I have long been struck by St Augustine's words...

You called, You cried, You shattered my deafness.

You sparkled, You burned, You drove away my blindness.

You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath.

Therefore, from now on, I will pant for YOU alone.

 

This week, as I researched stuff for my prayers, I found a website on the Hebrew names of God that said that "Jehovah Nissi" does not simply mean 'God is my Banner' - the standard that flies above me on the battlefield - but effectively  'God who Glistens.'

I like that.  I like the idea of a sparkly God, though I'm not entirely sure what that means visually!  It helped me to make a bit more sense of Augsutines powerful and beautiful words.

I still need to work with what it means to have a sparkly God in the greyness that Habakkuk speaks of, but I'm sure it fits somehow.

It's a while now since my decision to preach on Habakkuk.  As I have studied this book, read some commentary and pondered what God might be saying through it to me, to my congregation, I have also been struck by the relentless level of bad news on the television.  Am I just more attuned to it, or has this been a summer of almost unrivalled awfulness?  Every day, it feels, there's another murder report, another fire, another natural disaster, another soldier killed - and the cry of Habakkuk 'how long' seems ever more pertinent.

Today was a rare event - one of those times when I felt it right to abandon my written sermon and just talk.  I retained the main threads - a faithful God and the need for faithfulness in the face of struggle - as we explored the idea of authenticity in church.

Some people got it, some people didn't - the only comment I got was that I spoke too quickly!

Next week we move on to theodicy - the defence of a good God in a world marred by evil.  It had not clicked until now that the weekend will be overtaken by Diana stuff, so it will be the more important to move beyond the mawkish to some real engagement with tough questions.  I will be attempting to get people to think a bit, and to move beyond simplistic views I have heard expressed that "these are the end times so such things must happen" and/or "well it must be down to their sin." (Think of Luke's gospel and the tower that fell on people if you need to challenge such views)

Before the service, one of my folk told me she felt that God was speaking to her about the need to open the door between church and world, I have felt that we need to allow the realities of real life to enter our worship (something that Habakkuk expresses).  Many non-Christains I know use the questions of evil and suffering as their argument for the non-existence of God; I feel that we need to see that an engaged and provisional theodicy is actually part of mission - authenticity and trust in God despite all, not in a naive way, but one that is implied by Habakkuk's words that 'the people of God will experience life in all its fullness because of their faithfulness' (my paraphrase of some stuff I've read).

It is a mystery how sometimes things seem to fall into place,  As one of my Regional Ministers sometimes says, with a twinkle in his eye, 'if you were religious you might think God had something to do with it'!

I am due to lead worship at an upcoming biggish event and I'm trying to find an easy to learn Portuguese language worship song (for any local folk who know me, the local Portuguese speakers are simply not answering my request!).  Does anyone have anything - words and music - that I could have a copy of?

I have lots of non-English stuff but nothing in Portuguese, which is the one language I really need this time.  (And, no, Spanish won't do as 'near enough')

This programme on ITV on Sunday evenings will, this week, show Housteads Fort on Hadrian's Wall.  You ought to watch it, if only because we were walking by when they were doing a bit of early morning filming last week.  Quite a strange sight to see a 'cat on a stick' as you climb up a hillside.  It was tempting to make a loud noise and spoil the shot, but we were well behaved!

I looked at the website today and was intrigued and a bit disappointed how few of my own favourites were there.  The choices for London were, I guess, predictable, but for me one of the best views is from Blackfriars railway bridge, the city to the east and the 'Post Ofice' tower west and north - London in an instant.  Not sure what my favourite Manchester view is - I always look out for the spire of St Mary's in... Hulme?  Moss Side?  Not sure which!  Where I used to live - sentimental twaddle really.  The view from the platform in the Imperial War Museum North is impressive but I actually prefer some of the lower down views.  I have a post card Jim Medway's cartoon 'Oxford Road' of some cats catching a No 42 bus near the railway bridge on Oxford Road which is certainly one of my favourite views of Manchester - not pretty but authentic.

Watching last week's programme, I was struck by how many of the views were those people associated with childhood - a kind of nostalgia driven preference.  My own favourite childhood views are no more - "Blackey Moor" was our favourite place as children, a very long walk through a farm, over a brook to the grounds of a once grand house where a dogs' graveyard (complete with head stones) lay hidden behind a pond that was great for 'fishing' for tadpoles.  Now it is covered in houses, a whole generation has grown up not knowing the simple pleasures we enjoyed.  Sad?  Maybe, but my own special places have shifted and changed as I have moved around the country.  I don't know that I have one 'favourite view' or one special place any more, rather I have places and peoples I love, sometimes despite what they look like.

It is interesting to see what various people consider their favourite view and to hear the stories of why it is so, not so much because of the places chosen, but because it reflects the wonderful diversity of this tiny island we are blessed to call home.

I have just read The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.  It's described as being about redemption (at least at the end) but I'm not entirely sure.  More, it seems to me, to be about the outworking of a single decision - a choice made in haste and with honest, if foolhardy, intent, the consequences of which were worked out over a lifetime.  It is an unhappy tale, at least for the character we meet first and his close family, but one that provokes some thought.  I also read A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon, a very different, and overall humourous tale, and included a fleeting mention of one Miss Cottingham, class teacher who filled me with terror at the grand old age of 9!  Yet here, too were hints of the interconnections of lives, the consequences of secrets and half-truths.  I suspect I must be getting too intense in my old age when my summer reading gets the old grey matter going - or is it just middle aged angst?!

When I was around 12, an English lesson introduced me to Roberts Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, which I now know inspired M Scott Peck's spirituality writing (which I have never read).  It was one of those poems that lodged deep inside and surfaces ever now and then.  Choices - consequences and the "impossibility of going back to repeat the experiment" as my old boss used to say.

This week the A level results came out, and I was being a 'responsible adult' with a friend of mine at her son's results day party.  Watching these young adults celebrate, observing the different characters and listening to the hopes and dreams mingled with the first stirrings of nostalgia (they chose to have a primary school sports day as their theme!) the poem came back to me along with memories of the last 26 years since my own (and, I thought at the time, dreadful) A level results arrived.

I guess I've been pretty fortunate - I have very few regrets about the choices I've made along the way, and I'd like to think that I've learned from the mistakes I've made.  Watching these youngsters, and knowing some of what lies ahead of them - joy and sorrow - is a strange experience.  The girl with five grade A's and no confidence, the shy boy whose grades meant he didn't get in to his first choice, the couple who've chosen to go to the same university because they can't stand the thought of separation...  what will their futures hold?  How will the party be recalled in 26 years time when they are middle aged (and I am old!)?  Who will still keep in touch with whom?  What dreams will lie shattered on the floor?  Will any of them be doing this navel gazing?

The Memory Keeper's Daughter centred on a very big decision made in haste and its consequences over a life time.  Not every choice is as dramatic or its consequences so far-reaching but the book did make me think afresh about the decisions I make and the ripple effects they have  - whether it's the brand of coffee I buy, the path I choose on an afternoon stroll, the books I read or the sermons I preach.  I suspect that at the end of time when the review takes place, the sum of the small, seemingly inconsequential, decisions will be as great if not greater than the one or two mammoth ones I wrestled with.

All very deep as a response to a bit of summer reading - maybe next time I'll read some real rubbish!