On being profoundly profoundly deep

"And Jesus said unto a group of theologians, 'Who do you say that I am?'

And they replied, 'You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being,

the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our interpersonal relationship.'

And Jesus said: 'What'?"

I love that story. Possibly because it is borderline inappropriate – after all no one likes their Jesus looking like he’s a little slow to catch on. But I like it because it reminds us not to over-egg the pudding with the gospel.

There is a strong argument for keeping things simple.

A number of years ago, when I was a young minister in this church, I remember being quite beguiled by one of the ministers who had a widely celebrated command of the English language and was seen by some as being a bit of a spiritual guru.

He had this knack of saying something with all the angst of the point of his message visibly displayed - he would bend over slightly, curl his hands and his body into himself, much like I would imagine someone imitating ‘pain of new birth’ in an interpretive dance routine. And his points were often full of angst, so he was often in this position and he used words that were difficult to define, hard to pin down – words that left me back in Grade Five wanting to put up my hand to ask, ‘What on earth do you mean?” but feeling like the village idiot in doing so, yet holding to this gnawing suspicion that perhaps I’m not the only one who carried on straight when the speaker took a left turn. So while mid-fold, in an agonising last ditch attempt to get this Herculean point across, he exclaimed, ‘”This is meaningfully, meaningfully deep.” Another minister, close to retirement age himself and thus less beguiled by the wisdom of the elder, who to him was simply a peer – Guru? Please! He’s just Jimmy from back in Seminary, we almost failed Greek together! He would’ve if he hadn’t copied my notes… – and someone very close to me, let out an harrumph and repeated that phrase ‘meaningfully, meaningfully deep’ with such disdain I half suspected that he might just spit it out on the floor next to him.

 

That got me thinking: what is the difference between ‘meaningfully, meaningfully deep’ and say, ‘deeply, deeply meaningful’ or, ‘meaningfully meaningful’ and ‘deeply deep’? I mean, when is it appropriate for the language police to haul your sorry butt off to a holding cell for citing deliberate obfuscation of a fairly simple point or rampant abuse of an innocent, unsuspecting adverb? (And should I be hauled off for using ‘obfuscation’ when say ‘confusion’ would do?)

Because sometimes we as ministers do this, we make things unnecessarily confusing. I once quoted Homer in a sermon, which was not that unusual considering Classical Civilisations was my major at University, but it was met with some confusion. After the service one congregant remarked that he had heard of Homer and Bart, heck even Marge, but was not aware any of them had contributed to some kind of epic story called The Odyssey or The Iliad. And come to think of it, if I was quoting Homer, why wasn’t my quote, you know, funnier? (In this same sermon I meandered through an illustration about Alexander the Great leading my father to remark, ‘Well son, good point, but did it need to be six minutes long?’ leading to a frustrated, ‘Well dad, if people are going to get to the crux of the point, they need a working knowledge of the reasons leading to the Siege of Halicarnassus. Duh.’) The sermon just after this I felt compelled to use the words omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent all in the same prayer – not completely sure, at that time, what any of those words really meant; yip, I’m a slow learner.

And maybe this too is a lesson to any preacher, actually any leader: just because it is interesting to you, does not make it interesting to everybody.

I think there is a balance here. On one hand the gospel is very simple, its truth a glistening, honest, beautiful thing whose simplicity and earthy truthfulness sparkles so enticingly that anyone, even a child, can get a grip on it. But then your journey begins and questions come and simple things segue into more complex things and answers become more questions, and black and white fade to grey; and importantly language is stretched and pulled to breaking point, and words are sent around swirling to give some form to this mystery.

For God is mystery and sometimes words fail us entirely.

I have this habit of remembering things other ministers say; well not everything they say as ministers are by-and-large a rather talkative lot - but insightful things, things that are offered sometimes off-the-cuff and hit me as so profoundly (profoundly?) true that immediately my cerebellum fuses and those words stick in my brain like gum to the bottom of a primary school desk, immovable.

One minister said, “You know, I don’t care for simplicity on this side of complexity that is nothing to me, but simplicity on the other side of complexity, that is a remarkable thing.” A remarkable thing indeed; only I’m not one hundred percent sure what he means.

So I’ll give a shot at what I think it means: I think you can sit with questions. I think you can wonder through the existential maze and sit with a book that insists you open the Dictionary.com window to help you navigate your way through, yet you can still hold to a faith that is beautiful and true, joyous and adventurous, illuminating and inspiring, and by all accounts, quite simple.

