I think I mentioned that words from a friend had sent me browsing through some old prayers amd hymns. Some of them are embarrassingly bad, and I wondered how I had ever thought otherwise, except that one always has a graciousness towards one’s own creations which one may not show towards the work of others.

One or two seemed decently done, and another few invited the kind of revision that they ought to have been given years back. Here’s one of the latter:

YOU ARE MY DEAR SON (Tune: Firmament CH4:148)

“Stay clear, stay clear” the voices said
When Christ came down by Jordan bank
“Stay clear of this baptismal rite
Devised for those whose lives are rank.”
But when he took the sinners’ place
And shared their joy in granted grace
He heard your voice, as soft wings spread,
“You are my dear son, my delight.”

“Stay clear, stay clear,” the voices say
When we are faced with human sin,
“Stay clear of those who do no right
For they will surely drag you in.”
But when we stand with them in blame
And seek your freedom from our shame,
We hear your voice as clear as day,
“You are my children, my delight.”

“Stay clear, stay clear,” the voices say
When we are faced with human need,
“Stay clear of those who suffer night
For in their darkness you may bleed.”
But when we make their need our own
And fight for justice to be shown,
We hear your voice approve our way,
“You are my children, my delight.”

“Stay clear, stay clear,” the voices said
When Christ came through the city gate
“Stay clear of those who have the might
To fashion failure into fate.”
But when he’d hung upon the cross
And let his life go into loss
He heard your voice that wakes the dead,
“You are my dear son, my delight.”

This enshrines an interpretation of Jesus’ baptism as recounted in Mark’s gospel which starts by creating apocalyptic expectation and then tells us simply that Jesus arrived to be baptised alongside an average bunch of sinners looking for a new start.  God’s paternal voice here links this story to the transfiguration, and of course to the crucifixion where the centurion declares Jesus to be a son of God. The gospel becomes at one level therefore, an extended definition of what it means to be a child of God. Or perhaps I should say, redefinition, as the definition of the Messiah as triumphant national ruler was part of Jewish tradition.

In this hymn I wanted to emphasise God’s delight in Jesus. The translation, ‘in you I am well pleased’ doesn’t sound like a very powerful statement of approval, more like a decent rating on a school report. Mark’s language derives from Isaiah 42, “Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights.” Now that’s more like divine approval! God is not marking our card, but when we dare to act like his children, he is delighted.

I also wanted to emphasise that acting like a child of God is rarely the obvious or popular thing to do, because it involves declaring others to be children of God also, which is bound to get up somebody’s nose. Whatever the authorities thought about those who responded to John’s ministry, they certainly didn’t give them the status of God’s children –  but Jesus did, by sharing their new beginning.

But how could the Son of God need a new beginning? The very idea is heretical! That’s why Mark put it at the begining of his gospel: with Jesus, we can all start again, in humility, as children of God.

The tune has been long associated with Addison’s hymn of creation, “ The glorious firmament on high” which relates to Pslam 19, “the heavens declare the glory of God” and is wonderful in its way. Unfortunately that way also includes phrases like “dark terrestrial ball” which seem strange or incomprehensible to modern ears. So perhaps I may be forgiven for nicking the tune for a composition which will certainly be forgotten long before Mr. Addison’s.

While checking some facts for my last blog about the writings of José Saramago, I came across one of his short parables which was new to me. It is entitled, “The Unknown Island.”

In a certain country the king is accustomed to receive petitions from his subjects who must come to an obscure door in the palace to deliver them. Mostly such requests are in fact received and answered by the cleaning lady. A man appears who demands to see the king himself, and when the king answers him in person, he demands a boat in which he can sail to an ”unknown island”. After it becomes clear that the man will not take no for an answer, the king makes arrangements for him to be given a boat, although he is warned that there are no unknown islands any more.

When the man receives his boat he is joined by the cleaning lady who wants to share his voyage, and while the man goes off to recruit a crew, she cleans the boat and repairs its sails. Sadly the man returns alone because no sailors want to sign up with such a madman, and are not interested in non-existent unknown islands. Puzzled as to their next step, the man and the cleaning lady decide to spend the night on the boat. During the night, the man dreams of the boat itself putting forth shoots and trees.

In the morning they declare their love for each other, paint a new name on the prow of the ship, hoist the sails and depart. The ship called THE UNKNOWN ISLAND goes off on its maiden voyage “to discover itself.”

