A nest of lions

Fly high, Rebecca! Fly high!

A week ago daughter number 1 left for a fortnight in South Africa, where she’s fulfilling a dream working with lion cubs.

And last Saturday daughter number two, Bethany, left to study in Edinburgh.

Inevitably you think of the ‘leaving the nest’ metaphor. You bring up your kids, and then watch them fly. I am very proud of them both, full of respect and love for them.

In Jesus’ story, the prodigal son went to a far country as an expression of his waywardness and unwavering self-focus. Our two have left for their own far countries (one much further than the other!) with our blessing, seeking to become more fully themselves.

I’ve a mixture of reactions are their going. A little worry. A smidgeon of jealousy – Rebecca will see things I will never see. A touch of self-rebuke – should I have been braver when I was younger, more resolute in following the path to independence? But you can’t judge what bravery costs in someone else’s life, and as a young man I was as brave as I knew how.

And a sense of no longer being needed. When Bec was in Central Scotland before, there was always the reassurance that she was just down the road, but now she is on her own in another hemisphere beyond any immediate help from her parents. But of course I am still needed in a newer role – as father to a fellow-adult.

Some Christians are able to pray that God will keep their loved ones safe from any danger or harm, but knowing that bad stuff happens I don’t have the faith to pray that way. But I can and do entrust these girls to the great God who is present with us whatever happens, present in both light and darkness.

Jesus own life modelled this journey of self-becoming. We believe his father died before Jesus became a public figure. But we see both Jesus’ deep love and respect for his mother, and his resolute embracing of the mission he knew was his.

Jesus taught us to pray ‘Our Father in heaven.’ But I wonder if sometimes we live as God’s infant children, expecting God’s perpetual attention and smile on us, and never becoming the mature Christian adults God dreams of?

Jesus grew away from his parents in finding his mission, and so must each of us as human beings. But in our relationship with God it is precisely as we become more at one with God, that we become more fully ourselves. This is a paradox, but I believe it is true, and on my clearer-seeing days there have been moments when I have experienced the truth of this.

I wonder if to experience God in this deeper way it is necessary for us to go into a far country where God seems distant, where we discover who we are, the strength of our faith, and the extent of our longing for God?

Perhaps, to turn Jesus’ parable on its head, it’s the Father who goes into the far country, inexplicably withdrawing from us, so that we cry ‘How can you do this to me, Father?’ Perhaps it’s the daughter or son who stands at the roadside daily watching for Father’s return, the welcome party already prepared for this God whom we find to be more tender, more loving, and more mysterious than we had ever anticipated.

The girls will be different, and wiser, when they come home. Once boisterous cubs, they are now well on their way to becoming adult lions! And in their leaving and returning their parents will also be changed, and together we will move forward.

I wonder if the lesson the relationship of Jesus and Mary has for us is this: we may, as Mary did, see our children’s lives turning in unanticipated directions as they embrace unexpected dreams. We will serve our children best as parents if we learn both to let them go and to affirm them in the dreams they have been given. I believe parents and children best serve one another when each of them seeks that losing of self in the Father through which we are truly found.

I was sharing with a friend my thoughts about Rebecca going off Africa, and he said, encouragingly, ‘Good for you and Lorna, giving them wings to fly away with and a nest to come home to.’

There is a nest in which we will all find ourselves. The nest of the grave, from which new life will spring; the nest of heaven, from which we will spread our wings in unimagined skies; the nest which in a sense we have never left – the Father’s heart.

Fly high, Rebecca! Fly high, Bethany!  Fly high!

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 27th August 2015)

Welcome home!

Last week a new exhibition opened at the National Gallery in London of some of the works painted by the Dutch artist Rembrandt (1606-1669) during the last 19 years of his life. On the wall beside my desk at work, I have a print of one of Rembrandt’s finest paintings from this period which isn’t on show at the Gallery, The return of the prodigal Son completed shortly before his death.

It’s based on Jesus’ famous story about the son who demanded his inheritance from his still-living father, and went off to the far country where he squandered the money and ended up in abject poverty. His thoughts and his heart are drawn homewards, and he returns to the father’s farm, penitent. He is welcomed not grudgingly, but with open arms.

Rembrandt’s painting depicts the tenderness and love of the father’s welcome. The son kneels, resting his head against the father’s abdomen, and returns the embrace. The elder brother looks on, disapproving, unforgiving.

Rembrandt struggled financially in the final years of his life. He chose to paint works which showed reality as he saw it rather than adopting the currently fashionable style which would have restored his fortune.

Throughout his life the artist painted many pictures of biblical scenes, sometimes including self-portraits of himself as a figure in the crowd. But he was particularly drawn to the story of the wayward son. In 1635 as a young man he painted The prodigal son in the tavern, a self-portrait of himself and his wife Saskia.

In the picture the son is drunk and lecherous, and Saskia is depicted as a prostitute. It’s almost as though the fashionable Rembrandt, careless of morality, reckless with money, rejoices in identifying himself with the wayward son.

In the following three decades. The artist’s life was overshadowed by tragedy – the death of his wife and three of their children – but also by greed, arrogance, and a collapse into bankruptcy. He cruelly conspired to have a woman who had raised a law case against him certified of unsound mind and committed to an asylum.

The deep truth we see in the painting from the 1660s as the son is welcomed back lovingly by the father is so profound it must surely reflect a revolution in Rembrandt’s own life and thought.

When, sitting in the office I feel perplexed or disheartened, I only have to glance at the picture on my left to be reminded that I am loved by God unconditionally and for ever.

I am convinced that the fundamental truth about God is that God is love. No matter how far we feel we are from God, no matter how much we have messed up our lives, God loves us, God is willing to forgive us even if everyone else considers us unforgivable. God waits for us to remember our identity as the Father’s children and come home – for the first or the 1000th time, and when we come we find ourselves embraced by the Father’s welcoming arms.

But what about those of us for whom the very word ‘father’ has been impossibly damaged because of our experience of bad, destructive fathering? We can think of the person who has loved us most perfectly – an aunt or uncle, a grandparent, a brother or sister, a friend. In loving us as they did, their love, despite its imperfections, reflected God’s greater love for us.

We can identify with others in the painting too. With the elder brother, unforgiving, suspicious, offended that despite his faithful work on the farm over the years the father hasn’t ever thrown a party for him like the one planned in honour of his brother’s return.

We can understand his feelings. But his reaction reminds us it’s possible for our religion to become a task to accomplish, an empty ritual, a way of shoring up our sense of identity so that we don’t experience the wonder of the Father’s love for ourselves and others, the love in which our true identity is found.

And ultimately Rembrandt’s painting challenges us to become like the Father. To be a symbol of, and more than that, a channel for God’s boundless love, offering grace, unconditional acceptance, forgiveness and healing to God’s broken people. Saying little, with no personal agendas, simply expressing the Father’s love.

There are other figures in the background of Rembrandt’s painting whom we can hardly make out. They represent all of us who don’t believe, or aren’t sure, or feel we’re unforgivable, all of us who feel wounded and broken and in darkness. They challenge us to step in to the light which radiates from the Father and so experience the embrace which healed Rembrandt and set him free to speak truth in his final great works.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highand News dated 23rd October 2014)