tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

 

There is a moment in the Tragedy of Macbeth, where it is becoming clear that the future he and Lady Macbeth had tried to grasp will be ripped from his hand, and when he has just been informed that his wife has ended her own life with violence, where Shakespeare gives Macbeth this amazing soliloquy:

“She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.

Three times in the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John, the biographer John writes: the next day, the next day, the next day.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.

Building a sense of inevitability. A player stepping out on the stage. A tale told. But when his hour comes, this poor player will not be forgotten. The telling of this tale is not sound and fury, signifying nothing, but signs and passion, that the heater might believe for themselves.

[Bonus trivia connection: Macbeth act 5 scene 5 continues with Macbeth threatening a messenger:

“If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee:”]

John breaks the petty pace pattern of the next day, the next day, the next day at the start of chapter 2, declaring: On the third day ...

... an image he will carry through chapter 2 when Jesus moves from a wedding at Cana (On the third day) to the temple in Jerusalem, where when he is challenged to justify his driving out the animals, both the sheep and the cattle [note, contrary to those who use this incident to justify violence, the whip is not used against fellow humans, as if Jesus was an Egyptian overseer of Hebrew slaves, but as a practical means of directing livestock], he replies with an enigmatic statement his apprentices later understand as a prediction of his death [parched, hanging on a tree, charged with and declared guilty of false speech] and resurrection (in three days).

The difference between Macbeth, who was not only a literary character but also an historical king of Scotland for seventeen years, and Jesus, who is not only an historical person but also a literary character, is that Jesus does not despise the way to dusty death as the way of fools; he is the Way, and in walking the way faithfully – keeping faith with frail humanity – transforms dusty death into the door to life; a candle – the light of life – extinguished, briefly, only to reignite.

But before we get to the temple, and long before we get to the foretold death and resurrection, On the third day John takes us to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where six stone jars that had held water are refilled with water, which is transformed into wine.

The point is not that the wine is better than the water. This is not Jesus superseding Judaism. The wine is the water, transformed, not replaced. The detail John notes is the instruction to fill the jars to the brim. That is, the water that was already in the jars has been depleted: you cannot fill a full jar. First depletion, then filling, then transformation. We must embrace loss, the impact of death, if we are to experience gain, the promise of life.

This is what Macbeth failed to grasp, and what we so often fail to grasp.

 

poise

 

Yesterday we saw a rise in temperature, and walking the path between the vicarage and the church early in the morning, I noticed that the path was covered with large droplets of water that were holding their shape. Retracing my route forty minutes later, I noticed that the water had held the shape of my footprints, the tread of my Dr Marten boot soles. Indeed, the water held the shape of my footprints all day and is still holding their shape the following day.

I don’t understand the physics, but I know that this has to do with viscosity, ‘a measure of a fluid’s rate-dependent resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighbouring portions relative to one another’ (Encyclopaedia Brittanica) and informally known as thickness. At the current temperature range, the water has a high enough viscosity to hold its shape. The SI units of viscosity are newton-seconds per square metre or pascal-seconds, sometimes expressed as poise (1 pascal-second = 10 poise). The poise of water between 5°C-10°C is 0.015-0.013 P.

Poise, as a unit of measurement, is named after the French physicist Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille. But in English ‘poise’ means a graceful and elegant bearing in a person. And there is something elegant about holding oneself together under pressure. There is something graceful about making the world a more beautiful place by your presence. There can be something graceful and elegant about embracing a gradual change in the face of external forces or circumstances we cannot control. There is something graceful and elegant about bearing witness to the presence of another, passing through your presence in the world, to saying not only ‘I am here’ but also ‘They were here, too.’

There is poise to the viscosity of water, and as I walked the path between vicarage and church, or across the patio outside my back door, yesterday, I trod with reverence for the water, for my recently past self (careful not to break the edges of my earlier footprints) and for the forensic testimony of the interdependence of life. Poise is not a word often associated with a dyspraxic person, but the poise of the water invited me to pay attention to my own poise in the world.

stone and water

 

The Gospel set for the Second Sunday of Epiphany is John 2.1-11, the account of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

It is a favourite passage of mine, and paired with my favourite Collect (or Prayer for the Day, the day in question being the Second Sunday of Epiphany).

I want to pay attention to the details. There are six stone jars, for holding water for ritual purification, that is, a physical and bodily action that invites us to pause and to experience our body as holy, something that is both inherently good and chosen by God for his good purposes for his world, truths we lose sight of in the business of daily life. Such rituals are a gift, bringing us back to our body as gift, and are especially relevant to those of us who have been shaped by the Enlightenment and the Cartesian view that ‘I think, therefore I am’ without reference to my body or the bodies of my parents and indeed my ancestors from whom my body was given me.

