Category: spirituality

I don’t know who the man born blind is either, but idly speculating …

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Who is the man born blind? Who do you think he is? How do you picture him? When Jesus went looking for him (John 9:35), after he had been thrown out, who did he ask for? Did he have a name?

John leaves him anonymous. He may be Bartimaeus but if it is John has stripped him of his name. Anyway, Bartimaeus is another man who is blind in Mark’s gospel – it’s the other one (also nameless) that Jesus uses spit on to help him see (Mark 8:22-26).

Even if it is Bartimaeus the meaning is unclear, for if Bartimaeus is an Aramaic name his name means “unclean”, but if it is a Greek name his name means “honoured”. He certainly isn’t unclean in the eyes of Jesus and John. In fact he is a man whose blindness is accompanied by other gifts – a kind of biblical sage who is such a contrast to the able-bodied disciples.

Is he then, the model disciple?

We guess the identity of the “beloved disciple”. There are theories – could be John, Peter, Lazarus – but there’s no settled answer.

It might be that John has deliberately anonymised both of them, the man born blind and the beloved disciple.

Who is the beloved disciple? My suggestion is that the beloved disciple is whoever has his or her head on the bosom of Jesus (John 13:23), so that he/she can hear the whispered will of God, so that he/she can feel how the heart of Jesus ticks.

And similarly I wonder, is the man born blind the one who comes to see? – was blind, but now s/he sees – not through their own efforts, experience, wisdom or learning but through the gift and creation of God.

I don’t know whether you ever call rain “spit”. Our dog always pokes her nose out of the door warily to check whether it is spitting. Even if it is just spitting she turns tail and heads back in.

The rain is the spit on the earth, and the making of mud. It was from the mud that the Lord God formed humanity to become a living being (Genesis 2:7) and it was with the mud and a rub of the eyes by the lord both of light and darkness that the man born blind could see (John 9:6).

But is this just about the one man born blind? Is it about all those who “come to see”? And is the man born blind a new Adam? Is the man born blind the beloved disciple?

Just speculating. Who do you think he is?

Ox-faced Luke: a poem for St Luke’s Day

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44231259_10217343419320451_8457308505865453568_nOx-faced Luke,
his gospel yoked
to that load bearing
beast of burden
ploughing on
through life’s muddied field

Ox-bowed Luke,
his gospel bulging
muscle of sacrifice
for the lost, the poor
and stranger still
their inheritance of earth

 

Luke, author of the third gospel, is often symbolised by a winged ox, one of the “four living creatures” of Ezekiel 1 (and Revelation 4). The ox represents domesticated animals. Symbols for the other evangelists are: (m)an(gel) for Matthew, lion for Mark and eagle for John.

 

I need to go to Specksavers

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My poetweet this morning responds to a reading of Genesis 3

It’s also the serpent
that opens the eyes of the blind.
And when they saw they sewed,
dressing their nakedness,
hiding their very selves
behind blinds of honesty
from one another,
from God, forever,
till another one with love
opens the eyes of the blind.

Since the dawn of time we have been wanting to help one another to see. “Now, can you see?”, we ask. “Why can’t you see?”, we accuse. I am really grateful for those who have opened my own eyes, for those who have coloured my life with love, those who have helped me to be more open and more confident. I am not so grateful for those who have been more serpentine, those who have insinuated shame into my life.

How can I help others to see? What if I am not careful in the way that I am? What if all I did was bring shame and destroy self-confidence? What if I am serpent like in my feedback and suggestion? What if all I achieved was to force people back into their shell? What if I poisoned their view of the world and themselves?

The serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw [through the eyes of the serpent] that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight for the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Genesis 3

How can I help others to see unless someone with love opens my eyes? Until then, I am a blind guide, even blind to the damage I do to the eyes of others.

Will we put our hands together to pray?

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Every morning I, David, pray with Jews,
my brothers, my sisters. Their scripture
fallen into my hands, fills my mind,
names me. I take their prayers,
the longing of their psalms,
I hear their pain, share their dreams,
my amen I join to theirs.

And I regret every morning
I can’t pray with more distant relatives,
my brothers, my sisters, children of Hagar.
A step too far. What are their longings,
what are their dreams?
I pray, that as I pray, they pray,
with me, for me, amen.

