I Just Might

Modern Preaching: a study in ensnarement between Enlightenment and Postmodernism

2012-01-18T15:56:00.001-06:00

So I've (finally) finished grad school, moved into my church (yes, you read that right), am finding my place within the strata and tangle of this fascinating community, and am now sorting out how best to do the visa thing so that I can stay, which will probably involve going back to Oz for half a year. So that'll be nice. I have failed to update this blog in ... um. However many months. Even though there has probably been (and will be) plenty to tell you about. All of this is true. But can wait.

Oddly enough, the subject of this post follows on, thematically at least, from my previous one. Never let it be said I don't value continuity. I have now spent three years in seminary, which has included one semester of studying didactic preaching (which was the sum total of what was taught in the class called "Communication of Biblical Truth", and if that doesn't give you pause, the rest of this post is for you; likewise, if you find the "P" word up there in the title a dirty one), along with I don't know how many years of sitting in church listening to preaching. I am no expert. But I am a heavily experienced observer. And now, you are going to get My Opinion.

Brace yourself.

Modern preaching, more or less, sucks.

Now – it is encumbent on me to acknowledge that amongst the preachers I know and have heard, there are earnest, intelligent, accomplished souls who sincerely seek God's truth to proclaim it, and believe that our modern preaching form is the best method to do so. If you are among this group of people, and find yourself affronted by the above statement, I don't apologise for making it but you can take the (postmodern) comfort that it is, as stated, my opinion. Quite likely the majority of your audiences enjoy your preaching, or are at the very least comfortable with it. There have almost certainly been times, possibly even more times than not, when I've found something enjoyable in it too.

For the enlightenment-minded among you all, I shall break this topic down into its graspable component parts and deliver these parts in a discourse with an eye to rationality and persuasiveness. For the modern-minded, I shall break it down, include self-conscious commentary and utilise technological advantages available to me. And for the postmodern-minded, I shall share story and experience personal to myself and others. I will not, however, do these things in any real delineated way (since they're all interrelated anyhow). You're big boys and girls and, I hope, can juggle various epistemological swerves without too much hand-holding.

the story so far

(or, ESTABLISHING RELEVANT CONTEXT: A Study in the Great Movements in Recent Eras of Thought)

(if you're impatient for the point, skip to the next section)

Our story opens with the Enlightenment, or, "the Age of Reason":

A Glorious Age of Man, wherein the kindled Rebirth of Intellect and Enquiry from the ashes of the Dark Ages is fanned into its Brightest Blaze of Reason Triumphant. Mystical truth and its attendant vagaries is pruned, sensibly, from the province of Reason; only that which may be Weighed, Measured, Quantified, Proved – that which is Objectively Available to All Minds and Experiences in All Circumstances – may be effectively engaged as Truth and basis for progress. A solid, unchanging, immovable, rational Foundation upon which to build the Heady Spires of Human Endeavour.

(Anchored, it is generally understood, by the assumption that what undergirds this discoverably-consistent and coherent world is a consistent and coherent, discoverable Creator. Ie, God is the Measure of All Things.)

Huzzah! Come one, come all, and look upon the definitive, societies-wide accomplishment of Enlightenment Thought, and marvel: the Great Wonder of the Industrial Revolution! Through Rational Thought and Invention, we may raise Mankind to Heights undreamed of by any age before!

Excellent. Job well done, everyone. Now all we have to do is keep building, yes? Keep innovating on Truth that can be proven – the Scientific Method being our very best friend, here – and the future is gravy. The whole world brought forth into light and plenty, the dark days of credulity, superstition and misery left, thankfully, far behind us.

So we do; we build, and build, and discover and discover, and theorise and experiment and revise and experiment and generally achieve mastery of the rational universe (or, you know, close enough). Heartened by the reassuring mechanistic consistency of the observable, quantifiable world, we begin to suspect we can actually do without the whole undergirding God thing, or at least his non-mechanistic qualities, because frankly his whole mystical, mysterious, transcendent shtick had become rather unseemly (not to mention messy) in light of our bright-and-shiny new testable, knowable, dependable Truth. Enter Deism. And, with the proposal of a mechanism for diversity of life as we observe it without the need for divine creativity (that would be Darwinian Evolution; you may have heard of it), enter atheism.

Which is ever so much better, really. Neater, certainly! The physical world, with its attendant epistemological boundaries, is a better foundation of coherency for enquiry into Truth than the unmeasurable divine, as the progress and productivity of the Enlightenment conclusively demonstrated. Material blessings, once superstitiously – irrationally – considered the province of the Great Unpredictable Provider In the Sky, are now achieved by human invention alone. Bounty is made possible, not through appeasing deity but through properly grasping and implementing Scientific Principles; progress and Truth can thus be decoupled from anything spiritual at all, and in fact there's no reason to believe that anything outside of the natural world (that is, anything that can be measured ... er, by the natural world, but pay no nevermind to that, because –) even exists. Truth is ... well, TRUTH is ours, if it's anyone's, obviously, and our TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES are in and of themselves the progressive realisation of the ideal. HUMANISM! MANKIND IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS! Finally, we have something we can truly depend on – truly control, because it's us, after all – as our EVOLUTIONARY PINACLE OF KNOWLEDGE, MORALITY, PROGRESS, MASTERY OF ALL WE SURVEY, AND ALL THAT STUFF.

(Those playing along at home would be correct in surmising that this marks the emergence of the MODERN PERIOD – THE "SCIENTIFIC AGE".)

I don't know about you, but there's a comfortable sense that we're sitting pretty right about now. We have tamed – tamed! – the physical universe.... Let me just say that again, in the unlikely event that the enormity of such an accomplishment has become blasé through familiarity: we have tamed the physical universe. One or two short centuries of rigourous intellectual exertion is all it took, and collectively the human brain has encompassed all there is to material existence. (And since we have mostly decided there is nothing outside that, we are de facto World Series Champions.)

Then ... well, I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't seen it, so [spoiler alert]: then, the Twentieth Century happened. Which included, among other notable things, the discovery of subatomic particles, the development of some really weird physics, the invention of the commercially-lucrative adolescent age group, two world wars, a decades-long global stalemate with enough firepower to destroy the world 100 times over, and more inventive and effective and horrific ways of killing each other with technology than any previous century ever dreamed of (which is not to say there weren't some ancient and medieval periods that didn't give that attempt their very damnedest). I'm not saying there weren't good things going on, too, but to some, that whole "PINNACLE" business began to look just a little feeble, if not outright ... well. Suspect, to be honest. People began to comment. Eventually, spurred on no doubt by all that rebellious sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll, there were ... questions.

The most irritating, to the MODERN mindset, was that staple of teenage thought: oh yeah? Well, how do you know? This question of nascent postmodernism (the "information age") may have found a niche, of oddity if nothing else, within the Enlightenment question of: ah, interesting, how do you know?, but unfortunately that question had accumulated answers enough that MODERNITY had codified the statement: we know actually quite a lot, thankyouverymuch, and while you're under OUR ROOF you'll kindly recall that WE make the rules! We worked very hard to establish this domicile upon SCIENTIFICALLY-PROVEN UNIVERSAL CERTAINTY and we will not have you tracking in mud and kicking the walls with your "relativism" and "subjectivism" and elephants and blindfolds! And who let that Uncertainty Principle in here –? ... oh wait, that was us.

Thus a titanic struggle over TRUTH began. Only, not really. Because the Enlightenment/MODERN tradition had laid claim to the possession of TRUTH so strongly, framing it as "that which can be proven through replication of results" with such success, postmodernism couldn't reject (or move past) MODERNIST principles without rejecting TRUTH as well. Impetuous move, perhaps, but let no one say it isn't fun to make MODERNS splutter forth righteous effrontery with a well-aimed declaration that all truth is subjective.

Well, naturally there is spluttering. It's a nonsense claim. If there were going to be any attempt at INTERNAL, LOGICAL CONSISTENCY, the statement would read: all truth is subjective, even this one. Which would then promptly self-destruct, under the sneers of MODERNS and their Very Rational Enlightened foundation. Which, if postmodernism looked to MODERN epistemology to legitimize its truth-claims, would be a problem. Rather infuriatingly, however, it doesn't. It looks to its own. I mean, the very nerve of it, but that's what it does. (And under the postmodern epistemology, all truth is subjective is not problematic – because they have no problem with the idea that something can be both nonsensical and true at the same time. It is only Enlightenment and MODERN thought that insists on a one-to-one correlation of MAKING LOGICAL SENSE with TRUTH.)

Yes, that's right: postmodernism makes truth-claims. Of course it does. All philosophies do. The problem it's dealing with is that it's making truth-claims in an arena where the philosophy it is challenging long ago claimed a monopoly on TRUTH. And the arena itself. And, for good measure, declared that nothing else even existed. Strategically, then, the best option is to take the discussion outside the arena, provided there is indeed ground beyond its boundaries, which is precisely what postmodernism did.

In terms of the broader discussion of truth, it's a pity, since there is a lot of good stuff inside that arena, but MODERNISM's lock on it means it's currently unwinnable; better to just leave them in there until they're starved into cultural irrelevancy. In the meantime, it has turned out that the ground outside is wild with tantalising irrationality and fertile with possibilities. The vast unmappable jungles of the mystic and the mysterious, so long abandoned, are being rediscovered, via the epistemology of personal experience – the only thing (as adolescents have discovered beyond any question) one can truly depend on. The individual is the measure of all things! Or at least all the things that one individual can experience! Which, thanks to the internet, is actually quite a lot, even if it's 90% virtual and also complete rubbish.

... Is anyone still with me? Hello?

what this has to do with anything

(or, CUT TO THE CHASE: Enough with the Ridiculous Typography Already! Wherein Capitals and Italics resume their Traditional, Objective Purpose of Authorial Emphasis (and I stop trying to be so damn clever).)

It may surprise some of us to learn that the bible was written a while ago. Now, I hear chuckling in the audience, and I appreciate that, because I was in fact making a little joke there. Which I will now make again: the bible was written a while ago. In fact, it was written before any of those eras listed in vaguely storied form above. And the reason it's important to point this out is because it was written by different people, in different cultures, all of which had different ways of evaluating truth.

If you look at those eras up there, each one has accepted forms in which truth is communicated. The job of a good preacher is to study what the bible says and do their best to understand that in the light of the culture it said it in, attempt to grasp the essential message, and communicate it in such a way that preserves the integrity of the essential message to their audience.

So far, so good, although even a quick pause for thought will spot that Moderns and Postmoderns require very different preaching approaches, and I want to say something about this quickly before moving on. I was going to say a great deal more, as you can probably tell from the amount of context I established up there, but then I realized it's easy to rant about styles of preaching and how they fall short of some standard; I don't like didactic preaching but that's because it bores me to tears, not because it lacks any merit whatsoever for communicating truth. I'm not going to assert that it sucks on that basis alone (because I've got a better one; see below).

Essentially, the point I was going to make about preaching to the different philosophies up there can be boiled down to this:

Moderns receive truth presented in a propositional format. The essay format, that we had drilled into us since forever: a central argument, given as introduction; three points (with sub-points); conclusion. (Even writing that makes my toes clench, but never mind my raging personal hate-on for it right now. Just wanted to remind you it's there.) They love powerpoints and bulletpoints; the message is clearly laid out in a logical step-by-step progression, intellectually graspable.

Postmoderns receive truth presented in a personal format. The closest the pulpit can get to that is the testimonial format, although really the way to communicate truth to a Postmodern is to put them in a situation where it is experientially graspable (which is nigh-impossible from the pulpit). Hence the appeal of a dynamic "worship" session; the music is an experience they can participate in.

The utterly objective and the utterly subjective, wanting nothing to do with one another. Which is a pity, because it is in the context they give one another when they're integrated that actual meaning is found. Didactic preaching, which takes the propositional format above, acknowledges this by ritually including a sub-point of illustration for each point (usually extremely poorly), between the sub-point of exposition and the sub-point of application. This is done because the exposition doesn't mean much – has little force for application – until it is contextualized to personal experience. An illustration – a story, basically – is used as the bridge between the two.

(Story is the bridge between the intellectual and the experiential forms of receiving truth. Actually, I'd go very much further and say that it's the vehicle that integrates truth on every level: propositional, experiential, applicational, personal, relational and communal. Just putting that out there.)

In any case, the conflict between how the Moderns and the Postmoderns in the pews are receiving the three-point sermon is not the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem of the didactic sermon also contains the problem with the pulpit itself: what it says about the nature of truth. The argument about objective vs subjective truth presupposes that truth is a set of statements about the nature of reality. The pulpit, which evolved from the Enlightenment tradition of lecture halls, of one person (or a series of people) standing at the front presenting on a subject, in and of itself limits truth to being a series of ideas, regardless of the criteria (reason vs experience) by which those ideas are evaluated for veracity. The entire Enlightenment-Modern-Postmodern pageant presupposes that truth takes place in the realm of ideas.

Therefore, the message from the pulpit and modern preaching (which is making a claim of communicating biblical truth) is: truth is an idea.

The message from the bible (the actual biblical truth) is: truth is a Person. Specifically, truth is Jesus Christ.

Jesus didn't say "The truth is about me"; he said "I am the truth." The truth IS Jesus Christ. The gospel isn't the good news about Jesus Christ; the gospel IS Jesus Christ. But generations of truth being presented as ideas to accept or reject has led us to believe that the "salvation message" is a series of theological propositions and not Jesus himself. The way is not following Jesus, the way IS Jesus. The life doesn't come from Jesus, the life IS Jesus. (Basically, the moment you stray from Jesus himself, you're in trouble. It's a decent rule-of-thumb. It's also remarkably helpful in that, as a person, Jesus Christ is eternally, universally relevant, regardless of the prevailing philosophy and culture.)

This proposition (that the Truth is the person Jesus Christ) can be said in a didactic sermon (although I can't say I recall ever hearing it). But that's the extent of it. That is as far as a didactic sermon alone can go to get that message across (while being undermined by the assumptions inherent in its own format). It doesn't matter if it's communicating truth in a way Moderns or Postmoderns will accept; its claim to being the venue in which biblical Truth is communicated is saying that truth is something it's biblically not. And that is why it sucks.

Does this sound interesting to you?

2011-02-17T16:20:00.002-06:00

Hello, yes, it's been a long time. Sorry about that. Life happened, and incidentally, is still happening.

Part of that whole business of life happening is that I am currently, against my will, taking a preaching class. Well, "Communication of Biblical Truth", but it's preaching. And homiletics. Which is kind of interesting, sure, but if you'd given me a choice between three credits of preaching and three credits of an elective class (which would have doubled my elective options), I would have chosen the LATTER. Emphatically.

However, being that I have to do this, I am taking what I can from it. A lot of it has to do with communication theory, which is fun enough, but then I do keep finding myself wanting to colour outside the box. In any case, tonight we all have to give the introduction to our sermons, a kind of warm up thing, to get us in the groove of standing up in front of each other and, well, preaching. And since I have to write out this introduction, which is feeling awkward, I thought I'd do it here, so that you can all share in my frantic attempts to be relevant, engaging, interesting, simple and challenging. And still remain somewhere in shouting distance of orthodox.

It's on James 3:13-18, and I'm kicking off with Peter Anspach's Evil Overlord List, and I just don't know how well that's going to fly. But here's what I've hammered out:

A while back, I came across this thing called Peter's Evil Overlord List. This Peter sat down and took a good long look at your Bond villains, your Star Trek villains, your Lord Saurons and Darth Vaders and Emperor Palpatines and White Witches of Narnia, all these guys who have aimed for total world domination, and figured out the ways they went wrong, and made up a list titled "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord". This way, when he comes to take over the world, he will have these rules in place and will have ensured his security.

Having posted it on the internet, he received more suggestions from other insightful people, and the list grew to over 200 items. For example:

– My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealling ones.

– My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

– One of my advisors will be a five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

– I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

– Whenever plans are drawn up that include a time-table, I'll post-date the completion 3 days after it's actually scheduled to occur and not worry too much if they get stolen.

– My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

I love this list. It's funny, and it shows a fair amount of insight and wisdom on the part of this evil-overlord-in-the-making. He has made an effort to learn how this whole system works, and he's applying his understanding by acting accordingly. Success is clearly guaranteed.

But as I was looking over it again, it struck me that there is still a problem with all of this. Every evil overlord faces the same one: no matter how clever they are about avoiding the pitfalls and protecting themselves, the author is going to make sure that the hero wins. So even though the evil overlord has mastered the world system he is in, his lack of understanding of the one who created it means all of his cleverness will ultimately be wasted – and most likely turned against him, which will be even more humiliating.

So much for fictional megalomaniacs. They had it coming anyway. Here's where it gets a bit more worrying: we all have a list like this. Not in so many words, probably, and certainly not in a numbered format. But we use them anyway. A classic one would be:

– I'm going to agree with my boss even though I think he's doing the wrong thing, because I can't risk endangering my job.

Or perhaps:

– If that's Mum on the phone, tell her I'm not home!

Or:

– I will repeat that rumour I heard about the guy who is in competition with me for this promotion.

– Next time my wife nags me about a chore I haven't done, I'm going to remind her about this and how she let me down.

– That person is really annoying me, and I know exactly what sarcastic thing to say to make people laugh at him and notice that I'm more clever.

What about:

– Although I should preach this passage boldly, it will offend some of the biggest contributers to the church, and I can't afford to lose their support.

– Until that person attending my church starts behaving in a more Christian way, I'm going to make my disapproval clear so that everyone knows I don't agree with what they're doing. I don't want to threaten my credibility with the congregation.

It's understandable, and let's not pretend that it isn't. Life isn't easy, and the world works in a certain way, and we have all learned to act accordingly. If we go along with some things, it makes life less difficult. And then we can save our strength for the things that are really important.

Although James doesn't mention the specific circumstances of the people he was writing to, he tells us enough to know that the Christians were not that well off, and didn't have much clout in their communities. The rich people, on the other hand, were using their influence against the Christians and taking advantage of them. Looking around at the world, seeing how it works, it's not surprising that the Christians might do what they could to appease the rich people, even if it meant turning their backs on fellow Christians. If a rich person happened to come along to church, or was even a Christian himself, wouldn't it make sense to treat that person as well as possible, in the hope that he could use his own worldly influence on your behalf? Wouldn't it make sense to use your resources wisely to make the right friends with the right people, and create some security, rather than spending it helping the poor who can't do anything for you and the church anyway? Wouldn't it make sense to act accordingly?

James doesn't tell them, or us, to be ignorant of the way the world works. If anything, he encourages us to understand it. But that's not the main point of this letter. James tells us that no matter how clever we become about how the world works, and how good we are at working with it, any security it gives will not last. Real wisdom lies in knowing the Author, understanding what He considers important and how He is going to make things turn out. And once we understand that, acting accordingly will look very different.

So what are the unmistakeable signs of true wisdom in our lives? How can we tell if what we're doing is really wise, or just clever?

Let's look at what James says about it, in James 3:13-18....

... So that's the introduction. Thumbs up? Down? Does it do all the things an introduction should do, whatever those are?

I'm a ramblin (wo)man

2010-08-14T00:57:00.001-05:00

It's my last night in Bend. I'm packing, burning cds for a car trip (iPod? what's that?), wondering how I fit so much in my bags on the way out here. Also wondering how I managed to pick up ten extra books, and also wondering if that indicates I've actually learned restraint. I probably won't get much sleep tonight (we leave town at 5 AM), but that's par for the course when I travel.

The moon is a heavy yellow crescent, drifting languidly through the green remnants of sunset, Venus trailing to the north. Above, the stars are beginning to emerge; at dark, you can even see the belt of the Milky Way. You can see satellites roaming across the starfield, and the occasional shooting star. Last night was the peak of the brief Perseid season, but most of the nights I've spent stargazing, I've seen one or two.

Only the moon and Venus will be visible in light-saturated Chicago, with its dull rosy underglow on the clouds and clear sky stained purple by golden streetlights. And that's beautiful, too. Much like beauty, God can be found anywhere and everywhere. This time of official solitude is at an end, but its effect is ongoing; it's played its part in refining me, shaping me as an instrument in God's hands. Blacksmiths smith their own tools, and so does God.

I still don't know exactly what to tell people about "solitude", which I foresee being a problem, going back to school. I'm going to have this conversation a lot. Hopefully by the tenth iteration, I'll have figured out what to say. Or perhaps not knowing will be part of the fun.

The question of whether I think everyone should do it is a little easier. I think yes. I think it's a unique and needed season, and that there are things God can do with you when he's got your undivided attention for a substantial amount of time that won't happen any other way. Does that mean I think everyone will do it? Obviously not. Personally, I don't think it's something only the "super Christians" can do, I think anyone could do it, if they're willing to let God take charge and not depend on their own spiritual strength (or other people's approval) for it to "work".

Then should people just drop what they're doing and run off to the backwoods or the monastery right now? Of course not. For most people, this will not be the first step in their journey. It comes at the needed time. God planned this time for me very carefully, when and how it happened, for best effect. I would encourage people to start considering it, and work out whether they're even willing to do it. And let God lead them from there.

Which leads to the question of "did it work"? Having only fuzzy expectations of the time (and having those thwarted), I would say an unequivocal yes. As I said, this was unique. There was no other way to teach me and show me the things I learned. Could the time have been more "efficient", or could I have done more with the time? Would I change things if I did it again? I'm sure it's possible, but one thing I know for sure is that God is not about efficiency. He can be very efficient when he chooses, but our God is extravagant, exuberant, abundant, a God who celebrates and lavishes, not economizes. Look at his creation; an infinite God doesn't get picky about effective time and resource management. We, his finite creations, do. Because his extravagance isn't in our power, and we don't trust his love to simply give it to us in the best way possible. He's taught me to trust that I will have what I need in the moment, and leave the future to him.

Anyway. I need to finish packing; the floor is strewn with my life's detritus, which I am once again attempting to fit into a sturdy back pack and two book bags. Perhaps one day I'll invest in "proper" luggage, but I doubt it. I like the impermanent, the old and faithful, the limitations that insure I discard regularly. It's one more thing that reminds me I'm only in transit.

learning through meaning, experience, and story

2010-08-04T14:12:00.005-05:00

Something that's been coming up a lot in conversation this summer are the interrelated topics of meaning and experience, and story, by which they are connected. These topics have been coming up in relation to two different things: how the head and the heart learn differently (head through meaning, heart through experience, and you can connect the rest of the dots there on your own); and the rather extraordinary imbalance of experience and meaning in our present culture.

The first has played a large part in understanding the journey God's got me on in all this, why he leads me into things that I can intellectually grasp, but resist experiencing. The dynamic of how the heart learns was part of an old post I did about how we deal with suffering and the questions it raises, but the basic idea is that heart can only ever learn through what it experiences. Meaning is meaningless to the heart.

