Freedom's kiss

Recently it’s been cold, cold, very cold,’ performance poet El Gruer intones in a poem recently posted on YouTube, An open letter to the government, an open heart to refugees. There’s an arresting poignancy in her voice; the space between words is as important as the words themselves. ‘The weather of our hearts has been dismal,’ she continues, ‘because it took the body of a young child to break the ice.’ (She was referring to the discovery of a child's body found face-down on a Turkish beach on 2nd September, on of a group of 12 Syrian migrants who drowned in an attempt to reach the Greek island of Kos.)

The young poet, originally from Inverness, aims to ‘take poetry into places where poetry doesn’t normally go’, performing in pubs, clubs, churches, homes, festivals. Like all her work, this latest poem displays both compassion for those who suffer, and hope. ‘There are many of us that want to bring rest to your distress, to learn your names and to give you an address.’

Compassion and hope are key themes in El’s recently-published first collection of poems The paper sky which combines serious subject matter with clever word-play, and a lightness of touch. She has an ability to empathise with people who are suffering, letting their voices be heard speaking out their pain, and thus giving birth to compassion in us.

Through El’s words we experience struggles with addiction; the pain of still-birth, miscarriage and the loss of a young child; the consequences of childhood trauma; the terrible sadness of seeing a beloved mother ‘camouflaged’ by dementia.

It sounds grim, and it is indeed painful to be confronted with the reality of other people’s pain. But, taken as a whole The paper sky is a book of hope. El has said that she aims ‘not to rant and rave about the issues of the day,’ but would rather ‘focus on nurturing words that will save.’ She has also told us ‘I believe in the power of brokenness. When we cry out, God meets us.’

In the very act of articulating our need we are met by God. The paper sky is not an explicitly religious book, and yet you sense that God is forever present. Thus the addict discovers that ‘freedom’s a kiss’; the girl with autism realises that she is ‘a work of art’; the woman burdened by distressing family circumstance and by world news ‘followed Google Maps to St Peter’s’ where, singing as the tears fell ‘in worship I raised my hand.’

I particularly appreciated the poem Trafficked. It begins with the insight ‘what people do is not so far apart from the condition of their hearts.’ It follows that people who cage, damage, enslave, hurt other people are those who have themselves been caged, damaged, enslaved, hurt. It then reflects that those who have been loved, honoured, healed, redeemed are best equipped to show love and honour to others, to heal and to redeem.

Trafficked then highlights a strange anomaly: that those who damage others are much more committed in their doing of damage than those who release others in their bringing of freedom. But ‘Freedom needs to be more than a word.’ And so this powerful poem ends with the plea that we who are free, must free others.

The poem reminded me of Jesus Christ. Wholly free, and secure in the Father’s love, Jesus is able, and proactively willing to free us wholly.

El Gruer has said  ‘Every piece I write is immersed in prayer before-hand,’ and it seems to me that there is another poetry which she aims to take into places where it isn’t normally welcomed – the poetry of Christian faith, so often dismissed as irrelevant, yesterday’s news. El speaks out this poetry with conviction: not a performance this, but an expression of who she is.

Another poem I loved was one of the specifically Christian ones, Sunday School. The speaker remembers her five-year-old self hearing the name ‘Jesus’ in Sunday School. That word ‘Jesus’ resonated in her, and, glimpsing the reality behind those two syllables she felt like running to Jesus across sunlit fields, gathering flower for him as she went.

But instead, she had to sit cross-legged in a dismal hall, patient listening rewarded by juice in a tawdry polystyrene cup. What an indictment of us as Christians, I thought, taking something beyond wonder and presenting it in a drab, unimaginative context. But then I reflected – isn’t the poem really saying that the power of Jesus is such that he meets us in the drab ordinariness of our lives, and sets us free? Can diluted juice in a polystyrene cup become a Eucharist?

The key thought lying behind El Gruer’s work is this. The ice in our hearts is broken by a son, dead not on a Mediterranean beach, but on a cross near Jerusalem; and by the same son alive on that resurrection Sunday when the poetry of God burst free.

The Paper Sky by El Gruer is published by Canterbury Press. ISBN 9781848257672.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 1st October 2015)

Sharing the good news

The train approaching Springburn Station one evening in the mid-1970s isn’t over-busy – there’s about a metre of unoccupied seat between me and the next passenger. I reach into my briefcase and draw out the flimsy leaflet, and then I pause, summoning courage for what I am about to do.

Eventually, as the train comes to a halt I turn round and say hesitantly to my neighbour, proffering the leaflet. ‘Excuse me,’ would you like a gospel tract?’ ‘No,’ he replies, gruffly. ‘OK,’ I say quickly, and in that moment I feel both wounded and hugely relieved.

The word ‘evangelism’ means ‘sharing the good news.’ Evangelism, as it was described and modelled by other folk in the churches I attended as a young man, involved a constant readiness to talk about the Christian faith in general and your own faith in particular; to go into the town centre handing out leaflets and engaging people in conversations; to miss no opportunity of spreading the word on trains and buses and at work.

There were videos showing you how to befriend your neighbour, and bring conversations round to the target subject: the need for God; Jesus; his death and resurrection; the urgency of responding.

