And this one is just stunning...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtcLOJLF2T8
IMHO, it's worth learning French just to get Brel's lyrics!
Quand on n'a que l'amour
A s'offrir en partage
Au jour du grand voyage
Qu'est notre grand amour
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Mon amour toi et moi
Pour qu'éclatent de joie
Chaque heure et chaque jour
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour vivre nos promesses
Sans nulle autre richesse
Que d'y croire toujours
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour meubler de merveilles
Et couvrir de soleil
La laideur des faubourgs
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour unique raison
Pour unique chanson
Et unique secours
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour habiller matin
Pauvres et malandrins
De manteaux de velours
Quand on n'a que l'amour
A offrir en prière
Pour les maux de la terre
En simple troubadour
Quand on n'a que l'amour
A offrir à ceux-là
Dont l'unique combat
Est de chercher le jour
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour tracer un chemin
Et forcer le destin
A chaque carrefour
Quand on n'a que l'amour
Pour parler aux canons
Et rien qu'une chanson
Pour convaincre un tambour
Alors sans avoir rien
Que la force d'aimer
Nous aurons dans nos mains,
Amis le monde entier
Friday 30 July 2010
Friday 23 July 2010
Servanthood for beginners
A few years back, H. had the food he offered to someone who had asked him for money thrown back at him in his parish office. He wasn't very impressed, and this topic still crops up regularly in our conversations.
My point is: if they asked you for money why did you offer food?
His point is: I can't support an addiction to drugs or alcohol that any money will most likely fuel.
My point is usually then: actually you don't know that. And even if you're right, you've just robbed that person of their dignity and completely destroyed any chance of further dialogue.
Recently, my brain has been fairly obsessed by the topic of servanthood. I mean I'd been mulling it over for something like 6 months and my thoughts still seem to go nowhere creative. But let's apply it to this situation. If the Queen asked you for money you would not offer her food because it would not be your place to judge. So I decided to apply my servant-of-all obsession to the random street encounters in the streets of Leeds where I get asked for money quite a bit.
Once I fell back into the old mistake and invited a guy who was sitting on a street corner next to the Roman cathedral up for dinner. He said defensively and quite dismissingly "I'd just like some change please". So I said, of course, I'm sorry, and gave him some money. I thought "great, now he thinks I'm one of those mindless punctual dogooders, I bet they're dime-a-dozen in Leeds".
I've bumped into him quite a few times since and have always given him a quid or two since, absolutley unquestioningly, just in sheer obedience, as if it was the Queen asking. He's taken a total liking of me and recently even opened up to quite an extend. I'm the passerby who obeys him.
The other day, I did not have any change and said so. He replied by saying with a huge smile "that's okay, you're alright, you always give me lots!!!"
And still, I'm tiptoeing there. Because none of the dozens of "solutions" I think up in my PhDed head everytime I'm sitting in a boring work meeting may not be appropriate. I guess I'll continue to serve, and to listen too...
Sunday 18 July 2010
David E Jenkins is awesome!
Despite all the crazy wedding preparations and the last minute work things before we set off, I took the time to go and listen to David Jenkins preach and have a bit of a chat with him after the service.
That sermon, reflecting on his relationship with God after a life of ministry, was the most moving thing I've heard in yonks, I had to remind myself that I did not have a tissue and so could not bawl out without making a huge mess of myself. It was hard, especially since the guy himself fought back a few tears, wondering if this was one of the very last time he would address the people of God in this way.
If you haven't read any of his work, jump on the stuff at once. I'm just finishing "God, Miracle and the Church of England" and it oozes love, just like the guy himself does. If somebody in my neck of the woods has had a full on, lifelong love affair with God, it's that old Jenkins who lives a few miles away. I begged the sermon printout right off him (after all, he's got the original on his computer) and I got an autograph on it too. Which will now live right next to sister Helen Prejean's between the pages of my bible.
I'll leave you with a passage from his book that was exactly what I need to hear these days:
...the Greek actually says that the father [of an epileptic son] bursts out and cries, "I believe, help my unbelief!".
The father's faith was not falling short. He had faith because he had glimpsed something in Jesus which he longed for for his child. But he did not have faith because he did not dare. It was too much to hope for. "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief". No falling short. Surely that is much more like what true faith is really. Risky commitment to a glimpsed possibility in the face of reasonable human hesitation about whether it is really possible [...].
