Ashes

I decided that, for Lent this year, I would try to write a little every day.  I have no specific plans about what form that might take, or whether I'll complete much or anything of any particular projects.  Nevertheless, this Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, I have something to show for my efforts:

Ashes

All these years I’ve held within
The truths and lies that I have told,
Like ashes on my skin.

I thought so long that it was sin,
This secret, buried deep like gold
All these years, still held within.

I never knew how to begin,
So kept my spirit hard and cold,
Wore ashes on my skin

To hide myself from friends and kin,
Always waiting just to fold
All these years on hold, within.

I forgot just how it felt to win,
The weight of my imagined goals
Like ashes on my skin.

And in the silence and the din,
This sanctuary for the ensouled,
I shed the years I’ve held within
With ashes on my skin.

The Pilgrim's Saved Progress

Please note: the following article contains some spoilers for the videogames Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Horizon Zero Dawn.

As both a Christian and a gamer, one of the things I find particularly fascinating is the point where these two disparate areas of my life intersect.  There are plenty of websites and blogs dedicated to Christian responses to and interaction with the video game industry and, contrary to what some might expect, it’s not all Jack Thomson-esque ‘Violent Vidjagame’ rants.  There is a sizeable community of Christian gamers on the internet and, seeing both their faith and their gaming as important parts of their identity, they like to explore how they interact in their lives and what Christianity might have to say about gaming as a hobby; about the types of gameplay on offer or the stories games tell.  Sites like Game Church and Geeks Under Grace often explore this side of things and, though I don’t visit them much, I too like to ponder what my faith has to say about my hobby.  In particular, and especially in the last few years, I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘pilgrimage’ in video games and it surprised me to find that there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of discussion on this topic across the internet, so far.

According to Wikipedia, “a pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.”  It’s a kind of adventure, a temporary stepping outside of ordinary life often, but not always, with a destination or goal in mind.  It does not have to be religious - indeed there’s a growing market for secular pilgrimages focussing on mental health and wellbeing.

Based on the above definition, many video games are already about pilgrimages of one kind or another.  A hero is chosen to go on a quest that takes them out of an otherwise less-than-thrilling existence and, through the course of that journey, revelations unfold before them, lessons are learned, powers are gained, etc. etc..  Sometimes this even takes the form of an actual pilgrimage, like in Final Fantasy X where your characters all accompany Yuna, the summoner, who must visit each of the temples of the Fayth in Spira, to beseech their aid in defeating the monster Sin.

Often, as indeed is the case in Final Fantasy X, the pilgrimage structure is actually subverted with the intent of saying something negative about organised religion or about spirituality in general, or just to provide an exciting (if now rather predictable) twist in the narrative.  Even then, in a lot of cases, the actual revelations themselves are far from profound and the whole experience is built more on having fun than on any kind of self-improvement or spiritual development.  And that’s fine.  That is what games are for.  But I believe they can often be so much more, whether they intend to be or not.

Before I look at some specific examples of games where I think this is the case, however, I’d like to look at another concept, related to the concept of pilgrimage, which I think captures even more closely what video games can be.  That concept is peregrinatio, a Latin phrase meaning to travel abroad, but used by Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century to refer to a way he thought Christians should journey through life, as those who are sojourning away from their homeland, rather than comfortably situated within it already.  The Celtic church took the term and used it even more specifically: peregrinatio pro amore Christi - journeying for the love of Christ.  As Esther de Waals described it in her book The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination, the Celtic peregrinatio is a “seeking, quest, adventure, wandering, exile”.  It is this concept that led so many Celtic figures, like St. Columbanus and St. Aidan, to leave their homelands and travel to spread the word of Christ, founding new Christian communities across the British Isles and beyond.  Another Celtic saint, St. Brendan the Navigator, even left behind a fantastical (and probably allegorical) journey narrative as his legacy - one which could make a fascinating premise for a game in its own right  - so committed was he to the idea of setting out and letting God lead the way.

The Celtic idea of peregrinatio permeates Celtic Christianity, such that journeys, both physical and spiritual, hold special significance and there are many Celtic prayers dedicated to the idea of journeying with God.  When looking at the medium of video games, I wonder if a virtual journey might not also hold such significance.

So what examples do I have of virtual pilgrimages?  What have been my digital peregrinationes?  Well, the most obvious example that comes to mind is Thatgamecompany’s masterpiece, Journey.  A very simple game with a wordless story about a mystical journey up a mountain, Journey is a game about pilgrimage.  The exact nature and purpose of the pilgrimage are obscure, told only through images the player finds in shrine-like locations at the end of each level, but over the course of the titular journey, you gradually build up a power of mystical light that allows you to float through the air for longer and longer periods, enabling you to reach more complicated platforming elements and to interact with a series of surreal, fabric (or scripture)-like beings who aid you on your travels.

You can also meet and play along with other players playing the same level at the same time as you.  These meetings are not pre-arranged and you have no control over them.  Neither are you able to communicate with the other player through any means other than your own character’s movement through the world and through the ‘speaking’ of bright glyphs of light, the meaning of which is… whatever you want them to be.  In these simple interactions, whilst surrounded by beautiful locations, strong environmental storytelling and the stirring, emotive music of composer Austin Wintory, the game brings out the sense of wonder and attachment one finds in travelling with others, even those we do not know when it is done for the same sacred purpose.

And, like the title suggests, Journey, just like many pilgrimages, is really about the journey, not the destination - to the point that when you complete the game and reach the destination in the midst of bright light and jubilant harmony, the game takes you right back to the beginning to do it all over again.  This idea of the journey itself being the significant part runs right through the idea of peregrinatio and it has become a feature of many pilgrimages, something we can see coming through even as far back as the Canterbury Tales, where a pilgrimage journey, rather than a particular place or time, is the backdrop for all of its varied stories.

Which brings me to my next category of games, the so-called ‘walking simulator’ and specifically the Chinese Room’s seminal example Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.  The title might lead you to suspect that it has a Christian theme from the off, but, if anything, that’s a red herring, at least on any surface evaluation of the game.

In Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, you wander around the deserted English village of Yaughton and its surrounding countryside, witnessing scenes from the recent past played out in silhouettes of golden light and slowly unravelling the series of events that lead to the village’s deserted state, eventually making your way to the place where all the events began, an observatory on the edge of the village.  It is a very haunting, peaceful and reflective game.  There is nothing one might consider action and you are almost entirely passive in your reception of the story, choosing only which paths you take around the location.  The soundtrack, by the excellent Jessica Curry, is a mixture of orchestral swells and English choral music and, combined with the beautiful countryside views, it lends the game a further emotional and meditative filter.  Even without the story, therefore, Everybody’s Gone… has the feeling of a kind of spiritual journey, and I personally found it to be an enriching and deeply moving experience.

There is an interpretation of the story which I found on the internet, however, that adds another layer to this spiritual perception of the game.  Through the course of the game you learn about how an alien presence referred to only as the Pattern, and appearing as the golden light you’ve been witnessing, had made its way into Yaughton and begun affecting and eventually disappearing all of the village’s inhabitants.  It’s certainly possible to view the Pattern as a malevolent alien force and the disappearances as acts of murder, but this isn’t how one character in the story - an American scientist who is an alien of another sort in this quiet English village - views the events.  For her, the Pattern is something beautiful and being united with the Pattern is not just desirable, but the ultimate way to be.  These two different attitudes to the Pattern are similar to attitudes you may find to the idea of God and Heaven, but there’s more to this spiritual interpretation than just that.