When we are wronged or injured, our hearts are taught that we are of little value, resulting in the pain we feel (and the desire not to experience it again). When we are comforted and loved and supported, our hearts are taught that we have great value, resulting in the joy we feel (and the desire to experience it again).

There is no reasoning here, no past or future, just the shape and strength that our collective previous experience, and forward-looking hope and fear, have made of our hearts. There is only the present experience interacting with the present shape. Which is not to say that reason doesn't respond; it does, in a variety of ways. But the vehicle of every response has to be through story. The information of the head's meaning is translated by story in order to make sense to the heart, which experiences the information.

Obviously, I'm using the term "story" broadly here. For example, in the wake of "Alice" being slighted by "Bob", her head may remind her heart of the event (or an amalgam of events) of "Charles" loving and valuing her, and so soothe the pain in the moment by reawakening the experience of that joy. Or her head may spin a quick tale of why Bob and his opinion of her is worthless, and smother the pain with pride. Or her head may discover a story of misfortune that Bob is currently suffering himself, and awaken compassion or pity to replace her pain. I'm not saying these are all good or even very effective responses, but it's what we do, and the part we play in shaping and strengthening or weakening our hearts ourselves.

God wants our hearts, as much as our heads, to know his goodness and love. But that doesn't mean protecting us from all that we fear, because for one thing we all know that our hearts can be wrong in their hopes and fears. For another thing, we would never learn any better that way; experience ought to teach our hearts to be wiser (that is, better at matching hopes and fears to reality) and stronger (that is, more resilient to the effects of hopes, fears and reality).

If we only had comfort, all the time, our hearts would be paltry and shallow and ignorant of the vast ways and means God has to love us, knowing only endless single-note comfort. He teaches us the width and breadth and depth of his love by leading us out into the wide, broad, deep world and showing us his love in every circumstance, and thus shapes and strengthens our hearts. Very often, it is only in the places we fear – the places where our hearts have been shaped by previous experience to expect rejection and the pain of being devalued – that he can get us to pay attention to him, reach for him, to our huge loss.

Which has all been part of this solitude. One of the enormously beneficial and scary effects of solitude is that you can't get away from your own mess. Everything that our hearts believe make us less valuable, less worthy of love, because it's what we've been rejected for before. You sit there with the mess and God slowly reveals each part, letting you discover his purpose and love and value of you in allowing it in your life in the first place. His purpose and love is guaranteed, by the way – not because of our value, but because of who he is, which is what our value depends on in the first place.

Which is too good and joyous a thing to be dragged down by a rant about all that's broken and twisted in our current culture (that may be a slight exaggeration), so I will leave that for another (more ranty) day.

book review: "Reaching Out" by Henri JM Nouwen

2010-07-16T04:29:00.003-05:00

I have not been having much success in figuring out what I want to say about solitude so far. Even amongst the three solitude interns, the experience of solitude has been varied, because it is such an individual thing.

In fact, I don't think I can put it better than I did in a skype chat with my friend Tim, when he asked how it was going: "This is going to get hackneyed, but I don't know how to talk about it. It's so subtle. Also, hard. Also, I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time. I am now certain that everyone will have a completely different experience of solitude, so giving the particulars doesn't help give the real sense of it."

So having (mostly) finished the two books that we intended to read through (which means we get to do another one – GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy, huzzah!), I thought I could review each of them, and perhaps doing so will give some feel for what it has all been like.

Therefore, the first one we read: Reaching Out by Henri JM Nouwen. It's not a large book, but is a rich one in its shades of mysticism and simple truth, worth spending time to savour. Nouwen himself is a Dutch, Catholic priest and very successful theological academic, who left that career in order to work in a community of adults with mental disabilities in Canada.

The basic idea of the book is very simple: it concerns "The three movements of the spiritual life." Each of the three sections of the book deal with one; concerning oneself, moving from loneliness to solitude; concerning others, moving from hostility to hospitality; and concerning God, moving from illusion to prayer. What is quite striking, for such deep and often painful subjects, is how calm the discourse is, how gentle yet unflinching and honest in its treatment.

In the introduction, Nouwen explains,

This book is a response to the question: 'What does it mean to live a life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ?' Therefore, it is a personal book, a book born out of struggles which in the first place were and still and are my own. But during the years it became more and more clear that by deepening these struggles, by following them to their roots, I was touching a level where they could be shared. This book does not offer answers or solutions but is written in the conviction that the quest for an authentic Christian spirituality is worth the effort and the pain, since in the midst of this quest we can find signs offering hope, courage and confidence.

Amongst the mostly Christian circles I currently have available for discussion, the last two movements don't prove too difficult, because we already have some kind of concept of what "hostility", "hospitality", "illusion" and "prayer" are, as well as a value judgement of them, whether or not we have examined them very deeply. But with the first movement, loneliness to solitude, most people laugh (nervously), and say that they're not really lonely, or called to solitude for that matter (unlike us weirdo interns, clearly). So that's a good place to start.

Nouwen makes a very convincing case that loneliness is the basic state of every human soul – not that he's actually arguing anything; he's just examining it. He notes:

in a period of history in which we have become so acutely aware of our alienation in its different manifestations, it has become difficult to unmask the illusion that the final solution for our experience of loneliness is to be found in human togetherness.

One illustration I found quite striking was an experience he recalls of the New York subway, looking from huge ads on the wall depicting people connected and joyous, to the crowds of people on the platform, each in their own severe bubble of isolation. If need for human connection and belonging (ie, loneliness) weren't real and compelling, advertising campaigns wouldn't use it to sell their product. Millions of songs and thousands of movies would hold very little appeal, because apart from their refrain of achieving some kind of intimacy, they don't have much to recommend them.

But he makes the point strongly that this essential aloneness of the human experience is something to be entered into, not fled into addiction of all kinds. If we will only be still in it – something that requires both courage and faith – we discover we can be still in it. That everything we ran from or tried to numb does not destroy us, however painful, but helps deepen our person and our journey.

[It] is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.

One of his students wrote:

When loneliness is hauting me with its possibility of being a threshold instead of a dead end, a new creation instead of a grave, a meeting place instead of an abyss, then time loses its desperate clutch on me. Then I no longer have to live in a frenzy of activity, overwhelmed and afraid for the missed opportunity.

It is this loneliness which is a universal human condition; the state of solitude it enables us to enter, a universal humal calling. In this solitude, at rest instead of always grasping, we finally find space for true intimacy, not demanding others to meet needs they cannot meet, and knowing when and why to gently refuse their demands of us. I can be I, and you can be you.

Hostility to hospitality is essentially this: where we can create and maintain a space into which someone can enter and be received as themselves, without cruel expectations. It is in this safe space they can also be confronted as needed, maintaining careful balance.

Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody.

And it may be quickly deduced that illusion to prayer is also connected to these two, but toward God. He explains:

Although loneliness and hostility are more easily understandable in light of our day-to-day experiences than the awareness of the illusiory quality of many of our strivings, it is only in the lasting effort to unmask the illusions of our existence that a real spiritual life is possible. In order to convert our crying loneliness into a silent solitude and to create a fearless place where strangers can feel at home, we need the willingness and courage to reach out far beyond the limitations of our fragile and finite existence toward our loving God in whom all life is anchored.... Solitude and hospitality can only bear lasting fruits when they are embedded in a broader, deeper and higher reality from which they receive their vitality.

I wish I could simply quote the whole book, but enough for now. If the quotes intrigue you, I can't recommend reading the book highly enough. It put language to so much that I've been grappling with, it was like having a conversation with an old and beloved friend who I hadn't seen in too long. It is a work of both courage and faith, of honesty and vulnerability; it creates the hospitable space and invites the reader to enter, to be both received and confronted in safety.

fires not quenched

2010-07-05T01:59:00.085-05:00

It's the fourth – or the end of it, anyway. (Timezones can be tricky.) People are still letting off the occasional firework, legal (stays on the ground) and illegal (shoots into the air and explodes). There's a wild kind of permissiveness in the air; the heady aroma of booze, barbeques, fireworks and patriotism. Hell of a combination. America ... is a strange place. And sometimes I feel very strange in it.

Here in Bend, they let fireworks off a butte which is kind of central to the town and surrounding suburbs. However, what people really look forward to is the butte catching fire, which it does almost every year. Tonight was no exception; I was with a bunch of other interns at a host's house, right at the foot of the butte, and we spotted (and cheered) two blazes before they were put out by the fire department, standing by.

My friends, what more could you ask for entertainment?

In fact, there was something today that simply made my heart soar. I was almost moved to tears, in fact. And fell in love with God's truth all over again.

Every now and then, someone will defy the world to be obedient to God's call. Every now and then, we are privileged to witness an event of total selling-out to his will. A lot of the time, these things are unobtrusive, lost in the bustle of the world, gathered up and kept safe until God chooses to reveal his glory of the faithfulness of his people. But sometimes, he will shine a spotlight on it in the here-and-now – and that happened at church today.

To understand, there needs to be context. This is America. Like it or not, the insular, self-satisfied, largely unquestioning patriotism is simply what is. It's the milieu conversation takes place in, and there isn't another; like the shortcomings of any culture, fixating on it is like complaining you have to get wet in order to swim with the dolphins. It's just the reality of the situation.

Having said that, there are ways to challenge the culture you're in, lovingly but truthfully. It takes courage and vulnerability, and Ken embodied all these things today with his message. In the midst of cultural pressure to cancel the service because of the holiday, and because of the annual pet parade through downtown (sorry, not kidding about that one either; however, he mentioned last week that someone from the church came up to him said that if they cancelled church, he'd punch Ken in the face, which Ken thought was awesome); in the midst of the single most patriotic day in America's calender; in the midst of a religious culture that often conflates love of God with love of country, he got up and talked about the abuse of rights by Americans.

He talked about how Americans used their rights to protect themselves and their affluence. He talked about how the bulk of the Declaration of Independence was about King George's failure to enact his responsibility to recognize and uphold the rights of the people of America. He talked about the land of the free built on the backs of slaves. He talked about the political expediency involved with Woodrow Wilson refusing to allow the charter of the League of Nations recognize equality of race. He talked about the delusion involved in imagining that because we have more, we deserve more; about hypocrisy, sacrifice, justice and responsibility.

And he talked about how Jesus came and did for us what we could not do for ourselves. How we are called to give away our rights and our power, not cling to them, to give them in the service of upholding the rights of others who are being trampled, who cannot do it themselves.

It was long, deep, heavy, and shockingly real, on a holiday that is supposed to be fun and parties and all about America's awesomeness. He spoke it all gently, and heartbrokenly, and without giving an inch. For me, struggling to know how to speak truth lovingly in this culture, it was a beautiful model, which I can only pray God helps me learn to emulate. He let God say what he wanted to say, and it moved palpably through the room. I don't know that all the responses will be positive, but that's never a guarantee with God's truth anyway. I am just thankful that God brought me here, now, to witness this, and that Ken let God rock his will and his words through him. And this flame will not soon go out.

after God's own heart

2010-06-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

I just love the discourse going on at this church. And that it's going on at the head, heart and life levels, often simultaneously. There's some good stuff to absorb here, and I am so grateful that God has cleared a season in my life to do it.

This is Ken, the pastor of the church, hitting the nail with his usual incisiveness.

How was David a man after God's own heart? from :redux on Vimeo.

the value of stillness

2010-06-24T00:22:00.003-05:00

After a few weeks of solitude – learning it, exploring it, feeling out the boundaries – one (of the many) thing I've found developing is an even deeper understanding for the value of stillness. It's also one of those few things which doesn't require such volumes of context to communicate well, or which perhaps even should be shared.

Stillness gives value to motion. Perhaps this is self-evident, but as I find myself stepping out of solitude and plunged into the clamour of the world, or even as it swirls around me as I sit back from it, I am increasingly astonished (and dismayed) by the meaninglessness of it.

It hurts. It hurts terribly.

My growing desire for an active less, in the last some years, has been largely instinctive. I couldn't explain much apart from the increasingly apparent unattractiveness of busyness and noise and clutter. In the last few weeks, it resolved itself into one of those integrated, simple truths:

Without stillness, motion has no meaning.

Without silence, speech has no meaning.

Without solitude, intimacy has no meaning.

Only the ability to choose to not do something makes the doing a choice. Otherwise, it's just a compulsion.

2010-06-07T20:10:00.002-05:00

The church that I'm at this summer has a service after the service just to answer questions. The guest speaker last week was asked what worship is, and gave an answer worth re-posting.

To check out the other redux videos on their website, go here.

the journey so far

2010-06-03T02:29:00.004-05:00

This ... is going to be interesting, if nothing else.

I have been here in Bend, Oregon, for less than a week, and I am already so psyched about this summer. Most of you already know that I'm here to do a "solitude" internship with Antioch Church (and most of you responded one of two ways: "... What is that?" or "That's an internship?"), and I can tell you, the closer I get, the more it seems like the most perfect, extraordinary gift God could give me for this period of time.

Tomorrow, I embark on this journey in earnest. The last few days have been all about arrival of all the interns (only three of us are doing the solitude one), orientation, meeting people, et cetera. It's been amazing just getting here; I took the train from Chicago to Portland, all 45 hours of it, and it was the best fun travelling I think I've ever had. I am definitely going to go by train whenever circumstances allow.

This is not going to be a particularly interesting post, I don't think. Just explaining what's going on and the context of the posts for the next few months, so sorry about that. Nothing terribly deep yet, although there's an (mostly unrelated) epiphany about Buttercup (from The Princess Bride) which I had recently which is pretty exciting, and intended to get around to jotting down here. So there's that.

First, then, in the interests of good housekeeping, to answer your questions: a solitude internship is where the intern clears their deck and enters a time of doing nothing but waiting on God. It's not 24/7; the ballpark amount of time we've been given per week is 30-40 hours. The rest of the time we can hang out with people, do whatever. However, we've been given explicit permission to say "no" to any and every ministry need which crosses our radar; the first thing the guy who's running it asked of us was to agree, all together, not to feel guilty about doing that. The only requirements are a weekly meeting to discuss and debrief together for an hour, and attending church on Sunday.

We'll be reading and discussing two books: Reaching Out, by Henri J. M. Nouwen, and The Way of the Pilgrim (by an unknown nineteenth-century peasant). We'll be reading, journalling, praying, reflecting, hiking, drinking coffee, whatever – being still and waiting to hear what God wants to say and where he wants to lead. It's a time of stripping life down to stillness, in order to determine what is necessary busyness, and what is busyness to be busy. It is disconnecting identity and value from role, service, ministry, ability, any of those things. Ultimately leading to a healthier place to minister from.

It's the first time the church has attempted anything like this kind of internship, so we're the beta version, which I love because it means the whole thing is basically unmapped and waiting to be discovered as an internship structure. Matt, who's running it, deliberately took a whole year of solitude, and is passionate about its benefits. Just listening to him talk about it is restful. To have the heart-knowledge of this kind of discipline is a blessing I can't begin to fathom yet – although hopefully I will soon enough!

And: yes. It's an internship. It's the most amazing one I can conceive of, and yes, I'm getting credit for it, because grad school is awesome that way.

So far, so good. Meeting the other 20-odd interns, and the various people involved in all the internship stuff that's going on here, has been really encouraging, and has also helped clarify my understanding of this time as I explain it over and over to people. It's fun when one of those beautiful turns-of-phrase just tumbles, unanticipated, out of your mouth. One of the more revealling, to me, was when someone asked how I knew that this was what I was supposed to do, and I said something to the effect that I don't really plan this stuff ahead, or make goals, or anything – not even with my move to Chicago. God just opens up a me-shaped hole in space and time, and I step into it. It's really not any more complicated than that.

Of course, I guess this method of guidance requires some basic idea of what shape me-shape is. I have a decent idea; I know, however, that after this time of solitude I will have a much better one. The idea of spending an entire summer getting to know God better, and also learning more how he's shaped me and why, is just ... stunning.

Anyway. Buttercup.

So a little while ago I watched The Princess Bride with some friends at college (as you do), for the first time in years, probably. And, being the resourceful, self-sufficient, self-respecting young women that we are, we were doing the typical bemoaning of Buttercup's essential uselessness in pretty much every way. I mean, really. She's kind of dim, and helpless, and although she's not actually ever whiny, you kind of write her off. And why on earth does Westley love her? The most beautiful woman on earth? That's it? Talk about shallow. We want true love to be a meeting of true equals, right? Especially in our enlightened day and age.

So we were watching this, and I was thinking about the ways Goldman was playing with concepts of fantasy in it all, when the role and value of Buttercup hit me in a whole new way. I mean, the whole point of Buttercup being useless at rescuing herself in any way (literally – everytime she tries, she either is completely ineffectual, or she makes things worse), is to reveal the hero that Westley is. Buttercup needs rescuing so that Westley can rescue her. It's that simple.

By the climax of the movie – in the chapel – she has learned what her role is, and she does it magnificently: she keeps the faith that Westley will rescue her. And I got that. That's a courageous role. I had begun to grudgingly give credit where credit's due, to even appreciate the magnetism and beauty of that, and to defend her to those I watched it with.

Which is when it hit: Buttercup is a brilliant picture of the Church. (I'm sure that this is not what Goldman had in mind, but a good story always captures a truth.) Our job is not to save ourselves, nor are we in any way equipped to do so. We only mess it up, and fail, when we try. Our role is to reveal and glorify the one who loves us truly, who goes to every length to save us. Our role is to be rescued, to show the character and love of the rescuer. Our role is to keep the faith, to look boldly in the face of sin, persecution, opposition, everything arrayed against us, and say, "My Jesus will save me." To trust his promise that he will always come for us, that his love is true, that he is able to rescue us.

Mind you, this was not "blind" faith. Buttercup's faith was based entirely on knowing Westley; seeing what he had done, what he was willing to do, meant that she knew she could depend on his love and his promises. It was informed faith, faith based on a relationship. Faith, like love, requires knowing its object. The more knowledge grows, the more love and faith grows, if it's warranted. The way in which it was "blind" – based on knowledge ("hope", in the biblical sense) rather than sight, which is the concept I assume the whole idea of blind faith came from – was that she could not literally see Westley coming to rescue her in the castle, but her knowledge of him meant that she knew he would. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." () Anyone who says faith is the opposite of knowledge is either phrasing it very poorly or doesn't know what they're talking about.

Anyway. Buttercup. Kickass role model. Who knew?

me, circa ... 2007? 2006? ish?

2010-05-16T10:42:00.002-05:00

I just ran across this old thing in a random doc folder. It was made in response to all those email questionnaires that my friends kept forwarding, that ask you what your favourite colour, food, song, everything is, and hypotheticals about being stuck on a desert island. And I thought those were boring questions, so I polled some friends and put together this little questionnaire, which I thought asked questions that were significantly more interesting and broad.

I sent it off to my mailing list at the time, and got some back, which was cool to see what my friends had said about themselves. Don't know if it ever really took off, though. Feel free to fill it out yourself and email it to me or let me know you've posted it, or something – these are questions I definitely like reading the answers to.

My answers, from the time of composition (I might get around to doing it again sometime soon, I wonder if the answers will be much different?):

1. Physical description:

Mostly kind of “average-slash”. Average brown/blond hair, average green/blue/grey eyes, average nice/boring face, average height… I don’t know if my build is average, but it’s kind of like those lovely ladies Rubens so enjoyed painting. Stocky/a little plump… but averagely so.

2. Personality description:

Stable like a gyroscope. In a mostly frictionless environment. Intelligent, creative, brash, interested in many many things, love to discuss many many things in order to discover new perspectives and ideas from other people (to broaden rather than justify my own understanding at all costs). I analyse things too much, or so I’m told; I didn’t realise this sort of thing was regulated, but now that I’ve totally blown my limit, what’s the point of stopping? I’m taking this thing to Mexico… I’d like to have an “artistic temperament”, but I can’t take myself seriously enough. And the whole thing – meaning Me – is “under new management” – meaning the Holy Spirit – but the transition is decidedly rocky. Oh, and I have a sneaking little suspicion that I’m not quite normal.

3. In one sentence, what is the meaning of life?

To glorify God.

4. What qualities do you have that would make you a good totalitarian dictator?

I’m pretty good at getting my own way if I don’t care about the consequences, and I understand that’s a helpful thing in a determined dictator… I can justify just about anything with spurious, morally bankrupt logic and pettifogging… I can muster very convincing confidence and certainty in myself, not to mention bring quite startling amounts of arrogance and intimidation to bear on people. Uh… in theory, that is…

5. If your life was a novel/movie, what would the title and/or tagline be?

Title: “The Art of the Ramble On”; Tagline: “God has a sense of humour, and it’s better than mine.”

6. Ideally, who would score/perform the soundtrack of your life, and why?

Thomas Newman (composer for movies “American Beauty” and “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, and the title theme for “Six Feet Under” tv show, among others) and Sam Beam from the band Iron + Wine would collaborate on composing – Newman for the wry whimsy, Beam for the surreal, playful noir. I guess I’d leave it to their discretion who they got to perform to material, since I’m no music expert; but going according to my tastes, the major recurring artists/bands would be the John Butler Trio (for their lean sound, and Butler’s intimate, eloquent guitar – and his voice, impassioned and knowing, is pretty good too), Eva Cassidy for her soulful sweetness, Nina Simone for her power, boldness and sass, and Dusty Springfield for her smoky sensuality. And of course Iron + Wine would be quite welcome, too. I think those mostly fit my moods and whatnot best, if not always my personality… Oh, and Eric Bibb can do all the blues + roots/gospel stuff.

7. What character traits have you inherited from your parents?

A significantly skewed way of reacting to the world from my mum (although not skewed the same way as her), and a kind of bull-headed dependability from my dad. I’m basically 50/50 of mum and dad (as opposed to my brothers, who take more after one parent each), but my parents are so far apart on any spectrum that exists that the really interesting thing is how their traits mix and war in me. If that sounds melodramatic, try growing up with it on the outside and the inside. “Schismatic” barely begins to describe it… but in a fun way.

8. What is your earliest memory?

My earliest distinguishable memories come from a holiday to Fiji when I was three; I can still remember distinct but kind of boring stuff, like our cabin on the boat (horrible dark khaki/green bed covers – that colour sticks in the mind); but I can also remember stuff like piggy-backing my dad as he snorkled about the reefs (he didn’t dive while he had me on his back!) with my own mask so I could stick my little head under and look whenever I wanted. That was pretty neat. And I remember being fascinated by the coconuts, or maybe it was the coconut trees, but I have no idea why. I certainly gave climbing them my best shot, but I don’t think I was wildly successful.

9. What do you hope will be your last words?

“Oh, the irony…” No, I don’t know why.

10. What new thing did you learn today?

How pointless, amusing and long message-board threads can get when discussing “trivial” military nomenclature “errors” made by movie adaptations of sci-fi computer games – and how they inevitably degenerate into claims that “ninjas would so kick marines’ asses!”

11. a) In ten years time, how much is it going to matter that you wasted an hour filling this out?

