Writing and reading as therapy

I wonder why I have such a desire to write and reflect in so many posts in such a few days. Two nights ago I was asked an English question, What is the difference between self-disclosure and assertiveness. I think this blog has become for me a vehicle of self-disclosure and pray it serves as encourage and not as assertiveness. Last April, I read Henri Nouwen's comments:-

• Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write. Quite often a difficult painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become life saving for us and sometimes for others too.
  

Strangely this image of the boy playing cello from 1900 is very significant. His name is Otto Frank and just happens to be the father of Anne Frank, the famous young Jewish girl diarist. Otto the only survivor from the family was given his daughter's diary on his return to Amsterdam. Otto read it and many years later recalled his first reaction "I never knew my little Anne was so deep".

I don't know about depth, but all this stuff comes from the last five years of journalling. This reviewing and reading of my old journals and writing is therapeutic for me.

Dreams, cyberspace and reality

Paprika (パプリカ, Papurika) is a Japanese full length anime based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel, about a research psychologist involved in developing a device that will permit therapists to help patients by entering their dreams. However somehow the world of dreams and physical reality becomes blurred and a bizarre parade of symbols, which we might attribute to the Japanese collective unconsciousness, takes over. What happens is that people are drawn into and immersed in this parade. The device was created for good ends, in fact healing, but the human condition creates problems. This anime is not for the faint hearted the imagery is strong and effective, and it exposes fundamental human urges.

Joseph and Daniel were important ancient figures who took note of dreams, and Peter and Paul were early church figures who found importance in recognizing the divine presence in them. They are important but care is needed in their interpretation and discernment in the origin or source of the dream. Over the years, I have had very few dreams that I could remember on waking up. But since starting journaling the number has increased and I have kept a record of the dreams, and sought to understand them and their purpose and perhaps message. I believe dreaming is a sort of visual journalling and can contribute to the knowledge of self and therefore knowledge of God.

Recent scientific work has studied the ability of humans to project themselves into cyber identities whether in games or facebook, chat rooms or forums or even blogs. My fragments are consolidated here in this blog but I am not here. It is important to not live in our dreams, nor cyberspace. I would like to think that reality is where God is with us. An old confession was that God is the creator and sustainer of all things. It has been years since I heard the second spoken or discussed yet if God as sustainer defines what is real then all of life is lived in the presence of God. If we define what is real then perhaps Paprika's nightmare is closer than we imagine.

Correcting corrupted images

A key moment in my formation was the realisation that an understanding of God as father is frequently shaped by childhood. My divine image was marred by earthly experience. Henri Nouwen's book The Return of the Prodigal brought my own personal exploration and study of Rembrant's painting. The father has one hand of strength and power strongly holding and other of gentleness almost consoling.

Furthermore one of my personal struggles is that sincerity is not enough, and proficiency is required. Recently Nodame Cantibile which exists as a Japanese manga, anime, and live drama has opened me to myself, bringing old experiences of making music and loving music for music's sake. I find myself in so much of it. Set in a music college it says much not just about music but it begins with music and moves off into life. Music is a metaphor for life and living. It raises old questions about conflicting loves and what is a deeper love, it asks questions such as what is important whether to play music as I like it rather than first taking music seriously for music's sake in order to bring pleasure and joy. It brings to the front the links between technique and inspiration. The Nodame story is more than a romantic love story but also one where the love of music is a key and this is paralleled in a love of life and love in life. Even then the childhood experiences hamper and limit development and opportunity until dealt with. In my experience of parents it was a father who pushed and demanded and a mother who persuaded and consoled. Yet God as divine parent is both. Nodame Cantabile reminded me of the importance of striving for technique is as important as the ability to sing i.e. the expression of the soul of music. All art has its techne and psyche sides. (technical and soul) The spiritual disciplines present one side and movements of the spirit the other.

Sometimes we need the power of God and other times we need the shelter of the wings of God. We need a transcendent relationship if we are to live in this world, but we also need to love the experiences or at least find the experiences of the love of God here in the world. We need to take life seriously (the father's left hand) to enjoy life (the father's right hand) , otherwise we're stuck in hedonism or stoicism.

