clearness, clarity, and correcting cluttered thinking

Space or spaciousness seems to be a key part of spirituality. The European gothic cathedrals changed the worldview of those worshipping inside. Earlier the architecture was constrained by the limitations of building techniques simply they could not build upwards and outwards without incredibly thick walls and lots of pillars. But the development of the buttress and flying buttress brought height, width, and light. Windows as vast surfaces of glass through which light filled this space opened things up. At the same time it is claimed that humans in their literature became more self -aware and self-reflective.

In the post-rock era of music, I am noticing a significant parallel. Recently I came across Natural Snow Buildings, a french duo who produce huge ambient landscapes using large audio palettes of sound. Their The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, an earlier work, reveals much of their origins but their recent release The Centauri Agent is more electronic and processed. The interesting thing is they are not commercial. Their recent issue is free for download through their label Vulpiano Records. Much of their previous work has been through incredibly small releases. It is clear they are not trying to make money. They are not flooding the world with cd's and bits of plastic.

In that collision of ideas I'm currently reading The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, which is a detailed taking apart of our worldview of the need to acquire more and more stuff. She says "I'm not against stuff", "I'm not romanticizing poverty", "I'm not bashing the United States." But everything is connected in fact interconnected and the current global problems are linked to stuff. In this respect we need to understand our stuff i.e. how we got our stuff and where it came from, in terms of extraction, production, distribution consumption, and disposal. She paraphrases Einstein, saying "problems cannot be solved within the same paradigm in which they were created."

Last night in our Bible study we discussed what made you famous for more than 15 minutes. One person in my group said by changing the way people think. I think there's a little more than that, by changing the way people think by correcting cluttered thinking the world can be changed. We have at least to suspend thinking from within our current worldview.

Recycle and simplicity

I was reading an article on Lifehacker and one respondent claimed

A cd/dvd is considered a class 7 recyclable plastic. To manufacture a pound of plastic (30 CDs per pound), it requires 300 cubic feet of natural gas, 2 cups of crude oil and 24 gallons of water. It is estimated that AOL alone has distributed more than 2 billion CDs. That is the natural gas equivalent of heating 200,000 homes for 1 year. It is estimated that it will take over 1 million years for a CD to completely decompose in a landfill.

I'm so glad I no longer back my data up onto CD and DVD roms. But the issues remain about the nature of our garbage. The clutter I've been hanging onto is crazy, but perhaps the music industry's hanging onto CD's and the movie industries to DVD's is worse. I'm currently reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden. A very interesting book written in the first half of 19th century. It's a fascinating read not just because Thoreau is a Transcendentalist - a pre-industrialization proto- ecologist but because he challenges unbridled acquisition. In order to research and write, he built a little house by Walden Pond and farmed a few acres and claimed that "I found that ... it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one." He grew his own food and built his own shelter and sold a little excess to cover his costs. He lived at Walden for 2 years 2 months and 2 days. The fascinating thing is I've been reading this on an iPod touch which has been gifted me by grace as a pass-me-on. It isn't, for me, a hand-me-down because it has raised me up. What if I had bought a book?

It occurs to me that it might possible to live your life more simply where technology is used especially where distribution is digital and virtual. Thoreau seems to be for me at the moment a 19th century hippie, jailed for refusing to pay his taxes in protest over the Mexican War. There is no doubt of his intellectual ability and insightfulness. (A graduate of Harvard.) I'm interested in where these thoughts go in the collision of ideas between Thoreau's and the distribution of digital media through the internet as possibly a lighter carbon footprint .

How does this relate to spirituality and faith? I believe we tend to simply accept cultural trends and marketing. We buy into an unbridled consumption model. if we do this it is extremely difficult not to end up with cluttered lives, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We need enough space to think and to think critically. I'm about to read yet another book about decluttering. I am amazed not that I reading another one but that I can find yet another one. This one published 2008!

getting back to it

Well yesterday I felt drawn to the Reference Library on my way home. Don't know why but I went in. I thought to see if The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was available anyhow instead I picked up this book and read it between 11.45pm and 1.30am. Strangely challenging and relevant for where my life is at the moment.

Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back by Brooks Palmer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What is this book doing on my ology shelf at Goodreads? Brooks Palmer, a professional clutter buster, is not an organizer. The issues are internal not external, more psychological, sociological, cultural etc. Most of it is not about organizing what you have accumulated rather getting rid of stuff both internally and externally.

