- Pericles
Monday, 7 September 2015
30 Second Reflection - Life Achievements
'What you leave behind is not what is engraved on stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others'
Friday, 4 September 2015
Vicar's Sofa – Subversive Wisdom
Random confession time
- I love a snarky cross stitch. There is something about sitting
down for several hours and stitching something wildly inappropriate
that just makes me smile. Something cathartic about reversing what is
normally something so twee and wholesome and making it into something
that pokes fun at the world and how we live in it.
And that is a little bit like some of the wisdom writings that I love the best, what I call Subversive Wisdom. In previous posts we have looked at finding wisdom in nature and in the every day things of the world. It is an approach that sees the world as ordered, than a result inevitably follows an action, that there are good ways to live that will bring good results.
That, to be sure, has an element of truth in it. We all know that results follow our actions, that to a certain extent we live the life we build and we reap what we sow. But life is also a tricky old *insert swear word here!* at times! We certainly don't always get what we deserve. Children get ill, relationships get derailed, wars break out and life is simply horribly unfair.
That is what Subversive Wisdom is all about. It is about saying 'hang on a minute with your Proverbs and your advice this totally *bleeeeep* thing is happening to me. What do you make of that?' There are two books in the Bible that particularly take this approach, the book of Job and the book of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is like a long catalogue of the rubbishness of life. 'Everything is meaningless' says the author. Everything ends and all that we work for is handed on to those who come after us whether they have earned it or not. The days are long and life is hard and at time inexplicable. He laments and argues and grumbles and snarks his way through twelve chapters.
Job, on the other hand, is a story of a man who has everything. For a while. Then catastrophe strikes and he loses everything, home, family, livelihood and health. It is the stuff of nightmares. Job is visited by a number of friends with appallingly bad advice but advice that sounds oddly reminiscent of some of the good life wisdom writings. Job, however, is having none of it and simply says 'No, this is rubbish and I've done nothing to deserve it. It is simply unfair and I'll hear nothing else.'
I like this stubborn resistance to glib reassurance and platitudes in Job and Ecclesiastes. I like the complete rejection of easy answers that avoids the reality that life can be bone crushingly hard. And do the authors get anywhere with this approach? Well of sorts. Job is commended by God for continuing to protest his innocence. Ecclesiastes swings between darkness and light, seeing the joy in life as well as the sorrow.
But ultimately they are both books that end with a great big question mark, just like the difficult chapters of our own lives. No reason appears. No safe answer that we can comfortably accept appears. We just struggle on and pass through and keep going hoping against hope that new life that is waiting for us on the other side.
And so I love this side of the wisdom literature, this gritty, dark side. It allows us to get real about the realities of life and death. It challenges any attempt to control or make safe the tempestuous journey of life. For every piece of advice about living life well perhaps we also ought to take a dose of this to heart.
 |
| From http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/ |
And that is a little bit like some of the wisdom writings that I love the best, what I call Subversive Wisdom. In previous posts we have looked at finding wisdom in nature and in the every day things of the world. It is an approach that sees the world as ordered, than a result inevitably follows an action, that there are good ways to live that will bring good results.
That, to be sure, has an element of truth in it. We all know that results follow our actions, that to a certain extent we live the life we build and we reap what we sow. But life is also a tricky old *insert swear word here!* at times! We certainly don't always get what we deserve. Children get ill, relationships get derailed, wars break out and life is simply horribly unfair.
That is what Subversive Wisdom is all about. It is about saying 'hang on a minute with your Proverbs and your advice this totally *bleeeeep* thing is happening to me. What do you make of that?' There are two books in the Bible that particularly take this approach, the book of Job and the book of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is like a long catalogue of the rubbishness of life. 'Everything is meaningless' says the author. Everything ends and all that we work for is handed on to those who come after us whether they have earned it or not. The days are long and life is hard and at time inexplicable. He laments and argues and grumbles and snarks his way through twelve chapters.
Job, on the other hand, is a story of a man who has everything. For a while. Then catastrophe strikes and he loses everything, home, family, livelihood and health. It is the stuff of nightmares. Job is visited by a number of friends with appallingly bad advice but advice that sounds oddly reminiscent of some of the good life wisdom writings. Job, however, is having none of it and simply says 'No, this is rubbish and I've done nothing to deserve it. It is simply unfair and I'll hear nothing else.'
I like this stubborn resistance to glib reassurance and platitudes in Job and Ecclesiastes. I like the complete rejection of easy answers that avoids the reality that life can be bone crushingly hard. And do the authors get anywhere with this approach? Well of sorts. Job is commended by God for continuing to protest his innocence. Ecclesiastes swings between darkness and light, seeing the joy in life as well as the sorrow.
But ultimately they are both books that end with a great big question mark, just like the difficult chapters of our own lives. No reason appears. No safe answer that we can comfortably accept appears. We just struggle on and pass through and keep going hoping against hope that new life that is waiting for us on the other side.
And so I love this side of the wisdom literature, this gritty, dark side. It allows us to get real about the realities of life and death. It challenges any attempt to control or make safe the tempestuous journey of life. For every piece of advice about living life well perhaps we also ought to take a dose of this to heart.
30 Second Reflection - Trust
To Trust
silently throughout centuries
of darkness.
