The heart is a liminal place

It’s Halloween on Saturday, long thought to be a ‘liminal’ time, when the boundary between the material and the spiritual is paper-thin. I was at a liminal place last week – the Bield at Blackruthven, near Perth, an interdenominational retreat centre where people go to reflect and pray, listening to God, and finding blessing and refreshment.

I was there for a retreat organised by the Ignatian Spirituality Centre in Glasgow, and run according to the principles laid out by St Ignatius in his Spiritual exercises.

Entrance to the Bield at Blackruthven

It was a silent retreat – the nine of us taking part kept silence from the Tuesday evening until the Thursday evening. And it was a ‘guided’ retreat – each day each of us saw our nominated prayer guide at least once.

At first I was restless. ‘I don’t belong here! God surprises me in my busy-ness with insights and creative ideas, but not in silence.’  But then I began to enter that sweet, blanketing stillness where God is found. I realised that God flows deep within me as a powerful river, bringing both peace and creative energy. ‘Flow, river, flow…’ I wrote in my notebook.

On the Wednesday morning I met my prayer guide - a cheerful, sensitive woman from Glasgow, a professional potter, Katy Low. She suggested I reflect on the New Testament story of Jesus restoring Bartimaeus’s sight, after saying to him ‘What would you like me to do for you?’ ‘Imagine Jesus asking you “What would you like me to do?”’  Katy suggested.

Sitting room at the Bield

I knew what a good Christian ‘ought’ to ask – but what was really on my heart? Only when I was talking to Katy again the next morning did it crystallise. ‘Lord, I want to be my authentic self, the self God made me to me.’

Later on Wednesday, and the next morning the river was not flowing, or if it was, its course ran deep beneath the surface.

Om Thursday I shared with Katy my thoughts on the Bartimaeus story. It resonated with me: the ‘outsider’ welcomed by Jesus; the man whose name means ‘son of Timaeus’ who found his own identity when Jesus opened his eyes.

Garden at the Bield

Katy suggested I reflect on the story of the woman honouring Jesus by breaking open an alabaster box of expensive perfume and anointing Jesus’s feet. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s such a contrast to Jesus’s followers on another occasion who were each too proud to do the servant’s duty and wash the feet of their group: they were ashamed when Jesus knelt with basin and towel.’

As I said this, I realised something for the first time – that the alabaster box of expensive perfume was a symbol of Jesus’ body, broken, his precious life given because of his love and desire to honour humanity – including me!

Perhaps it’s a slightly cloying image, but it was a very special moment – Katy had thought there was something in the passage for me, and I had received it. ‘Isn’t the Holy Spirit wonderful?’ I said.

That morning in chapel we’d heard a quote from St Theresa of Avila about learning to enjoy God. I realised as I sat with Katy that God enjoys me, enjoys being with me. It’s one thing to know yourself loved by God; it’s a deeper wonder to know that God enjoys you.

For the rest of the morning, I was no longer troubled about structuring my day, it was enough simply to ‘be’, deep in silence, seeking to enjoy and knowing myself enjoyed.’ In time, there was an edge of anxiety because the experience was so different from my ‘normal.’ It’s a reminder that not all the thoughts which flow in times of reflection are positive and good. We must, as Ignatius put it, ‘discern the spirits’ and not give energy to our fears.

Biled exterior - the chapel is straight ahead

In the afternoon, desperate for a newspaper, I sneaked out to the supermarket. I reckoned God could enjoy me just as much in Tesco as at the Bield. I walked across the car-park and up the aisles with this burning sense of wonder. God enjoys me!

On Thursday evening, the nine of us came ‘out of silence.’ Each brought a symbol or an idea which summed up the significance of the retreat to us. I mentioned the adult-size swing in the grounds, which symbolised my discovery that listening to God is not a ‘duty’ to be performed, but something playful and liberating.