That faith that anyone can hold to, even a child.

In some ways I am nowhere near where I used to be. In other ways I love Jesus just as much as I always have, and for exactly the same reasons: Jesus gives my life meaning, Jesus has always given my life meaning, is just that my definition of what meaning is has changed.

This is probably a warning; I see it in religious people. I see it in myself. Sometimes our words, our theology, our immense learning, these can become red herrings, making ourselves seem more important than we are or constructing a purpose beyond what is necessary. So much of what we read in academic circles really falls into the category: who cares? You will find that category after: what do you mean? And right before: who thinks this stuff up? These are all sub-categories under the broader major category: Huh?

I speak this as a lover of learning and one deeply committed to furthering tertiary studies, but you can ask any student, one of our greatest fears nibbling at the back of our minds is that nobody will read this advanced thinking beyond ourselves and maybe some ageing professor in a backwater college with an egg stain from the forties on his tie and sporting a wicked comb-over. And of course, our Supervisor who is paid to read it.

Of course all this learning does have its use – academia makes us better thinkers and we are perilously short of those; it is fruitful. Of course. But just find application for it and simplicity beyond it.

At another retreat, as ministers were sharing, one minister spoke of that particular frustration any preacher feels; he had spent the whole week analysing, praying through and preparing a text for Sunday. Never before had a text been excavated to such depth. He stood to preach believing he had unearthed this wonderful truth only to look up and find one guy sitting in the front pew, as fast asleep as a child after a bed-time reading – snoring lightly, pleasant look on his face; so sound asleep was he that, had he been laid on his side, he could have been cut- and-pasted into a mattress commercial. Ask any preacher - that is about as soul-destroying as it can get.

And so it goes.

So, the next time you are sitting in church and the preacher (possibly me) is boring you to death and you’re losing the will to live and you’re on a very dry descent into Dullsville please just remember one thing: you worship a God who is wonderfully, wonderfully loving and who calls you in turn to be lovingly, lovingly wonderful.

On peace being upon us all

Aya Sofya

I attended an Inter-Faith gathering on Friday night, which was interesting. We were an eclectic mix of the world’s religions: some Muslims, a Hindu-looking guy, a Buddhist – I presume, dressed as he was in flowing orange and looking very peaceful – a couple of Atheists, an Agnostic or two; it was difficult to know exactly where everyone stood on life, love and everything else as we weren’t sporting team colours or name-tags denoting our positions. We were however gathered loosely in religiously (or non)-affiliated clusters.

But as always, the conversation was stimulating. At one point Atilla, a Muslim friend of mine (some of my best friends are Muslim…), referred to the Prophet Mohammed as, ‘Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him’. I was responding to this and said Prophet Mohammed, and then I came unstuck: was it okay to say Mohammed alone without, you know, the added phrase? Would it be rude to just say Mohammed? Would it be like someone coming up to me and referring to my Saviour Jesus as ‘ol’ J.C.’? So, in the moment (forgive me, in robust inter-faith conversations, you’re working with fractions of a second to get your thought out) I said, ‘Mohammed, peace be upon him’. I was a little shocked that I said this. It sounded a bit too Islamic. 

I don’t know if I just had not noticed or if my confusing remark started a bit of an avalanche but then others started saying, ‘Peace be upon him,’ so much so that there seemed to be an awful lot of peace now flying around the room, and rather disconcertingly attaching itself to all sorts of different kinds of people. One man, until this moment a rather confident-seeming atheist, referred to Gandhi and then, like with me, hesitated wobbled and then said, ‘Peace be upon him.’ Actually he didn’t say that, he tried to say that but said instead, ‘May the peace of…’ and then rather trailed off, realising there was no good way for an atheist to end that particular sentence. And then I thought to myself: But Gandhi is a Hindu? He isn’t a prophet is he? A holy man for sure but… Is he a holy man or just ‘above average’ spiritually? He needs a miracle to be saint though, isn’t that right? Or is that just a Catholic thing? ... Who decides these things anyway?

And so it goes.