If I thought it was a waste of time, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

11. b) Do you have any suggestions for questions that would make this a more interesting hour for other people filling this out – or, for that matter, anything to say to them generally (please keep negativity to a minimum, folks; we already know you’re all bitingly witty)?

Since I bear full responsibility for compiling this questionnaire, it would be a bit pointless for me to suggest yet more questions; but generally I will say to you all: if you are truly incapable of having fun filling this out, then don’t bother; but I enjoyed it. Such is the nature of me… Man, I can’t believe how much I wanted to write “have a nice day” there, instead…

Lace! Stringy things! Everywhere! My eyes!!!

2010-04-16T22:26:00.008-05:00

I am actually at a loss for words how to start this post. I think I need a new category for this stuff: "America, the Parallel Universe" (or, as a friend misspoke this evening, the "Paradox Universe", which was in some ways even more apropos).

We were at what is essentially an underwear party. Lingerie shower, bachelorette party, whatever you want to call it. All the bride-to-be's gir'frien's rock up and give her sexy underwear for her wedding.

Not kidding. Not making this up.

Like the more benign kitchen teas and shower teas that we are used to, this is what is done to help set up a young lady in all the essentials of married life and happy home. And it is expected. Almost universal, according to my sources.

We sat there eating cake made in the shape of a bustier, while the two brides (it was a joint shower) unwrapped their gifts, to much blushing and high-pitched effusiveness. Meanwhile, my delightful and highly prized cultural insider saved my relative sanity by telling lingerie shower anecdotes, including such phrases as "had to try them all on" and group shopping excursions and about ... well, you don't need to know about the cake. And, as she predicted I would write in this post, that's when they started chanting, "Try it on! Try it on! Try it on!"

No one actually tried anything on, thank goodness. But I mean ... this is one of the first times in my life where I feel like the phrase "what is this I don't even" is one I could utter without the slightest attempt at irony.

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

Well, that felt good.

We started discussing the phenomenon from a cultural point of view, given that the colonies which stayed closer to their English roots – Australia, for example – have a vast array of sex/genitalia-related insults and expletives, which are nonetheless not considered obscene in the same way that they are in America. I just realized, although I didn't think of it at the time, that the religious expletives have a similarly heightened impact here; it got me in trouble for ages, thinking nothing of dropping a casual "damn" or "hell" into the conversation. I get away with "bugger" because they don't even know what it means!

Although I have done precisely zero investigation on the subject, it seems almost inevitable that this stems from the puritan roots of the country. The insults which are taken mildly tend to be more related to stupidity: retard, spaz, and a bunch of others which make me deeply and quietly angry, but for (obvious) personal reasons, which I occasionally (and unapologetically) use to make the people using those words very uncomfortable. [Edit: Oh, and, even more – toilet humour. GAH.]

But here's the point: we sat around while lacy, racy, and see-through items were waved about and discussed specifically in the context of the upcoming marriages, and who was the most uncomfortable person in the room? Me, that's who, the girl who employs the word "bugger" to swear even though she does know what it means.

Which seemed a curious paradox, although there's a lot to be said for culturally-mandated pressure valves, where taboos can be engaged in a socially acceptable way. For Australians, and the English too, I'm pretty sure, things such as emotional repression are acceptably vented at sporting events, where it is expected that you get drunk and ridiculously passionate about your team. For Americans ... well, maybe that's what's going on here. Who knows. I'm not intending to do much further research on this one.

This is your intrepid anthropological adventurer, deep in the heart of America, signing off.

take me out to the ballgame

2010-04-12T12:44:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, it is just surreal to be here in the States. You chug along, noticing the little, constant differences from home, and talking about culture and accents and influences and beer, and then suddenly some particular day is important and everyone comes over all American. !

Today is ... something. The first Cubs game of the baseball season – or is it the Sox? It wasn't made entirely clear to me, and I didn't really bother to find out. Last week, everyone was all excited about the baseball season opening, and the general sense I got of that was it marks the beginning of Spring, real Spring. (Of course, we may very well have several snow falls between now and the end of May; that doesn't preclude the Springness of Spring having Sprung, apparently.)

So down in the SDR (student dining room, where I work and thus get free food that's already prepared in meal-type format), it is baseball fever. They're serving hotdogs, calling out and throwing crackerjack packets (caramel popcorn and peanuts) into the crowd, a popcorn machine going, baseball caps on stuff, signs, Chicago- and baseball-themed music playing, interspersed with old baseball radio commentary ... I got told off for putting ketchup on my "proper beef" Polish hotdog.

And they are enjoying themselves so much. It's cute, actually; especially the two cooks in their forties who appear to be reliving their boyhoods in front of us – they're the ones pitching crackerjacks at students' heads. Americans know how to celebrate. Even if I don't necessarily agree with their reasons, methods, style, or extravagance, I will laud their ability to unabashedly celebrate what they love. This is not an ironic culture, and this is one of the ways it serves them well.

sleep "rhythm" suggests too much regularity

2010-04-02T01:22:00.000-05:00

I am sitting in class and, unusually for this time of day and week, I am perfectly content. I don’t do well in the morning, attitude-wise, and while I love this particular teacher, at 8 AM his beautifully soothing Alabaman accent doesn’t always help me stay awake. But this morning, by the grace of God (not the amount of sleep I’ve had, I promise you), I am awake and enjoying the class.

The wonderful thing about his classes is that, embedded in the flow of mellow vowels and cadence and gentle humour, are many gems of wisdom, polished by years of experience. Looking at 2 Corinthians today, at the goals of ministry, he said: To help people find joy in God.

Also: We are transformed by what we are preoccupied with.

Posted using no new-fangled gadget, just old-fashioned ctrl+s, ctrl+c/ctrl+v, and patience. (That last one is very old fashioned.)

epistemology, plus a couple of not real words

2010-03-20T18:45:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I blame homework. School generally. I was gonna think about other things. But no. Epistemelogical quandarifying (not a real word) it is.

I just finished a week-long modular class of evangelism and apologetics. Not my favourite subjects, as taught, which might have been detected in previous posts. Mostly because ... well, that's a rant that doesn't need to be indulged, actually, so never mind.

Apologetics in particular is a strange animal. I am not a systematic thinker, at least in the linear sense that "systematic" evokes. I have come to observe that I think in sprawling networks, which works for me, and usually turns out to be thorough enough to satisfy my standards. So although I love the host of ideas and debates and discovery that comes with discussing the issues involved, I tune out pretty quickly when it becomes the If This, Then That formula for the shape of the argument. It works as logic. Not as the artform of conversation. I suspect this is why I've never been all that interested in studying philosophy formally.

Anyhow, it's at that point that I start chasing up related things in my head, rather than paying strict attention to the process of ensuring a sound premise, for example.

Still somewhat in that mindframe, I was wandering around teh interwubs, and came across a few new interesting sites. One blog in particular was refreshingly and pungently intellectual, and intensely devoted to naturalism; the author, Peter Watts, seems as fascinated by cognition, sociology, politics, astronomy, perception and being opinionated as I am, but from a polar-opposite ideology, and was duly added to bookmarks.

I have yet to come to a conclusion of how rigorously he examines his own predispositions and reasoning, but he seems capable of calm discussion; unfortunately, the only reason I found links to the blog was because he is currently suffering a legal ordeal with the travestical (not a real word) border security laws of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave – or, as he put it, "a justice system which criminalizes the flinch response" – of which we appear to share the exact same opinion. Even so, he's able to write about his situation with balance, so that seems promising.

Some of his posts set off a cascade of musing, in particular a recent one called "The Neurology of Trandscendence", discussing a point in the brain (the posterior parietal cortex, for those who desperately wanted to know) which deals with processing physical self-perception. The existence – or malfunctioning – of which gives rise to a (faulty) sense of there being a spiritual realm. Out-of-body experiences, the sense of the presence of God, energy chakra, that sort of thing. At least, that's what I gather the basic idea was. I haven't yet read the paper his post was referencing, although I might get around to it soon if I can.

In the comments (which were a little too echo-chamber-ish for my comfort of mind, but anyhow), one person said that it might surprise people to learn that some religious academics would take the same information and decide it meant the contrary, that we were designed with a "God channel" in the brain. I most certainly was – it kind of astonishes me that anyone with any imagination at all couldn't grasp the idea that facts are often interpreted in different ways by different people. That facts relate to, but do not equal, information or meaning.

This is one of my main problems with "scientific" inquiry as a method for evaluating the validity of any ideology or worldview. The first, and most obvious one, is that the scientific method is itself an ideology, so using its findings to judge validity inherently assumes that its ideology is: a) superior; and b) capable and relevant to the rendering of such a judgement. Absent any compelling reason, I'm not willing to grant the former, and the latter is patently absurd in many cases.

This is an interesting little philosophical snare: ask someone why their ruling ideology, to which they subject truth-claims in order to assess validity, is or ought to be the ultimate criteria. If they use their own ideology to justify it, it has problems. If they use a different ideology to justify it, it has problems. If they use their own ideology to justify it without acknowledging that it doesn't have the capacity to, they have problems. (If they use the sum total of information and understanding, past, actual and potential, in the universe and anything outside it, to justify it, they are God. Start bowing.)

For example: Empirically-tested and/or observable phenomena – scientific method – is the only way to establish knowable truth.
Response: Oh? How do you know that?
If the answer is something along the lines of "It has been tested and verified," then at least they are staying true to their ideology, but you may as well walk away now if you were looking for a fruitful conversation.

And that's another problem, since I appear to be picking on the secular scientific mindset today. Naturalism insists that the material universe is all there is, that we are simply a complex collection of chemicals, mechanisms, and functions. Fascinating as that is as a concept, you have just undermined your entire argument as far as I'm concerned. If that is all you are, all anybody is, including the people who came up with that theory, then why on earth should I accept your reasoning? Haven't you just told me that any meaning you come up with is meaningless? Haven't you just told me that anything you discover is merely the product of imperfect naturalistic processes happening far beyond and beneath your control? If the supernatural realm is merely a malfunction of the brain, how sound is the logical-reasoning part of the brain? Haven't you just committed the same order of fallacy as the person who says, "trust me, I'm a liar"?

To reference another of Watt's posts, he gives a passing nod to the study of statistics when pointing out that correlation is not causality. So I conclude with asking: just why do we imagine that conclusions drawn from facts lead to ideology, and not the other way around?

distortion as storytelling

2010-03-09T19:52:00.003-06:00

It's interesting how loving something, combined (naturally) with knowing a lot about it, has the tendency to ruin your enjoyment of the treatment the subject receives at the hands of someone who doesn't care as much as you do, or has a different agenda for it.

Well, obviously. It's hard when you see something you love being dealt with in a way you would never do it, in a way that is therefore ostensibly disrespectful. I mean, I'm most familiar with this phenomenon in the sensitivity Christians have toward the portrayal of Christianity, God, and Jesus (in descending order, interestingly) in secular media. (Not that I think some of us do a much better job of it, often, but that's a different thing.) However, this sensitivity, and even offense, actually seems fairly universally felt in regards to something you care about.

Some of it, of course, is justified; sometimes, the person representing the subject in a particular way is doing so out of hostility. More often, though, the problem is that the subject is not the priority of the matter, and is being distorted in order to serve another purpose. This happens all the time in popular media, movies and television. Think of the number of times you, or someone you were watching a show with, were bounced out of the story with the exclamation of "But that would never happen that way!" Like a basic understanding of physics while watching most action movies (although that is an almost universally-accepted conceit).

For a specific (non-physics) example, I was skimming a discussion board about Casino Royale (yes? what?) and a comment caught my eye to the effect that the last round of hands in the poker game was ridiculous, and spoiled the movie for the commenter. If I recall, the four hands were a flush, two full houses, and a straight flush (which Bond held, of course, and yes I did recently rewatch the movie). As the commenter described it, they are "monster hands", and the probability of them coming up like that was astronomical. Because the commenter knew the odds, it destroyed his/her suspension of disbelief; in effect sabotaging the entertainment which depends on it. And let's face it, Bond movies do rely heavily on the audience suspending disbelief and investing in the fantasy, which was what sunk the last Brosnan efforts; they were too fantastic to be believed. (No, the other meaning of "fantastic".)

However, I will posit that the commenter in this case (and in many similar cases) was wrong. Not in their (subjective) enjoyment of the movie, but that they assumed it was down to either bad storytelling or indifference on the part of the storytellers. It was neither, and this is an awareness that audiences today generally lack. It is not (always) bad or indifferent storytelling to distort some element or other to serve the story's impact; often it is good storytelling.

As a sidenote, I think the difference lies in how much you distort the elements and whether they need to be distorted. That comes down to skill, creativity, and research. The distortion itself is almost always a part of story; moreover, there are usually many elements that have been distorted that you haven't enough understanding of to notice, and therefore enjoy thoroughly (while someone else is crying out, "But that would never happen that way!").

To continue with the Casino Royale poker example: not everyone is as familiar with the odds as the commenter was. In fact, most people have a poor capacity for judging odds, which is part of the reason Vegas and lottery competitions flourish. And the reason is the same: in story, the mathematical odds themselves don't matter so much. (Every person lives in a story inside their own head, and sometimes that story bears less resemblence to the "real" world than is ideal.)

In stories generally, the odds are not relevant as themselves, they are relevant as they serve the story. If the storyteller wants to make a point of how impossible something is, they'll draw attention to the odds against. In Casino Royale, the hands had nothing to do with the odds. In-story, they had to do with the tension of whether Bond was reading Le Chiffre correctly, in order to get him to go all-in on that round.

There are also a few good storytelling reasons for making them all "monster hands". The established movie-poker vocabulary is that the climactic hand is always the most impressive. For the vast majority of the audience, minus a few poker nuts, that is the reality, because that is most of the contact they have had with poker. It is expected. Which means that not doing it that way, ironically, destroys their suspension of disbelief.

A related reason is that, as opposed to poker, the same majority of the audience has had a great deal of experience with money, quite outside of its portrayal in movies. The pot of $120 million is an amount they do understand conceptually. To have such an impressive amount of money riding on a realistic (unimpressive) array of hands actually creates some cognitive dissonance, which, again, damages the suspension of disbelief. Unless you're making a point, it's bad storytelling.

That's just one example. One not related to movies has come up in some recent discussions of music I've had with college students, some of whom are music majors, and some who aren't. Many of the music majors find a lot of songs and styles unenjoyable (even unendurable) because of the technical flaws or lack of skill, where we untutored mortals just hear a song we quite like. It comes down to values, priorities and taste, which are often (not always) legitimately subjective. More importantly, it bears a great deal on clear communication; being able to understand the priorities the other person is working from. But that's another ponder.

According to my values, knowledgeability that destroys enjoyment is not desireable, but neither is ignorance. Knowledgeability-in-perspective is what I'm looking for here, I think. Others may find it more desireable to sneer, and more power to them, but I reserve the right to snicker condescendingly.

recent thoughts

2010-03-05T00:24:00.001-06:00

On the back of, well, life and stuff, these are some of the things I've been musing on lately:

The question of who God is, is far more interesting and meaningful than the question of whether God is.

I like Neil Young's stuff a lot better than I always assumed I would.

To explain irony to Americans who ask for an example, I should just show them clips from Top Gear.

I've been spending too much time watching Top Gear online lately, but that's explained by the fact that I only just discovered that it has an official site that you don't have to be in the UK to watch.

I'm Sick and Tired of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. However, being bored reading about it (again) meant that I figured out how to explain the ontological argument to someone else.

Jesus told his church to go and make disciples of all nations. These days we in the west seem to largely assume evangelism covers a lot of that, but I'm beginning to think that (as usual) we've got hold of the wrong end of the stick on that one.

Thus have been my musings. Now I have to continue homework reading.

the sort of thing we reserve the word "epic" for

2010-02-14T00:52:00.001-06:00

Just ran across this today (it's about four days old), but all I can say is damn.

Praise the Lord this is preserved for posterity. It is just about perfect. Now I want to be an internet anthropologist.

(Be sure to read through at least a page or two of comments on the article. This will not be onerous. Try not to rupture anything laughing, and remember, the warning in bold a few paragraphs into the article was added later – not that it appears to have helped matters at all. The further it goes, the better it gets.)

challenges and the people who want them

2010-01-18T17:04:00.007-06:00

I have come to the conclusion that it is actually impossible for human beings to challenge themselves in a truly significant way. (Of course, that all depends on what you define as a significant challenge. I'll get to that.) This has been a passing reflection at various difficult times of my life, but I began thinking about it more recently due to a new show I've been watching, Leverage.

It's a fun show of a team of insanely competent thieves contracting to do ad hoc Robin Hood gigs, getting revenge on the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor and powerless who they've ripped off somehow. Which does explore the theme of challenge, because the show keeps piling adversity upon them so that they actually have to work to overcome. And everyone is seriously at the top of their respective game. And this all creates challenge- and character-related issues. Which is quite entertaining. But that's not what made me start thinking about this.

The "big guy" character, Eliot, is played by Christian Kane (yeah, the guy who played Lindsey on Angel, who sang that song in the karaoke bar, and – as it turns out – actually has a country rock band). Now, one of the very fun aspects of this show is that one of the show's creators, John Rogers, blogs about writing and producing the show, and also does q+a on his blog after each episode airs. So in the process of reading this blog and checking out a few of Kane's songs on YouTube, it turns out that Christian Kane is what we Aussies affectionately call a "mad bastard". Who spits. I have a very unclear idea of what that interview is about, apart from the spitting. Cowboys? YES. Inspiring more of a reaction of morbid intrigue than "hellooo, nurse", though. Mind you, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Aussies, right? We generally like this kind of guy, as long as he's not full of himself. (We often are this kind of guy, especially with the help of beer. Russell Crowe is not atypical, people.) And Kane mostly comes across likeable. YMMV, although I doubt he cares very much.
Anyway, reading some of the stories and the way he conducts himself got me to thinking about the kinds of people who just keep pushing to find the next big challenge, the next big thrill, whatever. Mind you, there's a difference between thrill-seekers and challenge-seekers, even if the activities overlap, and it's all there in the name; I'm much more interested in the challenge side of it. To my mind, this kind of person pursues challenges to learn more about themselves, usually their limits, rather than the high or the thrill itself. And it happens in more arenas than the drinking, brawling, spitting, hoodsurfing ones, although I understand those are popular in some circles. I myself have done almost none of those, but for much of my life I'd launch myself at whatever daunted me, so either I'm projecting this guy's motivation or I'm recognizing it. (Obviously, I think it's the latter. I could be wrong, but....)

I grew out of this kind of thing, though. Mostly. And here's why: it doesn't really work. Not for what we really want it to do. I mean, yeah, we do learn about ourselves through the challenges we chase and engage. We learn how to deal with things, and some strengths and weaknesses. And we become very – sometimes infuriatingly – confident. But based on my experience and observation of the phenomenon, what we really kind of want is to be taken down, to find something which we can't beat, because that's what we don't know about ourselves – who we are when we're totally defeated, who we are when we hit something which we can't survive and remain the way we were.

Evan Esar said, "Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose." That's the basic idea, here; to shed everything it's possible to, somehow, and then see what's left. I get the feeling that most people don't do this, but I don't know. I've never asked. I just know (because I was one, and I've known a few others) that there are some who do. And the reason we do is because it's very hard to find. It's one of the themes of Fight Club; "How much do you really know of yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Which is ... definitely a more male approach.

Like I said, it doesn't work. We don't know how to challenge ourselves for that kind of thing. We're not wired right. The way we see ourselves and the world dictates the challenges we perceive, which are not the ones which will truly strip us down. So we just keep pushing harder and further, and it becomes more and more meaningless. Eventually we either jump over the edge into self-destruction, or we settle for just enjoying ourselves out on that edge, or we give up altogether, but we never really find what we want.

The challenge we seek can never come from within ourselves, because it's always subject to our own limitations, which is what we're trying to get outside of. It's a terrible thing to have to live within your own limits. It has to come from someone else, an external agent. But that's a problem, too; that someone else has to be bigger and stronger and capable of making us submit. Consistently. Without destroying us. And part of the reason we're on this quest is because we haven't found that yet.

And me? It stopped for real when I finally submitted to God. And man, he took me on the ride of my life (literally) and it's not going to stop. Ever. It's fantastic. He hit me and broke me and ground me down to nothing but who I am, and just keeps refining that. He took me far beyond what I could ever know of myself from the inside. And the brawl with the world finally means something, actually does something real and eternal; Jesus Christ is a brilliant battle commander. (Well, the perfect one, really; so.) After doing the other kind for twenty-five years of my life, the difference is extraordinary and worth every scar.

book review: "Holy the Firm" by Annie Dillard

2009-12-23T05:25:00.008-06:00

I'm hoping, next semester, to sit in on an undergrad class, "Violence and Grace in the Novel". Preparatory to that I'm reading some of the texts during the Christmas break, or seriously considering it, anyway. I borrowed what I could from a friend who took it this semester, and this review is partly inspired as an elaboration of a brief exchange we had about it, as well as a response to his paper that he emailed to me. (And, yay, finally doing another book review like I kept intending too....)

Holy the Firm was the first (and so far only) one I read, and ... well. It would be far too banal to say "I liked it" – which is what I was going to say – because, really, "like" is an irrelevant word here.

It was a strong push-pull reaction, probably exacerbated by the fact that I essentially read it in a day (it's a short book), a day which was itself not lacking in incident. And by incident, I mean deep aversion and irritation, as well as some pleasure and whimsy, each in their own season. This was an unusually intense day for me, and admittedly that does tend to heighten my general stubbornness.

So, having minimally sketched what context you might need to properly interpret my moodiness as I review the book, I will add: I did like it.

Dillard's prose is dense and bordering on poetry in places. She has an arresting turn of phrase, looping coils around her subject matter and sprawling in embrace of her setting. It seems a disservice to simply say "it's about this, such-and-such" (which is what my friend did quite elegantly in his paper, because he'd been asked to), to take a few choice brute words and enervate her evasive, haunting reflections. This book is a delicate grapple. It must be eased into, in such a way that I was not always willing to do.

The setting is Puget Sound in the Pacific northwest, and her descriptions alone makes you want to up stakes and move there. Right now. She immerses herself in it, draws us in after her, and so it washes and rears magestically, a backdrop to the threefold drama she presents to us. Here, have some:

The Cascade range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water. There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea. The mountains wall well. The rest of the country – most of the rest of the planet, in some very real sense, excluding a shred of British Columbia's coastline and the Alaskan islands – is called, and profoundly felt to be, simply "East of the Mountains." I've been there....

They are the western rim of the real, if not considerably beyond it. If the Greeks had looked at Mount Baker all day, their large and honest art would have broken, and they would have gone fishing, as these people do....

Since I live in one room, one long wall of which is glass, I am myself, at everything I do, a backdrop to all the landscape's occasions, to all its weathers, colors and lights. From the kitchen sink, and from my bed, and from the table, the couch, the hearth, and the desk, I see land and water, islands, sky.