Throughout the game, you witness again and again how, before it ‘takes’ people, the Pattern brings out the conflicts and struggles of that person’s life and, from a certain point of view, resolves them.  It is, essentially, bringing about a kind of confession and reconciliation, analogous to the actions of the Spirit in Christian Theology, such that the person’s eventual acceptance and disappearance is not all that unlike a kind of Christian rapture after all.  This interpretation of the story, combined with the laidback exploration of Yaughton turns this virtual journey into a spiritual experience, a kind of digital peregrinatio, if approached with the right mindset.  And, as will all such journeys, it leaves you with a lot to ponder and reflect upon afterwards, something I still find myself doing, especially when listening again to its beautiful soundtrack.

Though Everybody's Gone… has a definite endpoint and goal, just like with Journey, it is the journey itself, the experiences you have along the way and that you take with you as you move on, that is really important.  This idea of experiencing a journey is especially important in the next category of games I will look at: open-world games.

In an open-world game, the game opens up a massive area and allows you the freedom to explore and stray from the path towards the next main objective, choosing instead to follow sidequests, hunt collectables or just enjoy the scenery.  When I suggested to someone that open-world games might be particularly important to the idea of pilgrimage in video games I was exploring, they said that they thought they would be particularly unsuitable because they are always distracting you away from the main task, but, I would argue, that is precisely what makes them some of the best candidates for this kind of virtual/spiritual experience.  In an open-world game, you are given the chance to make your own goals and to choose to experience the game world in spite of, or at the expense of, rather than dictated by, the game’s narrative or gameplay loops.  This enables a more meditative experience and the option to overlay what the game already provides with your own spiritual reflection.

At this point, it is worth considering how we might meditate and reflect on art generally.  Paintings have often been the object of or inspiration for spiritual reflection.  One can gaze on a beautiful painting - especially if it is of a religious subject, but even if not - and appreciate the ideas it contains, the creative talent that bore it and the God that lies behind all such creativity and beauty.  Video games need be no different, except that, often, they create an experience we can actually inhabit in a much more direct way than with a static artwork.  On top of this, they often utilise the creative talents of worldbuilders, those with the skill to create fictional realities that excite us and in which we can believe, if only for a time.  Worldbuilding, it should go without saying, is a creative talent particularly close, in certain ways, to the creative act of God Himself and the one, in my opinion, which depends most on that existing creation.  Thus, reflecting on the vistas of an open-world game is both similar to reflecting on any other work of art and also to reflection on creation itself, such as we might do during a physical pilgrimage.

For an example, I’ve picked a game I’ve only recently finished playing: Horizon Zero Dawn, in which you play a young woman named Aloy in a post-apocalyptic world of primitive tribes and massive, animal-like machines.  The game’s story takes Aloy on a massive journey across the remains of the American midwest and deals with the themes of multiculturalism, environmentalism, religion and identity and the dangers of technology.  In the course of the rich and often tragically haunting story, you learn that much of how the world appears in Aloy’s time is down to a complex terraforming AI which has rebuilt life on earth after manmade machines wiped it out entirely. Aloy’s home tribe have essentially mythologised this AI into a mother goddess, but Aloy, in a quest to learn who she really is, must learn the truth for herself.  This lends the game a kind of pilgrimage feel, as Aloy’s journey takes her to the ruined “shrines” and “temples” of this AI’s history in her efforts to understand that history and, in the process, put an end to a digital “demon” that threatens all life on earth.

On your way to these discoveries, however, you can also just explore the world and, whilst it is often fraught with danger, it has a breathtaking beauty and is permeated by the kind of stillness that one can only find in the natural world.  Reflecting on the artificial creation of this world, both in real life and in the terms of the narrative leads me to reflect on the creation of the real world, to appreciate all the more how it has come into being and to worship the creator who enabled that to happen.  Journeying through Horizon’s forests, deserts and mountainscapes also gave me the time and space to reflect on other things as well and, with things spiritual in mind, any trip into that world can become part of life’s peregrinatio.

There are other titles I could talk about which have been or contained elements of meaningful pilgrimages for myself, but about which I don’t have time to go into detail.  Games like ABZȖ, made by one of the designers who worked on Journey and with music by the same composer, which creates a mystical underwater journey of startling beauty and, with its environmentally-told story of a quest for a mystical, life-giving water (the abzȗ of the title) is full of spiritual metaphor.  Or like SOMA, an existential horror game set in the ruins of an underwater research station, which I played when I was just starting to understand that I might have an anxiety disorder.  The philosophical questions it posed about the nature of existence and human consciousness turned it into an unlikely pilgrimage of its own, one I found I desperately needed to complete.

Of course, none of these games is necessarily a true pilgrimage unless you make it so.  There needs to be intentionality to your approach to exploring their worlds and pondering on their meaning.  You could just take it all at face value, enjoy the experience and move on, and there would be nothing wrong with that per se, but if instead, you choose to inhabit their worlds and savour their beauty, to put yourself wholly inside the experience, bringing your own past experience and spirituality with you, then they have the potential to be far more than the sum of their parts and an opportunity - particularly relevant for those of us in various stages of lockdown - to experience the pilgrim’s journey from our living rooms.  The escapism they allow need not be an escape from the things that matter, but an escape from the business of life into something more profound: escape to a place where we can find refreshment for our souls.

On Priesthood

As part of the process of discernment - working through a sense of calling to the priesthood of the Church of England - I'm encouraged to read quite a lot and reflect on the things I've read.  Sometimes those reflections are little more than introspective book reviews, sometimes they go a little deeper and, sometimes, the best way to express how I've reflected on something I've read is through poetry.  Such is the case with my most recently read book, On Priesthood: Servants, Shepherds, Messengers Sentinels and Stewards, by Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Reading.  As an examination of what it means to be a Priest in the Anglican tradition, it's really quite excellent, but one thing that stood out to me was Bishop Stephen's inclusion of poetry produced by those about to be ordained.  He emphasises the power of poetry as prayer and, as such, I thought it would be the best way to reflect on the book as a whole.  Here, then, is On Priesthood, my poetic response.

Faithful guardian of the flock

Entrusted,

Who leads,

Who protects,

Who guides and enables.

One who ripens the fruit

In others,

So the harvest may be gathered

In the world.

Faithful herald of the word

Delivered,

Who speaks,

Who teaches,

Who questions and provokes.

One who sows the seed

In each soil,

So the harvest may be gathered

In the world.

Faithful keeper of the mysteries

Revealed,

Who receives,

Who kindles,

Who treasures and polishes.

One who tends the fields

With care,

So the harvest may be gathered

In the world.

Faithful watcher of the horizons

Opened,

Who sees,

Who ponders,

Who reads and interprets.

One who quietly observes

The clouds

So the harvest may be gathered

In the world.

Faithful servant of the Lord

Humbled/Exalted,

Who waits,

Who loves,

Who empowers and lifts up.

One who gleans the sheaves

For the struggling,

So the harvest may be gathered

In the world.

Encouragements

This blog would have originally been published in May of 2014. For reasons I can't quite recall - perhaps because it was too personal - it never was, but the reading it now there are things it says which speak to me even six years later, so I publish it now as an artefact, as a memory, as a lesson.

Today marks two weeks since we debuted the Aberdeen Passion 2014 and began an unforgettable and intense two day experience of God's goodness, mercy and love as a diverse family of actors, singers, musicians and production crew. It has been a long two weeks.

Never before, to my recollection, have I experienced such a dramatic shift between an ecstatic high and a melancholic low. I went from the certain, emboldening, relational and joyous experience of God's Kingdom life, to being uncertain, afraid, lonely and sad and as each low day dragged into the next I realised that it wasn't really passing, certainly not in the way I had expected it to.

