All Saints Day

Lord, today, 

We thank you for the Saints now gone before us whose faith defined their living and their dying; those who loved you more than their own lives; those who are still mirrors of your love.

We celebrate the saints who walk among us rejoicing while they walk in your footsteps, making your name known in a fractured world, against injustice, prejudice, hatred, evil.

We stand with those who sacrifice themselves to bring about your kingdom here on earth.

Lord, your grace shines in the lives of Saints.

We thank you for their example, their holy words. Your Spirit inspired them. Come Holy Spirit inspire us to be saints in your Church now. 

Source

All Hallows Eve Prayer

"... he is the God of the living, not the dead.” (Matthew 22:32) 
"... The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it." (John 1:5)

Lord, tonight,

We will face all that most concerns us:
our fears, the shadowed places of the mind;

the fear of the unknown;
the inevitability of the grave;

the cold thin place between waking and sleep.

We call to mind the powerless, the lonely,
those who most fear the knock at the door;
all those deceived by the world’s empty promises;

all those cowed by menaces or threats.

We stand with those weak in body, mind or spirit,
and those seduced by treats or hurt by tricks.

Lord, your light shines into every darkness.
You told us: pray ‘deliver us from evil’.
Your Spirit gives us hope, gives us courage,
a candle in the window, unhurt by the wind.

Adapted from here.

Walter Brueggemann's 19 Theses

In September 2004, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has recently passed away (2025), sat with a group of church leaders for a theological discussion as a part of the Emergent Theological Conversation series.

He brought with him a working document that he called his “Nineteen Theses,” a series of convictions he had developed over the years that he hoped would seed the discussion times.

Short, succinct, penetrating, these nineteen statements are an interesting and I think, helpful agenda for a life committed to the service of God’s Kingdom.

*** *** ***

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.
2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.
3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.
4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.
5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.
6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.
7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, to enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.
8.  The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.
9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.
10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature, its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.
11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.
12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.
13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.
14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”
15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighbouring of all kinds.
16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.
17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.
18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.
19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, what would happen if you talk all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult. 

From 2004 Emergent Theological Conversation with Walter Brueggemann, September 13-15, 2004, All Souls Fellowship, Decatur, GA.

***   ***   ***

Brueggemann teases out what he means by "therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism”  — 

The dominant script of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.

* I use the term therapeutic to refer to the assumption that there is a product or a treatment or a process to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble, so that life may be lived without inconvenience.

* I use the term technological, following Jacques Ellul, to refer to the assumption that everything can be fixed and made right through human ingenuity; there is no issue so complex or so remote that it cannot be solved.

* I say consumerist, because we live in a culture that believes that the whole world and all its resources are available to us without regard to the neighbor, that assumes more is better and that “if you want it, you need it.” Thus there is now an advertisement that says: “It is not something you don’t need; it is just that you haven’t thought of it.”

* The militarism that pervades our society exists to protect and maintain the system and to deliver and guarantee all that is needed for therapeutic technological consumerism. This militarism occupies much of the church, much of the national budget and much of the research program of universities.

It is difficult to imagine life in our society outside the reach of this script; it is everywhere reiterated and legitimated.”

Source: "Counterscript: Living With the Elusive God" by prominent Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, published in The Christian Century on November 29, 2005 (Volume 122, Number 24, pages 22–28). [1, 2, 3]

‘It’s just totally – IMPOSSIBLE!

I just love these quotes!

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), arguing against the PC in 1977.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered.” - Albert Einstein, 1932.

“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, 1916.

“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.” — The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” — Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” — Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio in 1921.

It seems that whenever we try to predict the future based on our paradigms of the past we are usually, hopelessly short sighted! Joel Barker in his book “Paradigms: Business of Discovering the Future”  suggests that there are three qualities organisations need to survive in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century:

Firstly they need excellence – that is creating goods or service of genuine quality for the people they serve. This will be the non-negotiable ‘ticket’ to the game, but it will not be enough. Ask yourself: “Does what we produce provide quality, significance, and delight for those we serve?”

Secondly, they need innovation – the capacity to keep on improving and advancing the potential of original idea. Think how each generation of smart phones builds extra features or lower price. Ask yourself: “Do we keep evaluating, fine-tuning, hearing feedback, and improving what we do?”

