Thursday, November 26, 2009

Open hands: desiring change & needing sameness.

Most of us are caught in this strange war between desiring change and needing sameness. We want the excitement of a revolution, but we cling to the safety of the status quo. I hate to say it, but from what I see around me, the status quo usually wins. 

A number of my friends have recently been wanting change, but from what I can tell don't seem to be working very hard to make change happen. I see hurt, panic, desperation, complaining and a great deal of suffering, but no movement towards anything new. What appears to stand in the way of change are the pre-conditions and assumptions that the status quo has given us. For example, changing jobs usually is dependent on the precondition of what one earns at one's current workplace. Moving house, as another example, would rely on the preconditions of location, space and cost (to name just a few things).

We attach conditions to change for good reason: change for change's sake is simply pointless. But at the same time, we can impose so many of those preconditions on ourselves and our situations that change becomes impossible. To use changing jobs as an example again: if you hate the environment you're in and get paid a decent salary, you would ordinarily want to move to a workplace that gives you as good a salary but with a better working environment. 
Unfortunately, as often happens, you may not be able to get both. In most cases, as behavioral economists tell us, you would more than likely stay where you're miserable with your acceptable salary: the status quo will more than likely end up winning.

Now, my point about this whole matter is simply this: if you want to receive change, more often than not you're going to need to let go of some things. If you want a Ferrari, you're going to have to let go of a lot of money. If you want to marry, you need to let go of the freedom that singleness gives you. If you want to gain knowledge, you'll need to give up some time with your friends so that you can spend a bit of time reading and studying. If you want to lead a moral life, there are certain behaviours that you will need to change ...

We all have to live with open hands: always expecting to let go in order to receive. In fact, when we live with open hands, the battle between desiring sameness and desiring change turns into a friendly tension that allows us to embrace the best of all possible worlds.

Monday, November 16, 2009

We don't know who we are...

I was out running earlier today, watching clouds build up overhead into a storm that is raging outside as I write this. And on my run, I let my mind wander into an epiphany (or, at least, a reminder of an epiphany that I had a while ago) ...

The mosaic law expressed in the Hebrew Torah was often used by the ancients as way of seeing identity as inextricably bound to what a person does. If you keep the sabbath, don't eat pork and wash your hands and feet in accordance with ceremonial custom, you are right with God. You're on a good track. This has its benefits: identity, as a fairly fluid, misty concept, is much easier to understand when it is tied to tangible outcomes. 

Grace diffuses this concrete way of thinking – diffuses the self-assured nature of the law by pointing out that identity must first be bound to a state of being before it can be bound to a state of doing. Some of my students – designers, fine artists and philosophers in the making – often speak about their future careers in such as way as to give occupation a gravitas that I think is dangerous. I know so many people who choose a job based more on what they want to do than on who they are or what kind of person they want to be. This kind of thinking imbues work with only a temporary kind of value, because if a person gets bored or frustrated with what they do (which seems inevitable) they end up having a quarter-life or mid-life crisis. They end up coming face to face with a rather ugly reality: they don't know who they are. What they're busy doing has lost meaning even though it is not meaningless.

Grace undercuts the law, but does not negate it. It recognises that our actions are important, but also that they are only the surface. You can do good without being good. You can be polite with anger in your heart. You can speak clean words with corrupt thoughts. Grace points out that deeds are simply not enough by cutting through to the core, by telling us to identify ourselves, not by some external concrete system of values, but rather by a change of heart.

Friday, November 13, 2009

All things new.

No matter who we are, no matter about the specifics of we believe, we all know that there is something horribly wrong with the world. To see this is the easiest thing in the world: just pick up a newspaper and read about what’s going on in your neighbourhood. To make matters worse, we all have this acute sense that not only is the world a mess, but that we too aren’t particularly perfect. It’s a messed up world, filled with messed up people. I should know. I’m one of them.

One thing that the Christian Bible teaches in Genesis 3 is that close to the start of human history, a couple of people turned away from what was good by deciding that they knew better than God. And, since then, that’s exactly what all people keep on doing: all of us keep walking away from the good.

Yet, fortunately, we haven’t forgotten what goodness is. Even when we step out of the light, we are acutely aware of what light looks like. This residual good is ingrained in us. It’s built into us, part of our genetic and psychological makeup, and no matter how hard we try to shake it, we all know what is right and what is wrong.