The true adventure of humanity is to discover itself, and no human being should take no for a answer, or be prevented by ridicule from those who have lost the desire to explore. But for Saramago the adventurer is no solitary. It is only in partnership, here the partnership of man and woman, that the courage for the adventure can be maintained.

Something like this seems to be the author’s meaning. But lurking behind this humanistic parable is a more fugitive meaning which may be my own invention rather than Saramago’s:

There is a king who gives me a vessel in which to venture over the deep to an unknown island. In partnership with the lowliest ( and therefore wisest) servant of the king, I am encouraged to set off into mystery to find ourselves.

Amen.

The other day, challenged by a friend, I looked through a file of prayers and hymns which I had written years back and forgotten to throw out. Amongst much dross, I found a few items that said things I still wanted to say, and that were therefore worth revising.

One of the repeated experiences of my minstries has been the way people treasure the presence of Jesus in their darkest, weakest, most doubtful and most sinful times. This seems to me a treasure specific to faith in Jesus who left a record of his friendship with sick people and sinners and never pretended he could face suffering with a smile. The hymn which I revised and presented here arose from these experiences.

LORD OF THE SICK AND BROKEN (Tune Moville, CH4: 450)

Lord of the sick and broken
Who shared disabling pain,
Your suffering has spoken:
No cross is borne in vain.
For every wasted body
And every tossed and scattered self
Is planted in your Passion
And harvested for health.

Lord of the dead and dying
Who prayed that you might live
You show us by your crying
What God’s love cannot give.
But those who on their journey
In faith and fear walk into night
Are partnered by your passing
And lifted into light.

Lord of the poor and powerless
Who loved the little ones,
You still defy the sourness
Of arrogance and guns.
And all who trust the Servant
Whose wealth was poured put for the least
Are paradised through patience
And share the Father’s feast.

Lord of the strong and the evil
Who loved in spite of hate,
You struggled with the Devil
And plundered his estate.
So even Satan’s legions
May hide their steel within your side
And pierced by your perfection
Desire what they denied.

Lord of the daft disciples
Who found his friends untrue
Forgive our weak denials
Of comradeship with you.
May all whose trust has faltered
And let your life be sacrificed
Be repossessed by pardon
And recognise the Christ.

If anyone reading this wants to use it for public worship, please do so, simply noting its authorship.l

José Saramago who died a few years back, was one of the great modern masters of the parable. Both parables and allegories are stories designed to be recognised as fictional pointers to some greater story, such as the story of a whole society, or the story of God; but whereas an allegory provides a very complete mapping of the greater story – think of Pilgrim’s Progress or Animal Farm- a parable only connects with its counterpart as whole story to whole story – think of the Prodigal Son, where Jesus sugggests only the most general likeness to the story of God and humanity (God and the father in the story are both embarrassingly fond of children who mess up). The details of the parable do not need to map on to the details of the bigger story, so Jesus can have fun with a broke Jewish boy surviving by feeding pigs. This freedom to invent novelistic detail does not detract from the parable’s function of making at least one bold point about the greater story.

Most of Saramago’s novels are parables although they are much longer than any told by Jesus. He uses the freedom of this form to create characters that arouse and retain  his readers’ sympathy, and plots which are complex enough to keep them turning the pages, while suggesting by means of his narrator’s ironic voice, that they should recognise similarities with the story of their own lives in society; for he is above all a social critic, exposing the follies and brutalities of capitalist society.

Take for example “Blindness” his most famous and probably most violent story, which starts off from the absurd premise that everyone in a given society goes blind successively, except one woman. Almost immediately, blind citizens are herded into concentration camps by those who have not yet gone blind. Once all but one are blind, the stronger prey on the weaker as they have learned to do. Those who cannot defend themselves, especially women, are treated with sickening cruelty. The single person with sight finds that her only “benefit” is being able to see what’s happening, as she continues to be in a minority of, well, one. Eventually some victims begin to show solidarity with each other,  and to think of opposition.  Through equally violent actions, rebellion takes place, after which people begin to regain their sight. It is a parable about the blindness of capitalist societies to humanity and justice, and about the necessity of rebellion.

An equally dissident partner parable called “Seeing” explores the chaos which results from all election papers in a General Election being returned blank. It does not present an optimistic picture of democracy.

