The Servant

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his hand

I heard a sermon once and it changed my life.  The time, location and circumstances have faded with the memory but the vision has remained clear. It was in the letter that Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi, in the second chapter where he quotes a hymn:

Christ was truly God. But he did not try to remain equal with God. Instead he gave up everything and became a slave, when he became like one of us. Christ was humble. He obeyed God and even died on a cross. Then God gave Christ the highest place and honoured his name above all others. So at the name of Jesus everyone will bow down, those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And to the glory of God the Father everyone will openly agree, “Jesus Christ is Lord!”

It was a picture that was thrust into my mind and burned into my memory, of a hand that could have grasped, could have held on, but let go, willingly let go.  There were lots of questions: What kind of person would willingly let go of his right and come to this life where he would suffer be tortured and die?  For what purpose?  And what did it mean for me? The thought, uninvited, which broke into my ordered world, carried an unavoidable and unmistakable challenge. It was about attitude, about my attitude. Paul was saying: we should have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

Many years later sitting with a group of international students, some believers and followers of Jesus, other unsure, while others Buddhists, Atheists, Hindus and various strands of religious background, we were thinking about Peter and the call from Jesus at the side of the lake to “come and follow me”. One of our international friends asked “If I decide to follow Jesus, will I have to give up everything too?” As usual I didn’t know how to answer the question, others stepped in to do that, but afterwards thinking about it, I knew. The answer had to be “Yes”. Yes it did mean giving up everything and yes it did mean not grasping what you thought was your right but letting go and giving it up.  It would look different for different people.  What it meant for others was not my business. I knew what it meant for me.

Now as almost everyone pitches in with their take on the life of Nelson Mandela, there is one thing that strikes me, more than anything else, about the man: his humility. How he seemed to continually stress that he was not a prophet or a king, but a servant. That is true greatness.

Crawford Mackenzie

The war against children

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baby isaac

No matter how you try the bad news gets to you. You can anesthetise yourself for a time, then the horror of it all grabs you by the throat.  You can be cushioned for so long and then the rock bites. The mud slides, the floods and waves rage on the land. The earth’s crust moves for a couple of seconds and cities are flattened while the lucky ones escape to shiver in tents in the cold mountains.  The famine never ends and peace still does not return to the villages. The merchants ply their evil trade in poison and guns and the wars continue: wars and stories of wars.

This week it was Syria and two distressing reports. One was by the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN ) “Violence against women: Crimes of impunity”  highlighting again the despicable nature of modern warfare, where women are targeted  and rape is an instrument of war. The second was even more harrowing. It was by the Oxford Research Group “Stolen Futures: the hidden toll of child casualties in Syria”  The statistics alone are damning. During the conflict, 7,557 children were killed by explosives, 2,008 by aerial bombardment, 2,806 from small arms including sniper fire and summary executions and 112 were tortured and killed with infants among them. That means that picking out children to be tortured and executed is, like the raping of women, just another instrument of war. It is almost impossible take in or believe. We have come to accept  that children will inevitably be caught up in conflicts and suffering, but to specifically target children as this report, if true, clearly shows, represents a new level of horror a new depth of evil.  It is hard to come to terms with it.  Immediately there is white hot anger and utter contempt for those who are behind the killings. There is also deep shame and guilt at our impotency. The great powers in the world with all the resources at their disposal can do nothing other than make noises and carry off a few chemical weapons to be destroyed. Our parliament having voted against intervention, has kicked into touch any possibility of standing up to the bullies for some time to come. It is almost as if behind a veneer of liberal niceties we are with Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz “let the brutes exterminate themselves” “It’s not our problem”

But what can you do?  What can I do?

