A Tribute to a Fine Man

My Father Bruce

23 February 1920 to 14 November 2011

My Dad was always apologetic about his fatherliness because he had never known his father. Dad was born in Midland in 1920 while his father was a patient and growing increasingly ill in the Wooroloo Tuberculosis Sanatorium. His father was to die just after Dad’s first birthday.

Despite this lack of role modelling I think I had as a good a dad as any kid could have. Indeed, the absence of distinct male-female role modelling meant that he brought us all up with openness to doing whatever needed doing around the place rather than leaving that to the women or the men. Dad led a very busy life but my impression of him was that he was around. He set boundaries that I didn’t like, so that was probably about right, and he instilled in me a love of God and others and a desire to follow in the way of Jesus. What more could I ask?

It is a hazardous thing to ask the youngest child to write the Eulogy because I missed out on much of the stories of his early adult life, but tales have been told and I can share some of them with you today as we honour this lovely man.

Dad had two older brothers, Alex and Dudley, and not long after he was born, and his father’s estate was settled, his mum managed to buy a little house in Morgate Street, East Victoria Park, where the Coles Supermarket Car Park is now. His mum got a great job cleaning the local primary school – it was great because it was a job that paid the bills and she had time to look after house and home. From her meagre savings she bought a piano from Nicholson’s and I suspect that she or one of her sisters taught Dad to play, something he was able to do even after he could no longer read the music.

Dad left Leederville Technical School just before he was 14, I think, and got bits and pieces of work. Sometime later he decided he needed to learn to write better and went to some night classes and when he was 16 he did a Wool-classers Course at the Wool Stores in Fremantle. With that qualification he worked in the stores but was also asked to travel with a team of shearers all around the Pilbara and Kimberly. I still marvel at the thought of his mum letting her youngest boy aged 16 go off with a team of shearers (hard working, rough living blokes) for three or four months to do the tour. He must have been good at it because he went on a second tour the next year. His wool-classer’s ticket came in useful years later as he helped around on farms of church people that he visited.

Dad got involved with the church as a child and as a young man quickly demonstrated leadership that some of the older men of the church wanted to harness. As early as 1939 he was on the preaching roster to help at Carlisle, South Belmont and other churches and our friend Brian Stitt remembers my dad visiting Shenton Park Church one time and telling them that he really wanted to be a preacher and that he was working hard to overcome his speech impediment – I think a lisp – by practicing speech in the Midland Church hall and doing a bit of street-side soap-box preaching. If you find that hard to imagine, so do I.

Dad and Mum were married in 1942. Bethel was born almost at the end of that year, David in 1945 when they were living near Dalwallinu, Joy at the end of 1947 when they were living at Gutha and I was born in 1953 during an interlude of their service on Carnarvon Mission. Life in all those years was pretty tough in lots of ways, but they managed to give us the impression that we were on an adventure and that we had everything we needed – which we did. Dad worked hard for his family and for the church and we all feel like he gave us many wonderful gifts.

I am going to ask David to tell you some of the ways in which Dad was so special for us and for the people in the churches he served in.

We have each written down our own memories about Dad which was a really good thing for us to do, but really there were too many stories to tell here. We might publish them on the Internet or something for those who want to remember him.

So I would like to tell you some of the remarkable and special things Dad brought into his marriage and family life as well as his work for the church, and along the way a few of these stories may be told.

As John mentioned already, Dad was at times quite self-conscious of the fact that he had not had a father to be an example for himself in his role as our father. This was not as much of an impediment as he might have imagined, because when I look at him as a father, I am amazed at how he and Mum were almost completely interchangeable for us. Yes, Dad worked the job, and Mum was the “Minister for Home Supplies” as he used to call her, but Mum was involved pretty equally in the “ministry”, and Dad readily stepped in to do the chores around the house.

Mum used to say she didn’t need a dishwashing machine – she married one. Dad was quickly up at the sink after a meal to clean things away.

There were times when Mum had to be away. Mum had to come back to Perth to have Joy so she travelled with me and Beth to Perth until it was nearly time. Then she put me on the train back to Gutha accompanied by a friend we knew and I had a wonderfully special time “batching” with Dad. Dad could manage the household as well as the work he was there to do. And he somehow made those times really special for us. This happened many times and Dad always just stepped into the role of sole parent without missing a beat.

Dad and Mum both did the Bible Classes that set Dad on the pathway for ministry, but Mum was ahead of her time in sensing her own calling into ministry, once describing some of the things she did as a young woman at Midland as “pastoral work”. They were indeed equally yoked in the work of ministry, even though women were not allowed to be obvious in certain roles.

Dad had an easy manner with people and with kids. Each of us has recalled stories and expressed the view that Dad made us feel special. Joy’s sense of specialness came from all the different affectionate names he had for her – he would often call her Tinkles in memory of some bunny slippers she had with bells on them, but sometimes called her Floss and Fizz Gig. If she was in a bad mood the Tinkles was replaced with Jangles.

Dad’s sense of humour was a part of this easy way with people. Two kinds of things would set him off laughing – Slapstick comedy and puns. He could never tell jokes well if they relied on a punch line, but he could always muck around with words and mimic accents. In every place he moved on from he left dozens of people whose lives had been deeply touched by him.

When I think about Dad’s work on the Mission I am amazed at how he juggled what must have been a really complex situation. He was the substitute father for up to 40 boys. He had to be strict, but he was still able to have lots of fun with them, and he was able to forge life-long relationships with many of these boys, and other kids from the Mission.

Mission life was tough at times. Rations were thin as they say, but Beth tells a great story of Mum & Dad going fishing out on the jetty. Mum insisted that you just went out till you saw fish and then you caught them. Dad was tired and decided to stop where he was. “I’ll wait till the fish come to me,” he said. At the end of the day’s fishing, we don’t need to mention that Dad caught all the fish that were caught that day, but we will.

Dad was also a man of courage. I suppose we all are in our own way. But you know there were times when Dad found his work for the church really challenging. Some people were hard to work with, some people were hard to work for, some churches really didn’t make adequate provision for their minister, and sometimes things just went pear-shaped.

Dad faced challenges like this in Carnarvon and Midland, in Albany and North Perth. He took some real blows to his confidence, but we as kids were somehow protected from that until the stories were able to be told much later on.

When he relinquished his position at North Perth and went back to live in Albany he had no idea what he was going to do or how he would provide for Mum. At least he could garden. He loved his fruit trees and his vege patch and he had a roof over their head. Something would come up. Well the jobs did come and he managed to find new ways of helping out at the church while not being the minister.

