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

What happened?

The question goes "What happened?" and the the reply "God alone knows!"

What happened this last week? In fact what happened since Christmas? And 2007? Where did that year go? I feel time has disappeared.

Ignatian spirituality has a number of key elements. One the use of imagination especially in reflecting about the Gospel stories. Another is the examen. It is simply to pause and be aware of where God has been active in your or my life. It can be for the last few minutes, hours, day, days. week, months, or years. It is not just self-awareness rather heightening awareness of a life lived together, forever in the presence of God. We tend to sing worship songs in excess about this and fail in any effort of will to live it out. Life has been too hectic or full over recent months and this last week has been forced pause. Sometimes sickness is the only thing to force a pause . For some I know it has been unbelievably dramatic and the ground removed from beneath their feet. For a small family back home on another continent there can seem no purpose or reason, and I'm sure there is the potential to see only absence not presence.

I heard last night that Mel passed away leaving a daughter and husband. Working with young people in my neighbourhood, I knew her as a little sister of her older teenage sibling Sarah. I have many endearing memories of her watching her grow up: her matter of fact innocent way of talking, her wide-eyedness at the world around her, a gentleness that called to be protected, a real spark for life and living. There is no making sense of it all and perhaps there should be no seeking for reason only recognizing the sadness, accepting the darkness and looking for glimmers of hope for another fire.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ... Jesus wept. John 11:33, 35

Ten hours straight

Well I've had my first square meal since Monday, vegetable. chicken and rice cooked in a soup stock with creamed corn (3 cereal bowls full). Before that I had 5 bowls of chicken congee over 4 hours. Things have now changed considering in the last 3 days I'd consumed 2 slices of dry toast, one can of Campbells vegetable soup, a cereal bar, a packet of seaweed, and half a litre of concentrated Ribena (in hot drinks). Still it's good to start kicking again and I'm 6 pounds lighter than Monday.

Why the strange diet today? Well I've just completed 10 hours of video editing. I reviewed 5.5 hours of tape and chose the clips and then edited them to my sound score I'd created, mangled, assemble and put together. I am frequently amazed how things come together. word, images, and music. Given that the limits of my technology and software forces me to imagine a visual sequence, somehow put together something that matches that approximately in audio and then merge the two together using the score and video soundtracks. It is a process impossible to be analytical, it is only something you can feel and intuit. During the 10 hours I only stopped to pick up a bowl of food or move laundry on but kept at it, eating when I felt hungry, which was most of the day!

The fruit of my labour is 6 minutes 33 seconds of video for my international students event over Christmas. Perhaps you see that my personality type is INFJ thats J with a big "J". Even with bppv, some messed up blood sugar, and some problems regulating body temperature, I have to reach that blissful feeling of completing something, at least one small step. There are many more steps, and hurdles to jump but there is a good sense of moving again.

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. Acts 20:24

sick, sick, sick,

There they are. Quite beautiful but sufficient to confine me to bed and the washroom for 36 hours. Monday night I came home and felt quite ill and during the night I was so. Tuesday was up and down and drinking small amounts of fluid. Then wednesday afternoon everything was calm and I could begin to sleep longer than 45 minutes and also flat instead of propped up. Yesterday I felt fragile and a little hungry so I ate a little soup, and congee and risked a cereal bar. Today I'll try and eat some real food again - I feel OK.

I posted a 12 days ago about shalom and peace and the concept of right functioning in creation. I wonder, if everything were functioning in a state of shalom then the rotavirus would not have struck me down, because my body's natural defences would have dealt with it immediately destroying it? Or perhaps, because the viruses no longer infect my cells or no longer exist? Maybe I'm pondering things in the wrong direction perhaps my body was in a state of shalom functioning as it should in an imperfect world.

(btw Tuesday's posting was something I wrote over the weekend!)

I'm not perfect only flawed

So many of God’s servants are hurting in their body, families, marriages and in ways I cannot label or identify. ... Yet these are some of God’s best servants and most Christ-filled saints. Some of his most useful, loving people. The crucible does not need to be approved by me or you to be effective. God chooses his own instruments, preparing, sharpening and equipping them as He chooses. His agenda is Jesus. Mine would be comfort, wholeness, happiness and so forth, with Jesus as the end result. God is only interested in making us like Jesus. internetmonk.com

Michael Spencer wrote the above in his blog (here) and it reminded me again why I'm doing what I do. But it also reminded me to sensitive to the facades or masks of having all of life sorted out carried by many Christian leaders, not in a spirit of condemnation or judgement but rather in sadness.

