A personal challenge

A Certain Risk: Living Your Faith at the Edge by Paul Andrew Richardson

Of course getting our priorities right in life is important but Richardson moves everything to a new level. In fact you might say my understanding and more important my way of living is challenged in the edgiest way possible.

As the Spirit opens your eyes, what will he allow you to see? He will show you greater possibilities that you have ever dreamed before.(158) To be sure, many leaders have an important role as visionaries and communicators. Yet, as we come closer, we will always discover a band of people who have stepped out by faith in response to the dreams the Spirit has planted in their hearts.(38) The agony of faith ...is stepping out beyond the edge of human capabilities and trusting God's Spirit to lift us into his dreams.(113) Faith is the flash point between God's creativity and your participation in his creativity (100)

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Infobesity

We are so informed that we can’t be bothered. Catherine Collins British Dietetic Association

Brian just sent me a link to Tim Challies blog (here) and I found this great quote within a quote from John Naish's book Enough. We need and I think I need to learn his lesson of when enough is enough. Challies notes that Golden Labrador Retrievers are a dog that has a far bigger eyes than stomach and not a lot of sense. It will eat too much, throw up and then eat again. The dog will repeat this cycle.

... while we are given more information than ever about healthy eating, our consumption of fresh food has fallen. This is partly because we are too busy getting and spending to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking.

One of the lessons coming at me from counseling and spiritual direction is that I know a lot but am lousy at actually practicing it or applying it in the real world. I know what I need to do but don't do it or use it or applying to wisdom. I consume information in large quantities but the issue is application. I hurt Iris yesterday because I had too much information to give rather than love and support. There is so much information out there but in fact it's more about learning lessons not consuming. It's more about digesting and not merely filling our stomachs. Otherwise we're (or at least I am) no better than a Golden Labrador Retriever.

Marketing wisdom or commonsense

I've just finished reading Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. It looks at human behaviour and the retail environment and attempts analysis of how human chopping behaviour works and why. To this how the store environment can work with or work against this behaviour. They call this the conversion rate, from someone wandering into a store to someone leaving the store with a purchase.

My friend Firman and I were talking this week about this in terms of getting clients. You don't just wait for them to come to you. You have to get out there and talk and meeting and get infront of them. If you're looking for someone who might want to become a Christian, you want them to comein and stick around. We want a conversion rate as well yet we are passive.

In retail it seems to be well known that men will wander into a store, look for information in brochures or displays, collect and generally leave without consulting or talking to anyone. Women are the opposite looking for advice and to consult someone who knows something about what they're looking for.

I realized this has huge ramifications for churches how they welcome men and women. When it comes to welcome desks, information points, and welcome personnel there are enormous changes needed in how things are done, if done at all. Churches are generally dominated numerically by women. Why? My boss once asked whether it's because the words of the songs (read excessive emotionalism) or the relevance of the messages or the packaging/environment is wrong? We asked this on one of our staff training modules why university Christian groups tend to be monocultures, particularly no "jocks"? So what is the purpose of the church? to become monocultures because that is what is most successful or to become reflections of the Kingdom of God?

information overload or obesity

...the average American on an average day, who consumes 34 gigabytes and 100,000 words of information Roger Bohn How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers

I started reading a blogger running a site called infovegan. I was challenged because he was thinking about the consumption of information like food and calories. Rather than having the weight oppressing us, we are consumers of information and can become obese. The solution is a balanced diet. Many of his ideas originate from some research at the University of California by Roger Bohn (here). I think infovegan deductions are based on the fact that around 41 percent of information time is watching TV (including DVDs, recorded TV and real-time watching). But he fails to acknowledge that a higher percentage of the total time is spent on computer games.

Still there some interesting helpful suggestions which I been thinking in response to my internet time and bytes consumed which is vastly larger than the average American of the research. Infovegan suggests realizing we are choosing to eat and then looking at what we're consuming.

"...if you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with the information you’re consuming, ... You’re consuming too much opinion and not enough fact. ... consumption ought to be limited such that you maintain a clear mind and the ability to form your own opinions."

So what do I need to do? Well I'm trying to read more books and some fiction. I'm trying to understand how I look at the world and respond to it. I'm trying to simplify in the pursuit of simplicity so I can be freer and more spontaneous because there is enough space to be so. I need to lose some weight in the information diet and eat more healthily.

In my prayers Wednesday morning I read this. It hit me deeply because Iris and I were talking about this exact area of our lives only 10 hours earlier.

It is so easy to get caught up
with the trappings of wealth in this life.
Grant, O Lord, that I may be free
from greed and selfishness.
Remind me that the best things in life are free.
Love, laughter, caring and sharing.

small and compact and meaningful

Terunobu Fujimori, Tokyo, Japan - Beetle’s House from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

This Beetle House is small but it has that sense of simplicity and spaciousness that I feel is when my soul is headed.

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.

labels - help or hinder

I've nearly completed the sift, sort and dispose sequence in the my CD collection there are over 120 CD in the dispose. Just people I'm never really going to listen to yet in my keep boxes are close to 300 CDs, excluding the 100 or so still on shelves. I started trying to make up playlists so that I can categorize them for playing and reasons for playing. Trying work out what category to file some of my stuff is really difficult. I got scared when I found some of my stuff was described as shoegaze! Is that a musical style? I'm happier with the label of postrock but what does it really mean.

