Multi or mono-faith?

An interesting thought bolted unexpectedly out of Sunday’s sermon. There is apparently a serious prospect, or at least a debate, of the Church of Scotland proposing offering some of their churches for multi-faith worship.

This provoked a somewhat unnecessarily staunch defence of remaining a Christian worship community. There has been no desire in our own community of believers to unite with others for multi faith worship. The notion is not even on our radar.

However I do believe we would do well to think it through. The prospect of Scotland’s main denomination opening out to embrace all faith worship seems strange and unnecessary. Yet as a counterpoint and also increasingly disturbing is the creeping secular intolerance of faith groups (although secularists target mainstream Christianity and don’t dare take on other faiths)

It seems unnecessary for the Kirk to consider this, as I can’t imagine any reciprocity in the arrangement. Will Christians be welcome to inter faith worship at the Mosque, gentiles to Synagogue?

As usual our 20-30 centuries old scriptures don’t give direct guidance. Like climate change, genetic engineering, nuclear arms, the topic of multi-faith worship is a modern encumbrance.

The OT gives the story of Ezekiel on Mt Carmel. This is seriously confrontational multi-faith worship. Taunting the followers of Baal to invoke a miracle of fire, which the Lord finally brings burning up any credibility in following a false faith.

Yet Jesus took a much more gentle approach with the woman at the well. He willingly debated the place of worship; Samaria or Mount Zion. He unveiled the inner place of worship in Spirit and in Truth. But qualified this worship as the kind that the Father seeks.

Would not the Father hear and seek the genuine worship of one true god in the heart of the Muslim Jew and Christian? With our monotheistic and Abrahamic brothers and sisters can we not bond over our common heritage and shared scriptures?

Grass greener

Now that my post holiday blues have receded and I'm settling back into normality again I wonder why the grass gets greener?

Now that Ive stopped Googling for affordable island homes on Mull and imagining an idyllic alternative lifestyle in the Hebrides I have realised it's our false concept of life that's to blame.

Holidays are a recent invention. Our great grandparents would in all likelihood not have had any. Certainly the Hebridean islanders of even recent times would not have taken any time off except for sickness and maybe for exceptional family reasons that forced them to travel somewhere. The other exception being the 18th century rich young who were despatched on grand tours of Europe. Going more distantly through history travel was the exclusive domain only by necessity inhabited by soldiers, sailers and merchants. The only people opting to travel were ecclesiastical scholars and missionaries.

This current and the last generation are the first to regularly travel for pleasure. 'A change as good as a rest' entered the lexicon and expectation. Holidays and time off incrementally became personal rights. Hitherto these had been communal things; festivals, religious feast days.

So in deliberately exposing ourselves to the possibilities of alternative lives in undreamt of locations we stoke fires of jealosy. We envy Meditteranean lifestyle, culture and diet. We envy tanned skin. We covet a place in the sun.

Then we are led to disdain our driech grey skies even more and become so dour that 4 weeks in sunny climes every becomes almost a medical requirement for national health.

Mulling around

Back from a week on the Isle of Mull. A wonderful place. Never has the North Atlantic looked so azure and Meditteranean. Staying on the 'Ross' the southern fingered peninsula we had easy cycling access to two pristine sandy beaches.
Our caravan had a view that so rested the soul. Across from Bunessan bay to Staffa, Treshnish Isles, Lunga and more distantly to Coll and Tiree.
Just 6 miles away we could take the 5 minute ferry hop to Iona. Another uniquely stirring and peace making place.

The Independent to rebrand as The Intolerant

A shamefully hysterical polemic piece by the Independent about the suspicious dealings of CARE Interns at Westminster. There are 12 of these sinister Christians employed by MP's (well less than 2% of them) With such 'long reach' they have 'masterminded' opposition to the latest embryology bill, at the same time The Independent ackowledges the long arm of the Roman Catholic Church leaning on the PM and members of his cabinet!

A re-reading of the article substituting 'gay' or 'muslim' for Care, evangelical or Christian would be very disturbing indeed.