There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to the menstrual cycle, not because women are a contaminating presence but because they have a body that experiences cycles to be attended to, not only on a practical level; cycles that connect them deeply to all creation. There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to eating bread, inviting us to pause and wonder at our hand, and the intimate connection between labour and food. There are rites of cleansing when laying out the dead, to remind us of the gift of a living, breathing body, for we bring nothing into the world and will take nothing with us when we leave it; and rites of cleansing before a priest declares a blessing, to remind us that a blessing is not merely words but a physical thing, a hand stretched out, air passing through a voice-box, matter connecting with matter in ways that matter.

The water used for water-purification must be living water, that is flowing, directly from a spring. But some took the view that living water could be stored and carried – though not directly touched – in stone jars. Unlike the more common (cheaper, readily available, disposable) clay jars, stone does not become ritually unclean when it comes into contact with something ritually unclean – such as blood, or a corpse. The family hosting the wedding in Cana used stone jars, which suggests that ritual purity was essential to them. This in turn suggests that they were a priestly family. We know that priests lived in Cana, and, along with other priests scattered in Levitical towns across the land, took their rostered turn serving at the temple in Jerusalem. If so, they would also have a spring-fed mikveh (a bath used solely for ritual submersion) in their home, and it would be from this water that the servants filled the jars at Jesus’ direction. (We once owned a house that had a stream flowing through the basement and occasionally flooded and had to be pumped out.) That there are six jars is a matter of biographical detail – the reason there were six jars was because there were six jars – not some theological symbolism – six days of creation, for example. The significant detail is that they were stone.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Jesus himself are invited guests, and the kind of close-circle guests expected to stay for the duration. Mary herself is thought to have been from a priestly family, and these may be her relatives. As she is not the host but nonetheless keeps a close and interested eye on proceedings, it is possible that this is the wedding of one of Jesus’ siblings. It is possible – though this is entirely speculative – that it is the wedding of one of Jesus’ sisters to Nathanael, after Nathanael has discovered that good things can come out of Nazareth after all, and Jesus has vetted Nathanael and declared him to be ‘a true Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’

Everything about this account – the jars, the water, the wine – is gift. It is not the case that the wine is better than the water (though it is better than the wine that had already been consumed). Jesus is not superseding anything here. We are not doing away with Judaism. Everything is gift and everything matters. The servants must manoeuvre heavy stone jars, fill them from the mikveh, carry them back, dip a ladle into the water, which is now wine. The master of ceremonies must lift the wine to his lips and drink, and declare it very good, though he does not know from where it came or why it is only now being brought out. The servants know where the wine came from, but not how it came to be wine. It is gift, and mystery. It is participation.

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Epiphany declares:

Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your heavenly glory ...

The phrase ‘the poverty of our nature’ is a recognition that we do not make ourselves – do not summon ourselves into being by our own power and authority – but receive our life as a contingent gift, wondrous, deeply connected to others. We do not need to make ourselves acceptable to God; nor does Jesus need to make us acceptable to God (though he may need to open our eyes to see). Yet, as if this were not wondrous enough, what is already gift is transformed into another – a different – gift ‘by the riches of [God’s] grace’ – that is, through the act of another gift-giving. This is grace upon grace.

You are a gift, and that gift is embodied. That body will age, and experience limitations, and is intended to become thoroughly inter-dependent with others, who are themselves also gifts who enjoy the gift of life. The gift you are is a gift that will undergo transformation, many times over, as your personal story is woven into the big story God is co-authoring with humanity. Like the servants and the steward, we will both know and not know what it is that has happened, for it is a mystery, not to be explained but to be entered. Like the disciples, we will be given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory and are encouraged to respond by affirming our belief in him. The occasion of our transformation may be a running out of some resource, as the wine ran out; or the abundance of a resource, as the water filled the jars to the brim. The ebb and flow of our lives is full of endings and beginnings. In all things, may Jesus be glorified.

 

Christ, the Lord

 

We get milk delivered to our doorstep, but sometimes, as happened yesterday, I have to pop out for extra. As I approached the till, the cashier said, ‘Christ, it’s cold.’ and then, in panic at what is or isn’t appropriate language in front of a vicar, ‘But the forecast is that it is about to get warmer. Thank the Lord.’

Am I a bad vicar for finding their response hilarious? Perhaps. But Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ or Anointed One, lived on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. I think he would respond to ‘Christ, it’s cold.’ with, ‘It certainly is!’ And while I am not especially keen on his name being used as an exclamatory, I am far more offended by those who co-opt his name to their political attempts to exercise control over the lives, bodies and relationships of other people. The only control that is the fruit of the Spirit – the only control God exercises – is self-control.