Then Atilla did a rather strange thing: he said ‘Jesus, peace be upon him’. Now one of the first, and rather surprising, things a newbie will learn in inter-faith dialogue is that Muslims hold Jesus in high esteem, as a prophet. So he too gets the phrase, ‘Peace be upon him.’ I found this rather offensive; I felt like saying to Atilla, ‘But Jesus is ours so stop making him sound so, I don’t know, Muslim-y. Just Jesus will be fine!’ Sporting an attitude the equivalent of a petulant child jumping up and down demanding a slow-to-arrive sweetie. I might have said this except the exceptionally smart Catholic had only minutes earlier reminded us Christians that Jesus was in fact not Christian but Jewish and that he had in fact not come to start a new religion; this is true, but unnerving. (As a colleague reminded me as I recounted this conversation, with Jesus not being Christian and John Wesley not being Methodist, it’s very hard for us Methodists to know exactly where we stand.) Inter-faith debates go like this. The ground begins to wobble beneath your feet and if you’re not careful you will lose your balance.

A few days later, while listening to Atilla present on Inter-Faith, he spoke of the prophets – and the prophets we have in common; his slide had the names of the prophets followed by an acronym, PBUTA. I wasn’t sure what that meant till I heard Atilla say, ‘Peace be upon them all’. I realised this was a catch-phrase for all prophets. I suppose religious reverence would soon give way to godless tedium if each prophet demanded a repeat of that phrase every time their name was used.

But I liked that: Peace be upon them all.

And maybe we just extend that a little bit: Peace be upon us all.

Or maybe we can just shorten it: Peace.

When Atilla was preparing to give his talk I said, ‘See you Monday.’ He said, ‘Hopefully’. I looked blankly at him, then blinked. ‘No, not hopefully, definitely. We’re on. It’s been advertised. People are coming. You’d better be there!’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought ‘hopefully’ was the correct English translation of ‘Inshallah’?’

‘No, I don’t think so. My Arabic is a little rusty but if ‘Inshallah’ means I could possibly make it but there’s a good chance something else might come up, then yes that is a good translation, otherwise not so much. Doesn’t ‘Inshallah’ mean ‘God-willing’?’

‘Okay then. See you Monday night, ‘Inshallah’.’

When Monday was finished I was saying goodbye to Atilla and his colleague Abdul, who lately has been everywhere Atilla is sporting always a smile, saying never a word. (He is a deeply helpful young man though silent as the grave.) I had neglected to give Atilla a gift for his presentation that evening and was arranging a coffee during the week to hand a gift over.

I said, ‘I’ll phone you mid-week and arrange to see you Thursday?’

Abdul looked at Atilla then looked at me and spoke only the second sentence I had ever heard him speak: ‘Hopefully,’ he said, sporting a smile so broad it made him float.

On the fat and juicy life

I went to the dietician last week. Every now and again, like most people my age, I get filled with this overwhelming sense that a detox is in order – it normally hits me after my third cup of coffee that I take while having my first breakfast.

I was ushered in to the office. I sat down. She pricked my finger and placed the results under the microscope and onto this intimidating computer screen. I have been through the detox motions before so I knew what was coming. Before my poor blood cells could be examined, on the screen was the perfect representation of what good blood cells look like: really smart, healthy looking blood cells, the George Clooney of the blood cell world. They were free floating, hippie-like in the bonhomie of bumping loosely into each other, large, plumpish, at-peace-with-themselves blood cells. Mine? Well. Mine were not very much like that at all. Think polar opposite.  After the paradise of the first cells, mine were ushered onto the screen. An apocalyptic wasteland: anaemic, stuck together, none of them bouncing against each other – rather all strung together lethargically like a chain-gang after a long stint in the sun.

I looked at this and considered the sheer miracle of me still able to sit there and draw breath. What was most disconcerting though was the music playing in the background – it was a horrible instrumental version of ‘Amazing Grace’. This seemed a little manipulative. Just looking at those blood cells made me consider my mortality; I hardly needed the help of ‘Amazing Grace’. What next? While taking my blood pressure would she forward to ‘Abide with me fast falls the eventide’? As my wheezing cells spluttered and hiccupped their way across the screen I softly sang the words, ‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years…’

I left the building with an invoice for fourteen hundred rand and a suitcase full of pills.

I mention this because I’m scared that I’m falling victim to a trend: this health and eating habits trend. This obsession with what goes into our mouths – how much, when, to what degree, sometimes to the detriment of common-sense which, for me, seems to be solution enough.

