Though as a Baptist I and my wife have enjoyed our wonderful visits to Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church in London and the New Road Baptist Church in Oxford during a sabbatical stay, All Souls Langham Place also attracted us.  But too late in his ministry, or off schedule, to hear John Stott, we nonetheless heard inspiring evangelical preaching by other staff pastors and enjoyed worshiping with a truly international congregation.  More recently the ministry of the Langham Partners International made a strong impression on me; I thought how positive, resolute and effective their mission sounded!

On at least two occasions my ETBU travel study students accompanied me to worship there at All Souls, once in March 2003, another in May 2006; that last time, on a Sunday morning, we walked the half mile or so from our hotel on Gower Street and entered that church just next to the BBC buildings. There the worshipers clearly recognized their congregation’s place in its own domestic society but displayed numerous, lively, and colorful connections with Christians around the world–and there were many visitors–the Africans dressed brightly, impressively for worship!  We enjoyed the tea and biscuits afterwards in the fellowship center, too, the opportunity to make new acquaintances, and to look at the books and tapes they offered.  It was a privilege to share just briefly in the vibrant experience of that missions and ministry-oriented urban church.  I am grateful to the Lord for all that, and for John Stott.

I saw a wonderful thing this morning! Just as the sun came up, I was walking on the meadow path by the creek. It is down the hill from my and Mimi’s house. A hundred blackbirds ate their breakfast in the meadow grass. As I walked toward them, the birds closer to me flew up and settled on the other side of the flock. They did so continuously. They were a rising and falling wave of black birds against the green-brown field.

At once they decided—all together, as if they had the same mind—to fly to a tree. They rose in a wavery but true sphere of black bodies and wings toward a tree. It is winter, still, and the tree has bare branches. The tree has a teardrop shape, rounder at bottom, narrower toward the top that ends in a point. How marvelous!

As the ball of birds flew upward it took the shape of the tree, but larger at first, and then shrank to the size of the actual tree as the birds lighted on its branches. It was wonderful to watch this happen with the grey sky in the background. The tree seemed to have black leaves, too, but just for a minute.

So, blackbirds are artists in a flock! This morning they also reminded me that God is an artist. He makes art together with his creatures. Now, how wonderful is that? What a beautiful thing I saw this morning! I thought of my granddaughters, right then and there. I wanted you to know about it too. – Papa

Update, May 25, 2011.

David Lyle Jeffrey remarks on the poetry of Richard Wilbur in the June/July 2011 issue of First Things and mentions a poem on the birds.  Of course Wilbur’s observation recalled what I saw and reported to Laura.  He wrote,

As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,

A landscapeful of small black birds, intent

On the far south, convene at some command

At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone

With headlong and unanimous consent

From the pale trees and fields they settled on.

After a paragraph or two of Jeffrey’s comment, another stanza from Wilbur reads,

Delighted with myself and with the birds,

I set them down and give them leave to be.

It is by words and the defeat of words,

Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt,

That for a flying moment one may see

By what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.

Yesterday, October 30, the Baylor Bears frosted Texas on Texas’ home turf — 30-22.

Happy All Saints’ Eve, Baylor family!

On August 22, 1957, Flannery O’Connor wrote a letter about her cousin’s husband, a man who taught at Auburn University. The professor finally had come into the Church. Flannery O’Connor explained his conversion as follows: ‘We asked how he got interested and his answer was that the sermons were so horrible (when he had gone to Mass with his wife), he knew there must be something else there to make people come.’ The mystery of conversion remains not merely a question of successful rhetoric.

The second quotation follows a Chesterton comment on Thomas Aquinas, “It was his special spiritual thesis that there really are things; and not only the Thing; that the Many existed as well as the One.” (i.e., he was a realist who told others to “get real” in their thinking and believing).  So, then:

Not everybody needs to be an intellectual. Not everybody is a saint. Yet we must acknowledge that it is dangerous for ourselves, for the public order, when there are no philosophers. We suspect it is even more perilous for there to be no saints. When we wonder why, the answer returns to “receptivity”, to the realization that the highest things, which we rightfully seek because of what they are, are not for us to “make” or concoct. Aquinas wrote:

Nature is a prelude to grace. It is the abuse of science and philosophy which provokes statements against faith. These mistakes can be confuted by showing how impossible or unconvincing they are. Remember this, that as the truths of faith cannot be demonstratively proved, so the denial of them sometimes cannot be demonstratively disproved, though any lack of cogency can be exposed (Exposition, de Trinitate, 2, 3).