I was anxious much of the time, desperate to make human connections, especially with those who had had the same great experience and might be feeling something similar. I stayed glued to Facebook, feeding off the short-lived excitement of another comment or like, another photo posted. In between, especially in work, I would be hit by waves of apathy or despair. I relived moments from the play, both on stage and off, and mourned the fact that I was back in the real world, no longer doing something I loved with people I felt a connection to.

I cried. A lot. And a lot more than anyone knew.

And in the midst of this I knew God was with me. At first it was in the kind words of those who saw the Passion and wanted to thank us for our part in it. To a certain extent this was only to be expected, but people were so generous with their praise, it was more than I had truly anticipated.

Then it was in the way that, whilst I was worrying about leading services in my home church - and particularly praying in front of the congregation (something I've spoken about at length) - I had a couple of people telling me how much they enjoyed my prayers (specifically) and found them helpful, something even more have done since I actually led those services last weekend.

And there have been other encouragements too. In a week in which I had, in my desperation to connect, flaunted myself on social media, I never received anything but kind words. The song lyrics I had stuck in my head from the Passion turned out to contain the exact reminders I needed before leading services on Sunday. The sermon that evening was on Hope and Suffering and how, as Christians, we can and should live authentic lives where we do not lie about how we feel (part of the inspiration for this blog). This month's minister's letter was just a long list of encouraging verses. I've had specific verses (Jeremiah 29:11 foremost amongst them) lodged in my head since this began and my bible reading notes have led me through the end of the exodus, reminding me of God's faithfulness and his good plans for us.

I have been surrounded by blessings, from the weather this morning to the smiles on my family's faces when I come home each day. I have fewer reasons to doubt God is with me and on my side than ever before.

And yet I have railed at Him and questioned him. I have called Him cruel and hard. I have tried to cling to Him as to a rock in a storm and, because I was still getting wet, have doubted Him. I have been vain and selfish and inconsiderate of the pain of others. I have been a very poor witness.

These two realities have run alongside each other, each with a claim on me, but one has weakened with time, whilst the other has seemed to strengthen as I have paid it more attention.

I've used the past tense so far, but the truth it is it not yet over. I am still riding a low point, if not as bad a before. I am still prone to bouts of anxiety, or melancholy. I still have moments when I just want to cry. The waves of despair have mostly passed, but they left behind the flotsam dredged from the depths of my own personal abyss. I have always been susceptible to times of mild depression and anxiety is no stranger. These are facets of who I am, of the chemistry of my brain and they will not go away so easily. The aftermath of the Passion had unsettled the balance and I have to deal with that. The point here, however, is that I do not have to do so alone. God has remained by my side throughout, patiently waiting for me to turn to Him, to cry out, even to shout at Him, so that He can put His and around me.

The encouragement is that, far from being distant in our suffering, God is right there with us. And that helps. It is not a miracle cure. Though I belive such is possible, our witness is sometimes the greater in the long term because we've faced pain with God, rather than avoiding it through him, and so we carry on and cling to the one beside us.

Grief, Death and New Life

Ezekiel 37: 1-14, John 11: 1-45

The Church of England’s Revised Common Lectionary gives two rather lengthy readings for this Sunday, but, unlike so many such pairings, they have a clear common theme: resurrection.  The passages approach the concept of resurrection in very different ways. In the case of Lazarus’ resurrection, the story is, for the most part, very literal: Jesus raises a man from the dead, although his declaration that He Himself is ‘the resurrection’ takes the concept beyond mere bodily resurrection into the world of spirit and metaphor.  The resurrection vision which Ezekiel sees, however, is not to be taken literally at all.  God Himself explains the meaning of the vision and it’s clear that he is not talking about raising the people of Israel from physical death, but from the spiritual death they feel they are experiencing in exile, or, indeed, the spiritual death that had sent them into exile in the first place.

At this extraordinary time, when everything we do seems strange by context - for most of us, cooped up at home, watching the pandemic grow ever worse in the world outside - and when we are cut off from our traditional concepts of Church, there are a few comforting things that I take from these passages.

Firstly, there is the promise of “the shortest verse in the Bible”, John 11:34, which, in the NRSV linked above is translated ‘Jesus began to weep’.  In the NIV it’s famously just ‘Jesus wept.’  This verse is so often used to point to Jesus’ fragile humanity, how He experienced pain and suffering in incarnation just as all humans must.  At a time when many are anxious and fearful, when so many are losing loved ones very suddenly, when what appears to be a lottery of death hangs all about us, there is comfort in knowing that Jesus weeps, too.  Even knowing what is about to happen to Lazarus, He shares in the suffering of Lazarus’ sisters; He feels their pain as He feels His own at the loss of a friend.  Thus, as we suffer through this pandemic in many ways, we can draw near to Jesus and grieve with Him.

Secondly, there is the promise that death is not the end.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life and, as He says, ‘Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.’  In Jesus there is hope, even in the face of death and, contrary to how many present it, it is an inclusive hope, one offered to any and all who put their trust in Him.  The only barrier, it seems, is our own decision to do otherwise.

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly for the majority of us at this moment, there is a promise for the life we live now.  Though we may feel cut off from the Church we love and the familiar patterns of our faith through isolation, though we may feel we are going through a tough and empty time where all the joys of our life have been stripped away and God has never seemed further, though we may be utterly dead in faith and feel unable even to choose to believe in Jesus, the vision of Ezekiel gives us hope.

God is able to bring new life in all its forms and in all its fullness.  As the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 16, 'You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.' God can put flesh on the bones of our life, breath in our bodies and allow us truly to live.  Right now, when we may feel enervated, apathetic or hopeless; that there is little for us worth doing or little we can contribute to our friends, families and communities; that ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely’, God is able to reach down to us in our living death and lift us up to be an army for His purposes.  And that is God’s work, not ours!  We don’t have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, nor despair at the work to be done, we just have to trust that God will do His work and thus enable us to serve him effectively.

And so we pray:

Father God,
Thank you that you are with us in our suffering
Through your Son, Jesus Christ,
That you, too weep and grieve,
That, though death may come for us all,
In you it does not have to be the end.
And now, as we struggle to find the energy
To face many days cut off from life as we have known it,
Give us new life and new energy and new faith,
So that we may serve you well now and always.
In the name of Him who weeps with us,
Our saviour, Jesus Christ,
Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forevermore,
Amen.