I have just finished reading his final parable, called The Cave, which of course rests on the famous parable by Plato, according to which prisoners bound in a cave, and unable to turn their heads, can see, on the cave wall, shadows cast by puppet showmen, lit by the flames of a fire, which they accept as reality. Someone escapes amd returns to tell the others that what they think is reality is only shadows, and that real life requires them to throw off their bonds and go up to the real world. His fellow prisoners treat him as an idiot, and it is said, would kill him if they could. In this way Plato describes the plight of most of humanity, who cannot rise to the philosophic vision of goodness, and mistake deceptive shadows for reality.

Saramago’s story involves a potter who works in a desolate rural region near The  Centre, a huge industrial/ commercial/ social complex which offers accomodation, work and leisure to its inhabitants, while controlling most aspects of their lives, and isolating them from nature, even to the extent of providing artificial nature parks within the complex. The potter, who has been dependent on the Centre which buys his crockery, is told that his produce is not needed any more.  He tries along with his daughter to diversify into art, by  making figurines, but finds that Centre dwelllers have no interest in them. He and his daughter, who is pregnant, prepare to move into the Centre with his son-in-law  who is a security guard there and has been allocated a flat. This involves leaving behind a rescued dog which they have befriended, with a widow woman nearby, for whom the widowed potter has an affection. One night the potter investigates a very secret archeological dig underneath the Centre and comes upon a cave where dead human beings, bound head and foot are placed in front of a wall. Behind them is a walkway, and behind it, the marks of a fire. When he asks himself who they are, he answers, “they are us.” He decides to leave, and returns to his pottery, his dog and it turns out, the widow who loves him. Shortly they are joined by his daughter and son-in-law who do not want their child born in the Centre. Together they pack their stuff on the potter’s aged van, and set off into the unknown.

The Centre is not shown as exercising any brutality. It provides wisely, “like God” someone says, for its inhabitants, while excluding anything natural or anybody who might have an independent mind. People are not forced to live there, but choose to do so, because it is the future. The characters of the potter, his daughter and son-in-law and the dog,  are quietly but tellingly developed, so that the readers can imagine themselves in their shoes. Equally quietly but firmly Saramago makes his point: this modern, capitalist paradise is Plato’s Cave, where willing prisoners are sheltered from reality, including the reality of their own exploitation,  and give up any desire to face it. The only hope for humanity lies with those who are unwilling.

The parable does not argue, anymore than Jesus argued with the lawyer who wanted him to define the meaning of “neighbour”. Saramago’s parable is longer than the “Good Samaritan” or “Plato’s Cave” but should not be embarrassed by their company.

As the year dips into late autumn, as the leaves fall and the early frosts nip the ungathered apples still on the tree, my mind, like that of a large proportion of my fellow citizens, turns towards the next holiday with its promise of warmth, leisure and self-indulgence. Brochures are scanned, websites inspected, and we know that even if the search is unsuccessful or simply premature because we haven’t begun to set aside the necessary moola, the act of looking is itself therapeutic: our dreams of other times and places help us deal with this time and this place. If I can imagine myself climbing through vineyards on a Spanish hillside, I can cope with Dundee on a wet Sunday.

I wonder if the thought of heaven plays a similar role in the lives of believers? Burdened with our own wrongs and those of the world at large, do we take comfort in the thought that one day we shall be elsewhere? Yes, the comfort may be diminished by the fact that we have to die first, but when we are sore and weary that may not bother us overmuch. When the earthly city is oppressive, the city of God is ever more inviting.

Indeed, it seems relevant to enquire whether heaven may not have been invented by human beings precisely for this comfort. Of course, even if we reject that specific reasoning, we have to accept, that like all religious concepts, including gods, heaven has been invented by human beings.  I mean that even if religious concepts point towards something real, they have in sober truth been invented by us: our human concerns and prejudices are all over our creations.

In the case of the Christian heaven, much of it was invented by the early and medieval churches, incorporating the Jewish inheritance of Jesus and the Pharisees (who were unique amongst Jewish believers in developing the idea of heaven) together with a pre- modern cosmology according to which heaven is above the earth and hell below. Clearly the resurrection of Jesus had a huge influence on the making of heaven, but the belief in heaven as the rescue of mortal life predates Jesus and his disciples.

