Dorothy L Sayers on language for God

Trying to get God into a verbal formula is like trying to force a large and irritated cat into a small basket. As soon as you tuck in his head, his tail comes out. Once his back paws are inside, the front paws appear again. Even when you finally manage to squeeze the cat into the basket, his “dismal wailings” make it clear that “some essential dignity in the creature has been violated and a wrong done to its nature.”

(from "Mere Discipleship: Growing in Wisdom and Hope" by Alister E. McGrath.)

My favourite reads of 2019

The books I most enjoyed reading this year, without any why's or wherefore's - you can go check them out if you so desire.

(Oh and they're listed here in reading order, not preference of any sort)

1.  All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment
2.  Lewis on the Christian Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God
3.  On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
4.  Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
5.  Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister Is Called to Be
6.  The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
7.  Walking Through Twilight: A Wife's Illness-A Philosopher's Lament 
8.  The Lord Is Good: Seeking The God Of The Psalter
9.  Thirst
10. Virgil Wander
11. Taking the Long View: Christian Theology in Historical Perspective
12. Strangers in Their Own Land Anger and Mourning on the American Right
13. Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
14. Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing
15. The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor's Heart
16. Christina Rosetti: Poems (Everyman's Pocket Poets)
17. Old Testament Wisdom Literature
18. Confessions of St.Augustine
19. Disappearing Church
20. Grace & Glory
21. Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith 
22. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

You're speaking to it in acts and it speaks back to you in reactions

Reading 'church' for land/place/farm in this from Wendell Berry makes for worthwhile musing:

Analogies have tied things together for me, personally. The fundamental one for me is the analogy between your relationship to your spouse and your relationship to your place. Both need to be a settled commitment and both involve continuous learning and adjusting. If you have a wife of any spirit, she’s not going to let you be married to her only on your terms or your assumption about what she is. Land, a place, by nature also is going to react. If you’re wrong about it, you’ll find out. The problem there is that your land, your farm, doesn’t speak English. You’re speaking to it in acts. And it speaks back to you in reactions. 

If you’ve been badly mistaken, the reaction can be expensive—to it and to you. It’s possible for the tuition to be too high, economically or ecologically or both. And that’s why the destruction of the continuity of local communities and farm families is a significant loss. It’s a loss that is practical. There’s nobody to say, “Hold on a minute. That’s been tried before, and it didn’t work.” If you can keep that voice alive, then you’ve kept culture alive, a local culture in which the generations talk to each other.

(from: "It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays" by Wendell Berry.

a healthy dose of realism for potential ministry workers

Interviewed by Jim Leach of NEH , Wendell and Tanya Berry said the following about people thinking to take up farming...

BERRY: Well, I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues of conservation and good agriculture and peaceableness, they find something hopeful in my work.
TANYA BERRY: They’re looking for a life instead of a career.
LEACH: What are the principles you encourage, then?
BERRY: When they say they’re planning to take up farming, I encourage them to be awfully careful. I have received a lot of letters saying, “I don’t like my job. I don’t like where I’m living. I’m going to sell out, and move to the country, and be a farmer.” It seems to me that the only responsible thing, then, is to write back some version of “Be careful” or even “Don’t do it.”
TANYA BERRY: Or “Keep your job.”
BERRY: Yes. Buy a place in the country if you want to and live on it, but keep your job. Don’t put your marriage at risk. Don’t put your livelihood at risk. Because there’s a lot to learn, and why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing? So, in writing favorably about farming, I’ve assumed a considerable responsibility that I’ve tried to live up to. People say, sometimes in alarm, “You’re discouraging me.” And I say, “Well, yes, to some extent. I’m obliged to encourage you to be thoughtful.”

(From: "It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays" by Wendell Berry.)

It struck me on reading it that, given the avalanche of encouragement to younger men and women to enter ministry, to become church-planters or assistants or [insert your choice of title]...that there is much wisdom in being, as Berry suggests, more thoughtful. His question, "Why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing?" feels especially pertinent. And "Don't put your marriage at risk" is an utterly haunting statement.

This isn't of course to discourage new ministry workers - very many are and will be needed - but is simply to encourage a greater open-eyed realism, a realism that will include a greater consideration of and attentiveness to the subject of 'a call to the ministry' and the slowing down of the process of discernment and decision.

neither sarcastic nor cynical

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge — God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 are smothered in irony, in the light of all he will go on to write in the letter. But the note of thanksgiving and rejoicing, despite all their flaws and muddle and the agony of heart and soul they are causing him, reads as utterly genuine. There is not a hint of sarcasm or cynicism here.

And that is deeply challenging. When wounded or disappointed by others, when you see your hard work nullified, how easy it is to think or speak with clever sarcasm or stinging cynicism, but Paul does neither. In God's presence he lifts his heart and voice in praise, simply and sincerely. Because they have been genuinely saved to the great glory of Jesus and all their present struggles, all their sinful meanderings, will not - can not - erase what God has done. The reality is there, despite the smears. Jesus is yet at work "to present [them] to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." (Eph. 5:27)

That is always a cause for thankfulness and confidence.

Preacher: don't be David Letterman

Every night you're trying to prove your self-worth. It's like meeting your girlfriend's family for the first time. You want to be the absolute best, wittiest, smartest, most charming, best-smelling version of yourself. If I can make people enjoy the experience and have a higher regard for me when I'm finished, it makes me feel like an entire person. If I've come short of that, I'm not happy. How things go for me every night is how I feel about myself for the next 24 hours.

David Letterman, Parade Magazine, 26 May 1996 (quoted in Wholeheartedness by Chuck DeGroat, p.15)