Cold Fairyland

This is part of Cold Fairyland in Shanghai. (Myspace here)

I have a great interest in fusion music especially where it seeks for a true integration of style. I'm not a fan of the "12 girl band " perhaps because I don't see a real authenticity or true integrity of the music styles or traditions.

However Cold Fairyland who have captured my ears, bring lyrical beauty and authenticity for their music. Of course I'm biased cos I like cello integration and alternative. Their last cd Seeds on the Ground is very reflective. Listen to Dead Children in Newspaper at their myspace website I think you'll find something odd and strangely attractive.

How I wish this were the true nature of worship music for the church, something mysterious and serious, something closer to reality, an awesome God in the truest sense of the word.

The Temptation of St Anthony

I have discovered that Dali's painting and others were painted as part of a competition!

Max Ernst was in fact the $3,000 prizewinner in this "Temptation of St. Anthony" contest. The sponsors of the contest appear to have been a movie company and they persuaded 12 artists to paint what they thought St. Anthony saw. This winning picture was used in a movie, Bel Ami or The History of a Scoundrel and strangely had nothing to do with St. Anthony. Runners-up included Belgian Paul Delvaux; Ivan Le Lorraine Albright; and of course Salvador Dali.

There is a long history of paintings on this subject and the monsterbrains blog has excellent information and links. (here) I've always had an interest in St Anthony/Antony not just because he is my namesake but I suspect because of his asceticism. As an introvert, solitude is something I desire and yet it is the deepest battle requiring great exertion of will. They say the closer you get to God the more you are target for the Devil and temptations. Wikipedia has a nice summary of Athanasius' biography. (here)

catastrophes

It is true that Nietzsche, instead of driving me further into atheism, initiated me into the questions and doubts of premystical inspiration, which was to reach its glorious culmination in 1951 when I drew up my [Mystical] Manifesto . . . Nietzsche awoke in me the idea of God. Dali 1952

Dali as a surrealist developed his strange method of image portrayal by searching for images from beyond conscious human intellect: paranioac-criticism. This paranoid-critical method of painting was a deliberate detailed reproduction of subconscious images from dreams or spontaneous or self-induced delirium. I am strangely attracted to Dali's work ever since I saw some of his crucifx images and since visiting the Dali Universe exhibition in London. This picture is from a series entitled Catastrophes. For me these are a collision of ideas and Tolkien is very helpful.

... I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary 'truth' on the second plane (....) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.- The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, # 89 (7-8 November 1944).

The unnamed image is from Dali's series called Catastrophes. There is a certain sharpness and severity which is contained within a sense of being bracketed or put in parenthesis. When things go wrong for us and life is difficult perhaps to the point of almost unbearable what are we to do? Perhaps the secret is the act of putting things in parenthesis that catastrophe can become eucatastrophe. I can't date this image but at some point in time Dali's worldview changed and he found belief, faith, God (read more here). That doesn't mean Dali became a conformist or anything like that, but he was still pulling apart the world around him but with a greater sense of meaning. In his 1942 autobiography he is reported to have written :-

And what is heaven? Where is to be found? Heaven is to be found, neither above nor below, neither to the right nor to the left, heaven is to be found exactly in the centre of the bosom of the man who has faith! At this moment I do not yet have faith, and I fear I shall die without heaven.

By 1951 and the Mystical Manifesto Dali moved from artist depicting the existential angst of the absence of God to painter of signposts grabbing at the edges of perception and sensibility, the place where catastrophe and eucatastrophe meet: The place of Faith, Hope and Love

Sleeping alone

This last month I have been sharing bedrooms because of 1/people staying over at my place, 2/ national staff conference sharing a hotel room, and 3/ International Christmas sharing with four students in a bunk room.

It was this last Saturday night, actually 3 am Sunday morning I asked myself why I do this every year. I couldn't sleep because of snoring and other's noises. At 4 am I was wondering how I could get married so I only had to share with one other person whom I have got used to sleeping beside. I now have a huge envy for those who are married, they only have to share with one other.

I'm an introvert and being around others seems to cost me something, even when they're asleep. Being an organizer as well only accentuates the problem so little sounds become points of worry and due consideration whether action is needed or not. I'm introvert living in an extroverted or extrovert-normalized world, perhaps a quarter of the population. A book I'm reading to write a review, notes that introverts are among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups... and they are not just misunderstood by extroverts but also by themselves because they've accepted the outgoing lens of society as the correct one.

Of course the grass is greener on the other side of the hill, but a change would be good?

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali's The Temptation of St Anthony

Years ago I read The Life of Antony by Athanasius. A fascinating story of his struggles with himself and his desire to follow and be faithful to God. Antony/Anthony was the founder of Christian monasticism and asceticism

Dali reused a number of key themes from the history of art. The Temptation of St. Anthony is one used by some of the more fantasy-oriented Renaissance artists (e.g. Matthais Grunewald). In this version, the saint is walking through the desert when he is confronted with a number of temptations. The first a monstrous horse often a symbol of power or strength and them a number of elephants on stilt-like legs. There carry different temptations, including the golden cup of lust and perhaps symbols of greed. There are many Freudian interpretators out there but I find Athansius' biography more helpful. He was being tempted by "memories of his possessions, the guardianship of his sister, the bonds of kinship, love of money and of glory, the manifold pleasure of food, the relaxations of life , and finally, the rigor of virtue and how great the labor is that earns it...".

After two long conferences this month where my sleep patterns have been severely disrupted, I've just returned and slept 3.30pm Wednesday to 10.30 am Thursday. And last night I slept a further 10 hours. We all have our temptations to deal with and their desire to turn us from the path of virtue. They may not be the same but they come at us steadily and we struggle with each of them in turn.