 

The photo is by mrehan, found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrehan00/3455167464

First Steps

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The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn
which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Proverbs 4:18

Who knows where first steps lead?
We feel our way through death’s vale,
beyond the pale to dark corners,
blind alleys, a way hardly taken,
through dark nights of the soul.
This is the path of the righteous,
the path of Missio Dei,
the path of light to dawn.

The Negative Spaces We Forget

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I didn’t know what “negative space” was until I joined an art class and discovered just how important negative space is. Negative space is the space that surrounds an object in an image. Negative space helps to define the boundaries of positive space and brings balance to a composition.

We highlight what we do. In conversations we talk about what we do, showing some things, hiding others. In our work meetings we report on what we are doing. But what is going on in the negative spaces? Do we get asked to share what we are conscious of not doing? What are the things that lie in the shadow of those things we highlight? What about those things we don’t have time for, or can’t find time for? What happens when we scrutinise the composition of our negative space?

When I think of my own negative space I am conscious of the thinking, the theology, the sharing I could be doing but can’t because of a mixture of my laziness and my preoccupation with other things. I also become conscious of the people I have forgotten and who have receded into the shadows, the neighbours I should know, the circumstances I should understand and empathise with.

It is not a pretty picture. Like many in pastoral ministry I am sure that I failed to take account of negative space. It was the people in front of me who got my attention – those who could talk, those who could demand a hearing. It was the people who were privileged enough, well enough to walk the same streets as me. The assumption was made that if you didn’t see someone they were OK. So we judged how well bereaved were coping from what we saw – the evidence before our eyes, sometimes forgetting that the very reason we don’t see some people is because they are hiding (or being hidden), because they are not well enough to be “out”, because they don’t want to be a burden or because they are shamed by a society that only seems to know positive space.

We forget that positive space is a privileged space, a space for those who are able to stand proud. Negative space, on the other hand, is a much larger space – a pit of not knowing, ignored and forgotten by those who don’t occupy such space. In the dazzle of positive space it is easy to forget God’s light shines in darkness. It is easy to forget that there is much love in that negative space.

The image of The Bomb, is by Israeli artist Noma Bar

Praying simply

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A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

These are the closing lines of W H Davies’s so simple poem, Leisure.

I bet I’m not the only one to be brought up sharp by this. Could this be a Lenten discipline: to take time?

Mary Oliver’s simple lines in Praying might help us to take time in the everyday – just to wonder and wander in prayer. Prayer doesn’t have to be difficult.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Photo credit: Vilseskogen

 

Some power lines as powerful as can be

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Sometimes what comes out in conversation takes our breath away doesn’t it? Conversations are wonderful ways of learning and realising stuff deep within our experience.

At a recent workshop on power leaders in ministry were sharing empowering stories and exploring ways of empowering others. What emerged was a radical question, very simply expressed: don’t we want everyone to be as powerful as they can be?

There is, of course:

  1. a huge “as long as”,
  2. and a qualification who the “we” is who so want us all to be powerful as can be
  3. as well as a health warning.

The health warning is that power can be so dangerous and all of our perceptions of power are coloured by our experiences and the extent to which we have been overpowered or empowered.

The “we”, of course, is not everyone. There are those who want to protect their “superpower” status and they depend on belittling and demeaning behaviours to manipulate dependence and fear in others. They have a vested interest – and they often are vested, dressed up in uniform – in a status quo in which they are favoured. To be part of the band of “we” we need to ask the question about how we can be disarming – to unilaterally disarm as an initial step to deescalate unhealthy power dynamics.

The “as long as” of the question “don’t we want everyone to be as powerful as they can be?” is as long as it is the right sort of power. We know what the wrong sort of power looks and feels like. It either makes us feel big (aka arrogant) or small – either way it is dehumanising. Our workshop conversation had begun with a consideration of a typology of power developed by French and Raven back in 1959. They identified five (later expanded to six) bases of power. Those bases are of two sorts. The first sort is the power that is handed on with authority, hierarchically and is based on position. The second sort is the power that is given by “followers”. Followers turn to people who they believe are competent (“experts”) and to people they like or respect (“referent”). Those we turn to may have positional power, or they may not.

