Illusion or reality

Thursday night, I continued to study the Lord's prayer in my basics study and we came across "lead us not into temptation". I asked What is temptation? Silence and then simple words like flesh and sin etc ... What is temptation? What does it look like? 20 minutes later we struggle to a realization of the power and pseudo-authority of temptation and issues of choice and God's will and what that means.

I think discernment is all about knowing where something comes from. What Walter Wink calls unmasking the powers. Temptation is a distraction which takes us away from where we belong, from who we truly are, from our purpose and meaning in life.

Jargon is a deep enemy of meaning because jargon or even more so platitudes drive us into meaningless conversation. It can take us from reality into illusion that everything is right or OK. I posted about Noam Chomsky's concision (here) earlier in relation to mission statements and to be honest I'm beginning to find that a lot of faith talk falls into to the trite and meaninglessness of illusions.

Even the Lord's prayer can become meaningless, jargon, platitudes unless we are willing to grasp at, to reach out, to a relationship. That relationship is not nebulous but concrete because it is personal in essence. That is why we now pray "Our Father" ... and ask "deliver us from the power of the evil one": Reaching for reality asking to be delivered/released from illusion.

Music, emotions, and thinking

Data from Startrek: The Next Generation. Could he truly play music? Music requires technical ability, emotional interpretation and therefore emotional content, and yet also cognitive engagement to understand the world of the composer and composer's intent.

I've become quite fan of Nodame Cantabile because of its authenticity towards music and display of a deeper understanding of the relationship between interpretation, technique and musicianship. But I've also realized more and more that imagination as inspiration is also required. Otherwise things become mechanical reproduction. Sometimes worship sadly ends up here, lacking the spirit part of inspiration!

As a romantic at heart, somehow I don't think the experiencing of life, love, music and spirituality can truly be separated. Whether the highs or the lows of life, I never want to stop feeling them.

Fragile is the common life

A glass cello and glass violin. I'm not sure about the decision to build musical instruments from such a fragile material. They are not just vulnerable to being knocked or dropped but they are vulnerable to the vibrations produced by the music for which they were made.

People operate out of their strengths and conceal their weaknesses. Yet the Christian life calls us to work out of our weaknesses that the strength and power of God be made visible. This is faith, not foolishness. Yet there is foolish faith when common sense wisdom, phronesis is denied, for example operating dangerous machinery and not using safety equipment when it is available, or deciding to walk across a highway. There is also foolish faith when not seeking expertise or advice when it is available, also seeking a breadth of opinion rather than finding something that merely agrees with what you want or think is right.

My Auntie Mary is being discharged at long last from hospital after 3 months. However when I went to visit on Saturday she had a list of phone numbers to call to setup her home support services. At first I was indignant and frustrated, how could they do this to her! Anyhow after some good counsel Sunday night, Monday morning I went and asked what was happening? I found out she'd been asked if she wanted to make the calls or whether they should do them for her. I had to tell them that an Asian, especially female senior, expects to be asked 3 times even when they desperately want help.

We hide our weaknesses and needs from each other and yet weakness is what real community should be about: the asking and giving and receiving in the context of strengths and weaknesses, in the context of having and not-having, in the context of needing and giving. This is the common life but the common life is fragile because people don't know how to hear others asking for help, they don't know how to see and respond because weakness should not be shown. BUT after a while if you do need help and nothing happens, you stop speaking if you realize no-one is listening! When your's and my lives are too busy, and self-obsessed then the life together disappears.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. Acts 4:32

Cultureshock and re-entry shock

These straits and island of the blood can be recognised as those very shores and lands we encounter in our earthly migrations. Places become buttons of feeling and colour. ... I know, for example, the coagulation of Victoria on Hong Kong Island and Victoria on Vancouver Island have become in my inheritance, planetary junctures of emotion. Both British Victorias, these new-world cities must have seemed to my ancestors two ends of the same rope. Fred Wah Diamond Grill

Fred Wah is mixed-blood Canadian poet who alludes to a lot of my Old and New World identity issues which are allied to cultureshock. Perhaps you can understand more the whole concept of this blog draws on this quotation. Only recently I've been asked about my understanding culture shock because I led a seminar on culture shock and reverse culture shock at International Christmas.

In that I was forced to revisit some of my original research for my thesis and re-examine how and what I was presenting. Strangely I realized I had hybridized 2 models which were remarkably similar and based everything on the Kubler-Ross model of 5 stages of grief. The stages are: Denial: The initial stage: This cannot be happening to me. Being Angry: "Why me? It's not fair." Bargaining: "If only this could happen then...." Depression: "I'm so unhappy, why bother going on?" Acceptance: "I can accept it even if I don't like it."

Peter Adler was my main theorist who had a similar five stage model to Kubler-Ross firstly, there is a tourist like interest, differences are intriguing. Perceptions are screened and selected. Then, disintegration where the individual becomes overwhelmed by the new culture's requirements or the state of affairs. Then, reintegration they can function, but tend to be angry or resentful towards the new culture. following on a stage of autonomy, where the individual is more confident of their ability to survive this all. Then finally independence where the person achieves biculturality. The problem I had with Adler prescribed the course or path yet Kubler-Ross only attempted to describe stages and not a procession of steps. Also Kubler-Ross also suggests it is never fully sorted out, while Adler sees it all as a finished product. But humans are far more complex than that. Culture shock loiters in the corners of our psyche and the stages do return but our ability to cope and ride the rollercoaster has increased. There is a similarity to conversion and spiritual transformation, learning to live in a different place with different values and beliefs.