Back home, I still carry within me the silent centre, the secret place where, when I am calm enough to find the door, the real God meets the real me. God is not ‘out there’, behind a barrier we dimly see through at liminal times or places. For the heart is the liminal place where God waits always to welcome us.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 29th October 2015)

Sisters and brothers, not enemies

‘I found my faltering and uncertain faith had been stimulated by this humble Free Church minister,’ wrote journalist Kevin McKenna in the Daily Mail. His subject was David Robertson, Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, and minister of St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, where attendance at services has grown from 7 to over 250 since his ministry there began in the 1990s.

David Robertson

David Robertson takes no personal credit for this. He told the journalist, refreshingly that ‘The only thing that would bring people here would be the knowledge that God lived here too’; McKenna concludes that Robertson ‘is fast becoming the most important Christian leader in Scotland.’

But this is the man who in a recent public debate with another McKenna, Scott, minister of Mayfield Salisbury Church of Scotland in Edinburgh told him that if he were a member of St Peter’s Dundee ‘I’m sorry, I would have to say this. I would excommunicate you.’

The background to this is as follows: David Robertson had disagreed with something Scott McKenna said in a sermon about the way Jesus removes the barriers between us and God. To Scott, the teaching that Jesus died as our representative, our substitute, bearing on our behalf the wrath of God so that our sinfulness can be forgiven portrays God as ‘vindictive and immoral’ in requiring sacrifice before forgiveness can be given.

David pointed out (correctly) that this belief was central to faith in the New Testament, and has been a key Christian conviction across the centuries, though he accepted that other pictures are used to describe what Jesus achieved (for example overcoming powers of darkness, paying a ransom, setting captives free.)

After a private meeting, Scott invited David to take part in a public exchange on their views at his church. 250 people attended the event on 30^th September – there’s a full transcript on David’s blog https://theweeflea.wordpress.com.

The debate covered a couple of topics besides the significance of Jesus’ death.  Both men agreed that the Bible was inspired by God, but Scott pointed out that it was also a very human book, written in specific cultural contexts, and must be interpreted in the light of this. On the future of the church in Scotland, David was forthright: the Church of Scotland was ‘dying’ because it did not preach the whole gospel as David defined it.

Throughout the debate, Scott emphasised that both men were on the same journey, a journey with Christ, in and towards God. David (though tempted as he said in a later blog post to agree in order to make things easy for himself) could not conscientiously accept this.

Because Scott didn’t hold to a fundamental belief about how Christ saves us he was not, in David’s eyes, a genuine Christian. ‘I had hoped for Scott’s conversion,’ David wrote afterwards in his blog.

My place on the spectrum on belief is between these two men, but closer to Scott than to David. Over the years I have journeyed towards Scott’s view of the Bible – and I believe God has led me in this journey of re-thinking.

On the issue of Jesus’ death, I accept he took my place; I accept that ‘Jesus died for my sins’; I say this with a loud Hallelujah! But I don’t believe it is appropriate to judge who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ on the basis of this issue.

Scott sees in David ‘a real love for Jesus which I certainly share myself.’ He speaks of being ‘secure in the love of Jesus.’  But in David’s eyes, far from loving the same Jesus, Scott believes in ‘a different Christ.’

I couldn’t disagree more with David on this. I believe the pictures the Bible gives us are there to help us understand something immense beyond our ability to comprehend. The Christ behind these pictures is the same Christ, the sole Christ, and that if we entrust ourselves to Christ, then whatever our particular views on how Jesus’ death ‘worked’, we are nourished in taking the bread and wine.

Surely what matters is love for Jesus, and Jesus-inspired love for others, not precise doctrine? Jesus didn’t teach substitution in his encounters with people. For him it was ‘Follow me! Love me! Obey me! Be born again!”

Like David, I am passionate about Jesus (though mine is a gentler passion than his). I am passionate about the power of Jesus to change lives and change society, to bring us hope and a future.

And for all his bluntness and occasional unwise words, I love David Robertson as a Christian brother. I am simply concerned that he doesn’t recognise that many of us in Scotland whose understanding on some issues differ from his, are sisters and brothers, not enemies; partners of the living Jesus.