Mind you, those some of the more prosaic descriptions; others ask more context, and I don't have the room to them justice.

And so, the drama's subject. The book is vaguely theodicean, but really more a meditation on suffering, the being of suffering, or a part of it, anyway. And not nearly so dour as that implies. It is a meditation, not a battle. She gives it to us in three parts, three nuggets of circumstance where we are invited to indwell, however gently, the sacrosanct immolation of suffering. Does that come over as obscure? My apologies, but the text pulls you in sideways.

Fire is her motif, both emblematic and active, drawing out the two-sidedness of suffering. To suffer is to burn, but to burn is to illuminate, to glorify. Yet the connection is far from straightforward, and is largely what she is exploring, seeking what divinity is within it. Brief vignettes and strands of thought plumb this profound mystery, circling the central dramas.

How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without light is wasteland and chaos, and a life without sacrifice is abomination.

What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can any artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?

And yet, and yet. It's her pain, and the struggle that creates in her Godward, and she gives us nothing of herself. It's so turned inward that I felt (as I finally articulated when discussing it) that I was being asked to relinquish too much of my own identity to enter hers. At each twist, it is her own suffering that she is seeking to come to grips with, yet we are only ever given reflections in the external dramas she examines. The final part touches most on her own journey, but only obliquely. It gives a sense of her own suffering that is too tender, even raw, to approach.

Which is ... her prerogative, of course. I've used it; few people haven't, probably. And it makes a far more accessible book to those who haven't suffered as deeply as her, asking more sympathy than empathy of her readers. But it frustrated me, and as I said, I read it on a day when I was digging my heels in my own identity in any case. I know I will enjoy it more when I go back over it, when I can let it be what it is, because it is brilliant and beautiful, but I doubt I'll become satisfied with the closeness she denies us.

And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God.

now look here

2009-12-11T14:58:00.005-06:00

First off, I would like to acknowledge the snippiness of the previous post about asking questions. I don't know that I'm repented of it, exactly, but I recognize that I have something of a forceful way of expressing myself in writing at the best of times, and that the edge which creeps in when I'm irked can be quite ugly.

Don't know what to do about that one, really. Sanctification construction zone! Proceed with care. In any case, I undertake not to bite your head off if you feel the need to rebuke me in the comments. You can even do it anonymously, if you like. I'll do what I can to hear what you're saying.

Speaking of hearing, a recent conversation brought up the subject of listening. It's curious to me that so many people think that listening just happens, that it's something everyone can even do. Listening is a skill, a very important one and a very difficult one. I've had a couple of people comment on me being a good listener in the last semester, and I know when I am listening well and when I'm not – because when I listen, I am consciously working at it. And if I have become good at it, it is only by the grace of God, that for literally years and years he put me through the wringer as he taught me how. I hope, should anyone decide they want to learn how to become a listener, they won't need as much refining – that I was a particularly stubborn and flawed piece of ore, and that others don't need nearly as long in the furnace – but I won't guarantee it. Only God knows what it takes to turn someone into a listener.

Do I need to clarify, at this point, that I'm talking about the fuller sense of listening? Not just what happens when soundwaves hit the inner ear, but what happens when the mental ear perceives meaning. To listen is to be attentive, to pay attention. It costs. It costs you.

Many people have never learned even to hear. We only have a finite amount of attention, and it is spent according to our will, which is in turn exercised according to our priorities. Very, very many people have never learned a priority higher than themselves, and in all fairness it should be pointed out that the culture we currently inhabit is very deliberately, chillingly constructed to keep people there. That's why it's imperative that we acknowledge our need for God, the ultimate culture-breaker, to get anywhere with this. There's no one else to look to for help who can actually do so.

Thus, left to our own inclinations and the encouragement of our culture, our attention is spent almost entirely on ourselves. I suspect this is why so many people describe child rearing as so radically life-changing – because for many, it is literally the first time that their attention is forced to be spent on someone else, someone moreover who cannot repay in kind for a long time. (Of course, for many, it is a lesson incompletely learned, and a host of horrors arise from that.)

So, with our finite quantities of attention, some are able to hear – to acknowledge that someone else has said something. Something which at least a cursory examination is due, which might contain markers of something needing further attention, actual listening. If you think it's a bit much of me to say that even this is unusual, just think about how often people ask a question and show virtually no interest in the answer – even talk over the answer you try to give. If ever a person was going to be in "hearing" mode, it ought to be when they have asked a question!

But we're going further than that; we're going all the way to listening. "Hearing" scans to find relevant meaning in what is being said – relevant to the hearer. Hearing is an act of will still done according to the priority that there might be something important to me in what is being said; the attention is still being paid to me. Hearing at least acknowledges the ability of the other person to contribute something important, acknowledges that the other is an active player in the situation, but it is still the self that is the most important element.

Listening reverses that. Listening is an act of will done according to the priority that what is being said is important because it is important to the other. Listening requires that you quiet yourself – all those things you usually listen to in your own head, anxieties, preoccupations, errant thoughts, distractions, clever insights, hurt and impatience and reactions to what is being said. Listening is carving out a quiet in yourself which you give to the other person to fill. Listening means doing this repeatedly, every converstation, every time one of these things leap up and catch your attention again. Listening means consciously deciding that what the other is communicating is more important than what you are communicating, even internally. It costs you you.

No human does that. Nothing originating with humanity or demonkind can teach that. It is a purely divine quietness that only God can teach, although I don't put limits on the ways he chooses to do so. And only in him can it become a joy, which I assure you it is. On the "negative" side of the equation, who could sustain this self-death of quietness with others if God did not grant life, if he did not perfectly listen? Because everyone needs to be listened to, which is another reason why so many people listen only to themselves – they have no reason to think anyone else will do so for them. And isn't the world noisy with need? God affirms and abundantly satisfies the need he gave us to be listened to, freeing us to listen, both to him and to others.

And on the "positive" side, there is abundant joy also in listening to others, to creating that space for them to speak both in text and subtext, and be affirmed in their need and worth to be listened to. There is joy in the self-abandonment, the true entering in to others' worlds, the ministering in God's ways and strength. There is joy in taking the critical faculties which are so often used to filter out others' impact on us, and using them to filter our own response to impact them in the wise time and the loving way.

Listen: it's worth it.

Question.

2009-12-04T13:48:00.006-06:00

Okay, so, based on a conversation I had recently with an early twenty-something, I have been conducting a loose, impromptu poll which has pretty much unanimously confirmed the position I hold. I'm talking fifteen-zip sort of statistics here. Arrogantly, I'm not all that surprised about that, but I do wonder if the results are being skewed by the fact that the people I've been asking have tended to be people I prefer to interact with (and therefore people who are likely to have the same view on this particular concept). So I just polled the denizens of the café I'm sitting in (mostly fellow students) on the subject, and received not only a consensus in agreement but anecdotes to back it up.

The question in question is this: Is there such a thing as a stupid question?

I will give you a little hint: I think there is. Very much so.

A few people have nuanced their reply with saying there is no such thing as a stupid question in abstract, but the context can make a question a stupid one to ask. But then, a question totally divorced from context is essentially meaningless, and even with that nuance people have agreed that, in practice, there are stupid questions. One even referenced a saying I quite like, "There are no stupid questions – just stupid people." Which ... tell me if I'm reading this wrong, but it's an implicit condemnation of the statement that there are no stupid questions. (And the person who quoted it pretty much thought the same.)

The best anecdote? While discussing sex trade issues in general, and a statistic of how many registered sex offenders there are in the state of Colarado, the question was: "Wait, you have to register to be a sex offender in Colarado?" The person who asked was eighteen. Which highlights an interesting point: often, teachers will tell kids that there is are (stupid bad grammar) no stupid questions in order to get them to ask about things, to start exploring through questions, to not be afraid of looking dumb for asking about something they don't understand. Fine, I can see why that is a common practice. But why is that not balanced with the idea that you should engage your brain before opening your mouth? At what point do people graduate from the school of free passes for dumb questions, and are shamed into thinking? Shame, while vulnerable to a great deal of abuse, is actually a healthy thing. Our culture is striving for shamelessness, but that is a discussion for another day (and don't I have a lot of those?).

Now, some context might be helpful – I was having this conversation with someone who was asking questions. They weren't actually stupid ones (but that was the defence when I challenged them, hence the discussion question, which is a sideline to the real issue). They were, however, inept and presumptuous upon the goodwill or ingrained avoidance of conflict (also known as "politeness") of the person being asked. Given that I am sadly lacking in the latter, and had burned through all I had of the former, I finally flatly refused to answer a question and challenged the asking. It led to an incomplete (due to time) discussion of the power dynamics of questions ... which is another interesting subject for another time, because I have homework to finish....

of apple cider and authority

2009-10-28T23:20:00.010-05:00

Have I posted for a while? No. Have I felt like it? No. Has there been anything interesting and worthy of blogging, if only I could find the time? Yes. Now that that's out of the way....

I've been out in the burbs of Chicago today, and between the cool, wet Fall air, the sumptuous Fall colours, and the rich Fall flavours in the food, I was reminded again just how American America is. One thing I love about the States is Fall. It brings with it things like hot apple cider, and pumpkin things, and chocolate chip cookies that are perilously dense (actually, those are around all the time, but this season seems to be the right one to eat them in). Plus I got to ride the elevated train around about again today, which I absolutely love for some reason. It's clackety and elevated and old and winds through the city buildings a storey above street level, and full of weird people going to odd places. What's not to love?

On to the reason I actually felt like actually posting, finally. I've always been fascinated by how things work. It's one of my favourite things, to sit and noodle through how things work, and there has been quite a lot of such noodling in the past few months. One thing in particular I am beginning to think more about is authority – what it is and how it works. Some things which have contributed to this ongoing musing have been the ideas of prayer, truth, speaking, spiritual warfare, words and hermeneutics.

I do not understand authority; it is not something that comes at all instinctively to me, so this musing is starting out slow. There's a lot of information gathering that is happening and needs to happen before I can start forming theories and drawing conclusions. Already, though, there are some things where I'm responding with, "Oh – that's how that works."

It helps that authority and power are closely linked, and I understand power somewhat better. Authority seems to have a lot to do with using power aptly, bringing about the results the power was intended for. Power can be misappropriated, at which point authority is abused – but does it thereby stop being authority? Not sure about that one yet.

Which gives me some kind of shape for the definition of authority, which I realise might be helpful at this point. This is in very early stages, and hopefully will be refined as I grapple with it more and trawl for other opinions. I once heard a fairly helpfully broad definition of "power" as "the ability to make something happen." "Authority", I think, is the licence to exercise power. Authority has limits and boundaries, but that doesn't mean it can't be taken outside of them; that would be when authority is abused. And of course "licence" implies that authority is given, and logically can only be given by a higher authority*. In fact, consider the root word of "authority"!

These are the generalities which I have been quietly constructing; one specific issue of authority which has come up numerous times of late is that of speaking truth. (The whole question of how authority and words interact is complex and vast, and I'm still feeling out the shape of it.) I think I first began to contemplate this because of a discussion on preaching (a common one around here), but I think it applies pretty broadly to all of us who are inclined to instruct or inform others about things.

My solidifying conviction is this: we have the authority to speak truth only to the extent that we have submitted to its authority in our own lives. No matter how marvellous an insight we think of – or how right we think we are – if it has not messed with our lives and brought us into line with it in practice as well as intellectual assent, we have no right to speak it. We should stay silent, or better yet examine why we haven't given truth the weight it deserves in our own life. It is the only way to respect and serve the reality of the person or people we speak to; it is how we handle truth with humility, by acknowledging its authority over us.

Don't take what I'm saying too far; for example, I'm not claiming this is the only boundary for speaking truth, nor am I saying we should never voice insights which owe far more to the perspective we are able to have than to our experiences. But again, if that is what we are doing, we ought to have the humility to acknowledge it – to say "I have no real experience on this, and I am sure I don't understand some things, but from the perspective I have it seems that such-and-such..." And of course these things will be expressed in different ways when addressing a congregation, or a friend, or a workmate or whatever.

I say this because, generally, I'm pretty good at working out what the right answer is – or at least, a good part of the right answer – even if I don't have much experience in the issue at all. I can confidently assert some stuff that sounds pretty good, even wise. In doing so, I am claiming more authority for my words than I have any right to, and I am also in danger of becoming arrogant about it.

Now, does that mean God can't use what truth I have spoken, what insights I gave? Of course not! He does it quite often, I imagine, and not just with me. But that's his mercy, both on me and those I speak to, and has little to do with me. All truth is his truth, and so he can give it authority to exercise power in the hearer, but in a way that's the whole point! His truth is powerful and we need to be very humble and careful in the way we handle it. The more I ponder it, and see my impulse to speak in action, the more I am convinced that very few of us treat truth with the reverence it we should; we are far too cavalier with it, and frequently misuse it badly.

And in case you're wondering, yes: I have been choosing to stay silent a lot more often in the last year or so, and occasionally chosen to word things very differently. I am still seeking what boundaries my authority to speak has, and it's an interesting and unfinished journey.

* The word "higher" needs qualifying, because while it's a comfortable use when we're talking about God, or a battalion commander or whatever, it starts getting sticky when we talk about interpersonal relationships. If we assume that giving authority denotes a higher authority (which it must, logically), we little egalitarians start squirming because we think one person is being labelled as better than the other. On the other hand, if we recognize that we have higher authority in some areas of our life, and that this is common to all people and ought to be acknowledged as such, the squawking will likely die down. In fact, if these areas of higher authority didn't exist, human relationships would be unrecognizably different, and when those areas of higher authority are either abused or disregarded, we are looking at a manifestation of sin.

yeah....

2009-09-27T02:08:00.002-05:00

And this just gives me the willies.

jawdrop

2009-09-17T00:09:00.006-05:00

Seriously. God had a ridiculous amount of fun with making his universe.

If I ever needed some kind of object lesson in the scale difference between me and God, comparing my dinky little sculptures with his entire universe, micro to macro, might be a place to begin. Of course, the way it begins is by breaking my brain... O.o

Authors, Texts and Readers: 9 sentences

2009-09-05T22:51:00.003-05:00

In the past two hundred years, movements in philosophy has led to hermeneutical theory taking, in turn, the author, the text itself, and the individual reader to be the key element in interpretation. The role of each, while in vogue, was isolated and taken to extreme: first the empirical person and setting of the author became the reason for studying the text; then the text became a free-floating entity with no mooring in time or space; and finally the reader became the ultimate arbiter of a text’s meaning, even to the point of saying that no meaning existed beside that which each individual brought to it.

In the “communication model” of hermeneutics, Brown suggests that meaning is to be found by holding each of these elements in relationship, while limiting each to its reasonable authority. The author has meaning they intend to communicate (“communicative intent”), constructing a text that reflects their setting, intention, and anticipated audience, and which will be understood according to the reader’s own circumstances, attention, and knowledge. These elements are inherent in any attempt at communication.

Which raises the question: given only the text of this single blog post, written as part of my homework to summarize chapter three of Jeannine K. Brown’s Scripture as Communication, what just happened? Did communication take place? What of my setting and communicative intent can be discerned from this text alone? And ultimately, what is the meaning of this post?

sweet home, Chicago

2009-08-25T21:50:00.003-05:00

I've been all the way home – for a couple or so months, no less – and then back again for a whole week, and typed nary a word on the subject. Mind you, things have been busy, and I've never particularly taken to the Twitter-type posts. Too busy for noodling and nattering, at least to a coherent standard, but it was a good holiday. – If by "holiday" we mean "crazy running-around time of craziness".

So it's been high mental intake, low output, that sort of thing. Hopefully that will shift gears now that classes have started. For some reason they seem to think the output is kind of important; go figure. Probably the deadlines will help.

Anyway. Back to living mostly within a few blocks of land (as opposed to roaming constantly all over Sydney – which is a stunningly beautiful city with gorgeous weather, so there must really be something wrong with me to leave again), and having no mobile phone, and just running randomly into most of my acquaintance, and slipping back into the odd rhythm of community here. I like not having a mobile, not being constantly contactable; it's a very freeing thing, if only practicable in highly specific circumstances. And you have to be willing for your compulsively contactable community to keep nagging you on the subject, or trying to make you get on Facebook by threatening to just make up an account for you. Not that that would work; I can be hard enough to follow, let alone imitate, and y'all know how I feel about Facebook et al.

I love not texting, not worrying whether my phone is on, not always being distracted from the here-and-now by things that can wait. And when it's important, like this afternoon when a friend in need phoned my apartment, God had me walk in the door at the precise moment to field the call. Unsurprisingly perfect. I may not yet be able to trust him in absolutely everything, because I am unreasonable in ways I haven't even begun to understand, but I do trust him to put me exactly where he wants me, exactly when he wants me, so that I am able to serve him the way he wants me to. He loves the people I'm serving far more than I ever could, so all I have to do is be ready and willing to do it, and trust him for the rest.

Time to do some reading and go to bed like a good little bible student.

your typical Monday night

2009-05-26T01:05:00.002-05:00

I really quite like my toes.

Feet are interesting.

(I am completely sober.)

That is all.

making my way home

2009-05-22T14:01:00.007-05:00

So in Arizona, they really like country music. Like, really. I guess that makes sense. Never much thought about it before.

I've bounced around friends just a little bit before flying out of the country - the only thing Nikki had to say was "Grand Canyon", and I was in. I just wished we'd had more time to explore everything; Arizona is an incredibly beautiful state. Already there are embryonic plans for a road trip down Route 66 for next summer break. Have I mentioned that I'm coming back to the states to keep studying?

Right now I'm sitting next to Carrie in her family's home in Porterville, CA. That's Central Valley to you, the largest something-or-other in the state. Geographical thingie. Yup, I'm S-M-R-T. It's all small-town agricultural land around here, and it's delightful - undulating golden hills, rows of citrus trees, hazy distant mountain ranges (that's from the smog, though), hot bright days. This is my wind-down time, no pressure, no schedule, just "so what are we gonna do today?" In the last couple of days we've volunteered in Carrie's mum's first grade class in the afternoon; yesterday we took them to "Australia". I wore my hat. Very exciting.

... Okay, so I was about to launch into a hat-related anecdote, but I realized that there is absolutely no context for it, so: each semester at Moody they do a week-long conference thing of talks and whatnot. The opening night always has what's called the "Parade of Nations", in which various international students and missionary kids represent their countries by walking down the aisles of the auditorium carrying the flag, preferably dressed in their national costume. Now, I am the only Australian on campus, and although it feels unAustralian to go about waving our flag (without yelling "Aussie Aussie Aussie!"), I duly submitted both times to the flag ceremony.

Of course, lacking a Wallabies jersey, I had very little that would posit as "national costume", so I wore my Redbacks work boots and my black Drizabone hat. (Those boots have been set on fire, cracked all over, tramped in Congo dust and Grand Canyon dirt, and propped up on desks during bible college lectures, and remained sturdy and faithful; I'ma gonna be buried in them boots.)

So when I got the hat out to shelter my poor little white face from the southwest sun, Nikki said, "It's the parade of nations hat!" And I'm all, "Huh?"

Then she explained that in the last flag ceremony (only the second I'd ever participated in, remember), some kid sitting near her in the auditorium that she doesn't even know spotted me coming in and exclaimed exactly that: "It's the parade of nations hat!"

My hat is famous, y'all. (That's an American term. Why they can't pronounce "g'day" right I'll never know.) I might have to be buried in that, too.

In related news, Carrie and I sat with her family and watched the season finale of American Idol, attempting to keep snark to a minimum in the commentary. An excellent exercise in self-control, by the way; I highly recommend it. It was the first time I'd ever seen more than five seconds of the show together, and it was a fascinating study in marketing cycnicism. Not one I'd want to repeat any time soon, though.

I keep having an achy memory of Chicagoan winter, its snow and bite and brooding dormancy. Some people thrive in the adventure of the elements, and others wilt away from sunshine. I think I got a little of both. One of the sweetest moments I can recall from my whole year there was standing on the eleventh floor of my building, at around ten-thirty at night, watching about fifteen boys from the next-door dorm playing football in the dim golden-lit snow.

I'm looking forward to coming back.

the core of it all

2009-04-09T01:41:00.009-05:00

So my favourite thing about doing the Personal Profile assignment was the last section, where we were asked to compile a list of scripture verses which inform our core convictions about ministry. Everyone will have different verses according to their calling and role in the body, and the lists aren't meant to be exhaustive or immutable; just a compilation of those passages that stand out the most, getting a feel for what we feel to be the basic principles.

I found I couldn't comfortably narrow it down past thirteen (highly indicative of character, no doubt), and they are arranged in three catagories: core, character and community. And yes, the alliteration was all my doing. It seems to be a popular mnemonic device around here, and apparently it's catching.

The core catagory has only one passage, but for me it's absolutely central. Without this understanding, there is no truth, no motive and no resource for ministry:

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

So... yeah. Anything done apart from this is ultimately meaningless. I love the phrase "that in everything he might have the supremacy." And "in him all things hold together." It hit me some years ago, thinking about this passage, something of the depth of its meaning: in all of this whole entire reality, every scrap of space and every tick of time, in every life lived and deed done, in all that there is from beginning to end ever, there is nothing that is not about Christ.

Now, of course, I can't comprehend all that that means, because I can't comprehend everything. It's a shockingly casual word, "everything". Anyhow, I can't get my head around it all, because my mind is not an earth-sized supercomputer with ten million years' run-time*. What I do know is that nothing anyone does, decides or thinks about is worth spending any time on in the long run (read: eternity) if Christ is not the dead-centre reason.

It's a pretty helpful plumb line. Without what Christ has done, there is no power to achieve anything of eternal value. Without who Christ is, there is no reason to do anything of eternal value, or even understanding of what it is. As far as I'm concerned, this is the touchstone for ministry, no matter what you're doing. And it's amazingly easy to lose sight of it, so I'm thinking the phrase "constant vigilance" is appropriate here.

"Character" and "community" verses to be posted soonish (I may or may not be trying to make up for not posting for months). I have a position paper to write on eschatology, so that will be fun. Hope y'all have a meaningful Easter.

*Being facetious. The nerds to whom this was a shout-out won't need to click on this, but just so everyone is included... *links*

so personally me!

2009-04-06T15:55:00.009-05:00

I'm procrastinating again - I'm supposed to be doing a "Personal Profile Paper" where we take a whole lot of personality assessment thingies and summarize. Then we set goals and strategize. Can I get a woot? Amen.

If I've learned anything, it's that I put little stock in these things. The criteria seem too narrow and the strokes too broad, even scattershot, like reading horoscope personality traits. Just ignore anything that isn't applicable, you say? Way to inspire confidence.