Most absurd of all is the ever hysterical Richard Dawkins rent-a-quote "If only these restless busybodies would keep their prejudices to themselves, nobody would object. But they can't resist inflicting their ignorant opinions on others." Please take your own advice Dawkins.

Stunted snowman victim of global warming

Pitiful. All that could be mustered by my office colleagues on the roofgarden in Glasgow's only snowfall this year. Climate change is ruining our snowmen production.

Many mansions, many doors?

Increasingly I have found the narrow path less comfortable. It seems an inflexible and limited route. There is a lack of latitude over the way taken for deviation, carelessness and loss of bearings. In all of our times, in all of our journeys hasn’t there always been a multitude of pathways. Isn’t it the direction and destination that count?

Its too hard to accept that this is all there is, the one and only chance. The evidence for evil is too powerful and pervasive. A three score and ten without any resolution, any meaning, is too unbearable and a curtailed life even more so.

If I were asked now about the ultimate destination, the pie in the sky thing, then I would affirm my belief in heaven. I cant say what heaven exactly is. I would say it’s an afterlife with God. I think it’ll be brilliant beyond our imagining. More colourful, more noisy, and as crowded or as solitary as we can ever desire.

It’s the getting there. We don’t have to do anything. That’s enormously comforting. No anxious earning of approval. In by grace and by the faith. Yet how will they know unless He is preached? So may didn’t know and will not know. They will not be ‘in.’ Or will they be there? Will they be because of other ways? Will we visit many mansions? Will there be many surprises? Shall we be eternally stumbling upon Muslim brothers and Hindu sisters that we never knew and that like us they travelled there too? Perhaps in parallel with us or in a diametric route but still able to satisfy the Truth and finding the Way?

Of course taking a narrow path needn’t mean singular. I don’t think believing the magnanimity of God and his blessing of many paths affects my witness to Him. Rather I think it strengthens it. Its clear to me that I can show people to the door that I know best as it has been revealed to me. I cant and wouldn’t direct people to the path along to the mosque, temple or chapel because I know nothing of it. So I can only point to the door where Jesus stands and knocks.

Café Scientifique: Edinburgh, Moscow and Recife

Friday 29th Feb 09: Today I was taking part in a videoconference on climate change via a 3-way videoconference with people in Moscow and Recife. It was great to be taking part in a real-time adaptation solution and seeing this in action. Dialogue without air travel.

Adaptation to and mitigation of climate change were the main topics. How do we get the push and momentum amongst confused and indifferent publics? How much more did we feel our respective governments need to do? How much to we wait for top-level action or act ourselves?

The urgency is clear; we have breached 450 ppm of CO2, the highest level for 600,000 years, taking us into uncharted territory beyond the known naturally cyclical parameters. There was a call for clarity on the need to measure the true scope and increasing speed of the problem- ensuring the whole range of GHG were being accounted for; something highlighted by the thawing of permafrost in Russia and consequent methane release.

Optimism was notably absent. Yet we in Edinburgh seemed coy about our early success in having legislative action in both Westminster and Holyrood. The first climate change legalisation in the world after all!

Cloverfield - Mission Implausible

28th Feb 08: I misspent an hour and half today watching this minicam monster movie. It’s tediously compelling. The sheer pointlessness was almost disturbing.

I wasn’t sure what was in the mind of the makers. “Lets do a Godzilla movie but like really, really realistic?” The script was vacuous and didn’t help the earnestness of the performances which were actually pretty good. I’ve never seen a movie so undiversified in its characters. NY seemed to have eliminated all elderly and children.

There was no higher purpose. It was “ohmigod lets get outta here” again and again. There wasn’t any sacrificial heroism. What do movies like this say about us? That we should empathise with the shiny beautiful young yuppie people? That we should readily accept that they implicit represent of all humankind? That America and Manhattan in particular is symbolic of our highest pinnacle of civilisation? That we should be shocked and in awe if its under attack and losing? I just couldn’t relate or even care about them.

