

Faith: a difficult scandal

Came across these words by Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, whilst reading around Genesis this morning. Faith is not easy. It is, in fact, impossible - for us alone. But we're not alone...

[The story of Abraham and Sarah] shows what a scandal and difficulty faith is. Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Embrace of this radical gospel requires shattering and discontinuity. Abraham and Sarah have by this time become accustomed to their barrenness. They are resigned to their closed future. They have accepted that hopelessness is 'normal'. The gospel promise does not meet them in receptive hopefulness but in resistant hopelessness...

The total Abraham/Sarah story is about a call embraced. But in this central narrative the call is not embraced. It is rejected as nonsensical. And indeed, if no new thing can intrude, if newness must be conjured from present resources, the promise announced here truly is nonsensical. But our interpretation must focus on the overwhelming question of God: 'Is anything impossible for the Lord?'

~ Walter Brueggemann, commenting on Genesis 16

Belieber

Contrary to the sniggering assertions of some of my friends I’m not a Belieber. In truth, I hardly know any of the songs Justin Bieber’s sung. I couldn’t even hum along.

Nevertheless, I did find the story of the ordinary lad who achieved YouTube fame, well – endearing. I was prepared to say ‘Good luck to the lad’ and wish him well. I even played a video of one of his songs during a Sunday sermon once (this one – Pray). It was this that made some label me a belieber – and if that’s all it takes for the cap to fit, I don’t mind wearing it.

But recently the media has turned against young Justin. ‘Justice Bieber’ yelled the headline of the Metro as I passed through the station on my way to work the other morning. The young singer, catapulted too far into realms of fame and fortune he couldn’t handle, has been caught speeding, apparently high and drunk. More scurrilous stories have come out. Strippers. Substance-abuse. You get the picture.

And it made me really sad, not because I’m Justin’s number one fan, but because it seems to me there’s something toxic about a culture that lifts people – in this case a child – to the heights only to smash them down and gloat when they land on the rocks.

We (rightly) excoriate child abuse, but it seems to me that there’s a kind of collective, cultural abuse about this kind of thing. Yes Bieber’s 19 now, but he was only a minor when he started his meteoric rise. I don’t think any young person – indeed any human being, let alone a child – can handle such a flight. (Remember Icarus?)

I think the boy who wrote ‘Pray’ meant well. I think a culture that should know better – that says it knows better – should examine itself before baying for Bieber blood. 

I pray for Justin Bieber. But I also want to take my part in forming an alternative culture; one in which innocence, youth, childhood, idealism, the gifts of a rising generation – such things are nurtured and protected, not squandered and spoiled.

The tragedy

I read a Shakespeare play for the first time recently: “The Tragedy of Arthur”. The chances are you haven’t heard of it because it doesn’t exist.

“The Tragedy of Arthur” is a novel by contemporary writer, Arthur Phillips, about the discovery of a long-lost Shakespeare play about King Arthur. The novel includes the entire text of the play and a long introduction – which is, in fact, an autobiography of a fictionalised Arthur Phillips, the man with the lost play in his possession. As the story unfolds, the reader – along with the narrator – becomes increasingly convinced that the play is a fake, made up by fictional Phillips’ fraudster father. But it could, just about, be genuine. And part of us wants it to be.

But of course, we know it’s all made up anyway.

The novel turns on ideas about authenticity, fakery and the desire to believe – at times despite the evidence. I particularly enjoyed some iconoclastic asides, in which the narrator lays into Shakespeare with the shocking claim that not everything Shakespeare wrote was all that good. Could even the Bard of Avon have dropped some clangers?

Take Hamlet, possibly Shakespeare’s finest work, urges faux-Phillips. Take the scene following the discovery of Ophelia’s drowned corpse, a moment of pathos and tender tragedy. Queen Gertrude describes Ophelia’s flower-strewn watery grave in lines of tender lyrical poetry. And a penis joke.

...crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name...