Mind you, I'm not complaining because I don't like what my results say. My results are fine, if little paradoxical at times. And I'm sure they are somewhat accurate, as any broad stroke will be. It seems the greatest benefit of it is to require greater self-examination, figuring out why the heck I scored what I did rather than something else, and exactly how that applies (and how it doesn't). All in all, a rather tedious exercise. For example, being advised that my personality type(s) need to try new things and sometimes go against the crowd, be more determined and dominant and can be too concerned with winning seems a touch incongruous. Ah, but just delete what isn't applicable? Right.

The worst one (for me) was the character self-assessment, which was just entirely subjective, requiring you to rate yourself against what you perceive to be "average", while noting that by that they mean the average seminary student. It "assumes that you possess enough maturity to give an accurate picture of your present character development." I think I'm okay at evalutating my strengths and weaknesses, but I have always been completely crap at evaluating what constitutes "average". I don't know that I even believe that such a thing exists. Not to mention that asking an Australian to objectively declare that we are, in our own opinion, significantly above average at something achieves conflicted results, given our tall poppy syndrome. As a result, I busted out of the average range only twice in a list of twenty-nine traits. Not particularly helpful.

The best one, for my money, was the one that measured "basic values", probably because each pair was plotted on an independent scale, allowing for flexibility, range and overlap. Oh, and the spiritual gifts one was interesting, too, mostly because I've never done one before rather than because it put labels on what I already knew.

Sigh.

/procrastination

Edit: I just spotted this one too: I size up situations and comply with the rules in order to look good. Also, apparently I am sensitive to what others think about [me] and [my] work.

make some noise for Jesus yo

2009-04-03T22:04:00.002-05:00

Just attended the first ever rap music recital at Moody Bible Institute.

Awesome.

and in other news

2008-12-22T15:02:00.005-06:00

I don't like posting because I feel like I ought to.

It's cold. Currently -16°C, if my desktop widgets are to be believed. And I am ensconced in one of the quirky, paraphernalia-crammed coffee shops which Chicago seems feverishly to produce. The ones whose musical playlist is precisely calibrated to let you know just how indie-hip they are. There's some good stuff in there, but a lot of it is kind of annoying. Rather like Tom Waits. It weeds out the casual listener from the true aficionado in-crowd. Don't get me wrong, I like Tom Waits, but you have to be in the mood, you know?

My skin is dry. My fingernails are abnormally long, because my rule of thumb is simply to cut them all whenever one chips enough to be annoying - working in the foundry, that happened predictably frequently; now, they just keep... growing.

Also, it's time I wrote my next newsletter and sent it out. Ding it.

"Damn" is a real four-letter word here. I keep shocking people with it. They say "ding" or "dang" or "darn" instead. "Hell" likewise; they say "heck". I kind of wonder, sometimes, exactly what the difference is. Why sanitize swearwords? You mean the exact same thing, surely? And the idea of trying to make "damn" and "hell" more genteel is agreeably absurd, which is one of the reasons I acquiesce. Then again, using them as swearwords the way Aussies do equally downplays their inherent seriousness. So we're all stuck. That's not really the point of swearing, though, is it? The point is to say something shocking, unacceptable, to make a point. Therefore sanitized swearing is oxymoronic... Or just to say something, a conversational place-holder. Or an intensifier. This is making my head hurt.

Time to get more inventive. I'll have to hunt up some Strine and confuse people. I feel I've been letting the side down. One of the things I like about being Australian is that we can borrow or steal anything cultural from anyone and this is perfectly in keeping with our national heritage. We can be Australian and anything else that appeals to us. Rather like the English language.

The sun has set, because it's 4.30 in the afternoon. Enough said.

I like the word bumblebee. Also pickle. There were others I was thinking about the other day, but I've forgotten what they were. But I still like them.

Today's stream of consciousness was brought to you by the letter D, the number 17, and too much loafing about.

homework-induced garble

2008-12-08T23:59:00.002-06:00

The words Ephesus, Artemis and silver have formed their own little ideophonic word group association in my head.

Fun.

Two days until the semester is Done.

winter says hello

2008-12-01T11:37:00.003-06:00

First snowfall that hasn't just melted away the moment it hit the ground. Things are getting colder... but the weather so far has been comparatively mild and pleasant. I keep waiting for that to change, people here get so dire about "Oh, you'll see..."

Just thought I'd post about that, since I've been so lazy.

Ooh, it's snowing again...

That Won

2008-11-05T00:17:00.002-06:00

Huh.

The first time I ever became aware of Obama was when he was on Oprah in 2004, talking about The Audacity of Hope, I think. (I don't watch Oprah. I was channel-flicking.)

I watched him speak and he struck me as thoughtful, measured, intelligent and, possibly, wise. He struck me as having character and vision.

I watched him and the one real conviction I took away from it was, "This guy is going to be president one day." I didn't think it would be this soon, and I wouldn't wish what he is going to face on anyone, but I think he is the best person this country has available to do it. May God give him humility, wisdom and strength.

Congratulations, President Elect Obama.

days go by

2008-10-29T15:55:00.003-05:00

Ack!

*waves feebly from under piles of midterm homework*

The first snowflakes fell on Monday.

I'm starting to think about how to stay on for another year or year-and-a-half and just get my Masters while I'm here.

The election stuff is still crazy. Also, people honestly think Obama is a socialist. !

More on this later.

Edit: oh yeah, and D.A. Carson spoke in chapel today. *boggle*

American politics - the Christian issue

2008-09-29T14:29:00.012-05:00

It will come as a surprise to probably none of you that I have, in my one-month-and-change here in the states, had several conversations on the broad subject of American politics. None of them were particularly laid-back in nature, except when they occurred solely with other internationals.

It's been a busy week for the general election, and to celebrate the first presidential debate, I thought I'd post some lop-sided, indefinite and far-from-comprehensive observations that I've gathered from the conversations I've been having. Most of these observations are of long-term trends and thought patterns derived from the statements of those citizens kind enough to share them with me.

Number one, they are all insane.

Well, perhaps that is overstating the case a tad. Just a tad, mind you. Let me qualify the particular flavour of insanity they exhibit, lest anyone draw the wrong conclusion from my wide open statement: I find their priorities/world view nearly inexplicable.

(Which, from a postmodern mindset is no problem - whatever works for you, dude - but I don't live in a postmodern world. I live in a world where objective reality matters, and I think at some point the American people are going to find that they do too. The sooner the better. This kerfuffle on Wall Street at the moment may help, but I suspect that, short of a disaster genuinely on par with the Great Depression, this slap to the face won't be the last one they'll need.)

Here's one that's been driving me kind of nuts: abortion. This would have to be the biggest and most misunderstood issue amongst Christians in America today. It is almost the only issue they care about, politically. Perhaps I ought to say it's the middle-class white Christians, who are significantly over-represented at Moody; I'm sure in other neighbourhoods the issues are more varied. I can't begin to give you proportionate representation of the views, because I'm beginning to find it difficult to raise the subject and not get unhelpfully apoplectic.

So, suitably caveated (not a word, is it...?) on what I'm about to say: every political conversation I've had here at school, the first (and pretty much only) fundamental reason people give me for supporting the Republican party is their stance on abortion. I mean, two have added that they supported the Iraq war, that it was necessary (those pesky WMDs... I'm not kidding; apparently they have just been really really really well hidden), and gay marriage occasionally gets a look-in, usually once I've brought it up. But really, it's all about the legality of abortion. The feeling I get is it's the only thing that matters to them in supporting a party.

Don't get me wrong - I think abortion is certainly an important issue. I understand it is highly emotive, even better than I did before, now that I've met some of these people. Highly, highly charged, and requiring far more delicacy than I have on my very best of days. I am blunt, and what I'm about to say will be blunt. Those easily offended probably should skip ahead, or maybe even give the rest of the post a miss; in fact, to be totally honest, I'm not sure what you're doing reading my blog in the first place. It's not thin-skin friendly.

So: I would never have an abortion. Ever. Then again, I'm not a fifteen year-old girl, scared out of her mind with no one to turn to for help, no financial resources whatsoever, and no knowledge of a God who longs to pour out a flood of love onto her just as she is, because her only picture of God is a church which says "we condemn every choice you have made and are about to make; what you've done makes you evil, and evil people go to hell". Please don't think I am saying abortion is perfectly fine in her case - but I think it can be understood why she might feel it is her only viable option.

The legality, or not, of abortion certainly will have an impact on the amount of abortions carried out. It will make them much more expensive and much more dangerous, and will reduce their number; it will also make them impossible to regulate. Those who I despise most for getting them, women of means who regard their pregnancy as an inconvenience, will still be able to get them one way or another. Those who are desperate will be far more likely to go to some hack willing to do it cheaper, because they can't afford anything more, and will be more likely to die from it. They will have no access to counselling either before or after the fact because it's illegal.

Now these are just some thoughts, and off-topic ones as well. I can't solve the issue of abortion for you right now; for one thing, I've got lots of homework, and for another, I'm not the greatest moral and ethical genius in the history of the world. (I have enough humility to know that at least...)

The point is, these are nuanced issues requiring deep consideration and great compassion. Neither of which I see in those I talk to about it. Abortion = Murder = Evil = Legislate Against It. It is that simple to them, that black-and-white. And I can see the attraction in that. I can also see the soul-killing indifference to human need and tragedy and brokenness in it. It is easy to be legalistic. Jesus said as much to the Pharisees in , and goes on to condemn them for completely missing the point of God's law: justice and love (never one without the other). He rips into the experts in the law, too: "For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you!" ()

And so I ask: where, in all these people crying out that God hates abortion and it needs to be abolished, are the crowds of people running to the side of that fifteen year-old girl saying, "Here I am, I'm here to help you. Don't think you have no options. God loves you as well as your baby and doesn't want either of you to die, and he's sent me to love you and not condemn you for the choices you've made. He doesn't even demand a return for his love in order to give it. He asks everything but demands nothing, and freely gives you the resources of his love through me, right here and right now, in whatever practical, emotional, and spiritual way you need. This is who God is, and how much he loves you!" Where are you?

Okay, well clearly the subject gets me worked up, because really all I was going to say is that because of the unbelievable weight given to this issue, Republicans can do pretty much whatever they like in any other area. No matter how morally repugnant, how unethical and arrogant, how exploitative of the weak and powerless - as long as they are against abortion, the vast majority of mainstream Christians will vote for them. Literally. It is a genuine Get Out Of Jail Free card, no questions asked, as far as I can tell.

And it really has nothing to do with God's heart - it has to do with Christians perceiving themselves to be the moral arbiters (which we're not, frankly), fixating on this one moral question, and throwing a tantrum when it turns out we have very little credibility left in secular circles.

The mind boggles. More on the other stuff later.

why the head is stupid about the heart's suffering

2008-09-04T14:04:00.007-05:00

This will just be a quick reflection arising from a discussion we had over lunch of God's omnipotence as it relates to suffering - ie, why doesn't he do anything about it? (Which is a false dilema, by the way; the existence of suffering doesn't preclude God acting in response to it. The more honest phrasing of that kind of question would be why doesn't he do what we want him to do about it? - which changes the slant of the discussion considerably.)

This post isn't so much about suffering, by the way. It's more about the search for answers - the question that was raised by a Ugandan classmate when the lecturer discussed omnipotence was, "In the face of the suffering of my people, how can I tell them God is all-powerful?"

Now - there are true philosophical answers to this, intellectual answers, which he duly received. And they are important and ought to be sought for; it is certainly not the case that it is impossible to intellectually reconcile the two issues, even if we can't always encompass all the nuances and outworkings of such an explanation.

However, as he expressed at lunch, it was not the heart answer he was looking for. He could not take that answer back to a suffering nation, to people who pray to a seemingly all-powerful, all-loving God who doesn't stop their suffering! And that is also true. So the five of us at lunch talked about that aspect, and it was a very heartfelt and good conversation.

Again, I'm not going into those answers, head or heart, here. Maybe some other time, in the highly unlikely event that such a subject should ever come up again...

No, what struck me here was actually the dissonance generated when we respond to heart-seeking with head answers. Our first reaction to a need, or a question of the heart, is an intellectual questing. Why is that?

Thus I muse. Has the intellect been given so much prominence in our composition that what satisfies our mind is assumed to satisfy everything else? A clearly preposterous notion when it comes to our bodies - try informing the stomach that the understanding of the head ought to meet its hunger. Yet that's what, by our actions, we seem to try to do to the heart.

Or is it the elevation of Reason in consequence of the Enlightenment? But the heart will not be ruled rationally. It simply refuses. I suspect we have lost a great deal of wisdom concerning the workings of the heart because it doesn't come under the aegis of exalted reason, and therefore has been somewhat ignored as a subject of study, an element of ourselves that deserves to be addressed.

Here's the point: the heart doesn't want answers. It doesn't want to know the whys and wherefores. It wants comfort. Its cry spurs on our minds to search for answers, which is good and necessary for our minds - please don't think I'm saying we should not seek intellectual explanations and answers to the problems that confront us. All I'm saying is that we should never, ever presume that in doing so we are addressing the whole of the problem. The heart doesn't care. Its cry won't stop because we discover a formula. The answer it longs for is acknowledgement - empathy - comfort.

Handily, God knows this perfectly well. The bible has explanations for suffering and the goodness and power of God, and it's important for us to understand these things as we confront the suffering of others (and our own). But these explanations are not what God tells us to give to them. It's not what he gives people who are suffering. Our answer to someone who suffers must first and foremost be our presence - we are to mourn with those who mourn (). We must never delegitimize their suffering by offering intellectual solutions - such things should only come after we meet their need for love and compassion, and that is a large demand that will likely need to be returned to - much like hunger or thirst.

I am always glad for the example in Job of this. I've heard it often, and heartily agree, that Job's friends were most effective in their friendship, and in meeting his condition of need, when they sat silently in the dust with him. It only went downhill from there, when they opened their mouths to give their opinions and explanations. Likewise, when he appeared God didn't answer the intellectual questions raised by Job's suffering. Instead, he basically just said, "I am here." (Well, and challenged their presumption in making judgements as to his purposes in a pretty fearsome way.)

So, anyway. Just some thoughts.

Aaaand we're off!

2008-08-25T22:51:00.006-05:00

I'm winding down, absorbing, processing, my very first class of the semster - not just the content of that class (which was rich and exciting in itself) but the whole being a student again. I honestly don't know how I'll go - I've always been good at learning, at understanding and applying information, but turning that into concrete marks is another thing entirely!

It's great just to feel passionate and engaged by the material, though. I love to learn, to pull ideas apart and discover insights and patterns, all that stuff. Even if I barely scrape through on marks, if I come away with a deeper understanding of God, myself and my world, one that compels me to stand in the breach and serve however I may, that will be the true prize of this academic year, time and money well spent. The indications so far are good!

Post-script: I changed over the time/date settings. Now they really do reflect what time I'm posting; don't get too worried over it, though, I only have one morning class! Sweet, sweet sleeping in...

everyone likes photos

2008-08-20T20:48:00.015-05:00

Moving right along from the wildly popular "Hell" post;

Look, photos! I was going to spend the afternoon writing my next newsletter, but the words wouldn't come. So instead I browsed through what photos I could salvage from what turned out to be a very scratched disc, and selecting a few that might give a bit of a sense of Bunkeya. These are all ones I took, or Jess took, with her camera - I have a lot of Alex's, too, but they're both vastly superior and sadly not mine, so if you want to see them, go bug him. These ones are not all horridly out of focus, I promise.

Now if I can only figure out how to add photos to this blogpost...

Aha! Okay, good. So, to start off with, this is Arestans (I have probably spelt that completely wrong), the son of one of the wonderful women who helped us in the house, Gracia.

They say that it's the kids who steal your heart, and it's totally true. I'm not even a kids kind of person, and... well, I wouldn't say I was helpless to resist, but they certainly made an impression.

This is Mike (pronounced phonetically, so: "mi-keh"), who was one of the more openly inquisitive of the kids, and loved being photographed. He found me once or twice when I was drawing and very solemnly went through the contents of my pencil case, and advised me on what I should use. He was right, too!

A few building pictures, just to prove we were actually doing something:

The finishing touches - nailing on the roof.

Bindi, Jess and myself in our Sunday best - the lady on my left is Gracia.

And finally, a few location shots. If I remember, this shot is looking to the east.

Our backyard and beyond, facing (roughly) south. On the left is an old unused water boiler.

The village, to the north. Note the cellphone tower - put up only a week before we arrived, ceasing to function very shortly after! Last I heard, it was fixed about a week after we left, but who knows what the status is now...

So, there you have photos. Aren't they nice? Nicer than talking about hell, anyway.

so let's talk about Hell, then

2008-08-12T10:57:00.006-05:00

Why, oh why, am I posting about this today? I'm all brain-fogged with jetlag and words haven't really been working for me all that well in the last week or so. It'll probably all come out wrong, and clearly I should just be reading the book my cousin left on the counter or watching something mind-numbing on tv. And it's not like it's a fun subject or anything - it's not even cool to bring it up, if you're a Christian; you just get accused of hellfire scaremongering, and possibly bible thumping.

So I couldn't tell you why. I can tell you the reason I've been musing over it: it's come up in several conversations I've had with different people while travelling, and nearly always by them as a commentary on the absurdity of Christian doctrine. (There's a post on the subject of a "personal relationship with Jesus" that I apparently owe one of them, but this feels like it needs to be explained first, a necessary context.) Also, I picked up The Great Divorce by CS Lewis in London, an allegorical exploration of the nature of Heaven and Hell and humanity, which is very good (and also short). It contains no hellfire at all - or bible thumping, for that matter.

For my part, this will merely be a collection of thoughts, certainly incomplete, unsystematic and possibly irrelevant. They have no designs on argument, proof, or conviction; their only purpose is to hopefully express something of what I understand of Hell, as actually portrayed by the bible, and why I don't have a problem with it. That is to say, why I don't find it an absurd, unjust, cruel notion inconsistent with God's fluffy-wuffy character of love, et cetera.

Hell is a terribly difficult thing to discuss or contemplate calmly. Most people's reaction to the subject is largely and strongly emotional. Whatever righteousness they claim for themselves in their opinion on it, whether denouncing it or invoking it, usually stems from how they feel - about themselves, other people and organized religion. No matter how sophisticated their arguments are, in their most basic form they are generally self-justification (again, mind that I am talking about both religious and "non"-religious people here; unless otherwise stated, I'm not distinguishing between the two in this post). That is human nature.

This is why I tend not to get into deep philosophical conversations about Hell with most people; it is nearly impossible to keep them from feeling personally seriously threatened by ideas contrary to their own, which does not make for a rational, free-flowing discussion. That terrible insult, "intolerant", has an airing, and it's all downhill from there. And besides which, it is a very rare person who is actually interested in what you have to say, who doesn't simply hang a label around your neck and seek the opportunity to express moral indignation in some form or another.

Incidentally, I'm okay with being intolerant about certain things. It seems to me "intolerance" can be appropriate, that some things are like gravity in that respect - not: I don't care what you think/how you feel about falling from a cliff, but rather: unfortunately, how you feel about it is not going to change the essential problem here.

In our thoroughly convenient first-world culture, insulated from so much of the terribly harsh difficulty of everyday life, we seem somehow to assume that our preferences about a situation ought to make a difference. That we should be shielded from bad things, no matter what, because we don't like bad things; that whatever makes us happy is the most important consideration. Try explaining that to your average African - if they don't laugh in your face and call you a fool it's because they're being either polite or cautious; you're much richer than they are. It wasn't until life got so despicably easy for the richest 3% of the world's population (and that is what we are) that the concept of Hell became so hard for us to get our head around.

However unpalatable, Hell belongs in this category of situational intolerance, in that how someone might feel about it has nothing to do with its existence or function. If that offends you, you probably won't enjoy the rest of this post, as this is the understanding I'll be working with - that how anyone (including myself) might feel about it, though important, is beside the point.

The biggest thing about hell seems to be "how can this be true?" - how can people I don't think deserve to go to Hell be sent there by a God who claims to be loving?

Well, for a start, the presumption involved in such a question needs to be pointed out. It is presumptuous to assume that we, with our muddy grasp of moral reality, comfy self-involved delusions about ourselves, extremely limited insight into others and total blindness to all but the most glaringly obvious consequences of anyone's actions, could possibly be more qualified than an all-seeing, purely good God to pronounce moral judgements. I mean, seriously. That it even needs to be pointed out, how utterly flawed our basis for attempting to hold God hostage to our notions of right and wrong is, is probably the most extraordinary thing about the whole business. (Of equal ridiculousness and misunderstanding of the difference between ourselves and God is sanctimoniously consigning those who don't happen to agree with us to Hell.)

I won't quibble with whether or not someone is a "good" person by human standards. There are such people. Not all of them - perhaps not even most of them - are Christian. But it's not interesting, and human moral standards are inherently subjective, so it's not even helpful. (God's objective standard of absolute good makes things much easier - raise your hand, not if you've led "a pretty good life, all things considered", but if you've led an absolutely perfect life, down to the last detail...?) And above all, it's not at all relevant. It's not how you get to Heaven or are condemned to Hell.

To quote Lewis (or rather, one of his characters):
'Everyone who wishes [to come to Heaven] does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there would be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.'

Note what he is saying: people go to Hell because they'd rather be there than pay the price of going to Heaven. What is that price? It is having your own way. Those who prize their own way, above all else, will get it - and for eternity. Nothing that is not themselves will remain - nothing of God or from God will be left to them, not the slightest screed of goodness, joy, peace, love, justice, mercy; only pure themselves, in total clarity. When was the last time you shone the light of total clarity into your deep, dark, messy soul? How keen are you for people to see the very worst in you? How long can you go without needing to find something to distract you from you?

It means that every person in the world, from the moment they can understand the idea of God and the idea of themselves, has the simple choice of whether they will submit to God's claim on them (without whom they would not exist and cannot even sustain their own life from moment to moment) or that their own desires are more important. Whatever religion, whatever understanding they have of God, the choice is the same. Most people don't really know all that much about God until they really want to know more about him than themselves; and when they do, God is more than capable of showing them who he is. If they don't want to know, they aren't forced to - not in this lifetime. God allows their choice to be eternal.

It is a consequence that is both just and merciful, and accords perfectly with God's character of love - because the only option other than spending eternity apart from God is spending eternity with God. And for someone who wants nothing to do with God, it would be the only thing worse, because apart from Hell there is no escape from God; for such a person, Hell is the better option. It is not a good one - it is a pit of despair, loneliness and horror of yourself - but it is better than being forced to confront, for eternity, the essence and source of goodness and love which you hate. Whose presence makes you feel forever the depth of your utter insignificance, when your own significance was what you based your entire life on, leading you to reject the only significant thing there has ever been or will ever be.