In spite of modern cosmology, the popular imagination still holds on to the “Man Upstairs” and the picture of the dear departed “looking down” on the grieving family. But there is often no serious belief in the after-life or in the soul’s meeting with its maker: the scenario is pure kitsch, a lighthearted drama that evades the issue of mortality. This heaven is a shallow vision, like a week in Ibiza, that helps people endure what Shakepeare called, “the whips and  scorns of time.”

The serious believer will rightly protest that I am describing a parody of the Christian hope that trusts in God’s grace in Jesus to forgive our sins and save us from death, so that we may glorify God forever. But did serious believers not invent this serious theology in order to depict a serious salvation? It’s notable that although Jesus himself believed in resurrection, his language about the kingdom of heaven refers not to an extra- terrestrial realm but rather to the rule of God on earth. He appears, like some of his contemporaries, to have believed in a “world to come” which was a transformation of earth rather than a separate dimension. The “heaven” of Church doctrine, certainly, emerges from Christian reflection on the death and resurrection of Jesus, rather than from his teaching.

Should it therefore be dismissed as a wish- fullfilment that keeps believers walking purposefully on the pilgrimage of life, while preventing them from enjoying the goodness of earthly existence with a whole heart? Intelligent atheists like Bertrand Russell criticise faith as evading both the sorrows and the joys of  life, by not understanding how even our dearest joys are based on our mortality. The great American poet, Wallace Stevens in his poem, “Sunday Morning” ridicules the notion of a realm that has no death:

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.;
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Teacher.

Thich Hat Hanh is the Teacher of the Plum Village Community in France, although I first heard of him when he came to the USA from his native Vietnam to speak against war. He is a man of profund courage and wisdom. In his poem above he wipes out the distinctions we so easily make between ourselves and others, insisting that true being is what he calls “interbeing” in which we recognise our unity with the universe: we are not all the same, as if our particular being did not matter, but in our innumerable differences we are one community. I would want to add that in my faith, this encompassing unity is God in whom, as St Paul said, we live and move and have our being. Whenever we realise our shared life, we realise God: in friendship, in partnership, in churches, in neighbourhood, in charity, in the fight for justice and peace in the world. When we do so we add to the names by which we call ourselves.

Of course we would all like to be called only by nice names: few of us want to be called Donald Trump, but when we remember our own denials of truth and our outbursts of rage, we may find it difficult to refuse that name. One of the categories of names I most want to refuse, are those of my fallen idols. Once I was delighted by the slightest connection with them, now, since they have displayed their feet of clay, I want nothing to do with them. This is especially true of Aung San Ssu Kyi, whom I revered in her long battle with the military junta of Myanmar for a measure of freedom and democracy. Her calm courage was an inspiring example. Now, however, she has chosen to ignore the evidence against her nation’s army, of a genocidal attack on Rohingya people, who live on Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh. She has refused to admit any wrongdoing and parroted  descredited myths about the Rohingyas being foreign settlers. I would be happy to identify with the Rohingyas but surely not now with Aung San Ssu Kyi?

Well, when I think of her blindness to an uncomfortable truth, I can remember my own similar blindness in the past. When I think of her failure of courage in this instance, I can remember my many such failures over the years. When I recognise that she is dodging responsibility for an atrocity, I can remember my own shiftiness when faced with the hurts I had caused. So, maybe, even if it gives me no joy, I have to admit that Aung San Ssu Kyi is a fitting enough name for me.

Mind you, if I’m happy to be called Rohyngya, I’m even happier to be called Médicins Sans Frontieres/ Doctors Without Borders, who have been providing skilled medical attention for the Rohyngya refugess in Bangladesh. As always, many of their staff are locals whom they have trained and paid; as always they have remained impartial while bearing truthful witness to the facts of what they are dealing with. They refuse government and multinational company funding because they want to intervene as they see fit and not at the behest of others. They are efficient, modern, well- equipped, multi-national  and brave. If we need boots on the ground in areas of conflict, theirs are the most effective. Through them I can make my identity with Rohingya victims more than a prayer. Although they don’t know my name, they do know the reality of the care given in my name and the names of millions of others.

The Hebrew people saw the name of God as holy and therefore not to be spoken. Even today many of them refer to God simply as Hashem, the name. The ten commandments and numerous other passages warn people against dishonouring the name of God by word or action. If we want to honour the name of God whose shared life unites us all, we could do worse than follow the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh by recognising with sorrow our identity with wrongdoers while activating our identity with those who do good.

