Category: Personal Perspectives

A non-apology?

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by Martin Scott
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I recently posted on the pope’s apology to native Americans in a Canadian context. Experience shows that such an apology is part of a chain of events, there being responses that precede and further, deeper apologies that will flow subsequently. Today I read a response from a native American (Lori Campbell) who called the apology a ‘non-apology’. Wow and does she make some points… oh yes.

Here is the link to her article: https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/08/05/pope-apology-indigenous-canadians-catholic-church

I still maintain that the pope’s apology is significant, it is part of a chain, but the article highlights major shortfalls, and I think a comment such as:

Money flows where priorities go, and the Catholic Church clearly prioritizes renovations over reconciliation.

opens up the difficulties all institutions have. Survival is the name of the game for institutions. Having life taken from someone / (maybe I also thnnk from something?) is named as a sin, and Jesus did not allow that to happen to him… but the day came when he lay donw his life. Nature, with diverse plants growing together, the end of one set in its right season provides life to the plant growing next to it; maybe during the life cycle it also provided shade. Diversity co-habiting space… but not one of dominance and survival at the cost to others.

Yes I remain positive about the apology… but sobered at the journey we have to make. I wonder will we ever make it back to a major root apology – an apology to the planet / creation? And apparently Lori would suggest that money, apology and reconciliation have to journey together.

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Just a few thoughts

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by Martin Scott
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We have a lot going on, not least of which is seeking to avoid too much sun, for at 34+° each day with a heat wave to come (so what was the last 10 days?)… anyway as an outside observer to the UK here are a few thoughts.

Churchill has reluctantly gone, and might try to re-appear (Boris as ‘Churchill’); we are about to get a reincarnation of a former Prime Minister, the one ‘who was not for turning’. (I have been convinced for some time that the next was going to be a woman.) The England football team have won the Euros with the help of a certain Dutch woman: Sarina Wiegman. As one smart person responded to the suggestion that she become the next English men’s coach – why would she want to do that and take a step down? (And on the game, apologies to our European German family – I think that was a hand ball not given…) But my comments this day are not about football so moving on.

I am thankfully not a politician and of course it is very easy to criticise from an armchair, so my comments are not personal to those involved, simply noting that they seem to act as signs. So much hope / hype from certain Christians about Churchill back in the person of Boris; and I am sure that our next will act (hopefully a little tempered) Maggie-esque. Male commentators will come along saying ‘I have always supported the women’s game’, thus getting in on the act…

It all illustrates the issue we are currently seeing in many places, the battle for true humanity, with a true balancing of the masculine and feminine; without it toxic-masculinity and also toxic-femininity manifest.

I have a chapter in one of the books I wrote about the ‘new creation’ being feminine. Or at least I went on to qualify that statement that it will appear ‘feminine’ as it is in contrast to the patriarchial one that is around us (a fallen creation). One of the Scriptures that I hold as central is the transformation that takes place for those who are in Christ:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Cor. 5:16,17).

A new creation is our context, and that affects sight. Old categories prove inadequate, with ‘a human point of view’ falling away. Indeed Paul uses stronger language – has passed away… everything becoming new.

Looking in from the outside there are signs in the UK around the masculine / feminine. Paul looking in on that one-world-government anti-Christ system challenged them – and challenges us – with regard to our sight.

Sometimes something (someone) inadequate holds space, but there has to come a time when that space is filled. Perhaps the creaks and groans will give way to substance. It is a time (when was it not?) for imagination, for a way of seeing that registers a new reality though it remains invisible if one holds to a human point of view. Imagined, responded to with repositioning, so that it truly rises.

‘From now on…’ That is a time reference if ever there was one.

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Foundational Story / Stories

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by Martin Scott
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At a personal level we all have stories, some of which we would love to have a measure of amnesia over. The young Martin is an embarrassment – ‘did I really say… no surely that was not me’. (Thankfully I have a birthday soon so will on that day no longer be young… never again to make a mistake. I am ever hopeful that one day soon I will enter the ‘second half of life’.)