But when a friend from a church in Victoria started putting the hard word on him to come and be their minister, all the demons rose again. “I’m not properly trained,” he would say. “Do I really want to put myself in that place where people can do that to me again?” Some of you will understand what that was like.

I am so glad he said yes and went. It restored him to a work that he thought he had failed at. He could hardly believe that he would have it so good again. The people there loved him and after just one year there, someone said to him “We feel like we have known you all our lives.” This was just the best thing anyone could have said.

Dad was a jack of all trades enjoying mostly to work with wood in either a carpentry setting or a joinery setting. I helped him build an extension to our home in Koongamia and a double garage that is still standing. He dug leach-drains and septic tanks. He tinkered with mechanics and loved painting up old bikes to look new. He taught me so much in that project and he has passed on his love of such crafts to both John and me.

Dad loved ideas. He read widely and actually liked to engage in debate. The process helped him work things out. He must have been a bit fearsome at times, because he would say things sometimes with pontifical authority (which of course he didn’t have) and most of the time we would just accept what he said and that was it.

Eira loves telling the story of meeting him before we were married, and as was her custom, when her dad made such utterances, she engaged in the debate. So she engaged with Dad. We were all so unused to this fearing an “argument” or “scene” and somehow we all dissolved into the rest of the house leaving Eira to it. Thus began 36 years of respectful engagement in ideas with Dad that both Eira and I will treasure.

I also want to thank him for a wonderful piece of wisdom he shared with me as a young man. Before Eira and I went to Bible College we had an opportunity to do something else in New Guinea for a while. We were struggling with how to decide what to do. Somehow I had gotten this idea that God had a plan for my life, and that my task was to discover it all by myself, and that if I took a wrong turn, God would give it to me in the neck. I was afraid of doing the wrong thing.

Dad said to me “Sometimes we have two good things to choose between. Whichever we choose, God will bless us in it.” That wisdom has carried Eira and me through many decisions since and I thank him for the insight he had in that moment.

Mum and Dad were married for 68 years when Mum died a year and half ago. So intimately were their lives entwined with each other that even if Dad had not been plagued with dementia he would still have found it hard to understand that Mum was no longer here.

Bethel and Joy have carried an enormous load these past few years look after both Mum and Dad with a commitment to keep them at home for as long as possible. This has been like running a marathon without knowing where the finish line is. It was hard work, and I want to pay tribute to them here in front of you our friends, but both of them would say enthusiastically that they would not have had it any other way. There were too many precious moments, odd-ball events to laugh about and intimate times shared to recount but they made it all worthwhile.

It would be interesting if we could recall exactly how many different ways Dad found to ask about Mum, after she died. “Have you seen Mum lately?” “Have you heard from your Mother?” “I haven’t seen Mum for a while. Is she late from work?”

We always replied in one way or another that Mum had died, and tried to awaken a memory of it. In response to this news, he complained several times “Well, nobody told me!” Another time he said “I must have been away at the time.” But most hilariously, one time, he responded with a question “Did she die permanently?” So you can see, there was never a dull moment.

But as you all know, dementia is a terminal illness, and each person takes their own particular journey down that road. I think that Bethel and Joy, and latterly Chris would say it has been a privilege to have taken that journey with both Mum and Dad.

Life became increasingly challenging for Dad over the past two months and with all the resources Amana Living could give us Bethel and Joy managed until Dad got really ill on Sunday. He was admitted to Joondalup hospital in the afternoon. They made him comfortable in ways we could not have done at home and as he settled into what was to be his final sleep he was reaching up his arms as if to visions of things we could not see.

Now he is with Mum and in God. There can be no better place for him.

Our Personal Stories

From Bethel

A child takes things for granted – that Dad will always be around – so perhaps we don’t hang on to as many memories as we wish we had when occasions like this arise. I don’t remember much before Gutha, and of that time I have many happy memories. There were times when Dad tried to teach me to ride a bike, with the pedals built up with wooden blocks because at five and a bit my legs weren’t very long. If I could learn to ride then I could ride over to Lawrence’s farm and go to school in their ute. The next year there was a school bus at the front gate of the farm so Dad would double dink me to the bus stop. If there was time we would go the ‘long way’ – zigzagging across the farm track. Then there was the time when Cousin Lynette and I saw a ‘wolf’ down at the salt lake. We felt much safer when we got back to the house and near Dad.

Of times at Carnarvon one memory is of our ‘day off’ and the family went fishing out along the jetty. Mum insisted that to catch fish you walked along until you saw them. Dad got half way and stopped while Mum walked on. He was going to wait until the fish came to him. Guess who caught all the fish that day!

There are of course many other memories, but more importantly there are things about the person of my Dad that I would like to acknowledge. He was a good sound Bible teacher. He was insistent that things be done ‘decently and in order.’ He loved to play the piano – especially hymns from Sankey’s Hymnal. He was a humble man, never looking for praise or reward, just getting on with the job. If he saw something that needed doing he got on and did. He was a caring pastor – to the point where on one occasion he walked the streets of Midland searching for an old man who had been to the Prayer meeting and hadn’t made it home by the usual time. He found the old man around 5 a.m. – he had had a heart attack and died as he walked home.

Dad read extensively books pertaining to his ministry until he retired when once again he discovered Zane Grey’s Westerns. He loved to pray and read his Bible. He loved to laugh and crack jokes – punny ones, and in latter times he loved the ‘pommie women’ and others from Amana Living who came in to help care for him because he could take off their pommie accent and enjoy word play with them.

He helped me in the moves from school to school – right up to the last one. He was my Dad and I was proud to be his daughter, but most of all I loved him.

From David

I would like to start by expressing thanks to God for the love and caring of Bruce for all the Children at Carnarvon who learned from him as they would have from a Father , he was their Dad also , I consider them Brothers and Sisters

Precious Memories from an age I should not have been able to remember, some enhanced by having an older sister to recount and some private to me because My Dad was special and every day with him was an adventure and before the arrival of Joy we had special time together in Gutha and surrounds “Just Dad and Me batching” ( I was all of 2years 10months old)

Gutha was a Rail siding north of Morawa, the cottage was on a farm property of a church member Grandpa Carslake and that adventurous life created indelible memories of a wonderful man who served God in every aspect of his life including Fatherhood, Yes he was a different type of father because his role model was his mother so firmness also came with gentleness.