(Christian Viewpoint from the Highland News dated 22nd October 2015)

Dancing with midges

Last Saturday, I went for a walk with my family round the beautiful Loch An Eilein in the Rothiemurchus estate near Aviemore. We enjoyed the stillness, the calm water, the friendly smiles of other walkers and cyclists.

We’d just passed the visitor centre cottage, the one with the word ‘duck’ on its low-ish lintel, which suggests that an oversize waterfowl lives there. I noticed a couple of people with what looked like bee-keepers’ nets over their heads. What was going on, I wondered naively. And then I realised – midges!

John Dempster with daughters Rebecca (left) and Bethany at Loch An Eilein

There were swarms of them, hundreds touching down on hands and neck and forehead every time we stopped, a persistent low-grade irritant.

275 years ago, when the increasing power of microscopes was opening up a new world for exploration - the world of what primary schools call ‘minibeasts’ - someone published a book called Insecto-theology. It sought to draw lessons about ‘the being and perfection of God from a consideration of the structure and economy of insects.’

Its author saw them, little creatures perfectly designed for what they have to do, as evidence of God’s wisdom and creativity. Many Christians now accept that God created life on earth through a process of evolution, perhaps setting up the conditions for life, and allowing life freedom to develop.

But whatever your view, midges remind people of faith of a big question. Why does God allow pain? Specifically, why did God allow annoying creatures like the Highland Midge to come into being? More specifically still, why couldn’t all Highland Midges be like the males, who simply eat flowers and dance in choreographed swarms to attract a mate? Only the females gorge on the blood of animals and humans to nourish the eggs forming within them. There must be a better way of providing food for frogs and fish!

Why is this wonderful, intricate, beautiful miracle of a world defiled by pain? Why is ‘nature red in tooth and claw?’

I keep that in my ‘big, unanswered questions’ drawer. Jesus said God knows each sparrow in its living and dying. And so you can bet God knows every last midge, and cherishes midges as examples of divine creativity.

I thought of the vast contrast between me (tall, reasonably intelligent, self-aware) with these minute midges crawling over my wrist. Yet this is contrast is nothing compared with the contrast between the most gifted and intelligent of human beings and the God who could create a million universes before breakfast, and yet is present in each atom, each breath.

I brush aside the midges as an irritant, but far from brushing me aside, God knows me, loves me, calls me. For God to become one of us in Jesus involved greater humility than it would for me to become a midge for a brief season of dancing beside a highland lake.

I guess we can learn from midges. They bite my neck because they are programmed to relentlessly further their own destiny. Yet I see in myself regrettable tendencies to take advantage of others, seeking to diminish them for my own ends.

But I admire the perseverance of the midges. So vulnerable to wind and rain, they persist with focus and determination in achieving their mission. Our mission as Christians is to reflect in our lives the love of that immense creator. Occasionally our words may be an irritant as we challenge those, whose wonder at creation is akin to worship, to consider a greater Wonder, more worthy of worship. But the sign of our presence should be not a red, swelling wound, but a healing touch which lingers long after we have gone, for we are agents not of the death and pain which so perplexes us, but of life.

And these midges remind me of the mist of doubts and temptations and fears which sometimes we find ourselves walking through. But God has given us a midge-net to protect us, if only we will wear it – the knowledge that we are loved, and cherished far more than birds and midges, for there is more of God in us than in them; we are God’s precious children.

Andrew Swift is an Episcopalian priest in Argyll who Tweets @midgedancer and blogs at ‘Dances with midges.’ He doesn’t say why he chose this title. But perhaps it’s a picture of our lives as Christians – dancing with midges, fully playing our part in this mysterious universe, not overcome by the stuff in our ‘unanswered questions’ drawer, learning to rejoice in the God who made us and loves us.

Last Saturday, we were not overcome by the midges, but danced with them. And when we’d made it back to the cottage, there was still no sign of the oversize duck, waddling towards the water.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 15th October 2015)