The notion of transfiguration may suggest something seen in an enhanced mode, as in many of the techniques offered by apps for photography, whereby a photo of my aged self can be transfigured to portray me in the prime of life. But the  transfiguration which most interests me is that by which something or someone is seen as they really are.

Broughty Ferry is a prosperous suburb of Dundee, which seems wonderfully separate from the problems of the city, although its increasing use by wealthier young people as a weekend playground has reminded me of the famous couplet by Hilaire Belloc:

Like many of the upper class

he liked the sound of broken glass.

Its housing is a mixture of Victorian fantasy by Jute barons, solid respectability by successful professionals, seaside terraces by B and B landladies, modern retirement flats by the douce elderly, and also this:

A cluster of older houses connected with the original fishing village and ferry port, expressing decency, usefulness and a modest elegance. In this morning’s autumn sunshine and from this viewpoint, the suburb was transfigured into its true self.

I have seen this happen to people. I remember at university a lecturer in Old Testament who was a little bent and wasted in his middle years, and not too rivetting as a lecturer, but when he turned out for the college football team with students twenty years younger than himself, he was transformed into a version of Stanley Matthews with a magical dribbling ability and a devastating left foot shot. In fact his guile at football was matched with a guileful interpretation of the Bible which led to his masterwork on the book of Proverbs.

Marilyn Munroe was subjected to many transformations as an actress, but her husband, the writer Arthur Miller, noted particularly the change that came over her when she was in the company of vulnerable or troubled people: then she was at home, in sympathy and entirely herself. That transfiguration revealed her character.

Always, of course, the change is not just a special state of the person or object which is seen, but also the readiness of the viewer to see with open eyes. If I had been in a dull mood this morning I would not have seen Broughty Ferry transformed. If Arthur Miller had been self-absorbed, he would never have seen the real Marilyn.

In the story of David and Goliath in the Bible, the boy David is just a daft boy until his stone knocks the giant to the ground. Then we see that of course he is already a cunning and dangerous warrior, who is happy to cut his opponents head off. The story reveals that a clanking berserker is no match for an intelligent youth who can kill at a distance. Goliath never had a chance. David is transfigured in action.

All this perhaps helps the intrpretation of the story of Jesus’ transfiguration.

The Transfiguration Mark 9

² Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³ and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one^b]”>[b] on earth could bleach them. ⁴ And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵ Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings,^c]”>[c] one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ ⁶ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷ Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved;^d]”>[d]listen to him!’ ⁸ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

This passage is not factual history. For example how did the disciples know that the figures appearing with Jesus were Moses and Elijah? (a primary schoolboy once answered this question perfectly, “They had their names on their shirts like Messi”) But it conforms to my model of transfiguration:

1 Jesus is changed – into himself! What shines is his own nature.

2 The disciples’ understanding is first of all that Jesus belongs with the greatest heroes of their faith, and is even greater.

3 Secondly they understand that Jesus is confirmed by God as his child.

4 At the end of the revelation what they see is simply Jesus as he truly is.

In Mark’s Gospel the readers realise that what happens when people encounter Jesus    with trust is that they are transfigured and become their true selves even as they become like Jesus. To be like Jesus is not to lose your identity in his, but to find it in his. St Paul expressed this clearly in his letter to the Corinthians:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

When people are united with Jesus, they shine with the glory which comes from him, but they are truly themselves, with unveiled faces. The Spirit of which St. Paul speaks is the “interbeing”, the realm in which there are no barriers between person and person, or between a person and God. Living beings  become translucent to each other and to their maker. Their transfiguration into shared life is also their deepest identity.

In 2002 a muslim callled Abu Zubaydah was arrested by the USA and imprisoned without trial in Guantanamo Bay, where he is still held, still without trial. Although the USA authorities have dropped charges that he was part of Al Qaeda and involved in planning the September 11 attacks, he has been subjected to the most brutal and sustained forms of torture, especially repeated bouts of waterboarding and vicious beating. He was and still regards himself as, a mujahadeen, one of those who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion, receiving an almost fatal head -wound, which damaged his brain. He believes in the forceful defense of Muslims who are under attack, but utterly rejects the doctrine of ISIS that it is ok to attack civilians.

