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?

An Old Woman – a poem by Arun Kolatkar

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An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You’ve seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.

She won’t let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?’

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plateglass clatter
around the shatterproof crone
who stands alone.

And you are reduced
to such much small change
in her hand.

Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004)

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Arun Kolatkar was a poet from Maharashtra in India. He was a prolific poet writing in both Marathi and English. He was also an award winning designer. He won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his collection of poems, Jejuri, published in 1976.

This poem describes a fairly typical experience. The reader stands in the shoes of someone accosted in the street by a beggar desperate for money for something to eat. The reader knows what it’s like, to be stuck to “like a burr”. What we often forget, because we want to look past them as if they weren’t there, is that, for the desperate too, it’s part of their everyday, to latch on to others in the hope of charity. The tendency for the accosted is to shake off the attention. The norm for the beggar is to be shaken off.

But, in this poem, there is a notable turn towards compassion. The speaker looks “clear through the bullet holes she has for her eyes”. “You” look through and past her, but as you do so what you look at begins to shatter, and it’s only the “shatterproof crone who stands alone”. Is it then that the bullet hole eyes take on their significance? Is it at this point you recognise her wounds, the battles she may have fought and lost? Is it at this point that you realise what has become of her, and what has become of you in the hands of poverty – that “you are reduced to so much small change in her hand”?

There is such pathos in that last line. There is such small change in small change for a life that should be demanding huge change.

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.

Leadership Styles and a Political Divide

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I’ve just been rereading this book. It is so full of wisdom and good sense for leadership.

David Herbert's avatarGrits and Grains

lamdin

Sometimes you hear bells ringing all the while through reading a book. There was so many chimes in Finding Your Leadership Styleby Keith Lamdin – so many “just so” moments”, so many reminders of other reading – and I so agreed with the direction of Keith Lamdin’s travel.

Two women staffing a train tea trolley lead Lamdin’s book. While passengers on a delayed train were getting upset about missing their connections these “trolley assistants read the emotional climate of the passengers on the train and knew that they needed to stay calm”. They led in that moment offering “something different from those more familiar teachings about leadership, vision and motivation”. Their example demands a second look at “leadership” and suggests that leadership is for all types, leadership is not something special and that all of us have natural ability to lead others – though some make better leaders than others. Lamdin writes:

“leadership…

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Shoulders, Atlas and Earth Day

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earth-158678_960_720If you had to choose a poem for Earth Day what would it be? From my limited collection of poetry I have chosen Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye. It reminded me of Atlas and his burden – I share the popular misconception that he shoulders the earth (rather than the celestial spheres). Naomi Shihab Nye shoulders hope in her poetry. She says that her poems often begin with the voices of her neighbours, “always inventive and surprising”.

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
no car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

this poem is from Red Suitcase

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