Drawing and spirtuality

A study from The Incredulity of Thomas by Peter Paul Rubens. In my journalling I became fascinated by hands and their ability to express feelings, emotions and sentiments. The earliest influence was Henri Nouwen's With Open Hands, but later the works of Van Gogh from his Brabant period. This was a time in the Borinage where he found himself with the poor.

Van Gogh wrote "And in my picture I want to say something consoling, as music does. I want to paint men and women with a touch of the eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we try to convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our coloring . . . . Ah, portraiture, portraiture, with the mind, the soul of the model --that is what really come, it seems to me. (September 3, 1888)

As I draw hands and contemplate the original or the drawn that I find within myself echoes and resonances, the possibilities of the creator.

Being countercultural

I struggle with how so many are conformed to the world and not transformed by the renewal of their minds and spirit. Perhaps I might have become a monk or a hippie in the past but perhaps I am?

So often I meet leaders seeking methods as solutions who fail to hear the call to faithfulness and fidelity against cultural values and attitudes. When it comes to sabbath (read my earlier posts), workaholism and fear of loss of recognition seem to take over. Bonnie Thurston asserts "with regard to time... we Christians must become distinctly countercultural; we must shift from being future-oriented people to being present-oriented people. I am not arguing that we set aside Christian hope of heaven, nor that we set aside our responsibilities or our work. I am asking that we become present to them, to find joy in them rather than seeing them primarily as a means to an end."

What does this mean? I think it means we need a new point of view or worldview: Taking sabbath as rest with enjoyment and celebration, taking sabbath as a discipline and witness to the world of something different, and sabbath as a mode of being in the world, relishing each precious moment like it might be our last. It is to lose the busyness of life for the business of raising cognitive dissonance in those around us, to raise the fundamental questions of what is life about?

Serving or loving, our purpose?

Were we made to serve God or to fall in love with God? So often we run with the first and not the second, if not you then I definitely have!

When we can see that "conversion is a process of self-transcendence... having sought what was merely self-satisfying and comforting, we now seek what is true and good" then I think Paul Oakley's lyrics "It's all about you, Jesus" begin to ring true. As Dean Brackley goes on further "... the first impulse comes from beyond us, and what happens is disproportionate to our efforts ... conversion as falling in love. A powerful new love ignites and works its way through the whole person. It pulls lesser loves into love. ... Being in love gives life a deep sense of purpose."

One of my deepest lessons, of this summer, was a student deciding to stop understanding what faith and spirituality and belief were all about. He instead decided that the love of God was sufficient to give purpose in life. John Piper's assertion that the mission of the church flows from the worship of the people takes on a new light with this understanding. If only we could get the falling in love with God bit right. Sadly I come across so many involved in worship and leadership who have not moved beyond what was "merely self satisfying and comforting" to truly falling in love with God.

Is the talking head the only way?

Why do sermons or homilies have to be preached, or spoken? After all the spoken word is not necessarily as key as it once was. We became written cultures after aural cultures and since then we have moved on again to become visual cultures. Our worlds are massively full of conscious and unconscious symbols. The symbol that this video was shot, without conscious thought, riding the King streetcar down and onto King Street is not lost on me. I made it over 4 years ago and the soundtrack calls to mind the chorus of the people crying out "his love endures for ever". The phone tones are yhwh - the dialing code for God. This seeks to have the same intents that a conventional (whatever that means) sermon, i.e. to move people to seek change.

Good and bad discernment

Discernment is a term much abused. It has a spiritualized usage and I notice how much it is abused when someone uses a lot of energy to justify a course of action or a decision in their life. For example, a young woman returned to Canada and during her absence her family moved from Montreal to Toronto. After a month she announced God wants me to be in Montreal. However listening carefully all I could hear was I want to go back to Montreal. Too often discernment is thinly disguised language for my decisions. I think we ought to be more honest about what we are doing or desiring. God-wants-me-to-be-happy-and-therefore-I-should thinking is unfair and dishonest. Another young woman shared she had three job offers and a desire for a working holiday in Australia, I advised which would take you closer to God and then which felt like the greatest gift from God.

The spiritual gift of discernment is of good and bad spirits, which was clearly absent in the first case and sought in the second. Discernment involves firstly attitudinal stance: Are you or the person wanting to go the God direction or is there a clash of wills? This already acknowledges that there are moral norms to be acknowledged such as loving and respecting God and others, but the energy used to justify a decision betrays a pre-decision already made, which is denying openness.