Like the sun
you know all the secrets:
you could make the geraniums
and the wild zagara bloom
deep in the marble
quarries and legendary
prisons.
in his white barracan
listening to God
make the barley grow around his house.
Antonia Pozzi (1912-38) Translated from Italian.
I have so much faith in
you. I believe
I could wait for your
voicesilently throughout centuries
of darkness.
Like the sun
you know all the secrets:
you could make the geraniums
and the wild zagara bloom
deep in the marble
quarries and legendary
prisons.
I have so much faith in
you. I'm as calm
as an Arab wrapped
in his white barracan
listening to God
make the barley grow around his house.
Antonia Pozzi (1912-38) Translated from Italian.
Thursday, 3 September 2015
30 Second Reflection - Presence
Presence
Expecting him my door was open wide;
Then I looked round
If any lack of service might be found,
And saw him at my side:
How entered, by what secret stair,
I know not, knowing only he was there.
Expecting him my door was open wide;
Then I looked round
If any lack of service might be found,
And saw him at my side:
How entered, by what secret stair,
I know not, knowing only he was there.
T.E.Brown (1830-97)
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
30 Second Reflection - Home
'Now trust a heart
that trusts in you'
Now trust a heart that trusts in you
And firmly say the word 'Adieu'
Be sure wherever I may roam,
My heart is with your heart at home
That pure light, changeless and strong,
Cherished and watched and nursed so long;
That first that love its glory gave
Shall be my pole star to the grave.
- Emily Bronte
Now trust a heart that trusts in you
And firmly say the word 'Adieu'
Be sure wherever I may roam,
My heart is with your heart at home
That pure light, changeless and strong,
Cherished and watched and nursed so long;
That first that love its glory gave
Shall be my pole star to the grave.
- Emily Bronte
Tuesday, 1 September 2015
Vicar's Study - Compass Books
There are books in my
house that I see less as pieces of paper bound together and more like
compasses. They have been companions on the journey and I have turned
to them constantly. You know the sort, dog eared and the spines bent,
but you couldn't ever consider getting a new copy because this is the
one that has been in your hands through all the ups and down of life.
On the blog this week, for the 30 Second Reflections I post each morning, are some excepts from some of my 'compass books'. One, an anthology of Christian poetry, I brought shortly after I started going to church. It has been opened a hundred times or more and spoken to me in big ways and small of how I am feeling right in that moment.
I've also collected women's poetry and writing for a long time. I love this old Penguin collection because it draws together the writing of women back to ancient times right up to modern day and from women all around the world. It got me into the Japanese poems of the Manyoshu, short little poems filled with images of summer blossom and love, and to writers from closer to home like the gloomy and atmospheric poetry of Emily Bronte.
Sometimes these little books have seemed to speak directly to a question I am asking. In this little anthology of women's spiritual writings I read an except from the diary of Florence Nightingale shortly after my 30th birthday feeling simultaneously overawed by the approach of starting work as a Vicar and also part wishing I was more, well, normal! It read,
''I am 30, the age when Christ began his mission...The thoughts and feelings that I have now I can remember since I was six years old. It was not I that made them...But why, oh my God, cannot I be satisfied with the life that satisfies so many people?'
That quote wasn't an answer to the things I was mulling over it just gave a sense of solidarity. A sense of solidarity that someone else wrestles with the same thoughts too and someone as brave and bold and extraordinary as Florence Nightingale!
I think that is why these books are so precious and what they are all about for me. Not answers, but guides. Not the destination, but signposts. And we all need those things. We all need the occasional person, or poem, or piece of writing to nudge us on the way of the journey through life that only we can make and that no one else can make for us.
So how about you, what are you 'compass books'? I'd love to hear from you!
On the blog this week, for the 30 Second Reflections I post each morning, are some excepts from some of my 'compass books'. One, an anthology of Christian poetry, I brought shortly after I started going to church. It has been opened a hundred times or more and spoken to me in big ways and small of how I am feeling right in that moment.
I've also collected women's poetry and writing for a long time. I love this old Penguin collection because it draws together the writing of women back to ancient times right up to modern day and from women all around the world. It got me into the Japanese poems of the Manyoshu, short little poems filled with images of summer blossom and love, and to writers from closer to home like the gloomy and atmospheric poetry of Emily Bronte.
Sometimes these little books have seemed to speak directly to a question I am asking. In this little anthology of women's spiritual writings I read an except from the diary of Florence Nightingale shortly after my 30th birthday feeling simultaneously overawed by the approach of starting work as a Vicar and also part wishing I was more, well, normal! It read,
''I am 30, the age when Christ began his mission...The thoughts and feelings that I have now I can remember since I was six years old. It was not I that made them...But why, oh my God, cannot I be satisfied with the life that satisfies so many people?'
That quote wasn't an answer to the things I was mulling over it just gave a sense of solidarity. A sense of solidarity that someone else wrestles with the same thoughts too and someone as brave and bold and extraordinary as Florence Nightingale!
I think that is why these books are so precious and what they are all about for me. Not answers, but guides. Not the destination, but signposts. And we all need those things. We all need the occasional person, or poem, or piece of writing to nudge us on the way of the journey through life that only we can make and that no one else can make for us.
So how about you, what are you 'compass books'? I'd love to hear from you!
30 Second Reflection - Love
Set me as a seal upon
your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.
- Song of Solomon (from
the Bible)
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