People's homes are a map of their mind. The mind is a storehouse of memories and opinions and beliefs. ... Problems ensue. Things pile up unused. ... home had become a stagnant pool. ... When you toss things and readjust your living space, you readjust your state of mind

We need to clear our minds and our homes to find space and freedom. We need to find release from the stuff, which invariably has feelings attached to them and realize that this clutter locks us into the past. Believing that these feelings are in fact scarce we need to realize that through letting go we can have freedom to experience the abundance and riches of feelings in the present.

View all my reviews

A stressed week

The last few days have been stressful. My Auntie Mary wasn't home when she should have been but we weren't sure that she was out. When all the agencies (four of them) who are involved in her daily care call, I end up being the co-ordinator. I was trying to decide whether we needed the police or not. Thank God for helpful phone operators who referred me to a supervisor who was inspired to call the person giving her a ride to a doctor's appointment. Why a doctor's office doesn't have a human being to answer phones I have no idea. Anyway the panic was aleviated after 2 hours.

The same day my doctor emails me and tells me I have an adrenal incidentaloma. Actually I didn't see those words. All I saw in the email was a growth on my adrenal gland and a discussion whether in was benign or malignant. Well currently it is 6mm and therefore tiny and it needs to be monitored to see if it grows or not. There isn't a panic at the moment rather this is quite common and it will be a matter of wait and see. But I'm going to see the doctor next week.

This week I had my dental hgienist appointment. Mostly everything was OK except the problem molar was 9mm pocket. Actually 4 or 5 is normally bad! She took X-rays and was going to talk to the dentist. Well the same day as the other stuff she phones and advised me that the dentist was suggesting extraction! It's the last molar on the bottom right side, so I was worried. Nothing would left to chew on. Well we're going to wait and see if I can improve my hygiene and that it begins to heal! A real call for prayer because the expectation is that it will not.

Also this week is Iris' english exam results. She needed an average score of 6 and I got the call to say she got a 7. Our relief is unbelievable because all the other stuff of the week is pushed aside and we now know we can have a future together. With only 2 weeks of preparation I feel God's hand is with us.

feeling lighter and spacious

The last few days I've found new energy and my internal space you might say my psyche feels lighter and more spacious. It's the product I believe in God's intervention in my life, physical health in the medical and dental treatments, mental and emotional in the counseling, in the spiritual with my director, and the external spatial in beginning to clear up and get rid of stuff.

Today I had to help Auntie Mary, in her frailty. Finally I and her Veteran Affairs Canada counselor met with her together and got her to agree to accept help. But it's not that the help isn't there for her. I've talked at length with her, the VAC counselor, the community care counselor, and even there's the Neighbourhood Link social worker in the background. Today I started opening her mail and sorting her financial documents out. In that moment I realized I had the energy to face my own problems of organization. I am being changed through the experience of helping, serving, and realizing I don't want to be this cluttered and unable to cope. I found uncashed expired cheques and unpaid bills etc. After three and a half hours I cleared one chair and one third of the table. There's a long way to go but we've begun the journey.

Paradox or absurdity

It seems much more healthy to me to accept that two pieces of contradicting information can both some how be true. It removes that default state of distrust, and displaces it with acknowledgement, respect and insight. Frank Chimero On Paradoxes

I've been thinking about a conversation I had on Sunday about how sometimes the world seems random and the choices we make significant and yet we confess God is sovereign and rules over everything. The necessity of paradox to generate mystery other wise things become explainable and the divine reduced to level of human understanding. Religion and of course theology are at the end of the day human constructs and therefore flawed and limited with a certain provisionality. Thus my ideas are always locked in time and subject to change either breakdown like entropy in science or changing and evolving and maturing. Hence the theme of this blog.

I've been reading the Minimal mac which sent me the way of Frank Chimero's blog and an entry called On Paradoxes. He made me think about the relationship between paradox and absurdity.

Often times paradox and absurdity are mistaken for one another. I think there’s a subtle, but important difference. Absurdity is paradox’s immature little brother. Absurdity is spineless. ...Two incongruent things are placed side-by-side. The supposed value is amusement from the randomness. Absurdity often seems a pale imitation of paradox. The Simpsons is paradox. Family Guy is absurdity. ... Paradox has insight, absurdity lacks it. Paradoxes have meaning.