Okay, I'm done for now. In closing I'd just like to say I believe I am finally coming to appreciate toast in all its glory. Toast is great. Toast is universal. Toast is dairy-free.

farewell Congo (for now)

2008-08-03T12:51:00.007-05:00

My final night in Congo. I ought to post, even if it is short; the power's on (how long? who knows!) and we're waiting for Claude, and his friend Claude who's staying for a while, to come home before we have dinner. (Claude Deux is nothing like Claude, who - when contemplating the dinner fork and the desert fork laid next to his plate last night - said that the two short forks ought to have gone to Claude Deux, and the two long ones been given to him. The joke didn't need interpretation.)

It's a little sad to be going, cast adrift in the very big world, all on my own. I can already smell Airplane, faugh. I'm glad I took the time to spend with Bethany, after all the excitement of the team had left with them; it was good just to get some small feel of what her life is like when she's not expertly shepherding a bunch of excitable, wayward Australians.

And of course it's easy to become nostalgic in retrospect, but I would say to anyone considering it: Beware of coming to Africa, unless you are very thick-skinned or don't mind having your lifeplan utterly disrupted because you're being tugged back. As Jess, the other girl on the team, said, Africa gets in your blood. I never had any hankering to come to developing nations, really. Ever. Not that I was indifferent to them, it's just that there seemed to be plenty of problems right in front of me in my own culture that need addressing - which I'm better suited to helping. Hence my area of study. But now I'd be pretty surprised if my path didn't lead me back here again, in some form and duration or another. Not that I will ever be a full time misso (is that how it's spelt?) out here (family can breathe a sigh of relief) but I don't imagine I will ever be able to say with certainty that I'm done with Africa. I'd better not go to Asia or South America, or I'll never stop moving!

Well, the moment has been marked and I'm getting peckish, and the men have returned, so that will be the last this blog will see from me in Congo, for now - but definitely not about Congo. Next stop, London!

PS, ignore the time signatures. They have no idea where I am, hehe

moments of Congo

2008-07-31T09:00:00.017-05:00

The power's on, woohoohoo! I wasn't going to blog just yet, but when the power's on you grab the electricity by the horns and seize the current and... I don't know, take advantage of the situation. I'm just praying it'll stay on long enough to get a decent-sized post out. The fridge is working, electrical things are charging, it's all very exciting!

Africa "does your head in", to borrow a favourite phrase of our two puppies (otherwise known as the fourth-year apprentices who came on the building trip; think nearly full-grown Great Danes or some other large dog - no yapping, just big boisterousness). Everything you know about how things work is turned on its head. Except for human nature. It has been enlightening to see how much human societal functions are just an agreement, no more, and by no means binding or absolute - in fact, nothing but the flimsiest veneer over a volatile reality. This is the case everywhere, but here in Africa it is more obvious in a lot of ways.

I'm sitting here, slowly, slowly munching on a bar of dark chocolate that my brother bought me at the airport when I left, almost a month ago. I've saved it this long, through butt-numbing, spine-bending landcruiser trips, hours-long church services (also having a negative impact on your behind), putting up with up to four members of the team laid low with malaria or stomach bugs at a time, theological arguments, seemingly endless games of 500, PMS and a very affecting Christian women's book. Of course, there is the consideration that if I'd got it out any sooner, I might have had to share it! (I shared my other dark chocolate, but this one's special.)

I'm all that's left here in Lubumbashi of our team of... well, it's a bit hard to count, actually. You could say seven, plus two "tourists" and Bethany. That's probably the most accurate. I don't know that the Tourists particularly appreciate the label, but what with safariing before joining us, being out with us in Bunkeya for only four days and sleeping in until eight-thirty (even nine, once, I think!) it's the one they got stuck with. They flew out yesterday, and I'm here alone at Bethany and Claude's, listening to the laughter and clanking of Claude's men as they work in the yard.

And the power's still on! The excitement is nearly on par with returning from Bunkeya to flushing toilets (rather than a bucket-flush arrangement, which is not easy to get the hang of, nor a lot of fun when half your team have diarrhea... is that really how that's spelt?). If the power stays on, there's even the possibility of actual hot showers tonight, rather than a sponge bath (which I don't mind so much - although by candlelight it becomes trickier, which I discovered last night because the solar-powered portable light hadn't been charged during the day). I just wish I could think of something to write to do justice to the situation.

Hm. Word-picture impressionism, perhaps. (Don't worry, the experiment won't go on long; I have to start preparing stuff for dinner pretty soon.)

Driving home in the late afternoon, traffic ahead of us gold-etched ghosts, silhouettes flickering and fading in sun-gleaming clouds of dust.

Moonrise, heavy and majestic, yellow in dust and grassfire smoke from the valley below; by day they are only white billows trickling up from the ground, but at night they are lines of orange dancing across the darkness.

Clear melodies drifting through the dry, hot air, humming and whistling familiar tunes almost subconsciously at their work; high and sweet from the women washing our clothes, deeper and snatched to the rhythm of the building site from the men.

Knowing, enigmatic hooded eyes full of uncommunicated words and hidden amusement, watching the equally mysterious mazungu (white person) navigate strange new currents, a careful offering of beset connection.

The press of a mass of small dusty bodies on all sides, a galaxy of wondering gazes crowding up against simple guitar music, in a tiny village out in the "long grass".

Blazing patterns of colour swathing curves of straight-backed women, loads balanced easily on the dark head above a gliding, steady tread.

... Time for slicing and chopping and such. Those cauliflowers won't cut up themselves! Let's hope the power returns for another round later on.

seven and counting

2008-06-26T00:00:00.008-05:00

So it's a week, precisely a week, until I jump ship. (Well, jump "a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains..." only it's cold and cloudy at the moment, and I spent all yesterday wandering around the city, so that hardly seems accurate.) It seems a fitting occasion to mark with a quick post, especially as I ought to be packing and sorting and clearing stuff out and, well, procrastination is currently the order of the day.

What to say, though?

Some things (not going into the people) I will miss, in no particular order:

The idea of Australia. We are, by and large, a hopelessly sentimental nation - as evidenced by our incorrigible love of lost causes, misfits, battlers, underdogs and the imprudently bloody-minded (Gallipoli, Ned Kelly, Waltzing Matilda, Mad Max, et cetera). It's a grim, glorious romance with a somewhat idealized past more than any present reality. So it's no surprise to me that I should feel nostalgia for a sparse, austere, grandly indifferent land, even the rim of which has the air of being barely tamed, and the complex extremes of character of the people who ride her... Conflicted patriotism (to the point where we don't care for that word at all; patriotism is no virtue down here - "fierce ambivalent affection" is the best description I can come up with at the moment) is part of being Australian. So I will miss that, being in amongst that, the more for being on the other side of the world - a dream of a thing is always better viewed from further away.

Gums. Red gums, ghost gums, grey gums, scribbly gums... They are beautiful and strange. I will miss them.

Kookaburras. And bellbirds. Part of that nostalgic bloody-mindedness, since there aren't any where I live, but... there you go. They're part of the texture of my remembered Australia, of trips to grandparents and the country. When I finally settle down, I want it to be somewhere with bellbirds.

The smell of my cat's fur. The smell of Australian air. The smell of barbies in the still, warm evening.

Sydney Harbour, and the bridge. Travelling down through The Spit in late afternoon light, mellow gold threading in amongst the sailboats and the windy twisty tricksy nooks of Middle Harbour, gleaming reflections in the smooth water.

The quality and clarity of sunlight, the unbroken bowl of blue above. Rain that is a joy and a relief rather than a nuisance.

The Aussie sense of humour.

... Okay, I should stop this now. It's gotten depressing. I can't even be bothered to list all the things I won't miss... Suggestions welcome in the comments, though.

a vital factor

2008-06-04T23:12:00.003-05:00

I was badgered last night about a new post.

I know I can't just keep squeaking by via linking other stuff, but I think this deserves a nod. And I'm certain that the figure quoted will crop up regularly in future calculations.

The countdown to leaving is getting into the more interesting numbers, like 28. No doubt I shall be posting more substantially soon... Meanwhile, I have more pressing things to attend to.

so there

2008-05-27T06:22:00.006-05:00

Truth is real; truth is huge.

Truth is unchanging, complete, consistent and complex.

Truth is silent; deceit circles endlessly, lies din and clang in tantrum. Truth need do nothing.

Truth is stark, and beautiful, and terrible.

Truth is implacable.

Truth is.

I pity the fool!

2008-04-22T06:58:00.013-05:00

Warning: I am in a Mood. This will be a Rant. It's unlikely to be understated.

Mind you, it won't be a rant about what's put me in this mood, which is actually not that interesting. It's about an entirely different subject that's irritated me for quite some time and recently popped up again. My current state only lends impetus.

At least I'm writing.

I put fingertips to keyboard tonight to protest (no doubt to no avail) the over-sexed nature of damn near everything, but in particular popular media and its audience. Seeing as how I have relatively little contact with popular media, I am able to leave it gladly in the box marked "beneath my notice". Yet sometimes out springs Jack to slap you across the face with it, and it is truly vile.

Caveat: I'm certainly not saying that the treatment of sex and sexuality has no place in public content. I'm not even talking specifically about the use of sex as a blunt instrument to sell, sell, sell whatever you happen to be shilling, although that cheapening of sex is worthy of a rant in its own right.

I'm talking about how sex appears to have saturated everything, to the point where audiences, by and large, have lost any discernment or sophistication to understand a deep relationship of a kind other than sexual. They actually seem uncomfortable with the notion, and automatically infer sexuality where there is none. They often actively want the erotic element; just take a look at fan fiction and discussion forums.

Paul, writing to the Ephesians, files it under "futile thinking" - "They are darkened in their understanding and seperated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more." (, my emphasis, duh. Italics were invented like fifteen hundred years after the New Testament was written.)

It is a wretched existence to be always seeking yet always unsatisfied; it's hard to know whether to have more disgust or pity for them. It's very easy to have a humongous level of irritation.

In the chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis has this to add: "It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.

"The dangerous word really is here important. To say that every Friendship is consciously and explicitly homosexual would be too obviously false; the wiseacres take refuge in the less palpable charge that it is really - unconsciously, cryptically, in some Pickwickian sense - homosexual. And this, though it cannot be proved, can never of course be refuted...

"Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair."

(Lewis doesn't bother to spell it out for the hard-of-thinking, but since there are so many more on the web than reading his books, I'll point out that there is a significant difference between a "Friend" and "friends". I invite you to figure that out for yourself if it isn't immediately obvious. And don't you just love the term "wiseacre"?)

I first really noticed the phenomenon as bothersome on an otherwise very enjoyable night of my life, namely going to watch a Lord of the Rings movie marathon at Mac centre with several Friends. Return of the King had only just been released, and I hadn't seen it yet, and we spent the night in one of two cinemas packed to the brim with nerds giddy with excitement and fancy dress. (Not all of us. Not even most. But apparently some couldn't resist.)

I'm sure you know to what I refer. The titters at the intensifying relationship between Sam and Frodo as they travel to Mordor struck me as so sad and puerile. Evidence that the beauty of a devoted friendship of comrades under fire cannot be portrayed in any substantial, emotional way without being completely misunderstood and even ridiculed. Coming from the comfort and security of padded seats in climate-controlled cinema in a peaceful first world nation only makes it despicable, too.

That people would generally rather be stupid and childish than trouble themselves to grow the hell up, I'm kind of resigned to, at least in a broad sense. That their level of understanding may actally inhibit the telling of more sophisticated stories - that they may eventually remove an entire lexicon of relationships and impoverish the vocabulary of Story, holding us permanently hostage to innuendo - drives me up the wall.

Frodo and Sam are hardly an isolated example. I should stay off the internet, really, as reading idiot opinions only either wastes my time or gets me worked up, and you have to navigate very carefully to avoid them. I could go on, and on... but at this point I can't be bothered. Railing against stupidity is a magnitude of futility beyond comprehension.

However, just to let off that final squeak of steam:

Attention, idiots!

i) "Very good friends" is not just a euphemism for "boink buddies". Sometimes it means "very good friends".

ii) A person may have deep motivations that have nothing to do with being in love or in lust, even if they happen to share a scene with someone of the opposite sex.

iii) Tension that is not sexual, repeat, not sexual, can exist between characters (and people).

iv) Hatred ≠ secretly desperately in love.

v) Casting attractive actors with good chemistry in the roles of close siblings is not an attempt of the part of the movie/tv show makers to indicate lustful undertones. I mean, wtf?

vi) Seeking such titillation rather than valuing any kind of non-sexual relationship is, frankly, repulsive, and only demonstrates how deeply corrupt our society's priorities really are.

vii) Grow up or shut up.

in the top ten at least

2008-02-27T19:24:00.004-06:00

Pants.

oh, so that's where the world is...

2008-02-11T02:32:00.000-06:00

I see that my plan of not writing until no one checks my blog anymore (and thus relieving me of any perceived pressure to write anything, anytime, ever again) has worked perfectly.

In the meantime I have been amusing myself by discovering just how little I know about where countries are on their continents (and that they even exist, in some cases). I have found a series of games. Map games. Fun map games, if you're as nerdy as me.

So I thought I'd share - on the off chance that one of my nerdy friends drops by - and hasn't already known about these sites for ages and ages, or just wants to play again since it's been such a long time since they first discovered them. Little tip, though: use a mouse if possible, not a trackpad.

Africa

Middle East

Europe (bloody annoying music though; you've been warned...)

yup, still about

2008-02-08T10:49:00.000-06:00

Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on.

- Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

- Plato

... Obviously I'm like totally wise and stuff.

Oh, and also: Soup!

don't worry;

2007-11-15T00:18:00.000-06:00

I'm not dead.

from macro to micro

2007-08-28T00:07:00.001-05:00

Whee! Full lunar eclipse tonight!

Totally unrelated, and by way of Things that Should Be, all electronic equipment that come with remotes should automatically come with an inbuilt pinging device. Just a simple button on the big, stationary, unlikely to be lost for days under piles of stuff except in the most extremely untidy environments, main component that causes the remote to beep discreetly, and possibly a small light on it to flash. In this day of modern technology, is that so much to ask?

repentance theory

2007-08-26T01:27:00.001-05:00

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters. - Margaret Halsey

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. - Doug Larson

Something that has caught my attention rather often is how many people seem to misunderstand forgiveness. I don't claim to be an expert myself, although I've had plenty of practical experience on both sides of the equation, but there are some things which I assumed were obvious (silly me).

My bugbear in this particular arena - the circumstance that seems the most common - is the notion that the person who apologises has thereby done something righteous, and is somehow entitled to forgiveness. Even more extraordinary is the idea that if they don't receive it, they now occupy the moral high ground!

That one just boggles my mind. The only way I can make sense of it is that these are the assumptions of people who simply haven't thought their situation through logically, and are operating on the self-justifying auto-pilot that is in-built to human nature. Understandable... perhaps... but certainly not impressive.

Maybe I'm wrong - it's not out of the question - but as far as I understand it, forgiveness is an act of mercy. Therefore, by definition, it cannot be earned, bought or in any other way deserved. The one in the wrong has utterly bankrupted themselves in this respect.

That's how it goes, isn't it? One person wrongs another, and in doing so not only bankrupts themselves but incurs a debt against the other. The wrongdoer (remember, I've just said this twice) is bankrupt, through their own actions; they have no way of paying their debt to the one they have wronged. An apology is an acknowledgement of the wrongdoer's iniquity - a repudiation of what they've done and a desire for restoration, also known as "repentance" - and nothing more. It is in no way some kind of hard currency that goes toward paying off the debt. It does not move the wrongdoer one iota closer to righteousness!

Addressing those who, with furrowed brows, are currently quibbling sotto voce that an apology is surely the first step toward being right with one you have wronged: it's not. Perhaps you could consider it the first thing you have to do (and that's debatable), but if we're talking in the metaphor of taking steps, you've walked away from being right with the other person, and repentance (signified by the apology) simply means you've stopped walking away and have turned 180˚. On the spot. All that's changed is that the possibility of restoration now exists, where it didn't before; the fulfillment of which still lies entirely in the power of the other person.

I don't know how to say it any more clearly. It is the wronged one's choice, the wronged one's mercy, which determines whether the wrongdoer is restored. The wronged person is entitled to choose not to forgive.

Do I need to say that again? It's unpalatable, perhaps, but it's true: the wronged person is entitled not to forgive. They don't have to. The wrongdoer has severed the relationship, and the one they wronged is entitled to leave it that way. That is just. Forgiveness is not just; it is merciful. Additionally, if they weren't so entitled, the choice to restore has no meaning.

All very black-and-white so far, isn't it? I can hear the grey-world objections already: "But we're told to forgive, as God forgave us!"; "No one's perfect, fair go!"; "What if both sides were in the wrong? The other person started it anyway! They should apologise too/first!"; "It can be so hard to apologise, surely that counts for something?"; "But you can make it up to them!" and, of course, "If I apologised, they'd just rub it in my face for months. No, thank you."

Those are the main ones I can think of so far, none of which having any validity, to my mind. If any strike a chord with you, I invite you to think it through for yourself before telling me off - if you still think it's valid, you're most welcome to say so. I'm not going into any of them here, though, since I think they have more to do with human nature than the nature of repentence and forgiveness; besides which I should probably post this before something else happens to cut me off from the internet for days at a time.

excuses, excuses

2007-08-03T11:15:00.008-05:00

Yes, well.

I came down very badly with this 'flu that's been going around, early in July, to the tune of not being able to get out of bed for several days, and not moving much off the couch for several days after that. What with one thing and another, recovery has been quite slow and this has included the ability to write coherent sentences without staring at the screen for whole minutes between words, or follow a complex thought from one end to the other.

This in turn naturally led to the postless state of affairs of the last few weeks, for which managment can offer no apology except that anything published would have been even more tosh-like and worthless than usual.

Speaking of tosh, I did manage to catch up on the last two volumes of Harry Potter, kindly lent by a friend who puts up with my mutterings and rants on the subject extremely graciously. It would be fairly pointless to go into a lot of my objections, unreasonable as they are - the series is written for kids and that means the writing's not to be held to so high a standard. Frankly I believe it ought to be exactly the opposite, but kids don't know know any better so you get away with it.

Also this was only going to be a post saying, "Sorry, I've been sick, a more proper-ish kind of post will be along soon," so a tirade about the shortcomings of Harry Potter and the Endless Convenient Plot Contrivances seems a tad misplaced.

Therefore, I will only list the two issues which irked me most, and that briefly: one, Rowling's notion of magic (and, indeed, plot, but that's just back to the mediocre writing thing) appears to be pure wish-fulfilment; it has no cost. None that I could discern, anyway. Some will argue that that's the basis of the whole appeal of the series, and then I could argue back that it is irresponsible, pandering to and reinforcing immature consumerist attitudes which rollover to perceptions of wider environmental and sociological concerns. I won't, though, since mostly it just irks because it's silly.

Two: the only character with any kind of an arc, the only one even close to being three dimensional, or interesting - who is, in fact, the propelling protagonist throughout the entire story - is dealt with very shabbily, in my humble opinion. Not in what the character did or endured, but in being given progressively fewer scenes - probably because he kept stealing every one he was in. On the other hand, perhaps Rowling would only have messed it up if she'd spent more time with him.

Oh, and also, Harry is a prat. Three, then. To be fair, though, he can't really help it. And to be fair to Rowling, she creates some pretty good one-dimensional side characters - again neatly not spending too much time with them and thus avoiding giving Boba Fett a Kiwi accent, as it were. And she's got a great many cute ideas that she crams in by way of distraction from the essential flimsiness of the story, which helps.

Now if the millions of minds influenced by her writing can manage to make the connection between the subverted Ministry of Magic's nascent Muggle pogrom and the tactics used by various administrations in the War On Terror, the governments of tomorrow may be facing a rather more interesting political climate.

a poem for the Not Easily Impressed

2007-07-01T08:40:00.003-05:00

As it turns out, at least one member of my reading public found Emily Dickinson too try-hard for his taste, so I thought I'd offer something that he might enjoy more. I'd thought of putting it up in the first place, but it was a just little too long.

It's the opening from Byron's epic poem, The Corsair, a tragic, romantic tale that pretty much defined Hollywood-image pirates, most recently typified in the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy - bearing little resemblence to the ugly, brutal reality, but who cares about that sort of thing? The ideals of freedom and defiance are too attractively expressed (no matter how erroneously or naively) and too much fun to be slowed down by the dour truth.

At any rate, the poem opens with this rip-roaring pirate song that "... from the Pirate's isle/Around the kindling watch-fire rang the while..." and sets the expectation of the glories of a pirate's life...

O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their sway-
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Oh, who can tell? not thou, luxurious slave!
Whose soul would sicken o'er the heaving wave;
Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!
Whom slumber soothes not - pleasure cannot please -
Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide,
The exulting sense - the pulse's maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?
That for itself can woo the approaching fight,
And turn what some deem danger to delight;
That seeks what cravens shun with more than zeal,
And where the feebler faint can only feel -
Feel - to the rising bosom's inmost core,
Its hope awaken and its spirit soar?
No dread of death if with us die our foes -
Save that it seems even duller than repose:
Come when it will - we snatch the life of life -
When lost - what recks it but disease or strife?
Let him who crawls enamour'd of decay,
Cling to his couch, and sicken years away:
Heave his thick breath, and shake his palsied head;
Ours - the fresh turf; and not the feverish bed.
While gasp by gasp he falters forth his soul,
Ours with one pang - one bound - escapes control.
His corse may boast its urn and narrow cave,
And they who loath'd his life may gild his grave:
Ours are the tears, though few, sincerely shed,
When Ocean shrouds and sepulchres our dead.
For us, even banquets fond regret supply
In the red cup that crowns our memory;
And the brief epitaph in danger's day,
When those who win at length divide the prey,
And cry, Remembrance saddening o'er each brow,
How had the brave who fell exulted now!

a poetry punter

2007-06-27T22:04:00.003-05:00

It would be scurrilous indeed of me to pretend to be a long time poetry appreciator; it's one branch of the literary arts I never had much time for. But in the last few years the charm of poetry has been slowly and subtly working on me. Some poetry, anyway. There's quite a bit of trash and a vast ocean of mediocre verse out there that I can't find it in me to accomodate, and probably never will.

Poetry is often hard work. Generally speaking, the best poems are dense - each word carefully selected and crafted together to specific effect. Even when rattling out a narrative in verse after tiresome verse, poetry is primarily grappling with more abstract concepts through it. Meaning is explored aesthetically, evocatively, not limited to stodgy linear logic or prose storytelling demands.

Or, to put it as Archibald MacLeish did:

Ars Poetica
(The Art of Poetry)

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves.
Memory by memory the mind--
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--
A poem should not mean
But be.

You need to invest time and stillness, or otherwise patience, into unpacking poetry, which is probably why I never got into it when I was younger. It's a rare kid who has the skill of stillness (although I suspect it's almost as rare among adults). I'm only just beginning to map my way through this world of poetry, so as yet I probably have a relatively childish palate.

But, for extra credit, I'll share with you a few pieces I've enjoyed the most - two of Emily Dickinson's and one of Yeats'. (Take time. Enjoy.)