 

on burn out and overwhelm

 

‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.’

Isaiah 43

Two years ago, I was burnt out. I had been covering two vacancies, in two neighbouring churches, for too long, and the fact that someone was providing cover meant that the processes for addressing the situation were not moving in the way that they ought to move. And I had reached the point where I was exhausted, emotionally, and had run out of hope that anything was going to change.

When I share this story, people share with me their experiences of burn-out, in the face of intractable challenges in their working lives or family circumstances. And when we are burnt out, we need someone to show us one small step that we can take.

I met with my archdeacon, and told him that, even though I had not lost my sense of vocation, I was seriously contemplating walking away from this, from holding these vacancies. He listened, and said, ‘You need a sabbatical.’ (three month’s paid leave). I replied, ‘I’ve been asking for a sabbatical for over two years now, and I just get pushed from pillar to post.’ He responded, ‘We’ll make it happen.’ One small step.

On my wife’s recommendation, I got in ouch with friends who live in Spain and arranged to go and spend a week with them. They live in a Roman walled city. Each day, I walked around the city wall, then found a café and drank coffee and read. Small steps.

The next small step was deciding that I would not go back to holding two vacancies but would leave the place where I had been based and concentrate on the place where some of my time had been loaned. Small step after small step. And at times what looked like a path forward vanished into thin air, inviting me to stop and wait and look around and find a next small step.

In this way, step by step, including not heading too far off the path, we rebuild hope.

Burn out is not uncommon. But being overwhelmed is very common. Overwhelm is the experience that life is unfolding too fast, faster than our bodies and minds can manage, faster than we are willing or able to keep up.

One of the common experiences of overwhelm is found in the wake of bereavement. The world rushes on, oblivious, as if it did not know that it had come to an end, as if people did not care that you had lost your very life when someone dear to you died. You might even have had it said to you, ‘Have you not moved on? It’s been six months.’ as if six months was anything at all.

We experience overwhelm when the demands placed upon us are too relentless.

And the experts tell us that the cure to overwhelm is play.

When children play, they are fully absorbed. Their parent might say, ‘Come on, it’s time to go.’ and it is as if the child has not heard them, because they have not heard, not because they are disobedient but because they are absorbed.

Through play, children learn cooperation and problem solving, but also and more fundamentally experience joy. As adults we assume that we have learnt the lessons of play (the skills of cooperation and problem solving) and so we leave play behind. And over time we forget how to play. We lose touch with joy.

Burn out is a long-term challenge. It takes more than a three-month sabbatical to return. But overwhelm, despite being a big emotion, can be smaller in scale, and a more frequent experience. The late modern world comes at us thick and fast. At times we might take out ten minutes just to play and that be enough; at times, a whole day.

And God does not say to his people, you will not walk through fire and the waves will not rise over your head. God says, when these things happen, because they will happen, when you are burnt out or overwhelmed, there you might discover me with you. In the revelation of a small step, or in the midst of play.

 

reading

 

The biographer Luke records an occasion when Jesus read aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth. We encounter Jesus in a synagogue several times in the Gospels, but here (chapter 4) Luke gives a particular insight into communal reading.

Contrary to popular belief, people in antiquity knew how to read silently (the difference between seeing a text and listening to a text) but the predominant form of reading was out loud.

Between the ages of five and twelve, Jesus would have learnt to read by reading extracts of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) aloud, and, eventually, committing them to memory. This was the core of what we would call primary or elementary education. Then, as a teenager, he would have done the same with the Prophets.

Over the centuries our reading has shifted. Reading aloud and reading silently are both open to us but reading silently has become the norm. Reading has been moved from a communal act to a private act. For many, the primary purpose of reading is, in fact, to escape from others, from the demands of the community around us. Reading opens up horizons that do not actually exist in our lives, though they might, one day.

And reading silently has certain positives, not least as an act of rebellion against unjust demands on our time and our bodies by other people. But it also has a cost.

Reading aloud has several benefits, benefits that we have largely lost. Reading aloud can improve our memory; can improve our comprehension of complex texts; and can strengthen the emotional bonds between people (which is why we still read out sentences that strike us, and memes that make us smile, even if for the most part we sit scrolling our individual screens). Reading aloud could build resilience against dementia and offer early signs of its onset.

