Too close for comfort

There is a classic photo by Man Ray from 1924 which is very similar to this drawing, but strangely this is less sensual than the photo. Perhaps its because of the angular character and it being a drawing and yet it is closer to my realities. Yet I am attracted to it. A few years ago on one of the forums about cellos we discussed whether our cellos had names and gender. In fact very early in my posts here I found my electric cello was an "it" and my acoustic cello was a "she" but without a name.

This last week in so many aspects of my life, listening as a spiritual director, conversing as a student campus worker, attending meetings, and sitting with pastors in a ministerial, I realize there is fear. We say we want to know God, we say we want to be closer to God but there is a right and safe distance. This distance includes maintaining my control of everything. I learned this week from a speaker that fear is the best way to raise money and increase donations, and that it is a very unhealthy approach and perhaps even dishonest! But fear also keeps us from depending on God. Much of religious structures and programing are expressions of that fear of a God too close, who asks for dependency, who asks for all of us.

There are so many dangers in second-hand faith. We can avoid getting really close to God by supposedly getting together with others. Faith has to be first-hand. The communal aspect is important as encouragement and exhortation (especially if you are an extrovert) but it remains a personal relationship with God.

A cello cannot make sound by itself. If there is music played around it, it can resonate picking out the frequencies and ring sympathetically, but it is not making sound. A cello cannot play itself, it can only play music when it has a cellist, a musician, a player.

Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice. Ez 33:32

I don't fit!

I've been checking my ergonomic ratios against my workstations against this calibrated position for my height and discovered my legs are too short for my height so my seat height is wrong when set against this standard. Of course I probably am the worst person to measure against the norms or standards of the US army!

What can I say? I've had a full day listening to God and helping people to find God in their lives. It has been busy but satisfying. I have received life affirming satisfaction of being in the right place, being the right person. Two students said a couple of weekends ago that they envied me because I seem to be satisfied with where I am. I'm not sure I really am satisfied but I have a sense of assurance, and can embrace that I fit with where I am now, being and doing what I am. But also I am dissatisfied with where I am and and who I am and what I do because I am a long way from who I am called to be. We live that tension of the not yet but stuck in the now.

I was reading Sunday an alternative translation of Psalm 23 - You lead me down the right path, the path that unwinds in the pattern of your name. It is a very free translation and extremely beautiful poetic expression of our and my life. I wrote in response "When I choose to wander from this path, I am lost in my own self-centredness, self-needs and desires." God keep me close.

cold rationalism and deep emotions

I'm taking a course in critical thinking and theological reflection and at times I get really frustrated, because I'm more a post-modern than modernist even though my basic analytical skills are quite reasonable. Emotions and passions are important and should be part of the evaluative process. Yet when I help people to write essays and it's important to conform to an academic standard but I'm getting to a point I don't like it. Feelings as intuitive process of judgment also has its place.

I really feel tonight that Feeling is more important than thinking anymore. Tonight I started watching a Taiwanese TV drama series called The Rose, I came across it because of a song by 阿桑 [Ah Sang] - 葉子 [The Leaf]. The music video (watch it here) was quite beautiful and immensely sad and it made me curious about where it came from. That started me on a pursuit which identified the TV drama and then the Taiwanese group S.H.E. and in fact all 3 members appear in the show and Ella Chen (E of S.H.E. ) takes a starring role. The Rose is a Taiwanese version of a Japanese Manga and its a wet tissue story of Cinderella. In fact after the first episode I'd already cried three times for the heroine. But for now the closing credits song Ah Sang's Ye Zi - The Leaf

A leaf, is a wing that does not know how to fly.
A wing: is a leaf that’s fallen into the sky.
Heaven, it wasn’t supposed to be a dream.
It’s just that I’ve forgotten a long time ago how I flew.
Loneliness is one person’s desire.
Desire is a group’s loneliness.
Love’s beginning was companionship.
But I also forgot who it was who needed the companionship.
By myself, I eat, travel, going and stopping everywhere.
And by myself, I read, write, and tell my heart to myself.
But here has my heart drifted to that I can't even see myself clearly?
I think I'm slowly, completely, losing you.

