It’s been a while since I wrote anything on here: we moved house and I’d underestimated both the feeling of security of having your own home and also the physical and emotional toll- clear thought has been rare.
At the theological college I went to, there was a final year course called ‘Credo’; the aim being to write down what you now believed after three years of theological education. At the end of my first year, the Principal left and the course finished with him: I never got to write my magnum opus.
I saw the above image a few weeks ago at Cave Things – Designed by Nick Cave under the heading ‘prayer cards’ and shared the image on social media. I think that my quarter century ago self would have found the sentiment a bit limp, forgetting the semi-ironic Smiths lyric:
It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
If I was writing a creed now it would have to have ‘Be kind while there is time’ in a central place.
In the intervening twenty-five years an awful lot has changed- for various reasons life isn’t where I expected to be, by dint of vocation I’ve shared in an awful lot of suffering, death and brokenness, and I’ve even more become aware of the fragility of life. Being kind when faced with the vicissitudes of life feels ever more important: we do not know when time will run out for any of us.
Would my 33-year-old self see my 58-year-old self as a ‘lily livered liberal’? Perhaps, but I think I’d tell him that orthodoxy (right belief) is less important than orthopraxy (right action) and to be more bothered about the latter than the former. I’d say kindness isn’t a passive word, but sometimes involves sheer bloody mindedness and a lot of courage.
I’d also tell him to take himself much less seriously and stop being so up himself, but that’s another story.
I’m not sure what I’d have written in ‘Credo’ although I suspect though that it would have been word heavy and a little brittle & fearful. Looking at some churches who post their statement of faith on their website – often in many words- I sometimes get that same feeling – perhaps unfairly- about them.
I hope to do more posts over the next few weeks, but I’ll leave the final words to Nick Cave:-
‘This is what binds us together, it is what dignifies us – a true and common regard. Small acts of ordinary kindness or courtesy, or the simple gestures of appreciation toward each other, speak into our increasingly individualised world saying, “I believe in you.”*
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Wearily Hopeful 