Going Viral

We live in unprecedented times. Even if one is to look at past pandemics, like the Bubonic Plague, or past events that transformed national life, like World War II, the culture we live in is so far-removed from those times as to make any comparison shallow and unhelpful. The world has never faced anything like this before and to have the very foundations of normality pulled out from under us and life reset to its basic elements is an unsettling thing for many of us. Much discussion has taken place already concerning the nature of the crisis we face and the changes it must wreak upon our lives - after all, many of us don’t have much else to do now we’re locked up in our homes for the majority of the day. I’ve seen discussions about how this will impact our view of economics in the future; how it might alter relationships and our appreciation of friends and family; how it helps us to value the most essential services we are offered in life, like medical care or the provision of groceries. People have made much of our suddenly reduced impact on the environment and, yes, there has been an ongoing conversation about what this means for the Church, which is my concern. With church services across our and many other nations suspended indefinitely and the Archbishop of Canterbury calling on Christians to be Church in a radically different way, I have found myself reflecting on what this might mean. How can the Church be radically different when it cannot meet in any traditional way? What can replace the usual Sunday services or weekly Bible studies? Are there ways to be Church online that we haven’t really explored yet? I am convinced that there are, that the way forward for the Church at this time, and as something that must be ongoing for many of us even when this crisis is over, is to be found in expressing our faith in new creative and practical ways - online for now, but unleashed onto the world as well just as soon as we can leave our homes. I don’t know how this will look in practice, however, and I’m not convinced anyone else really does either. I think, first and foremost, we all need to look at the gifts God has given us and ask ourselves (and God) how we might best use those gifts in our current situation. Only once Christians start to do this en masse will this radical “new” vision for the Church become clear. I put ‘new’ in quotation marks there for a reason. I’ve been hearing talk of new opportunities for the Church, when, actually, what I see are the old paths rarely taken becoming the only options once the well-trodden ways have been closed off to us. I was directed by my ADO to Psalm 137, ‘By the rivers of Babylon…’, and found much there to consider in this current situation. There are obvious comparisons to be made between the Jewish community in exile in Babylon and the Church in exile from its buildings during this pandemic. Certainly, whilst Christians everywhere are greeting this new way of living in very different ways, some of us must be taking this enforced absence from Sunday rituals very badly. Are we sitting down and weeping by the living-room sofa as we remember Holy Communion? It might sound silly put that way, but for some this level of unsettling change will be very upsetting and whatever action the Church takes to continue being God’s people in this strange exile, we must consider how to care for and encourage those who are finding it difficult. Similarly, whether we realise it or not, many of us will be clinging on to old ways of doing things, just as the writer of Psalm 137 seems to be in the second stanza. Certainly, the immediate response to the closing of churches has been to recreate what we know of church online through live-streaming. There’s nothing wrong with that at all and, indeed, it will prove very helpful for many of us, but I am convinced that we will soon discover that that alone does not constitute Church and we may find ourselves longing for something more and grieving what we have lost. The Psalmist, too, laments over the loss of Jerusalem and fears forgetting it as we might fear whether it will ever be the same again after the pandemic has passed. He asks ‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’ and we too must ask ourselves this question. How can we sing the Lord’s song with social-distancing, in self-isolation, in lockdown? The exiled Jews found ways to answer that question. The exile was a period of incredible spiritual growth for the Jewish people, with much scriptural material written and revised during this time as well as many talmudic writings as commentary. Whilst we mustn’t pressure ourselves into doing more than we can in a time which will be trying in lots of unexpected ways - strained relationships, finding time and energy to educate our children, worrying about work and finances, etc. - there is no reason that we too can’t find some time to grow in our spirituality, gaining new insights into scripture, into the way God is working around and through us, learning to love God more and our fellow humans too along the way. Perhaps we will find Psalms like 137 helpful to consider during a time of readjustment. We might at first relate with its picture of fear and sorrow, but by asking its questions, by hurling them at God if necessary, hopefully we can learn to move on. Here I find Romans 12 verses one and two helpful. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” In the light of our current circumstances, I read this rather differently than I have done in the past. I am very conscious that it is by God’s mercies - the way that he condescends (comes down with us) to be with us in our daily lives - that we might be able to become living sacrifices and live out our faith - our being Church without the usual Sunday worship rituals. Indeed, this verse talks about spiritual worship, which doesn’t require bricks and mortar, or a worship band, or even a preacher, at all. I am reminded also of Hosea 6:6, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”, or Psalm 51: 16-17, “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Both speak of relating to and worshipping God outside of the traditional religious practices of the day and so our living sacrifice might also be a living liturgy or a living prayer - turning our lives into the act of worship we are no longer allowed to perform in the way to which we have become accustomed. And that living sacrifice, that liturgy of our lives, is also to be something novel, something transformed and renewed. We need not conform to the patterns of our religious traditions any more than to those of this world. There is much they can teach us of course and much we can borrow and use - I’ve been learning much from exploring Celtic Christianity, for example - but they do not need to constrict us. We have the opportunity now, as we have always had, to worship God and to serve His kingdom in new ways, with new creativity and new love guided by the Spirit. As I see it, the Church is always on the edges of Heaven and Earth, always at the point of standing up, jumping in, taking action. Right now that image is more clear to me than ever before, because all the old patterns we might have fallen back upon have been taken away from us, thus now, now we can perhaps show the world something new and in so doing reveal the most ancient of truths. And so, hopefully, I write these reflections and share them publicly in ways I might not a few weeks ago, because this situation emboldens me. This is but one part of the Church we might become, but I do what I can see to do and hope to have my eyes opened further the deeper into this time of darkness we go.

Scotland: Success, Sorrow and the Sin that Separates.

So, Scotland has decided.

My fears were unwarranted and the majority chose to vote No and the United Kingdom I call my home will continue to be united, for a while longer at least.  The sense of relief this gave me on Friday morning was greater than I had anticipated, feeling remarkably like a weight lifted from around my shoulders (I guess that's a cliché for a reason) and then leaving me with the overwhelming sense of exhaustion one usually gets after long periods of anxiety.

Consequently, work on Friday was slow, but it lacked the horrible sense of tension which had accompanied the weeks beforehand and so, despite being tired, I was happy.

Then I began to read the statuses and comments from friends on Facebook who had voted the other way (if you're reading this, then you'll most likely know who you are) and my mood changed,  I did not feel guilty - I genuinely believe I voted the right way and do not wish to change my mind at all - but I did feel sad.

It is genuine sorrow I feel for all those who I know and respect and, indeed, care for a great deal, who chose the opposite outcome from myself and were horribly disappointed.  Even though that outcome would have been a nightmare for me, and one which would have left me deeply upset, I cannot respond to their emotional turmoil with smug happiness.  I feel their pain even though it is for the loss of a dream I did not want to see come into reality.  I feel their pain even though, in one tiny part, I helped bring it about.  This is, in short, a bit of a mess.

And it has always been so, although especially in the last few months, weeks and days of the referendum campaign.  Scotland was (and is), for all its pride in its new found democratic engagement, a deeply divided country.  I felt this personally as I saw the very same Yes votes as in the paragraph above declaring their feelings about the hoped-for independence and found myself beginning to brim with suspicion, mistrust, dislike, even... even hatred.

I am not proud of this, of course, and nor did I act upon any of these upwellings of negative emotion, but neither can I deny that they existed, nor that they might reappear if similar circumstances were to arise once more.

I can even rationalise it quite a bit.  Amidst the pre-referendum tension, Yes votes were looking forward,  hopeful and optimistic and often vehemently passionate, towards a future for Scotland I did not feel I could have any part in, one which would, essentially, be expelling me from the country.  And, even though that would be the result of my decision, not theirs, and even though that was not what they were actually voting for (and nor should it have been), that automatically made them a kind of enemy.  When people you know and love, or even strangers on the streets or in the comments threads become the enemy for no other reason than that they have a yes badge on their lapel or in their profile picture, you know something deeply troubling is occurring

And of course I had to keep reminding myself that they were not the enemy, that they were just choosing the path they genuinely believed was right for themselves and their families, or Scotland, or both.  They were given the same choice as I had been, and given the same information and the only difference was that they interpreted it all a different way and if we're all honest none of us knew for certain which interpretation was truly correct.  We just had to make the best of it.

And crucially, to put a theological spin on all this (which is where I'm heading anyway, in case you were in any doubt) neither vote was a sin to cast, at least not that I can see.  For those unfamiliar with the concept of sin, it is primarily defined as that which we do against God, our creator and the one who knows us best.  Sin is a broken relationship, a rebellion and it usually has consequences for our own health and spiritual well-being, or that of those around us.

Neither Yes, nor No was a vote which said something about your relationship to God, to bring shame upon His name, or renounce Him in any way.  Equally, neither Yes, nor No was designed to wilfully hurt another human being.  Though I have read arguments to the contrary, I do not believe that a vote for Yes was driven by rebellion or hatred of the English, neither was a vote for No driven by selfishness and greed.  I am sure that God is equally capable of using an independent Scotland for His glory as He is able to do so with the current United Kingdom.  I do not know what His design in all this was, but since it was not made clear in anyway, we could not be wilfully going against it by voting either way.

