Personal Blogs

My wife and I had a short break in the Scottish West Highlands at the weekend. We took a walk through a little village that eventually led to a graveyard. We enjoy walking through such places; it draws attention to the wisdom found in Ecclesiastes 7:2, where we read that “It is better to go to the house of mourning,” KJV.

There’s a reason the verse imparts this advice. A walk through a graveyard reminds us we are mortal creatures and one day the garment that we wear will wear out.

I observed individuals embedded in their plots. Men, women, children who were the heroes of their own journey in life. Who had deep inner lives that were cut short? I say, cut short because you may think in what way is an 86-year-old cut short?

We are built to last with no sell-by date. God created man to live forever. Philosophically speaking, we do not need to look far to realise it. Think of our minds, I’m in my sixties and yet, I’m still a youth in my inner world. My brain has the potential to take in knowledge eternal. That we have a “mind” is one of science’s great puzzles.

However, what about you and I? John 3:16 shows that faith and life connect inexorably. It’s good to take a moment and read that verse and ask, “What does this mean for me?”

The Slovenian language has a word, an untranslatable word doživljaj, which embraces a rich encounter with someone or something. A walk through a graveyard embraces both the encounter with the graves that remind us of the short breath we take on this earth and also that by turning to God in our solitary walk and experiencing the rich encounter that leads to life.

Consider,

For Nathanael, it all began with those fashion magazines his sisters would leave around the house. The female body held mysteries for an adolescent boy. Soon, this gravitated to internet pornography to the point of becoming a firmly embedded addiction. He never felt good about himself afterwards. He would pray for forgiveness, but felt God was not there.

 *****

Ann goes into the supermarket. When no one is looking, she slips a bar of chocolate into her back pocket of her jeans. That evening, she prays to God to help her win the lottery.

*****

Sharon, was an evangelical ‘Christian.’ She would spend her days making sacrifices by going out preaching. However, at night, she would call her friends and relate the latest gossip — Gossip that often gravitated to slander.

There were considerable moments of doubt she often felt about her relationship with God, but that soon diminished when she had another day of preaching. After all, God would overlook the bad for the good, she reasoned.

*****

Sin will always put distance between God and us. When Jesus cured the young blind man in John chapter 9, in conversation with the pharisees, the man replied, ‘We know that God does not listen to sinners.’

How true, at Isaiah 59:2, we read, ‘It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.’

We find in 1 John 3:9 that John writes, ‘No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.’

We will always find a listening ear with God so long as we put away sin and practice what is right.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.

"Eternal wisdom made all things in love,

By love are all bewildered.

Intoxicated by the wine of love."

The quote above is by the 7th century poet Farridudden Attar. He compares love with wine; intoxication and pleasurable. However, he attributes God as the maker of love (Eternal wisdom). And so be it because there are no other explanations why we, as humans, love. It’s another aspect of the moral human. It may be argued that love is an evolutionary provision to bring tribes and villages together. But there is a major flaw in the theory. Not only do some humans love their neighbour, but some humans love those they have never met.

Consider the billions of pounds that are donated to charities that minister to orphans, cancer research, developing nations, homeless, Christian Aid, Oxfam, and many others. Take a short bite out your day and watch the work of the Mercy Ships.

Mercy Ships: The Next Chapter | TBN UK - YouTube

Image by https://unsplash.com/@neonbrand

Now, I was thinking of this Japanese word, Omotenashi and I’d like your opinion. I was in the Philippines some years ago and one day, a tricycle driver rode us to town. When we reached the destination, he invited us to his home that Saturday. Now that was a first for me. Can you imagine the Western taxi driver doing that? I'm sure some would, but I haven't experienced it.

Anyway, we went to his home which was no more than a corrugated metal shack with a few farm animals. Chicken was on the menu. I was moved by this hospitality and then overwhelmed when I discovered the family killed their only chicken to give us the meal that Saturday.

But you know this? Hospitality is not the correct word for this. I think what they did ran much deeper, because I invited them to a restaurant a few days later, but they were not having it. None of this quid-pro-quo on their part. It was entirely unconditional love. And I think we should get a hold of this omotenashi word. It's a good word for we Westerners who have slipped far behind our Asian neighbours on this matter of omotenashi. What do you think?