Thirdly, and most importantly, the successful organization demonstrates anticipation. That is the creativity and imagination to embrace the future! The new possibilities, needs and context – before anyone else does! Ask yourself: “Are we prepared to walk out of our comfort-zone; let go cherished trophies; experiment with the new; risk failure; and celebrate the prophet or the radical?” in other words, an openness to explore new paradigms.

The Shadow Valley

A few days after heart surgery, I was stretched out comfortably, in my hospital bed ready for a solid night’s sleep.  

It had been a good day. The various heart-readings were just fine, I’d done several ‘laps’ of the ward, breathing deeply, the surgery was healing nicely.

One more sleep and I’d be heading home.

I had a wonderful deep sleep, till Amy the night-shift nurse tapped me on the arm to wake me for the 4.00am readings.

Blood pressure was OK, but my heart-rate was like a New Orleans jazz band!

Up to 166 BPM then down to 60, then up to 130, then nothing for a few seconds, then all the way up again, then ‘normal’ for about 20 seconds.

She couldn’t actually get a reading, at first, because it kept bouncing around.

I’ve learnt since that arrhythmia of some sort is not uncommon after cardiac surgery, typically occurring two to three days post-procedure. Often it’s temporary, but it can be dangerous, so they need to investigate it.

Anyway, within a few minutes we had a whole party going on in my jazz club, dimmed lighting and all. I’m sure, at one point, there must have been 15 people crammed into the space and two or three of those large machines that go ‘bing’ every few seconds.

I didn’t feel too bad, but they needed to work out what was causing the issues before they allowed me head home. So the next day I went through more tests and they put me on various meds to stabilise the heart. Things began to settle down over the next two days, but there were still a number of times the heart rate was bouncing around. Eventually, three days later I was considered stable enough to be set free on an unsuspecting world.

Interesting, I noticed that through the day, things were quite stable, but in the dark hours of the night, it was more of a challenge. That’s often true of other ailments too. That flu or fever or that burning throat or that anxiety or fretful fearfulness gets worse overnight but eases during the day.

I reckon that’s why the ancients used the metaphor of the night or the dark for times of trouble or challenge.

Psalm 23 is arguably the most beloved of scriptures, portraying God as our shepherd who leads us beside still waters.

Verse four has traditionally been rendered like this, and many of us will remember reciting this in Sunday School:

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” (Ps 23:4 NKJV)

But the phrase “valley of the shadow of death” isn’t speaking about death, but about night-time; about times of deep and perplexing darkness.

A better paraphrase might be something like this:

“Even if I walk in the valley of absolute darkness I will fear no evil, because you are there with me.Your crooked stick and cane [or club], they reassure me.”

The image is of the flock heading home at the end of a long day grazing in the green pastures. It’s getting cold and the sun is dropping to the horizon. As they journey, the path drops into a deep valley that gets darker and darker as the sun sets. Maybe the night mist is already rising around them.

An the night is dangerous in the ancient wilderness. There are lions and wolves. There a brigands and raiders.

It’s hard to see where to go. Your feet can twist on the rough paths. There is the terrifying smell and sound of the creatures of the night.

Yet this flock fears no evil because of the comforting physical presence of the the Shepherd with them through the darkest shadow. They can’t see the shepherd, but they know he’s with them.

We too will traverse the night with it’s fearful and ambiguous darkness. Like these sheep, we too are comforted by the presence of the Shepherd, and the tools of his trade – the heavy walking stick used to hit out at predators, and the hooked stick to pull a sheep back from the precipice. These are a confidence-building manifestation of the extent to which this shepherd knows his business.

We can’t escape the dark valley, but we can negotiate it with trust in the voice and the presence of the Shepherd.

When King David fled into exile from his palace, hunted down by his estranged son Absalom with his ruthless assassins, he finds himself in grave peril and in profound distress as he heads into exile, and there he writes a prayer:

“ Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him. …. (Verse 5) I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. 6 I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.” (Psalm 3: 1-2, 5-6, NIV)

When the dark closes in, this is a great prayer: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.”

And of course, the thing about the night, is after the dark comes the morning and the rising of the sun.