Getting things in persepctive

Sometimes we need to get a health checkup, sometimes I just need to get things into perspective. Somehow we need good friends around us, sometimes I need someone I trust to challenge my thinking just to make sure I'm still on the straight and narrow.

Yesterday I had a long session reading over and helping a student working on a paper about cognitive-behavioural therapy and pain management. It's strange how much you can pick up. I realized during our session a certain amount of my teaching involves the cognitive aspects of the psychotherapy inducting the student into a different way of thinking or learning to think differently so editing becomes possible and also working with the behavioural reducing stress.

So many of my telephone calls to me are from people trying to get things into right perspective, and sometimes I have to challenge but most of the time its simply encouraging them to recognize what they already know. One aspect of cognitive therapy is an action plan, seeking confirm that actions will be taken to prevent, modify or change things. When it comes to faith and spirituality action is required but its not about action, rather active passivity. What do I mean by this? I think it is a active seeking after God, in being open to the activity of God rather than a self-centred crying out.

One of the articles I found in the paper we worked on this afternoon examined different pain management interventions and compared them. Somehow there was little difference between the different techniques and methodologies and even compared with the control group. But significantly there were wide variations between individuals in each group. It seems to suggest that methods are not important rather the individual themselves determined a receptivity to a method.

I suspect that for whether a church or an individual, spiritual growth is determinant on the attitude and willingness of the individual or church to grow rather than any specific methods. I recall the Hawthorne experiement in the early days of time and motion studies on production lines. They noticed that productivity inevitably dropped, but always went up when there was a change in patterns before dropping again. Do you want to change?

feeling trapped

I've been trying to catch up with my Google reader account and the feeds to which I subscribe.

There was an item from Deep Church a group that continues to fascinate me for their relevance to my own thinking. (you can read the whole post here)

What catches me is are how much of the list of what Deep Church is and to which I simply say amen ...

... in dealing with "our ‘pathological ecclesiologies’ is the western tendency to describe the church in idealist terms – creating a vast gulf of disappointment between the reality we experience and the ideal that we hold ... Deep Church calls us to be more concerned with phronesis (practical wisdom), than theoria (abstract theological reasoning). ... For too long descriptions of church have been idealized, blueprinted, separated out theory and practice, and as a result, we have been more confident in using sociological descriptions, rather than bible, church tradition or theology based ones. ... Deep church is about being missional and outward, whilst being confessional and communal. This pattern of gathering and dispersal, like blood being pumping in and out, is the heart beat of ecclesial life, rather than alternative models of collapsing church into competing activities of post church social justice, or self indulgent aesthetic worship spaces.

My trouble is, I look at Deep church and feel hope, and I look at the world around me and see more blueprint and solutions rather than "the possibility of the church and the christian faith built around the declaration of a God who is close and knowable, whilst mysterious and unfathomable." Go and read the posting... if you dare

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:31-32

What does growing up mean?

Errol sometime ago referred me to anime-style teenager Peanuts characters and these are an example.(see others here)

I have been a fan for many years collecting books and reading and even writing papers for courses in my academic studies about Peanuts. Here I ask How much have they changed in their teens?

Lucy the superbly self-confident and at the centre of her universe remains so. Linus always in the shadow of his big sister but maintains a mystical mysterious edge to him. Rerun the younger brother got lost in the mists of time. Charlie Brown, older brother to Sally remains the misfit and not so much at home in this world character, continues to wish the world were a better place and lives in the tensions of hope and reality. Hey am I describing facets of myself?

We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. Col 1:9-10

companionship

Today was a better day weatherwise. The sun shone and I felt a lot better so much that I rode my bike again. I had lunch in Chinatown, visited the rehab hospital, bought a metropass for January, then went on to tutor in English and do some conversation on campus.

The last few days have forced me to question Do I live for myself, for others, or for God? I've had to do some serious thinking. I think if I hadn't heard Carny's voice yesterday I would have simply got on the bike despite the bad weather, despite the close shave with the SUV coming home. We sometimes use the words Where is your heart? To avoid jargon I think this actually means What is the goal of your life? What is your purpose in life?

Charles Shultz creator of the Peanuts cartoon and comic strips had many good insights. In one strip Charlie Brown explained that he thought the purpose of life is to make others happy. But Lucy reacted by saying she didn't think she was making anyone happy, and more importantly no-one was making her happy, so someone wasn't doing their job.

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands. Ps 138:7-8

right attitude, right position

Notice the two different playing positions of these cellists from the Nodame Cantabile orchestra. Sat on the front edge and sat right back in the chair.

Yesterday in conversation with a student I realized that having a sense of justice and injustice is important. Examining a situation where one person in an organization was having trouble with her manager. Colleagues became involved because they saw it as a way of dealing with all their frustrations with management. The problem was the staff saw it as revenge against management rather than seeking justice against the injustice of the manager and staff member. When revenge happens this staff member becomes victim twice, of the manager and of the staff.

What does good management look like? In our Thursday night studies we've been looking at the two facets of God, love and justice. I think good management contains both. Years ago I had the honor to mentor the manager of a senior daycare unit. She was having problems with her staff and we started talking. We dealt with justice which was making her staff aware of the criteria she assessed their performance on and teaching them to assess themselves. We dealt with love treating them equally but not the same. She treated them as individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, she gave them opportunity to train and become more effective, she taught them to work together and support each others weaknesses. A year after her unit moved she told me that she finally had to let a staff member go, but it was the easiest it could be because he knew why he had to go and knew he had been cared for.

Attitude is so important, are people things to be used and abused or are they gifts to us, a grace for a time. Justice and love have meaning only when they have transcendental value and only when they are embodied in relationship. In life we can sit backwards or lean forwards!

juggling too many things

This time of year is crazy for everyone. But the problem is some people are just plain dangerous. Somehow the Christmas stresses have blurred people's ability to see properly.