So if voting Yes (or No) was not actually sinful, how can anyone justify the automatic enmity which holding the opposing view produced in myself and so very many others on either side of the divide?  We can't, even though we may have felt genuinely under threat from the alternative viewpoint.  That means that the enmity itself was the sin, but there's more to it than that, for we might ask how we could avoid sinning in this way in a world where people inevitably want different and opposing things without any of those things being sinful in themselves.  It just seems terribly unfair.

And of course it is.  That's because the sin is not just within ourselves, responding negatively to those we see as different, but in the world as a whole - the sum of all the sinful desires and temptations we all experience in our lives.  It is sin in the world that creates the situations were we can want different things for the right reasons and put ourselves on opposite sides of the battle in doing so.  It is sin which creates the thousands of differing beliefs we all hold to dearly, whether globally, or even within one religion or school of thought.  It is sin which results in the greed and mismanagement of resources which force people to squabble over food, or oil or land.  It is, of course, sin which creates democratic governments which do not function as advertised and cause inequality, deep divisions of political conscience and the desire to split.

What I am saying, then, is that it is sin which brought about this referendum.  I do not, of course mean that the SNP were sinful in their desire to ensure the referendum took place, or that the desire within so many Scots for independence itself is sinful.  No.  I mean that it is sin which has brought us to this point, which has so tainted the history of the nations of the United Kingdom, so corrupted those who govern it and so embittered the hearts of many on all sides of the debate over the centuries that the referendum and the division it brought into sharp relief was completely inevitable.

For, of course, in a perfect world we wouldn't need national boundaries and separate governments to protect our identities and desires.  In a perfect world the very thought of cutting ourselves off from each other in such a way would seem ludicrous.  In a perfect world our diversity and differences would be so celebrated, so marvelled at, that we would never think it a cause for isolation, separation or relocation.  In a perfect world there would be no need for ideas like nationalism or unionism, because they would be one and the same thing.

That is why I'm sad even though I got what I wanted.  I'm sad that it had to come to this, that my friends should be upset by my happy turn of events.

But I am also joyful, because, whilst the world isn't perfect, I already have my true nationality, my true citizenship, in a place which is, and so do many of those friends.  Whilst we might disagree on many things, including the details of our faith from time to time, we are united by the one who took sin upon Himself to save us from it and who will, one day, sweep all nations and their pretensions to glory out of the way, to make way for a true kingdom - not of some kind of ethnic purity, as some would see it, nor a dull place where everyone is the same and isn't allowed to think for themselves, but where the diversity that the King Himself created can be celebrated and enjoyed and can complement and balance and just work, in the way the world today never could, no matter how idealistic we might be in changing it, or how well-intentioned our efforts to prevent change.

So, I thank God that He has the solution to sin and sorrow and pray that he will comfort you and transform you in yours and that one day we might meet up as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and never be divided by our differences again.

A Fair Hearing

It is late at night on the eve of the Scottish Independence Referendum, an event which is easily the most historic (if one can use that phrase before it has even happened) of which I have ever been a part.  The hour is late and, after days of doing little but liking articles and comments and, on one occasion only, actually sharing one, I find that I do want to have my say.  Everyone else is having theirs and that's what the internet age is all about, right?  Getting to give our points of view, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense or anyone is actually listening?

Yes, I'm aware I'm lampooning this even as I write - I get the irony, but I'm doing this because the desire to be heard is a strong one and it's one of many which has fired up this referendum in the first place.

I don't want to write a series of arguments or clever points to get you to swing around to my point of view, however.  I'm sure you've already made up your mind, or, if you haven't this late in the game, then you're probably not going to be swayed at the last minute by meagre ramblings.

I'm also not here to congratulate everyone on their political engagement, to point out all the wonderful things the referendum debate has brought into the public consciousness, to pat everyone on the back in advance of the final whistle and remind us all to be sportsmanlike in victory, or defeat.

I'm not condemning either of those actions, either.  We all have a right to speak up about the things we believe in and are passionate about and there is much truth to the positive, 'we're all friends here, right?' posts as well.

No.

All I want to do is express myself and, primarily, I mean how I feel.

Lent: One Month Later

Yesterday marked exactly one month since Easter, Resurrection Sunday and the end of my (mostly) fictionless Lent, so I thought it would be a good time to look back and, very briefly, review how it went and what has become of me since. Unfortunately yesterday was also rather busy, so, beautiful symmetry ruined, I shall update you today, instead.

Firstly, how do I think Lent went? During the experience I was pretty up and down about it, riding the highs and lows of successes and failures, expectations exceeded and disappointments encountered. One month on, however, I can view the whole thing as something meaningful, directional and for which I am hugely thankful to God for leading me into. Combined with the Aberdeen Passion, recent job explorations and church activities, it really feels like the sometimes glacial work of being transformed by the renewing of my mind was given a serious turbo charge!

That flipside of that comes in the answer to the next question: how do I feel what I learned and experienced during Lent has carried through into my post-Lenten life? The answer here is more ambiguous, at least partly because I'm still living it, but also because the successes and failures continue. I had intended to keep listening to sermons a few times a week, for example and managed it for the first week or so, but then the lure of new episodes of Fringe has dulled my enthusiasm.

I have managed to keep to my morning prayer and bible study time, however, and that has helped to stabilise me through the flat times, the depressing times and the moments of anxiety after the Passion. (There's actually a whole missing blog post about that, but I think I have been wise to leave it in my drafts).

I have also been examining the things I really love to do and tried to do them more, to God's glory, I hope. I've got back into song writing and singing more, and have posted a couple of songs on my new soundcloud account. I have also vowed to do more writing that is not merely Shadow, including updating this blog and finishing Murkland (although please bear in mind I last committed to finish it on New Year's Day, 2013.,,)

In the midst of all this in keeping my eyes and ears open for the opportunities God gives to use my talents and skills for Him and hope to find a more fulfilling path in life than where I've been up until now - careerwise, at least.

So, watch this space, I guess?

After the Passion (A Psalm)

The last few days have been very tough, for all the reasons listed in my previous blog and more.  I have felt cold and empty when I should have felt joy, and lonely, even when there have been many people around me (and people who love me very much right beside me).

Last night, in the midst of all this I felt the desire to write a Psalm.  I have never tried before, nor have I really wanted to, but I started it right then and worked on it again this morning.  It is probably still a work in progress, but I wanted to share it, for, in writing when feeling low and in focussing on God as I did so - in crying out to Him and praising Him - I find my heart very much lightened.  I hope it might be a blessing to others also.

One final thing.  Psalms have a tendency to be melodramatic and, it has to be said, so do I.  That tendency has got a lot worse this week - leaving me feeling guilty every time I express myself - but here, in the context of a Psalm, it seems only a magnification, not a distortion.  I hope you read it as such.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?

My enemies outnumber my friends.
They are locusts stripping my fields,
They are an army of ghosts sent to haunt me.
Their helmets shine like gold,
Their raiment like the sun at noon,
But they hide faces pocked with decay,
Their flesh is the flesh of the grave:
To rally to their call is to die.

Why have you let them come to me, oh Lord?
Why, when victory seemed so close at hand,
When I basked in the glow of your triumph,
Was it snatched away, so cruelly?

For I have seen your Holy city, Lord,
I have tasted the wine of Zion,

And drank with the family you had given me.

The air was cool and sweet,
Like honey on my lips,
Like nectar on the tongue.
Your people welcomed me
With olive branches and laurels,
With fruit and fragrant wine.
We sang and danced and rejoiced together.
My cup was overflowing with joy.

But it did not last, Lord.
Like a dream, it vanished in the morning,
Like a fox it ran with the dawn
And I was left alone.