Arguably, that bit of nudge-nudge-wink-wink hardly serves the mood of the scene. Rather spoils the moment? It’s a crass mistake, a duff line, rants Phillips. But Shakespeare need not worry. For the patron saint of English literature can do no wrong. Enter four hundred years’ worth of directors, actors, academics, critics – not to mention audiences – who scramble to justify William the Great, to find ways make the sore-thumb line work. It’s Shakespeare’s uncanny Freudian-before-Freud grasp of Gertrude’s psychology. Or it’s his artful and brilliant reflection of the theme of “beauty and the grotesque”, which permeates the entire play. Et cetera. One thing must be insisted upon: Shakespeare could never have written a bad line.

Beneath the irreverent banter, Arthur Phillips (the real one) clearly has a great love of, and respect for, Shakespeare’s works. I, too, love Shakespeare. But I, like Arthur Phillips (the false one) have sometimes found myself thinking, “Wait a minute – that’s not actually a very good line (/scene/play)”. Even A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which, apart from being the best play ever written, is also my favourite) has some jokes that take considerable invention for a director to render funny. I know; I’ve directed it.

Don’t tell anyone I said that.

Anyway, it got me thinking about God.

God, like Shakespeare (and the British press, but that’s topic for another day) is beyond criticism. You simply are not allowed to suggest that He Who Is Worthy Of Capitalised Pronouns could possibly get anything wrong. This, after all, is the deity who has none other than John Milton, that other titan of English literature, writing an epic poem in ten books “to justify the ways of God to men”.

On a dry theological level, I must concede the point. God has all the omnis in His favour: omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. But this does make it rather difficult to have an authentic relationship with Him. Because, frankly, sometimes it feels rather like He has got it wrong. And if we’re not allowed to say it, then any relationship begins to feel more like politeness – or even pretence. (Remember the Emperor’s New Clothes”? There is a Christian equivalent.)

Faced with storms decimating eastern India or closer-to-home tragedies like a dying parent (or even, I admit somewhat shamefacedly, mundane trials like a delayed house move), I find myself wanting to say, “Come on, God! What are You up to?”

But that’s not allowed, is it? He’s God; by definition He must be right.

Many contemporary Christian worship lyrics refect this. These songs are often on one note only: a note called something like “praisy-boingy-woingy-happy-glory-hallelujah”. Even songs that touch on darker themes generally do so only to laud God for being unswervingly at our side throughout. “Never once did we ever walk alone” croons a popular anthem, with more than a nod to Rogers and Hammerstein and/or Liverpool Football Club.

But what about when we are alone? When, God’s omnipresence notwithstanding, all sense of Him has vanished?

Where contemporary worship too often fails, the bible comes to the rescue. There’s wonderfully gloomy Psalm 88 with its eighteen verses of depression and despair, culminating with the words “Darkness is my only companion”. There it ends without so much as a Praise the Lord. Or Abraham’s bartering. Or Job’s complaint. Or Jeremiah’s lament. Or the most dark unanswered prayer of all: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!”

The bible’s writers weren’t averse to letting God know when, in their view, He’d failed to come up with the goods. Nowhere do their writings descend into whining and they are shot through with worship and theological depth. Psalm 88 accuses God, whilst simultaneously appealing to Him; Abraham frames his haggling with reverence; Job ends with eloquent silence; Jeremiah’s grief is transmuted into some of the most beautiful poetry in the scripture; Christ’s unanswered prayer leads to the redemption of the world.

But this doesn't prevent them from letting God have it with both barrels.

I want to make a plea for lament and complaint to be part of our worship (on which, see this rather wonderful post I read a while back). It’s different to whining. It’s different to boring “God is not great” atheism (that’s the equivalent of the Year 10 student who opines that “Shakespeare is crap”). It will take careful expression, poetic artistry. It will demand honesty, bravery, authenticity.

Yet lament, complaint, accusation, pain expressed – they are part of a real, authentic, biblical walk with God. The tragedy, not just of Arthur, but of me, of you, of us all – even of God – needs expressing.

Let’s get talking to God about those things. He’s not Shakespeare. He can cope. It’s part of truly loving Him.

Dying we rise

I write with news of change. We have decided, after ten years, that it is time to wind up White Stone, our community house on Leamington Road and its wider household membership. After a few months’ prayer and thought for the whole of our church congregation in Coventry, the decision was made to strengthen our communities by closing one of our five houses and rejigging the teams in the remaining four.