Moving from place to place was an art to Dad and Mum , they were too young to be called Ma and Pa Kettle but photos of the E B Clapps on the move bear witness that there was a similarity. 1949 in the little Bedford, 1955 in the New Bedford (a bit bigger), and in 197- when they moved from North Perth back to Albany. Transport was arranged with David I had a small Toyota one tonner and I borrowed Uncle Bill Jefferies 16’ beehive trailer. No photos were taken but I am sure there is a transport inspector with an indelible image in his mind of a 15’ truck with a 20’ trailer packed high with furniture, battling to get through the Gleneagles Hills and a couple of pilgrims in search of the new land driving without a permit ?

Yes Dad was always around and always ready to assist Mum did most of the Taxi driving to sports but there were some occasions that Dad came to the bike races with me . Bringing me a thermos of coffee and my Mum to meet me at Sawyers as I neared home from my solo ride from Geraldton on the push bike (3.5 Days)

Koongamia was a special time for the whole family and special skills were learned from My Dad as we built the Back Sleepout onto the house then the two car Garage/workshop

For the son to learn to tinker with the A40 and help with the maintenance of the Hillman

From Joy

When I was just a toddler, I was given some little green felt bunny slippers with bells on them. I guess Mum and Dad thought that it was a good idea at first as they could track my movements about the house. This was when Dad gave me my second nickname (he gave me quite a few) on “Tinkles” after “Joybells”. Dad didn’t want any specific nickname to stick so I was “Tinkling bells”, and then on to the mood describing ones like “Jangling Bell”, “Jangles”, “Cowbells”, “Clangiebells”, and then on to the “Cherry Pie” and “Strawberry Pie” and “Copperknob”. And that’s not all . . . there was also the “Flossies” and Floozies” and the “Fizz Gig”. I’m not sure that the others had such a plethora of labels, but I sure got a few. He still called me Tinkles to the last.

My Dad always made me feel special. I could see it in his eyes when he saw another red-headed child. It said to me “I have my own little redhead and she is special”. Ah yes, it has begun to fade with the years, but that’s OK.

My Dad was a “Doing” sort of Man. There was not always the money to pay others to do things or buy things for the family. On the mission at Carnarvon when I was 8 or 9 he acquired a very old red tricycle made of flat iron with solid rubber tires. Actually the tires were missing and so it ran on the rims. He took out the back axle and hammered the back struts together with a single wheel on a very short axle between them. That was when I had my very own Penny Farthing bicycle. It was fun. When I was a little older Beth and I both had bicycles (second hand, of course) and Dad had painted Beth’s dark green with light green lines, feathers and scrolls, while mine was light green with dark green lines, feathers and scrolls. He had worked in the paint shop of Malvern Star Bicycle factory many years before, and was very good at that kind of fancy art work.

When Gladys came to live with us in Koongamia, being teenagers we would stay in bed on Sunday morning to the last minute until Dad started giving us the hurry-up by getting in the Hillman Minx and starting the engine. We would fly out the back door with our stockings in one hand and an apple in the other. We proceeded to complete our getting dressed while crunching our apple breakfast in Dad’s ear.

We all (Mum, Dad, Penny and I) came to Kingsley on Australia Day 1988 from Albany. We had bought 2 Villa Units at the end of Goollelal Drive and enjoyed our time of living nearby. After a shift or two for both of us, they came to live with me in Barridale Drive in 1997. Dad, besides being our most reliable antique dish washer, spent all his time in my garden, which was good for me as I was working. He would always be there to meet me off the bus to assist me crossing the road. Our garden was so colourful as Dad loved colour and flowers. Neighbours would stop to chat. When he was diagnosed with Prostate cancer in 1999, I felt that I needed to move from the corner block that we were on as I knew that while the garden was there to be done, he would try to do it. That was when we shifted together to our present address. Of course, he continued doing the gardening until it proved more than he could manage. He still enjoyed a walk around the garden almost to the last. He was always Grateful, Caring, Gracious and Humble. He missed Mum terribly during these last 18 months, but it has been a pleasure to be able to care for him with Beth’s help. He is God’s Humble Servant, gone to meet his Master and Lord.

From John

My childhood memories of Dad centre much on him as a traveller. There was so frequently a trip somewhere to be made. I can remember sitting on his lap, probably as he drove the mission truck, with my hands on the steering wheel as if it were me driving.

In 1964 he was the State President of Christian Endeavour and so did a lot of visiting around the country and being the little one I got to go with him and mum often. And then when we moved to Albany we had many trips back and forth to Perth as well as a monumental trek by car to Adelaide for the World Convention.

I remember my dad leading things at Midland Church – conducting the singing, running movies, presiding over fellowship teas in the back hall. I know I wanted to be like my dad and I remember practicing conducting like him. I even got onto the piano in the church, I must have been 9 or 10, and I found a tune in the Sankey’s song book that was in the key of C – no sharps and flats – and I bashed away at it over and over till I thought I could play it for church one day. I did eventually get to play for Church when I was 16 and we were in Albany – I still remember how nerve-racking that was.

Dad was a time keeper – very punctual and ran a tight schedule. We used to say that if he was 15 minutes late leaving on a trip he was 15 minutes late all the way (at least in his head, even if he did make up the time).

Dad was handy with things. He made things with wood. I remember the Communion sets he made; hymn number boards and the like. I remember him working with shellac to make something really shine. He was a handyman builder – probably from the Mission days – but he built the extension and baptistery for the Midland church. He built a back bedroom on our house in Koongamia as well as a double garage this is still in use. He dug leach drains and septic tanks. He did anything he could that didn’t need a license.

I remember him painting up bikes – second-hand bikes made to look new. I remember him tinkering with his car engine, tuning it with a borrowed strobe light to get the timing right. He had so many tools and now I have so many tools – passed on from him and from David.

My dad loved the countryside. We would often keep our eyes out for wildflowers as we drove. We even walked across marshland east of Albany in search of Albany Pitcher plants –with success. When I was a teenager Dad took on the role of “chaplain” to the Stirling Ranges Boys Camps. When he agreed to do this no one else realised that in his job-description was morning porridge-making on the camp-fire, which involved him getting up before everyone else, getting the fire going and then cooking a great pot full of oats for the boys. There is a whole generation of young men out there who remember Pardie’s Porridge.

One of his greatest joys when we were living in Albany was showing visitors the favourite places he knew – not on the regular tour spots. That wonderful natural hinterland was an extension of his home and he showed people around it as if it was his home.

As a personal tribute to my Dad, I want to acknowledge his role in laying the foundation for a later passion in me for ecumenism. Dad was always involved with the other ministers in the communities he lived in. He never took an exclusive stance among them, and he taught us to respect people no matter what their denomination. His work with Christian Endeavour also exposed me to people from the wider church, and I thank him for that. In his later years, when Eira and I moved into the Anglican Church, he was open to coming along to see what it might have been that drew us there. He liked what he saw.