Mary belongs to a Weigh-Less group. These three fine young women are constantly talking about going for weigh-ins that happen through the months with charming irregularity. The irregularity of the actual weigh-ins is matched by the resolve of these three to continue the process; calories are constantly counted, portions carefully considered, cake strangely still gets eating (at least in my household). They also chirp each other about this process. They can say things I can’t which is hard because the scope of these conversations allows for a volley of witticisms, none of which I’m allowed to speak. They can mock each other, bystanders however – especially male bystanders, bystanders married to one of these three – are absolutely forbidden to comment. If they do, it won’t end well. They call themselves Fat Club (their whatsapp group comes replete with an image of Miss Piggy and actually, they spell it Phat Club) and as we all know, the first rule of Fat Club is nobody is to talk about Fat Club. My wife asked me about a pair of jeans she was wearing the other day that were by all accounts a little tight; in an inspired moment, after her inquiry, I remarked, ‘Well I am considered the Pants Whisperer and I can tell you, those jeans are screaming.’

That did not end well.

But I see this kind of infatuation with body and eating all over the place. There is this show on television where three chubby fellows chomp their way through various exotic delicacies prepared by a group of usually young, nervy, sweating, newbie chefs. It always seems to end with a highly emotive taste-off where one of these three, normally the largest one - always sporting a cravat - is smooshing the food around his mouth. But this is not the part that gets me. The part that gets me is the seriousness of the moment. This moment has all the severity of a child sacrifice on an Incan temple altar. It is normally at this moment that I look at Mary absolutely puzzled and say, ‘But it’s just food?!’ This is normally followed with her instructing me to shut up.

Coupling this obsession with food is the obsession with body shape and size and exercise and running and lifting and nibbling and checking waistlines and muscle powders and… well, the list goes on. 

And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is just life and a big part of life is eating and exercising.

But another part of me thinks that we’re doing what we’ve always done when things are a little out of sync: the thing that is there to help us live life better slowly becomes the purpose of life in general. The helpful means to a better life becomes the end goal of life itself. And I suppose to some degree that is okay. I mean, there are worse mistakes to make. But I worry that by doing this, we shrink our worlds. I mean by all means, build bigger muscles and devote lots of time to it if that is your thing but don’t let that be all you build.

I can’t fathom meeting God one day and requesting a moratorium on questions about my contribution to life till after I’ve showed off this dazzling six-pack I’ve spent a lifetime creating. (Hence my firm resolve never to build a six-pack, a resolve I have held to with unwavering determination.)

So those of you who are like me, I offer you a dietary plan:

·         Drink more water.

·         Consume less sugar.

·         Exercise a few times a week.

·         And check the fat content on products. (That seems to be a big thing.)

·         Also, stay off ice-cream. Unless you are using it as a defence mechanism against rapid weight gain, in which case eat as much as you like. And all bets are off.

·         And then swing past my house. I’ve got some pills I want to sell you. Obecalpym©. Special price.

And my last piece of advice is a platitude because this seems to be a part of our world particularly susceptible to platitudes. After my blood was checked I was informed that, I quote, ‘You are not happening to life, life is happening to you.’ This sentiment was offered with such gravitas, so sagely, I could do nothing but wobble my head up and down in agreement. Absolute tosh of course. Not only would I not mind falling on the wrong side of that equation, I just wish it was that simple. My happening to life and life’s happening to me are constantly colliding like an atomic super-conductor super-collider.

 

“Are you happening to life or is life happening to you?”

“It depends, what time is it?”

Another saying that has more helpfully stuck with me is something Anne Lamott (of course) said a while back and something I recently re-read (and paraphrase here): “Don’t forget to have a juicy, creative life.”  (Read this great article on this whole idea.)

So from time to time I will eat a carb and yes – gosh! gasp! - I will do it after seven in the evening, because sometimes that is when a carb demands to be eaten. And yes, sometimes I will eat sugar (refined!) and I will probably live to tell the story, Tim Noakes be dammed. 

“Don’t forget to have a juicy, creative life.”

That and my simple diet plan will have to suffice until such a time that we have, as a species, evolved to the point where a dietician’s opening remarks to me are, ‘Well, with this detox plan you’re going to have to increase your caffeine intake by at least two more cups of a coffee a day.’ That will be a 'Hallelujah moment' unaccompanied by ‘Amazing Grace’.