If you have bothered to read this, this far, you have almost certainly read it silently. When we read silently, we do the minimum work necessary for comprehension. We do not pay close attention to the difference between, say, prophecy (noun: prophetic content, which may be written down, such as the book of Isaiah) and prophesy (verb: the act of delivering a prophecy, out loud, such as Jesus reading the words of Isaiah and then declaring that they were fulfilled in his presence in his community). You may have found the repetition of read, in the first sentence of this paragraph, once pronounced reed and once red, jarring.

Reading aloud, whether alone or in the presence of others, is good for you. And reading aloud in the presence of others is good for them. For us. We hold back, feeling embarrassed, lacking confidence and perceiving ourselves to lack competence, perhaps because you read aloud at primary school and someone laughed at you for getting it wrong (you did not get it wrong, you were practicing, which is the only way to grow in confidence and competence; you were stretching yourself beyond what you already knew) and you fear (sadly, perhaps with good reason) that you will be judged harshly if you read aloud in public now (who do you think you are, to stand up there like that?) (ha! they said that wrong). But confidence and competence are grown by practice.

I would love to see the local church community of which I am a part rediscover itself as a place where stories are read aloud, by a diverse range of people, for their good and for the communal good. Where riches are uncovered, where newfound freedom is experienced, where things lost are restored.

 

formation and transformation

 

I am reflecting on these verses from the prophet Isaiah 43:1,2

‘But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’

I am reflecting on these verses in part because they (along with the following five verses) are set for this coming Sunday, and in part because they are entirely resonant for the first Monday of January, which, here where I am, is bleak.

These verses are spoken into an historical context I cannot relate to, nor could Isaiah imagine our twenty first century context, and yet ‘overwhelm’ and ‘burned’ are soul experiences we know all too well. Perhaps less familiar is the sense of being ‘created,’ ‘formed,’ and ‘redeemed.’

We experience overwhelm when we sense that life is unfolding too fast, faster than our body – our nervous system, certainly our conscious mind – can manage. We experience burn out when we lose hope – when, in contrast to life unfolding too fast, it feels stuck; when we can see no path from where we are to where we want to be.

These opposite and sometimes co-habiting emotional responses are familiar alarm bells in the complex society we have constructed that allows the few to dominate the lives of the many.

Psychologists tell us that the cure for overwhelm is play, or mindful play, which is a way of describing being absorbed, for a time, in being over doing. An activity that has no directed productive purpose (but, ironically, is essential to our longer-term direction, productivity, and sense of purpose).

Conversely, the return from burn out involves learning hope, through setting realistic goals, identifying flexible and alternative pathways, and embracing agency: our ability to change our circumstances, over time, one small step at a time.

We see both overwhelm and burning out addressed in Isaiah 43:1-7, with an understanding that we might be equipped to face such possibilities (indeed, likely scenarios) even if we cannot reliably predict and avoid the circumstances that are beyond our control – the waters rising, through which we must pass; the fires we walk through.

And what Isaiah imagines God might do with a people, we, who are called to participate in the divine nature in embodied ways, might well attend to doing in our own flesh.

The cure to overwhelm is play, and in these verses Isaiah imagines God, who has not only created a people but who has formed them as a potter gives form to clay. This is a creative process, one in which the potter brings their skill, yes, but the clay brings its unique properties, which are discovered through a playful interaction between the two, wet fingers exploring, imagining, nothing set (by fire) as yet, clay yielding, folding in on itself, taking one form and then another. There is both absent-mindedness and focus here, not in a self-contradictory way, but in being present to this moment alone, to creaturely embodiment, to the inchoate desire from which form will take shape. Daydreaming is part of the creative process, as is getting caught up in flow. And this can be scary, at first, especially if we like to be in control, if we want to master a skill – or our own self-expression, identity – without being willing to surrender to being a novice, an amateur, at being ourselves. Yet in such deep waters, God may be found with us.

The way back from burn out is hope, hope that tomorrow might be different from today. That we might know a little more freedom than yesterday and grasp it and put it to good use. That we might see a way forward – even if the path disappears into bright fog, for there is, at least, a path out from here; and if there is a path from here, and that path is blocked, there may yet be another path from there. And to those who have been burned, and those who might yet pass through fire (and who does not?) Isaiah imagines God calling on the compass points to surrender their captives, the sons and daughters who have been carried off into some distant exile, far from home, far from their own lives. That is powerful imagery. God has a plan, a redemption plan, that does not settle for what is but can imagine powerful societies overthrown that a new generation might be raised up. Not one path but four, from east and west, north and south. That the experience of exile is transformed from hopelessness – this will never change – into something to push against and grow strong.

What playfulness might you set apart time for this week?

What small step might you make on a path to a goal?

Where might you rediscover God with you in your life, however it looks at present?