Common Prayer

Many years ago, and in what was to become an enduring gift to the Christian Church, as a response to the problem ordinary people had trying to replicate an ordered prayer like akin to the monastic hours of prayer, the Church of England compiled and published the Book of Common Prayer.  In addition to orders for Sunday and pastoral services, the BCP offered an Office of Daily Prayer that included Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer to be said or sung in parish churches before and after the working day so that all could attend.  With it was published a calendar of readings that over the course of the year all of the Old Testament will be read once, the Gospels and Epistles will be read twice and the Psalms will be read 12 times.  This calendar also provided connections to the liturgical seasons and the commemoration of the saints of the church.

I recently discovered, through some internet networking, a new resource for a daily Office that was both refreshing and challenging, so I took the effort to secure a copy.  Published in 2010 by Zondervan, Common Prayer seeks to bring together in Common Prayer, people from diverse Christian traditions, liturgical or not, in order to celebrate a common life in prayer.

A number of principles underpin the structure and content of this resource.  "Liturgy is a workout for the imagination, because we are invited to see the reality of the universe through a new lens."  The creators of this resource firmly believe that our prayer life, through Common Prayer, can not only transform the way we see the world, but also the way we experience time, freeing us from the everyday world views that interfere with our spiritual life.  The calendar of readings, the solidarity of a Common Prayer, and praying with the saints, ancient and modern enable us, in our spiritual lives to transcend our captivity to self-centredness.  A recurring theme in the prayers is a call to radical life-style and a commitment to social justice - hence its appeal to the ordinary radicals among us.

The structure followed for the Office reflects a daily cycle of Evening Prayer, Morning Prayer and Midday Prayer.  But there is also a weekly cycle that acknowledges Sunday as Resurrection Day, the gathering of the Disciples on Thursday, the suffering of Christ in Friday and the preparation for the Feast on Saturday. This weekly cycle happens within an annual rhythm of seasons.  Special Morning Prayer liturgies are created for the moveable feasts of Holy Week and Pentecost.

Each day begins at sunset and the weekly cycle of Evening Prayer liturgies is simple and will become familiar, for it is the same each week.  The aim is to help us retire from the day altogether, but they also ground us in the weekly cycle of our lives.  

Morning Prayer also has a simple structure, but beginning on December 1, Common Prayer provides a unique selection of prayers and readings that reflect the annual cycle of Seasons as well as a celebration of the saints.  Some of your favourites may be omitted, but many more modern saints are acknowledged and for me this is a refreshing element of Common Prayer.  Each day provides a selection of a Psalm, a reading selection from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and a pithy quotation from a saint, such as Teresa of Avila, or Jean Vanier.  This latter element reminds us in a tangible way that the Communion of Saints reaches right into our modern time.

There is a single and very simple liturgy for Midday Prayer and its purpose is to carve out a space in the busyness of our days to centre us on Christ.  In addition there are occasional prayers and a short anthology of songs that are referred to each day in Morning Prayer.  Thought-provoking lino-block prints mark the beginning of each month's Morning Prayers, and a website supports the whole book with additional resources.

Two copies now occupy our votive space at home and we are looking forward to the freshness these new liturgies will bring.  Let me finish with a quotation from the Introduction.  "Truth is not simply imparted by a preacher or teacher; it is lived together in the context of community prayer, gathered around Jesus.  Praying in a circle or around a table can help us to be mindful of this fact, enabling us to see each others faces and remember that the centre of our worship is Christ, not a pulpit.  Each day, all across the globe, circles of Christians gather - in basements, living rooms, on street corners and in slums, in prisons and in palaces - holding hands and praying to the God of the universe to be with us.  So let us pray, and let us become the answer to our prayers."

 

A word from Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, two of the three editors:

"After several years of working with scores of communities, liturgy experts, artists, and musicians, we’re excited to announce that Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals will be out in time for Advent. It’s more than a book… it’s a way of life. We’re excited to share it with you.
 
We’re so excited, in fact, that we’ve been working with friends across the country and around the globe to plan nearly 150 release parties. We hope you can find one near you.  But more importantly, we want you to come and see the beautiful art that’s been created for this project.  We want you to have a chance to pray these prayers with a gathering of friends.  We want you to sing these songs and take them home with you, knowing that you’re not alone, but part of an incredible family of fellow travelers that stretches all the way back to Abraham and Sarah."

Love Upside Down in a Quirky Kingdom

The latest offering for general readership by Steven Ogden, Love Upside Down, is remarkable for the ease with which it can be read.  Authors, when dealing with topics they have been passionate about for many years, can easily lose sight of the steps necessary to bring readers to the place they have occupied for a long time.  Indeed, such a criticism might have been made of his earlier offering I Met God in Bermuda in which Ogden wrestled with some of the big ideas of Paul Tillich and Karl Rhaner.  Ogden has not failed to bring his readers all the way.

Ogden establishes first that since LOVE is at the heart of this Quirky Kingdom that Jesus established, a fundamental shift is needed in the way we see things.  This is an invitation into a radical way of seeing God's Kingdom on earth in which the eyes are opened to see the frequent failings of church on earth to live up to its claim to be that Kingdom.

Fundamental to this thesis is that in the Church we generally grapple with responding appropriately to difference.  Churches tend towards homogeneity and that when confronted with those from the edges of society the church can be less than welcoming.

At the heart of Ogden's discussion is the current struggle in the Anglican Communion to respond adequately to Gays and Lesbians in their quest for full and open membership of the church as well as their qualification for ministry in the church.  In some sense Ogden uses this very current example to illustrate his thesis, yet I can't help feeling that the example is in some ways the whole motivation for the book.  This is not a criticism, rather an alert to the reader that there are many other fronts on which the Quirky Kingdom calls us to grapple with difference.

His sixth chapter Downside Up unpacks the heart of his thesis.  Step by step he calls into question the usual ramparts that some stand behind in order to exclude.  So often we seek to maintain a Principle at the expense of the People most adversely affected by the Principle.  Underlying the appeal to Principle is the assumption that it is self-evident, and that if you don't get it, it's your fault.  Ogden asserts that too often Principles are grounded in a bundle of our own deeply held feelings which can rarely be discussed with clarity or wisdom.

In the example of the homosexuality issue, the untested Principles at stake seem to be homosexuality is wrong, homosexuality is unnatural and procreation is the definitive measure of human sexuality and identity.  Step by step, Ogden demonstrates that these Principles do not hold the weight that those appealing to them seem to think.  He goes on to call his readers into an understanding of the Quirky Kingdom that Jesus calls us into as a place of subversive love, that undoes all that we think we know about love by calling us, as Jesus did, to love the other - the one who is different, the one who is vulnerable, the one who is forced by society (and too often the church) to the edges.