What worked though was the unrelenting grinding and overpowering soundtrack. The shudders, thuds and shrieks build up into a convincing and head throbbing crescendo. And when the military strikes build up too the sense of jeopardy oozes off the screen. But the hero’s search for his loved one didn’t cut enough through all the effects to make a satisfying climax. It was bleak and brutal. That’s another thing that worked though, the realism (although the spawned aliens was a reference too far and didn’t add much to the horror anyway.)

Blogs can change the world...well public services maybe...a bit

Was inspired by this story of blogger who breaks through virtual into reality and makes change happen. Well done mate!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/08/summit.reynolds

Inertia

Great quote of the day:

"If you act like there is no possibility of change, you guarantee that there will be no change." Noam Chomsky

Cynics of the world take note!

Your work/life balance

Today I received another list of questions to assess the ever elusive work/life balance. However this one really is the most devastingly close to the bone I've ever experienced. I'll list them below so that you see what I'm about to discover about my out-of-kilter life and long suffering family.

This is how you use the questions. Give them to your partner, family member or friend, and let them answer them as though you are asking. Its recommended they write down their answers then discuss with you!

1. Do you think I have got stuck in habits which detract from my ability to integrate work from non-work aspects of my life? What are those habits?
2. On a scale of 1 to 5 rate how 'with you' I am when we're together. Do I occasionally/often/always seem distracted and 'elsewere.'
3. From the way I talk about my work, do you sense that its an area of my life in which Christ and my faith have a definite and distinctive impact?
4. Do you think I have the right attitude to work and relaxation?
5. What role could you play in helping me achieve a better standard of work/life balance?
6. Do you believe I am sufficuently accountable to you for the choices and priorities in my work and life?
7. Do you believe I am living a life with a clear purpose?
8. As far as you are able to discern, how far is my work and life consistent with God's calling for me? (for us as a family?)
9. On a scale of 1 to 5 how would you rate the ability of our family to manage pressures of work and life? Do we need to make any changes?

Quite a thorough going through! I'll post when I've been assessed (and probably no time to blog!)

God of Media

I have been given the task of doing a workshop in March broadly entitled 'God of Media.' Here are my thoughts for a preamble.

In this 21^st century the media has omniscient scale, speed and reach. It is omnipresent, 365/24/7 coverage; events can be in millions of homes as they happen.

The media can shape consciousness and values. It doesn’t merely report events or pass on information or a message; it makes the news. News that is packaged in a pluralistic, ostensibly tolerant, value neutral, or value laden way. These values are not rooted in something such as a predisposition to Christendom, rather the media pursues its own ‘news value’ and sets the agenda for mass consumption. We only hear and receive what unaccountable editors and their owners consider ‘newsworthy’. What we hear is simplified, decontextualised often emotive and usually loaded. Even entertaining.

‘Breaking news’ doesn’t just mean sudden events but could also describe the invidious effect that leads to the progressive breaking of governments, of taboos, of cultural, societal and moral norms. There is ‘media power’ and this can be wielded politically, globally and morally.

So in this context of media power what issues are there for Christians, as message bearers, to think through and how can we respond practically?

Hidden Jesus best show on Christmas Day

Good old Channel 4. What was once the desparate-to-shock adolescent of British broadcasting has now grown up into a likeable erudite dude. And a brave one too, on Christmas day no less a programme about Jesus! Two and a half hours of documentary with liberal, soul searching, dreadlocked theologian Robert Beckford.
I thought it was great. Exploring the other views and what if's behind the virgin birth and messiah accounts. Taking a look at the other hidden stories such as Jesus' alleged trip to Kashmir after crucifixion failed to kill him. Trying to make sense of the Gospel of Thomas. Listening to what messianic Jews had to say and how muslims wait for Jesus to return too.
Most interesting was the parallel messiah stories. The similarity of Jesus and Krishna; virgin birth, miracles, walking on water, with similar exhortations on loving neighbours albiet with a bit more karma. The astonishing revelation about the Roman god of Mithra, the God of light, and how this diety's birthday was transferred to Jesus! Hence 25th December.
So much that made me really think about the 'unique' message of Christianity and the 'other sheep not of this sheep pen' and the 'many mansions' in heaven.