Now, the point I want to get to is this: all of us, fallible as we are, are pretty good at noticing what’s wrong. The problem is, we forget to see that God’s grace is all about making things right, putting this broken world and our broken souls back together. God is all about drawing us back to Himself, bringing us back to Eden.

If we begin the human story at Genesis 3, all we will see is our fallenness (in the form of what St. Augustine calls “The doctrine of original sin). And, certainly, we are fallen. But if we read Genesis 1 and 2, we see that it all starts with a good God who made everything good. And the whole story of the Bible is all about returning to good. Genesis 3 belief calls us to simply get rid of the bad. Genesis 1 and 2 belief encourages us to figure out what a whole, full, joyful life looks like.

The Hebrew word ‘teshuva’ (often translated ‘repent’) simply means ‘return’, and it’s found all over the Bible. Return, like the prodigal son; return like an adulterer who realises that infidelity breeds contempt; return like an addict, who sees that there was a time before that addiction ruined his life. 

Life is not all bad. It's not all a mess. It's just that it's difficult to see the good first without a change of heart.

So return.

Being a follower of Christ isn’t about becoming really good at pointing out how stuffed up everything is – everyone’s doing that. Being a follower of Christ isn't about discovering that there are all sorts of rules that we need to follow to learn how to get into heaven. Being a Christian means waking up to the fact that, in small and great ways, something amazing is happening. Revelation 21:5 records Jesus’ words, which are a magnificent summary of this happening: 

“See, I am making all things new.”

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

New rules for a very old game.

Imagine a man so subversive that he steps onto a soccer field and tells the referee that the rules of the game don't cut it. After all, he points out, the players keep breaking the rules. They keep tripping up themselves and their opponents. They use their hands when they're supposed to be using their feet. They aim for each other instead of the ball. The referee tells the man that if he doesn't like the rules of the game, he can just as well get off the playing field. You're offsides, the referee says. 

But the man won't leave the field. He tells the referee that he's missing the point.  The ref won't listen. The rules are fine, he convinces himself. The subversive player tells the ref it's not that rules aren't fine, it's just that they're not enough. For the game to be better, you don't need better rules, you need better players. If you want to stop players from fouling each other, the yellow card is always going to be too late. You need to stop the players from fouling each other by instilling good sportsmanship into the hearts and minds of the players.

The ref gets all sarcastic at this point. He tells the man that his ideas are just a bit too 'pie in the sky'. The man says, that's okay, 'cos he made the sky that holds the pie. He claims to have invented this game. The ref gets so angry at this point that he sends the player off. Red card. What kind of a man would claim such a thing? The rules are enough, he says. The rules are enough

We just need to keep telling ourselves the rules are enough. Just keep repeating this solid, easily digestible maxim to yourself so that you don't have to face up to the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you're just not the kind of sport that you want to be. Stick to your neat platitudes so that you don't have to realise that they're just not true, or, at least that they're not what you'd hoped they'd be.

Maybe that man, subversive as he may seem, is absolutely, unequivocally, irrefutably right. 

Now what?


Sunday, November 1, 2009

You are the message

The philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) is arguably most famous for stating that the "medium is the message" (in Understanding media, 1964), meaning that no extension of ourselves is ever neutral. Of course, he was specifically referring to physical media – like the light bulbs, clothing and the television – but I would like to suggest that this is as true of our actions as it is of the tools we use to carry out our actions. Our whole being as a projection of ourselves sends out a message. We say something whether we speak or not.

I believe that if we measured the truth of our actions by their consistency with the words we speak, we would often discover some alarming discrepancies. In our everyday reality the message of our words is easily disrupted or misinterpreted because they don't match our actions. I remember a few years ago seeing a television commercial in which an Italian couple was arguing. The woman would say something like "Tua madre รจ una cuoca cattiva" (Your mother is a terrible cook) whilst throwing a vase full of flowers at her boyfriend. The subtitle would then appear, reading "I love you." The exaggerated incongruity  and absurdity of the whole scene makes it pretty funny, but I wonder if it is not entirely implausible. How many abusive relationships exist because of the detachment between words and deeds? How much hurt do we cause when we say something we mean, but then don't do what we mean to do?