But which one to close? It is, I suppose, a good sign that no household rushed to volunteer! As it happens, the White Stone team had been showing signs of considerable strain for some time. We've had some truly wonderful times over the years, with a cast of amazing people sharing the journey – but it hadn't always been easy (see posts like this, this, and this!) and the core team had grown tired and some had suffered a degree of burn-out. It had become difficult to generate fresh energy and forward momentum.

Our story on a scroll; our calling on a carving.

So we’re ‘quitting while we're still ahead’ or something like that. We’ve been very supported by our local friends – that’s helped enormously in a tough time. Needless to say, it’s a time of grieving and loss for us. But it’s also the right move, I believe. One of my dearest friends (and fellow White Stone pioneer) coined an apt neologism to describe the sensation: ‘grelief’ – an odd combination of grief and relief. This just about sums it up.

A number of us are going to move to one of our other community houses in the area. My wife, children and I, however, are going to live in our own place for a while and take stock. We'll still be linked to the community – part of a common purse, and maybe even with one or two others living with us – but we're looking forward to having some more time and space. People are referring to it as our 'sabbatical' which sounds rather nice (in reality I'll still be working for the church and three children mean that life is never exactly quiet!)  

It's a big change for us, this sabbatical from load-bearing leadership. We need time and space to be restored and find fresh vision and direction. Please pray for us.

The house on Leamington Road probably won't be sold, but used somehow. It may even house a newly formed community team. That would be rather wonderful – the house has been a place for God and we’d love it to continue to be. We’ll see.

In my bleaker moments I can feel only loss, pain, bewilderment, anger: ‘Our holy and beautiful house and all our pleasant places have become ruins’ (Isaiah 64:11). Yet at other times, I remember that death is God’s way into eternal life. ‘It is in dying that we’re born to eternal life.’ After all, we follow Jesus, crucified and raised.

I don’t know about you, but my natural mentality doesn’t easily grasp the paradox of life from death (even if it is all over the New Testament I claim to live by). In the latter half of his ministry, Jesus repeatedly told his disciples he had to die. And repeatedly ‘they did not understand what he was saying, and were afraid to ask him’ (Mark 9:32). After he was raised they were as slow to understand: ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:26).

It was necessary. ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’ (John 12:24).

From Jesus’ death, freely chosen, came life for the world. I pray that from our small ‘death’, freely embraced, new opportunities may spring; new dreams, new joys – new life.

God, don't you care?

Okay, so a few things have happened recently that have got me down. Much as I'd like to be superpastor ('is it a bird? is it a plane? no!...), I've found myself finding it hard to believe in anything very much and fighting an 'I quit' reflex.

And to cap it all, I'm in the odd position of preparing a Sunday morning talk on faith/faithfulness (set up the topic in advance back in a sunnier spell). As someone once said, 'God must love me'...

But in the course of thinking my way through faith and realising I don't have much, I came again across the story of the stilling of the storm in Mark's Gospel.

'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' scream the terrified disciples as Jesus snores serenely 'on the cushion'. ('On the cushion'? Did Jesus take this 'snooze-through-life-threatening-scenarios' aid everywhere, or only on small boats?)

Do you not care? Fair question, I reckon. Ever known that feeling? It's all cracking off, drowning's imminent, and God's asleep somewhere on his heavenly cushion?

So, Jesus gets up, rather unreasonably tells them off  ('Have you still no faith?' - looks like he may be irritable when just woken up, too), and flicks away the storm like we might a gnat.

If it was me I'd want to finish the story (or the sermon) with a pithy, pious conclusion like: 'And they were all filled with faith and said "You are the Lord!"'.

But not Mark. His rather more realistic conclusion goes like this: 'And they were filled with great fear and said "Who is this?"'

Yup. Reading this I think 'What a relief, I am a disciple of Jesus after all. And as unbelieving, fearful, bewildered, baffled, and hard-done-by as the first lot. I'm relieved to be in the refreshingly flawed company of guys like the twelve disciples.

And I'm relieved that faith is not so much about its quality as its object.