Discernment is an issue of freedom. Dean Brackley writes "Authentic freedom is about responding to reality under the guidance of the Spirit." It is clearly not a case whether we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or visit the sick or those in prison but rather who? If we lay aside our desires we can either make a practical decision or follow the Spirit.

Openness and the will to change

I have some music at tapegerm.com and sound loops at freesound which I recorded off the subway and made available.Now I discovered that the samples have been inserted in a game! The game is Tremulous and my sample loops are part of the Paris Metro and an underground world. You never know where and what will happen.

A call from a student earlier tonight reminded me I can never predict what will happen for me or someone else. Life is unpredictable. There are no guarantees, no sure fire solutions. I can never solve others' problems let alone my own. But there is more to life than solving problems, there is the companionship of others and the experiences that can challenge and grow us.

Gorsch the cellist (or gauche or goshu) is a great little story by Kenji Miyazaki made into an Japanese anime by Isao Takahata who later founded Studio Ghibli. The story tells of a young cellist who while diligent is limited. The conductor and the rest of the orchestra are frustrated by his seeming lack of ability to play well. Over the course of 4 nights, local animals come to visit Gorsch in his little shack and their visits change change him, bringing out musicianship from deep inside of Gorsch.

Being open is essential to being transformed or being made new. In the Christian tradition there are two different understandings of what grace does. Grace can be imputed bringing about something transformative and alternatively grace can bring about something new. Both can be helpful when facing the uncertainties of life, that God might bring about something new or simply transform something already there.

Three ways of sabbath-ing

I think that sabbath is best thought of in three ways. As I reflect in preparation for a workshop the following three aspects provide shape and understanding.

1. The keeping of sabbath as a day of rest. Bonnie Thurston asserts "One of the marks of divinity is that God knows when to stop working, when to rest, when to enjoy what has been created by work..."
2. The doing of sabbath as a practice, is as Norman Wirzba suggests "the focus and culmination of a life that is daily and practically devoted to honoring God, the source of all our delight..."
3. The being of sabbath is even more core. Marva Dawn suggest Sabbath is a corrective. "The only way to stop our chronic need to work in our own way and with our sense of hurry is to stop, to cease, to spend time immersed in God's enfolding devotion to us and in the triune provision of whatever we need in order to do the work God really wants us to do in God's manner and cadence."

I think the being of sabbath is the key or cure to a very human condition. What Marva Dawn points to is a fundamental shift from self-sufficiency and "I" centreness to a focusing on God. Bonnie Thurston is beautifully blunt ... "beneath the complaint that we are too busy, that we don't have enough time, is the pride of attainment. I'm so busy may well be a way of saying see how needed I am, see how important I am".

Bernard of Clairvaux, a signficant medieval writer on the spiritual life, basically was frustrated with conduit thinking. He saw people loving and serving God and others as channels, which is living life in a narrow way, where love pours out as fast as it rushes in. This is not life in all its fullness or abundant life. He suggested that love and service needs a reservoir and outpouring is out of fullness and surplus. "We have all too few such reservoirs in the church at present, than we have canals in plenty." Notice that a reservoir life is more focused on primarily receiving from God in order to overflow over others, but people frequently merely have a survival giving from the limited resources of a stand pipe or conduit.

It's still a challenge as I face down these conclusions! (see Kino's Journey episode 10 notes for issues of identity in what you do and others needs - the picture is Haji from Blood+ , a vampire anime, which is particularly appropriate for lives lived in the absence of sabbath )

drawing number 6

The text "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives so also through Christ our comfort overflows". 2 Cor 15

This picture contains the clock tower of my church at the bottom of my garden as I grew up. There is a bowl of food sitting in the back of the picture (actually rice and 2 fish) and the heart is in the shade for the tree sheltering. The shadow on the ground seems to be 1 2 4, the values doubling.

drawing number 5

As I gave thanks for my time of rest I felt that God had written me to this point in my life. This was drawing number five.

The text was "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so thta you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit". ( Rm 15:13)

The lower section represents fossil beds near where I was staying and the causeway alludes to another set of images I drew pointing towards my spiritual journey.