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