Still Quarrying 123 - Living Word.

I sometimes catch ‘Desert Island Discs’ on Radio 4.  Yesterday the ‘castaway’ was the actor Brian Cox.  He spoke very movingly of his childhood in Dundee and the poverty he experienced which in many ways has shaped his outlook on life not least his politics.  He also had heart-felt reasons for his eight choices of music, some of which chimed with my own taste.  Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell and the Beach Boys could well figure in my eight choices if ever invited.  

At the end of the programme Brian Cox was asked the usual questions.  If he could take just one of his discs to the island which would it be?  Which luxury would he like to take?  What book would he take apart from the Bible and Shakespeare which are already there?  In response to the latter he very quickly and firmly stated: ‘Well, I don’t particularly want the Bible.’  He was told by presenter Lauren Laverne that he was getting it anyway!

He is not the first castaway to object to having the Bible on the desert island.  It is maybe not surprising but you can’t help wondering what lies behind it.  It’s quite possible that the mention of the Bible stirs up some dark and painful associations.  Maybe not about the Bible itself so much as people who professed to value it and live by it and yet were clearly not shaped by its truths.  

We are not quite in desert island mode at present although closer to it than we have ever been.  My main distraction has been reading although in everything I have gone through it would be hard to pick out one book that had that desert island quality about it.   I can say though that I have been most grateful for time spent with my Bible.  Maybe you’re thinking: ‘He would say that wouldn’t he!’  But trust me there has been nothing more helpful to me over last year and into this present crisis than keeping company with the ancient voices of faith, the Bible people, who faced some of the worst circumstances that could fall on human experience and yet were never ultimately shaken out of their faith in a good and loving God.  

Don’t get me wrong.  There have been times when the words have seemed to slide off the surface of my brain, rain falling on stone as John Calvin might say.   But there have been other times which I would describe as Emmaus experiences (Luke 24: 13-32) when like the two bewildered and downhearted followers of Jesus on the road my heart has burned within me and to paraphrase the old hymn Jesus was very near.  

I have lived through a time when ‘spirituality’ has become fashionable and Christians have been drawn into various methods and techniques to experience the reality of God more fully.  I haven’t been unaffected by this to some degree but nothing satisfies more than an open Bible and time to reflect upon a passage or even just a verse.  For me that is the door that opens up to the reality of God.  This is not to say that the Bible cannot be perplexing, even baffling, but it’s my conviction that what is needful to keep secure our relationship with God and live according to His ways is accessible to all.  

While studying English at university one of our professors was said to be an expert at ‘hearing the voice beneath the text.‘   In other words in some unique way getting in touch with the author and his/her message.  My prayer when I open the Bible is that I will not just understand but that I hear the Voice that speaks to us through the ages.  

Still Quarrying 122 - Renewal.

That was a new experience this morning!  We read a story to our grandson Busby over 300 miles away in Cheltenham, played a game with him and sang a song.  We were also able to see his wee brother, four month old Roddy,  who probably didn’t know much of what was going on but looked happy enough.  All possible because of Face Time on the Manse ipad.  It was good fun and an opportunity to be grateful for the technology that enable us to keep in touch.  Of course as soon as I write that you realise what is missing.  We can’t touch.  I haven’t yet had a cuddle from Roddy.  Altogether now: ‘Awww.’  

There was a new experience yesterday which made me see that the technology doesn’t just enable us to maintain relationships but also to forge new ones.  A young minister in Wick, Andrew Barrie, had been in touch last week.  He wanted to interview me on Face Time about my cancer experience for his video blog.  That happened yesterday and when it was over we got to chatting.  It turns out I know his father also a minister.  We were both in Ardrossan Presbytery as baby ministers.  Apart from making me feel old I came away from our time together feeling I had made a new friend.

Andrew was telling me about the live streaming his congregations had begun for Sunday worship.  One of the great encouragements so far has been the number of non-members who have been logging on.  It may be that these times have turned people’s hearts Godwards.  Perhaps going to Church has for many reasons been a problem for certain people.  These and other thoughts come to mind.   

What is of real importance for us all, however, is to take these experiences to heart and to learn the lessons that are emerging from these times.  In a sense we should not waste the challenge of these times in just hoping that we will get back to normal.  This is an opportunity for reflection and preparation  because what we are going through will leave us changed forever.  The Church will never be the same.  The eternal truths of the Gospel will stand and ‘shall from age to age endure’.  But how we share these truths and live them out in our lives should always be subject to scrutiny and adaption.  The vision of the Reformers embraced the dictum that the Church should be  ‘Reformed and Reforming.‘   We need always to be on a stretch to find the best way to share the story of Jesus.   This doesn’t mean tinkering with structures and chasing every fad and fashion.  What is needed apart from an essential spirit of repentance is a serious consideration of how best we  can bear our witness in the community in which we are set down.  