He calls us to celebrate this difference in what he styles a Queer Banquet.  He challenges us to understand that the PROBLEM is not homosexuality, but the Church and that if we address that problem with the clear teaching of Jesus then we will usher into the church this same Quirky Kingdom that Jesus talks about in which the ground of our being, our humanity, is what unites us all, and that nothing else - no other basis of distinction - can be used as the basis for exclusion, for none of us deserve our place at the Banquet Table.

This call for a radical and inclusive approach to church life is timely.  There is nothing in the Gospel that Jesus taught that invites us to hate others or each other - indeed quite the opposite is called for - and this is what creates the upside down world of Love that Ogden is reminding us of.

Thanks Steven.

If we were creating the Bible today????

When I was in seminary we did a lot of work in both Church History and Systematic Theology exploring the ideas behind the Bible as an expression of God's revelation. All this is good, but it tends to leave one with the idea that God's Inspirational and Revelatory work ceased when the Canon of Biblical Books was decided and closed in various Councils of the Church in and around the 4th Century. In other words, we get the impression that God no longer inspires men and women in the way that they were inspired back then, and that nothing has or can change in our understanding of God.

A few years ago, John Spong offered a challenge - he probably wasn't the first to do so - by asking people to consider what writings they would want to include as equally inspirational in their spiritual lives with a view to creating a contemporary Canon of Scripture.

I would like to take up the challenge but am inviting your input about what examples of literature and art you might include if we were a Virtual Council of the Church. Given our capacity to store written material digitally, the Canon of the 21st Century could be published on a Kindle or iPad and contain a much more comprehensive selection of materials than ancient manuscripts were limited to.

You might want to include the prayers of Bonhoeffer and Henri Nouwen, the cartoons and poems of Michael Leunig, some of the great art works of the last millennium as well as sacred musical works and hymns - Mozart, Handel and Fanny Crosby for example.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Where is God? "Out There" or "In Here"

I have always been sensitive to the presence of God in creation. As a child I was fascinated with the natural world – insects, lizards, plants and flowers – and as a teenager took up many opportunities to walk in the ranges and around the coast of my home town at the time –Albany. In these places I sensed God as vast, awesome, inspiring, powerful, beautiful, delicate. God was dynamic in these places – strong and powerful in the wind and the waves – and yet so engaged with that Creation to have cared about the miniscule detail of a flying bee orchid, or to orchestrate the transformation of a swampland into a place of wonder by the chance encounter of a house-block sized area rampant with the flower spikes of the Albany Pitcher Plant.

As an adult some of my most memorable moments involve the natural environment and a sense of awe that I have always connected to a sense of the presence of God. I recall stopping my car along the road from Nanutarra to Paraburdoo in the Pilbara. While there were hills around with their rocky outcrops, purplish hue and skeletal trees, the road itself was dead flat, cutting a

swathe through golden spinifex and pindan-red earth and all this was covered over by a flawless blue sky of richest hue, undiminished by the dust and smog of city life that dulls the blue to pale shades. I remember just standing there, turning on the spot slowly, amazed by the beauty and feeling at one with it – I wanted to take all my clothes of so as to feel fully connected with it. This was a timeless moment. Not a sound to interrupt except the screeching calls of the brown kites that circled round on the thermals.

On another occasion I recall walking along the beach at Mullaloo on a summer Sunday morning before the crowds had built up. There was a fisher or two, and a few other walkers. There were three wet-suited boys on boogie boards squealing and whelping like pup-seals. As we walked a bit further on we noticed two dolphins cruising just beyond the wave break. They seemed to be a adult and juvenile. There was no hurry in their movement. There was no anxiety – just the most graceful and liquid movement through the water, with the adult paying careful attention to the progress of the juvenile. Another timeless moment as we were drawn into this interface between aquatic animal life and our own in the intersection of land and sea. When we got home, my wife commented that truly we had worshipped God at Mullaloo Cathedral today.

As a final example of how I experience God in the creation, I recall the occasion when I was invited to celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday by joining her and some others as her guests at the Stirling Range Caravan Park with a view to climbing Bluff Knoll together. A month before, Bluff Knoll had been seriously burnt out by a bush fire. The walking trail had been closed because handrails and steps were no long there, so we decided to climb Mt Toolbranup. Among the party, I was the youngest at 40, there was a couple in their late 70s and a 60-ish bloke had undergone a quadruple by-pass surgery 10 weeks before. We set out early and we walked slowly. I was familiar with the trail, and I don’t think I paid that much attention to it. When we reached the summit we were quite amazed. All members of the party had made this climb before and our common experience was that the wind was a persistent companion to the summit. This time, Mothers’ Day in 1993, there was nothing more than the gentlest zephyr of a breeze, the sun was warm and visibility was so good we could actually see the ocean to the south some 90 kilometres away. We settled gently into positions to eat our lunch and savour this place. We talked a bit, but mostly, we sat still and soaked it in – another timeless moment. We were on the summit for over an hour and the weather conditions didn’t change. We all felt reluctant to leave. There was a sense of holy awe for us all in that place. Later that evening I had the pleasure of leading a real thanksgiving Eucharist for us all, with words that rekindled that awe and our joy in God in the mountains.

In these places, my Spirit has been kindled with life by the God who is there and in me. I may not have had the vocabulary of Teilhard de Chardin and Matthew Fox but my spirituality has been gently and most definitely nurtured in the heart of the Creation. Herein lies, I think, my unwavering conviction that God is present with me no matter what crap life chooses to dish out for me. Troubles do not drive me away from God; rather they drive me deeper into him.

I realise now that while I may had adopted and used the language of dualism for much of my spiritual life, my experience of life has found that a dualistic interpretation of life doesn’t quite fit. I don’t think I ever got to thinking I was odd for this, but as I reflect on my 50 years of Christian life I can’t recognise a time when dualism reigned as my cosmology.

BUT it wasn’t till very recent times that I was introduced to a vocabulary that would make sense of it all, and the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry and Matthew Fox are at the heart of it. I came across this work aurally, not through the written word. Thirty eight MP3 recordings of telephone conversations with a wide range of thought leaders from the worlds of science, theology and ministry from many different traditions of church, made up a series called “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith”. It was these that helped me formulate a vocabulary that made sense of my spirituality.

Religious Education in Secular settings

The current debate is about a couple of things, I think, and Christians need to engage in the debate with the utmost honesty about their arguments.