Oddly enough, the primary role of confession in Christianity is not to spend ages beating ourselves up for our inability to live out the truth, but to simply admit that we have not let the message become incarnate in us. Confession is the acceptance of grace, not the denial of it. The word confess literally means to agree, or to say with. It is the admission of truth, whether the truth is comfortable or not. It is equivalent of the Koine Greek word exomologeo, which literally means, to speak out the word or to let the inside be made evident outside. Now, the point I really want to make here is that often the best way to confess – and get the word out – is to live it out. Speak only when your words can match your actions. 

I remember hearing of two friends who had this massive argument. A couple of days later, to say sorry, the one guy went to his friend's house at some crazy hour in the morning, and (without telling his friend about it) began to mow his front lawn. He didn't say sorry ever, at least not with his mouth. But he lived out his apology. This, I suppose, is what we mean when we say that actions speak louder than words, and what St. Francis of Assisi might have meant when he told his friends to "preach always, and only if necessary, use words."



Monday, October 26, 2009

Ideas that breathe

I like to create ideas and then give them room to breathe. And I've realised that the only way ideas can truly breathe is if there are people around who are willing to give them sufficient space to breathe. Fundamentalists of all kinds – not just within religious circles – tend to be pretty comfortable in their space, and so squash any idea that may force them to consider the fact that their view of reality is in some way incomplete. I know many of these people who, for whatever reason psychoanalysis might offer, take the oxygen away from an idea until it dies. An example of this sad phenomenon would be as follows. 

In some conversations, when I mention that I read quite a bit of philosophy (only when I'm asked, of course), or (more subtly) insert some kind of philosophical notion into the flow of our discourse, it's incredible to see the reactions of the people I'm with. Occasionally, people nod their heads and go, "Oh really! That's fascinating!" or "I've never thought of it like that before", but more often than not I've received blank stares or some kind of rebuttal in the form of a statement: "I'm not very philosophical" or "Let's not go into that right now." The first statement is an obvious lie – everyone is a philosopher just by living in this world. But not everyone is a very good philosopher. 

I really don't blame people for their inability to want to engage with even the simplest unfamiliar notion (Take Socrates's "The unexamined life is not worth living" or Chesterton's "A yawn is a silent shout" for example). I think it's uncomfortable for most of us to have to challenge our own lived-in status quo. I dare say that all of us, in different ways, are prone to taking the oxygen away from interesting ideas. But, obviously, in thinking about this, I've realised that the kind of person I want to be is someone who listens well. In the end, the idea that I listen to may be flawed, ridiculous, daft or untrue; but how will I know that unless I let the idea come out of hiding? 

I can't help thinking of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein as a metaphor for this where the people of the town want to kill the 'abomination' that Dr. Frankenstein has made before they understand the nature of the monster. He may be ugly, but what if underneath that vile exterior he is a really peace-loving guy? What if the monster is really not a monster at all. Sadly, in the tale (as far as I can recall), the monster becomes monstrous precisely because that is how he is treated. 



Tuesday, October 20, 2009

A parable

A long time ago there was a large, walled city with no name that was the envy of the ancient world. However, its reputation was built merely on hearsay, for the only people allowed in and out of the giant city gates were the people who came from the city, and those people never spoke of their own country to those who did not belong to it. 

As rumours grew of the wealth of the city with no name, more and more people wanted to find out what was going on behind its walls. Kings and politicians were particularly interested in the wealth that they might find there. 

At last, a greedy young king from another great city took his soldiers and waged war on the city with no name. The war raged on for many years until, at last, the king, now old, and his men were able to break through the main gate. By then, so many lives had been lost. Most of the people of the city with no name were dead. 

It was certainly a revelation to the invaders to discover that there was nothing within the walls but some tents, humble farm fields and a few sheep and cattle. There was no wealth at all to speak of. 

"Why do you have such high walls?" the old greedy king asked one of the few surviving locals.
"These walls are the legacy of our forefathers," said the man. "The walls are to help us to protect what we have."
"But you have nothing!" exclaimed the king.
"Dear king," said the man. "You have conquered the city, and are now its ruler. It is no longer we who have nothing, but you."

And the king wept. Finally it had been revealed to him what he'd been searching for his entire life.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Polemics

A 'polemic' is the term we use for any kind of argument that has a very strong stance on any particular issue that is being debated. Naturally, there is a place for polemics, because some things are right and others are wrong; and polemics help us to figure out the difference. But there is a dark side to polemics ...

