The River we travel

‘I’ve seen them now, and I will never be the same.’ These are the words of Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling non-fiction writer based in New York.

Reading about him has focussed my thinking on two events in Inverness – the on-going commemoration of the first visit to the city 250 years ago by the founder of Methodism, John Wesley (he preached in the High Church on Sundday 10th June 1764), and the recent service at the Cathedral where the Bachuil (or crozier) of St Moluag was on display. St Moluag was a contemporary of Columba: like Columba he met King Brude at Inverness and established many monasteries.

The Bachuil in the hands of its current custodian, Niall Livingstone of Bachuil, current Baron of Bachuil

What did Gladwell see which he claims changed his life? It was, he tells us, ‘the weapons of the spirit.’

Born in England, Malcolm Gladwell was raised in Canada where the family joined the Mennonite Christian community. His two brothers retained their Mennonite faith in adulthood, but though Malcolm continued to believe in God and to view Christian faith as logical, he admits ‘what I have had a hard time seeing is God’s power.’

He told an audience in 2009 that he was ‘truly sad’ he didn’t share his parents’ faith. He described a communion service he’d been present at as one of the most beautiful things he’d experienced, and was sad that nothing out-with faith affected him in quite the same way.

John Wesley preaching

And then he began researching his latest book, David and Goliath: underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants. One of its themes is that sometimes people with no material advantage, and indeed with severe disadvantages are much more powerful than they appear. They have an inner strength and resilience which (in a recent article) Gladwell describes as ‘weapons of the spirit.’

The book includes many personal stories, two of which are explicitly faith-driven. There is a Mennonite couple who find a way to forgive and express love to the person responsible for their daughter’s death. There’s the French Alpine community which, led by the local pastor, quietly resisted the Nazis during World War 2 and helped many Jewish people to escape to Switzerland.

Exploring these stories, Gladwell was amazed by the persistent courage people showed.  Their behaviour was, he said in an interview ‘very hard to account for other than by the particular kind of strength you get from faith.’

As a direct result of this evidence for the power of God in human weakness he says ‘I am in the process of recovering my own faith.’

One of the key points he makes in interviews is that the Mennonite tradition of forgiveness helped prompt and shape the bereaved couple’s willingness to forgive. And the history of the Alpine village standing firm in the 17th and 18th centuries s against state oppression of Protestant faith inspired the villagers’ resistance to the Nazis.

Which is why I got thinking of St Moluag and John Wesley – just a couple of the many Christian leaders who have visited the Highland across the centuries. The tradition we inherit in Scotland is a tradition of faith – of mission, of iconoclasts like Wesley challenging the status quo, challenging us when our faith becomes a veneer rather than a soul-deep reality.

Wesley acknowledged the importance of tradition when he noted on 10th Juen 1764 ‘the remarkable behaviour of the whole congregation after service’, their serious reflection on what they had heard. Wesley attributed this to the fact that Inverness has ‘for at least a hundred years had such a succession of pious ministers as very few in Great Britain have known.’

Malcolm Gladwell challenges us. To some the challenge is to understand the tradition before we reject it, to assess with unbiased eyes the evidence of God we see in lives around us. To others the challenge is to live, uncowed by injustice and adversity, lives in which weapons of the spirit are evident, 

To some the challenge is to rediscover in faith the beauty we have found nowhere else. To everyone the challenge is to recognise that ultimate power does not lie in the hands of those who appear most powerful.

I held the 34” long Bachuil of St Moluag that day in the Cathedral. As my hand encircled the fragile wood I sensed a stillness and continuity. It was as though I’d entered a glass-walled, peace-calmed cubicle. We hold to an ancient faith, fragile but resilient.

Yet what matters is not so much what we hold, as who holds us – the God of St Moluag, the God of John Wesley, the God of Christians across the centuries, the God who isn’t a visitor among us, but a perpetual presence, the God who wills us to seek that vision which will so change us that we will ‘never be the same.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 5th June 2014)