 

cracker

 

Monday 6th January will be for many the day they go back to school or work after the Christmas break. Even if you are retired, and have nothing in particular to go back to, it may still feel like a gearshift. The Christmas decorations are back in the loft, and we turn our faces into the cold wind of a calendar month that seems to last a full three-hundred-and sixty-five days. But the 6th of January is also the Feast of the Epiphany. How might we keep the feast, wherever we find ourselves?

An epiphany is a revelation, and like a Christmas cracker, a revelation has two ends: at one end, the one who is revealing something, and at the other end, the one who therefore sees or hears something they did not know until now. At the Feast of the Epiphany, God is holding one end of the cracker, and we are holding the other. Here are three ways God might hold out an epiphany for us to grasp, taken from Matthew 2.1-12.

Firstly, God might speak to us through the wonder of the world around us, including the night sky, and the stunning dawns we often get at this time of year. Perhaps you might choose to get up early and get outside and look up. To take a deep breath and feel the cold air wake your lungs to life. Perhaps there will be a hard frost, that, during the night, spread fractals of ice across the windscreen of your car. The beauty of creation, as vast as stars and as tiny as ice crystals, can take our breath away. And open our eyes to the truth that we are not the centre of the universe, we are very small, and yet we are held by the love that holds everything there is together, which is a very secure place to be. And when we respond in overflowing gratitude for the sheer gift of life, we take hold of our end of the cracker and pull.

Secondly, God might speak to us through the wisdom and – crucially – the hope of others. The beauty of the Christian tradition and the resources of our scriptures, history and practices, is that they spring from many different generations and cultures. None of us has the full picture. God can speak to the young among us through the elderly and speak to those who are older through the children. In particular, I think that the older we get the more we need children to speak life to the hope within us. My observation is that many of us lose our sense of hope as we get older, and I think that is because the Baby Boomers became the most affluent generation the world had seen, and affluence is a hope-killer. My advice to those who are older is, stop consuming news, because human love and faithfulness is not newsworthy, and the news will bombard you with exceptional sorrow and despair. You do not need to be abreast of situations you can do nothing about to pray that the world might know peace. My advice to those who are younger is, restrict your consumption of social media, for it too holds out a distorted reflection of the world that makes everything appear closer than it is, such that we can think we are sitting in the same room as other people when in fact we are miles away. But when we are present to one another – to whoever is right in front of us – we take hold of our end of the cracker and pull.

Thirdly, God might speak to us through our dreams. We take in a lot of information, more than we need, so much that it becomes overwhelming. It is as if your wardrobe is full of clothes on hangers, but you have many more clothes, piled on a chair and strewn all over the floor. And you can’t find the thing you need. You are sure you saw it somewhere, but where? And when we sleep, our subconscious acts like a responsible adult, picking the clothes up, sniffing them, neatly folding those that might be worn another day and dropping the ones that are a bit whiffy in the laundry basket. Seeking to draw harmony out of chaos, which is how we most deeply participate in the divine nature. At times, our subconscious is so hand-in-hand with God, it is hard – and perhaps unnecessary – to tell them apart. But when we quieten our souls enough to sleep deeply enough to dream, we take hold of our end of the cracker and pull.

So here are three ways God might hold out an epiphany for us to grasp: through the wonder of the world around us; through the wisdom and – crucially – the hope of others; and through our dreams. But any Christmas cracker worth its salt contains a paper crown, a gift, and a riddle.

The paper crown reminds us that we, like the three kings, are drawn into God’s epiphany.

The gift is that when we gaze upon the face of Jesus, we see God – whom we could not see – made visible. Jesus is the revelation of God, of what God is like. What we see in Jesus, we can say of God – and what we do not see in Jesus is not of God. There is no violence in Jesus – no harm or oppression – and so any violence attributed to God (by admirers and critics alike) is misattribution. Jesus walks away from a fight, literally – evading those who sought to kill him – and metaphorically – keeping silent under hostile questioning. Jesus attends to the person directly in front of him, with compassion – even when he himself is crucified. He absorbs suffering and returns love. He is the emptying of power to be an infant dependent on others to show him the way he should go, and the adult who hangs from the gallows. He is foolishness in the eyes of the world. He sleeps soundly in the madness of a storm at sea. He thirsts. He is love.

The riddle is that we become God’s epiphany to the world: the bearers of the greatest gift, from which every other gift flows and to whom every gift returns: Jesus. This bleak midwinter Monday, may you be a star in the darkness, a treasure-chest on the journey, a child who sparks joy. May you be whatever God might choose to make his Son known in the world. Amen.