Polemical reasoning encourages people to be hard-headed at the beginning of an argument and utterly immovable by the end. If a person thinks he is right at the beginning of an argument, he will be even more convinced of his rightness by the end of it. And if two people argue with this same stubborn attitude, the result is relational disconnection, where everyone is talking but no one is listening. In fact, the Greek word from which we get the English polemic is the word polemos. Polemos means 'war'. 

While there are other possible ways of arguing (through paradoxical or metaxological reasoning, for instance), the point I want to make here is far simpler: it is only by listening that we find the truth. It is only by asking questions that reality is opened up to us. Merely hammering across a one-sided view of everything in our world will probably end up making us very one-dimensional people. 





Sunday, October 18, 2009

Emergent detergent

This past Friday, I sat around a table drinking coffee and discussing the so-called emergent church movement with a few friends. Two of them in particular were doing what the church has been doing for the last two millennia: placing the emergent church in opposition to the evangelical church. If the church – the whole church – is the body of Christ, then why are we treating certain members of this body as if they don't belong. If a hand is hurt, do we cut it off in order to examine what is wrong with it? I agree that some of the doctrines of various factions of the emergent church may be a tad suspect, but I always find myself defending some of the nobler facets of the movement. After all, some of the doctrines of standard evangelical denominations are equally suspect. In fact, I don't know of a church with a perfect doctrine.

In this conversation, one of my friends in particular was very adamant that the emergent church – especially as represented by people like Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt and Brian McClaren – is tantamount to the worst kind of heresy. But I think that even if these guys have got some things wrong, surely not everything they say is utter hogwash? Is there nothing to affirm in what they're teaching? I feel that this sort of vehement denunciation does nothing to build anyone up, and further extends polemical reasoning into a terribly irrational state: it's the kind of thinking that throws the baby out with the bath water. 

In the end, I've worked out that my main problem with all this stupid arguing over things that we have no control over is that it shows up our desire to prove, like true pharisees, that we have it more figured out than other people, who themselves feel that they are more clued up than we are. Everybody thinks they're right, which is precisely why everything goes wrong all the time. I left that conversation on Friday feeling downcast and heavyhearted. It has taken me two days to figure out why. It felt like we were speaking about God's people behind His back.  The words did not honour God or His holy church. There may have been truth in what was said, although I am doubtful of this, but there was no love.

This letter from Pseudo-Dionysius (5th century AD) to a friend  of his (named Sosipater), who was doing some church bashing of his own, is very helpful:

"Do not count it a triumph, Reverend Sosipater, that you are denouncing a cult or a point of view which does not seem good to you. And do not imagine that, having thoroughly refuted it, all is therefore well with you. For it could happen that the one hidden truth could escape both you and others in the midst of falsehoods and appearances. What is not red does not have to be white. What is not a horse is not necessarily human. So cease from the denunciation of others and speak about truth in such a manner that everything you say will be irrefutable."


Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Control

The philosopher Epictetus (AD 55 - 135) had some truly brilliant advice for those who have the world weighing down on them. In principle, he argued that people should learn to accept what they cannot control, and to do something about the things that they can control. Funnily enough, this principle is found in something that we know today as Reinhold Niebuhr's (1892-1971) Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference ..." This prayer is often quoted, but without the rest of it, which I think is truly beautiful:

"... Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen."

There's a huge amount of freedom that comes when we realise that we are not in control; in short, when we realise that we are not God. This is not to negate free will, but to accept that the greatest freedom comes, paradoxically, when we relinquish our freedom. After all, it is written that those who lose their lives will be found.


Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Creation before the fall...

The monk Pelagius (c. 360 - c. 420 AD) denied the doctrine of original sin, and this upset a lot of people who were more fond of the Augustinian position, which states (approximately) that humankind is inherently evil. Pelagius was deemed a heretic by the Synod of Carthage, and many people at the time felt that justice had been served. After all, how dare this anyone proclaim that human beings are inherently good?!

I'm not too sure about the finer points of Pelagian doctrine, but I'm pretty sure that he may have presented something worth considering. People are very good at raising the issue of original sin, and they have a history filled with hundreds of bloody wars, brutal killings and heartless cruelties to back them up. But what about the good stuff? Surely God pronounced his creation good before the fall. Surely we are not all totally depraved? 