Inevitably I am back crying to God who can do something and I find the voice of the sons of Korah in Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…… Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’

 

Crawford Mackenzie

A philosophy of design

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The “Critdwg 410 05a Ground floor plan as proposed” at Architecture School was a terrifying experience. You pinned your work up on the display boards allocated to you, the plans sections and elevations, working details and thinking processes with models and the odd perspective, if you were good at that.  It felt so much like pinning yourself up on the wall naked and exposed to the withering gaze and half concealed contempt of the lecturing staff who came round and systematically demolished your work: the work that you had laboured and sweated over for months and through many all-night sessions, the hard thought through plans and ideas which were mercilessly demolished and torn to shreds. It was an exercise in ritual humiliation designed to harden the feeble student and weed out the failures from the rest.  Judging by the astonishing self-confidence that exudes from students and graduates today, in almost any field, this practice has been replaced with an affirmative approach and positive strokes. I don’t recall any positive strokes. These were reserved for the smart guys. At the end of the session the head of the school would always posit the question “What is your design philosophy?” This was the final crushing blow. Your thinking had been shown to be defective, your ideas crass and your presentation infantile and now you could not actually explain what your philosophy was because you didn’t have one. How I managed to qualify in the end, I will never know.  

dwg 410 12 cross section

Now more than 40 years later, when all my contemporaries, save for a few, are retired or planning theirs, I am beginning to feel that I am getting the hang of this job – designing buildings and maybe I could  answer the question better this time if asked.

What is my philosophy of design? Well, it is about designing, creating something worthwhile, something of value, not wedded to the fashions of the day nor mimicking the patterns of the past. It is about simple things, using a simple palette of light and shade, space and moving through spaces, scale, colour and texture, making restoring adapting buildings to be safe, secure, appropriate, accessible, feasible and workable. It is producing buildings that will sit nicely in their environment, be comfortable in their use and purpose and with a body language that is clear and ambiguous. It is about producing buildings that will delight the eye and inspire the mind and be fired by a desire and a longing for beauty. Essentially that’s what I think it is it is about.  It is about beauty.

I could certainly answer the question this time round with confidence. Achieving it, of course, would be another thing.

dwg 410 08 View of interior

Crawford Mackenzie

Covenant Love

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I listened to a very powerful and moving sermon last night. It was about marriage. It was not about the how to, the problems, the disintegration, the redefinition, or about the pathetic futility of trying to play around with, tamper or trample over something so precious and so beautiful. It was about a wedding that the whole of history and the cosmos is preparing for. It was about the pictures, the drama, the songs, the poetry and the demonstrations of covenant love woven through the pages of the bible, from beginning to end. It was about the one single event around which the whole purpose of existence is focussed, stretching, longing and aching for. It was about the ultimate drama which shapes our lives and is lived out even in our fragmented, disintegrated and dysfunctional relationships. It was about the final consummation of the restless longing that is indelibly printed in our hearts. It would be very hard to think of a bigger or grander theme.  It was simply breathtakingly.

It was Mike Reeves on “The Lord’s Delight” and you can hear it at http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk/resources-media/sermons/

Crawford Mackenzie

Book Review

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I was asked to review a book recently.  It was not for publication or distribution but a friend, who I care about,  had simply asked me to read and comment on a book she had read which had made a big impact on her.  She didn’t say if the impact was negative or positive, so I was given a clean slate and approached it with an open mind.

I have to confess that I don’t read a lot and am amazed by friends who can devour several books in a day, who carry a pile with them on holidays and have their kindles loaded up with, what seems like, whole libraries. The little I read tends to be more in the non-fiction than in the fiction section and I often re-read books a number of times. I am also a slow reader. My English teacher, at school, tried to teach me to skim read but I never learned and now I don’t want to. I prefer to savour the language and the thought and to remember the phrasing and give time for the ideas to sink in. So this was a special and a tough task.

The book was not new. It was first published in 1995 and is reputed to be an international best seller, but it was one of the worst books I have ever read. The writer claims to have had a revelation or series of revelations over some years, directly from God, in which god speaks in everyday language with words of wisdom, stories and humour, contemporary references and many quoted words and verses, mainly from the Bible.  But unlike other recognisable forms of literature, with parables, myths and allegory etc, this writer clearly wants the reader to believe that it was in fact God who was speaking directly to him. This is made clear in the introduction.  “It happened to me” he says “I mean that literally” and “it was for everyone and had to be published”. He describes it as “gods latest word on things”.  Now I have known and heard of many people who claim to have heard God speaking directly to them and I have no reason to doubt that these have been true and real experiences but, in each case, God was speaking to the individual and usually over something specific like a decision or a direction or a calling. In this book, the writer maintains that God is not only speaking directly to him but charges him with telling the message, spreading the word to others and specifically to do this by writing the books, of which there are three. “You will make of this dialogue a book, and you will render my words accessible to many people. It is part of your work”  If he is to be believed and if he is accurately reporting what God was saying, then the Bible is deeply flawed from beginning to end and Jesus was either deluded, mad or simply a fraud.