Pragmatism. I am where I am today because of the journey I have taken, mistakes, wrong turns included. I am not suggesting ‘fate’ (or predestination!) but I do believe there is a God who works in all things, through all things for redemptive purposes. Some of my foundational stories I have outgrown. They were in Chapter 1 of my book, and I am now in Chapter 10… however, in this post I am going to press into the corporate area.

Many corporations (if they claim to have purpose that does not have money as the bottom line) have a foundational story – the why for which they are doing what they are doing. As time develops (thank you Walter Wink) changes take place, the corporation takes on a personality that if left unchecked is increasingly separate from the founders / foundational story. I have tracked with three organisations where I consider this is the case. I have noted in one of them that around 25 years after the start the foundational story had become unknown by those who joined from that time on.

We can legitimately move on from a foundational story, in the sense of ‘that was the young Martin’ and thankfully I have matured. We can move on by saying – that was at the core but I could not live up to that, so no longer am pushing for that. I have no issue with that. Honesty counts high in the kingdom of God; probably counts higher than getting it right (but what do I know?).

We can move on… but I consider if we move on by simply ignoring it we will find ourselves with a movement / corporation that decides the future, a future that does not fulfil the foundational story but deviates from it.

I am pondering if boards / leadership teams / eldership / blah blah blah have a couple of functions: to ensure the foundational story is alive (even if it has developed and been adapted) so that any movement does not veer off from the foundations (not a good idea for buildings… look at the Temple built on sand: although the claim was it was rock, Jesus spoke of the flood coming and the true foundations would be revealed). And maybe the second aspect is that such a board / leadership is there to hear the voice of the practitioners and seek to ensure that as much as possible is in place to help provide a decent shape for the river to flow. The foundational story brought to a suitable next level but through some centralisation but through the ‘practitioners’. In Ephesians language: growth; filling; built on the foundation of.

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Yes! An apology

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by Martin Scott
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The pope has travelled to Canada and to lift a few sentences from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62296834

In his first public remarks in Canada, Pope Francis has asked indigenous residential school survivors for forgiveness.
“I am deeply sorry,” the Pope said on the grounds of a former residential school in Maskwacis, near Edmonton.
He said his apology is a first step, and that a “serious investigation” into abuses must occur to foster healing.
The pontiff is in Canada to apologise for the Church’s role in schools meant to assimilate indigenous children.

A start.

And that is what apology from the heart does, and when it comes from someone / a group who are in relationship to the original perpetrators it is so powerful. This, I know, is not the first work done on apologies into the first nations people of Canada (who of course do not recognise the artificial border).

Plenty of Old Testament passages that can be pulled up – forgive us our sins and the sins of our forefathers / mothers. And all of it seems to undergird the work of Jesus, from his baptism that launched a movement. John was very reluctant to baptise ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ in a baptism for the ‘forgiveness of sins’. Understandably so! But once Jesus said it was to fulfil all righteousness, into the water John plunged Jesus. Jesus, confessed sin – for that was the baptism of John – not his own sin, but the sin of the nation. Going all the way back to the wanderings in the wilderness, for therein lies the background to the 40 days in the wilderness and his meditations on those passages of Scripture. A door was opened, not all came through it, for to do so they had to separate themselves from this perverse generation.

First nations peoples. We need this start that the pope has taken on in and through his apology. The land is crying out for it. Talk to anyone in our neighbourhood who is over 60 years old and they will verbalise (in non-scientific language) the earth / climate has changed beyond all recognition. Sit as we do in 39°C (98°F) heat without air-conditioning and we do not need much to persuade us of the changes! Ask first nations people and they without scientific language will tell us.

I wonder what might happen if the start gets momentum. In Canada a nation of mercy, then beyond?

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Beni Johnson

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by Martin Scott
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Many of you will know Beni Johnson, married to Bill, where with many others they have dedicated themselves to a ‘culture of honour’ amidst a pursuit of the miraculous. Yesterday, Beni, passed away having battled with cancer in recent times.

I first met the Johnson family in April 1998 as they graciously invited me to address the church on a Sunday evening. Flowing on from that I had many visits there and had many private conversations with Bill. A public figure, and as such will always attract criticism; I think though there is never a higher accolade than ‘what a person is in public that is what they are in private’. He never promoted himself, and held to a line based on his convictions when many others would have deviated.