Last night biking home around 5 pm I decided to take a back street route as the drivers on the main road were crazy! But they weren't any better. On this one way street I got in the correct position for a left turn but an SUV driver overtook me and cut right across the front of me. I still have no idea why I wasn't hit! I have a feeling my guardian angel was extra vigilant. The strangest thing was my heart wasn't beating fast and the adrenaline wasn't flowing. What ever happened to Peace on Earth? There is something very wrong.

Today I was fully prepared to ride downtown and got as far as the front door with my bike bag, when I heard my young friend Carny say be careful. Except I was going downtown to meet and have lunch with her, but that is what she has said almost every Monday evening after English class. Today the snow was falling, and we were due perhaps for freezing rain and later rain. Still Carny's words had exceptional meaning for me and I went back in, packed a backpack and walked to the subway station.

The angel of the LORD asked him, "Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me. Num 22:32

The Scream

I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting -
suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. Munch

Here is a copy of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" - sometimes called "The Cry". If I were looking for an evocative image to portray raw angst of life
this is it ...

This reminds me so much of the other side of Jean Paul Sartre's nausea for whom the idea of other people was hell and for Munch raw existence without connection is also hell. It's interesting that this painting is part of a greater series of painting he did, The Frieze of Life, a series of paintings he produced in the 1890s. The Frieze symbolically examines the journey from love and passion, to jealousy and melancholy, to anxiety and death.

Just examine his biography. Munch's life was full of anxiety. When he was 5 years old, his mother died of TB and his favorite sister Sophie died nine years later. Then he was 25, his father died and yet more happened. After his father's death, his sister, Laura, went mad and was committed to an asylum. I find for myself a link to Nietzsche's death of God and through Munch's being influenced by a nihilist philosopher, Hans Jaeger.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness ... Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder....My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.

Munch I think was part of the expressionist period of art history where the artist does not reproduce reality like a photograph but is recording the raw emotional impact on his own consciousness.

I suspect that Munch found this fear necessary to be creative. What sort of fear might be creative or even essential to the human person?

For me I am influenced by Paul Brand's ideas about both the negativity and positiveness of pain. This has been real for me across my life and I met him many years ago in my godmother's home. Few people would count pain as a blessing His publishers assert "But his fifty-year career working with leprosy patients in India and the U.S. convinced Dr. Paul Brand that pain is one of God's great gifts to us. As an indicator that tells us something is wrong, pain has a value that becomes clearest in its absence. Those who feel no pain reap terrible consequences."

I suspect fear is what drives us both positively and negatively. The beginning of Wisdom is fear of the Lord says the Bible. Fear and despair can drive us to seek meaning and purpose in life. Without this we become dead inside.

I prefer strangling and death, rather than this body of mine. I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning. "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, ... Job 7:15-17

On the road two - the return

I have returned home after a week away and suffering very deep tiredness. I have always found it difficult to sleep with strangers in the same room especially when there is snoring to deal with. This conference probably bit the deepest in a long while.

After my earlier posting a colleague commented on the very dark circles under my eyes and expressed worry. So much that I got worried myself. I still find the concept of sleep and rest difficult. and letting go is is a serious issue that I carry.

Strange because this is what I find I teach to many of my mentorees. You are not the saviour of the world! God is! Funny that we teach the lessons that we ourselves must learn or perhaps as a good musician friend once said to me. The best teachers of a musical instrument are those who struggle because they have to think about what they are doing while excellent performers often find it difficult to explain what is going on. Perhaps this is God's little joke with me...

I attend a conference on reaching the ipod generation and end up using it to block out the snoring so I can sleep!

On the road one

Sleep and rest are an important aspect of life, but snoring and extraneous sounds prevent me from sleeping. Somehow in these circumstances I've only been able to sleep when I really tired. So it's 1.40am Tuesday morning I'm wide awake after trying to sleep for an hour and a half but just getting annoyed in the hotel room.

Sabbath is something I've also done some important thinking about and yet have failed to significantly integrate into my life, both weekly and over the year. Yet I have never considered myself a workaholic.

I supposed we all carry our burdens on out our backs and eventually we hardly notice we're carrying them. Assumptions, values, worldviews are intrinsic to human existence otherwise how do we make sense of the world. I think this is all still linked into the view that we are what we do. I can assert that is a false view because my value is who I am before God within that relationship and yet at core that value is still firmly entrenched. Can I love without doing? I think so but the problem is a worldview. Charles Reich has a three stage theory of the development of American consciousness.

Consciousness is not a set of opinions, information, or values, but a total configuration in any given individual, which makes up his whole perception of reality, his whole worldview.

In his three stages the first is the consciousness of the immigrant, pioneer or small entrepreneur who founded America in the 19th century. The second is the consciousness of the corporate state where the individual is sacrificed to efficiency. Here I remember Charles Chaplin's silent movie Modern Times which portrays the alienation found not merely in Marx's class struggle but culture's consciousness itself imposed on the individual. For Reich I think the third stage is salvific for the recovery of self, this is a form of transcendence, of personal liberation. However this is not a ontological transcendence rather a domesticated earth-bound hedonistic humanism.

... listen to music, dance, seek out nature, laugh, be happy, be beautiful, help others whenever you can, work for them as best you can, take them in, the old and bitter as well as the young, live fully in each moment, love and cherish each other, love and cherish yourselves, stay together.

BUT ontological transcendence carries two directions
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbour as yourself. Luke 10:27

jealousy and envy and corruption

All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton

Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. It's claimed he plays guitar, piano, synthesizer, bass guitar, drums, cello, and violin. He joined Roy Wood and Bev Bevan in forming a band which went on to become ELO. Roy Wood, better known as a multi instrumentalist left, leaving Jeff Lynne the solo creative force for ELO. This picture leads me to doubt the cello playing.