I tried to imitate this ‘sales pitch’ model, in order to do what I felt I ought to do, but also in an attempt to feel good about myself and to win plaudits from others. However, as an introvert I shrank from this form of evangelism. It simply was not ‘me’, and yet I felt guilt at my inactivity, miserable at what I regarded as my deficiencies in this respect.  I was not alone – there was even a book about evangelism entitled ‘Our guilty silence.’

For some of us, particular words cast a dark shadow because of negative experiences we associate with them. For me ‘evangelism’ is one of those words, linked with memories of compulsion and failure.

And yet there is good news!  God is there – an amazing creative being beyond our power to imagine, who inhabits the universe, as someone has put it ‘like song fills a forest, or light fills a room, or love fills a heart.’ A God who reveals God’s love for us in Jesus, summoning us to wholeness and security.

Jump forward forty years. A couple of Fridays ago I had a lunchtime haircut at a different barbers from usual. The woman cutting my hair spoke freely, and I could tell from what she said that she wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. I sensed her sadness, and felt deep empathy with her, and compassion for her. (This is unusual for me, for whom compassion is usually an act of mind and will rather than spontaneously arising in my heart.)

Even after all these years, the ‘parent’ voices of the past whispered ‘You should be evangelising!’ But what I did was to pray that I might be as Christ to this woman, and then simply went with the flow of the conversation, listening carefully, reflecting back what I was hearing while all the time hair-cuttings cascaded from her busy scissors.

In the old days it seemed to me we were expected to follow a formula in our conversations about God, passing on ideas which I believed in my head but hadn’t experienced in my heart. But for me, now, talking about the good news is simply being real about where I am at on my journey of faith, being real about the God who came among us in Jesus, being real about the many, many things I don’t understand and forever question, being real above all about the Love Who open-armed reaches out to us all.

We are all – every single being on the planet - forever surrounded by God’s song, God’s light, God’s love. If we are open to God, God sings in us, shines in us, loves in us in all our daily conversations and relationships. We don’t need to use holy words, because if at that moment we are consciously loving God however feebly, we are holy, and God will bless others through us in unexpected ways.

When I was paying my £8 after the haircut was finished, I looked at the woman and said quietly, but with emphasis ‘God bless you.’ She smiled, and I left. That was it.

But I thought to myself  ‘Mmmm! I guess that was evangelism. That wasn’t so bad.’

It’s when we are able to redeem the words we fear by associating them with good and positive experiences that we gradually realise they no longer intimidate

As Christians, we have the very best of good news to share, but we share it best when we relax, expressing it in ways unique to us, unique to our individual, God-given personalities.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 27th November 2014)

A life in letters: Open Airs

Summer Sunday afternoons in the late 1960s in Carluke’s Market Square which is more triangle than square.  A group of people stand round a microphone on a stand, a battery-powered amplifier, and a harmonium. Everyone is smartly dressed; the women wear colourful hats. I am standing at the mike, defiant in the enforced eccentricity of my Hunting Macrae tartan kilt, plodding through  How great thou art. One of the Sisters, sitting decorously upright on the wooden slats of a park bench accompanies me, pedalling languidly. The sound bounces back, echoing off the stone house-fronts surrounding the square.

These ‘open airs’ were held, with the local Council’s permission, Sunday to Sunday from around April through to September. ‘WP and DV’ (Weather permitting and Deo Volente – God Willing.) There would be Gospel hymns from Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos, perhaps a testimony of someone’s journey to faith, a solo, and a short sermon from the week’s visiting preacher.

As the service progressed, some of the Brethren and Sisters, armed with gospel tracts walked round the paths criss-crossing the market, and lingered on the pavement adjoining the road where cars heading towards Lanark queued when the traffic lights were at red. When someone wound down a car window – or had a window open because of the heat – and looked quizzically at us over the hedge and chain fence, a tract would be enthusiastically proferred. We heard of at least one person who by that means was drawn to Christian faith.

I was familiar with open airs from childhood. Sunday afternoons in the late 1950s found me leaning against the sun-hot railings in the centre of Milngavie next to the Black Bull pub watching the Allendar Burn sparkle on its way below me while the Brethren spoke and sang. The Baptist Church in Carluke which my parents and I attended for a few years from 1962 did not, as I recall, have open airs on the agenda and so it wasn’t until we joined the local Gospel Hall that I found myself once again participating in these alfresco expeditions, taking to the streets with God’s people.

Young men in the Brethren who were considered to show promise as potential future preachers would be invited to accompany an older, more experienced Brother when he was scheduled to take Sunday services at a nearby meeting. Thus I recall one Sunday being asked to go to Allanton with Ben Schofield.

The evening service was preceded, earlier in the afternoon, by an open air. I remember before we went out of the hall – no more than five or six of us, all men – we prayed together, kneeling on the cold lino at hard wooden benches. Then we went and stood on a deserted street corner. We sang, unaccompanied, and someone prayed, and Ben preached through a megaphone. Perhaps I said a few words. But throughout the time we were there, we saw hardly anyone. There was not even a twitch of curtain. The good folks of Allanton must have been lying low until we left.

Open airs no doubt had had their day, but by then the traditional hit-the-streets-and-preach approach had long ceased to be an effective means of communication.