Power

What we wish for when we want everyone to be as powerful as they can be is:

  1. for them to be freed from oppressive power, and
  2. for us to help one another into habits (not vests!) and disciplines in which virtues grow to the extent that we inspire confidence in one another

This is a tall order. We are all broken power brokers and we all come to the conversation with temptations to, such as, protect our position, make ourselves look big/clever, win. We can only help one another. This is a community endeavour in which we can help one another uncover our abuses of power and re-member those excluded by our executive powers.

NB Spoken by a white middle class university educated priest with well reinforced positional power but convinced that the communities I care for should be as powerful as they can be and eternally grateful for those communities which have been empowering and made this life worth more that it otherwise would have been.

You want it darker? I’m ready, my lord

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Leonard Cohen, tenant of the Tower of Song, born with the gift of a golden voice wanted it even darker on his last album. Darkness is keenly felt by many, particularly at this time of year when the darkness reinforces experiences of isolation and grief. The fairy lights that bedeck so many houses is an act of defiance against the darkness. Nowadays these artificial lights double up as Halloween and Christmas lights, intended to brighten our winter days and to jolly up the darkness.

But there is a sense in which we need it to be darker. Advent is a season to be rescued from the light-hearted. It is a time of year to get serious about the darkness that is part of our lives in our relationships, in our despair, in our anxiety, in our jealousy. It is a time to get real about the suffering so many endure, the millions forced from their homes, the many who suffer the consequences of economic austerity.

Those for whom this is too serious, those who are afraid of the dark, do us no favours when they say “lighten up”. Their merriment is like the fairy lights which don’t diminish the darkness but only pollute the night sky. We need it darker to realise that we are not all sweetness and light wherever, whatever and whoever we are.

Vincent van Gogh lived through some dark times. He wrote to his brother Theo: “I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless”. Like Leonard, Vincent did dark. And yet, in another letter to Theo, he wrote:

“It is true that I am often in the greatest misery, but still there is within me a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner, I see drawings and pictures. And with irresistible force my mind is drawn towards these things. Believe me that sometimes I laugh heartily because people suspect me of all kinds of malignity and absurdity, of which not a hair of my head is guilty — I, who am really no one but a friend of nature, of study, of work, and especially of people.”

In his darkness he saw the most beautiful stars, some of which he painted and gifted to us. (Do see Loving Vincent if you get the chance.)

1280px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project

In ancient times the stars were guides to the wise and inspiration to the faithful. These days it’s Cowell-made stars that draw us. Stellar constellations are lost on most of us, mainly because we can no longer see them. The light in which we trust is artificial. We need it darker for a time.

PS You may be interested in Jenny Bridgman’s Advent blog exploring Dark Spaces

The Little Boy who bombed the Little Girl: a prayer for transfiguration

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I did look for photos to illustrate this post. What I found were so awful and distressing – and what I would have used seemed so trivial in comparison. So I have posted Scott Butner’s photo of the statue of one of the so many tragic victims, Sadako Sasaki – she seems to be beckoning us into her “wishing well”.

Sadako Sasaki died when she was 12. She spent her life praying for peace. A sculpture of her in Seattle (pictured) shows her beckoning us to join her prayer. She was two years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on her town of Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. This little girl survived the bomb but developed leukaemia. She is remembered for the thousand cranes she (nearly) folded before her death in 1955.

Her first crane was made by her best friend when she visited her in hospital and told her about the Japanese saying that one who folded 1000 cranes would be granted a wish. Legend has it that Sadako only managed to fold 644 cranes before she died, and that the other 356 were made by her friends after she died and buried them with her.

Ironically the bomb was called “Little Boy”.

Many people have made the connection between the Feast of the Transfiguration which the church celebrates every August 6th, and this act of disfiguration which took place on that August 6th. People in Japan celebrate August 6th as a national peace day.

Matthew (17:1-13) describes the Transfiguration and how disciples saw how Jesus’ face shone when he was seen on the mountain with Elijah and Moses. This was a meeting of three visionaries which not only transfigured Jesus’ appearance but also strengthened him for his journey to Jerusalem.

Many people will be taking their holidays at this time of year including some who, like Jesus, will be taking to the mountains. Can we pray that they will see life afresh and gain strength for the next stage of their journeys back to work against all that disfigures their own lives and the lives of others?

Besides the Seattle statue there is another in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. It has a plaque that reads: “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.” That is a prayer of lament, a visionary prayer and a prayer that we may see the world anew.

This is based on words originally written for the Chester Diocesan Cycle of Prayer