One of the problems of the Enlightenment i.e. Modernist thought, which gave way to facts being scientific and rational, is to reduce the mysterious to the explainable. Sadly religion and theology sometimes ends up here or at least reduces everything to the level of absurdity. Surely paradox opens our minds to mystery and subsequently to wonder. For is not the beginning of wisdom fear of the Lord?

Gifts and choices

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices. Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos speaking at this year's Princeton graduation told the story of a car journey with his grandparents and what happened when he said something smart but not sensitive about his grandmother's smoking. Pulled aside by his grandfather he was give a simple wisdom. "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."

Bezos gave up a good job in a financial firm to found Amazon and he admitted ... "it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all."

I'm challenged by what Bezos says and by the strange connections he makes. He doesn't major on the kindness as a choice but the deeper key of choices. Being kind for him is not a gift but a choice, perhaps because being kind involves choices about the things you have and have been given. For a good part of my life I have been taking the path of least resistance or at least desiring that. Now I find perhaps rather than going with the flow I need to step out even more in faith, having the courage of my convictions. Bezos claims "We are the choices we make." I'm beginning to think he is right. My choice to leave the civil service quit a secure job, my choice to leave the UK, my choice leave friends and family behind has made me who I am here and now.

I'm living through a time in my life where I'm forced not to go with the flow but to make clear and deliberate decisions about my attitudes and values, about my health and lifestyle, about the very core of who I am, my identity. These choices will shape who I am in the future, for better or worse. I am not what I have, nor what I do but the choices I make. Perhaps to love perhaps the care or to be kind.

Intimacy involves distance

Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other ... To keep the right balance ... requires hard work ... A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance ... Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, in other words being away increases love. Perhaps it would be absence helps love grow stronger. The metaphor of the dance is also good for our relationship with God, but God is not absent rather gives us space to grow, to practice good decision making and exercise good judgment and learn. We need doubt and free will to grow and we need the space to exercise both and the courage to step out into that space.

Seeing and asking and smelling

I was talking to my neighbour because last Sunday I watched many women coming out of the local Orthodox church with a branch or handful of a green plant. I discovered that this is a tradition that comes from the time of Constantine, a Roman emperor who embraced the Christian faith giving it official status in the Empire. His mother Helen is reputed to have found the remains of the cross. St Helen took part of the wood and nails with her to Constantinople where Constantine gave orders to build at Jerusalem the Church of the Resurrection.

The temple was constructed in about ten years. St Helen did not survive until the dedication of the temple, she died in the year 327. The church was consecrated on September 13, 335. On the following day, September 14, the festal celebration of the Exaltation of the Venerable and Life-Creating Cross was established. The basil grew where the Holy Cross was found. Tradition tells that the aroma of the basil attracted Saint Helena and she ordered the workmen to dig there. Incidentally basil (βασιλικός) in Greek means kingly, royal. I feel honoured that my neighbour gave me a sprig of basil from her porch. The smell of basil took a new twist in meaning for me and so did my relationship with my neighbour.

Supposedly basil helps to promote higher states of awareness and open the heart and mind. It has an extraordinary antispasmodic action that makes it useful in the treatment of muscular cramps, all respiratory tract infection, asthma, and bronchitis. The oil possesses antiviral, anti-infectious and antibacterial properties and is uplifting and stimulating and helps chase away the blues. Perhaps I should start growing it?

Health and Dust

Day 9 of my back trouble saga. My back is getting better with no sharp pains but a ban against riding the bike and lifting heavy weights. Both I had to do for the the BBQ on Saturday, (don't tell my chiropractor). We had far more people than we first expected or planned for and had to sort out extra food. But on the day, donations made the food even greater than we needed.

I still have the dull ache in my legs but the vertigo seems less again. Somehow adversity and troubles has brought something good. With the clear up, yesterday I could have a small birthday dinner at my place which is the first in two years! It felt so good having people around the table eating.

Strangely last night, a little almond nut turned up on the floor of the kitchen. It was almost a repetition of Totoro again. This whole episode in my life can only be described as an experience of the sacred or holy. New freedom and deepening relationships as each little event contributes to the next. For example, last night Iris and Naomi were delayed for dinner, so Dickie decided to lift and remove the old stair carpet. A dust trap and also liability as it is quite frayed etc. Today as I write and reflect I am increasingly aware that perhaps my ill-health over the last few years is also related to bad air quality and dust! Of course physical, emotional and spiritual health are interlinked and this journey is headed in a good direction.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Roman 8:28

Effects,prayer, wishes

You wonder whether you have an effect. Whether anything you say has an effect. Two weeks ago I filled in one of those surveys having bought something from Shoppers Drug Mart. I noted that I couldn’t find my favourite toasted coconut marshmallows snacks and I also said something about looking for special sale items.