Chesterton writes that what is wrong with this world is that we do not ask what is right. And I think this is an invaluable insight into this issue: it's easy to negate the negative, but not so easy (or natural) to affirm the positive. I know enough moral atheists to be able to tell you that even the godless are capable of being godly. I know enough fallen people to know that even the fallen are reflective of the fact that they were created good. In the end, I have no problem with the doctrine of original sin. But I do have problem with the denial of the doctrine of original good. 


Thursday, October 8, 2009

Thoughts at 23h11

It's pretty late, though not impossibly late, and I'm sitting here in my kitchen with a cup of tea after what has been a really hard, long week. My thought for the day comes in the form of a question: isn't it amazing how we spend most of our time planning for a future that may not exist? We work really hard sometimes, and maybe the work isn't going to lead to anything. I think acknowledging this may be a good way of figuring out whether or not the things we are busy with now are in fact worthwhile. If the future never happens, at least you can say, "Well, hey, I think what I'm doing now is valuable, even if it never sees the light of tomorrow!"

Now, in preparation for this tomorrow that may not exist, I'm going to do something that I definitely deem worthwhile: I'm going to sleep.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Human doings, human beings

People like to see themselves in the light of what they do, because it's easy enough to measure success or failure: if you climb to the tope of Kilimanjaro, you're a successful climber; if you save someone's life, you're a hero; if you arrive at work, your driving can't be that bad. Right? Actions are easy to label. 

I've heard that ants, who lose the scent trail that they follow, can end up following each other in an endless circle.  These ants can carry on in this 'circular mill' until they collapse or die. If they're lucky, they can lose their way again, thus escaping the circular mill. If this doesn't happen, all they have is a perpetuation of a perpetuation: on and on it goes.

The cultures we inhabit can be much the same. Fashion, technology, consumerism, religion and any number of the things we encounter in culture are often just perpetuations of perpetuations; copies of copies of copies. No one remembers why they do things. They just know they need to do them. These circular mills are so dangerous for the soul, and are very easy to trigger – as a friend of mine pointed out to me, "there's such a lot of energy, a sense of being 'in', a feeling of moving forward together". Circular mills cause us to mistake movement for progress. So, we do a lot, and we give what we do a name, but we still have no idea who we are.

To get out of the circular mill, all we need is a point of  reference point outside of the circle – what I like to call a transcendent point of attention. This point of attention doesn't have to be static but it should give a sense of whether we are on the right track in all that we do. I believe wholeheartedly that this transcendent point of attention is Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Zaccheus the Pharisee, the God who calls Himself "I Am"... All that God does comes out of who He is. And surely we can learn from that? Surely we should figure out who we are first before we climb Kilamanjaro or drive to work? 

I think people are so obsessed with what they do, because they've forgotten who they are, and it's both scary and embarrassing for them to have to admit that. 

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Welcomeness

"Blessed are the happy-go-lucky boys and girls," Kurt Vonnegut writes. But today, I don't feel so happy-go-lucky. I feel like there's a lot wrong with the world, 'cause when I do the math, very little in this life adds up to justice, peace and harmony. I really don't want to let my thoughts degenerate into a mindless mash of pessimism and hopelessness, but sometimes it's hard to stay positive. 

Still, I think for all the mess and the sadness in this world, Jesus' beatitudes are a tremendous comfort to me. They acknowledge that the state of things is not as it should be; that we are not where we should be; they acknowledge our poverty of spirit, our sadness, our down-and-outness. But they also acknowledge the goodness of God.  He calls us 'Blessed' which is not the same as 'happy' or 'happy-go-lucky'. It's more like the word 'welcome':

Welcome are the poor in spirit. Welcome are those who mourn. Welcome are the misfits, the lonely, the outcasts, the strangers, the addicts, the beaten-up, the fearful, the hopeless, the pessimistic, the depressed, those who struggle, those who grapple, those who wish things were different. 

The beatitudes are not things to strive for, but realities to accept. We don't need to become poor in spirit, because we are poor in spirit. And yet, because of who God is, we are welcome to step into his home, to let ourselves be wrapped up in his arms, to feel loved and accepted despite our flaws and despite the messes we encounter in this world. I just hope that I will be able to offer that sort of acceptance to everyone I meet along the way.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Vulnerability and exposure

Every once in a while, in moments of weakness, I find myself uttering various kinds of deeply felt, deeply believed truth. In those rare moments I'm simply being honest about what I'm going through, and what I'm thinking and feeling. Often, if I'm lucky, my honesty is met with warmth, openness and gentleness. But, sometimes, those moments are met with a cold, blank stare or a blunt retort. 