The present crisis has already exercised the imagination of Churches of every tradition throughout the world.  Together we see the need to hold things together until these days are behind us.  But let us pray that this will be a prelude to a new vision of the Church with mission at her heart, a launching pad for the Gospel, what I once heard described as ‘the greatest truths anyone can ever stumble upon.‘    

Still Quarrying 121 - The Trenches?

‘Another day in the trenches!’  That was among my first thoughts the other day.  I don’t know where it came from but I suspect it was one of the Home Alone movies where eight year old Kevin MacCallister pits himself against very persistent and very incompetent home invaders.  Unlike Kevin we do not have an enemy we can see and our aim is to get through these days depending on the skills and expertise of others.  Still, this does not mean that we should lack personal purpose and aspiration.  

Terry Waite is back in the news.  His experience as a hostage in Lebanon for almost five years mainly in solitary confinement means that he can speak to these times of social isolation.  He puts things in perspective.  Compared to his experience we are actually quite well off in the resources available to us that can keep us strong.   What is needed, he says, is for us all to structure our day, be grateful for what we have, read and be creative.

It has occurred to me that in some ways I am way ahead of most people.  I’ve had periods of lockdown over the past year not least since the transplant in early January.  So to an extent nothing much as changed.  Certainly there is new concern over family and friends and how they may be affected.  And from time to time there is anxiety as to what might be the consequences if I with low immunity pick up the virus.    But every day brings things to do: the blog, my books, cards and emails to write, phone calls to make and receive and a very light exercise programme specially designed for me by my pal and Personal Trainer Fraser Drake who runs the Kumafit gym in Milngavie.   This is apart from the ever supportive companionship of Gabrielle and the blessings of Scripture and prayer.   So it’s not really day after day ‘in the trenches’.  

I do recognise, of course, that a constant routine can become burdensome.  I was speaking to someone recently who is having to work from home and is a creative kind of guy but the monotony is beginning to get to him.  I think this will probably be the biggest challenge for many of us.  There are so many books you can read, DVDs you can watch, contacts you can make before you come to realise what you are missing.

It makes me think of Paul the Apostle as he neared the end of his life.  He is in prison for the second time in Rome.  Previously it was a kind of home arrest where he had comparative freedom but now he is in chains and stuck in what one scholar has described as some ‘dismal underground dungeon with a hole in the ceiling for light and air.’  However, visitors seem to be allowed to some extent and so he writes to his friend Timothy, a letter probably smuggled out, and urges him to come and bring some comforts with him:

‘When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.’  (2 Timothy 4: 13)  

The picture is someone who is feeling the cold, often lonely and  needs something to read, especially ‘the parchments’ which are probably the Scriptures.  This has to be set alongside Paul’s declaration in Philippians 4: 11-13 during a previous imprisonment that he has found ‘the secret of being content in any and every situation . . . I can do everything through him who gives me strength.’  Has there been a wavering in Paul’s conviction that he now needs company and books?  I don’t think so.  Paul was like the rest of us.  Sometimes the strength he needed came to him through fellowship with God’s people and the written Word of God.  But even when these were inaccessible he knew the powerful presence of the Risen Lord.  In 2 Timothy 4: 16-17 he recalls his appearance before the civil authorities in Rome when he was very much on his own.  He refers to the desertion of those he thought were his friends.  But then comes this extraordinary statement:

‘But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.’  (2 Timothy 4: 17)

Paul was strong within himself and able to use the present challenging circumstances for the advancement of the Gospel.  

What I am taking from this is that in those days when I might feel as if I am ‘in the trenches’ or that the monotony of these strange days threatens to crush there is a Presence who touches my inner being and not just for my own benefit but for the benefit of others.  I hope you all experience these great truths in the days ahead.  

Still Quarrying 120 - Sharing.

We have been watching the News more than usual and I noticed that the BBC news reader George Alagiah has been missing recently.  The reason for this came out yesterday.  He is a coronavirus victim.  It is mild but it comes in addition to the bowel cancer he has suffered since 2014.   he has had innumerable chemotherapy treatments but his condition remains at stage 4.  

He was interviewed on the News last night and spoke in his dignified and warm-hearted way of his recent experience.  One thing in particular rang a bell with me.  He said that cancer sufferers are used to living with uncertainty and worst case scenarios and therefore are probably better equipped to deal with the present crisis:  "In some ways, I think that those of us living with cancer are stronger because we kind of know what it is like to go into something where the outcomes are uncertain.”