Guess what last week there they were on sale, a rack full of them by the cash desks. Did my comment have an effect? Difficult to say. Lin Yutang, a Chinese philosopher who studied and published in the US has a number of books I read the most well known being the Importance of Living. In it is a chapter called if my memory is correct "Why I am not a Christian." Although from a strongly Christian family the death of his mother had a depe effect on him. While an aunt prayed that it would not rain at the funeral for his mother and it didn't, he could not believe that a God would be interested enought to do such a thing.

Yet Edwrad Lorenz, a weather modeller and father of chaos theory, formulated that complex systems behaviour can be modelled with very simple equations and minor variations can produce wildly varying results. Philip Merilees later concocted Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? I wonder if we can say that an individual's prayer can be paralleled here. Perhaps it is less a matter of ciritical mass and more about timing and being part of the same connected system?

Feeling settled

You have riches and freedom here [in the West], but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love? Lech Walesa (leader of Poland's anti-communist movement in the 1980s)

Feeling comfortable can lead easily to complacency. Summer is the season of fresh fruit and exotic tasty fruits. I transition from dried to fresh but there are some that are large and tasteless. These have been forced, picked early and ripened en route. Our lives are often tasteless and full of stuff without meaning or shape. It was Augustine who said in his autobiography that he was restless until he found his rest in God. Perhaps we need to maintain a pilgrim-on-a-journey stance right through our lives.

In Allport's work, a psychologist of religion, the idea of an intrinsic and extrinsic faith was developed. The latter is a faith grounded in practices attending church, Bible studies etc. The former, rooted in internal values and motivation. Followers have developed a further category of quest where seemingly this dimension is a contributor to significant maturity. We get stuck and often in the extrinsic place. We sound and look right but there is no interior transformation.

This last weekend I was speaking at a church conference about the dangers of our current image culture it's shallowness and meaninglessness. We are so focussed on being noticed and recognized and looking right. This has been a shift from our idol culture which placed money, sex, and power as gods to be worshiped. I wondered if we need to think of ourselves as icons either as windows to God or representations of God. if we are are open and willing we can truly be God's artworks.

RIP Auntie Olive

After ten and a half weeks in hospital with a slow slow decline, my Auntie Olive has passed away. She looked after me as a small child and told me that she'd toilet trained me and used to also remind me that I ran around her home banging my spoon saying 'Da da da da'. (That was a long time ago!) Also Auntie Olive's family housed my mother with before getting married and she introduced my future godmother. She was an incredibly patient and gentle woman.

It is in loss we only really find what we value. Mentoring and having good role models is something frequently missing in our world. I will not forget Auntie Olive for the model of care she provided for me.

Earth hour

I think my concerns for environmental impact seem to continue to deepen. Checking out a celloguy called Cello Joe, who also is a bicycle-touring cellist and also “the wildest beatboxing cellist in the west,” I came across this seemingly impossible idea, a band on tour on bikes. Electric instruments and a 1,000 watt PA. Also given they use the type of bike I have also been dreaming about the SUV xtracycle or free radical. In fact there's a whole world I didn't know about here.



So what will you do on Saturday March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm for Earth Hour. Don't just switch stuff off - That's good. How about having a party or celebration or service without being attached to the power grid? Prove it to yourself and others that for a moment the world can be different. Let's get something going? sign up here.

Hope

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours. Noam Chomsky

I am always conscious of hypocrisy and issues about saying stuff and not living it out myself: Trying to avoid the legalism of telling others how they should live and not doing it myself. However I am also aware of those doings things, assuming roles for which they lack either experience, knowledge, proficiency and most importance humility. Our problem is frequently that we think we can make the world a better place. We think we can solve the problem. The core problem is we place our hope within ourselves not recognizing our own weaknesses. One of the aphorisms in spirituality is 'knowledge of self is knowledge of God.'

Our trust in structures, institutions, programs and methods, and even each other constantly leads us into disappointment and even distrust. Perhaps it's not your experience, but I make no promises that I know I cannot keep and have the energy to carry through. I also make no promises for God - God will solve all your problems. Yes I believe he can but the promise say he will. There is a jump here, we need to be cautious when we claim to speak for God.

