Lament for Iraq, 2014

This fear has a name:

First ISIS, then simply IS

A present tense to be

For this present Hell of non-being.

Grave rumours flap like bats into news

What fresh rotting of humanity's corpse

Will turn this morning's meal to maggots in my mouth?

They are the ones beyond the lines we set;

They are the fanged devils we brought skulking forth from below deck -

The great ship called Civilization that we

Crewed with slaves, drove with war-winds, rigged with greed,

Is piloted by madmen.

And what do they erect in honour of all our interventions?

What great totem to our mighty aborting of peace?

An unroosted bird

An unplucked branch

A child's head on a spike.

Martin Little September 2014

Family Update Summer '14

This is a wee update on where me and the family are at, for those who follow such things!

It has been about 5 months since the last update, and my, how it has flown!  The last time I wrote about our situation, we were facing the end of my theology course and of Hannah's paid maternity with no prospects in sight.  Since then, I have not only finished my course, but we have bagged not just one, but two new jobs!

I'm delighted to have accepted a part time job with my college Westminster Theological Centre as Gloucester Hub Director.  This means basically I'll be responsible for running the regional learning hub where students in the South West come to have their lectures, video conference seminars and engage together as a learning community through worship, relationships and study.  I've been part of this community as a student for the past two years and it's been a wonderful experience.  Now I get to help others have the same experience!  It is such a blessing to have this job, which I can fit around my church work, and which means I can stay involved with the college that I love so much.  I am so grateful to God for guiding me here!

Finishing my Graduate Diploma in Kingdom Theology is sad, but also a relief - I've done well, but have had to work really hard (possibly too hard) to achieve what I have.  That said, I don't really know how to do things like this half-cock, and I came to the course so hungry to learn and grow.  So many of my understandings and assumptions about the Christian faith (and about God himself) have been challenged / affirmed / overturned / reshaped / redeemed (delete as applicable) that I don't really know where to start in describing it.  I think my faith is more humane now - less dogmatic but more quietly confident.  I still struggle a lot with prayer, self-discipline, personal holiness and the nature of Scripture, but I feel so much more equipped to deal with these struggles now.  Moreover, I feel massively more able to empathize and speak life to others who have deep questions about God.  Mere accepted wisdom has given way to tentative but more satisfying ways forward, and certain tensions to do with doctrine and ethics have been faced head-on.  On some issues - the Atonement, providence - I feel like I'm at a perennial crossroads between mainstream evangelicalism and more 'progressive' (or simply non-evangelical) approaches.  Whether I feel the need to plump for definitive positions or not is a moot point.  The cross of Christ and the wisdom of God have only expanded in their richness and significance through study and appropriating those meanings in my life.  Aquinas said: 'Whatever is more excellent must be attributed to God.'  I guess I'm working out what true excellence is.  

Ministry life at Holy Trinity continues to be good.  I'm still enjoying worship leading, even if it can be a slog at times, week-in, week-out.  I have been focusing still on mentoring individuals - God seems to put more people in my path who appreciate this kind of discipling investment, and I love it.  More and more, my call I think is to lead and pastor small groups of people.  Sometimes I feel like a fraud because of my own poverty of spirituality.  And yet, at the times when I've bothered to listen, God has been saying some beautiful things to me.  Learning to trust him, and learning that he trusts me (even though I screw up) is a journey; sometimes terrifying, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes ecstatic.  But always the road winds on and on.

Hannah also has a new job - in fact she started it today!  (I'm on kids duty today, and writing this while they are having their nap.)  She's working as a Project Archivist for Bath Record Office, and is now an employee of BANES council!  Again, this is a huge blessing and an answer to prayer:  we prayed: "Lord, a part-time archivist job in Bath would be great."  Boom.  It is great for her to get back to work, and though it is very tight with the kids (she has them when I'm at work; and I have them when she's at work) we do have Saturdays as a family day (as long as other commitments don't sneak in) and significantly, it means we are financially OK for the next year!  We also have tenants in our house in Linlithgow, after a worry-inducing, money-sapping period of about three months when the house was empty.  

Early in 2014 someone at Holy Trinity gave us a significant amount of money.  We don't know who it was (they gave it anonymously) but we are so grateful and humbled by this person's generosity!  I hope they have been blessed in the giving.  For us, it is a massive sign that God is caring for us, and is honouring our decision to move down here and to live the 'unpredictable life' because we believe we are doing what he is calling us to do.  I don't understand all the ins-and-outs of how this works.  But we choose to trust God and to believe he is working all things to our good as we trust in him.  We've had to work hard and make some sacrifices, and keep our part of the deal too, but we feel the movement is from him.  God is good, and mysteriously so!

We are also so humbled that people at St Thomas' in Edinburgh have supported us through my course. We can probably never really repay this, but our thanks go to those dear people who have loved us and trusted us.  Thanks and praise to God for St Thomas'!

