What binds us together?

We used to sing in 70's Bind us together with love. But reading a reflection from Jason Gardner at LICC I'm forced to rethink things and reflect on stuff brought to focus. The loss of the Lord's Prayer from our worship services is probably a deep problem that has bugged me for a while. A whole generation in the non-liturgical churches are singing the latest worship songs and changing them frequently. So what binds them together. Singing? feelings? common experiences? declarations? What binds Christians across the earth together as citizens of heaven?

If we are disciples of the Lord of all of life, our Christian discipleship must be whole-life. That means that the question of what it means to be a good citizen day by day is a crucial one for us to reflect on theologically. ... Paul put it like this: 'Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ...' (Philippians 3:20). Our first and foremost loyalty is to a divine polity. And our Lord, in the prayer he taught us, has given us our own pledge:

This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matt 6:9-10

More listening, more loving

The Spirit of Jesus Listening in us

Listening in the spiritual life is much more than a psychological strategy to help others discover themselves. In the spiritual life the listener is not the ego, which would like to speak but is trained to restrain itself, but the Spirit of God within us. When we are baptised in the Spirit - that is, when we have received the Spirit of Jesus as the breath of God breathing within us - that Spirit creates in us a sacred space where the other can be received and listened to. The Spirit of Jesus prays in us and listens in us to all who come to us with their sufferings and pains. When we dare to fully trust in the power of God's Spirit listening in us, we will see true healing occur. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

Thursday night we were reading and studying James and talking about how we love those we don't get on with or don't feel like loving. One of the conclusions was, we don't love others with our own love but out of God's love. But how do we live out of God's love? Except by receiving that love and knowing that love on many different levels. We cannot love many people from out of the bottom of our heart from our own resources. But God expands that space to fill it up with his love, to create a space or place to receive others. Thus to love God with all of our being and our neighbour as ourself is very much about receiving God's love. In my own troubles of being busy, I have to ensure that I spend enough time receiving God's love in order to live out of that love.

something strange

I've stayed away from facebook and myspace and the social networking sites as I think I am already fragmented enough. See my earlier posting on Continuous Partial Attention here.

But I love google analytics because I'm tracking my 3 blogs and seeing where people are coming from (which country, town) using what browsers and operating systems, even from what networks! I can't tell who you are but I can see that people come back again and again to visit.

I write into open space, the great darkness of the internet. I've called it along with the phone "dark media" because you really can't see the others. Jacques Derrida, whose philosophy has influenced me, talks of communication like sending a postcard. You send it but you don't know whether it arrives. You don't know whether it even gets read and understood or not. A few people I know read what I write here, I don't know whether they understand or not. I suppose one day I'll open the comments section But my email accounts are already pretty busy and I want to spend more time away from the computer.

Anyhow I've found my blog listed on someone else's blogs of note. What's surprising I don't know who they are. There's traffic coming from their blog as well. Thanks Jade whoever you are, I hope there's meaning somewhere in here for you.

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Heb 13:2

Listen as activity

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. Henri Nouwen - Bread for the Journey

I love to sit back and listen, often without looking so I can hear even more intently. If only people would be willing to listen more and speak less. But there is also a deeper listening, which is active and not passive and that is a spiritual attentiveness. In spiritual direction it is called the contemplative stance, a listening to another with attentiveness to yourself and your relationship to the Spirit within you. Strangely this does not reduce being there for the other person but extends the community being available for the speaker.

In my English conversation classes I teach English as a Second Language learners the unwritten rules of English conversation. Firstly, native English speakers hate silence and they will fill it after only 4 seconds. Secondly, native speakers don't listen but are preparing to interrupt with what they want to say. Thirdly, native speakers also attempt to hijack a conversation and take it somewhere else by changing the subject. You only have to listen carefully to group talking or even to yourself to know the truth of these rules. Yet listening offers so much to others.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry James 1:19

Not so different

This week I rewatched the National Geographic TV program on The Gospel of Judas and it's weird presentation of Judas especially the accusation that the Gospel of John makes Judas evil personified. It's weird because I understand from this Sunday morning's message, suggested from Phillip Yancey's book, that many alternative interpreters see Judas as potentially like us, or perhaps even more so, we can easily be like Judas. We're not so different.

I am still mourning Margaret's passing. I have struggled with my identification with her death. And the more I reflect the more I realize that she and I are not that different. We were not so different. I have said it a number of times in recent past that without my experience of faith, I wouldn't be alive today.

Jacques Derrida late post-structuralist philosopher, created a word différance. It sounds the same as différence but points to a key issue. It plays on the different meanings of the French word différer which means both "to defer" and "to differ." Derrida liked to defy definitions and thus perhaps that is why I am also very much a Derridean. To defer means that meaning and hence understanding can never be accessible, rather what we have is an endless play in meaning with other words that also resist being pinned down. Thus the limitations of dictionaries is always to try and define a word in terms of other words that don't actually mean the same thing. In contrast to differ brings us to a distancing which forces either/or understanding and the intrinsic violence that forms a part of making meaning. A dictionary is in a sense an act of violence because it forces or imposes meaning. Strangely the poet always plays with words and meanings to create new allusions or even illusions of something else.

In the end, my own playfulness and deadly seriousness is that I/we - are/were - not so different. Whether Margaret or Judas. Perhaps only a deferment or perhaps a different choice in the either/or situation of life and death, pain and relief, agony and ecstasy which we call life.

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. ... I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. ... but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Ecclesiastes 2:12-14

Books, more books and even more things

RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman. - Matt Selman (The Simpson's writer/producer)

I came across a comparison of attitude towards books and book shelves and it compared Matt Selman's views at Time Magazine (above) and Ezra Klein's view at The American Prospect (below).

No, this is all wrong. Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be.

Surrounded by hundreds of books, Dvds and Cds which fill the bookshelves around all my walls in my apartment, I think it is even more significant what books, etc are on the floor next to my feet at this very moment. So here's an interesting list. They include Antonio Gramsci's Selection from Cultural Writings, Perly's 1992 street map, The Art of Theological Reflection by Killen and De Beer, The complete Mr Bean DVDs, Michael Swan's Practical English Usage, Christ and Culture by H Richard Niebuhr, Vol 36 of the Word Biblical commentary: John, also Transforming Bible Study by Bob Graham ... and more (including a Bible).

From the book rack I keep in my bed (Yes I do have some in the bed with me!) AA Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh, The Early Asimov Volume 2 (together with other scifi anthologies), Barron's Art Handbook Colored pencils, also Meeting People is fun:How to overcome shyness.

What's the question? Why do you have so many books?
I'm not sure I understand the question.