Wording a Radiance. Daniel W. Hardy

that process. It’s often taken as a statement of ontology, but it’s more than that if you go into it. It takes you further into the ‘I am’ and into the infinity of the light that emerges. For years, I’ve found that to be the most nourishing thing of all: that there’s no sudden halt to the direction you can go; there’s always more, and that is pretty unquestionably linked to the light. The simple resplendence of the light here paralleled my experiences in Palestine.

      It is amazing, the burning bush: it’s a primitive ‘symbol’ and yet it is not consumed. It means that the divine can indwell the world without damaging it or taking it over. The transfiguration is more complex, but what supervenes them all is this enormous light. If you think of creation as in some sense a breaking through of the light, there are real parallels with the transfiguration and with the end times, with the unifying, consistent theme being the light, with its gentle and yet strong attraction.

      How do healing and reconciliation happen? This light heals without overburdening; that’s not in its nature. Christians often want a strong right arm. They talk in the language of power, but that’s not what it’s about; it’s about a gentle infiltration from within, not coming at you from outside, like a ton of bricks.

      How does light happen within the world? It irradiates from within. It’s like seeing people ‘light up’ within; it’s a huge privilege, and we have to recognize and discern it in one another and to embrace and delight in it.

      That’s what working with postgraduates is about: gently edging forward the things that are being prompted in them. Things take on a new kind of tentativeness. It’s about letting them recognize and articulate for themselves what is happening and what it is that they’re a part of; that’s the wonder. That’s what Jesus did. He didn’t say, ‘Here I am: this is what to do . . .’ He didn’t come with the purpose of giving a standard or doctrine; he met with people, and the meeting has to show itself as deeply as possible, to reveal who he is for – and in relationship with – each person. Read the Gospels: suspend your judgement and let him come alive afresh. I’ve learnt a lot in the last month about how Jesus happens for people. I’ve moved from understanding Jesus as a given who presents himself to you – and you can either take him or leave him – to realizing that it’s much more about Jesus walking alongside people and interacting with them/us. It opens up a much bigger space with Jews and Muslims: walking with Jesus allows you to walk with other traditions. It provides a wonderful opening because you can imagine Jesus walking with others, too. It’s a triple hermeneutic as Jesus meets with Jews and Muslims too. Just imagine the Emmaus Road story as a story of Jesus coming and walking among his disciples: Christian, Jew and Muslim. Simply look at all the things that Jesus did: his ‘love statements’ opening out the light in things and people, just being there in the flesh with them.

      Coming Home (Back to my voice!)

      This is where my father ended his ‘narrative’ account of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

      He returned home full of the Spirit. Something so powerful and deep had happened that afterwards (every day) he could not rest until he had found ways to do justice to it and to articulate more of it. Now there was a sense of Jeremiah’s ‘within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot’27 – but with more of the praise and wonder of the Magnificat (‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’), too!

      He had a new conviction of his purpose and deepest vocation and identity, and he was swept up in articulating the profound glimpse of the light and glory of God he had had during the pilgrimage.28 There was a new sense of integration and ability to articulate, too.

      But he also returned with an unexplained and never-before sense of exhaustion: ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me: I’ve never felt so tired in my whole life. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older and I’ll pick up again when I get some rest . . .’ But he didn’t. When I asked him to describe what it felt like (on the way to the hospital), he said, ‘Usually my mind is reaching out for things – for ideas and information: all the time, but now it’s as if I can’t . . .’ And within days he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. A friend, who is a doctor, said to us: ‘Just pray it’s not a GBM.’29 But it was. All he needed was enough time, and from that moment he began to talk with Peter every day about the contents – ‘their part’ – of this book.

      Notes

1 ‘Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus . . . and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him’ (Luke 24.13ff.).

2 At the time of writing I do not have enough distance on his life and death to be able to call him anything but ‘my father’.

3 Cf. Arvo Pärt (one of his favourite composers): ‘I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener’ (On Alina: Spiegel im Spiegel, ECM New Series 1591, 449 958–2, ECM Records GmbH 1999).

4 Micheal O’Siadhail, Hail! Madam Jazz, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1992, p. 14.

5 K. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.I, Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1958.

6 ‘Truly my life is one long hearkening unto myself and unto others and unto God. And if I say hearken, it is really God who hearkens inside me. The most essential and deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential and deepest in the other. God to God’ (Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life and Letters and Papers from Westerbork, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995, p. 204).

      ‘When I pray, I hold a silly, naïve, or deadly serious dialogue with what is deepest inside me, which for sake of convenience I call God . . . I repose in myself. And that part of myself, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is what I call “God”’ (Hillesum, Interrupted Life, p. xv).

7 A deep infection of the bone – in his case, his left shin, following a soccer injury.

8 Doctorate of Divinity.

9 Jubilate: Theology in Praise, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1984. Now available under the title Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God, second edition, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005. Also published in the USA as Praising and Knowing God, Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1985.

10 Published 13 October 2007.

11 Ephesians 3.14ff.

12 ‘Scriptural reasoning or SR for short, refers to a way in which those of different faiths share their scriptures together, originally derived from a practice called “textual reasoning” among a group of Jewish scholars out of which Scriptural Reasoning has evolved. It’s a way in which Christians, Muslims and Jews share their scriptures together (texts from the Bible, the Qur’an and the Tanakh – often quite difficult and challenging texts).