New Baptist Kidd on the Blog

Several times in my journal over the last three months I have written something like this: “I would never have thought it possible – thirty seven years after first experiencing the overwhelming impact of Christian conversion on my life, that God should pass this way again, and with such intensity.”

But that must only be the start of it – if some further ‘being converted’ is to be of any real significance it must bear fruit in active discipleship, discipleship which makes a difference for others and not just for myself. And I need to find words with which to describe it – both to myself and to others - for one clear component of my Baptist identity is a strong sense of calling to testify to the hope that is in me – I am called to be a witness to whatever it is I have seen and touched and heard.

So, I keep searching for the words with which to tell it. And one of the best attempts so far to make an inroad into the process of telling has entailed the exploration of three metaphors. Let me try them again here.

The first originates with a phrase from Thomas Merton’s ‘Seeds of Contemplation’ – Merton has been and continues to be a major source of inspiration for me at this time. The phrase is this, “… the metaphorical apex of existence”. Merton compares it to a tiny hole, hidden deep in the heart of our humanity, a tiny tiny point of entry through which we must pass if we are to find our true selves, and God. The metaphor grabs me because I think I have had a little peek through the hole, and maybe even a short excursion into the region beyond – and I like what I find; it certainly fuels my desire for God. It is, as Merton expounds at great length and in many different ways, one possible fruit of contemplative prayer, and it is probably the only really significant path to fulfilment in human life.

The second metaphor originates in the book which takes the same phrase for its title, the second in the Phillip Pulman trilogy, ‘The Subtle Knife’. I have recently completed all three volumes. At times I found them frustrating, occasionally a little irritating – I suppose when I felt he was being critical of something I love, especially when I also felt that he had not really understood – but most often I found them very illuminating. The ‘subtle knife’, which is used by the boy, and the ‘alethiometer’, which is used by the girl, have something in common, which I find spiritually extraordinarily perceptive. To use either of them effectively, the knife to open windows (the tiny hole?) onto other worlds and the alethiometer to gain a hold on truths otherwise beyond the user’s reach, requires a very particular kind of skill – which I also recognise from my tenuous excursions into contemplative prayer. Using the knife as the primary illustration – when the boy, crucially one who is ‘called’ to be the knife-bearer, first receives instruction from its previous holder, he is instructed to focus his mind right down to its very tip, to the fine point at the end, where the work of opening will be done. But, at first, this proves in no way to be effective. So then he is told to relax, to try less hard, to ride as it were the very fine line between doing and not doing, between active achieving and passive receiving. Yes, it is his mind, focused to a sharpness which will open to windows, but also (simultaneously?) not his mind at all, for ultimately it can only be the work of the one who has called the bearer in the first place. Aha, you say, the fine balance between effort and grace – as in prayer, on the one hand a disciplined activity, on the other a work of God’s Spirit within us. Yes, I bring my mind to it, but my mind alone remains a blunt instrument; only caught up by grace does it become potent for the moving of mountains.

Third, I have long been fascinated by the metaphor of the dream. And I find myself recalling a sermon I once preached at Sion Baptist Church in Burnley – occasionally people still quote it back at me, so I guess it must have been one of the better ones. In the sermon I begin to tell a story, an attention-grabbing story, seemingly drawn from my own experience. Only after a while does it suddenly become apparent that the story is actually the record of a dream! In the reflection that follows, my point is that though the form and content of the narrative are now exposed to be dream – still the dream remains real, I really dreamt it, and the fact of dreaming it can never be taken away. Sometimes over the last weeks I have been unable to avoid the thought that I might be ‘dreaming up’ this fresh encounter with Christ, that I have in some way ‘made it all up’, and that I shall wake up to my old self and find that nothing whatsoever has changed. Well, I increasingly feel that this is much more than a dream, but this metaphor brings me comfort, for even if my experience turns out to have dream-like qualities, no one can take away from the reality that I dreamt it.

So, three metaphors, all I think pointing in a single direction. I am not claiming that they have the power of explanation, they simply provide a first inroad into giving account of the hope that is in me.