Other things have been going on too - I managed to record and release an album, have another essay published, and am preparing another paper to give at the WTC conference next week.  It is all a bit crazy, but it is wonderful to have these creative outlets and opportunities to grow and explore the things God's fashioning in my heart.  My process of discernment with the Church of England hasn't progressed massively since February - partly because I've been so busy!  But this summer and beyond, this will increasingly be my focus as I look forward (hopefully) to being considered for ordination next year.  Then it could be all change yet again... or not.  But having the experience under my belt of uprooting and leaning more on God, along with two years of theology and development, I feel much more able to respond to whatever God wants for us as a family.  

The kids are really well!  Growing all the time!  It's exhausting, but they are such a blessing to us, and to each other (most of the time!!)

Frome is good - commuting is a downside (especially now we BOTH work in Bath, and me in Cheltenham once a week!)  but we've met some wonderful people here, and the town itself is fun and lively, happy and safe.  

Our thanks, love and greetings to everyone who reads this and cares for our family.  Praise to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith!

OT / NT

Moses supposes theosis in doses

but Moses supposes by legal decree

Moses he knowses theosis = kenosis
As Jesus discloses theosis to be.

In Defence of Crucifixes

Why do we close our eyes when we pray?  

Do we think that the distractions of the external world are any less pervasive than those of our minds?

It seems to me that when we close our eyes to the physical world for fear of idolatry; we merely replace the idols of the external world with the idols of our internal world.  Physical idols can be torn down, burned, sold off.  Emotional and theological idols are more tenacious and much more difficult to identify and destroy.  This is why theology matters.  This is why crucifixes matter.

Paul says:

"When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:1-2).

Lord, as we gaze upon your cross, may we turn from the misconceptions, misattributions, misappropriations and missteps we have formed about you in our minds.  

The hymn-writer says:

'When Satan tempts me to despair

And tells me of the guilt within

Upward I look and see him there

Who made an end to all my sin.'

May the crucified Christ who bears all our sin and opens his arms of love to embrace us, fill our vision at all times.  

When my little boy sleeps

Ok, so I wrote this weird little poem.

When my little boy sleeps

When my little boy sleeps, his lips relax;

they relax and gently hold their pure and full shape, full and plump as a rosebud heavy with the moistened sigh of spring

There's no tension in them at all, no taught-ness, no pursing -

When my little boy sleeps, he doesn't purse his lips

He doesn't shut his lips with a snap like the snap snap snap of closed purses putting all the treasure away away away

From jealous eyes, sneaky beams of furtive jealous wanting all over the world

The Want-World: relentless world of pursed lips, clenched fists, stiff necks, tight valves, doors shut, screwed down with anger and trustless redundancy, shut-down minds and shut-down dreams rusting in shut-down cages forever with only dust to live for

My little boy's lips, when he sleeps, are not shut up like a purse.

They are a song: rich and smooth and full and imperceptibly parted - parted as if a mouth could grow wings and fly and change and cease to be a mouth and become not a smile but a glimpse;
A promise.

Martin Little April 2014

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him

From my prayer journal:

Beautiful evening.  Tough day wrestling poisonous temptation, but overcoming.  Then a beautiful time with some musicians - students mainly, reading the crucifixion in Mark and singing My Song is Love Unknown, and praying whispers of thanks for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus who in dying ends emnity and clinches love for us all.  Then sang in harmony beautiful songs together.  Then beautiful sharing with Dave.  Then Bob Dylan 11pm driving back through the country to Frome.  Then stepping out of the car in the freshness of clear night stars roaring silently in the heavens above me.  Then stealing a look at my beautiful sleeping children and midnight talk with my beautiful wife.  Thank you Jesus.

A Kenotic Thought Experiment

A thought experiment:  if you are someone who holds the conviction, as I do,  that Jesus is the Son of God, the Risen Saviour of the world - the eternal foundation and embodiment of all truth, and the ultimate meaning of all existence - if you believe that, then try this.  Try imagining for a moment that Jesus was 'merely' a wonderful ethical teacher with a beautiful manifesto for social and personal transformation through the power of self-giving love.  Just live with that possibility for a few minutes.

Then ask yourself: if I knew the latter to be the whole truth, would I still follow Jesus?  Then add that thought-space, to your previously-held convictions about Jesus' divinity.

I just did this, in a manner of speaking, although I didn't intend to - it just happened while I was reading a book and thinking.  But the more I think about it, there is something powerful about it.  It was terrifying to temporarily lay aside my cosmic convictions, even for a moment.  But  I found when I took them back up again, having considered the sheer impact of this man's humanity - his very magnetism -   that the sacrifice only enriched my devotion to him as God.

Jesus said: 'For this reason that Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again'

St Paul riffed on this:

Christ Jesus, 

who though he was in the form of God
did not consider equality with God 
something to be exploited;
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave
And being found in human form
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death -
even death on a cross

Therefore God also exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.

The implications of this seem to me to be pretty game-changing.

Having tried the above, then perhaps extend this thinking to others around meet.  What if you were to momentarily lay aside your deeply held convictions about them, and simply love them for their humanity?  To see them as they are: a rebellious, tear-stained, blundering, beautiful child, just like me.

What then, if you were add that love to the deep and true conviction that each is none other than a rebellious, tear-stained, blundering, beautiful child of the Most High God?

Would you love them more, or less?