On Receiving Communion

I am not a big fan of receiving the Flesh of Christ in one's hand at Communion. I make a practice of receiving Him directly into my mouth as a rule, which strikes me personally as a more fitting and respectful manner, and for me to refrain from doing so or to change my practice would be to demonstrate a diminishment of reverence on my part. This is, of course, an act of personal devotion to Jesus. It does not (or should not) cause me to judge the devotion or love for Jesus of those who do differently.

Of course, there are numbers of people who would regard the method of reception as some kind of a quasi-litmus test of devotion or, alternatively, suggest that abolishing the possibility of receiving the Lord's Flesh in one's hand at Communion would naturally increase people's reverence for Him. This is, I think, a potentially insidious temptation and an unhelpful way of thinking. Our bodies and our actions do, of course, communicate something of our attitudes. That is the element of truth in such persons' mentality. But bodies and actions are not an infallible indicator. And there is not always a causal effect from one to the other or vice versa. Acts of personal devotion are frequently precisely that- personal- and that which communicates or demonstrates something profound in the heart of one believer may leave another cold.

For those who think that somehow such things are a natural consequence (or, worse, a cause) of a general loss of a sense of awe and reverence before the Almighty over the last several decades, hear the words of St Cyril of Jerusalem, who could hardly be accused of a lack of reverence for the Holy Flesh and Blood of the Saviour:

Approaching, do not come with your palms stretched flat nor with fingers separated. But making your left hand a seat for your right, and hollowing your palm, receive the Body of Christ, responding Amen. And having with care hallowed your eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, take it, vigilant lest you drop any of it. For should you lose any of it, it is as though you were deprived of a member of your own body.

What would be to me a symptom of irreverence was to St Cyril quite the opposite. A very small minority would question the orthopraxis of a bishop who gave this advice today. But they would be wrong. It is good that the Church has instituted options for the faithful in this regard, rather than conforming us to an absolute and monolithic expression of worship. When I receive the Body of my Saviour, I may express devotion to Him in a way that seems fitting to me; someone else to whom such actions have no such significance is able to express the same devotion in a different way. It is then for me not to judge people's love and desire for God merely by whether or not they conform to how I naturally express these things. "For man looks at the outward appearance but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Sam 16:7) And it is by our hearts, mine and theirs, that we shall be judged.

Sestina

I had a go at writing a sestina last week. Man, those things are the dickens to write! Pretty satisfying when it's done though (although I'm not sure if I'm likely to try another for a while). Not sure what to call it yet, but here it is, for public gustation.

In every place in which I walk about
I notice man's life isn't what it seems,
For every beast, when danger comes, will hide
Until it goes, but mankind looks for fun,
Oblivious until his doom has come;
Then, at the last, he finds there's no way out.

And in that moment every man cries out,
"Now that all's lost, what is my life about?"
At last does desperation make him come
To his senses, then - only then - it seems
Like he's awakened, lost his taste for fun
And maybe will from real things cease to hide.

For sometimes life's as tough as tanned hide
Or burns like roasted meat just taken out
Of the pan and eaten. It's no fun
To be betrayed or to have a bout
Of flu, to have life splitting at the seams,
To wait for something that will never come.

And when adversity like this should come,
Why should I be surprised that most men hide
By substituting what is with what seems,
And never daring once to venture out
To see the things that lie all round about
The bunker of illusion they call 'fun'?

Yet outside the confines of sug'ry fun
Lies something else which, if allowed to come,
Would shout the things they dare not talk about
And bring to light the good and bad they hide.
The one now peering in starts gazing out-
Yes, joy will shatter all that merely seems.

For Joy, not the emotion that just seems
To ignore the world, akin to fun,
But rather that which God, by trav'ling out
From heaven to be man, has caused to come,
Smiles quietly at grievous things that hide
In plain sight. It knows what the tale's about.

So hardships lie about, although it seems
That men can hide out in amidst their fun
Until God's joy should come and find them out.

Biggest Theological Battle

David Ould drew my attention to this video of part of an interview between Mark Driscoll and R.C. Sproul. Driscoll asks what, in Sproul's opinion, the most important theological battle for pastors in the next few decades will be.

Sproul's short answer is "Christology". Which is spot-on. And would be difficult to disagree with in any case- arguably, every major controversy Christians have had has been fundamentally about Christology. Moreover, last century and since, the influence of theologians such as Barth and Balthasar has, I suspect (and hope), renewed the focus of theology and theologians on the person of Christ- more than for the couple of centuries prior, perhaps. Which is something to be thankful for.

Sproul's longer answer is quite interesting. He replies that the specific Christological battle in Evangelicalism over the next generation will be over the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This confirms suspicions I have had for some time (or at least strengthens them with the agreement of a noted Evangelical theologian and pastor), and indeed Sproul mentions the New Perspective by name. The shadows of James Dunn and N.T. Wright loom large as ever.

Of course, I find myself to a large extent on the opposite side of that battle from R.C. Sproul. The battle is and will be about Christology, but I think orthodox Christology is at odds with the imputation of Christ's righteousness, certainly the way that doctrine has been traditionally understood by the Reformed. The doctrine of the imputation of the alien righteousness of Christ (alien being the keyword, imputation less so), in my opinion, fundamentally alienates Christians from their Saviour, placing a barrier between the two. It doesn't do justice to key biblical images such as that of Christ as the Head and the Church as His Body, or of the Vine and the Branches. I believe it also creates problems for the doctrines of sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit, separating entirely the work of the Spirit from the work of Christ, thus, I fear, in some ways undermining the nature and raison d'etre of what the Spirit does in believers.