Psalm 30:4-5 says:

“Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones! Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Joy comes in the morning — and part of that is a reminder that our future and the future of this world are in the hands of God. There is hope that the uncertainties and disappointments and fears and broken dreams will be collected and put together one day. Nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. The world may now lie in dark shadow, but there’s a bright and sunlit morning coming.

As Paul says:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8: 38-39 NIV)

There is a message of hope and presence to not just proclaim but live out. But we need to embody it for ourselves first, resting and trusting in the good shepherd both in the day and in the dark of the night.

I love the serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can; 

and wisdom to know the difference. 

Living one day at a time; 

enjoying one moment at a time; 

accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

taking, as He did, this sinful world 

as it is, not as I would have it; 

trusting that He will make all things right 

if I surrender to His Will; 

that I may be reasonably happy in this life 

and supremely happy with Him 

forever in the next. 

Amen. 

(Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971)

How fleeting is life

7:00am on a cold winter’s morning in late June, saw me travel in to the Austin hospital, up to the fifth floor, to prepare for major surgery. Strange to be in a large hospital and there’s not crowds of people on the move.

After getting myself sorted they popped me on a trolley and wheeled me through cold empty corridors into a brightly lit room filled with the disturbingly cheerful anaesthetics team.

I wonder if anaesthetists are trained in masking their work with humour. Dr Phil, with his broad Kiwi accent tells me we’re going to be partying and he’s going to make me the best cocktail ever. “If you could ask, what would you want me to get you?”

I furrow my brow to think: “Hmmm, what should I choose?” — And instantly — like time-machine fast — it’s mid-afternoon and there’s a crowd of out-of-focus, blurry faces and beeping machines asking me very loudly if I’m OK — And here's me still trying to sort my bar-order for Dr Phil.

It’s a surreal experience to be out cold to anaesthetics, very different to nodding off for a good night’s sleep.

To go to sleep often means you’re sort of conscious as the hours tick by. You doze off, you stir to the sound of possums grunting outside in the trees. You dream, you turn over, you wake up to check the time, you feel warm or cold and so on, you lie half-awake enjoying those last few moments before the alarm clock goes of.

But anaesthesia is more like death, I think. One moment you are totally awake; the very next moment, maybe a few hours or even a whole day has gone past and you have absolutely no awareness at all, of the moments you’ve missed. It all goes past in an instance.

And for me, through that time, lengthy complicated surgery had taken place. My heart and lungs were paused and a machine kept me alive. My body temperature was lowered several degrees and my chest was cut open and a key artery was pruned and repaired — and all of it, from my perspective, happened in the blink of an eye.

I suspect part of our trepidation about death is just that. Consciousness of time flowing past ceases, like being under anaesthesia One minute, or maybe a millennium goes by in an instant. Kingdoms might rise and fall, ice-ages come and go, generations of our descendants fly past and our gravestone crumbles into dust — from our unconscious perspective — it’s all in the blink of an eye!

The time, the few short years of conscious living activity are so short compared to the endless passage of unconscious time.

The ancient writers of scripture noticed this:

Psalms puts it: “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is. 5 You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” Psalm 39:4-5 NLT

Job reflects: ”Mortals born of woman are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure." Job 14:1-2

Koheleth notes: “The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. 6 Whatever they did in their lifetime—loving, hating, envying—is all long gone. They no longer play a part in anything here on earth,” (Ecc 9:5-6 NLT)

I think God gives us nudges through life to remind us that our time here is transient and brief. Virgil wrote that classic Latin quote: “Tempus Fugit” - “Time flees away.”

What will we do with the days remaining us? How will you and I live intentionally today? And then again tomorrow, if tomorrow comes.

Paul from Nero’s prison in Rome says: ”Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Eph 5:15-16

Psalms urges us to gather wisdom: “… teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 

Wendell Berry reflects on finding peace in nature, disconnecting from the anxieties of modern life, and connecting with the serenity of the wild:

The Peace of Wild Things 

When despair for the world grows in me


and I wake in the night at the least sound


in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be


I go and lie down where the wood drake


rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.


I come into the peace of wild things


who do not tax their lives with forethought 


of grief. I come into the presence of still water.


And I feel above me the day-blind stars


waiting with their light. For the time


I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.