tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post6226703145234385290..comments2024-02-19T10:15:55.380+00:00Comments on CAUTE — Making Footprints Not Blueprints: Inviting the God of love back from holiday to dwell amongst us once moreAndrew James Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02693417061963197121noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-56037637175998085662012-05-15T14:03:41.041+01:002012-05-15T14:03:41.041+01:00For me, descriptions are always incomplete, open a...For me, descriptions are always incomplete, open and pointing beyond themselves to the indescribable. It is definition that attempts to tie us down to a circumscribed understanding and to move us towards inappropriate power and control. The number of times I have seen people get bogged down in arguments about the definition of a word is too many to count.<br /><br />Maybe I let the words go on holiday as I read it, but it didn't work for me, anyway.Yewtreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02028699564003381058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-90433906277639211112012-05-12T15:47:57.675+01:002012-05-12T15:47:57.675+01:00Thanks for the comment Yewtree. I note your worry ...Thanks for the comment Yewtree. I note your worry about the passage from John but my point here is that we will always misread it if we take it as a *description* of love. This is because description is always in danger of moving us towards a metaphysics and towards inappropriate power and control. The trouble is that our inherited culture strongly tempts us to read a text like this one from 1 John as if it were a description. The paragraph in my post beginning "As you read the passage from John it is vitally important not to let the words God, love, Jesus, atoning sacrifice, sin, saviour, son of God etc. go on holiday" is encouraging us to avoid this move to metaphysics, power and control.<br /><br />In this post I'm pointing to a procedure (not a description) that must, to my mind, stand at the beginning of any genuine conversation about love. The moment we or another person feels love can be described we're all in some very dangerous waters.Andrew James Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02693417061963197121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-89079821307686873262012-05-11T11:54:13.969+01:002012-05-11T11:54:13.969+01:00The passage from John does not describe love for m...The passage from John does not describe love for me - I stopped reading at "he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" and had to force myself to read the rest of the quote - I skipped to your blogpost and came back to the quote afterwards.<br /><br />I think Paul does a better job at describing love with 1 Corinthians 13. And I also like Kahlil Gibran's efforts at describing love. They have perhaps become a bit of a cliché in recent times, but they are worth reading.<br /><br />As you suggest, I think we have to put love in context. I don't think it is loving to "rebuke" someone for their perceived transgressions (judge not, that ye be not judged) but speaking truth to power is love in action. And sometimes a loving response to another person's bad behaviour or bigoted opinions is to ask them why they hold those views or behave that way, and enter into dialogue with them. No-one ever changed anyone by shouting at them.Yewtreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02028699564003381058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-89290518280198612022012-05-11T09:27:47.828+01:002012-05-11T09:27:47.828+01:00Amen! my friend.
The problem is with persuading ...Amen! my friend. <br /><br />The problem is with persuading a culture that has been seduced by quickness and speed (in all areas of its existence) to re-engage in patient work that also knows how to, and why it must, wait. Given the subject matter and the image of buildings that you use, St Paul's words from 1 Corinthians (3:6-9) comes strongly to mind:<br /><br />I [Paul] planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labour of each. For we are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building.Andrew James Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02693417061963197121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-50043279873224645542012-05-10T12:35:47.382+01:002012-05-10T12:35:47.382+01:00Thanks for your post!
I was running through Cambr...Thanks for your post!<br /><br />I was running through Cambridge this morning and I came across the back of Queen's College, with its brutalist architecture imposing itself on a lazy backwater of trees. I have always admired these odd buildings because they are straightforward, honest, and try desperately <i>not</i> to hide anything. They were meant to envision an egalitarian society, a people's society, where everything was evident and visible and the structure was known and tangible. They were a complete rebuke of the bourgeois and baroque buildings of the past.<br /><br />The problem with these wonderful buildings is that unlike a cathedral of the 13th century, they were not actually built by the polis. They were imposed by high-minded thinkers who desired such a society, but also had the resources to foist that vision on the community. The community itself never participated in creating these buildings, and the 2003 destruction of the brutalist Tricorn building in Portsmouth was accompanied with high rejoicing set to the 1812 Overture. <br /><br />Which brings me to my point here: we want to be able to say what we see as absolute truth, and we see it even as good to use our resources to make these bold statements as a way of cutting through all the barogue and byzantine nonsense that we think accompanies everything around us. Yet it is not, cannot, will not be that simple. We have to engage and work with the community and not just do grassroots work, but cultivate the ground so that oaks can grow. Perhaps at some point those oaks, like 13th century community-built buildings, will decay and require new ones to be cultivated. But it never starts with a fully-fledged oak. A cathedral was never bankrolled by an individual. If we wish to proclaim 'God is love', then we have to do the hard work of quietly showing it, on a daily basis, on a small basis, in a way which breaks the dominance of the cycle. Brutalist architecture is decaying quickly; how could it survive? God is love should never be so easy to create as a brutalist building. <br />Ryan.RyShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10588101308951022562noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-20394870487004122122012-05-07T19:07:13.879+01:002012-05-07T19:07:13.879+01:00Greetings Dean,
Your point is, of course, hugely ...Greetings Dean,<br /><br />Your point is, of course, hugely important and thanks for making it.<br /><br />I think the answer to your question can be found in the combination of number of things. (Though when I say here "the answer" I mean something procedural and not a definitive description of some imagined, static moral fact).<br /><br />The first is that saying (and acting upon the idea that) "God is love" calls us constantly into relationships and, therefore, conversation.<br /><br />The second is that out of this ongoing conversation our various communities (that form religions, denominations, nation states and international groups such as the United Nations etc.) come to a variety of agreements about how to create systems of justice between the differing parties involved that take into account our various ideas of love and to structure healthily our rebukes and affirmations; to create corporate systems that can bring us to account when we transgress the rules of that system of justice (and we believe love).<br /><br />The third is that sheltered in the words "God is love" is something that is always critiquing our actual expressions of love (in our various communities and systems of justice etc.) and which will always be revealing how they don't, somehow, live up to all the fullness of love's claim upon us. In the language of deconstruction the event that is sheltered in the words "God is love" cannot be deconstructed but all our actual uses and expressions of love can be so deconstructed. That which is undeconstructable trembling in the words "God is love" keeps calling us back, again and again into to conversation to reassess what we are doing. <br /><br />As Beckett once famously said "Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." <br /><br />All the above is to appeal to an incarnational, relational, conversational God who dwells amongst us (when and wherever two or three are gathered together) and who will not let us settle upon as final any human enunciation of in what consists love. Throughout our lives we are called to sit down, break bread and drink a glass of wine together and, whilst we eat our shared meal, take time to reinterpret and renegotiate the contents of our rule books.Andrew James Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02693417061963197121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5144051388547159240.post-82484586284384270292012-05-07T12:04:16.306+01:002012-05-07T12:04:16.306+01:00i wholeheartedly agree here. The problem I find is...i wholeheartedly agree here. The problem I find is: what we mean by loving people, some people think its loving to rebuked and correct each other, even St Paul's letters and the gospels seem to agree with this. Is their love in rebuking and if there is, how far can it go?Dean Reynoldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12684817228671682542noreply@blogger.com