Reading Marva Dawn's book Joy in Our Weakness which is a study in Revelations I found her pointing to a moment where there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. (Rev 8:1)
I'd never noticed this before. "Silence is an important element of praise, thanksgiving, awe, fear, reverence, dread, repentance, anticipation, and prayer. In our busy lives, silence can deepen our intimacy with God." From this intimacy can come renewed and deepening hope. Our world is too noisy and too full of meaningless words. From silence and solitude can come the still small voice of reassurance and hope.

The freedom we should have is to choose a life with God, a spiritual life peppered or flavoured with hope. I baulk at saying 'filled with hope' because we can't actually achieve that in this life. We need hope that things might or will be better than they were, to move forwards. Of course this choice is not what Chomsky is referring to, but we have to move from being victim of the world, to the freedom of taking responsibility for each other. Loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Gaza and a prayer

If there has ever been a time for prayer, this is that time.

If there has ever been a place forsaken, Gaza is that place.

Lord, who is the creator of all children, hear our prayer this accursed day. God, whom we call Blessed, turn your face to these, the children of Gaza, that they may know your blessings, and your shelter, that they may know light and warmth, where there is now only blackness and smoke, and a cold which cuts and clenches the skin.

Almighty who makes exceptions, which we call miracles, make an exception of the children of Gaza. Shield them from us and from their own. Spare them. Heal them. Let them stand in safety. Deliver them from hunger and horror and fury and grief. Deliver them from us, and from their own.

Restore to them their stolen childhoods, their birthright, which is a taste of heaven. ...
Bradley Burston, Haaretz Newspaper

From Taize I learned about this prayer from a newspaper in Israel. Read the rest here.

Zimbabwe, a human tragedy

In a country with the terrible distinction of having the second highest proportion of orphans in the world — one in four children has lost one or both parents — the closing of schools and hospitals is hitting these most vulnerable children mercilessly. Celia W. Dugger New York Times

A few weeks on and cholera continues to spread and more human suffering. Cholera victims are expected to pass 60,000 and travel to neighbouring countries. Sadly the Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu called the cholera outbreak as a "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British". Meaningless words casting blame and no action.

Inflation officially hit 231 million percent in July, soldiers rioted because their wages were useless. Teachers have abandoned their jobs to find food. Hospitals are closed for lack of supplies etc. There isn't enough clean water to treat sick patients. Zimbabwe is being described as turning into a "failed state". "The situation is truly grim. One man and his cronies - Robert Mugabe - are holding this country hostage," Mr McGee US Ambasador.

What is a failed state? Well some criteria are as follows.

• a state whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory,
• legitimate authority to make collective decisions has been eroded,
• reasonable public services can not be provided,
• widespread corruption and criminality,
• refugees and involuntary movement of populations,
• sharp economic decline,
• failed interaction with other states.

The Fund For Peace's Failed States Index is very interesting for 2008. Zimbabwe is third behind Somalia and Sudan. The Uk is 160th, USA 161st and Canada 167th.

It is interesting that much of repentance and Faith involves the admission of weakness, failure and need for strength and resource beyond self. This is the realm of faith. looking into transcendence. Here religious leaders say pray that Mugabe step down, Mbeki former South African Prime Minister asks to a power sharing and in the waiting more die. Is there any point when a nations sovereignty can be violated because that state has failed in it's care of its citizens. I don't know but how can I avoid meaningless words. Perhaps people like Bonhoeffer had a better idea?

The elders

The signing of the 15 September agreement raised hopes in Zimbabwe and around the world, but the failure to implement it in good faith and create a workable power sharing government is leading to despair and accelerating the crisis. Regardless of the challenges in implementing the agreement, all parties should now make the welfare of the people their first priority and put an end to the unnecessary suffering of millions. Jimmy Carter - Elders in South Africa

The Elders, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former United States President Jimmy Carter and international advocate for women's and children's rights Dr Graça Machel have completed their assessment even though denied entrance to Zimbabwe itself. My own struggles pale into nothingness when I read and follow the reports.