On the one hand it is argued that there is no place for the religious domain in a public school setting; that secular means free from religion; and that the presence of Christian religious people in public schools, in particular, is evidence of a continuation of the cosy relationship between church and government that was supposed to be dismantled by our Constitution. That discourse is the dominant view of the readers and contributors to this GetUp! page.

I am just as uncomfortable as many readers with the cosy relationship between church and state and the not unreasonable perception that the proposal of the NSCP was entirely motivated by a desire to secure political support from a particular constituency as well as creating a pathway into the funding of public schooling in the states, thus influencing policy outside of the national jurisdiction. That is a political discourse which I do not wish to participate in.

I do believe, however, that there are well grounded arguments that create an alternative discourse by which the religious can legitimately occupy a place in our public school system.

Firstly, the presence of the religious in our public school settings is only a threat to the secular nature of those schools when there is coercion involved, when one religious view has structural precedence over others, where the purpose of the presence of the religious is to persuade students to subscribe to a particular religious world-view.

Contributors to these pages have provided sufficient examples to demonstrate that there are situations in which the presence of some Christian religious people and programs is such a threat to the secular nature of our schools. It is not universally the case and it need not be so. My Christian friends need to get used to finding ways to be there that do not pose such a threat.

The Principal of the Separation of Church and State that we believe is somewhat enshrined in out Constitution can be understood or interpreted in several ways. It is clear that for the Americans this means no prayers in school, and that the only way Christians can get close to teaching their "crazy views of creation" in public schools, for example, is to invent something they call "intelligent design", leave any reference to God out of it, as if the God factor is self-evident, and call it science. If you look back at the historical, social and political context in which the American constitution was established, and that the Free World was a place where many marginalised religious groups sought freedom from the religious oppression of the Church-States of Europe, it is no wonder they banned any presence of the religious from schools.

The Australian Constitution was written in a different era, guided by different objectives. The practical outworking of the Constitution on this matter has been to allow the religious to be present without requiring adherence or observance. Even in Victoria and elsewhere, where SRE is compulsory if offered by the church, there is a personal prerogative of withdrawal for parents. I actually believe that public schools should not be bound as they are in Victoria. They are not in WA, and my organisation has much healthier relationships with schools as a result.

As to the legitimate place of the religious/spiritual domain within the syllabus of a public school, it is worth noting that successive Declarations on Education, the latest being the Melbourne Declaration of 2008, all make reference to the need of any comprehensive Curriculum to teach kids, not just about religious diversity and pluralism, as a General Religious Education program would do, but to give them skills to look after their own spiritual welfare. Each state has a Curriculum Framework, and the Commonwealth is trying to overlay a National one at the moment. All these documents make reference in various ways to these matters, providing a way in for schools to address the spiritual and religious world-view. It is interesting to note that in none of the state jurisdictions is a General Religious Education Program delivered by classroom teachers, and at least in WA where the Curriculum Council has created two courses about religion for teaching as a high-school subject - "Beliefs and Values" and "Religion and Life" - these two courses have only ever been taught in faith-based schools. No a single state school has offered them to students.

The absence of the religious domain in the curriculum of public schools makes these schools less than comprehensive schools as there is a major gap in what they offer to students.

If the schools won't offer this dimension, and there is legislative provision for religious groups to do so though volunteer visitors to schools, I see that as an opportunity that should be taken. However, when visiting religious volunteers go into schools, they must remember that they are not in Sunday School. They are in a secular context in which a pluralist approach to world views is prevalent, and that they are there to make a contribution to that in the name of their faith - not to convert students to their particular religion. This is about giving kids information about the religious world-view and some life skills that they may make use of later on in life.

There will be challenges to this discourse, I am sure, but s Christians we need to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the debate. I hope that I am able to do that.

Are Atheists a Persecuted Minority?

In recent days I have been engaging in some of the public forums debating the validity of the Federally funded National School Chaplaincy Program. This has mainly been in relation to a discussion on the Atheist Federation of Australia's forum about School Chaplaincy, and a discussion page on the Get Up web-site.

As a general rule, both of these forums were dominated by opponents of School Chaplaincy and the few supporters who ventured to make a contribution to the discussion were ridiculed, derided and insulted to such an extent that few were willing to contribute for more than a few days - myself included. I concluded that they simply wished to hear from others who reinforced their views of reality rather than inviting them to consider the possibility that there are multiple realities that need to be considered.

I don't like to generalise, because there seemed to be a generalised view that all Christians were on a God-given mission to convert the whole world to Christianity, and even if examples were offered demonstrating this not to be the case, they were dismissed as being fundamentally deceptive - "they really want to, even if they say they don't".

I wondered why these self-appointed advocates of a religion-free public space should feel the need to respond to Christians with such derision. This response is similar to the response of oppressed or marginalised groups in society - they resent the power/influence of the dominant group and the only resort left is insult and an attempt to respond to exclusion with exclusion. We see this on a multi-cultural level, and in the areas of gender and sexuality.

Secular atheists have a world view. In this world view the scientific method relegates religion to the realm of fairy tails because the religious cannot be validated scientifically. It also challenges the divine as no self-evident logically, so therefore it is non-existent. Logic and the scientific method are the only two realms in which truth and reality can be found.

While this world-view may not be a religion, many who hold it do so with a zeal and fundamentalism that is akin to those associated with various religious traditions. In a sense it is true that for the religious and secular atheists "right" and "truth" are held in their hands alone and all others are living in some form of error or delusion.

The fundamentalists of both the secular and religious domains need to realise that modern society requires them both to have an authentic regard for each other that allows us each to have an equal place in society, not a marginalised one. I know this is hard for the dominant group - the religious - but there is already such plurality within the religious domain that making a place for the irreligious is not conceding much ground.

In the world of ideas there must always be room for alternatives as well as willingness to engage in debate about those ideas without feeling coerced to abandon your own views.

What do you think?

The Lord's Supper in Human Hands

I recently obtained a commentary edited by Peter Bolt, Mark Thompson and +Robert Tong all from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney reflecting on recent opinions of the Anglican Church of Australia's Appellate Tribunal that there are no Canons of the Anglican Church of Australia under which a Diocese could authorise the deaconate or laity to celebrate or preside at the Lord's Supper.

It is a bit of a deadly dull read, and I must admit that I find myself a bit ambivalent about the issues given my long association with Churches of Christ where it is almost the case that only the laity preside at the Lord's Supper.