My experiences of life suggest that no christian leader however mature is immune from the deadly sin of pride. (me included) However where one person accuses another rather than corrects then accusations normally reveal the heart of the accuser more than the accused. Furthermore Lord Acton also stated that:-

The man who prefers his country [read empire or self-madeness] before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.

Whether the leadership is ascribed or assumed there are radical problems when success and empires are build. I have found pride inevitably leads to jealousy and envy because a sort of territorialism appears and the childish behaviour or claiming things as "Mine!" returns. I have discovered another portion of Lord Acton's original quotation.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In another situation and another version he wrote in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

I think I would prefer to not be a great man, rather a quiet insignificant person in the world's eyes.

God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands. He will bring down your high fortified walls and lay them low; he will bring them down to the ground, to the very dust. Is 25:11-12

listen, resonate, don't appropriate

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?

Joan Jeanrenaud and her Ice Cello, a mixture of art installation and musical performance enhanced by the dripping of the ice provides us with a very fragile and vulnerable image of voice.

In my course we were given a reading from Jung Young Lee's Marginality a book I read 10 years ago. This drove me back to my Master's thesis and the importance of listening without an appropriating ear. Many people claim to speak from the margins but Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has asked whether true marginal people can ever speak because in being heard i.e. having a voice they either become part of the dominant centre or they are appropriated. Some of the worst compassion I have ever heard has been I know how you feel because (this...) and (that...) happened to me. No-one can ever know how another feels. The supposed listener has hijacked the pain of the other. They have neglected the fragility of others.

Over the years I have learned to talk less and listen more. Gabriel Marcel, a Christian existential philosopher, introduce to me the notion that to be truly present to another person is to be available to them. That I think is a challenge to any relationship and perhaps at the core of what any spirituality should be about.

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' ... 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Matt 22:37, 39

collective nouns

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind John Donne

The Kobe International Cello Festival was an incredible gathering of cellist 500 or 1,000 cellists!

What do you call a large group of cellists? No, not an orchestra but according to wikipedia they are a parenthesis of cellists. Can we believe them given the claim of rigged and biased information and even fake authorities posting articles? A flock of geese and a herd of cows and even a pod of whales but a parenthesis of cellists?

This year the trees have resisted giving up their leaves until the rain and snow fall of this last week. But now there are carpets of leaves under the trees. What can I believe and what do I believe? We need a collective to believe, we need relationship to truly believe, to have faith.

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves...

This quote comes from Meditation XVII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by the metaphysical poet John Donne. This meditation focuses on the collective or communal aspect of church in which the interconnection between each person and each part is important.

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Romans 12:4-5

Running out of time

Why do I feel like I running out of time? the clock is ticking and I feel so left behind... Moulann

I love an old song called Stressed Out by Moulann (myspace) (listen to the song), whose music my friend Matt played to me quite a few years ago. I have two opposite behaviour patterns when I'm all stressed out. One is to become super organized and prepare things way in advance i.e. I confront and control the objects causing stress. The other is total avoidance until the deadlines create desperation, i.e. I become a victim of the stress. I've reached a point at the moment where I'm in avoidance which if you know me is very rare. But I have a number of people I'm worried about including my Auntie Mary, plus I have a horrible schedule until after Christmas. I need a number of miracles.

The problem as I know is placing my trust correctly and releasing the worries. I've scarcely played my cello in a while and am not giving enough time to praying. Praying is a real tension about trusting God will deliver and my own responsibility of human action of doing something to bring things about.

Our Study in Romans last night just brought all that home to a reality. Why am I blogging so much about this? Perhaps I've got to get playing/praying...

See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Romans 9:33

Waiting patiently

When we have the Lord to look forward to we can already experience him in the waiting. Henri Nouwen

I am amazed sometimes how ideas collide from different places. This last week I've been talking and listening and have come to conclusion the younger you are the more the challenge to learn patience in a relationship with God. Sometimes its worrying about what we are going to do with or for God and yet more we want to get on with it. We are impatient with ourselves because we seem not to be getting any better. The run up to Christmas, called Advent is a season of patience for Israel needed a lot of patience for her Messiah and for us awaiting the second coming and also in the frenetic tensions of the season. Today being Black Friday the beginning of the shopping season! My reading today from Henri Nouwen was on patience.

If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the discipline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts gradually lose their spiritual sensitivity.

Without waiting for the second coming of Christ, we will stagnate quickly and become tempted to indulge in whatever gives us a moment of pleasure.

Let us live decently, as in the light of day; with no orgies or drunkenness, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled. Romans 13:13-14

enough faith

To pray means to be willing to be naive, [not to have everything right or sussed out nor pure without self motives]. Emilie Griffin

This trio is a Gibson harp guitar, a Gibson mandolin and a cello (origin unknown). I can't really imagine the sound or what sort of music they played.

In prayer I don't know what makes for sufficient faith in some circumstances. Sometimes I make bold claims in prayer for God's action and other times I am penitent and not even sure what to ask for. We've been praying for unemployed individuals to find and jobs and I heard 7 found work. We've been praying for 30 students from my campus to attend International Christmas - I don't know whether this is bravado or a faith statement. I spent an hour talking together with a student a couple of weeks ago about thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What can I pray for and is there something I shouldn't pray for?

I read Richard Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home in April 2003. I noticed this quotation ...

To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken ove by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. The movement inward comes first because without interior transformation the movement into God's glory would overwhlem us and the movement out into ministry would destroy us.

Prayer is more about being changed by the presence of God and less about asking for things. Prayer isn't about a quantity or quality of faith but a relationship always deepening, openness and willingness for change and transformation.

