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Parables of Northern Seed

Reviewed by William Ruddle.

For six years, Thought for the Day was a way marker on my daily journey to work. If I reached a certain point while the broadcast was live, I knew I would get in on time. Thus it was not always greeted with unadulterated joy!

Yet it was also an unwelcome intruder for other reasons. Frequently, the daily host would break into my daily agenda and force me to think unwelcome, but often needed, deeper thoughts about the world and my part in it. As McIntosh comments in his introduction, parables are often like “armour-piercing missiles. It penetrates the outer crust of ego and explodes its meaning softly down through ever-deepening layers win the human heart.”

I expected this read to be another such barrage, but I was sadly disappointed. The fault lies not with the contents, but its construction and timing. This book has two central faults which I think dilutes the invaluable work of Thought for the Day.

First, all the entries come from the same theological stable as they are all written by the same very accomplished author. What makes TFTD so interesting is that no two days are same and each window on the world comes from a very different perspective to the previous day and the following day's contribution. By the time I was half way through the book, the entries had become somewhat predictable. Originally of course this anthology was broadcast over a decade and this predictability was not present in the original material. Still, collated as this, the work is less. It seems a work is more than the sum of its parts.

Second, and arguably more fundamental, is the fact that what makes TFTD so disarming is that it is always culturally contemporaneous and relevant. Comments on the death of Coretta King, Burma and the Great Recession all made sense in their day. However, collated together as an historical piece they have lost their immediacy, their impact. Dare I say it, but the old adage that today's news is tomorrow's chip wrappings is sadly true, even in this realm.

I am reminded, once again, that theology and theological reflection is always done in context and that, moved out of context, it loses something of it value. The individual works are still of value on occasion I suspect, but drawn together in this way I think it has an ever diminishing value with the passage of time.