fake and fakery

This is a fake Ferrari P4 made in Thailand. It makes me ask what possess someone to buy an under-powered fake, made in a back street factory in Thailand. Image only goes so far, because it doesn't drive like one and certainly isn't reliable or safe. One test drive would reveal it as lacking and fake.

Years ago my friends Caroline and Nigel got married and while they were on honeymoon I got to babysit Caroline's new cello. About a year old and a winner in competition I expected great things from it. As a cellist, I got to compare the sound and playability of my own battered 1913 French Hawkes with this new winning instrument. But in the playing I realized that my cracked scarred beauty (see earlier post here) and the great new instrument were comparable.

How about your spiritual practices? I've tried most of the classical spiritual disciplines over the years. The easiest I have kept as part of my regular practice and the difficult ones I occasionally try again. But you can only find the real by working at it. How do you find the real life? Well you find truth and reality in the living out of life with the disciplines, i.e. instead of keeping them separate, they form your life.

Addicted to information

Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an 'urge'. It's more than that. It's a deep 'craving'. They (the addicts) are just like anyone else who is addicted to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cellular phone. ... Sufferers ... may experience loss of sleep, anxiety when not online, isolation from family and peer groups, loss of work, and periods of deep depression. Dr Pinhas Dannon

Last year group proposed video game addiction be listed as a mental disorder in the American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, a guide used by the American Psychiatric Association in diagnosing mental illness, but they failed.

Strangely I think internet is a different to my former caffeine addiction. Dr Irvine Biederman notes that new knowledge and perhaps continuing new knowledge which is fixed in a moment of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances. I discovered this on Lifehacker recently but then found it in a public release dated 20 June 2006. It took at least 20 months to filter from American Scientist (Press release here) to The Wall Street Journal (here) to lifehacker (here). Thus compulsive internet surfing is feeding our information addiction or habit. I wonder how about blogging?

That just leaves one question. How come people don't get addicted to the spiritual disciplines in this way?

Cleansed by fire

Every so often I have to catch up with my Google Reader account and every so often instead of writing something and storing for posting later I have to post it.

When I read the real blogs of real people in real situations, my own situation and issues seems almost fake when forced into a reality beyond me. Joey at Missions and Theology teaches and works in South East Asia. He and his wife recently adopted Thin Yannat a little girl earlier kidnapped in another harrowing episode. But this episode stunned me. (read it here)

We didn’t have the chance to know his name. We only know him as Thin Yannat’s father. He was a living skeleton—with sunken eyes and protruding bones. He was suffering from AIDS. ...

The Pastor refused to minister to a dying man and it made us angry. Narlin and I were their teachers and we were supposed to be responsible for teaching these local pastors about ministering to the dying people. However, we unbalancedly focused on Biblical studies in expense of teaching them practical theology. The incident demonstrates the failure of imbalance teaching. What good is biblical knowledge when you cannot minister to the people in a time they badly needed it? Perhaps we wept because we failed to teach these people. ...

What are we going to do with the dead body of an illegal migrant who died of AIDS...?

I'm ashamed of my own struggles, ashamed of the media and that it focuses on a failing stock market: The failure of vast corporations to make their predicted profits. I am ashamed when I read about Thin Yannat a little girl of an illegal migrant. This takes even greater focus when in my D.min where I've been working on units about theological reflection and practical theology. What is all this enterprise of academia about unless it deals with a tangible reality? This afternoon my assistant and co-worker Carny in my English Conversation class drew a card which asked What would you do if you had a magic wand? She simply said Abolish poverty! That was both familiar and also rattled my world. What's my or your life all about? Is it real and authentic? Does it touch tangible reality?

The last week or so I spent time with Proverbs 30. I'd never sat with it before, never contemplated nor studied it. It starts "I am weary, O God " and repeats it. "Surely I am too stupid ..." Then it moves on to say "Two things I ask of you ... remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that I need." I wrestled with my tangled reality as I wondered about my own financial support raising and I wrote in my journal " I do feel stupid and frustrated at the same time!"

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them? ... Naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand. Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, 15

Beauty and Holiness

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God—but only he who sees takes off his shoes Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In a recent interview (details here) Leigh McLeroy is recored as saying

Both beauty and holiness are “other than.” In their “otherness” they have the ability to transport and transform. They move and change us, evoking in us powerful response. When the prophet Isaiah saw his breathtakingly beautiful vision of the Lord’s holiness he was moved to say “Woe is me!” and then his guilt was removed and his sin atoned for with a searing hot coal. Thus transformed, he enlisted in the Holy One’s great cause by saying “Here am I. Send me!”

I've been wrestling with similar concepts how the aesthetic is not the same as the spiritual. They share a similarity in a sense of transcendence but they are not the same. Sadly my education Phd student discussion partner is leaving to return to his home country. Our conversations have revealed for me this exact issue. But I find myself wanting clarification from McLeroy. Beauty and the sublime follow very similar paths but I think only holiness disappears off on to the horizon, off to the Holy One. McLeroy sort of says this when he quotes the late Pope John Paul II who called beauty “a key to mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God.”