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore each of you must put off ... Eph 4:22-25

Archaeology, Paleontology and other things

I stopped studying history when I was 14 as part of those accidents of educational systems and specialized learning. However I never lost my interest in ancient things, from fossils up to ancient civilizations. Sometime I'll post pictures of my oil lamp collection! or my trilobites! For now I'm interested in a collision of events. My TV died 2 weeks ago and during my recent sickness I been watching streaming TV documentaries here on the internet somehow I've managed to watch 3 on Scottish brochs from different series.

Brochs are only found in northern Scotland and on the Western coast. They represent large stone towers standing up to 13 metres high and 15 metres in diameter. What fascinates me they are Iron age possibly 2,500 years old and of drystone construction i.e. built without cement and mortar. Originally they were thought to be a response to Roman incursions into Scotland but are clearly much earlier than that. The people lived both in a central chamber and in rooms between the concentric circular inner and outer walls. Surprisingly even given the cold and wet weather, thermal design assessment has suggested they would have been quite comfortable given the natural air circulation with a central fire hearth.

The past is important and knowledge of the past and lessons learned are valuable. The trouble is our consumer culture has a tendency to devalue anything old or yesterday. Practical knowledge or old technology have no relevance.

Yet I live by my wits and knowledge of the past. When blackout hit the NorthEast of North America I was ready to use candles for lighting with mirrors to increase lighting and cook food on my little gas stove. Had it persisted I might have moved to oil-lamp technology, a spoon, cooking oil and string wick; and straw box cooking, boiling the food and placing it in an insulated sealed container.

Of course nothing like blackout or a natural disaster which removes all municipal services will ever happen? And of course there'll be relief services? What happened with Katrina? What happens when all the stuff doesn't operate?

When it comes to spirituality it is surprising how many are now realizing the dryness and inadequacy of a merely cognitive faith. The recovery of many of the ancient spiritual disciplines is encouraging as long as they remain the means and not the goal. To understand the goal we need to understand the past.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Phil 3:12

Gentrification - the ambivalence

Young professionals as well as empty nesters are flooding into our cities, buying up lofts and condos and dilapidated historic residences, opening avant-garde artist studios and gourmet eateries. If market forces alone are allowed to rule the day, the poor will be gradually, silently displaced, for the market has no conscience. But those who do understand God’s heart for the poor have a historic challenge to infuse the values of compassion and justice into the process. But it will require altogether new paradigms of ministry. Bob Lupton

Found through Common Grounds Online, this is a familiar message from those with left-wing political allegiances but from this comes from the Presbytarian Church of America's journal (here). It's written by Bob Lupton who moved into an unsafe downtown neighbourhood and within months of him buying and moving in, two more families moved. Within six months, a developer build three nice little townhouses – his crazy decision had sparked a movement called gentrification. Lupton out of conscience learned the business of real estate development in order to save the homes of his neighbours who were being evicted. These were very people he had decided to live among. Lupton writes further:-

The urban church that seeks to minister in disadvantaged areas faces the eventual disappearance of lower-income renters from their communities. Such urban ministries are approaching an inevitable T in the road. If they remain committed to the poor, they must decide to either follow the migration streams as they gravitate to the periphery of the city, or get involved in real estate to capture affordable property in their neighborhood to ensure that their low-income neighbors retain a permanent place. “Migrant ministries” move with the people, establish ministry centers in the affordable suburban apartments, remain flexible. “Community development ministries” on the other hand remain rooted in the parish, purchase housing and land, form partnerships with builders and developers that enable their members (neighbors) to remain in a reviving community that has a healthy mix of incomes. Either strategy is legitimate. Both require significant retooling.

I've been troubled by gentrification for sometime. Sometimes called revitalization often it is more a codification for cleaning up an area, driving out all the undesirable elements. My friend Steve and I have been talking about incarnational living as community based ministry for quite a time and yet that can precipitate gentrification. I wondered what to do with this ambivalence I've felt and Lupton's article allows me to accept that ambivalence.

With the acceptance of the inevitability of gentrification, he calls for "gentrification with justice". Diversity is a gift but means both economical and ethnic. Communities are not accidents but are intentional and so are diverse ones. The older residents are a richness of history about things and people. Economic viability is not an option extra. For the community to be healthy it must have sufficient neighbours with income levels to attract and sustain businesses. But Lupton's call for justice cries that the poor also be "embraced and included" in the benefits.

[For] God's Shalom must be worked at. The roles of peacemakers, communicators, gatherers, organizers, connectors are some of the most vital talents needed for the establishment of “peace and prosperity” and a prevailing sense of well-being that God desires for His creation. Shalom is not merely the absence of crime on the street, it is the prevailing presence of peace and goodness in the relationships of God’s diverse family. It is achieved only by intentional effort.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8