Alone, I face this army in the desert.

Was it merely a mirage?
Did my mind deceive me?
Or are these ghosts the deception,
Sent to waylay me on my pilgrimage?

For I am not alone.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul,
When the one who holds the banquet
Walks beside me?

The Lord will be my shield.
He will be my armour and my sword.
His word will be the light to guide me,
The path which I must follow.

We march for home,
For the city on the hill,
Where the banquet yet awaits
And the doors are thrown wide
For the return of her Princes.

I will sing to the Lord,
And put aside the vanity that haunts me.
For the triumph was yours, oh my God,
The tears,
The sweat,
The blood,
But I rejoiced in the gift
And not in the giver.

[Selah]

It was not a dream,
For I have not yet awoken.
The city was not a mirage,
For the desert is the lie.

You have prepared a place for me,
Oh Lord, my God,
And though phantoms assail me,
Though I am faithless and weak,
You will not give it to another.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?
For the Lord is my rock and my salvation
And I will sing,
Though worlds collapse around me
And tears wear gullies in my cheeks.

I will sing.

Resurrection Day!

This is, hopefully, just going to be a short post.  I have post-Easter lunch dishes to do and should really get some proper rest and a cup of tea before long as well.  I am, however, emotional, a little overwrought and just kind of desperate to keep connecting to something that has passed and so I can't be held fully responsible for the length this post reaches...

Easter has come and that means Lent is over.  I can return to Fiction.  I no longer have to deny myself the way I have for the last month and a bit.  This is fantastic news in many ways, and yet, apart from reading a chapter of a story a friend is writing (and cruelly posted just after I had started my Lent - kidding!) I haven't really availed myself of the opportunity.  I doubt this has anything to do with piety.  It's mostly because the day has been busy enough with things of its own, and it's also because I'm in a really weird place emotionally

I'll tell you the story.

So, a little over six months ago I committed to joining the Aberdeen Passion 2014.  I've mentioned this before.  In that six month period, as well as having ups and downs in 'the real world' with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl, the departure of a much loved cat, and a fair degree of uncertainty over what I should be doing with my life, I bonded with my fellow cast-members (some again, some for the first time), grew into a part I wasn't, in many ways suited for, and fell in love, once again, with acting out the events of that first Holy week.

And then came Lent.  I started this blog and set aside something that meant a lot to me in order to take up things I knew needed to mean more.  I learned a lot, I changed a little and all the while there was this new family who were (some of them at least) following that journey alongside me.  They weren't the only ones, nor were they the most important family in my life by any means - but they were welcoming and accepting in a way those you weren't actually raised by, or with (or married to) rarely are and I saw them more and more often as the weeks went by.

And then there was last week.  A sudden, final, furious burst of activity to get the Passion play finessed and ready for the stage: the final rehearsal in our old rehearsal space on Palm Sunday, the technical rehearsal in the venue on Thursday night, the full dress rehearsal on Friday afternoon and then, one after the other, with only one night's sleep in the middle, the three performances.  What a ride!  What a rush!  What an incredible experience to share with these wonderful people I had come to love - without even really knowing many of them.  And it was all to the glory of God... and yeah, we had a bit of the glory too.  How could we not with people telling us after each performance how great they thought the whole thing was, how moved they were, how one actress had set them off crying, how another actor had really made them think about that character in a new way.  It was a profoundly intense... and in a sense, profoundly intimate experience to share.

And then it was all over.

It had to end, of course.  Today's Easter Sunday and we wouldn't want to perform it again on such an important day.  We have our own families to spend time with and share the joy of Jesus' resurrection all over again.  And we carry on in the blessed afterglow of all that we've experienced too - such an amazing high, such wonderful new insights into God's love for us, such potential in the friendships we have made!

But there's a hole there now.  For a while life was sparkling and strange and just so unbelievably fresh, that to return to life afterwards, especially knowing that work - that world of dreary normality, where I don't really even know who I am any more - is just around the corner.

I've had my ups and downs all day: celebrating Easter, and yet mourning the Aberdeen Passion - because that's what this is... it's grief.  Grief at the loss of a one-off experience.  Grief at the separation of relationships.  Grief at the ending of a dream.

But this isn't the end.  If there's one thing I've been reminded of time and time again this weekend it is that that Easter Sunday nearly two thousand years ago was not the end!  It wasn't the end then and just because we've finished one way of telling about it, it's not the end now.  The same saviour we crucified on stage, the one our characters hugged with joy at the end - He was actually present with us the whole time we were performing.  We could tell.  We could feel Him strengthening us.  We were encouraged by Him when things got difficult.  It was He who brought us all together and it is in His nail-scarred hands that all those relationships and experiences rest.

This isn't just the day when we celebrate Jesus' resurrection.  This is our resurrection day too.  If we believe in Him then we died with Him and were raised with Him.  My life is constantly being renewed in Jesus Christ!

So, I may be struggling a bit just now, but I know that my life was not that one play, and nor was my experience of its glorious subject, my Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, the man who was God, who bore the sins of the world, who is the one and only way to the Father and the gateway to eternal life - He is with me now and He knows the plans he has for me, for all of us.  I can't wait to see where He takes me next.

God bless you all and may you all have a Happy Easter!

Passion

We're into the final week of Lent.

It's hard to believe that Easter is so nearly upon us.  I think of what it felt like to begin this journey and I wonder if I'm the same now as when I began, or if there has been some transformation, however small - an evidence for the Spirit.  I incline towards the maudlin, the pensive, the contemplative.  Easter can do that, but I go through these cycles, these whirlpools of excitement and disappointment, of hope and despair, of intent and disavowal.  I get lost, sometimes, in the maze of my own complex, as if it were something real, a place of some significance, not merely a matter of perspective.

There'll be time to examine what I have, or haven't learned from this journey.  There'll be time to look deep at what I am left carrying on the other side of Easter - something precious, something worn but functional, or a piece of burnt-out wreckage.  There'll be time for the big debrief, but I gave you this little piece of my often messed-up mind just now because it sets the scene for what I'm about to talk about, which is, as John Cleese once said, 'something completely different'.  Or...?

One thing I have mentioned Ad Infinitum on Facebook, but have breathed (typed) not a word of on this blog so far, is that at 7.30pm on Good Friday, I'll be joining a crowd of other Christians (and some Non-Christians) on stage at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre for the second Aberdeen Passion: One Hope.

This is a big deal in itself, but bigger still for me, I will have the wonderful privilege and the grave responsibility of playing Peter.  This is the biggest role I have ever played on stage.

To put this in perspective, here is a potted history of my life in theatre:

When I was five I joined my first Christmas play - the Magic Garden - in the role of.... one of the trees.  I had no lines.

My second Christmas performance was to be as a reindeer, one of the ones at the back.  Again, no lines.

A later play gave me the opportunity to play Joseph - the Holy Grail of schoolboy nativity roles.  I ended up a choral shepherd in this musical version, however, on account of the fact that I couldn't actually sing high enough for the role...

In my penultimate year in Primary School, I got to play the father of St. Patrick in a mimed play about the Saint.  I mimed a version of St. Patrick's Breastplate, then was chased around the stage for a minute before being stabbed to death and not involved in the rest of the performance.

Apart from these primary school performances (I was also an advisor to Aethelred the Unready in a P7 play, which, despite being the biggest role I'd had up to that point, I can barely remember) my acting career has consisted mainly of Scripture Union Holiday Club dramas, playing singing caretakers, mad Italian chefs and slimy alien villains.