The Ark of the Universe... Bends Towards Justice

Martin Luther King Jnr

In 2010, I picked my copy of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov from my bookshelf. I had made a few attempts at it, but with life’s interruptions, the eight hundred pages were daunting. I now felt guilty that I had not read a book that was influential to so many writers and readers. A quick read would take me, a slow reader, about 30 hours, but this was not a book to dart through. It contained depths of philosophical thought.

There is the adage, ‘It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.’ It was of no surprise that a Google search for images of Dostoevsky revealed a middle-aged man with an unkempt beard and receding hairline. A skeletal face. Serious, with an ailing complexion. A profile revealing the tell-tale face of a man who experienced considerable injustices.  Diagnosed with Grand Mal Epilepsy as a teenager, a last-minute reprieve from a firing squad, exiled to Siberia, death of his second wife whom he loved, death of his child from an epileptic convulsion and the distress of raising a troubled teenager.

However, if the Karamazov book is anything to go by, it was the existential angst that troubled Dostoevsky later years. Mourning the repeated inhumanity of Russian society, he inevitably turned to thoughts of Divine justice. A question that is as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.

When he was exiled to Siberia, an old widow supplied him and his fellow prisoner’s hospitality. She signalled out Dostoevsky and gifted him with a Bible. He later wrote, in his letters ‘I am a child of this age, the child of disbelief and doubt, until now and even to the grave. What a terrible torment this thirst for faith has taught me, and now cost me, which is stronger in my soul, the more in me the arguments to the contrary’ The Bible, she gave him, was still in his possession at his death.

Fascinating that The Brothers Karamazov was, despite careful reading, I never found that attributed phrase where Alisha said to his atheist brother, ‘If there is no God, then all things are permissible.’ The problem lies in the translation it seems. Nonetheless, the aphorism stands as a valuable argument for objective morality and the personal God. Why does something exist rather than not exist? Why are humans who are apparent chemicals that have come about in the big cosmic game of chance directed by this virtue called justice? Is all the goodness and wickedness carried out by humans all for nothing? Are the acts carried out by Pol Pot, Putin, Stalin, and others, permissible? Will there not be a great judgement? If we are alone in this dark universe the anything goes. But we’re not alone.

We are governed by an invisible force that bends towards justice. We feel it in our lives daily. I say bends because we are free moral agents on a level playing field where goodness and wickedness meet. There’s too much wickedness for God to exist some might say. But isn’t the reverse also true? There’s considerable goodness. Why would any virtue exist in a universe that just happened? I see medical staff going to war-torn countries and risking life to provide care for those who are not their kin. What about Ignacio Echeverría, the 39-year-old Spanish lawyer who confronted the terrorists in the 2017 London Bridge attacks and sacrificing his athletic future and life in the process? There’s the stranger who sacrifices a kidney for the person he will never meet. The millions of charitable givers who make life more endurable for orphans in Brazil, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world. These acts defy the theory of reciprocity allogrooming. These acts describe altruism in the true sense. Just pure, unconditional love. And history is filled with such acts.

© 2024 Writer's Notebook: On Being Human

Philia: the love among friends.

In 2009, I was returning home from Rome. On the way to the airport, I noticed the sign for Via Appia (The Appian Way). I was reminded of a Bible account where the Apostle Paul was being transferred from Jerusalem to Rome under armed guard to have his case heard in 58 A.D. As Paul walked along this ancient road, news of his journey came to the attention of his fellow Christians in the city. Luke reports Pauls words:

‘The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they travelled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us.’

The Forum of Appius was a usual stopping place 64 km from Rome. The poet Horace described it as “festered with frogs, gnats, boatmen and stingy tavern-keepers”. The Three Taverns was a traveller’s inn 58 km from the capitol. What I find moving about this account is that the Christians of Paul’s day were prepared to walk all that way to support their spiritual brother. When Paul caught sight of them, he thanked God and took courage. The Greek word for courage (tharséō) from the source language of the New Testament, carries with it the warm-hearted thought of emboldening with inner strength.

I wonder, I just wonder, how many Christians would do the same for a fellow believer?