Ten ‘other’ commandments

Some of us are inclined to try too hard. If you're like that, you may find these ten 'alternative' commandments (which a friend wrote for me a while back after a prolonged time of trying too hard that had left me pretty burnt out) helpful:

Thou shalt not be perfect, nor even try to be.
Thou shalt not try to be all things to all people.
Thou shalt leave undone things that ought to be done.
Thou shalt not spread thyself to thin.
Thou shalt learn to say ‘no’.
Thou shalt schedule time for thyself and thy supportive network.
Thou shalt switch off and do nothing regularly.
Thou shalt be boring, untidy, inelegant and unattractive at times.
Thou shalt not even feel guilty.
Especially thou shalt not be thine own worst enemy but be thy best friend.

True lies

I’m re-reading The Lord of the Rings after many years.

It’s prequel, The Silmarillion, is a great favourite of mine, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read outside of Scripture and Shakespeare. And I’m reading The Hobbit to my 8- and 6-year-olds – so I thought it was time to revisit LOTR.

Tolkein expressed distaste for allegory, and the way that genre seeks to hound the reader into truth. He preferred the truths that come sideways through myth. Nevertheless, last night I read something which opened up a truth I’ll jot here, for those interested. (If mythic/fantasy literature doesn’t do it for you, feel free to stop here. See you next post if I haven’t put you off for good.)

So: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve arrived at that part in the story in which we meet Denathor, steward of Gondor. For those not familiar with Tolkein’s epic, Denathor has long ruled over that embattled country and its besieged capital, Minas Tirith. He rules in the absence of a king, just barely holding off the might and horror of neighbouring Mordor, the land of shadow.

Denathor is a man in despair – a despair that, a few chapters after we meet him, descends into madness. Convinced that all is lost and hope is gone, he tries to burn himself alive, together with his wounded son and heir.

The source of his despair, it transpires has come from having seen into a palantír (non-Tolkein readers, think crystal ball; Tolkein readers, forgive the comparison) in which he has wrestled with the will of the evil Lord of the Rings, Sauron. Through what he has permitted Denathor to see in the palantír, Sauron has deceived the steward into the crushing hopelessness which defeats him.

But it is what Sauron permits Denathor to see that struck me: he lets him see the truth.

Nothing that Denathor sees (or is permitted to see) in the palantír is untrue. He sees enemy armies amassing in great might and power, he sees the sparseness of his own and his allies’ strength. They cannot win. All hope is lost.

Yet Denethor is deceived by the truth. (In the end, it is two highly improbable heroes, two little half-size hobbits, that will bring triumph against Sauron’s might. But these Denathor did not see – nor did Sauron.)

When Satan, ‘the father of lies’, wishes to deceive, to wear out the saints, to sow discouragement and despair, he does not always lie outright. His most compelling lies can be those that are true. Lies that show truth – but not the whole truth.

“You’re not growing.” “That didn’t work.” “And you – you’re a sinner.” “Masses of people in the UK couldn’t care less about God.” “Sometimes, you couldn’t care less either.” “No-one’s listening.” “You make so little difference.”

And then, the whispered suggestion comes, so quiet, it seems to come from your own thought: “Why not just give up?”

But it’s a deceit. God delights to perform his greatest acts through the little people. He works in the small, the hidden, the ordinary, the overlooked. Watch out for mangers – they’ve been know to hold Messiahs. Watch out for executed criminals – they’ve been known to save the world. Watch out for that ragtag, disregarded, often odd, usually confused, rather-behind-the-times bunch called the Christian Church: they’re the firstfruits of God’s glorious new creation.

Let me learn the lesson of Denathor. I want to avoid listening to lies – especially when they’re true.

The kingdom is coming. Come, O Lord!

Love and madness

My old schoolfriend - another James as it happens - has recently become the vicar of a church in Luton. His inaugural address to his new flock was based on Acts 2; he explored something of what it means to live with 'everything in common'. It was good to listen to him, even if he has developed a mysterious southern accent in the years since we were schooled near Liverpool. (Apparently his church is called 'Saint Frarncis'...)