I was in the last Aberdeen Passion, One Life Given back in 2012, but even then I was a two-line Pharisee abs a one-line Angel. That experience was part of what drew me back to the Passion, but nothing I've done before has really prepared me for this. I'll come back to that - in fact there's a lot I want to say about the experience and it might not all add up to one neat, coherent narrative, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to ask you to bear with me and take what you can from my musings.

Firstly playing this role has made me look at Peter in a way I never have before. To me Peter has always been the bold, reckless caricature he is often portrayed as. A man of great faith and little time for thinking things through before hand. I say caricature, but that's not too deny that he had those traits. They are clearly to be seen in the texts of the gospels, after all. But, even so, actually playing the man on stage has forced me to look for more depth than I have usually been presented with in my previous encounters with his story.

Some of this had to do with my own weaknesses as an actor. I am not a bold person. I am not especially reckless. My faith has always been weak and, whilst the essence of acting is appearing that which you are not, I find it hard to portray a man who was, in many ways, my opposite. So I had to find some part of Peter I could identify with, a fragment of my own personality within him: the seed from which my portrayal of him could sprout. I think I found it quite early on in rehearsals.

Asked to talk a bit about our characters, I found myself latching on to the fact that Peter is, in fact, a man of some not inconsiderable contradictions. He walked on water with Jesus, was the first to recognise him as the Messiah (by the Spirit), proclaimed loudly how he would die for him; yet Peter was also the one whose faith failed him on the lake, so that he began to sink, who constantly told Jesus that the things the Son of Man predicted about his death and resurrection were 'not so' and who denied even knowing him three times to save his own skin.

The word 'passion' originally meant only 'the suffering of Christ on the cross', so it is right and proper that we use it in reference to the Easter story, but led me flip that about a bit just now by using it in its modern sense to describe the contradiction of Peter: Peter's passion for Jesus was matched only by his inability to follow through.

Taking a moment to look at that in my own life, I have often struggled with the idea of being a 'passionate' Christian, indeed, I have struggled with the concept of passion in many areas of my life.  For one who so easily gets lost in his own internal, emotional landscape, I can often seem cold and whilst I do get fired up about things, they are usually the things that don't really matter, as if it is easier to commit oneself to the frivolous than to the deeper things of life.  I have prayed for passion in my life almost as much as I have prayed for faith, and it is still something I am not always comfortable with.  One friend once told me that I was the British person she knew, and perhaps this was part of what she was alluding to?

Passion was clearly not a problem for Peter, however.  From his fervent attempts to please Jesus to his vehement denial, Peter was a man for whom strong emotion was no stranger, but how to balance these polar opposite moments in his life?  Having looked to see a way in which I could play him, with my more reserved demeanour and shyness, it seemed to me that he was actually a man riddled with insecurity.  What follows is my interpretation.  It may not be correct, but I think it is still illuminating for our own lives as Christians.

Peter is taken from a humble life as a Galilean fisherman to become one of the principle players in the most important event of human history, and, somewhere along the journey, the impact of that must have hit him.  He did, after all, get given the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah, so he was in no doubt that he had entered an exalted circle.  His only reason for being there?  Why, that would be Jesus himself.  Jesus was Peter's passport to lead him out of obscurity and into history.

So Peter clings to Jesus.

He loves him, yes - that's clear from his actions - but there is also a sense in which his image of Jesus is what is holding him, allowing him to reconcile his new circumstances with his old - his privileged position with the unschooled man he knows himself to be.  Jesus is everything to him, but his idea of who Jesus is is not completely correct and wont be until after the resurrection - in fact he'll still have plenty to learn about who Jesus really is for the rest of his life, just like the rest of us.  Peter is holding onto an idea of the Messiah which does not match up to what Jesus ultimately goes on to do.  It is obvious from his rebukes to Jesus every time the master tells him that he must die.  It's obvious from the way he responds to the appearance of Moses and Elijah during the transfiguration.  Peter has glued his insecure identity to a distorted image.

So, when Jesus is arrested, Peter's world starts to crumble.  This bold, courageous man, is left alone and terrified.  He follows Jesus at a distance, because Jesus - or at least his idea of who Jesus is - is all he has to hold his identity in place, but faced with the very real threat of being implicated with him and suffering severe punishment for being one of his followers, he buckles.  His idea of who he is and who he was cannot cope with the pressure put upon it by circumstances that, as far as he is concerned, make no sense whatsoever.  His vision of reality is falling apart, and, passionately, he denies having any connection to his master, his friend - his idol.

As I said before, I am not bold and courageous in most things and I certainly lack Peter's walk-on-water faith, even at my best.  What I can relate to, however, (and many others would be with me) is insecurity.  I've been over this before - I wrote a whole post on it - but being able to see and understand the problem, and even seeing the solution in the form of God's good grace, does not make it simply vanish.  I am still an inherently insecure person the vast majority of the time, and so I can relate to this in Peter.  I can relate to his uncertainty about who he really is, why he is being used by God the way he is and how he should follow through when things get rough.

So, this is my hook for playing him: Peter the bold who crumbles when his Master is taken from him, because his identity was hanging on who he thought Jesus was, rather than who Jesus was revealing himself to be all the time.  My Peter is somewhat stripped down, thought that's not to say simplified, necessarily, but I've focussed on this aspect of his character over some of the more traditional elements.  There is still some bravado, some rushed, thoughtless action - I can't change the story, even if I wanted to - but my performance hangs on Peter's internal life, the emotional landscape he, perhaps, doesn't really understand, the thoughts he holds onto and those he cannot yet grasp.

I don't know how much of that will show on stage, but I hope it will inform all that does.  In the end it is the best that I can do.  I'm simply not a good enough actor to portray Peter any other way.  I can only do my best with the talents God has given me and hope that, by his Spirit it is enough.  I know, also, that I'm not at the centre of this play.   The Passion is not about Peter, but he is one of our roads in to understanding it and so I take the role very seriously, praying that God will use it to reveal something of Himself to the audience this weekend.

And that brings be to the other thing I want to examine, just very briefly. I mentioned praying for faith, and have pointed out on numerous occasions that I am not bold - I lack confidence in myself and can be very shy.  So why, you might ask, are you acting on stage at all?

It's a very good question.  I was plagued by stage fright when I was younger - I remember once imagining myself having heart attack on stage at a school prize giving event and seeing my (somewhat rotund, and rather posh) headmaster looming over me to say "Get off the stage, George, you're blocking the procedure" - and even this weekend past standing up in front of my church to give an announcement was utterly terrifying, but here's a funny thing.  The last time I was involved in the Aberdeen Passion I was not really nervous at all.  There are still a few more days until the first performance and I do have a very strong sense of just how much bigger my part is this time around than last, but even so I'm still not really nervous.

Some of it is probably just because of how well and often we've rehearsed.  I cannot doubt that I know my lines and what I need to do with them.  Some of it is likely because of the great team of people I have the privilege of working with - the Passion family as we call it, because, in so many ways, that is what we have become and I treasure the time we get to spend together working on these productions.  But, there is more to it - of that I'm sure.

If there is a miracle hidden within my testimony, it is this: God has transformed me from a timid, socially awkward youth into a timid, socially awkward man - who can do whatever He asks of me, even in front of an audience, when He wills it to be so.  Praise the Lord, because without him I'd be hiding in cupboard somewhere right now!

Imagine

Another week, another blog and, once again, I think I find myself with nothing new to say, when a post begins to form in my mind. This time it's on the back of having just finished three books: A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology by Alister E. McGrath, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis and then back to McGrath with Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. Three very different books, all of which left me with plenty to think about and which (along with my previous read on meditation) have had me wondering about the role of imagination in the Christian faith. I hope to explore that question a bit later on.