Of course there will be many questions and insinuations that will now come their way. I wrote to Kris, at Bethel, earlier this year that since March 2021 I had been praying for them, as a number of attacks were being set up against them. There are ‘days of evil’ or ‘opportune times’; not all of life moves forward at an even pace.

The global body of Christ. The multiplicity amidst diversity. I honour the partnership that I have observed close up as well as at a distance. They held to a true line. 2009 was my last visit (with Gayle) to Bethel. We had to personally dig into our new geography and be more hidden than before. The occasional communication has taken place, but nothing face to face.

A few years back I had a tattoo placed on my spine. It simply reads ‘TRUE NORTH’ with an arrow and a compass for the ‘O’. I sometimes wish it was more visible for me to see, but up my spine it has to be.

I honour what I have seen in the Johnson family, holding to their true north.

Beni has entered her rest. We will all follow. In the in-between time we too must hold to the line of our convictions.

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Not fulfilled – repentance

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by Martin Scott
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Jonah, you old false prophet you, where is the destruction you prophesied? Although I don’t think there is any reason to think Jonah was literal (and I am not sure if Jesus thought he was literal… OK just a rattling of the cages in those totally aside, probably irrelevant comments), there is so much to learn.

Jonah did have some internal issues. And those were not dealt with after getting on with the job. He came to the city of Nineveh that never took three days to walk across(!) but probably did symbolically. Three days of being in the place of death, covered in whale vomit, is the only way to walk across any city. And certainly there is no way a city can be walked across and words of judgement be brought without carrying the vomit of one’s own failures with us.

When we do that we think we do well… until it does not turn out right. Yes, we all deserve judgement, but I have repented… so still show up and expose this city as evil. God doesn’t do it and then plays a game with Jonah. Up grows this shade, this protection only for it to go again. The shade of our repentance hiding the bigger issue of not understanding the mercy of heaven. God’s mercy is extended… even because in the city are many cattle! God’s respect for and love for creation, his sight of cattle is bigger and more merciful than all of us who have been so repentant and humble. That is just a cover for when the shade goes it is exposed. ‘I have gone through this and that…’ get’s exposed with and ‘I still don’t understand the love and mercy of God’.

Prophecy is not automatic. I love when we get warnings. Gayle hates it. She is the ‘glass is half full’ and never wants anything that changes that opinion. I need her cos I am ‘look the glass is half-empty’. In my glass half-empty scenario the real issue is to find how we can fill it right up or at least as close to the top as possible. For me warnings help! When we hear this is before you, set out for your destruction, I think OK now what are we to do as none of that is ‘predestined’.

Thank God for unfulfilled prophecies. For what can be turned.

So to the negative people, those who see demons here there and everywhere (OK simply writing to me in this paragraph)… you see some of that cos of internal issues. Getting swallowed by the whale was not enough. You do stink with the vomit, but there are deeper issues. Issues about understanding how God sees cattle!

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals (cattle)?

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I know what that means

Expectation is not enough

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by Martin Scott
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I have used the Peter example before… ‘You are the Christ’ meets expectation that the Messiah kicks out the enemies (Roman occupation in that era), so he is bold enough to stand on the word in order to keep Jesus in line – ‘not so Lord’.

It is nigh impossible to silence expectation. Our memories are so alive and important, and it is for this reason God says ‘forget the former things’, the irony being that s/he had just spent a number of ‘verses’ reminding them of the former things!

In that passage in Isaiah the former situation and the current one was similar: captivity by Egypt / captivity by Babylon, but the deliverance would be so different. I spent many years looking for a repeat of ‘the Welsh revival’ or the ‘Great Awakening’. Not now. And I see God at work everywhere. And is Jesus there present? Well we got to go and find out, and if we go then guess what? Jesus will certainly be there!

Peter discovered that something was happening at Cornelius’ house. But is it Jesus? Go find out, go humbly, cos you will be converted, and when you get there you’ll discover that the lines you drew, the in / out lines were not simply inadequate but wrong… and you are there Peter to bring Jesus into the centre of the party.