I think there is something in this.  Despite the generally encouraging statistics of survival, when you receive a cancer diagnosis the worst of outcomes is never completely out of your mind.  However, you learn to live with it, drawing on whatever personal resources you have including faith.   The threat of the coronavirus does not loom as large as the cancer itself and what strength has been built up in the cancer experience is there to face the new challenge.  

Listening to George last night brought home to me the importance of shared experience.  ‘I know how you feel’ is sometimes said in a glib way.  And the response: ‘How can you possibly know how I feel?’ is understandable.  But often shared experience can be a strength and an encouragement to sufferers.  I know how much I have benefited from listening to and reading about fellow myeloma sufferers.   What has been gathered in the experience of others has been a blessing.  I think Paul knew about this:

‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.’  (2 Corinthians 1: 3-4)

Still Quarrying 119 - Blows On A Bruise.

Saturday afternoon and I was watching the telly.  It was the 1943 version of Jane Eyre with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles.  I was completely lost in it.  Hardly moved a muscle in two hours.  I was reminded of something my now deceased brother used to say that the only decent films ever made were in black and white!  I wouldn’t go that far but certainly this old movie was essentially faithful to the darkness at the heart of the original novel.  Cruelty, neglect, madness, deception all feature before in the end we see the triumph of love.  

Jane is one of those people to whom bad things happen.  Orphaned at an early age, taken into the home of an uncaring aunt, sent to a school where the rod was never spared, eventually finding her way in the world but deceived by the man she loved.  It is just one blow after another falling on a vulnerable life.  And yet probably not untypical of the nineteenth century - or maybe any century with not always the happy ending Jane was granted.

Think about Job and how he was stripped of everything that gave him status and satisfaction in the world.  He loses property, family and finally his health.   Every blow falling on a bruise.  He comes to mind when I think of some people I have known.  At one level you accept that we are all prone to suffering but why so much for some?  I remember being struck dumb when I heard that Joni Eareckson had been diagnosed with cancer.  I really did say in my heart: ‘Lord, isn’t quadriplegia enough without this?‘   But then I see Joni’s attitude, sharing her confidence that she is still in the hands of a God who loves her, who considers her worth the death of His Son.   

These were the truths that in the end resonated in the heart of Job.  He realised he would never have all the answers but he received an assurance that God is sovereign, that He is in control, that He is working in and through suffering according to His good and loving purpose.  That is the assurance we find in the sufferings of Jesus.  With Him it was one thing after another.  Blows falling on a bruise.  The inner torment of Gethsemene, the abandonment of friends, the mockery and the whip and then the horrendous torture of Calvary.   Nothing of God there would be an understandable response.  And yet God was present and working out His purpose for the good of us all.

It is faith in this God which sustains those we might judge as having had more than their ‘fair share’ of misfortune.  The Iolaire tragedy in 1919 had far reaching effects on the people of Lewis and Harris.  At least 201 men returning from war service on New Year’s day lost their lives as the vessel Iolaire struck rocks known as ‘the Beasts of Holm’ just yards from shore.  The writer Ian Crichton Smith, a native of Lewis and an atheist, marveled that an event like this should have been the death of faith on the island.  Instead it grew stronger.  The reason lies in the nature of the God who calls for faith, the God who has spoken to the world of His love in the death of His Son.  

Still Quarrying 118 - Working Together.

I recently expressed my appreciation of the NHS and the care and expertise that has seen me through my recent treatment.  It has since occurred to me that there are others who are helping to keep the nation together who deserve our thanks and support and should be continually in our prayers.  My local Pharmacy, for instance, has been an integral part of my life over the past year not only in the dispensing but in the advice given whenever needed.  It continues to tick over in difficult circumstances.  And there are others who are working through these days sometimes at risk to themselves.  The police have new duties which they could never have envisaged  and unfortunately they are still having to deal with the usual criminal activity.  Then there are social workers, postmen, bin men, engineers, transport operatives, shop workers, dentists.  You make a list like that and realise that there must be so many you have left out.  

Perhaps we are being given a new appreciation of the various roles taken on by individuals which all come together to ensure the smooth running of our society.   This kind of corporate working is prominent in the Bible.   In the Old Testament, when the Tabernacle was being constructed craftsmen called Bezalel and Oholiab were called upon not only to make their own contribution but to teach others so that a variety of  people could come together to complete the project.  (Exodus 35: 30 - 36: 7).  It’s also worth mentioning that when the people of Israel in general were asked to make free-will offerings the craftsmen had to call a halt.  They said to Moses: ‘The people are bringing more than enough!’  