It would not be difficult to catalogue the ridiculous, bizarre and contradictory claims that are made throughout the book, but here are just some of them:

1)      There is no right or wrong only love and fear

2)      God is not the creator he is merely the observer

3)      There was no such thing as the ten commandments

4)      There is no sin

5)      There was no need for sacrifice

6)      There is no heaven

7)      There is no hell

8)      There is no devil

9)      Self is all there is

10)   We are gods or in the process of becoming gods

11)   Jesus is a master on a level with Krishna and Buddha.

12)   All the gospel writers lived and wrote their accounts long after Jesus had died

13)   We only suffer because we chose to. At any moment we could stop suffering. We could be healed, we could be perfectly at peace and happy if we chose to be.

I can well understand why people would be drawn to this book especially if they have been hurt, disillusioned or damaged in some way with organised religion. It would make them feel better about themselves but so would morphine or heroin or alcohol, for a time. The book is poison.

On the cover, were a number of review quotes. From the Mail on Sunday; “An extraordinary book“ I couldn’t put it down”.

It was extraordinary; I couldn’t get it into the bin fast enough.

Crawford Mackenzie

Independance

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I have always thought that independence was an honourable aspiration and something to celebrate when it was achieved. I remember, as a boy, sensing the excitement and interest when Ghana achieved independence from colonial rule in 1957, the first sub Saharan country to do so. Others followed. Zambia became independent in 1964 and while I remember little of that event, was able to visit that amazing country in 1985 and later in 2010. Despite many intractable problems there was still a real sense of celebration and pride that they had finally broken the chains of their colonial masters.  Last year I visited friends in Slovakia and when language allowed, asked how they felt about their break up with the Czech Republic.  The overwhelming view was that, while the economic difficulties were grave, still it was a good thing. “We are able to be friends again” said one.

So when it came to considering independence, I warmed to the idea.  I wanted to believe in it and I still do. There seems something good about being grown up, being able to stand on our own feet and more importantly take responsibility for our own decisions and actions and stop whinging and blaming someone else for our ills. But Scotland is not Ghana nor Zambia nor Slovakia. It isn’t Norway nor is it East Timor.  England has not colonised Scotland, we speak the same language, our families, friends, business, professions, scientists, academics, musicians and poets crisscross the border. Our histories are intertwined. Scotland’s golden period followed the union of the crowns and only in the past century have we begun to feel the poorer partner. The union seems to have been good for us.   And when it comes to emotion and passion, the things that seem to matter most are football, “bank” holidays, “For sale” signs which turns homes into commodities, using “shall” instead of “will”  and the south easterly bias of the weather reports.

What has finally disillusioned me and cooled my enthusiasm is the way the debate has been conducted over the past year. I have become less and less convinced that the leadership of the “Yes” campaign actually believe in it themselves. There has been an astonishing loss of nerve. Real conviction seems in short supply. There has been so much back tracking so many questions fluffed and unanswered. I am almost coming to believe in the perverse notion that the aim of the campaign is to be deliberately muddled and confused so that people vote against it and some semblance of pride can be retained.  They will be able to breathe a sigh of relief. “At least we tried” they will say. Like David Cameron’s very palpable sigh of relief when the commons voted against intervention in Syria

The most confusion, however, surrounds the word itself.  Politicians and pressure groups know how to reinterpret words to their own advantage so that it can mean something different from what you thought it did.  I thought I knew what marriage meant. Now I don’t. I thought being independent meant being in total charge of your own affairs. Now it seems to mean being dependant on another country, sharing a currency and a bank of last resort, being subject to a monarch of another country, submitting to a military authority based on the use of nuclear weapons and being subservient to the multinational giants who will always dictate the terms. It doesn’t look like independence. It looks like being fully dependant in all but name. It is like being an adult but still living at home with your parents on call, ready to lift and drop you, pick you up, dust you down and bail you out when you are in trouble. That is not independence so I think I will vote “No”

Crawford Mackenzie

Why do people hate Jesus?