No longer will Jacob be ashamed; no longer will their faces grow pale. When they see among them their children, the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
Is 29:22-23

What binds us together?

We used to sing in 70's Bind us together with love. But reading a reflection from Jason Gardner at LICC I'm forced to rethink things and reflect on stuff brought to focus. The loss of the Lord's Prayer from our worship services is probably a deep problem that has bugged me for a while. A whole generation in the non-liturgical churches are singing the latest worship songs and changing them frequently. So what binds them together. Singing? feelings? common experiences? declarations? What binds Christians across the earth together as citizens of heaven?

If we are disciples of the Lord of all of life, our Christian discipleship must be whole-life. That means that the question of what it means to be a good citizen day by day is a crucial one for us to reflect on theologically. ... Paul put it like this: 'Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ...' (Philippians 3:20). Our first and foremost loyalty is to a divine polity. And our Lord, in the prayer he taught us, has given us our own pledge:

This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matt 6:9-10

More listening, more loving

The Spirit of Jesus Listening in us

Listening in the spiritual life is much more than a psychological strategy to help others discover themselves. In the spiritual life the listener is not the ego, which would like to speak but is trained to restrain itself, but the Spirit of God within us. When we are baptised in the Spirit - that is, when we have received the Spirit of Jesus as the breath of God breathing within us - that Spirit creates in us a sacred space where the other can be received and listened to. The Spirit of Jesus prays in us and listens in us to all who come to us with their sufferings and pains. When we dare to fully trust in the power of God's Spirit listening in us, we will see true healing occur. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

Thursday night we were reading and studying James and talking about how we love those we don't get on with or don't feel like loving. One of the conclusions was, we don't love others with our own love but out of God's love. But how do we live out of God's love? Except by receiving that love and knowing that love on many different levels. We cannot love many people from out of the bottom of our heart from our own resources. But God expands that space to fill it up with his love, to create a space or place to receive others. Thus to love God with all of our being and our neighbour as ourself is very much about receiving God's love. In my own troubles of being busy, I have to ensure that I spend enough time receiving God's love in order to live out of that love.

something strange

I've stayed away from facebook and myspace and the social networking sites as I think I am already fragmented enough. See my earlier posting on Continuous Partial Attention here.

But I love google analytics because I'm tracking my 3 blogs and seeing where people are coming from (which country, town) using what browsers and operating systems, even from what networks! I can't tell who you are but I can see that people come back again and again to visit.

I write into open space, the great darkness of the internet. I've called it along with the phone "dark media" because you really can't see the others. Jacques Derrida, whose philosophy has influenced me, talks of communication like sending a postcard. You send it but you don't know whether it arrives. You don't know whether it even gets read and understood or not. A few people I know read what I write here, I don't know whether they understand or not. I suppose one day I'll open the comments section But my email accounts are already pretty busy and I want to spend more time away from the computer.

Anyhow I've found my blog listed on someone else's blogs of note. What's surprising I don't know who they are. There's traffic coming from their blog as well. Thanks Jade whoever you are, I hope there's meaning somewhere in here for you.

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Heb 13:2

Listen as activity

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. Henri Nouwen - Bread for the Journey

I love to sit back and listen, often without looking so I can hear even more intently. If only people would be willing to listen more and speak less. But there is also a deeper listening, which is active and not passive and that is a spiritual attentiveness. In spiritual direction it is called the contemplative stance, a listening to another with attentiveness to yourself and your relationship to the Spirit within you. Strangely this does not reduce being there for the other person but extends the community being available for the speaker.

In my English conversation classes I teach English as a Second Language learners the unwritten rules of English conversation. Firstly, native English speakers hate silence and they will fill it after only 4 seconds. Secondly, native speakers don't listen but are preparing to interrupt with what they want to say. Thirdly, native speakers also attempt to hijack a conversation and take it somewhere else by changing the subject. You only have to listen carefully to group talking or even to yourself to know the truth of these rules. Yet listening offers so much to others.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry James 1:19

Not so different

This week I rewatched the National Geographic TV program on The Gospel of Judas and it's weird presentation of Judas especially the accusation that the Gospel of John makes Judas evil personified. It's weird because I understand from this Sunday morning's message, suggested from Phillip Yancey's book, that many alternative interpreters see Judas as potentially like us, or perhaps even more so, we can easily be like Judas. We're not so different.

I am still mourning Margaret's passing. I have struggled with my identification with her death. And the more I reflect the more I realize that she and I are not that different. We were not so different. I have said it a number of times in recent past that without my experience of faith, I wouldn't be alive today.