But to this day the Lord has not given you minds that understand nor eyes that see, nor ears that hear! Deut 29:4

A shadow, not yet

Two days of limited activity and the flu and I've already dropped 5 pounds. One of the advantages of Western good living means I have all this excess weight to live off when I get sick. But then again when you're sleeping a lot during the day as well as the night you don't eat that much. But my helping students still goes on.

A phone call tonight brought the need to understand conflict and conflict resolution. There are four types of conflict pseudo, content, value and ego. I'd never heard of these initially so a frantic search on the internet to understand what the question was. Pseudo conflict isn't really conflict at all, merely behaviour which irritates. While content conflict is frequently a disagreement over a fact which awaits confirmation. When we get to value conflicts we reach situations of difficult resolution because the opposing people have different values. Finally we reach ego conflict where conflict reaches its most personal though it still involves value conflict. It reaches a point where they cannot “agree to disagree!"

I suppose my conflict with the virus in my body has reached the ego stage, we cannot agree to disagree. I think I'm winning at the moment.

Sickness and Tiredness

I'm borderline today... My body is complaining and my mind is just tired with a slight headache. I think I have flu but I'm not sure. I got up once for 15 minutes, then 30 minutes and now I hope for an hour or two and then
I'll go back to bed. Strange my legs ache but not the rest of my body.

All the best plans for today have disappeared and I've got nothing done. But at least it was the weekend. I'm sort of frustrated and yet I can't really be because it takes too much energy.

Read the Primary Text

In Academia it is frowned upon when you work from secondary texts and not the original. When you reads another's writing about the first piece you get an interpretation and sometimes I wonder where it came from. This video, which I made in 2004, is about our dominant culture's secondary text about Christmas. What is Christmas all about?

Into Great Silence

Past and present are human categories, but for God there is no past, only present. - from Into Great Silence

How does any one sit through a 162 minute movie where nothing happens and there seems to be no noticeable story line?

Deep in the French Alps, you can find the Grande Chartreuse monastery which is considered to be one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, Philip Gröning, the director and cameraman and sound recordist, wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to film them. It took 16 years for them to agree to him coming and filming. I fidgeted for about 20 minutes and tried to put the pieces together to make sense of the images and wondered why I was there. Then I began to notice the rhythm of life for this silent community as the faces and actions repeated and recurred and the seasons flowed one into another.

I have been reading Rudolph Otto's classic book The Idea of the Holy. Translated from the German an alternative title could be the notion of the sacred. Otto's phrase mysterium tremendum combines the notions of mystery with being filled with awesomeness. Otto parallels this with the word sublime from the world of aesthetics. The ineffable is another word close in meaning but in a sense I think the word transcendence holds more of the meanings that Otto is reaching for. This film is an induction into the world of the transcendent or the great mysterium tremendum.

Why is the title of the movie Into Great Silence? Silence is important or better the lack of noise is significant. The Carthusians are Trappists who are renown for their vows of silence but however the film has no musical score, no voiceover commentaries and a lack of spoken words for long minutes. What we see is elemental, just time, space, and light. It's a total immersion into the silence of the monastic life. Half way through I found an interesting urge of jealousy within me, they were being fed and had the chance to read and study and think without interruption. Not surprising for me when I thought about it! The film focuses on three characters a black novice-in-training, an elderly jack-of-all-trades who works around the monastery, and a blind monk who patiently sits and prays awaiting death and a different silence with greater intimacy with God.

Two striking moments leave memories for me. They were both on the days they are allowed to take a walk and talk with each other; one was a group of monks enjoying sledging down a hill and the other was a discussion whether they should keep a communal hand towel or not.

I was tempted to leave early because of the first perception of lack of action. But again I'm glad I stayed for this encounter with transcendence on many different levels. The notes for this showing in the series The Love of God suggest that "the call is not necessarily to religious life; but it is always to a spiritual life. That spiritual life reveals what love is, no matter what state of life one finds oneself in, or where one finds oneself in one’s spiritual journey."

Courage, take what life throws at you

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

I think this quote comes from Dale Carnegie What does this really mean? make good things from bad? The conversations of this last week have really challenged me. How do we face adversity?

The real issue is what do we do when things are difficult. When others destroy the trust relationships we thought had with them, where confidences were betrayed and gossip spread. I know we cannot live without hope, but I'm beginning to wonder if people can live without trust? I'm wondering whether whatever happens in a relationship we have to hold to fidelity even when we cannot trust the other. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them is another saying origin unknown. But for trust to come again it involves going back into the risky places. Something I don't like but somehow we all have to do it eventually.

The issue is when the rubber hits the road. We can theorize all we like but it is in the dirty circumstances of real life, living in an imperfect world with imperfect people, that we grow. We can still be faithful with people we don't trust.

what I've been listening to

A lot of people interpret what they think God says. But the only time God actually speaks for himself is in the books of the prophets. That's what kind of interests me. I'm interested in the idea of separating God from religion. Sinéad O Connor

I've been listening to Sinéad O Connor's Theology. yes, both her CD and her thoughts. It's an unlikely name for a rock/folk double CD which resist categories by issuing 2 CDs with identical track listings but presenting very opposite styles for the same songs. The skin-head Irish rocker who is infamously remembered for tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on TV is in interesting territory. The songs are one woman's search for the meaning in life and strangely she is looking at the God of Israel. You might not like her theology, her politics, her lifestyle nor her cropped hair — but you cannot deny that it is a good place to start by searching for the heart of God by searching the pages of the Old Testament. I find 33 based on Psalm 33 offers interesting insights in a darker rock version form the London sessions and a warmer folk version from the Dublin sessions.