Some of my cosiest childhood memories for me is being tucked up in bed and my dad reading me stories. Peter Pan, Pinocchio. Oliver Twist. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrope and many more.

I often think, not occasionally, but almost daily, regarding the little children who must go to bed without the story because of absent fathers. This is no fault of the mother. Being a single parent is a challenging task.

When I was in my late teens, I became fascinated by another group of missing fathers. I read a book about HMY Iolaire. This was a vessel that was returning to the Island of Lewis on Scotland’s west coast on January 1, 1919.

On board were no ordinary group of passengers, but 283 men who were returning from WW1. As they anticipated returning to their families after much deprivation and discomfort of the war, they no doubt looked forward to catching up on the lost years of absence.

The waters were hostile that day and the captain struggled to negotiate a safe passage. Suddenly, the ship struck rocks and 201 of the 283 men perished.

When the bodies were recovered, in their pockets were toys. Yes, toys. Toys for their children whom they had dearly missed. Gifts that would re-establish the lost years with their relationship with their little ones.

In an ideal world, there would be no absent fathers. Many, if not most, are absent by choice. Some by circumstances beyond their control. And my sympathy goes out to the latter.

 Imagine the scenario, a charity organisation that organised fathers with loving family lives to volunteer to pop round to the homes of children of missing fathers and read them bedtime stories. But in today’s world with many child predators, the idea seems absurd.  On the plus side, I’m happy that literacy is high in the West and many children learn to read for themselves. And I’m sure many single mothers take time to read to them despite the challenges.

Image by Barrett Ward (Unsplash)

That day, the street blushed with a force-ripe sun, but modern life made me wonder, how do I escape from humans?  —Jim McCrory

 How to raise a child

Her hair is dyed silver, euphemistically speaking. Fattish in tight pants that accentuate the unseemly parts and stress the stitching. The child in the pram has a Gregg’s sausage roll partially submerged in her mouth with the wrapper blowing down the street. The mother swipes her mobile phone to listen to the next track on her playlist.

The Indians are coming.

It's spring. The daisies are out the sun gently fills the air with a comfortable temperature. The High Street is busy with a conspicuous glee and the busker man in cowboy hat and boots spoils the mood with endless melancholy songs sung with a Nashville accent. Someone in the flats above hits him on the head with an egg. Perfect shot. He moves his kit up street and he begins disputing for performing space with the Peruvian Indians who have arrived with their pan pipes and charangoes.

 Protect the beer and fags at all costs.

The two men stand outside the pub with their half-empty or half full beer glasses; it depends on your viewpoint. They’re exhaling large clouds of cigarette spoke on passers-by with masks on. One seems too old for slim jeans and the grandad looks absurd with his saltire tattoo on his neck. They complain about the cost of living, the price of cigarettes and a pint. ‘The wife will need to go and get another job.’ The younger-old man says with a smirk.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do our hearts and minds think on terms of eternity? Why are we still young inside even when we get old?

A wise man once wrote that God has “set eternity in our hearts.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

I find this a very pleasing concept. Think of our brains, we have the capacity to take information into it indefinitely. We grow to love other humans. When out time comes, we never want to leave this planet. We desire to take knowledge in constantly. Is it all for nothing? Or is there something, somewhere in the unseen we do not know of? Many argue that we are bound in a material world, but the lived experience tells a different story.

I often wonder if the Chinese man I spoke about yesterday, found the answer.

My daughter's Swedish pen-pall invited herself over for a holiday in the eighties. The following year. her family reciprocated the hospitality and my son and I spent the year learning Swedish from Linguaphile cassettes and watching a Bergman film (The Best Intentions: Den goda viljan) and a Swedish copy of Dances With Wolves (Danser Med Vargar). Like Ann Pratchett's experience, I had pulled out Swedish phrases that were dark, or downright strange and to the amusement of the encountered Swedes.

I miss Sweden now.

I was reading Richard Selzer's essay, The Knife whilst waiting on an X-ray yesterday. He had just performed an operation. Here is how he concludes the essay in a masterful manner. 

At last, a little thread is passed into the wound and tied. The monstrous booming fury is stilled by a tiny thread. The tempest is silenced. The operation id over. On the table, the knife lies spent on its side. The bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks. The knife rests.