The doctrine of the Incarnation must be and remain at the heart of the doctrine of justification. By taking flesh, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, has hallowed humanity, become its new and proper source and definition. Humanness has been justified- made righteous- because Christ is human, has neutralised and defeated sin conclusively as a human and He, as a human, has been glorified. By becoming a member of Him, uniting myself with Him, the justified, sanctified, glorified life that is His begins to flow into, penetrate and take root in me. And thereby, I become not only a partaker of the life of the new Adam, but a partaker of divine life (2 Pet 1:4). That is indeed good news.

The Dean's Secret Diet

Another random attempt at nothing particularly profound but simply flexing prosodic muscles. This is meant to be a variation on the Sapphic Ode. The final line of each stanza is a bit shorter than normal, but I've tried to use spondees where possible (though it's difficult not to slide into inadvertent trochees).

The crucial question is, I ween,
What are the methods of the dean
By which he keeps himself so lean
And so fit.

Inquiring women want to know
About his metabolic flow
And speculate in whispers low
About it.

Why is his diet so effective?
What is his secret weight corrective?
The global feminine collective
Must know!

But he will make no revelation,
Despite all this interrogation-
"My legs have been since ordination
Hollow."

With words like these he mocks the fuss,
And likewise with the curious
Among the men, he won't discuss
It ever.

Thus sought by casual and keen,
The stubborn nature of the dean
Makes its discovery no mean
Endeavour.

And so the secret all do crave
Shall go with him into his grave-
Unless the health his methods gave
Prove endless.

As Clouds Fly O'er

At the constant promptings of Kiran to improve my minimal understanding of prosodic jargon, I recently purchased this book (actually, it was more of an impulse purchase, but don't tell Kiran that). Curiously, I bought it mere days before its author started making a name for himself as a leading anti-religious zealot, but that notwithstanding, the book is excellent. It includes, among many other things, chapters on all major metres in English, and quite a few minor ones, many with which I had had nothing but a passing acquaintance hitherto (often not knowing the metre's name but knowing poems that use it) and several that were utterly novel. This has inspired me to try my hand at a couple, just for fun, and for no particularly good reason I thought I might post some of these. Of course it goes without saying that the copyright (on the off-and-decidedly-unlikely-chance that I ever publish any of these) remains mine.

This one is another potshot at the rondeau form, which I'm finding kind of agreeable, actually- like a sonnet, its nice and compact:


As clouds fly o'er an azure sky
The businessmen don't lift an eye
But in their offices they lurk
And, bending over paperwork,
They disregard the sun on high.

Once long ago, in years gone by,
Each soul began to ossify;
Here see this long process's work
As clouds fly o'er.

Yet comes the day these men will try
And break the mould, revivify
Their spirits, for an instant shirk
The burdens of their office work
And lift their gaze to sun and sky
As clouds fly o'er.

Our Lost Youth

On a whim, I had a go at writing a rondeau today. I don't think it's too bad for a first try. Tell me what you think. I retain copyright.

In our lost youth, we used to laugh;
We'd energy enough by half,
Our interest piqued by petty things,
And in our backyard we were kings,
A broken branch our royal staff.

Yet now, before the epitaph,
Despite the claims of some riff-raff,
I mourn not long nor feel the sting
Of our lost youth.

But why? Youth is a golden calf
Some worship, but at last like chaff
It's borne aloft on Zephyr's wings,
And pining for it only brings
Denial, pain, a bitter laugh
For our lost youth.

Carl Sagan Sings (with Stephen Hawking back-up vocals)

This is cool.

Rapprochement et Eloignement

This is a very interesting article.

It bears out what I have said before about the importance of the present debates on justification within Evangelicalism and the Calvinism/New Perspective divide. I also found this paragraph very interesting:

Beeson Divinity School founding dean Timothy George signed the 1994 ECT statement, which he said was a "circumscribed step forward" in Protestant-Catholic dialogue. Among ECT participants, George said, there is strong agreement with the Augustinian emphasis on the gratuity of grace, that we do not earn salvation by good works or merits. He acknowledges Protestants' and Catholics' lingering disagreement over how justification relates to sanctification and Luther's famous phrase simul iustus et peccator ("at the same time righteous and a sinner"). But he does not see justification as the focal point of Protestant-Catholic disagreement.

Yes and yes. This gentlemen has both identified the core of our disagreement on this particular issue and has also realised that this particular issue is not the core of our disagreement.

Professional Development Woes

There were no classes today. Instead, we had to attend an insufferable professional development day with all the other staff. There were a couple of amusing moments but overall it was tedious and mostly unhelpful, some of it being entirely irrelevant to the profession ("Keynote speech: Customer Service Essentials"?! We're teachers; we have students, not customers!). Behold the fruit of the thinking processes of bureaucrats who haven't stepped into a classroom in years.

Still, rather than complaining (at least in a normal way), I decided during the course of one of these PD sessions to translate my frustration into verse. Below is the result.

Vicarious embarrassment is rife

As corporate drones attempt to motivate,

Instilling in us useful skills for life,

Suggesting that we all participate

With stupid cheers and endless pair-groupwork:

"We-all-learn! Now repeat it after me!"

Nervously, we wonder where this jerk

Has happened to misplace his dignity.

He seems to be (I think) professional

Yet talks to us like we are ten-year-olds:

"This OpenSourceWare's educational

System will assist your teaching goals.

Now turn and ask your partner how they feel

About these diverse possibilities."

Fast falls now from my brain all trace of zeal

In face of these weird incongruities.

Waul and His Ball

So I stumbled across another amusing piece of news media and, frankly, it baffles me how they remained blind to the potential headline given the fellow's surname. But no matter. I've taken advantage of it myself.

Mr. Waul has created a giant ball of rubber bands. See below.

But the question remains, can it compare with the World's Largest Ball of Twine?