Sing oh you righteous to the lord
It's right that the upright should acclaim him
Sing to Jah with your guitar
Turn up yer bass amp
Whack it up all the way to 'save him'

By the word of Jah heaven was made
By the breath of his mouth all its hosts
He gathers up the oceans like a mound
And stores the deep
Stores the deep in vaults

Sing him a new song
Sing sweet with shouts of joy
For the word of Jah is right
And he sees what is right
And he loves what is right
And the earth is full of his care

Jah spoke and it was
He commanded and it endured
He frustrates the plans of nations
And brings to nothing
The designs of people

This CD set is not sweet syrup nor pure rebelliousness. But interestingly it is honest and frankly something filled with risk and therefore worth listening to. (Check out her myspace page)

Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone. Ps 33:22

small is beautiful

Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful EF Schumacher

Just look at the cute 1/4 size cello and proud mother video taping her small son at his cello lesson. Actually Small is Beautiful is the title of a book by E F Schumacher which I read over 20 years ago and deeply affected many values for me.

[N]o system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that 'what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.' ... "Systems are never more nor less than incarnations of man's most basic attitudes. . . . The modern private enterprise system ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and envy as its motive power, but manages to overcome the most blatant deficiencies of laissez-faire by means of Keynesian economic management, a bit of redistributive taxation, and the 'countervailing power' of the trade unions.

Can you believe this was written in 1973 and that very little has changed? Schumacher was a well known and respected economist but his philosophy was based on sufficiency, appreciating both human needs and limitations, and the appropriate use of technology. His desire was a humanising of human systems. They should be dignified and meaningful first, and efficient second.

Richard Foster has written about the spiritual discipline of simplicity which speaks to the same issues. His language is strong and still reaches similarly only the few.

...our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things.We really must understand that the Lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality.We crave things we neither need nor enjoy.We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.This psychosis permeates even our mythology. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who purposefully becomes poor. Covetousness we call ambition. Hoarding we call prudence. Greed we call industry.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, ...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matt 6:19-21

anamnesis as re-enactment

I enjoyed this Remembrance Day as good message and a reminder what memory really is about. As I cycled across the city I kept coming across acts of remembrance - a company of soldiers on parade blocking traffic on a main street; Roads closed off; Four howitzers and accompanying soldiers ready to fire a salute - including an officer handing out earplugs to the crowd; Planes gathering in the sky for a fly past.

But this is not quite the same as a Christian act of remembering. We have to re-enact the event thus communion is a re-enactment of the Last Supper, a reliving of the event that opened the Passion of Jesus and encapsulates it in one act. I am indebted to Robert Webber's numerous writings of the importance of this whole idea. Anastasios, Archbishop of Tirana, Durres and All Albania has asserted the importance of remembrance, anamnesis.

...the fundamental anamnesis which defines our Christian identity: [is] the remembrance of the amazing intervention of God in the life of humanity. The remembrance, in faith and dedication, of the economy of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit determines our self-consciousness. It is from this that all other things begin and draw their meaning.

As I listened to my friend Euge speaking, my thoughts wandered to Augustine and the section at the back of his Confessions in Book 10. Augustine asks to know God as well as God knows him but he cannot know himself fully, and therefore he cannot know God fully so he asks how he can even know God. The cosmos testifies to its creator, but the cosmos is not God. Animals have senses but they cannot moved beyond the physical. For Augustine here is memory's role. How can you move beyond memory to knowledge of God? If you forget something, you search for an image in your memory. People desire to be happy, but how do people know of happiness? True happiness is only found with God. Humans confuse earthly happiness for the happiness found in God; they in this confusion become miserable, for God is not a sense perception, an emotion, or even the mind itself, yet God's goodness remains in memory.

For Augustine knowledge of self brings knowledge of God. Introspection and self-absorption are not real knowledge of the self. The kind of self-knowledge that Augustine wants is a realistic understanding of the inner workings of the human person recognising that God initiates and they should return to the initiator. Knowledge of God is knowledge of the activity of God and in particular only within the mechanism of memory, returning to the beginning and the end, alpha and omega.

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel... 2 Tim 2:8

begin playing

Not many years ago I began to play the cello. John Caldwell Holt

This is an odd way to phrase things because we think we start to learn. Holt went on to explain.

Most people would say that what I am doing is ‘learning to play the cello’. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exist two very different processes:- (1) learning to play the cello, and (2) playing the cello. ... They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on learning to play until I have learned to play and then I will begin to play. Of course this is nonsense. We learn something by doing it. There is no other way.

John Caldwell Holt was an innovative educator who challenged the idea of a compulsory or a coerced education process. Holt believed that children did not need to be forced to learn if given the freedom to follow their own interests and a rich assortment of resources, children would learn. Formerly a teacher he eventually quit because schools were in his view intrinsically flawed. Thus his line of thinking became known as unschooling and he became a proponent of home schooling. I think we already know that we learn best by doing but Holt looked at the environment, motivation and reasons that bring learning.

When I examine the language and I say that I am playing there is a certain confidence and feeling of accomplishment. I wonder if playing can be seen relationally that playing is an expression of the essential relationship between player and instrument. Learning to play is far more an abstraction moving oneself from the instrument. perhaps I can frame this in terms of Martin Buber's relationships. I am playing the cello is a declaration of intent for an I-Thou relationship however this realistically does not have a significance unless seen against the I-Eternal Thou which in this situation is music itself. But we have a tendency to reduce things to I-it relationships and learning to play is this. (See my earlier posts 1 & 2)

In fact as I think of it I see parallels with Jurgen Habermas' categories of learning. He presents technical learning, process/practical learning, and emancipatory learning. When it comes to the cello, there is a basic technical knowledge that is required however the objective is to transition to process/practical learning as quickly as possible i.e. move from I-it to I-Thou relationships with the instrument. But emancipatory learning requires an I-Eternal Thou relationship. Thus in cello playing, there is learning to play, playing the cello, and making music.

All I have to do is change the "l" to an "r" and spirituality and prayer and my thoughts begin to cascade into a new shape.

