A prayer by George MacLeod

Christ, you are within each one of us.

Nearer are you than breathing,

closer than hands and feet.

Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery, 

look out with compassion on the world.

Take us outside, O Christ, outside holiness,

out to where soldiers curse and nations clash

at the crossroads of the world.

We ask it for your name's sake.

Amen.

George MacLeod was the founder of the Iona Community. 

This prayer can be seen as a word to all the pilgrims who come to the ancient abbey on Iona. In this thin place many experience holiness. This prayer reminds us that God gives us holy experiences in special places to go with us back to the world charging and changing us as a result.

Love your neighbour as you love yourself

All human beings like being treated well. So often in our modern world people treat others with discourtesy, disrespect and downright rudeness. Being treated well gives you a boost and makes you feel good.

Last week I made a long train trip and booked using a special internet offer code. As a result I got a first class ticket at a bargain price. In first class the service I received was superb. 
I had never before experienced first class! In your seat you had complimentary drinks offered and complimentary food served all day by the carriage steward. This is not the way to take a trip if you are on a diet! It makes you feel good to be pampered and treated well. The seats are wider than those in ordinary carriages and also recline. I have been on long train journeys which can be a nightmare where you spend the trip longing for the agony to be over.
The trade off we have to understand is that good service costs. If we feel virtuous about getting the best possible deal and paying the lowest possible price for everything then we cannot expect the overworked staff,  inevitably be on minimum wage, to offer the best customer service. Like all of life we get what we pay for. You cannot expect a stranger to pamper you for free!
I find it challenging to wonder if I always treat people I meet in the best way that I can? Especially when I am tired at the end of a long day I know that I am not as nice to others as I want them to be towards me. 

Explaining symbolism

Last weekend we went to our daughter's graduation. It was held in Christopher Wren's Sheldonian theatre in Oxford and lasted for nearly two hours. I only understood a few words and had to keep looking at the translation on the glossy brochure that we had been given. The whole ceremony was in Latin.

All the participants were wearing gowns and mortarboards and had strange names like bedel, proctor, dean and pro-vice-chancellor. The proctors after having announced in Latin the names of the students graduating in groups of ten would immediately walk up and down the hall before calling the students to come forward for the degrees to be conferred. (This walking up and down was symbolic and was supposed to allow the deans to stand and object if they didn't want any students to be awarded degrees!) The students also dressed up – the graduands came in wearing the gowns signifying their status. Daughter arrived in her short “commoner” gown (the lowest of the low) that she had to wear for exams and formal dinners during her time as a student. They then processed out and returned in the new gowns indicating the new status the degree had conferred on them. The students awarded an MA degree knelt in a row in front of the pro-vice chancellor and he tapped each of them in turn on the head with a bible while saying in Latin “in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.” Though these students had been at the cutting edge of astrophysics and other sciences or working on modern literature they were re-enacting a ceremony in a form that would have been recognisable more than 500 years ago! I was relieved when the vice chancellor said the word “disolvo” to signify the end!

The university staff were used to the ceremonial. They knew the Latin script and when to bow and when to doff their mortarboards. They may well have become used to the strangeness of it all. But I wonder what the three hundred parents, partners and friends of the students made of the whole thing? If you had not read the guide brochure you might have thought you had landed on another planet or on the set of Hogworts for the filming of Harry Potter!

I sometimes wonder what a person who had never been to church in their life would make of some of the things we take for granted. We use words and do things in a symbolic way because we find they mean something to us. We must not expect that everyone will understand why we do all the things we do in the way that we do them. How much time should we spend explaining? Should we aim for a casual worship service with no symbolic acts or ceremonial aspects? More questions to live with.

Let Christ out

Nobody worries about Christ as long as he can be kept shut up in churches. He is quite safe inside. But there is always trouble if you try and let him out.

-- G. A. Studdert Kennedy

Geoffrey A Studdert Kennedy,  (27 June 1883 – 8 March 1929), was Church of England priest and poet. He was nicknamed 'Woodbine Willie' during the first world war for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual aid to injured and dying soldiers.

After the war he had a parish in London where he bacame a vocal campaigner for Christian Socialism until his death. 

Solvitur Ambulando - a cure for stress from St Augustine

St Augustine is believed to have coined the phrase "Solvitur Ambulando" which means "it is solved by walking".


Diogenes of Sinope, also known as "Diogenes the Cynic," is said to have replied to the argument that motion is unreal by standing up and walking away. A more idiomatic English translation might be “you’ll find the answer as you go.”


Whichever is the correct source of the phrase it has been quoted by Dorothy L Sayers, Thoreau, and Bruce Chatwin in their works.


When you feel stressed a walk is the best cure I know. Once you get outdoors in the open air, ideally amongst nature, then with the wind blowing around you and in your hair, your own concerns seen to shrink and get into proportion. My mind clears and I see much better probably because of both the fresh air and the exercise.

We have two dogs. They love to walk.  They have to go out every day rain or snow, wind or storm. They make me walk them even when I don't feel like it or would prefer to be huddled up beside the fire with a good book.


Setting out for a walk you can hold some question that is causing you concern in your mind. Not worrying about it but holding it there gently in your thoughts as you enjoy the physical aspects of taking a walk. Perhaps you want to do the same with something that you are worrying about. It is likely that when you return from the walk the stress will be reduced or gone and you will see more clearly.


When you walk in company you often chat about problems you are facing and often come up with solutions. Walking alone is essential for a writer friend who finds it is a time that he comes up with plots and ideas for his books. A walk can also be a cure for a writers block.  If you are not blessed as I am to live next to beautiful woods maybe when you walk you have to cross major road intersections. Instead instead of streams and distant mountain views you walk past apartment blocks, shops and factories but you can still lose yourself in the exercise. You are outside. You are taking in the perspective of the wider world. It is the walking that brings healing and up to a point it doesn't matter where you walk - though I know which I would find preferable.


Solvitur Ambulando

Faith seeking Understanding

This is my third and latest book available for the Amazon Kindle.

Confident Christians are not only those who are theologically conservative. This book explores how progressive and liberal Christians can develop a faith that is robust and confident. Faith is a lively and exciting journey of discovery and in this context confidence comes from living out that faith in our complex modern world. The chapters deal with faith, spirituality, the prophetic voice, intellectual exploration and inclusion. The title comes from the words of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury over 1000 years ago. Pastor John from Scotland has written several books, available on Amazon Kindle, to help people explore and develop their faith and spirituality.
This short book is just over 19,000 words. 

You can find this book for sale here in the USA and here in the UK.

A motivational poem

Last week in a group of friends discussing the world and its problems over dinner someone referred to Rudyard Kipling's poem "If". I had not read the poem for several years but found that I still know large stanzas of it by heart. 


I was put off this poem over twenty years ago when some commentator on a radio discussion programme dismissed it as a relic of the British Empire. He was no doubt one of those Marxist intellectuals who reinterpret history to fit in with their narrow view of what constitutes human life. (Fortunately most of these people have now retired!)


Looking at the poem afresh I can honestly say I am truly moved by the sentiments expressed here. Kipling captures something about what it means to be a good human being and a valuable and contributing member of society. It is about being positive. It is about perseverance against the odds. It is about big society - in the proper sense of the word - not the political spin often associated with the word. It is a truly motivational poem.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!