It is well to make note that Aquinas was referring to proof on the mystery of the Trinity, just for context’s sake. Schall has much else to say, about the compatibility of the spiritual life with that of the philosopher (contrary to the presuppositions of many a twentieth-century philosopher), the “liberty of the sons of God” in seeing that “what is is larger than what we are,” (contrary to the modern era’s rejection of “a God larger than itself.”) He writes that “This openness we possess to all being is our grace and our blessing, what we have accepted because we receive, not make, our own being. When wonder is addressed by grace, we are. This is the spiritual life given to intelligent beings.”

We receive, not make, our own being. I wonder at, and like, that statement. The truth of it is strength for me today. I hope it is for you also.

Schall quote from Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being, p. 347, in James V. Schall, “On Spiritual and Intellectual Life,” in Another Sort of Learning–Selected Contrary Essays on How to Finally Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found (Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 260-1; on Chesterton and Aquinas, pp. 267-8.

Don’t take me because I am faithful,

Don’t take me because I am kind.

If your heart settles on me, I’m for the taking;

Take me for longing or leave me behind.

Along with yet beyond all the reason, the negotiating, the policy statements, and the eventual platform, many American voters settle on a matter of the heart, a voting decision that allows them to leave the polls with hope and satisfaction: “I have made my best choice today.” Though it seems in recent presidential elections there have been no earnestly tantalizing choices, one could argue that few elections since 1800 have met that measure.

A brief word only about the delegate selection process, and I speculate: the Democrats could do worse for themselves than to risk anything like the grindingly close popular and electoral and judicial decisions of 2000 and 2004. Does choosing Barack over Hilary reduce that risk?

Take me for longing, or leave me behind.

Which candidate fits that bill?

What, you say, about the ways China has not and will not have arrived by August 2008? Yes, there will be many ways, but they will be less visible. On this point China warrants credit, even if not every Chinese has an equal slice of the dream, or even knows anything about it. Suffice to say for now that more Chinese will become acutely aware of the world beyond the borders of the Middle Kingdom — Zhongguo — and their thinking; their dreams will respond to the pull both of their own land and the recognition coming from lands beyond. At no time in human history will the world have paid more attention to China — no, not even at the time of Liberation in 1949, nor even during the height of Chairman Mao’s power in the Cultural Revolution, nor even during the Tiananmen Incident. No, the Olympics will be the height of exposure, and accomplishment, to date. You will know it when the climber and the torch reach the Everest summit.

How would you like to be on the media crew?

This past weekend our board president received, in absentia, a token, a totem of unity and patriotism, a gift in honor of his own military service, patriotism, and love of the United States and what our nation best represents, a ceremonial working/battle axe. It was also in honor of his sons, one of whom, a Marine lieutenant, still is recovering from burn injuries received in Iraq from a roadside bomb that killed most of his brothers-in-arms. Those injuries will force his retirement, which he must accept, though reluctantly, and earlier than he wished.

The giver? An elder representing the Citizen Pottawatomie tribe of Oklahoma. The recipient and his son? Members via Mexican ancestry, in part, of the Yaqui tribe. Yet all are citizens of the United States, heirs to a tradition of patriotism based not in what some consider a threatening militarism but in their convictions that they can best serve their country as members of a proud, distinguished service branch of the American Armed Forces. And these Marines have served well.

The United States includes many amazing people, humans whose backgrounds, convictions, and accomplishments can only evoke encouragement and admiration. I learned this past weekend about the long tradition of military service among the Cheyenne of the Middle and Northern Plains. Where in the social histories do we learn that the Indians are more than just a formerly oppressed group? Where do we learn that among them, always, have been individuals and groups who transcended the difficulties of accommodation and integration to the larger Anglo-European society, who came to share fully in it, yet who, paradoxically, retained their traditions as best they could? I am interested to learn more about the American Plains warriors whose love of country is a lesson for all Americans — not to glorify war, though some surely might, but to be reminded that in a world where wars will occur, there are patriots whose best response is to take part.

This is my first entry for 2007; I hope to have more to say about BuzzFever, among other things more typical of my own and some other common interests. Today is the Ninth Day of Christmas according to my lectionary . . . the ChristCelebration continues! Jesus’ death was a scandal to the world and still is. But, says Paul the Sent:

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.) But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved through his life? Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11, NET Bible)