Could we in a move of God that is so inclusive that our tiny minds could be blown? I think that really is possible. But we got to find out, and we can’t find out if we stay put and continue to prophesy the ‘greatest move of God ever’, ‘the month of the holy breakthrough’.

National / continental timelines are unique. I wrote a short review of the ‘Slow death of Europe’. Maybe should be expanded to ‘of the West’. For sure. Death of what was, and dare I say even some of the good things that seemed to be part of our heritage. I am not looking for a repeat of ‘Wales’ or… I am looking to be re-educated, and am still probably a little resistant to being converted, and just hope that it might be a process.

Let’s be careful about bringing our expectation into what we prophesy, and let’s be slow to put expectations on what we hear. And maybe get our shoes ready for that journey to Cornelius.

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A New Way

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by Simon Jones
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Simon Jones joined the ‘open zoom’ this past Tuesday evening and sent me a reflection that he wrote a little while back entitled ‘A New Way’. I asked him to add something at the beginning to give a context. Evev if you skim that background drop down to read ‘A New Way’. You can follow Simon’s ongoing reflections here:

http://www.simonswritingandwalking.com/

I really appreciated joining the open zoom on Tuesday. Peter really opened up for us thoughts to do with land, a new way ahead, and the old falling away. What struck me as he spoke and as I listened to other people’s reflections was how a new way has been opening up for some time, but that in the light of the last few years ‘shaking’ the new way and new ways we will need in order to find a way forward within society and communities, is being grasped by more people. We don’t know what the next few years will bring, but it seems that we are looking at a bigger change than we might have thought possible 3 or 4 years ago… potentially to the extent where established ways of life on macro or micro scales will be almost impossible to maintain. But even for those of us who may have sought to live a different way of life (perhaps semi counter-culturally from within or from the edges of society) for some years before the more recent ‘shaking’… the actual question of how new ways of life within society, new ways of living with people and as nations, and new ways of ‘expressing’ faith outside of pre-conceived concepts and constructs, remains just that – a question.

In other words, those who may have been living towards, praying for and prophesying a change – a falling of certain elements of unsustainable living and oppressive systems, macro and micro… don’t really know what to do when these things and these changes actually do happen, when certain things/trees do actually come down and when a new way, and many new ways begin to be called for. How do we live them? What are they? And what on earth could the role of little old me be when most people around will be so busy trying to hold up and hold onto the things which are falling away, that they want to keep there.

I know the choices I have made to live and struggle a semi-counter cultural existence with a family – mainly from within society than fully from its edges – and I know some of the things I want to be part of my own life, and some of those things that the land around and the earth in general is calling out for… but, do I really know the way ahead in this rapidly changing season? No, I definitely don’t – and what struck me on the zoom session is that none of us do really. But perhaps to live focussed on love, life, play and creativity in the midst of falling trees and collapsing walls, may be a better response than despair… and may, if we continue, begin to open up new ways that others can follow, or at least hook in with and forge their own new ways from there. So, I wrote this as a grappling with what is happening. I was struck in one of Martin’s posts where he said that Europe, despite its troubled history, may be entrusted with a calling to open up some new ways for the future.

I don’t think it should surprise us if it’s hard to see what the way forward is.

But together – listening to one another’s thoughts and different stories and perspectives, may in fact open further doors. I wonder if programmes like Ben Fogle’s ‘New lives in the Wild’ may be helpful for engaging and thinking outside of the boxes around us not necessarily to cause us to withdraw, but to help us to engage with the question, ‘what could life be like?’ in a way that is different to what we have seen, known and been told by the systems around that it should be like.

A NEW WAY

A new way is opening up,
But how do we find it?

A new way is opening up,
But how do we grasp it?

A new way is opening up,
But who will reveal it?

A new way is opening up,
But will we conceal it?

It is time for the nations to embrace reconciliation.
It is time for the peoples to embrace new creation.

Love opens the door ahead of us.

Love has caused much of the shaking.

Not because love is violent – no, love is gentle.

But the outpouring of gentleness reveals and repeals mankind’s law of violence.

How do we find a gentle way in relation to the land?
To love it, grow out of it and work with it, rather than simply work it or exploit it.

How do we find a gentle way in relation to economics?
To live independent of unjust economic systems – by faith and in trust.