But first: the books! McGrath's Fine-Tuned Universe is a book about looking at Natural Theology (traditionally what we can learn about God from what He has revealed of Himself through nature) in a new way. McGrath calls for an approach where we no longer seek to prove God's existence using Natural Theology, but whereby we recognise the way in which Nature reflects or 'resonates' with a Christian, Trinitarian worldview. We don't look to nature to prove God, whom we believe in through Scripture and personal experience, but we see that Christianity may offer the best explanation for what is observed in Nature. He examines the theological implications of this and then looks at some relatively recent developments in cosmology, physics and evolutionary biology which, he argues, can be seen in this light.

As a whole it is an approach which really appeals to me, indeed, though I might never have verbalised it as such, or been able to explain it very clearly, it is much the way I have always approached nature, but McGrath solidifies it, grounds it in science and uses Augustine's doctrine of creation as a way of suggesting how our growing understanding of the life, the cosmos and the emergent, stratified nature of reality can be reflected theologically.

It is fascinating stuff. I did have a couple of problems with the book, however. The first was that it spey inconclusive. McGrath intended it to be the start (or very nearly the start) of a theological and scientific conversation, so it sort of leaves all its ideas hanging, waiting to see who picks them up. Another issue is that it doesn't have a huge amount of scriptural grounding. This is common in Natural Theology in general and whilst it's clear the 'Trinitarian worldview' McGrath is talking about is scripturally based, he doesn't actually demonstrate this very often. It also results in the single most frustrating aspect of the book, which is his exploration of Augustine's doctrine of creation, which Augustine based, not only on Genesis, but also on a verse in Ecclesiasticus, one of the apocryphal texts not recognised as authoritative by the majority of the (protestant) church. Whilst the Apocrypha is another issue entirely from the one the book was about, McGrath fails to mention this as an issue at all, which seems a little incomplete.

Aside from these (mostly) niggles, however, it is an excellent book and one well worth reading of you have an interest in the places where theology and science meet and wish to expand your imaginative understanding of the Universe. More on that in a bit...

A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis is a very different kind of book. It is a short diary by the great writer and Christian apologist, written in the days, weeks, months after the death of his wife from cancer. It is astonishingly honest, angry and moving, yet also clear, with a precision of thought and analysis rarely seen in such moments. Through it Lewis appears to understand more about his grief, his humanity, and, above all else, God.  It's a book which, as soon as you start reading it, you realise must be important in some way and, indeed, I would recommend that everyone does.  It is phenomenally well-written, brutally honest and yet so well-thought out by the end.  I don't think I can review it further without repeating myself again.

Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, is a very different book from A Fine-Tuned Universe and yet McGrath's particular style and some familiar arguments manage to rise to the surface as you read it.  Much like the former book, it feels rather inconclusive, but what you do get is a very good overview of some of the major heresies of the classical 'patristic' era and some sound criticism of a number of theories on how heresy orginates and whether what we know as Christian orthodoxy has any right to be so. In doing so it challenges some traditional Christian views, such as the idea that heresy always originates outside the church, but at the same time post-modern approaches are also shown to be indefensible. Heresy is not a liberating alternative to a repressive orthodoxy, but the spiritual equivalent of an evolutionary dead end in the exploration of the best way to express Christian belief.

One finishes the book with a profound sense that Christian orthodoxy is to be defended (if continually developed), not only because it is the best model of life and faith for the Christian, but because it is also the most intellectually coherent, satisfying and exciting vision of Christianity. McGrath finishes with a call for theologians and practising Christians alike to exercise their intellects and imagination in presenting this truth to the world, which has been led to believe quite the opposite for a number of social, cultural and historical reasons.

McGrath's approach to theology is one of intellectual excitement, rather than spiritual development, but from reading his works (and listening to him) I'm reasonably sure of his saving faith in Jesus Christ. His very academic approach is a function of both his personality (which is similar to my own in at least this respect) and the context within which he works, but his appeal to the Christian imagination at the end is one which I think we all need to engage with, which brings me to the meat of this post...

Imagination.  The one thing all three books above have in common, aside from the fact that I chose to read them (and simply because they were there, on my bookshelf, rather than because of any other particular agenda), is that they each make appeals to the human imagination in the way they look at our Faith and the world around us.  McGrath calls for the use of the Christian imagination in how we look at and respond to the natural world and the sciences which explore it, as well as in how we look at our theological orthodoxy and relate it to the world.  Lewis demonstrates the power the imagination has to deceive us in our understanding of both God and those we love, but equally that it can be transformed by our faith to help us know God and others more clearly.

I have touched on this topic before, of course, in my defence of fiction and it's ability to be used as an explanatory, analogical, allegorical and inspiring tool for exploring the ideas of life and faith, but that's not all the imagination is used for and so this is a look at the Christian imagination as whole and why we should spend more time developing it within our fellowships.

Imagination is frowned upon by a number of Christians and this is seen to be something mirrored outside of the Church as well.  Imagination is something children have, an element of play.  It is not something which a mature adult should spend much time worrying about.  I commented on this attitude before, citing C. S. Lewis' response to such thinking.  This time I shall quote him more fully:

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

But as I said, there is more the the human imagination that its power to create and be absorbed in complete fictions.  The imagination is also a very necessary part of our rationality.  We do not simply use our imaginations to think of things that are not, we also need to use it to explore ideas that are, but which we cannot perceive with our usual range of physical senses.  The best example of this can be seen in the modern sciences, which are often exploring elements of the natural world which can be observed and recorded using various pieces of technology - things which most assuredly do exist - and yet things which the human eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the fingers cannot touch and manipulate, and so on.  Scientists, however some might baulk at such a suggestion (though I'm sure most would not) must use their imaginations if they are to understand such phenomena better, determining how they work and how they relate to other such phenomena.

Equally, Philosophy and Theology have engaged with the human imagination for thousands of years, exploring concepts which are real, but not tangible, which can be conceived of, but not seen.  The idea that the imagination is a fanciful, even shameful thing, seems to be a more recent one, tied together with the increase in fantasy fiction since the nineteenth century and, before that, to the puritan reaction against fiction full stop.

So what does it mean for Christians to use their imaginations?  I cannot claim to have a comprehensive doctrine to hand, nor can I cite much in the way of Scripture to help develop one.  All I can say is that Christians need to use their imaginations to see the connections between what they believe and the reality they see, as well as to expand those notions to see how they relate to what others believe and how best to share that testimony with them.  This can, of course, involve our creative gifts, given to us by God to exercise for his glory, but it can just as easily be used in how we explain our faith at a purely theological, spiritual or experiential level.

Romans 12 verse 2 says this:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will his - his good, perfect and pleasing will.

Paul is talking about a spiritual transformation which enables us to see the world in a profoundly Christian way, but just because it is a spiritual process does not mean it does not have physical applications. Seeing the world itself is one such application, how we think about the world and how we process our understanding of it are similarly physio-chemical processes in the brain.  The spiritual and the physical are not - as the Greek metaphysical worldview taught - completely separate realms, but interacting realities.  Our spiritual transformation affects us physically.  What Paul is speaking about, then, involves a transformation of our thinking minds - our rationality and our imaginations.  McGrath mentions this several times when proposing his new approach to Natural theology, suggesting that the Christian vision of reality is a transformed one and one which allows us to see the world in a certain way.  That doesn't just extend to the natural sciences, but to all areas of life and ultimately even to how we view our faith itself.

So, I'm not suggesting we need to invent theologies or visions of God to pass on to others, but we must use all of our minds as much as all of our hearts, strength and souls when we love God and the transformed Christian imagination is very much a part of that process.  We should not stifle it, but within the guidance of scripture and the Spirit, let it help us explore and express our beliefs and the wonderful deeds and personality of our gracious God.

Until next time, then, go well!