The importance of working together arose very early in the life of the Church.  Paul made much of the Church as the Body of Christ.  This was brought to the Church at Corinth which was divided along many lines.  Paul pointed them to the human body where it was necessary that each part contributed to the welfare of the whole.  It needs to be the same in the Church.  There are different gifts and their exercise contributes to the building up of the Church’s witness.  (I Corinthians 12: 12-31)

We hear from our political leaders and medical experts that each of us has a contribution to make in the present crisis.  It might seem passive and unexciting.   We need to stay at home, wash our hands, keep two metres distance.   We hear it all the time but it does no harm to be reminded of our responsibility to one another.  It will be  blessing if we come out of this time with a new realisation of how  dependent we are on others.  

Still Quarrying 117 - This Present Stillness.

Words from a poem by Edwin Morgan came to me this morning as Gabrielle and I were on our one permitted walk: ‘ . . . and the land lay still.’  Deserted roads, empty flight path, church bells silent.  There was an eeriness about it and yet the poem - The Summons - ends with a sense of expectation, that the stillness is a prelude to something significant happening.  

Some voices have have said that this time we are going through will work for our good.  When it is behind us we will return to a cleaner, fresher world and better communities where people are more focussed on the welfare of others.  

Even now people are detecting a change in the air we breathe.   My son living in Brixton London says you can taste the difference.  The journalist John Macleod writing from Morningside in Edinburgh says of the air: ‘it is clean, clear, positively Hebridean.‘   Add to this the many stories of people reaching out to the elderly and vulnerable and there is indeed much that we would want to carry forward from these days of Covid-19.

This is not to say that it will be easy getting there.  You can take so much of quietness and isolation.  Medical experts fear that there will come a point where people can’t take much more and will become reckless in their behaviour.  Some reports suggest this is happening even now.  

In my days at Glasgow Cathedral I became friendly with some of the priests at St Mungo’s Church.  They belonged to the Passionist order and were required at various times to make silent retreats.  I remember speaking to one about this and expected him to tell me what a relief it was to get away from the pressures of ministry.  I was much mistaken.  ‘It’s awful,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like to be in utter silence.’

I was listening to The Moral Maze last night on Radio 4.  Giles Fraser was one of the panel.  He is an Anglican minister who writes regularly for the Guardian and is a well-known voice on radio and television.  He is known as ‘the Loose Canon.‘   The panel were discussing some of the possible outcomes of the lockdown and it was put to him that he should be able to cope better than most because he is used to retreats.  He disagreed.  He confessed to hating retreats, often breaking out to go to the pub.  

The problem is that when you are spending more time with less to do and more conscious of your inner life you can become more uncomfortable with yourself.  The idea of being still can be attractive but you have to take yourself into the stillness.  That’s when memories of past failure can unsettle you rising like muddy bubbles from a swamp.  I heard someone on the wireless this morning saying that this is a good time to feel more happy in your own skin.  Easier said than experienced.  Even practitioners of Mindfulness which does  not necessarily accommodate God are warning of the possible hazards in exploring the inner life.

Maybe you have switched off by now.  We’re getting into gloomy territory that we don’t need at present.  But is it not the case that facing the dark shadows in our lives is the way to living more in the light?  Leonard Cohen sang:

‘Ring the bells that still can ring

 Forget your perfect offering

 There is a crack in everything

 That’s how the light gets in.’

Turning to the Scriptures we find there encouragement to face the reality of who we are with all the cracks in our depths and to believe that the Light that is Christ can  get through with the forgiveness and renewal only He can give.   Remember Psalm 130:

‘If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?  But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.  I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.’  (verses 3-5)

And the Psalmist did not have the assurance that comes from the sacrifice of Jesus and is expressed so powerfully by the Apostle John:

‘If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’  (1 John 1: 8-9)

Another Apostle took this so much to his heart that he declared himself ‘a new creation.’  (2 Corinthians 5: 17)  

So I can go forward in this present stillness in agreement with those who say that this could be the beginning of new attitudes and priorities.  If this gives us the opportunity to face the reality of who we are and to realise where can find forgiveness and renewal then we will emerge closer to the new humanity we see modelled in Jesus Christ.   

I’ll finish with a a verse from a Psalm which has become something of a personal mantra for me:

‘Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;

 do not fret . . . ‘  (Psalm 37: 7)

It is in being still in His presence that He can go to work to shape our lives according to His good and loving purpose.