Saturday 28 May 2022

Time

 I praise the gracious mercy of God, that, dwelling outside time, time has been gifted to us. This thought came to me on Ascension Day, last Thursday. It struck me that just as the Easter season in the church year is constructed to have seven weeks in it;- seven weeks to get to  grips with the mysterious reality of a Risen Christ- so we have ten days between Ascension and Pentecost to absorb that yes, Jesus is not here in earthly form. He really has gone. 

In fact this 'time to absorb the realities of mystery', are played out all over the Christian year, Four weeks for Advent, twelve days for Christmas, absorbing 'our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man'. ( I love that 'incomprehensibly'- twelve short days to wrestle with 'God....made man'), forty days of Lent, twenty weeks and more in the Trinity season to revisit the Jesus narrative with the full perspective from promise in Advent to completion at Pentecost. And then we start all over again.....

Time- in days, and weeks, months even- to absorb, accept, question, wrestle with, live with, push away, the immensities of the particular season. That's a mercy. So now, in Ascensiontide, I'm trying to looks at it from the point of view of the disciples who were there. Really gone? What next? Is this the end? What does 'the promise of the Father' mean? How can he just leave like this- such an anti-climax!  

The pondering and reflection are good, but are always overtaken by the next revelation- next Sunday, the gift of the Spirit. As so often, questions and reflections are met, not by answers, but by overwhelming grace. But then this prompts another time-consuming question...... 

Saturday 21 May 2022

spring

 Spring is three weeks early this year, they say- a sign of the changing times- climate changing times, that is. Already the roses are appearing, while some late tete-a-tete daffodils are still in bloom. The  'Rambling Rector' rose promises its version of heaven in the next week, with its luscious musky-honey-vanilla scent. If only it went on longer, instead of those glorious three or four weeks of its single flowering.

The urge to blossom and fruit is everywhere. The plum tree promises a bumper harvest, unless rain, wind and birds conspire to rob us. But lest I take all this for granted, I am aware that it comes at a price, and we have little time to pay our dues before climate catastrophe overtakes.

There is  a heedlessness in humanity which ought to be up there with the seven deadly sins, but somehow- probably because of our heedlessness, is not. Jesus rails against it, as did the prophets before him, as do the warnings on so much self-obsession, which obliterates the common good. Our need for more and for 'me' ruins the planet. 

Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free- and the two go together. In the endless search for personal freedom (from what? for what?), for more (to what end?) for 'me' (when did 'we' become less important?)  the linkage to simplicity has been lost. Such as a simple blessing, repeated year after year- the scent of a mass of roses on the still evening air.     

Sunday 15 May 2022

Lines in the sand

 Reading the first few chapters of Acts, the clues are all there as to how the faith began to free itself- not quite the phrase I want, but let it pass- from its Jewish roots. First the Samaritans are admitted ( chapter 8) then the Roman centurion Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile, becomes a Christian (Acts 10) and in Acts 16 the gospel leaps over to Europe. 

Given the sharp intake of breath which greeted Peter when the Jerusalem brethren heard that a Gentile had become a member of the faith, we can imagine the lines in the sand which would have been drawn by the more conservative members in Jerusalem at all these developments, and how those lines had been erased, perhaps painfully, by the advances which the proclamation of the gospel made. 

God is always somehow ahead of us, and calls us into the work he is doing. And we love rules, to know where we stand, to have certainty- and that's fine, as far as it goes. It's a lifetime's work to straddle the tension between what we perceive as the surprising calls of God, and the perceptions of what we see as the limits of faith. Sharp intakes of breath are perhaps called for as we survey the dynamism of God's works in ourselves, our communities; but possibly fewer as we realise another line in the sand has been erased.  

Saturday 7 May 2022

the transfer of data

 As a self-described technodinosaur,  I would choose to set up the new ipad at 1030 pm, little realising that the process would take me long into the hours when I should be dreaming sweet dreams. I call it innocence, but most technosavvy folk would call it dumb, or worse. 

Fearing that the process had stalled/I had done something wrong/maybe it would be better to do this manually rather than by some magical osmosis ('Just switch on Bluetooth, it says here'), I googled The Question- 'How long does it take to transfer data from one ipad to another?' An hour seemed like a happy minimum, so with anxious glances every few seconds, we sat out the hour. And more. 

Until ipad heaven arrived and the process was complete. 

The metaphor doesn't completely transfer to the realm of the spirit, but the transfer of grace from its source in God to this faulty, anxious, reluctant, blocking, but-wishing-to-be-made-new subject will take a lifetime, and will not be complete this side of the dive into eternity. If only it were simple, like the ipad- ha!