Tears are strange things because of their duality and yet for me they remain in the domain of sadness and not joy. Strangely only two people could ever fully make me cry instantly with their tears and they were both named Janice. I cried with and for them even though they are now far away. I believe that we are to cry with those who are crying and cry on behalf of those unable to cry. This is core to the life together. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book Life Together is one of those on my reading list but I understand that his central idea is that the Church is not a mere association of people with a common purpose which is frequently what happens. Rather it should be community focused upon Christ, not merely as goal but also means.

We need to stand together in weakness and not strength for in weakness we become strong. Not in and of ourselves but through a God who would transform us into the likeness of Christ.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Is 53:11

Continuous Partial Attention

I believe attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with pharmaceuticals. In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary tool. Linda Stone (see article here)

Multi-tasking is one of those jargon words very popular and a key word used for resumes to the excess, it has become almost meaningless. Linda Stone has distinguished between multi-tasking and continuous partial attention (cpa). Though superficially similar, at core they are different.

When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. ... To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. ... NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis.

Stone sees that we have moved from an age of multi-tasking to an age of continuous partial attention: from a need to manage time, to now a need to manage attention. Is this good or bad? Well from Stone's opening quotation you can see she understands that something important is happening.

[I]n small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless.

In my life I have done massively mundane work in a office for example assembling agendas or stuffing envelopes over days not just hours. We used to talk until someone got a walkman. (Yes that dates me pre-CD and mp3 players!) Suddenly everyone in the room started using them. Instead of talking we isolated ourselves and listened to music while we carried out this repetitive work. Multi-tasking removed the monotony of a task but generate a solitary individualized world, however cpa can drive us crazy as we cut up our ability to be attentive into smaller and smaller fragments - driven by the desire to be connected. Convergence in technology, combining our phones, pdas, internet browsers, emailing, game playing and entertainment is the cause, pathway and expression of all this.

Linda Stone suggests we are entering an age of uni-focus, or an era of protection and belonging. This means that we will learn to effectively get our priorities straight and stick to them, supposedly. Software is being developed and has already appeared to enable this. Some bloggers are less than positive with the outlook about this. I wonder if voice recognition is a good example, where users were forced to change their vocal patterns etc to conform to the software requirements rather than software conforming to the user. At the moment cpa remains a real issue as all this attentiveness dispersed causes stress, and strains ultimately our ability to be attentive, to really pay attention. Would Samuel have heard God among all the fragments if he was exercising cpa, continuous partial attention? I need to switch off the technology and sometimes give God my total undivided attention.

So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.' " So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 1 Samuel 3:9

synaesthesia

At Bartleby.com synaesthesia or synesthesia is defined as a condition in which one type of sensation evokes the experience of another, so that when hearing a sound one sees a color. It seems that a small percentage of people experience this but it is not a disease. It's more of a neurological condition where the senses overlap. For many it involves the colours and sounds or even attribute personality characteristics to inanimate or abstract things. Often, I understand that they have a spatial understanding of time.

Why am I blogging about this? Well I just remembered a friend years ago asked me if I had this condition. And I immediately said yes even though I have never been diagnosed it. I have read about it and seen documentaries on the subject. Of course I can see a colour and tell you what colour it is correctly. But ask me to imagine a colour and I can only feel it as sensation of touch. Significantly I really don't dream in colour only black and white even though I know what colours things are in my dreams when its important. Fortunately touch is pretty broad for example it includes temperature, pressure, texture and location.

This helped me realise why focusing has been helpful for me at times as much as dreams have been also. Focusing was first brought to attention by Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher and psychotherapist. He believed that those who benefited most from psychotherapy had the ability to sense vague, still unformed feelings in their body and connect this ‘felt sense’ with words and images that were used to describe it. I have found that attentiveness to my body feelings is a form of listening to myself and recognising what is going on inside of me, which in turn helps me to be aware of external relationships and situations, which in turn can heighten both my intuition and even discernment.

All this has just suggested to me why my whole sense of time is currently disrupted. I've noticed the return of my Bppv (Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo). I had in in the early summer bad enough to go to the doctor and sit and wait for 2 hours for a 5 minute session. But it went away or at least I edited it out again. Recently I been quite tired and the vertigo has returned albeit mildly. More a little twitch as the world jerks perceptively, rather than the wild spinning of before. Still my sense of the passing of time is wrong or off!

Still I wonder why my friend asked me whether I had synaesthesia years ago?