Talk about falling short reminds me, I fear, of those somewhat alarming sects or individuals who seem to want, so to speak, to blackmail you into hyping up your faith on the grounds that, if you jack it up, the faith pressures will somehow compel God into a miracle. Here faith comes dangerously close to being an attempt at manipulating God.
But real faith surely is something very different, the sort of thing you have and do not have, and that is whay you go on having it. Afterwards the disciples asked him privately, "Why could we not cast it out", and he said, "There is not means of casting out this sort but prayer."
That sermon, reflecting on his relationship with God after a life of ministry, was the most moving thing I've heard in yonks, I had to remind myself that I did not have a tissue and so could not bawl out without making a huge mess of myself. It was hard, especially since the guy himself fought back a few tears, wondering if this was one of the very last time he would address the people of God in this way.
If you haven't read any of his work, jump on the stuff at once. I'm just finishing "God, Miracle and the Church of England" and it oozes love, just like the guy himself does. If somebody in my neck of the woods has had a full on, lifelong love affair with God, it's that old Jenkins who lives a few miles away. I begged the sermon printout right off him (after all, he's got the original on his computer) and I got an autograph on it too. Which will now live right next to sister Helen Prejean's between the pages of my bible.
I'll leave you with a passage from his book that was exactly what I need to hear these days:
...the Greek actually says that the father [of an epileptic son] bursts out and cries, "I believe, help my unbelief!".
The father's faith was not falling short. He had faith because he had glimpsed something in Jesus which he longed for for his child. But he did not have faith because he did not dare. It was too much to hope for. "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief". No falling short. Surely that is much more like what true faith is really. Risky commitment to a glimpsed possibility in the face of reasonable human hesitation about whether it is really possible [...].
Talk about falling short reminds me, I fear, of those somewhat alarming sects or individuals who seem to want, so to speak, to blackmail you into hyping up your faith on the grounds that, if you jack it up, the faith pressures will somehow compel God into a miracle. Here faith comes dangerously close to being an attempt at manipulating God.
But real faith surely is something very different, the sort of thing you have and do not have, and that is whay you go on having it. Afterwards the disciples asked him privately, "Why could we not cast it out", and he said, "There is not means of casting out this sort but prayer."
Sunday 4 July 2010
The temptation of materialism
I don't want to shut up about it any longer:
Materialism really, really makes sense to me as a historically-situated 21st century Western European! (i.e. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_09_27_newsweek.html )
And so what is God made of then? My own synapse connections of course!
I sometimes wish I was living in pre-modern times. No wonder a lot of my scientist friends don't believe in God if that's the paradigm of the time... Why do I have to live in a time and place in which the notion of God is so freaking strange, and not at all universally accepted?
Francis Bacon once said that "a little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him (sic!) back." I guess I don't have a lot of science.
So now, if I promise to read lots and lots of Christina Rosetti, can this ridiculously crude materialism depart from my consciousness please? Do I even want it to go away?
I take some comfort in the observation that this is probably the numero uno lamest attempt at approaching God that I know of. And yet I hold Blaise Pascal to be amongst the greatest and most incredibly moving mystics that ever lived.
So yay for the kind of intellectual honesty that is both aware of its limitations and culturally reflexive. For now I'll just doubt my doubt.
Materialism really, really makes sense to me as a historically-situated 21st century Western European! (i.e. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_09_27_newsweek.html )
And so what is God made of then? My own synapse connections of course!
I sometimes wish I was living in pre-modern times. No wonder a lot of my scientist friends don't believe in God if that's the paradigm of the time... Why do I have to live in a time and place in which the notion of God is so freaking strange, and not at all universally accepted?
Francis Bacon once said that "a little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him (sic!) back." I guess I don't have a lot of science.
So now, if I promise to read lots and lots of Christina Rosetti, can this ridiculously crude materialism depart from my consciousness please? Do I even want it to go away?
I take some comfort in the observation that this is probably the numero uno lamest attempt at approaching God that I know of. And yet I hold Blaise Pascal to be amongst the greatest and most incredibly moving mystics that ever lived.
So yay for the kind of intellectual honesty that is both aware of its limitations and culturally reflexive. For now I'll just doubt my doubt.
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