In some respects I am a pragmatic Anglican rather than one by conviction, but I think that to belong to a particular tradition you must allow for things to be done in ways that are consistent with the particular orders and ecclesiology that marks out that church among the many.

As a result, I have no difficulty pointing to the issue of Orders in the Anglican Communion as a basis for maintaining that Presidency is not an issue that can easily be extended to the Diaconate or Laity if one wishes to remain Anglican.

This has to do with the essence of the relationship between the Bishop and Deacons and Priests. In the catholic tradition the Bishop is the primary minister of the church, and in the history of the development of the three orders of ministry in the church, it was the Deacons who were first appointed, supporting those who were to become the episcopal leaders of the church. So it was that the Deacons took their place at the right hand of the Bishop when he was presiding - their table ministry was assisting the bishop.

Next in the developing orders of ministry were the priests, and the nature of their relationship to Bishops was vicarious - they stood in the place of the Bishop within the plurality of congregations that by then meant that a Bishop could not be present for all for whom he was responsible. So the table ministry of the Priest was the same as the Table Ministry of the Bishop - to preside and the Deacon's place at table is beside the priest. It is interesting to note that in parishes where both a priest and deacon are present, it is the Deacon, not the Priest, who assists the Bishop at table when he or she visits.

The ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion also has bearing on this matter, and it somewhat overlays the issue of Orders. The Anglican Church is Diocesan not Congregational. The Churches of Christ of my earlier Christian life were Congregational and all instruments and authority necessary to constitute the Church were seen to be present in the congregation. The basic unit of church in the Anglican Communion is the Diocese and the primary minister of the Diocese is the Bishop. It is the Bishop and only those who stand vicariously in the Bishop's place that are authorised in the Anglican Communion to preside at the Lord's Supper.

For me, these are sufficient grounds to say that the issue being pressed for by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney is indeed eccentric, despite the protestations. They have argued that their contention for lay presidency is wide-spread and long-standing but they offer evidence of this controversy spanning a mere forty years of debate in Australia and and glimpses of it elsewhere in provinces in Africa, India as well as England over a period of a few more than a hundred years. These are hardly significant in time and scope given the 2000 year history of a global church.

An observer on Facebook recently commented that the Diocese of Sydney has systematically rejected all aspects of "Popishness," for want of a term, from their expression of the Church - no chasuble for priests, affirmation of the 39 Articles as foundational expressions of Anglican Doctrine (including the repudiation of Roman Catholicism) and much more - and that the move towards lay presidency would be the final step.

I would regard it is indeed the final step for once taken this Diocese would no longer be Anglican but rather a new Protestant Church in the Reformed Tradition. I sometimes jokingly refer to such evangelicals a "wannabe Baptists" for if they had their way they would elevate the Ministry of the Word so far about the Ministry of the Sacrament that they would only rarely celebrate the Lord's Supper.

Any thoughts?

Freedom of Religion or Freedom from Religion

The Australian Human Rights Commission has just published a report that has been about 4 years in the making. Entitled "Freedom of religion and belief in 21st century Australia", this report seeks to respond to the aims of a National Action Plan to "build social cohesion with a particular focus on fostering connections and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims."

There is a lot of interesting material in the report and its findings were not all positive. Religious life in Australia has become complex as new, non-Christian religious communities have grown in number and size. But perhaps the most interesting shift for me is the place of the non-religious and their claims about the nature of Australia as a secular nation.

In discussing the nature of the secular, the researchers received submissions from people who

claimed the right to unbelief and the right to be free from religion. They argued that the term "freedom of religion and belief" excludes the rights of persons who hold beliefs that are not religious, or who believe there is a right to non-belief.

I was intrigued by the distinction that was trying to be made here. To say we have "freedom of religion" is to say we can have any religion we like, but it is also to imply or assume that we all have a religion. They thus argue that we should speak about Freedom From Religion.

I can see the linguistic sense of this argument, but having spent a recent weekend debating matters of faith with members of the Atheists Federation of Australian Forums they seem to me to want to assert the right to take God and religion completely out of public spaces, consigning God and religion to an entirely private sphere.

From a Human Rights perspective, while they might claim that the presence of the religious in any form in the public arena is an infringement of their right to live in complete freedom from religion, the corollary of this position is that to grant the position would be to deny the rights of the religious to live in a public arena that recognises the place of religion. So, whose rights will win the day?

The report chose to avoid dealing with this issue, but it is one that lies at the heart of the current debate about the place of Christian Chaplain in public schools.

Having listened to the stories on the Atheists Federation forums about the intrusion of the religious factor in their schools in the persons of rather evangelical Christian chaplains, I have some significant sympathy for them. Where I work, the emphasis is on service, compassion and respect rather than evangelism in the delivery of school chaplaincy services in public schools and the kinds of embarrassing situations described concerning Chaplains in Queensland are much less likely to occur in this state.

However, I find the demand to make all public institutions "religion-free" is more an attempt to marginalise the religious than to make a valid claim for a human right.

Another little issue the Atheists raised, which again I have some sympathy for, was the wording of the religious question in the Census. Rather than having atheism, agnosticism or no-religion as options among a long list of religions, they suggest that the section should begin with the simple question "Do you have a religion?" If you answered YES, you would then be invited to respond to the next question about what sort of religion you adhere to. If you answered NO you would be invited to skip the next question. It would be interesting to trial both approaches to see if the Census reports of religiosity would be affected by such a change.

Finally, it is my view that social cohesion is best promoted by an understanding of the idea of "freedom of religion" that embraces the freedom to have no religion as an option. Those of us who are religious have just as much responsibility, perhaps more, to be respectful and tolerant of those who choose a non-religious life-style, as we would expect avowed atheists to be respectful of our choice to be religious. This also requires a willingness to allow each other to enter the public discourse in ways that are shaped by our faith or non-faith.

What do you think?

Evolutionary Christianity - the Pod-cast Marathon is complete

I have spent the last few weeks listening to 39 pod-casts of telephone conversations between Michael Dowd, a self-described "Evolutionary Evangelist", and people he refers to as thought-leaders who are drawn from many and various Christian traditions as well as academic disciplines and fields of science.

There were some well-known Christian thinkers among them - Bishop John Spong, former Dominican Priest Matthew Fox and Fr Diarmuid O'Murchu - as well as two Nobel Prize-winners, Charles Townes and William Phillips, and two Templeton Prize winners, Ian Barbour and John Polkinghorne. I listened to Anglicans, Catholics, Southern Baptists, pentecostals of various kinds, process theologians and those from what is called the emergent or emerging church. I listened to physicists, astronomers, mathematicians, biologists as well as various professors of Science & Religion, a position prolific among the many Christian Colleges that American young people go to after school.