Before he delivered his talk - which I understand was greeted with enthusiasm by the good people of Saint Frarncis - he tweeted to let me know he was going to mention me in it. His actual words were: In my first sermon at StFrancis, Luton, I intend to quote Tertullian, Tom Wright and @n0rma1 (that's me, by the way, for those unfamilair with Tweet jargon) - in no particular order.

Good heavens. Two titans of theology, one ancient, one modern - and me. And in no particular order!

James referred to me and the community life I and my sisters and brothers pursue as a noteworthy way of living out the challenge of Acts 2.

It was a blessing to be considered a blessing, though I did wonder if James was rather too swift to pidgeonhole our lifestyle as 'a calling for some'. It's not that I disagree, it's just that in my experience that sort of talk tends to lead to many Christians breathing a sigh of relief and getting on with being the same as everyone else.

But I mustn't be glib. You can't sustain a common-purse-community life without being convinced that you can do no other. A mentor of mine describes our community - of which he too is a member - as 'strenuous'. Shane Claiborne said to me recently that he sees us as 'community on steroids' (I loved that). And, in fact, the words James quoted me as having said to him, many years ago, were that Acts 2 had 'ruined my life - in a good way.'

A life of full sharing, no personal money, house and hearth shared, is a pretty tough call and cuts across a lot of natural preferences. Just for the record, I do not live in community because I like having no money or because I like having other people in my living room (all the time) or because I really enjoy other people choosing the colour scheme of my kitchen or because I always wanted to have my weekly diary substantially written by others or... well, you get the idea.

I live in community because I have to. Because I can't read the New Testament without it shouting community at me. Because God is a community and I want to be like him (even if he does bewilder me much of the time). Because I really do believe that radical, root-level, self-renouncing love is the way Jesus lived and because no disciple is above his master, I have to do so too.

I still agree wholeheartedly with what I said to James all those years ago - except perhaps the bit about 'in a good way'.

Okay, okay, it is a good way. But it can feel like madness. There have been times when I've felt like if I see another person I may kill them - with my words, if not with the kitchen knife. Times when I've walked round and round the block I live on, with my head pounding, thinking 'I can't take this anymore'. Times when some relationship tension has swelled to fill my entire emotional world and I can't escape from it, I can't 'go home' because they're in my home. Times when vision is dim and I can't remember why or what for. Times when I'm fed up with my family, neighbours and friends thinking I'm odd (or, worse still, thinking I'm 'radical') and I just yearn to be bloody ordinary like everyone else.

But in all this, just as much or more than in the times when living in community is inspiring and wonderful , I learn what it means to live Christ.

James said I gave up a lot of opportunities to live in community. Maybe. But I would not be even a tenth of the person I am today if were not for the madness that ruined my life - in a good, way.

Perhaps it would appropriate to leave the last words of this post to St Francis. This is from his Canticle of Love (if you like it, read it all here):

I have entirely renounced both the world and myself in order to buy love. If I owned all creation I would gladly trade that for love. But I find that love has deceived me. I have given everything and yet I do not know where I am being drawn to. Love has destroyed me. I am looked at as if I am mad, and because I have been sold, I am no longer worth anything...

...In this anguish of Love, Love, Love, O my adorable Jesus, I would die while embracing you, O Jesus, my sweet spouse. Love, Love, I beg for death from you; O pitying Jesus receive me and transform me into thyself. Remember that I am passing away killing myself with love. I do not know where I am, Jesus, my hope, destroy me with love.

A time to rest

I got a lot done today. Unfortunately, almost none of it was what I set out to do at the beginning of the day. Phones ganged up on me. Emails ambushed me. My agenda was hijacked.

It's tempting, tonight, to hive off to the office at home and get some work done - some of that work I wanted to get done today. After all, I'm heavily involved in leading a national youth event next week. Et cetera. Okay, so tonight's supposed to be a night of deliberate friendship, yeah, but if you knew the pressure I'm under...

No. Wrong. I must not bow to the subtle workaholism that drives. Spending time with people tonight is life. I won't put life on hold.

Not many people get to the end of their life, look back, and say 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'

So. Tonight's time for rest. Time for friendship. Time for play. Time for worship, perhaps, or for sharing of hearts. But I'm staying away from the office.

I may even switch my phone off.

Now that would be radical.