I have bands such as Sigur Rós, Labradford, Japancakes, Channel Light Vessel etc. They are a rock version (or postrock version) of Philip Glass a classical minimalist composer. The music is extremely repetitive with slight variation and modulations. It is these changes which create the interest as the patterns change and morph. Add to the fact the speeds are slower and there is a lot of reverb to create a huge ambiance, we are talking about a genre nesting between chill, minimalism and meditation.

The Bible talks about vain repetition in praying and perhaps this also applies to worship but the issue is this. Whether the nuanced changes and variations create something which rather than being vain is a gentle route lifting us to the ecstatic moment where everything disappears and God is God. The liturgical chants of the Orthodox churches and liturgical monasticism especially made popular in Taizé provides this. I remember a teenager saying once of her first Taizé worship experience, who needs drugs, when there is this experience.

But there is a dark side. Friday I was reading about the Danger Mouse/SparkleHorse project Dark Night of The Soul. I've been aware of Danger Mouse in looking at concepts of copyright in the remix culture and the "Grey Album" a remix of the Beatles White Album and the Jay-Z's Black Album. He is part of the better known Gnarls Barkley.

Well Dark Night was first delayed by legal wrangles but deeply marred by the suicides of co-creator Mark Linkous/Sparklehorse and contributor Vic Chesnutt. This recent album carries some heavy baggage which I hope to listen to soon. I wonder about whether a heavenward moment and a hellish moment are possible. Of course I think yes. In my sorting I had to decide whether to keep The Tear Garden's To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide. I kept it because it is an authentic reflection of one side of human emotions, the darker side.

A Gift

I got a parcel from Korea. In it was a book of Sting's poems. NB I said poems and not songs.

Of course they're the lyrics from decades of writing, but reading through the book I was separated from the music to appreciate the beauty of mere words. Sting describes it as being like separating a mannequin from the clothes it is wearing. The dummy is naked and there is a pile of cloth on the floor. The words stripped of their dependence on music are exposed to human examination.

When you're down and they're counting
When your secrets all found out
When your troubles take to mounting
When the map you have leads you to doubt
When there's no information
And the compass turns to nowhere that you know well

Let your soul be your pilot
Let your soul guide you
He'll guide you well

I'm rereading what might a controversial book Dance of the Selves by a transpersonal psychologist within a Jungian understanding of the human personality as both male/logic/animus and female/intuition/anima. Loretta Ferrier basically posits we need both the male and female aspects of us to work together for us to be truly effective and maybe I might use the word healthy. She see that the feminine intuition is the visionary and guide, but unless the masculine logic is there then dreams remain dreams. If there is only the the male aspect then things might be orderly tidy but stale and locked into often unhealthy patterns of living. An interesting book with perhaps some kernels of truth to open ourselves to ourselves, but with some caution and care.

Where does this leave me? Thoughts about what happens in the crises of life. Medieval Christian spirituality adopted a view point from Aristotle, namely knowledge of self was knowledge of God. Here Ferrier offers a guide to better mental/emotional health through knowledge of self and I think is helpful but only when kept in the light of God i.e. illuminated by God. In Christian terms we do not merely need to change and grow in faith but also we need to know something of the old self because the old self will return and cause trouble. Regeneration or sanctification are processes.

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?

The Minor Third

I think most people recognize that songs and music in the minor key are sadder than the major key. The first though I've had is how often are contemporary worship songs in a minor key. If we go back to the Victorian hymnbooks I can recall easily the presence of these especially in the Easter passion season leading up to Easter Sunday. Just a quick reflection as I've been sorting CDs to keep, Fauré Requiem the transitions between major and minors is startling and emotive. The transition in the last two movements Libera Me, in a minor key in a lower octave, to In Paradisum, in a major key in a high voice, is positively sublime.

The minor third is the clue to understanding sadness. Meagan Curtis of Tufts University has found the minor third progression is not merely a musical thing but occurs in human speech patterns portraying sadness. (At least in American English). So here I return to my old question so why isn't anyone writing worship songs with minor thirds or minor keys and if I've missed them why aren't we using them? Life has its joys and sadness, light and darkness.

More dimensions part 2

Reading appears passive because it takes place in a chair, on a bed, at the beach, in the tub, etc. Reading is action, exercise demanding strength of mind. Amy King Start A Revolution: Read this Book

I came across a longer quotation from Amy King which helped me understand more about the difference between books and film. Reading requires effort "working the imagination in to a sweat and, by default, developing other difficult-to-discuss human attributes like empathy and conscience." I don't think she is denying film or movies can have something to say and stretch our minds but her polemic is to challenge us not to be passive undiscriminating members of the crowd. I suppose her book has to go on my list of to read one day!

When it comes to reading the Bible it is not about learning stories, or being amused, or studying it to collect mere wisdom. Ideally it is about it becoming part of our worldview, developing our imagination and expectations, and changing our character to growing in empathy and conscience. The key is, I think, reading for formation and re-formation, rather than merely reading for information to be extracted.

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.