Life is all about a little bit of trust and a whole lot about needing hope. There's quite a bit of Cinderella in all of us.

unexpected memories

Roy Wood of ELO and Wizard fame is a multi-instrumentalist and one of the reasons ELO ended up with 2 cellists. But he left ELO and moved on very early in ELO's success leaving it to Jeff Lynne but leaving his mark.

This last week has been really full even though looking at my daytimer there seems to be a lot of white space. But if I pause and reflect I am drawn back to my lost loves and unreturned love. Last weekend I was talking with some of the students about long distance relationships and the pain and disappointments, the stresses and strains. In this moment I remember Moulann's beautiful but too short ballad Where did Forever Go (listen to it here)

tell me why you left me
because deep inside you know you’re still in love
maybe things would work
if you told me what you were thinking of
and how could you just leave me
crying all alone in my bed
holding on to words that i wish you’d never said
you said that you would always care
you said that you would always be there

where did forever go?
i really need to know
how you make me fall to my knees by bringing back all those memories
when did all the promises end?
will I find the strength to love again?
how could you take my soul and break my heart in two
don’t you know I gave myself to you?

and though you may have cared
you were never there

....
tell me why you left me
why did you leave me?

meaning and being

So what is it to be? … To be God is to anticipate a future self by an inexhaustible interpretive relation to an other that God himself is; to be a creature is to anticipate a future self, by a finite interpretive relation to an other that the creature is not…. Being is interpretive relatedness across time; that is, to be is to rise from the dead. Such is the description of reality that coheres with trinitarian doctrine of God. —Robert W. Jenson, The Triune Identity: God according to the Gospel

This is ontology which is the study of being, what is core to existence. Jenson appears to be a new generation of speculative theologians and this quote, which I came across, is particularly fascinating. But what does it in fact mean? I was amazed to read the comments in the blog where I found it that many couldn't access its meaning. I think it says meaning, identity and being are intrinsically related and extrinsic in relationship. Is this clear as mud? Well rather than rewrite a perfectly good explanation by the blog writer Ben Myers -

As humans, as creatures, those things that we move our spirit upon are the things that become our story. We TAKE meaning from things-- the meaning that those things have is written into our body and soul, the change our life. (How different is my life because of the internet? Very.) We're asking those things to promise a future for us, a better one. Even to say "I just live for the now" is to let your spirit be moved by that idea, and to ask that idea to promise a future good story. When we die, story over.

God the Father, being creator, is different from us: that which his Spirit moves upon is GIVEN meaning. The Father's Spirit is poured out on the Son. When the Son dies, the Father's story-giving Spirit says, "No, the story's not done!" and thus the Resurrection.

If we let out spirit be moved to creaturely things, then we are writing into our story things that will eventually crumble into not-being.

If we make our spirits move only to Christ, then we have as our own story the story of him whose story does not end. We have let our spirits take their meaning from the God who gives all meaning, from the God who will-be. His resurrection story becomes ours. His will-be is our will-be.

To be is to be resurrected, because all other being is simply soon-not-being.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Cor 5:16-17

More thoughts on temptation

I was thinking this morning during a message on Matthew 4 and the 3 temptations of Jesus about the truth aspects of temptation. I think truth and authenticity go hand in hand, yet there are those I have met that any means is OK for the gospel's sake. In other words doing something or anything for God trumps the legality, the ethical or the moral; people have become things and tasks. But the Gospels speak of God's love, the letters of the New Testament tell us that God is love. I think there is temptation and deception to devalue people when the ends justify the means.

I am astounded by the extravagant offer that is made to Jesus "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Except all this was never his to give yet alone offer. It was a lie or deception - it was a distraction. I suppose there was a short-cut on offer to save time, effort and pain but that would have cheapened everything because ultimately there would have been no real salvation, redemption. For the Gospel is not about, in Walter Wink's words, redemptive violence but redemptive suffering.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Is 53:5

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