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I was coming back from the shops with my oldest grandson, down the steep cobbled lane with the early morning Saturday sun hitting our faces, past the tiny gospel hall and the Hindu temple next door, looking down towards the river with the railway bridge snaking its way round into Fife; when he stopped, retraced his steps, and said “Look”.  Pointing to the noticeboard on the wall he read “I am the way the truth and the life – Jesus“  Having recently discovered the new world that had opened up to him through the joy of reading, he read everything. “Good” I said and trundled on. “No!” he said pulling me back to the spot “Look” and pointed to a large “X” scratched across the glass. “Someone has done that – someone who doesn’t like Jesus” We walked on for a bit and then he asked “Why do people hate Jesus?”. At once two thoughts rushed into my mind;  “out of the mouths of babes and children… “ and  “Why do they always have to ask such difficult questions” and so I mumbled something like “I don’t know, but I think it is because Jesus is so good that people hate him”.  He was silent for a time and then, totally unconvinced, responded  with a “So that is it?”

As always happens, I thought about the question afterwards. I tried to come to a better answer but the more I did the more I became convinced that that was, in fact, it. People hate Jesus because he is good. Good people are often admired but seldom liked. It is as if  a good life points up how shallow, selfish and self-centred is our own and faced, with a pure one, we are so aware of our own hypocrisy, greed, lust, deceit  and pride. It is best to keep a good person at a distance. It might actually bring out hatred. At the root of most of the emotion is not so much over what Jesus said or who he was but what he did. What he did when he allowed himself to be led through the suffering and torture to his execution on a rubbish tip outside of Jerusalem 2000 or so years ago. I remember listening to a tirade from someone about the film “The passion of the Christ”. They hated it and went on and on about the violence. Somehow they could take Tarantino excesses in their stride but Mel Gibson’s portrayal of Jesus’ suffering was just too much to stomach. I am not a fan of Mel Gibson nor the film but was taken aback at the ferocity of the attack.  Violent the film certainly was, gratuitous perhaps, but the context and meaning of the film was clearly stated in the words from Isaiah, shown in the opening sequence -“by his stripes we are healed” and I think that was what caused the most offence. If the son of God should have justly suffered all of this, and if it was for me, then I must be totally messed up. My life a hopeless sham and the good that I thought I was, could be nothing more than pathetic childish pretences, what Paul calls “filthy rags”. That truth is hard to swallow and so much easier to ignore. But because it is true, then we hate every reminder of it and hate the person who, by their very presence and existence, reminds of it. That, I think, is why people hate Jesus.

Crawford Mackenzie

Practical Advice

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We gathered together in the corner of the lounge, a bare handful of people in a dark and depressed November evening, mildly weary and tired, busy with lots of other things on our minds and with the unspoken question “what on earth are we doing here?”.  It was a congregational mid-week meeting for prayer, a centuries old tradition, the reputed “power house” of the church and we had come with a dogged commitment to something we believed in even although at times our enthusiasm and our sanity was seriously in question. Our pastor led us and read from Paul’s second letter to the Christians in Thessalonica. Specifically, the final catalogue of practical advice in the last chapter “ Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do.” (CEV). It was something so beautiful and simple and intensely practical. It was one of these moments when a shaft of light suddenly breaks through into the gloom and disturbs the moribund weariness.

I went home and wrote these lines.

NEVER STOP PRAYING

“Never stop praying!”

But we leave it to the last

When there’s nothing left ..but to pray

When the crisis is already on us

When the water’s pouring in

When the cancer’s taken root

When the relationship is floundering

When the famine is already raging

When the war has begun

It’s then we stop and start to pray

When we’ve tried everything else

But

Lets pray

And be thankful

At the start of the day

Before we’ve seen it’s trouble

In health

Before we know of sickness

In ease

Before we come into discomfort

In happiness

Before we’ve tasted sorrow

In life

Before death comes knocking

 

Crawford Mackenzie

A Breathtaking Campaign

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I got a response from my MSP this morning. It was slow in coming but detailed, reasoned and courteous all the same. I know him and he is a good guy.  But it told me what I already knew. He had made his mind up and would not be changing. He would be voting for the bill when it comes to parliament.  It was a matter of justice, of equal rights, of inclusiveness and while those with “deeply held beliefs” would be respected and would be protected in law, there was no going back.