This is something I've experienced throughout my life, but was reminded of today when something I said was met with the latter response. So, today, in being reminded of this, a startling truth was made evident to me, and it is this: that vulnerability feels like vulnerability only when it is not reciprocated. When two people are being vulnerable together it is the most liberating thing. But vulnerability without reciprocation is merely exposure. It's the exposure of everyone involved; of me and the other person. 

This makes me realise that we are all really like Adam in the garden of Eden, trying to hide our nakedness, trying not to get found out. But at the same time, we long to be known and understood. So here we are, vulnerable, yet exposed. We're hiding from God, but all the while He is calling out to us, asking us where we are. God longs for us to be vulnerable to Him, because He knows that when we are vulnerable to Him – when we own up to our flaws, our fears and our hopes – then, and only then, will we see that God longs to be vulnerable with us too. Only when we are vulnerable with God will we stop feeling so exposed.

God, rid me of God/me ...

It was Meister Eckhart who prayed that strange prayer, "God, rid me of God." It's a lovely prayer that deconstructionist, 'emergent types' like John Caputo (b.1940) and Peter Rollins (b. 1973) have embraced, because for them it represents a radical solution to flawed arrogance of Modernist absolutism. It's the idea that we need the real of God of All to destroy the idols that we have made in his name. Rich Mullins (1955-1997) echoes this when he says, "God is a jealous God and He will not share Himself with even the best ideas we have about Him." This is true, and we should affirm it as true. But we should also be careful of the consequences of making this kind of negative theology the only relevant theology.

In constantly seeking to destroy idols or have them destroyed, we may rid ourselves of true ideals as well. In short, we can end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. Negative theology seeks to find God by cutting away what is not God, similar to the way that the sculptor chips away the stone that is not the figure he wants to create.  It looks at effects more than causes, signifieds more than signs. Unfortunately, our natural human enthusiasm often leads us to chip so much away that we are left with nothing. And so, the ultimate consequence of negative theology is nihilism. Where there is no affirmation, all we have is negation: an endless chain of Derridean signifiers that end up signifying nothing. Where there is no affirmation, all we are doing is setting off on a journey that ends up merely away from here, a journey that ends up everywhere or nowhere. If everything is in flux, nothing is solid, and no knowledge of truth is possible.

Caputo calls deconstruction – this movement away from here – 'radical hermeneutics', or the 'hermeneutics of the kingdom of God'. But I side with Paul Ricoeur's (1913-2005) notion that it is really the 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. It can so easily become the suspicion that the God who is ridding us of God is not the God who should be doing so, but another construct that we have invented. 

My prayer, then, is something else: it is that God may rid me of me or "I". The destruction of the ego or the denial of self is what allows us to both negate and affirm, to cut away the rubbish in order to affirm truth. Having God help us to destroy our selves is a surefire way to destroy the false notions we have of God. For those who lose themselves will end up finding themselves; those who lose their lives will save it. 

May God rid me of me.






Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Paganism and redemption

I know it's a little premature to be talking about Christmas, but today I was reminded by my dad that there are some people in the world (who are, possibly, mad), who think that Christians shouldn't celebrate Christmas because Christmas replaces something that was, at its root, a pagan festival. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I know people like this. They're nice, friendly, well-meaning, and (of course) utterly wrong. 

The thing to remember about all pagan practices, from tattooing to fertility cults, is that they are inextricably tied to the fall of humankind (which, I'm told, has something to do with a snake and a tree in a garden with a couple of poor, misguided people). And if people fall, which they do, then surely they can be picked up again? 

Christmas – the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, not the celebration of mindless capitalism – is a beautiful thing, especially if it replaces some odd pagan festival, because it symbolises the possibility that all things, even grossly ungodly festivals, may be redeemable. Christmas means that even people like me – people who lose their way occasionally, make mistakes, upset other people but generally do their best not to be walking disasters – are not beyond redemption. That sounds like really good news to me. The abolishment of Christmas, on the other hand, sounds like a crime against humanity.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Hereness

Sometimes we're miles away, dreaming of some future event or some impossibly distant outcome. Other times, we're locked in some subjective history-book version of random past experiences. Most times, we forget that the present moment is the only one in which we truly have contact with reality. And yet it's easier to dwell on what was or to speculate on what could be. And so, remarkably, we miss the sacrament of the now. Now we are everywhere, all around, but not here. Now we are then. Now we are not now. I really long to understand fully what it is like to really live in the moment. 