Tricked not treated!

Why are people suckers for tacky fads? Halloween is becoming so commercialised. We all complain about this. So is it who buys the tat? I saw a garden tonight with plastic lit up gravestones and skeleton hands reaching out the ground. This was in a wealthy suburb. Funnily enough they glowed RIP! Why let yourself be ripped off? Apparently manufacturers of this tat says its getting as good as Christmas;


Halloween used to be a bit of spooky fun. The kids would make a costume (yes, even in the 70's and 80's) and go round the neighbours, tell rubbish jokes and wail tuneless songs. You would get monkey nuts in your poly bag. These are now replaced by glow in the dark witches cauldrons or jack- o-lantern pumpkin pots. There are face paints, pull-over latex masks, ready made costumes galore. Every 'guiser' looks perfect now. No-one needs to ask; 'so what are you then?'

We've fully embraced the Americanism of 'trick or treat' something earlier generations would have been too embarrassed to shout on strangers doorsteps. Of course the evangelicals decry it as a pagan, satanist thing that will harm our children. Hand me the face paint, think I'll go and get myself treated.

Emerging interest

Really enjoying this site for stimulating ideas about new ways of doing church;
http://www.emergingchurch.info/stories/prayerfeeder/abstract.jpg

Burma talk

Today I did a talk on Burma for church. It was a prayer focus service. This slightly annoyed me as Burma needs more than prayer. Burma needs us active, conscienciatised and lobbying government and corporate powers.
I picked up a few stories of the 1m+ displaced people that where truly horrifying. Its not difficult to find information for a country so closed off. Many exiles are working hard to keep up profile and video clips abound. Its a kingdom thats beautific and horrific. There are many many unsung heroes, and many hidden atrocities. Blood soaked oil.

I have a distant affinity with Burma. My grandfather Captian Archibald McLellan died there in 1942. One of 27,000 souls with no known grave.

Not very European

Just back from Rome. I want to be Italian! Prego! The coffee, cafes, the wild traffic, the shoes, the azure sky, cypress trees. In the fug of a Gauloises' fog the special last week in a movie-scene cafe just off Piazza Navona was Lobster and Gnocci! Heaven. In the blaze of the following afternoon I watch two men pull up in scooters at the Colunna Traiane. They unpack their boxes and start wrapping on togas, plastic breastplates and helmets. Moments later getting their pictures taken with every fabulous looking woman that passes. Tourist tat but somehow more impressive than the bagpiper in Glencoe.
There's an easy passion here that's not very celtic. Northern fringe people don't do Gladiator. They can get passionate, heated even, but but not like venus or vesuvius. No explosion of emotion. Any gesticulations are quickly brought to heel. At the Colosseo though, everyone is humbled. That's two thousand years and still standing still awesome. Not even the orbiting, dizzying traffic can rumble it down.
Had very limited time for sightseeing and gawping at Rome's shameless treasures. Time was spent in plenary, in discussion groups, in break outs and in smoky fugs with multi-lingual bright young europeans. A moment I remember in a discussion about funding for our campaign one UK fund had turned us down because they said they didnt think they had a remit for European issues. This brought smirks and guffaws of various franco, italian and slavic tones at the insular brits. I didnt find it funny but completely understandable. Because I was acutely aware of my otherness, my North Atlantic airs and aloofness. Being the product from the island of the mongrel race; roman, norman, viking, saxon, briton, gael. I saw how I had been blended into a root beer of insipidity. Not skillfully tongued but monosyllabic, monocultural, well almost, I knew some euro music..right?..
Perhaps I would have felt better if I was more culturally distinct. Not with tammy hat and kilt, but maybe bearing some northern edge, some longer hair and beard, leather and fur, tattooed celtic knot, some poetry and hipflask of dram. Actually I'd rather be italian.