He is no danger except to those who are attacking or oppressing muslims. Yet there he is, tortured by Britian’s chief ally, in the name of western civilisation. I would rather invite Abu Zubaydah to my house than the scum who have tortured him, but I would rather invite even them than the US politicians who have ordered their vile actions. I hope that one day their crimes against Abu Zubaydah are exposed and punished appropriately, say by the daily “rectal rehydration” suffered by their victim.

What has this got to do with Jesus and my continuing attempt to reclaim him from the sweet piety in which he often gets wrapped?

It’s to do with the admission, late in life,  by the great atheist Bertrand Russell that in Jesus we sense the “smell of something serious.” The story of Jesus presents a man who was not interested in the minor sins of his fellow Jews, but rather in the terrible things done in the name of government, religion, righteousness, and wealth. He was against the neglect and isolation of the sick, the stigmatisation of the sinful, the oppression of the poor. He was for justice, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, discipline and the love of God and the neighbour.

Take Mark chapter 6, which tells of Jesus’ rejection by his own people in Nazareth, his sending out of the disciples to preach a change of heart, the murder of the prophet John the Baptist by King Herod under pressure from his new wife, the meeting of Jesus and 5000 men in the wilderness where he fed them, and finally hoards of people bringing their sick relatives to Jesus for healing.

Mark presents someone whose humanity makes him a dangerous alternative to the brutal government of his country. Here is the smell of something serious. In Jesus, change is actually happening: his ministry is not the enthusiastic preaching of a new religion, but the encounter of love, justice and compassion with their opposites.

The churches of course have the task of remembering the ministry of Jesus, of honouring it in worship, sacrament and community. I believe that this task is important, but not sufficient for the churches to fulfil their calling: they must also continue the ministry of Jesus, as communities and as individual believers. That need not show itself in very dramatic public actions, but rather in quiet, definite opposition to any kind of brutality or neglect. Many churches in Dundee offer free food to the hungry, and their provision is used and appreciated. Even this almost invisible rebellion against the coldheartedness of society is worthy of Jesus as is the support of one parent families, of people suffering addiction, of rough-sleepers. These are communal provisions, but the individual acts of caring for demented family members or neighbours, the volunteer work for charities, the patient political involvement which fights for the good of all, they too continue the ministry of Jesus.

These obedient ministries should not just be seen merely as the outworking of worship, but as its content: the inclusive love of God which engages the believers in the shared enterprise of the Spirit, making them children of God along with The Son, to honour the Father’s/ Mother’s perfecting of creation, that love is celebrated in ministry as well as in prayer and song and story – and the ministries themselves become part of a church’s storytelling, prayer and song.

Amongst these ministries action for social justice, nearby or far away, should not be neglected. I am a founder member of change.org which makes it possible for people to contribute to campaigns for justice anywhere in the world. Organisations like Amnesty Intermational have always made personal involvement practical and effective. It has never been easier to know about those who suffer oppression, and we are fortunate in the UK to be able to use all the varied avenues and institutions of  democracy to work on their behalf.

Our conviction that the goodness we desire has its source beyond the world should enhance rather than inhibit our active citizenship. In this way we honour the one whose ministry had the smell of something serious.

This is another blog from my Lake District holiday, that I hope will not annoy readers who are busy in their work.

Patterdale is a busy walker’s village at the south end of Ullswater, with pubs and hotels that cater for active people. Even at 9 am Sunday the car parks are filling up, and their passengers putting on their hill- gear. As I ready myself, I nod at the guy in the next parking bay, who responds with a brief recognition of my existence. I am headed for Place Fell, a medium- sized hill which is also a stage in a number of longer routes.

I am maybe first on the track apart from two older women whom I soon ovetake. They are on the coast to coast walk, sponsored for an international charity, and committed to maybe 15 miles today and more tomorrow. I’m impressed and say so. They are just the first of many people I meet, mainly as I make my descent, which always gives one a slight advantage over those still toiling upwards. But we all exchange greetings as a matter of course, recognising our common citizenship of the nation of walkers. We might have passed each other silently in the village street, but here we are happy to greet and be greeted. Obviously this is a better realm in which strangers are taken as friends: a common humanity is being asserted. What’s going on?