Sunday, September 6, 2009

On the value of impractical things

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately, so my house is starting to look like a bomb has just gone off in storeroom for books. I've got books about postmodern philosophy, radical orthodoxy, design thinking, visual culture and many other topics strewn all about the place. The thing is, I have to read a lot at the moment; I'm busy writing a proposal for my PhD thesis. So the books-everywhere-mess is understandable. 

It's just that every now and then, I step out of this beautiful theoretical bubble and I wonder what the use of all of this is. I mean, the things I'm reading are all very interesting, and generally I find myself utterly enthralled by the ideas I'm encountering; but on any kind of practical human level – the level that we're all forced to live in at least 80 percent of the time – I don't know if it does me any good. Answer me this, Jacques Derrida, what is the point of your deconstruction? What does it help me to always be aware of the inherent decay of language and ideas? (For example.)

Okay, so, just in thinking about this for a few minutes, here are my thoughts on why it's important to read things that are of no practical use to anyone:

1) Practicality is over rated anyway. It's the impractical things like art and music and intricate, interesting theories that make life worth living. You can't brush your teeth with music or art or any of these weird ideas, but can you honestly imagine how drab and dull life would become without them?

2) Humility is an essential to living a decent, aware life; and there's no better way to be humble than to realise just how much you haven't figured out yet – or, better, to realise how little every one else seems to know as well.

3) Awareness is also essential to living a decent life, and there's nothing that wakes me up more than imaginative, well argued ideas. 

4) Man cannot live by bread alone, and while I'm pretty sure not all of the stuff I'm reading can be taken as direct quotations of the Maker of the Universe, I can't help but think that God is there in the words of this variety of thinkers. At least, I'm made more aware of God's being through these ideas that I'm reading. 

5) It's fun. And I like things that are fun.

6) Order is over rated. It's good, once in a while, to have your house covered in books because mess makes life interesting (but, again, only once in a while.)
 

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Displacement and memory

This morning I met up with a friend at a new shopping mall, one that I didn't know existed until today. In spending just a short time in this new space, it occurred to me that our a sense of identity is often connected to our sense of space. Our homes, schools and places of work – these become extensions of ourselves, or inputs into our sense of self.

But I've noticed something that may or may not be alarming, depending on how you look at it: we keep on moving to other spaces, or changing the spaces we inhabit. In ages gone by, a person would spend his or her whole life living in one space, with very little changing. These days, however, everything changes all the time, and I'm starting to wonder how this might affect our sense of identity. Does this constant reshaping of the landscape cause us to gain a deeper sense of the flux of life? Does it make our sense of self more fluid? 

I've also noticed that we're losing a sense not only of self, but also of time. The spaces we inhabit, after all, are ways for us to connect with history through material realities. A sense of the sameness of space – a sense that one gets easily in Europe – helps to evoke memories, both personal and collective. The unchanged throws a sharp light onto what has changed, thereby giving us a better sense of the passing of time. But if the spaces we inhabit shift and change all the time, what is there to remember? The changing of spaces obfuscates memory. 

To be honest, the concern that haunts me the most is far more practical and concrete than the above concerns. It is the concern that we have another mall in this city. Surely there are enough temples erected in the name of the gods of capitalism? Do we really need another one? But, I suppose, we'll never have enough until we've had too much. Such is the nature of the insane greed of our age. 


Grattitude and humility

GK Chesterton writes that the secret of life is found in laughter and humility, but I'd like to add to that. The secret of life lies in gratitude and humility. Laughter, after all, is an expression of gratitude. It's a natural way of expressing thanks for the deconstruction of our solipsistic seriousness. Laughter pulls us beyond ourselves and humble gratitude helps us to see ourselves as we really are. It is only in gratitude and humility that we realise that everything we have comes from somewhere other than ourselves. In a nutshell, gratitude and humility force us to come to terms with the stark reality that we are not God. 

Thank God for gratitude and humility.


Followers