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
by Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water
by WB Yeats

I heard the old, old men say,
"Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away."
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
"All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters."

on the subject of baths

2007-06-27T00:37:00.001-05:00

I don't take many things very seriously; I've never seen the point, since there always seems to be plenty of other people out there who have that pretty well covered. However, everyone needs to hold something inordinately dear, and personally I save that little quirk for bathtime.

It's not just getting clean; showers are perfectly useful, but I have no great emotional attachment to them. Baths, on the other hand, are an opportunity to hold the world at bay just for a little while, to turn a few cubic metres into a temporary oasis. This is important.

But a closed door and deep hot water aren't the only necessities; a few more props are required to shore up the blockade. Forget lightweights like rubber duckies, they don't figure into this - even bubblebath and whatnot is a side issue. No, we're talking a triple-layered heavyduty barricade against the World Outside: music, books and food. Possibly my three favourite things on the whole entire planet, which is why they make such good insulation... or maybe it's the other way around, although that's not a comfortable thought.

It doesn't always work, though. The problem with the world is that it's everywhere. The fortress you build to keep out the world can't ultimately hold out, because it's made of it. If you want an example of a fundamental, insurmountable flaw, that's one right there. And so the world quietly seeps right in, usually around the one hour mark.

Which is probably a good thing - if there were a way of truly blocking out the world, who would ever emerge from that state? Nothing would ever get done, and unfortunately there are a small, significant number of things that do need to be done.

So poop.

so anyway

2007-06-20T20:17:00.001-05:00

Perhaps writing smaller, more frequent posts would be the way to go. A thousand pardons; I've been too busy undergoing life to spare energy writing about it. I seriously don't understand this whole Second Life™ concept - I barely have time for This Life™, let alone Another One™. It astounds me that the west has reached such a level of pointlessness and luxury - the two terms being practically synonymous, in my Humble Opinion™.

Well, that's pretty short. I wonder if I should leave it there?

I've been reading Anne of Green Gables for something like the umpteenth time. Reading it to a friend, actually (I love reading to people), not that I ever need an excuse, but it's a great book to introduce people to. I'll explain why in the near future - I've decided to review it, if I'm going to be doing book reviews. I mean, I've got a whole blog catagory label for it now! Waste not, want not.

Also, I lent Blue Like Jazz to someone, and it's hard to review a book from memory... unless it's Anne, which I could probably review blindfolded, upside down in a vat of pudding wearing a tutu wetsuit. I don't know why I would, but clearly that's beside the point... I'd probably need a snorkel of some kind.

ingredients for variance

2007-05-02T05:15:00.000-05:00

Ah, the giddy whirl of life. Whirl, whirl.

It's funny: I sit down, log on, and all the long thoughts and quick thinks that have travailed my neurons just skitter away. Quite a lot like what happens when you walk into a video rental store, where suddenly you cannot for the life of you think of any movies you were keen to see, and so end up with Bad Boys 2 or some such.

I really hope this will not end up the same way. Perhaps if I just sit here quietly, some of my thoughts will be fooled into sidling back to me.

Whirl.

Whirl.

Come to think of it, I've never rented Bad Boys 2. I don't recall actually having ever watched it. No doubt the lack won't slow me down much.

... Actually, here's a thing. The last few weeks I've been passing some hours researching a subject that has shed an unexpected light on myself. It's fun when a passing reference or browsing discovery abruptly becomes a key to a whole new perspective on things you just took for granted and stopped thinking much about a long time ago. Especially since it doesn't happen all that often!

It occasionally comes as a surprise to some (it frequently does to me), but I'm not always that normal. Different. I know, I know: everyone's different, what's "normal" anyway, et cetera ad nauseum. As a general rule, I don't usually consider myself particularly different because I've always sort of just been me, regardless of circumstance. Inasmuch as I ever think about it, that state of affairs seemed just about spot on normality. What else are you supposed to be doing?

Sometimes, however, I am reminded that this is not so much the case. For example, various friends at various times have insisted that I must consciously go out of my way to be "different", to stand out from everyone else, to assert my independence cred or whatever. And they always seem skeptical of my sincerity when I respond with sometimes bemused, sometimes annoyed mystification.

And suddenly, a few weeks ago now, a whole little world unfolded itself around me and provided a few reference points for why I am unintentionally out-of-sync. I, and my brothers, are part of a (relatively) small global subculture known as TCKs.

That's "Third Culture Kids" to you. Also sometimes known as "Global Nomads", which I can just about swing with, or - going by one website I came across - "Children of the Wind", which I absolutely cannot.

To quote from the wikipedia article on the subject:

[Sociologist Ruth Hill Useem] used the term "Third Culture Kids" because TCKs integrate aspects of their birth culture (the first culture) and the new culture (the second culture), creating a unique "third culture". Sociologist David Pollock describes a TCK as "a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership of any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of a similar background."

It's not something I think about all that much these days, but when I was nine my family moved to America for three years for my father's work. Now, in view of all these TCKs that bounce around Nepal and Japan and Gemany and whatnot, spending a few years in each place and picking up new languages and so on, a move from Australia to America and then back after three years does not come off as all that radical, culture-wise. I was certainly thinking it as I perused the websites, and by dint of some little pointed derision, the friends I mentioned it to clearly thought the same.

Presumably it's part of the larger perception (not helped by "Children of the Wind", or "Global Nomads" for that matter) that the claim of TCKs is tinged with elitist romanticism, a notion not received well by our more (dare I say it?) parochial peers. This discussion of being "different" is impossible without using value-laden terms - such as "parochial" - that provoke a certain amount of bristling on both sides.

A postmodern proviso, then: I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both kinds of childhood, and neither is inherently better than the other. But they are different, and even though the range of experiences in both kinds can vary immensely, within that range they still tend to produce strengths and weaknesses in common.

And, having said that, in looking back and thinking over the moot hypothetical, without hesitation I would still have chosen to move country over staying in Australia.

Now, back to the point - just how much influence has this had to make me genuinely different to those around me, and how much is it just me being pretentious? To what degree can I lay claim to TCK status, given that we moved to America, not, like, Tajikistan?

Well, more than might appear on the surface. For starters - and this is not something you appreciate until you go there - America is in fact quite profoundly different to Australia. You can pick up echoes in all the US entertainment media we get over here, but when you go there you're literally inundated with it. It's unexpected and it's subtle and it saturates everything, which is its own brand of culture shock; rather than the full frontal assault you might experience in Ghana, for example, the differences keep ambushing you. It's like comparing trench warfare with guerilla, if I may be so melodramatic and irreverent; both take their toll.

The next thing to consider is that we were dropped right in the middle of it, with no preparation and no contact with anyone else in a similar position, so our immersion into the host culture was as complete as it is possible to be. So while, superficially, the culture required less adjustment of us than is typical for TCKs, our family had no support network, completely isolated in the experience except for each other.

As to that, it has to be said that our immediate family is not the most cohesive unit in the world; our parents divorced a few years after our return, but even before that I can't remember a time when we haven't had a fairly fractured and unreliable family dynamic. Part of that was a basic instability in my parents' relationship, and part of it was that the elder of my two (younger) brothers is mentally handicapped.

I haven't researched the wider experience much yet, but I think it likely that the impact of having a disabled child in a family is equally far-ranging as moving back and forth to foreign cultures, if not more so. As yet I have very little idea of how the relative stresses and advantages have worked to moderate or amplify each other. It's pretty easy to track some of the results, though; the tight alliance and friendship my youngest brother and I have is one of the more obvious ones.

But to again return to my "differentness", this pretty rare combination of circumstance produced in me, the oldest, an extreme self-reliance (as well as a strong awareness of the needs of others) and a deeply-rooted independence of mind and outlook. It also meant I developed a strong but not overt resistance to authority, as well as a certain obliviousness to the customs and conventions of structure and stability that many others take for granted.

So... I guess, in conclusion, I don't have the objectivity to be able to compare just how much my upbringing set me at odds to those around me. As my youngest brother once put it, when asked what it was like to grow up with a disabled brother, "I don't know what it's like not to grow up with a disabled brother." But I don't think it's surprising that I operate from a fundamentally different world-view, with different priorities and imperatives, to most of those around me.

book review: "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

2007-04-16T10:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I’ve finally finished Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and ought to get this review done quickly, because I have had several requests to borrow the book from some of my Christian friends.

First, some context to establish relevant bias and attitudes: I am a Christian. I am an Australian woman in my twenties. I read a lot; I love to challenge myself intellectually; I like to analyse and understand things, and this includes my faith. Rather obviously (or perhaps not), I do believe that God, as revealed in the bible, exists. I haven’t yet had to sacrifice intellectual rigour, or compromise logic and reason, because of that – although of course you only have my word for it. (See my first blogpost if you require more general context than that.)

I picked up The God Delusion the morning I saw it in a bookstore, keen to find out what it had to say and see what arguments Dawkins could present that I hadn’t already thought of or encountered elsewhere. I was determined – as far as I found it humanly possible – to put my preconceptions, and ego, aside and give his perspective a fair hearing.

The book took me a while to read partly for this reason; I had to keep stopping not only to think through his arguments but my reaction to them, and where that reaction was coming from. I tried to put myself in his shoes and see where he was coming from. I hadn’t read anything of his previously, and I knew very little about him except that he is an intellectual and an atheist, so the conclusions I have drawn about him or what he has to say comes from the reading of this book, without much broader context.

So much for my bias and intent. As for Dawkins, I believe his is summed up by a paragraph in the preface of the book:

If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or by design). Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan. But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, or for other reasons didn’t ‘take’, or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it. Such free spirits should need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether. At very least, I hope nobody who reads this book will be able to say, ‘I didn’t know I could.’

He also includes a disclaimer in chapter 1:

It is in light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion that I make my own disclaimer for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.

I’ll put forward my own disclaimer: this review is simply my thoughts and observations about the book in general. It’s an entire book addressing many different facets of God, science, religion, belief, ethics, philosophy, sociology and psychology; Dawkins couldn’t do much more than skim the surface of each one without his book ballooning to fifteen times its original size. So although I may mention some of them, I don’t want to get side-tracked; many of these concepts could fill up a book (many have), let alone a blogpost. I won’t be arguing over the existence of God, nor jumping into the ring for Science vs God, round 55471, nor itemizing the proofs of Christianity. I can do that some other time.

Nor will I be trying to ridicule or vilify Dawkins. If you’re looking for that kind of argument, there are plenty of them elsewhere on the net. I don’t feel the need or the urge. After having read him, I don’t agree with some of his premises, nor with some of his conclusions, and often I didn’t agree with his method. But so what? He’s entitled to think and feel and reason his way. I read him – if my purpose in doing so was only to condemn him, what was the point?

I take Dawkins at his word; I don’t think he was going out of his way to offend. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of material in here to raise the hackles of believers. It’s an emotive subject, especially since beliefs are closely linked with identity, and it can be very easy for people on both sides to get carried away. Dawkins has a very sour view of religion, and a not-much-more-complimentary view of God – if, of course, God even exists.

His encounters with religion – particularly, it seems, the slightly hysterical nominal Christianity of the USA, as well as of course the aggressive fundamentalist strains of Christianity and Islam which promote everything from indoctrination and intolerance to, at the extreme end, acts of terror in the name of God – have not encouraged him to delve deeply into distinctions. From Delusion’s content and tone, I gathered Dawkins to have a very strong antipathy to the religious mind (a term he applies fairly indiscriminately to any person of faith), which I would argue makes it easy for him to condemn it but impossible to actually understand it.

He has very little patience for distinctions, and has anticipated this sort of objection in chapter 2:

This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise – as sure as night follows day – turn up in a review: ‘The God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God that I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.’ That old man is an irrelevant distraction and his beard is as tedious as it is long. Indeed, the distraction is worse than irrelevant. Its very silliness is calculated to distract attention from the fact that what the speaker really believes is not a whole lot less silly. I know you don’t believe in an old bearded man sitting on a cloud, so let’s not waste any more time on that. I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.

I think it is worth addressing this. I am bloody certain Dawkins doesn’t believe in the God I do, and I couldn’t detect the slightest interest he might have in understanding him, not least because he attributes a substantial degree of silliness to belief. In this light, it is easy to see why he might feel that attempting to understand God – all gods, anything and everything supernatural – could be written off as a waste of time, and that any particular designation given to a deity is irrelevant.

He continues, further on:

For most of my purposes, all three Abrahamic religions can be treated as indistinguishable. Unless otherwise stated, I shall have Christianity mostly in mind, but only because it is the version with which I happen to be most familiar.

As an outspoken and famous proponent of both atheism and science, consider what form the “Christianity” with which Dawkins is familiar would take. From folly, to ignorance, to hypocrisy, to pomposity, to self-righteousness, to stomach-turning abuse and violent invective, any aspect of religion prominent enough to catch his attention is at best unappetizing. It is understandable (although not admirable) that he rejects the perceived edifice of religion as entirely without merit; that he has no interest in looking below the surface he is presented with; that he views distinctions as calculated distractions; that he sees only a residue of literary value in religious works like the bible.

It has led to his rather unflattering conviction that you cannot be intellectually honest, enlightened, educated, sophisticated, a critical thinker and a Christian (or a believer in any other religion). I found this a struggle for a bit; my pride did not like having it strongly implied and outright stated that the only way I could be an intelligent believer was to engage in a form of doublethink. (He makes sure to point out the flattering flipside, reserved for those who agree with him and reject God and religion – refer to the quote from the preface for an example.)

To give just one of the ways Dawkins put it:

Admittedly, people of a theological bent are often chronically incapable of distinguishing what is true from what they’d like to be true.

– But then there’s little point in opening a book entitled The God Delusion without expecting to be called deluded for believing in God.

His attitude also means that he completely misses the point rather a lot, which I found frustrating. To give an idea of how little he has grasped the central tenets of biblical Christianity, in chapter 3 he reprimanded CS Lewis (“who should have known better” – presumably there was nothing else to charge him with; of all the modern theologians, he is perhaps the one you could least accuse of being intellectually dishonest, unenlightened, uneducated, unsophisticated and an uncritical thinker) for advancing the “Lunatic, Liar or Lord” argument, because:

A fourth possibility, almost too obvious to need mentioning, is that Jesus was honestly mistaken. Plenty of people are. In any case, as I said, there is no good historical evidence that he ever thought he was divine.

And, in chapter 7:

I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment…?

It is little wonder that he lumps all religions in the same basket and treats them with sweeping statements of contempt, compared to the fastidious precision with which he sets out the views of those opposed to religion; after all, he understands and sympathizes with the latter. It’s what his book is about.

Also, I inferred that he doesn’t feel the arguments in favour of God or any religion really can be sophisticated enough to require fastidiousness or precision – worryingly, that’s probably because many of the religious people he comes across have about the same grasp of their religion as he does. He could conceivably think his is pretty comprehensive. He decries religious apologists’ practice of misrepresenting the words and meaning of their opponents, so I assume he is not doing the same, and that the beliefs and doctrines he presents under the name of Christianity (or Judaism or Islam) are honestly what he thinks they are.

(It is a quick jink through of one of those arguments I said I wasn’t going to go into, but I think this one at least is very relevant to the underlying assumptions of the book, so I’ll mention it anyway: from what I can tell, most people, “of a theological bent” or not, prefer not to think if they don’t have to. Most people seem to be largely “chronically incapable of distinguishing what is true from what they’d like to be true.” Although I agree there are a lot of “Christians” [*firmly-gestured air-quote*] like that, I don’t think this state is restricted to or particularly influenced by religion.

In the largely secular society in which I live, most people I speak to are surprised to learn that I am a Christian, because they have the notion that science has disproved religion. They usually have no very clear idea of how this happened, have little understanding of the arguments of either side or whether any of them are valid; they certainly haven’t taken time to think them through. I’d label such people “Scientists” as much as I would label their religious counterparts “Christian” [*firm air-quotes for both*], which is to say not at all, yet somehow this quibble escapes most opponents of religion. Surely people tend to latch onto whatever world-view is convenient to their thought-avoidance and complimentary to their self-image, be it theistic, atheistic or agnostic? I find it fairly simplistic to assert that it’s only the religious lot doing it, even more so that it’s religion’s fault.)

Right. So. Given all that, what did I think of the meat of the book, the arguments against belief in God? I found them to be perfectly adequate for their purpose. If someone wants to believe that God doesn’t exist, whatever their reason for it, then Dawkins provides them with a multi-pronged, forcefully argued, academically subsidized rationale, and praises their open mind, resistance to indoctrination, native intelligence and free spirit in adopting it. As far as this goes, I found The God Delusion gave me a valuable overview and insights into the world’s wisdom, and deeper understanding of how many atheists perceive matters.

If, however, someone is willing to entertain the idea that God does exist, I found that nothing Dawkins touts as being evidence against that idea cannot be considered as evidence for it, interpreted from that different perspective. So as far as resolving the issue goes, I find I cannot sum it up better than a Christian called Donald Miller did in his book Blue Like Jazz (which I may get around to reviewing at some point, because I enjoyed it). It’s probably terribly bad form to quote a different book in a book review (let alone end with it!), but I’m going to do it anyway because I am just so much the Rebel:

Sooner or later you just figure out that there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care… If I walk away away from Him, and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything.

...will resume regular service as soon as...

2007-04-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

Hey, check it out - someone's turned the Internet back on!

Neat.

gah update

2007-04-04T21:34:00.000-05:00

This is not that promised ebullient post celebrating the return of my computer to the land of the living. My internet access went down the very hour my computer flickered into functionality. (Is that a word?)

I only have a few minutes at my local library, and I have emails to write and stuff to check, so that's about as good as this update is going to get...

meandering mental muddle

2007-03-23T07:13:00.000-05:00

Still on a borrowed computer, and I'm having a little bit of trouble turning off the tv.

First it was Silverchair on jtv, then a brief stop at an SBS Italian movie where a groom waiting at the alter sees a woman crying in the congregation, goes to tell her to calm down and ends up deciding she's hysterical and, on the urging of the best man, slaps her a couple of times with increasing force and a weirdly banal lack of interest. Needless to say she doesn't stop crying. Those whacky Italians!

Uh. No pun intended.

I didn't think that was worth sticking around for, however, so it was back to jtv for Steve Cannane's Hack report on a Hillsong women's conference (emphasising the "subservience" preached to women aspiring to be a "Proverbs 31 girl"... subservience? Anyway.) and then back to SBS where the entire (fairly middle-aged) wedding reception was dancing the Macarena. Which was distressing.

I channel flipped away for a little while longer (the movie Eurotrip was also on, which I've never before watched but which I'm ashamed to say I paused on for few moments; the worst thing I think has to be that it's not even horribly bad, it's just horrifyingly pointless) and came back to SBS to two brides arguing about tampon sizes. Still in Italian.

Well, that does it. I'm really looking forward to the new Silverchair album. Also, it's about time I turned the tv off. Except... well, Rage is on ABC now... meh. This whole "tv" contraption is distracting; and to vindicate that assertion, David Letterman is blowing soap bubbles on channel 10.

Okay. The box is off, I swear. On to listening to Tim Buckley, who, by way of a tangent here, I'm finding less accessible than son Jeff. Maybe because I picked up an anthology rather than an album, so there's less structure and unifying identity to latch onto. Or maybe it's the difference of generation. Still, he's got this groovy thing going on, so I'm sticking with him for a bit.

It's a sad thing to think that a difference in generation inhibits my appreciation of something, but then I guess it's pretty unavoidable. Is it even possible to experience the zeitgeist of another time? I mean really? Understand, yes; experience, no. But then any sunshiny philosopher worth their salt would point out that you can still experience the products of a previous generation within your own time and enjoy an equally valid appreciation. Or something just as daft, probably using the word "resonate". That's why I don't hang around such people.

Clearly, the pace, volume, diversity and quality of modern cultural offerings is enough to send my stream-of-consciousness carreening off kilter; it's a good thing I'm not attempting to write anything Worthwhile. Hideous notion, that; positively pernicious, and something a lot of writers could do without.

But enough of the convection currents of my head for tonight; tomorrow I have to get up earlier than I'd like to get my computer back, and then I have to go and vote irresponsibly in the state election, since I've been paying very little attention to any of the pre-election party pontificating. Woot! Democracy in action.

technology is tyrannous

2007-03-16T05:47:00.000-05:00

"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." - Jimmy Breslin

On top of everything else ("everything else" needing no elaboration; we've all been there), when I finally got around to addressing my derelict blog, I find I am given no option but to "upgrade" to the new version. This blasted site was very cunning, oh yes: when I went to log in to my "Old Version" account, I was presented with a smug little panel detailing exactly how I could upgrade to the brand spanking new Google thingamy-whatsit, and no other possible way to achieve access to my blog.

Not that I object so very much to the features of the upgraded Blogger, although I didn't want any of them; it's the coercion that has me hopping mad. So much so that after I reluctantly, and full of the shame particular to being dictated to via technology, complied, I refused to have anything more to do with Blogger for the evening. I verily believe today's quick impulse buy of the Hilltop Hoods' most recent album, The Hard Road, along with the lastest Nick Hornby book, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (The Diary of an Occasionally Exasperated But Ever Hopeful Reader), was by way of therapy. So that makes it okay.

So having made a kind of grumpy peace with Blogger, I feel the need to offer the excuses for not blogging as regularly as I intend to, again: my computer has been dying a long and undignified death. The poor thing's now so close to kaput that it's all over bar the shouting - or a new motherboard.

I'm currently using my brother's laptop, having distracted him with watching Black Hawk Down, the third-longest dvd I currently have, while I do so. (He didn't seem likely to go for either Gone With the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia.)

I can't remember what I was initially going to blog about when I attempted to log in the first time; probably nothing particularly important. I can, however, completely sympathise with Mr Breslin - rage is a powerful muse. Especially when the enraging agent seems well due for a good kicking. On the other hand, it rarely lends to a balanced piece of writing, so it's well to weigh up the cathartic benefits against the possibility of getting carried away and making a fool of yourself - an affliction I am only too familiar with.

Anyhow, I'm not writing columns for newspapers and I've pretty much run down my supply of rage, so I will leave things there for the moment, except to say that one of the "upgrade" features is the option to file posts under "labels". The only reason I mention this particularly is that the field indicated for entering the label includes some helpful examples, being: "scooters, vacation, fall". Currently, the only label I feel at all inclined to use is "wtf?"

Hopefully the next post will be an ebullient report that my computer is restored...

I am Helpful

2007-02-22T06:19:00.000-06:00

The other day I mentioned to a good friend (and faithful reader of this very blog) that I am reading the new Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion. He responded by suggesting that I post a review of it, and that doing so would be "helpful" of me. It would, apparently, be one of the more "helpful" posts I could write.

I was vaguely thinking of posting on the subject anyhow, and I probably will do some kind of review once I finish reading the book, although I refuse to be drawn on when that might be since life is unpredictable and anything could happen. You never know, I might make book reviews a semi-regular thing. That might be "helpful", too.