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers... Eph 6:18

Heresy and doctrine?

When I hear an evangelical talking about “building God’s kingdom,” my theological sensibilities go into scramble mode. “That way lies pelagianism!,” I want to scream. Yet among evangelicals you will frequently hear this kind of talk.

I've added a few new blogs to my Google Reader account and I came across this opening line to a post on one of them. (read it here)

Learning to listen to ourselves is really important. My mother used to record her piano students and play back the performance to help them listen more carefully. One student, this week, in our study group asked How can I make God recognise me? That was a problem for the prophets of Baal. We were gentler than Elijah. Fortunately he listened to himself and realised the foolishness of the question because we can never make God do anything. But do we pay attention to what we say? Do we hear this talk of doing this and that for God, building the kingdom, this speak of humans assuming what is properly the work or rule of God? Is there a point when what we said excludes us from the greater community of faith i.e. heresy? I think so, though ignorance is bliss for some.

The blog argument developed: -

If the kingdom is the dynamic reign of God, how can we as humans “build” it? Actually, it should come as a relief to realize that you and I aren’t in the business of building God’s kingdom. ... But even the most impressive involvement of Christians in, say, racial reconciliation or ministry to the poor or restoring broken families, let alone evangelistic proclamation, does not amount to “building the kingdom” or, come to think of it, “changing the world.” These are signs or anticipations of the kingdom’s power and presence and future culmination, but provisional signs...

I believe there are core non-negotiables within the community of the church universal. These are what defines the community and perhaps the points when some leave or find they have to leave. I'm not suggesting a second Spanish Inquisition nor witchhunt but the need for good theology both taught and used. Am I being too conservative? I don't think so because there are certain confessional values that make a Christian a universal Christian i.e. united with all others both geographically and historically.

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Eph 4:4-6

chance, coincidence, or wonder

Sometimes unexpected things happen. Tonight we were going to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony except there were so many people attending that it was impossible to get into the hall. A student and I went downstairs to sit and chat in the refectory and there was a Chinese pipa player and guitarist setting up for a live performance. My young friend and I chatted for a while and I was saying that many years ago I had seen a group with an attractive and exciting pipa player. Then in the group's warm up I heard them play a very familiar fusion piece mixing Chinese and more Latin influenced. It was her 8-10 years later! I didn't recognise her but the arrangement instantly.

Silk Road Music was formed by virtuoso pipa player Qiu Xia He, who came to Canada as part of a touring ensemble. (info here) Her music and the fusion aspect is exciting and makes me wonder why Christian worship is so influenced by American monoculture when we live in a multicultural setting. What we need is more creativity and willingness to experiment, to break out of a conservatism in favour of a playfulness. Of course this assumes theoretical musical competency and technical ability.

faithfulness and brokenness

I came across a Japanese blog which led me to the story of the repair of a cello (see it here). It is as scarred as my own if not even more. Look at the amount of new white wood being added to the underside of the top.

It's strange how things cascade in my life and as I deal, with the brokenness of the human body in the hospital, with the brokenness of the human mind and spirit, with those who have crossed my path in life this last few weeks, somehow my own struggles pale into insignificance before those of others.

Another theme in my recent thoughts is the virtue of fidelity, faithfulness. This word carries ideas of loyalty, commitment, and authenticity. I believe that being faithful is an essential attribute of God. God is faithful. Here is the nexus point for me. Without fidelity in relationship, as loyalty, commitment and authenticity the brokenness of human lives and the created order cannot be resolved. Whether on the transcendent scale in the redemption of humanity and creation itself, or the human to human relationships, without fidelity there is no hope and no reason to aspire. Humans will consistently fail in being faithful but grace allows us to return and return to God and each other and reach for faithfulness, to bring even a tiny bit of love in our leaky lives to each other.

If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself. 2 Timothy 2:13

what would I recommend?

I got an urgent request for books that I would recommend for my colleagues at a forthcoming staff conference. A title is something but I have found for myself that a book is significant for its quantity and quality of quotable material, i.e. how much makes it into my journals. So here's my speedy top three with a quotation.

Gordon T Smith, Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation,

The [saving] work of Christ make conversion possible; even more, the actual focus and dynamic of conversion is that an individual comes to faith in Christ Jesus. Conversion is the act of believing in Jesus, choosing to follow Jesus and being united with Jesus as Lord and Savior. To be converted is to become a Christian. And the purpose of conversion is that we may ultimately be transformed into the image of Christ Jesus … In fact, conversion is the fruit of an encounter with the risen Christ himself, as witnessed to and experienced within a Christian community. Conversion is not the result of an encounter with truth or principles or spiritual laws; rather, it comes from meeting Jesus.

Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life

...But what unites persons like C.S. Lewis and Sadhu Sundar Singh ... is their common evangelical conversion. Each has a personal encounter with the transcendent Christ ...It is an experience of "interior longing" triggered by some ordinary experience, yet the "object" of the desire is not found in those experiences... The experience of Lewis and Sundar Singh exemplifies a pattern of spirituality in which the transcendent and historical dimensions of the Christian faith are brought together without watering down either one or the other.

Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian & the Risk of Commitment

Certainly these are the goals of the church, realized here and there, now and then. The parallel reality, however, is at the same time the church is an institution which operates, consciously or not, like other human institutions... The primary goal of all institutions and subcultures is self-preservation. Preserving the faith is central to God's plan for human history; preserving particular religious institutions is not. Do not expect those who run the institutions to be sensitive to the difference. God needs no particular person, church, denomination, creed, or organization to accomplish His purpose. He will make use of those, in all their diversity, who are
ready to be used, but will leave to themselves those who labor for their own ends.

sharing with no great claim

Visiting my Auntie Mary remains a rollercoaster ride of emotions. She has a good day and others days she seems so weak and frail. Saturday she could scarcely drink and it took well over 1.5 hours to get some milk, some water, some chocolate pudding into her. Learning to encourage rather than to push or pull someone is important. Also because of her infection isolation, visitors need to gown and glove Yesterday the carton of milk took only 5 minutes but still no solids.