How do we find a gentle way in relation to community?
When most of us fear it – for it has not always been an unconditional embrace of our
uniqueness and vulnerability.

Many want to hold onto the old ways.
But they won’t cut it.

But many of us who want the new ways, the new things, and the new season,
do not know how to walk it, talk it or live it.

But if we walk, talk, live, create, sing, dance, listen, pray and play…
If we do these things… these slower and more gentle things,
anyway… even if we do not yet know what the new way is…
What the new ways are…

Then in our being and resting and waiting and living, and praying and playing and occasional
thinking…

A new way will open up.
Many new ways will open up.
And we will see, and others will see.
And people will know.
And many will think the thoughts of love – the new ways of love
that are being thought by the few…

And perhaps the many will, in time, embrace some, if not all, of the ways and thoughts of the ‘few’.

Gentleness will open a door and a new way will come.
The past will be left behind…

And a glorious, but gentle future will unfold.

We don’t know what the new looks like fully yet, but we will.

Love has come, love will come and love is coming to heal and renew.

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Forgiveness – used as a weapon?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

I recently read an article from Michele Perry on how forgiveness being branded as (e.g.) ‘if you do not forgive (and move on)’ can be and is weaponised in many / most Christian circles. A conversation starter for sure and something that makes us go much deeper than a quick fix mentality. I interviewed her (video below). The original article is at:

https://dmperry.com/2022/05/29/please-stop-weaponizing-forgiveness/

In the article there is a link to a ‘live’ confession of a pastor (bravo) but also an exposure of the lack of transparency, followed by the covering of the pastor and no support for the one who has lived with the abuse. Painful to watch but if able to is informative and very challenging.

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OK so a little bizarre

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

I like to walk when I pray, as I said to someone yesterday for me ‘prayer is a whole bodily function’… maybe does not quite communicate what I meant, but pace of walking depends on nature of the praying, and even hand movements kinda sync when I pray. (Perhaps when I get mature, that elusive second half of life – elusive for me – I might settle down, be able to meditate, pray properly etc…, but as I say just a little too elusive for me as my DOB on passport does not seem to signify expected maturity level. Ah well, I am happy.)

I was pryaing into a situation today that involves something that needs resolving, and (OK let me use the charismatic language of ‘God said to me’ even if clinical tests were to show that it is overactivity inside my head) God said to me:

Do not seek legal resolution but seek a redemptive solution.

Those kind of phrases are just too clever for them to be solely the activity of my head. Really helpful with regard to the situation, for legal resolution often means court finds in favour of xxx and by implication not in favour of the other party.

Redemptive solution might / might not align with a legal resolution, but essentially will bring about a win / win. Even if I ‘lose’, I win for the outcome is to align me with God’s favour.

And the cross… I don’t think was about legal resolution. The ‘law’ was and remains broken (like the Prodigal Father whose outrageous behaviour undermined the societal norm, the one set by the Mosaic law). But the solution is redemptive. Oh yes! The result of redemptive solutions is a move toward the perfection that will come, it results in ‘I am not who I was, even if I am not yet who I am going to be’.

Certainly helped me pray.

As I finished today I said something crazy to the Lord (OK you have never done this). I said in the light of new way of communication how do you sign off? Zero time gap, and with the question out there from a somewhat mindless head… ‘With a smiley face’. I like that!

In Oliva, where we are currently, we still have a tradition that has all-but finished in Spain of an announcement being made in each street when someone has died. Final words… ‘Rest in peace’. Still meditating on heroes who have passed away recently from within my world – Christine Noble and Gerald Coates – I thought of Simeon in Luke 2. Now I may depart in peace. Rest in peace is something we say not inappropriately, but how much stronger is ‘depart in peace’. Having fulfilled what I was about, and fulfilling will mean somethings were not fulfilled for there is always a percentage that seems to ‘die’ in order for there to be a resurrection… way to go.

A little bizarre, the sun was shining but no evidence of sun stroke, just a sweet way to walk.

Go find and pray for redemptive solutions, live in peace, depart (when that comes) in peace, and in the meantime read the notes I leave you – you will recognise them by the smiley face at the bottom.

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