We trust each other as those who value the ecosystem in which we exist. Today it is beautful, other days it is frightening, but always it is something of which we are a small and appreciative part. We have different knowledge of it: some of us have climbed these hills since childhood; others do so for the first time today; some have studied sciences which assist an understanding of this system, others know it simply like the back of their hand; but we all respect the knowledge of our fellow citizens, because all express a common affection for this landscape and its creatures. “Did you see the deer up there?” a man asks me, telling me he’d noticed them from below. A group of young mountain bikers are carrying their cycles up the fell so as to enjoy a rapid descent on a less rocky track to the north. They have never been here before but have a sufficient map of the landscape in their heads. Here all travellers affirm each other’s journey.

Of course, there are many sorts of artificial communities in which people are recognised and valued: work, social organisations like the Rotary Club,  charities, churches, sports and cultural associations, and so on, where individuals recognise and affirm each other. But these are communities of acquaintance, whereas the community of walkers is a community of strangers, who may never see each other again, but are pleased to greet each other in passsing. Their mutuality is only a momentary goodwill, significant precisely because it is impersonal, a recognition that each is part of something bigger. Less than half a mile from a botched society this grace happens regularly.

If I was asked what sort of nation I would like to belong to, I might well put this kind of civility as one of its founding customs.

Storm Ali has been pounding its way through Cumbria where I am on holiday, leaving in its wake everywhere a scattering of leaves and small branches.  Since it was not raining steadily, and there were occasional glmpses of sunshine, I decided on a morning walk beside the River Lowther, near Askham.

A good track took me through mature woods, beside the river. The wind was rarely less than 50mph, with occasional gusts up to 70mph which produced in the wood an extraordinary  noise, an amalgam of the thousand different movements of trees, bushes, water, grasses, birds and animals. If it were a quiet noise you could call it a stirring because of the movement it advertises; as it is, you would have to say it is a gigantic stirring, a stirring of every atom of earth, moved by the wind’s force in the same overall direction, but with the very different individual resistances of trunk, branch, leafage, stem, rock, pebble, water and embankment, all adding to the general clamour.

Often when walking I am able to think of myself as an individual in movement through a static landscape. Today the world is in movement around me; nothing is still. The beech tree ahead of me, a massive specimen of at least two hundred years growth, moves continually to the wind’s choreography: the trunk bends just a little, creaking; its lower branches sway horizontally back and forth; higher branches bend downwards and spring back up in a repeated thrash; the leaf-bearing twigs bounce madly along the branches, with an occasional assemblage snapping off and cartwheeling through the air.

Even the tightly packed blackthorn hedge is in motion, its top leaves in a continual shiver and the whole body flexing along is length, snakelike. The low blades of grass are pushed upright but resist being flattened, which may be why the grazing sheep move precisely into the wind, cropping them. The river below me runs its own  route as always, but in passages of white water, its droplets are caught and dispersed by the wind, which uses the watercourse as a tunnel. Every now and then a crow or a thrush explodes into the air near me as if arriving through a warp from another universe.

The world is in visible motion but I reflect that the great wind merely magnifies what is always happening as the earth utilizes the energy of the sun to maintain its biosphere. All this crashing uses the tiniest package of the energy flowing outwards from our star which occasionally glitters through the clouds that march above me,  an energy received and transformed into greenness and oxygen by trees and plants and grasses, and into bodily energy by countless living creatures from the very visible like the brown dairy cow in the next field and the barely visible like the leather-jacket below my feet, to the myriad invisible bacteria which aid the chemical reactions needed for healthy soil. On even the calmest of days these movements happen ceaselessly.

As they also do in me. I also am a creature of the sun, needing its energy to maintain my metabolism, to go walking and to write this blog. I also benefit from the unseen toil of bacteria in my body, as they contribute to its health. Even when I sleep their therapeutic movements continue.

The Greek philospher Heraclitus was right: everything flows ( Greek: panta ‘rei). Modern sciences suchas astrophysics and quantum biology confirm this insight: the regularities we experience are only apparent; the motion is real. Our culture rejects this truth: it likes stable things, persons and institutions. It dislikes change, particularly when it is unpredictable. So when we formulated our image of God, of perfection, we made him unchangeable, immortal, omniscient and immovable, untouched by the changes to which mortal creatures are subject:

“Change and decay in all around I see,

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

What might it mean to remake God in the image of the universal movement of which I was reminded today, as I walked happily and wetly in the storm?