Last night I got a real encouragement in an email and it touched me.

God has been speaking to me in various ways about how he provides for us. One such moment came this past Saturday when the three of us were visiting Mary. As I watched you feed her, John 19:25-27 came to mind (Jesus providing a mother for John and a son for Mary). I was touched by that scene (despite itchy nose and shoulder pain from carrying bag on shoulder) :). I shared my thoughts with P and he thought it worthwhile my sharing it with you. I hope my sharing will be an encouragement for you as well.

Yes words can hurt and injure and never be taken back. And words can build up, edify and encourage. Thank God for encouragement

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Jam 3:9

noticing the background

This is actress Fukada Aki who plays a music student in Nodame Cantabile のだめカンタービレ her character's name is Inoue Yuki. Strangely I have watched the series many times and it seems that her name is never used. She is a secondary character and while I saw her in many scenes it is only recently I realized she was a cellist when the orchestra was playing.

Noticing is a strange thing in human experience. Somehow when we see the familiar we don't see and it is because it is familiar we don't see. They say familiarity breeds contempt. Learning to notice things is an essential part of spiritual maturity. It seems to me that often God's activities are so subtle that we don't notice him at work. May we never become familiar rather be amazed and filled in wonder, when we notice God at work.

After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ... Elijah heard it... 1Kings 19:12-13

Ducks and life

What does it mean to be in the world and not of the world?

The last week or so I seemed to be a doing a lot of talking around how much we are part of the world and yet not conformed by the world. Materialism and consumerism are real problem and issues. I wrestled for a long time whether or not to buy an ipod and eventually had done but it took me almost 2 months to justify it as a decision even after a good friend gave me enough for half the cost.

There are a lot of pressures on us and sometimes they become almost overwhelming. Sometimes we confuse loving others as being totally available and open to them, but this is not true. Our boundaries remain an important element to us being in the world but not of the world. Like we can never solve another's problems, we can neither taken their burden's in life from them. We can stand and sit and walk with them, we can prop them up and encourage them, we can bring the love of God to them but not remove the load.

The metaphor of a duck is very important to me in life, but recently it has been transformed. A duck is waterproof and it does not swim in the water. Look carefully it is so waterproof that it floats on top of the water. When it rains the duck knows it is raining but it doesn't get wet. It is touched by what is going on around it but it does not absorb the water. So also in life
- in our emotional lives, our spiritual lives, and our values and goals in life. And here is the beauty of it all, that God works within us.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Rom 12:2

it's raining

The movie tonight in the series The love of God was Monsoon Wedding. I wasn't sure why I went to see it tonight, given my emotional exhaustion of the last week and I was tired, but I was glad I stayed to the end.

This is a Punjabi wedding where Aditi, the bride, is on the eve of her arranged marriage to local but now living in America. The family relations are comedic and complex as befits any Asian family. Strangely this was presented in the context of the Ignatian Spiritual exercises' meditation on the temptation of Jesus. However I found it a fascinating study on the complexities of love. What is love? What is false or even warped love? Aditi's pursuit of her former lover still at this last moment threatens her new life. So many aspects are woven into a fascinating carpet which manages to stay aloft and not come apart. More aspects are whether love possible in an arranged marriage where the two have not met before? The love of a father for his children both adopted and birth are explored in the context of greater family obligations. The sensitive vulnerability of rejected and reconciled love is explored between, Alice the maid and P.K. Dubey, the stern wedding planner.

I will not spoil the movie for you. Rather I've been doing thinking about mistakes in life following recent conversations. I remember reading many years ago that there are no mistakes in life, only lessons. In more recent years I have learnt that God can use all our experiences, nothing is wasted. More recently in discernment if all the options or choices are sincerely made in the intention of honouring God then there needs to be no fear in the decision making process because God will not abandon us. Perhaps then this movie is about choices but rather than good or bad decisions, more about what affects consequences.

Furthermore reading discussions and reviews I realise this film presents alternative realities , rather than reflects the norm, to a South Asian setting, revealing the cost of love when it is wrongly rooted and the hope of love in honesty and a desire to follow the right path.

Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.' Matt 4:10

existential questions

What are the fundamental questions of life? If you are a fan of The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, then the answer is 42. The problem is really not What is the answer to life? But what are the fundamental questions of life. And particularly those of existence. But we ought not to confuse God with meaning nor questions. They are only sign posts. But what are those questions?

In my studies over the years these have been Who am I? in my individual identity and communal identity? Why am I here? Where is here? What's wrong with here? What's the remedy?

Today I've been in the hospital as power of attorney for a patient, my Auntie Mary. We got to talk to 4 doctors from 3 departments on separate occasions about resuscitation if something goes wrong with the 2 procedures they were suggesting! I had to face with Auntie Mary What is the meaning of life? What gives meaning to life? What makes life worth living? and continuing to live?

Then I had my weekly conversation with my Phd student and among other topics we discussed about What makes a Christian living their life with God different from someone equally religious from another faith tradition? Is it possible to have a conversation with God? Yet another conversation a few hours later What gives us a reason for living our lives? What makes our existence, work or lives valuable or worthwhile? Where is God in the bad stuff of life? Why am I here? What am I meant to do? Then in the listening/discernment group even later What makes the authentic spiritual life? How can I, or is it even possible to pass this on to another? What does it mean to follow God?

I always think of my good friend Ann, a survivor of anorexia. She used to say Life sucks! with an implied addition And I'm still alive! I agree with her and think that's the meaning of life!

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He [or she] will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:9-10