Competition blog: My New Scotland, Sunday Herald

We can’t seem to shake off this notion that Scotland needs its freedom. Braveheart. Flower of Scotland. ‘Free by 93!’ Remember that! Soon after we were lambasted for being 90-minute patriots. John Buchan would have agreed as he said, “The truth is that we are at bottom the most sentimental and emotional people on earth.” Well, certainly the case when our national identity is being debated.

Freedom for Scotland? Doesn’t this put it best? “Scotland will be reborn when the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post” alleged Tom Nairn. Ask a granny and she’d say ‘it woudnae be possible to strangle somebody wi’ a newspaper!’ Typically pithy, practical, and dour. A glass-half-empty worldview. McConnell at least tried to do something about the poverty of ambition, and then said what all the problems were, but nothing about what the ambition could be.

I’m with Tom Nairn’s assessment. We need to throw off our wee encumbrances. Our ‘cannae dae’ and ‘aye been’ culture. Its great there are signals of this abandonment already even with our in-by-the-pants-of-wan-seat Nat government. Why not have a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation. Why not have a seat at the UN?

Isn’t it odd that the Irish, Italian, Indian, Pakistani and now a plethora of diasporas find their new found freedom in Scotland? Yet Scotland’s own that find themselves with a perceived barrier to that same freedom. Like these entrepreneurial and risk taking immigrants we Scots need to reintegrate ourselves with some ambition and vision. What do I want Scotland’s freedom to be like? One that's moved on from subsidy junkie talk, and had some inspired grand dreams fuelled by hubbly bubblies on Great Western Road cafes. No more what’ll it cost us? What about the cost of staying on as constitutional co-habitees?

“Scotland's separation is part of England's imperial disintegration” said John Mclean. Of course a new Scotland means a new England, new Wales and new Ireland. A determined diversification rather than a homogenous huddling. Bring it on! Until the last Sunday Post wraps the last deep-fried mars bar supper in Scotland.

Inheritance Tracks

A friend of mine recently started a great email discussion about what your earliest musical influences were and what you wanted to pass on the next generation. Its based on a radio programme in Scotland, you need to recollect the person who introduced you to the earliest piece of music you can remember, then you need to think about what music you would now introduce to a child and why.

Here was my answer.....

My earliest memory of a piece of music that I really loved and was passed on to me by my father was the andante from Sibelius’ 3^rd Symphony. It’s a wonderfully gentle, minimal, sparse, a delicate weft and waft of strings and woodwind. I used to ask for it to be played on my dad’s ‘Binatone Music Centre’ again and again when I was about 7 or 8, maybe 8 or 9?

It puts you in mind of crystal clear lakes and sunsets in the artic north, of floating over jaggy snow capped peaks and fjords. Being Finnish I suppose gave Sibelius that clarity and subtlety. Its fairly repetitive for orchestral music but the rhythms are so lulling and soothing, layering up to a very pleasing uplifting crescendo. Such a contrast to Finlandia and En Saga with their Viking like brass blasts. But if you’re familiar with the Swan of Tuonela you’ll have a sense of the 3^rd’s simplicity and striking clarity.

The other piece was the theme tune from M*A*S*H which for a period of about 6 months marked my bedtime. I wasn’t allowed to watch it but I was allowed to listen to the theme and watch the helicopters swoosh about and land in the army hospital. I had no idea it was called ‘Suicide is Painless’ or indeed what M*A*S*H was about. That was also true even when I watched it when older!

Well from there I developed eclectic and seasonal tastes, dipping in and out of everything; pop, rock, heavy metal, progressive rock(!) jazz, folk, country and classical. . Went with the crowd on a lot of the time, so much so that I actually did go and see Simple Minds three times!

Many of the songs l love are melancholic, wistful, turning on unrequited love and the bittersweet. I’m not sure why. I suppose these kind of songs have a realism and rooting in emotional reality that I felt connected with me and my experience in the world. Its so difficult to pin down a song that I would pass on but I have picked out two that may serve the task in hand.