For a long time now we could see it was a done deal, as the leaders of all parties were in line on this issue and the voices against restricted to a small minority, it was inevitable that the legislation would pass into law without a hitch.

Looking back, you cannot but be impressed by the way those agitating for same sex marriage went about their campaign. Any group wanting to change the way society works could learn much from it.  It was planned and executed with great skill and meticulous care. First the population had to be softened up and this was done with the introduction of civil partnerships.  Once this act was safely embedded in, then the main campaign could begin in earnest. An early tactic was to change the words from “same sex” to “equal”. It was so simple, clever and effective. No one could be against equality. Next, the pre-emptive strikes on anyone who would dare to oppose the change- witness the ferocious attack on John Mason for having the temerity to suggest that no individual should be forced to approve of same sex marriage. But the real weapon was the threat of the “H” word (homophobia). This weapon, more than any other, strikes fear into the heart and, the mere possibility of its use, silences the opposition and turns nerves of steel into quivering jelly.   With the public softened up, the lone voices ridiculed and the sensitive cowed and intimidated, there remained the rump of the opposition in the shape of the church and the mosques. Here the campaign was handed a series of gifts. An alliance of disparate religious groups (Unitarians, Quakers, Pagans, and Liberal Jews) lead by a celebrity cleric the former bishop of Edinburgh declared their support. The Church of Scotland dithered, wobbled and fudged their way through consultations, commissions and debates and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, while stoutly defending the case against all odds, was effectively torpedoed with the disgrace and demise of its leader and most vocal advocate.  Pockets of resistance remained in the Muslim community and the evangelical church but astonishingly, in the later, cracks were beginning to show.  Many evangelicals spoke of not coming to a settled view on the issue. Well known media evangelicals like Tony and Peggy Campolo could parade their doubts and uncertainties in a series of presentations disguised as a “dialogue” . The lack of any clarity was all that the campaign needed to push home its advantage and secure the victory.  It was a campaign of breath-taking boldness, and speed and one of which Norman Schwarzkopf would have been proud.  The instigators will be mighty pleased that it was carried off with such aplomb and in such little time. It is now left to the people of Scotland, to our children and their children, to come to terms with the reality of what this will in fact mean. For it is abundantly clear that none of the protagonists have the slightest idea of where this might lead or what they have so casually unleashed.

Crawford Mackenzie

In the Autumn

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fintry from braes 2

The first frost is beginning to bite, the geese are marshalling overhead and that’s all that it needs to remind me that Autumn is my favourite time.  Every season has its beauty and its charm; winter with the crisp frost and blanket of snow that covers so much ugliness and for a while transforms the city into a magical wonderland, Spring bursting through the ground, as hard as iron, with the continual surprise of new life and Summer with its early mornings by the green and long evenings on the beach, that seem as if they will never end. But, for me, Autumn has most to say and most to bring and like Keats, its colours, its songs ,its blessings far outstrip the other seasons  For me, It is packed through with memories: the time when I became one of the big boys and moved to secondary school, the time of leaving home and the first days at college, the time of coming to this city and later to our present home, the time when our daughter was married and when our granddaughter was born, the time when I fell in love.

It is the changing of the seasons that is part of the wonder. But the changes in life’s seasons carry something of the same magic. Moving on and up to the next step, the next phase, the next decade: like the new jacket, the new décor, the new strings on the guitar, the new horizons, ideas and possibilities, the new people. The breathtakingly realisation that it is all still so much bigger and grander than you could possibly have imagined.  Inevitably there is sadness and loss that is inescapable. There will always be sorrow.   I identify with Sandy Denny in “rising of the moon” “ there’s a heart in very place a tear in each farewell but that’s the way it is that is my fortune”  yes moving on is sad , saying goodbye is sad, leaving people is sad, but overwhelmingly there is the joy of the promise of the hope of the glory.  There is reminder of the reality that all that seems to be loss is in fact gain and giving up is getting more.

It is the beginning of autumn again and for me, a new phase, a new opportunity, a new beginning. I could try, but it would be impossible to describe that joy.

Crawford Mackenzie