Along the way, in this marathon, I travelled through some amazing worlds of ideas, and I have to say that the people whose stories and ideas most excited me were mostly Catholic Religious women, particularly Joan Chittister. It seemed as if their contemplative life had given a great deal of time for good theological reflection such that their ideas were well thought out, really coherent for me.

Five Signposts became evident as I travelled along the way, and I thought I would have a got at describing them briefly here.

1. Evidence - since scientists seek truth, scientific evidence becomes an accumulation of truth about life as we know it, therefore evidence can be regarded as a kind of Divine Revelation. The claims by some that faith is theistic and science is atheistic is thus demolished, because all truth is an expression of God, even scientific truth.

2. A Single-story Universe - there are some cosmologies that see God, the Divine, as utterly separate from the reality of the physical world. This idea is largely derived from ancient Greek Philosophy, but it is based on the idea that the physical and the spiritual are like oil and water, and are perpetually separated. It is the basis of the idea that God is out there and has to be called into our present reality by our prayers so that God can intervene in the natural order and do a miracle or something, according to our wishes. There is thus a two-story universe in many people's mind.

Rather than being "out there" it is understood that God is intrinsically connected to every bit of the cosmos, as hinted at in Acts 17 where Paul, when he describes God as the creator of the world and everything in it and that God is so intimately present in this creation that he concludes "In him we live and move and have our being". This idea collapses the two-story world view. God is here, in everything. Instead of a theistic, dualistic world view, we see in Scripture evidence of a pan-entheistic world view - God is in everything. This is not pantheism where there are gods everywhere, but one God in everything.

3. A Deep Time Reality - the work of astronomers and astro-physicists has expanded our understanding of how old the universe is, estimated these days to be about 16.8 billion years. Along with this, we have an understanding about the stability of matter that means that matter is constantly circulating through the system of the universe. Atoms are used over and over again - one speaker described us as being formed from stardust, and this was not meant to be a romantic notion, but one based on scientific evidence.

This deep-time notion gives us a sense of being part of something that is indeed very ancient,even though humans have inhabited this planet for just a few million years, and life-forms for just a few billion years.

4. Death is Natural - One thing that is a natural consequence of this scientific world view is that death is something that is intimately connected to life - from dust we are made and to dust we return. This challenges the biblical notion that death was a consequence of sin; but one only has to think a little about the consequences for the universe if those first human beings had got it right and so all creation lived forever. All the resources of the earth be consumed in constantly creating new life.

Just as our gardens obtain life from the composting of dead plant matter so in a way the life of the next generation is secured by the death of a previous generation. There are many Biblical metaphors that catch a hold of this - a grain of wheat must die before it can produce a harvest - but we have so locked ourselves into this idea that death is a consequence of sin rather than simply part of the natural order that many find this one hard to grasp. But it is necessary to find new ways of understanding the Biblical material. For me, the Genesis accounts simply provide us with the best available explanation of why people so feared death.

5. Human Nature - The final thing that people spoke about, particularly Michael Dowd, was that the human sciences have helped us understand a great deal about human nature - psychology, anthropology, social science etc - and many of the things that were described in our Scriptures as being connected with the spiritual dimension such as evil spirits we would see now as having naturalistic explanations. They would also suggest that even the notion of sin is often related to things that are simply our head/body trying to cope with mismatched instincts. For example, in evolutionary terms our instinct towards violence against others is an instinctive response that derives from our much more primitive life and context millennia ago. In other words, the instinct is no longer appropriate and we have developed all sorts of social mores that help people change their behaviour.

These signposts are just that for me. They have marked the territory, and they have shaped the things that need to be considered as this new Evolutionary paradigm emerges. I resonate positively with a great deal of what I have heard and I am sure I will continue to ponder them for a long time.

How about you?

Revelation and revelation

I was recently reminded of the words that open Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
One day tells it to another
and the night to night communicates knowledge.
There is no speech or language
no are their voices heard;
Yet their sound has gone through all the world
and their words to the end of the earth.

A Prayer Book for Australia

Thinking about this I was prompted to think of the ways in which God's so-called Revelation is mediated to us. How does God speak to us? How do we know what we know about God?

Traditionally we have used a capital letter to distinguish two different ways. Capital "R" Revelation generally refers to the stories of our faith, once transmitted orally but now written, and contained in a compendium we now call the Bible. This definitive Canon of Scripture, of texts written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is for many the definitive Revelation of God. The only Revelation mediated in a higher form is Jesus the Christ, whom the Apostle John described as the Word or Logos of God - "the Word was with God and the Word was God."

The Person Jesus and these written Sacred texts have come to hold a primacy in the Revelation Stakes - Jesus because we see him as the human face of God, and the written texts because we regard them as "inspired" or "God breathed".

What then of the Revelation of God that is proclaimed by the Psalmist in those few lines I began with? Through the history of the Church there has always been an understanding that here, too, is Revelation, and there has even been an argument based on verses like this that since God is glorified and revealed in every element of the Cosmos, then we ought not to think of God as separate from us, as distant from our lived experience and therefore needing to be invoked into the present by our prayers and intercessions. (But that is an issue for another day.)

In respect of the written Revelation why do we find comfort in the proposition the Holy Spirit inspired those authors to write these definitive texts between 1900 and 3200 years ago but since then has refrained from similarly inspiring others to write texts that could be regarded as Capital "R" Revelation. By what authority has the Church declared, through those 4th Century Councils that determined what texts would make up the New Testament, that since that time there has been no further Revelation of this kind or authority?

All this is leading to a question, which I am sure has been asked by others elsewhere:

If a Council of the Church was called today with the express task of determining what texts, written since the 4th Century, could be regarded as expressing something of God that could only be regarded as inspired of the Holy Spirit and worthy of being included as Revelation, what texts would like them to at least consider including?

Would you want to include the writings of early Christian saints Benedict, Francis, Thomas Aquinas, and mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart and others? Would you want include Bunyan's "Pilgrims Progress" or John Milton's classic poem "Paradise Lost" or the poetry of the metaphysicals like George Herbert and Robert Frost?

In our multi-media world, what about some of the musical and visual extravaganzas that have so enriched the experience of our lives and have, in themselves, proclaimed the glory of the Lord?

I feel that we need to be open to this idea, and indeed many of us are given the way we buy sacred books other than the Bible. I am convinced that the Holy Spirit did not cease inspiring men and women to record their visions of God in words, music or visually, 1900 years ago. If this inspirational work has continued to this day where can we see the evidence of it?

I have posed the questions. What do you think?