The first is this lovely album track from Crowded House – just recently gloriously reformed again. It’s the sentiment of not being imprisoned by the past that I like. This track also has soaring strings and maybe that harps back to my early exposure to classical.

All I Ask

Crowded House

Written By N. Finn & T. Finn

All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Take the road forgotten
Don't leave me here
Oh please let me stay
Far from familiar things
All I ask is to live each moment
All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Strange roads going nowhere in particular
All I ask is to live each moment
All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Free from the last
All I ask

I am an unashamed U2 fan. I saw them in Hampden Park, Glasgow two years ago. Undoubtedly the best concert I have ever been to. I can air guitar and sing so many of their tracks better than Bono and the Edge (but only alone in the living room.) Bono to me is one of the most inspirational Christians alive. He has a streetwise sassy faith unbound by tradition and form. Many of the U2 songs are better than the dreadful contemporary worship splurging out from the Matt Redman school of blessed navel gazing.

U2 deliver songs racked with doubt, raw energy and spirit. Anthems that reverberating in your mind. Words that speak about the search and hunger for more of God and for more out of life. And the best of all of these…………..

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

U2

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you.

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you.

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her finger tips
It burned like fire
(I was) burning inside her.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone.

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running.

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh my shame, you know I believe it.

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.

Has everything under the sun already been done?

My friend Kieran posed this question on Facebook. Only 50 words are allowed in response. Obviously I need more verbiage space.This is my attempted answer.

Well ‘the Bible says so’ as the refrain of the grim verses in Ecclesiastes say; ’there is nothing new under the Sun.’ with its pessimistic take on the world and humankind. But I don’t think that is anything to do with human activity or our perception of relentless progress or terminal moral decline. Rather it is about the relentless cyclical nature of death and rebirth in the created world, the seasons, in nature and the ‘three score and ten’ of man. Nothing is actually new, its been before and is renewed, dies, is born again. When we discover a new species, its not actually new, its always been, but was just outwith our detection.

If it were, about humankind, history and progress, then I suppose the question you may be also posing is– what new things are there still to do? On this score there is a lot. Ecclesiastes was in a pre-technological age. It was about toil. No-one then could have ever thought we could change the temperature of the earth, or even fly out from the world into orbit in space. We are living in the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial to the information age and then the biogenetic age. Just edging into another technological orbit under the sun.

Maybe, to take a ridiculous example, in the next 100 years, in the same way as we see piercing in places you didn’t before; (noses, bellybuttons, lips eyebrows) we’ll see biogenetic cosmetic enhancement; natural hair extensions any colour your like (or think!) Maybe for the macho male, some cranial horns, skin colours and tints of all hues (already available for eyes) webbed feet for swimmers or sea dwellers (due to global warmed sea level rises.) In this sense there is plenty of invention and change ahead beyond our wildest imagining.

So there will still be plenty of technological advances, new things to be done, our sons and daughters taking up careers serving and served by technologies not yet invented. There will be the merging of electronic with neural, of machine and body. But is that ‘nothing new under the Sun’ in the sense of the scripture? I don’t think so.

These words I think point towards the limits of evil and the impossibility of renewal on earth. There is no shocking crime or evil that has not been committed before. In this sense the verses are very encouraging. The world is not getting worse and worse. Its just the same. It seems worse to us because of the scale, speed and awareness of events. There are many billions on the earth now (6.5Bn) More living now than have ever lived in all history (itself a mind boggling proposition.) So it seems there is a proliferation of evil. But paedophilia existed in ancient Greece and Rome. These are not modern phenomena. Same for conflicts and wars, only the technology and scale has changed.

So, in this world, under this sun, nothing really changes. So everything has been done. The world and we are fixed, limited and natural and therefore fallen and unrenewable. The only possibility of change and of meaning (as opposed to meaninglessness as complained of in Ecclesiastes) is change that comes beyond our selves and the world. It is limitless, spiritual, supernatural and it is of course a new creation – and all of those have not yet been done.