Jacques Derrida late post-structuralist philosopher, created a word différance. It sounds the same as différence but points to a key issue. It plays on the different meanings of the French word différer which means both "to defer" and "to differ." Derrida liked to defy definitions and thus perhaps that is why I am also very much a Derridean. To defer means that meaning and hence understanding can never be accessible, rather what we have is an endless play in meaning with other words that also resist being pinned down. Thus the limitations of dictionaries is always to try and define a word in terms of other words that don't actually mean the same thing. In contrast to differ brings us to a distancing which forces either/or understanding and the intrinsic violence that forms a part of making meaning. A dictionary is in a sense an act of violence because it forces or imposes meaning. Strangely the poet always plays with words and meanings to create new allusions or even illusions of something else.

In the end, my own playfulness and deadly seriousness is that I/we - are/were - not so different. Whether Margaret or Judas. Perhaps only a deferment or perhaps a different choice in the either/or situation of life and death, pain and relief, agony and ecstasy which we call life.

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. ... I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. ... but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Ecclesiastes 2:12-14

Books, more books and even more things

RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman. - Matt Selman (The Simpson's writer/producer)

I came across a comparison of attitude towards books and book shelves and it compared Matt Selman's views at Time Magazine (above) and Ezra Klein's view at The American Prospect (below).

No, this is all wrong. Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be.

Surrounded by hundreds of books, Dvds and Cds which fill the bookshelves around all my walls in my apartment, I think it is even more significant what books, etc are on the floor next to my feet at this very moment. So here's an interesting list. They include Antonio Gramsci's Selection from Cultural Writings, Perly's 1992 street map, The Art of Theological Reflection by Killen and De Beer, The complete Mr Bean DVDs, Michael Swan's Practical English Usage, Christ and Culture by H Richard Niebuhr, Vol 36 of the Word Biblical commentary: John, also Transforming Bible Study by Bob Graham ... and more (including a Bible).

From the book rack I keep in my bed (Yes I do have some in the bed with me!) AA Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh, The Early Asimov Volume 2 (together with other scifi anthologies), Barron's Art Handbook Colored pencils, also Meeting People is fun:How to overcome shyness.

What's the question? Why do you have so many books?
I'm not sure I understand the question.

The broken record

A fifth danger in the attractional-invitational strategy is that when believers try to “invite, entice, coerce, or otherwise lure the unchurched to become involved in church life,” it requires an unbeliever to “take the first step and cross a cultural boundary in order to connect with God.” (Ortlip, “The 7 Languages of Culture”) Jesus did not seek the lost in this way; Jesus always took the initiative to cross cultural barriers in order to reach people. He entered their world. He did not require them to enter His world. DaveDV at Missional Challenge (here)

I seem to be reading everywhere the same message, get out of the building and back in the street! I think we're suffering from a broken record cos no-one really wants to listen.

Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: Proverbs 1:20-21

Why are we lagging behind?

In the culture of late modernity many churches adopted a corporate model for leadership, decision-making, and planning. Pastors became CEOs, elders (or deacons) transformed themselves into corporation directors, and top-down, vision-driven planning became the order of the day.... It is a sign of biblical-theological health that this paradigm is being questioned in the missional church movement. Dave Dunbar

Dave Dunbar in an article (here) has raised this and other points.

More and more I am surrounded by groups and organizations still buying into this modernist vision thinking it is Christian and Biblical! They talk of image and branding and mission statements etc. This is all twentieth century stuff and we live a post-everything era. A lot of people don't trust politicians, religious leaders, institutions, in fact any form of leadership. Well that lot of people are mainly outside the church and outside very good reasons. Phillip Yancey writes strongly in Soul Survivor, a must read for anyone frustrated with church, "I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth." We all adulterate the gospel with our culture. But even more importantly who really trusts their company or their boss/CEO anymore? We're now used, taken advantage of, company profits and shareholders are more important than me as a person. Why are Christians around me adopting corporate culture? Why are we lagging behind adopting something that we already know really doesn't work and we don't trust!

Dave Dunbar goes further with this issue:-

The point is that missional churches need to cultivate what for many of us is a forgotten art–the ability to discern what God is up to in our world (or neighborhood). This is best accomplished in a community of believers who are able to listen prayerfully for what the Spirit is saying in Scripture, in and through the voice of the congregation, and in the specific context where the church is located.

We all want things on our terms so we can control or manage them. So we can feel comfortable with them. Comfort is the operative word. We buy into McChurch whether it is Willowcreek or come other thing but we're in the wrong TV show. I think The Magic Schoolbus has better theology than The Apprentice.

Arnold: Please let this be a normal field trip. - All: With the Frizz? No way!
...
Miss Frizzle: Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.

It is a matter of being more and more attentive to God stepping out, taking chances making mistakes and having to deal with mess and things being untidy and not adopting a business control model. Lets get back to being children of God, rather than managers.

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! Romans 8:15 (The Message)