We knew when we planned this trip that the situation in Zimbabwe was serious. What we have learned in the past few days is shocking. It is not just the extent of Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis, but the speed of deterioration in the past few weeks that is most worrying. The scale, depth and urgency of the situation are underreported. Kofi Annan

It seems to me that if things could take a turn for the worse they have. The basic infrastructure is now collapsing so sanitation and safe water are no longer available and cholera is looming as an epidemic. Perspective is such an important thing for me. A global vision is essential to put often our petty little worries into an appropriate scale. Our backyard should be the world. We don't need anymore more proof that people's greed and hunger for position and power is always bad. I still wonder what happened to government as servant of the people.

There are those who are the elder statemen and women who have in their latter years maintained honour and service such a Annan and Carter and those who just want to hang onto their own little territory like Robert Mugabe.

Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? Job 21:7

sometimes you wonder

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

Our world, our environment , where we live and what we eat affect us. A recent US study found autism rates were higher among children who experienced higher rainfall in their first three years of life. This research is based on child health and weather records from three US states, California, Oregon and Washington State, but British autism experts are quite condemning of the conclusions. This seems a strange correlation to put it mildly. Does this mean that everyone in the UK has a very high risk of autism? or people from the rain forests are more likely to be autistic? Perhaps its less about rain and more about West Coast life and environmental quality!

A more interesting piece of correlation research suggests that though there are significant differences in health related to income and social deprivation, when you live near a park, woodland or other open green spaces the differences are reduced. Sometimes you wonder what really makes sense and what doesn't. Rain and clouds make you emotionally depressed however autism is not an emotional condition. But an authentic association might be that green spaces have far reaching effects environmentally and emotionally.

I do believe increasingly that studying has its limitations and studying indoors at a desk or table has a deep implication. Philosophers and theologians have spoken of God's "two books." Bonaventura called them the liber naturae and the liber scripturae. Later Francis Bacon called them "the book of God's Words" and "the book of God's Works." The primary lesson of the book of nature is to convince us that God exists. God's second book, the Bible, then gets the picture of God into a greater sense of focus. However both are about thinking with the mind, lived lives and a sense of peace rooted in trust and divine relationship. A healthy way of living is to look at both, to experience both, and know that God created both.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:3-4

Please check your translation

"We must shift America from a needs - to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs." Adam Curtis quoting a US banker

Welsh is a difficult language in a country dominated by English however it is important to make sure your translation actually says what you think it says. Some local government officials in Wales wanted this notice translated as all signs have to be bilingual so sent an email request to the translation department and got this reply. "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." They assumed that that what they got was No Entry .. etc. No-one checked.

In many situations we just don't check the translation. Whether it is spirituality, faith, studying the Biblical text, or what is our fundamental understanding of what exactly is the church and its purpose.

I having watched and thought about Adam Curtis' documentary series The Century of the Self has made this challenge even more focuses my thinking. Business and Politics use public relations to read and fulfill our desires to make products or speeches as attractive as possible to us. Curtis links this to Freud and the introduction of psychoanalysis to North American culture. Freud's identification of deep human desires have been developed into an out of control individualism. This is translated at its most dangerous into North American church culture in the meeting of people's need's (Here we should read human desires but not deepest.) Immediately we head towards advertising and programming and all the stuff that goes with individual wants. It is an externally imposed reinforcement of selfishness and self-centredness.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. - Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew saw happiness was more than just a way of selling stuff but it was also political way of control the people. By satisfying particular inner irrational desires people could be made happy and thus docile and controlled. In any case people have to consent to make democracy work and maintain a stable society. Therefore engineering consent is a good thing. The US government, big business, and the CIA developed ways to manage and create this consent. But then Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, came to influence believing that the self did not need control but should be free for self expression. The freedom of the 60's was born except that this was hijacked and people now were encouraged to feel unique individuals and they needs things to express their uniqueness. Curtis contends that those with the power , whether Thatcherites or followers of Blair, felt they were creating a new and better form of democracy which responded to individual opinions. However these techniques were not developed to liberate people but a way of controlling them. The new left's appropriation nor translation does not remove the original issues. Curtis demonstrates this in both the rise to power of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. In the documentary we are left with the real question of who is in charge. It seems like it is the power brokers. (first episode is here)

Israel was never meant to be monarchy. It should have been a theocracy but the people wanted to be like other peoples. They wanted security and political structures like the other countries around instead of living out an alternative counter-cultural position. The church as new Israel should not really be a democracy, nor an autocracy rather a people seeking the will of God as a theocracy.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." 1 Sam 8:18-20