But I feel I have been in some way remiss in giving rise to the expectation of helpfulness. Have I given off a vibe of eagerness to assist? Exhibited a desire to oblige? Composed with an unacknowledged subtext of vending sage life-skills advice, guru-style?

... Okay, yes, you may be picking up the slightest of narks in my bemusement; of course I am glad if people find anything I write helpful, but that certainly isn't my aim in doing this. (It was also me giving in to the urge to mildly bait this good friend of mine, to which he will probably respond with the disdain it deserves.)

Ultimately, I write because I want to. I write out my thinks with blithe disregard of their usefulness to anyone, anywhere, ever. It's all just what I observe and what I think, and sometimes what I feel. Again - if these things are helpful, somehow, to someone - lovely! I'm sincerely glad to have provided that. But... I guess I'm ultimately dubious about my suitability to helpfulness. To me, taking the initiative upon myself to be "helpful" suggests an assurance of what others need "for their own good" that I simply don't have.

Having said all that, if someone asks me to do something like that, I like to be helpful - within reason, of course...

Yet now, for this one post, I feel I ought to offer something in the spirit of Helpfulness. There is an obstacle in the shape of my fairly firm conviction that I don't have much that anyone would ever actually find Helpful, but it is easily overcome with the idea I've had for a while of putting up some links to other sites that I find Helpful myself. Solved! (Of course, I make no guarentees that anyone else will find them helpful.) I'll link them in this post and, once I get around to it, I'll probably put them up properly under the cunningly titled "LINKS" heading.

Well, the first place I have to link to is a friend's blog. I personally find daily reading the bible difficult, both in discipline and accountability - so when he started blogging a short commentary on a simple ten verses a day, it was a literal God-send. I love both his substance and style (rather like a good strong cheese: sharp, rich, bold, good in small doses, with a lingering piquant aftertaste), and appreciate his insights and research, which challenge me to think more deeply about a passage than I otherwise might. It's a good way to stay in touch, and since he's putting in this kind of effort each morning I'm damn well going to make sure someone besides him is benefitting from it!

Okay, well, the next in my trio of frequent (Helpful) stops is the only webcomic I read regularly, or really at all these days. The cartoonist's humour and general slant on life is the precise calibration to bring about my wry smile, as well as often evoking ingenuous laughter. It's smart, irreverent, slyly observed humour (rather like jazz: off-beat, free-form, totally in the moment, rarely resolving, with surprising deviations), never mean-spirited and avoiding crudeness of attitude, although if you have a problem with jokes about sex you might find it a bit much sometimes.

And lastly is another blog I stumbled across recently, contributed to by a handful of intelligent, knowledgeable and rational Americans. I find it very hard to remain abreast of all the current affairs issues (a great many of them generated in America) I'm interested in following, simply because there's so much bloody stuff to sift through. These people seem to be interested in the same general things I am, and so act as a very satisfactory filter. They also link plenty of sites which flesh out what they might skip over.

Of course, that would mean very little to me if their approach weren't considered, reasonable and often self-deprecatingly humorous as well as passionate; the bloggers and world-wide community of commentors are from all over the political compass and informed, considerate debate seems to be the order of the day - even though things can get a bit heated at times. (Rather like... bother, running out of facetious similies. I guess it's basically a stimulating, enjoyable, information-and-ideas-rich conversation that sharpens, broadens and refreshes the mind... Fine, well, they can't all be winners.) The first post that I was linked to by another site was really the one that hooked me, and I recommend reading it even if you don't particularly care to read the blog generally.

So there you go. Cheese, jazz and conversation. Actually, it sounds like quite the party! The Helpful party. I hope you enjoy them; I certainly do.

What Women Want

2007-02-10T06:19:00.000-06:00

Last night on SBS there was a documentary, Stacked Like Me, looking at issues confronting women with "double letter chest sizes". (That's "big boobs", to any of you fellows who don't know about bra sizes, if in fact any such male exists in the 21st century.) The women interviewed were frank, funny, honest and in a way - to me - strangely moving. And apart from any of that, it was remarkably refreshing to see women who were natural and beautiful without looking anything like the actress/model archetype of modern beauty.

Of course there were issues discussed that are particular to women with large breasts, but the central issue - of body image and our difficulty in accepting ourselves as we are - pertains to every woman. Ever. Whereas men have as their core, driving concern the desire to measure up as a Man, women have their core, driving concern that determines their fundamental value to themselves: to be Beautiful.

I'm not kidding; nor is it nearly as shallow as it may seem at first. And just as the men's question is bound up in the first pillar of maturity that I talked about in my post on the subject, so the women's question is bound up in the second. It's a generalisation, but the sexes don't usually have as much of a problem with each other's question: girls "mature" earlier than boys, and attach far less importance to what makes them Women (plus they have the advantage of the physiological "initiation rite" of mentstruation), tending to take all that for granted; and men tend to attach far less importance to the fact that they are not Handsome like the chiselled, ripplingly muscled, hair-gelled actors on screen. If the actors make them feel insecure, it's far more likely because the actor's jaw is chiselled, muscles are rippling and hair remains attractively tousled whilst in the process of leaping from buildings, clocking bad guys, ravishing sexy ladies and insouciantly bluffing the villian across the table at cards, and all those other "Manly" things "Men" do.

(*cough*Bond*cough*)

Not always, but that's usually the way it goes. And women struggle with wanting to be admired, loved, desired - that's how we determine our worth. The word that I frequently fall back on as being the most comprehensive and concise for what we want is "cherish". We want to be cherished - and we know instinctively that only that which is Beautiful is truly worthy of being cherished.

We need to believe ourselves Beautiful in order to really trust that we are cherished, and - the flipside - usually can't conceive ourselves Beautiful unless cherished, actively and persistently.

And, like the men, we have a terribly misleading "solution" to our neurosis presented to us by popular culture. Except popular culture's solution to what it takes to be a Man is deliberately vague, ever evolving - it has to be, so that men are never quite sure what they're supposed to aim for. Women, on the other hand, have a very clear idea of what to aim for to be considered Beautiful, which works just as well for marketing because it is practically unattainable.

I don't really have the kind of straightforward solution for women as I prescribed for men. In some ways, ours is a more complex question - as befits our rather more complex nature. (This is not to put down men's "simplicity" of nature, or to rate complexity over uncomplicated directness, as both have their strengths and weaknesses. Besides which, our "complexity" could often more accurately be called "a mess".)

I suppose the easiest course could be to insist that we all just learn to "love ourselves as we are". This does present problems, though; not the least of which being there are some ugly things that we all have which ought not to be loved under any circumstances. So I could suggest self-acceptance, following on from self-awareness, as I did in the "Maturity" post, which is a good foundation but doesn't quite solve the problem for us.

The problem is that part of our solution will always rest in the hands of others, because our desire is to be perceived in a certain way and treated accordingly. There's an element of that where men desire others to see them as Men, but it's easier to marginalize. For women, the complicity of others (parents, friends, strangers - and the males in each category have the most impact in this question - and above all boyfriends/husbands) will always be central, no matter how we try to minimize it.

For Christian women, part of the solution can be to recognize that God's workmanship, though now tainted, is always beautiful, and to understand and trust how much he cherishes us. For those who won't draw comfort from that, there is the slightly woollier concept of all human beings having instinsic value and dignity - an appreciation of one's fundamental dignity being an excellent antidote for feeling ugly and unloved, while it lasts, which it generally doesn't.

There's also chocolate, girls' nights with close friends, certain movies (along the lines of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe) and the book Real Gorgeous by the down-to-earth and witty Australian, Kaz Cooke, which is recommended reading to every woman (and every man trying to understand us crazy creatures... with the caveat that it's not for the particularly squeamish: breasts and menstruation are discussed). I have one copy, which I'm more than happy to lend. (I also have Fried Green Tomatoes, which I'm equally happy to lend.)

But none of these solutions ultimately satisfy; we want to be Beautiful, not be continually re-convincing ourselves that we are. It's occurred to me (and may have confused some of you) that I have been referring to physical and spiritual beauty somewhat interchangeably, but for women the two are often entwined. Whether or not that's a good thing, it does suggest one recourse to ensuring Beauty, and that is to cultivate a beautiful spirit.

"Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting"; "Instead, [your beauty] should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit." I was trying to avoid quoting bible verses (Proverbs 31:30 and 1Peter 3:4, for those who need to know), since I didn't for the post on What Men Want and because not everyone accepts the bible's authority, but darned if I can express it any better, so meh.

Like the solution I proposed for Manliness, the solution for Beauty is a series of decisions governing attitude and action. A "gentle and quiet" spirit could be definied as not bitchy, not pushy, not selfish and self-centred, calm... all that stuff. We all know what truly beautiful natures look like, as well as what ugly natures look like - the good thing is that beautiful natures have a habit of becoming more beautiful with age. The solutions for both men and women are hard, life-long processes, more concerned with what we are than what we appear to others.

I can't promise that having a beautiful nature will guarentee a man who will cherish it - but I think it will make it more likely. The only other help I can give is to tell all you men to get out there and cherish the women in your life, whether they be wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters or friends, because your attitude to us has a profound impact on how we value ourselves. - Ladies, I've done all I can.

New Year McGuffin

2007-01-12T06:22:00.000-06:00

Yup, delinquent in blogger duties once again; actually, I've been away or busy for two-odd weeks, ever since Boxing Day, and have been recovering from it for the last few days. So tthbpt. (That's the onomatopoeic representation of me sticking out my tongue and blowing a raspberry. I realise there's a more efficient way of indicating that in type, but... tthbpt.)

I especially needed dedicated recovery time since I'm about to embark on two weeks of camps, and thus at least two more weeks of blogger delinquency.

The New Year has brought with it a number of ponderings and thinks, and one or two decisions too. This is unusual for me, since I don't bother much with the New Year's Resolution nonsense, but I think it was probably necessary as the looming year promises to be something of a difficult one. Plus, I spent quite some time standing in front of a wall painting a mural, and this naturally lends itself to introspection - particularly when you're feeling dissatisfied or upset.

My problem being that God appears to be obliging a request I made of him around a year ago. I knew at the time it was somewhat foolhardy, but it also made sense, which is why I made it. It was immediately after God had sat me down, figuratively speaking, and laid bare a few core problems within me which were inhibiting my spiritual growth. Nothing airy-fairy, just key emotional and psychological problems of which everyone probably has a few, tucked away.

It hurt, of course. It was bloody painful. It was also very quick and intense. And because of a few lessons in trust he'd taught me earlier, I didn't do anything but trust him and what he was doing, which turned out to be the best possible thing to do in the circumstances.

It also led to the request I made, in light of what had happened: I asked God to break down anything in me that had grown wrong, and start again with it. The person I talked the whole thing over with afterwards observed: "It sounds like you just asked God to break you." To which I agreed, uh, yeah, I guess I had. Or at least those bits that have been twisted, warped and broken already by sin and need to be made right... which is pretty much everything, really.

And for the last year, God has been doing just that. Not in big, intense blows - no KOs - but in little, persistent jabs and the odd uppercut. I don't know but I think it's worse, long and drawn out and interminable, with no end in sight so far. It's also pretty likely that this next year will hold much of the same, as God has clearly told me that he doesn't want me to go anywhere for this year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I knew, intellectually, what I was asking for, and I continue to trust God absolutely in what he does with me. There's an occasional glimpse of the very beginning of some good, solid building in the midst of all this demolition. I'm learning plenty, usually in tidbit form, about myself and God and our relationship, and his absolute supremacy. This is a good lesson to learn, if not exactly comfortable for we proud sinners. I'm coming to love him ever more, which is even better.

It's also been a very solitary journey, of necessity I suppose. I've found it very difficult to talk about it with others, even in general terms; not so much because of the pain and the humbling (although that's part of it) but because I simply don't have much to say about it. There's nothing to tell. It's all happening in minutiae, too subtle for me to register much change over any time units shorter than a year - which I guess is why I'm mentioning it now.

We're looking at Proverbs at church at the moment, in between all these flash guest speakers anyway. The key to the whole book is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. I understood that like other words which we mistake for describing feelings, such as "love", "hate", "pride", "humility" or "joy", "fear" instead describes an overriding attitude that motivates and dictates behaviour. It means deep awe and due reverence for God's Godness, although frankly knock-kneed pants-wetting isn't inappropriate when dealing with the God of the Universe either.

Being a little over-endowed with cockiness, I could never really wrap my noggin around the idea of fearing God, even if it meant the attitude and not the feeling. However, if I got nothing else out of this past year, I think I have found my fear of the Lord; it's what you have when you are totally alone, defenceless, stripped bare and driven to your knees before his throne.

Which is some progress.

Do you not know?
_Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
_the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
_and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
_and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
_and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
_will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
_they will run and not grow weary,
_they will walk and not be faint.
______Isaiah 40:28-31

Season's Greetings from a Christmas Curmudgeon

2006-12-25T18:44:00.001-06:00

Seeing how it's Boxing Day, I was figuring I'd better get that Seasonal rant in before it needs to be mothballed for another year, but honestly I don't have the energy for the venom such a rant requires. I might, however, find it in myself to briefly express some quiet dissatisfaction.

I don't like Christmas. It's tacky, irredeemably secular and rotten through with hollow sentiment. It was never really Christian in the first place, and frankly the "message" of Christmas more closely resembles Warm Fuzzies + Angels than the gospel. That non-Christians form their impression of Christ from Christmas and Easter tells me they get very garbled ideas of him, and of us.

Bearing that in mind, the argument that at least Christmas gives non-Christians some exposure to churchy stuff doesn't carry a lot of weight for me. Most carols are a hideous mix of mutant theology and dodgy doctrine, not to mention overly sentimental - although that particular objection might be more a matter of taste. And although I'd be happy to be wrong, I don't think the most conscientious gospel-focused sermon afterward can undo the damage, particularly since both messages are coming from the same church service. It's far more likely to produce only confusion if the rare non-Christian in the pews is even listening, not trying to keep the kids quiet and worrying about the turkey stuffing and dreading the coming of certain relatives to dinner.

There are of course arguments in favour of a "religious" Christmas. I just don't think they're very good ones. If I had my way the Christian church would jettison the whole thing altogether, abandoning the holiday to its secular manifestations, and good riddance too. Or, even better, it would never have been adopted into the religious calendar in the first place, but I guess that's a little much to ask.

I'm happy to argue the point with anyone who wants to, but right now I don't care enough to go on about it.

Why what?

2006-12-18T04:50:00.000-06:00

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. - W Somerset Maugham

I have absolutely no excuse for not writing here much recently; as you can plainly see, I did not have to, and so I have not.

It's a rather elegant way he's expressed the compulsion of true creativity - it applies to any form, though, not just writing. I think I touched on it in the post on self portraits, but the principal drive of all real creators is to come to grips with the world: not just discover it but understand it through expressing it.

To avoid inevitable quibbling, I point out that I'm talking about creators, not designers nor engineers. Writers, artists, composers, musicians, poets, actors, etc. The heart and soul of creating is storytelling, to tell it in whatever medium you have at your disposal. Ideally, it will be worth telling and told well, and so be intelligible to others.

The quote is a nice little illustration of that compulsion, too: the product of the ever-provoking question why? Why do I waste such time and energy cobbling words together in such a way as to arrive at something that has meaning? Surely it is a waste? But the explanation is simple: I have to.

Why? possesses me and drives me and opens my eyes to so much that I need to tame the influx, and the only way to do so is to express it. It is channelled, ordered; this brings understanding, and given an outlet; and I have brief merciful relief from the sensation of being about to explode. Writing, Maugham knew - and expressed - was the safety valve of writers; art for artists, music for musicians, et cetera.

I feel the demand for a quick excursion into the five essential elements of a true master in any creative field: the eyes to see, the heart to feel, the head to understand, the wisdom to sift and the hands to express. And all these must be honed and pursued and disciplined - little wonder there's been very few greats, percentage-wise. Most creators have only one or two of these elements to any useful degree, and so produce very uneven works, but the digression into the mechanics of creativity will once again wait for another night.

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there. - Thomas Berger

Sale! Sale! Sale!

2006-12-02T02:17:00.000-06:00

I'm getting a little sick of having stuff pushed at me that I don't need and don't want. This being the essence of advertising, I find I get painfully restless, even queasy, when commercials come on television - and why the only radio station I can handle listening to is triple j. And for the record, I don't watch a whole lot of tv, although the ABC and SBS are okay.

This little squawk was inspired by the "Beta Version" of Blogger being thrust in my face every time I log on or make a comment, or whatever. I didn't need it before, I don't need it now, I don't want anything it's offering, unless I missed a feature which makes you a cup of tea when you're blogging.

Seriously. I've seen plenty of advertising in my time, lots of new products with spanky new features, and a woefully small percentage of them can actually make my life better. They just make it more cluttered, except for the bank account. Having said that, the excitable rhetoric used in a lot of ads can make for the occasional chuckle.

I don't mean the odd actually good ad, made with wit and creativity; they're so rare it's like sifting through sewerage for gold dust to actually spend time watching for them. They come along, a momentary reprieve in the sludge of programs and ads, a brief serendipitous titillation that is best forgotten as soon as it's past, because you know you won't be seeing another any time soon.

Did I mention I don't watch a lot of television?

No, the chuckles come from the more mundane elements of ill-considered pitches, and occasionally also the comical grammar used to express them - although more often that aspect brings more despair than anything else. And I don't mean that the pitch is ill-considered as it relates to its target demographic - I have no doubt that often they are at least moderately successful. It's just that to those of us outside the target, who tend to actually think about what exactly is being said, it tends to produce a reaction of "... wait, what?" And, if we're lucky, turns into a fancy which we can spend a few diverting moments flying like a kite.

I remember noticing one, a few lines at the bottom of an online comic:

Silent Ringtone - Get it.

Impossible to hear by parents and teachers. For Free on your mobile!

Now, if that doesn't produce a few wry chuckles, followed by the mental image of an implant that allows kids with mobiles to hear ringing at a pitch usually only audible to dogs, then you're probably reading the wrong blog. Not overlooking the flat-out order to get the product - no subtle wooing of greed or desire for these guys, no siree bob. I guess they don't need it: it's Free (ingenious use of capitals there) and aimed at teenagers. Also, the thought occurs that a silent ringtone (apart from being an oxymoron) ought to be impossible to hear by anyone.

That's pretty much it for tonight; I have to finish designs for face painting, which I'm doing at our church's Barbeque and Christmas Carols evening tomorrow for all the precious little tykes who'll be running around with tomato sauce all down their shirts. (For those who don't know, I'm almost as fond of Christmas as I am of commercials. There will be a rant before the season's done. Be warned.) Also, my butt's going to sleep, and I want that cup of tea. I wonder if Blogger Beta comes with a cure for that?

I'm betting not.

Maturity

2006-11-23T23:40:00.000-06:00

I guess maturity would be blogging more frequently...

Okay, so I've been thinking about this whole maturity thingy. Some months ago, a cousin and dear friend asked me what I thought maturity actually entailed. The first thing that came to my head is something I've been pondering on for years now, and that is: a mature person takes responsibility for their own crap.

This first pillar of maturity applies equally to men and women - it's an acknowledgement of what you owe to others and the world, owning that responsibility and living in accordance with it. I would say it is also an awareness of what you owe yourself, but in our current individualistic society I don't think that idea requires any elaboration.

In fact, I think our notions of what we are owed need to be deliberately and sometimes drastically reduced, set aside until we come to grips with the other side of the equation. It often seems we are very clear on what we expect from others, particularly in their treatment of us, the consideration and respect we deserve - but does that translate into a clear idea of how we ought to be treating them? Do we make the allowances for them that we make for ourselves - are we as understanding of their faults and failings as our own? Do we forgive them as quickly as we forgive ourselves - do we judge everyone else, even those who annoy or anger us, the way we want to be judged ourselves?

So much for the passive side - what of the active? How do we want to be treated - encouragement, consideration, selfless attention and care paid to our struggles and concerns? I remember once petulantly thinking how nice it would be to have someone take a genuine, active interest in my life - only to have God turn it around on me and slap me up the back of the head with it. Was I doing that for anyone else? The second most important thing in the world, according to Christ: love others as yourself. Don't discriminate. (Luke 10:25-37 for his example of how far we should go to look after others' needs.)

I've already waffled about the hugeness of loving others in a previous post, and it's sidetacked me quite enough for this one. My point was: the moment I start focussing on me, on what I think I deserve, and whether or not I'm receiving it, I have no energy or mental space to devote to what others need or deserve - and vice versa. The overweening awareness of what I'm owed - that wail of "What about me? It isn't fair!" - is shown up for what it is: piddling, insignificant and largely irrelevant.

Now, I have to say that this perspective is made somewhat easier in knowing that my Father in heaven has my back - that whatever I need, God knows it and will provide. (Of course, the distinction needs to be made between that which we truly need and what we merely want - God is not a vending machine for our self-gratification, which strangely is what many people take him for.) Naturally, once again Christ sums it up far more eloquently than I ever could in Matthew 6:25-34.

"Seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness" and you'll never be driven to the bitter cry of "I've had enough, now I want my share!" - I mean, you might get fed up with people and want to yell something of that kind out, but that happens when you're looking inwards, worrying about what you want. I guarentee it won't happen when you're actively seeking God's kingdom and righteousness; for more specific directions as to how, refer back to that Luke passage, specifically verse 27.

... So. Yeah. Part of what makes a person mature is thinking about what they owe to others, caring about what is required of them, and trying to pay it as best they can with what they have. This includes being conscious of when they've done wrong and not running away from it, but owning it and addressing it with humility. (In light of the previous passages, it may seem I'm saying that only a Christian who's actively seeking God, and depending on him, can be mature, but I'm not - although I do believe it probably makes it easier.)

I guess this is at the heart of what I meant when I talked about a Man deciding, "Because I am a Man, I will do this." I hope that makes it clearer - and I think this criteria is applicable across all cultures, ages, religions and ideologies (although obviously some are more conducive to it than others), as well as gender.

Sadly, many (not all) thoughts and insights into maturity were inspired by seeing the behaviour of immaturity - in myself as well as others. I could keep expounding on this aspect of maturity indefinitely; as I said, I've been thinking about this for years. But I think the essence of my thoughts are there, and there's a second universal pillar of maturity that occurred to me when my cousin asked me that question.

It's another concept I've been thinking about for many years, although it hadn't struck me as being a part of maturity until that time: that of self-awareness coupled with self-acceptance. Self-awareness is pretty straightforward, I assume - as a concept, at any rate. But it alone does not produce maturity without the corresponding acceptance.

It is pointless to seek to clear away your delusions about yourself unless you are prepared to accept yourself without them. To be at peace with who you are as a person, your strengths and weaknesses, your abilities and lack thereof - to not want to be someone else - is to see through the world's superficial grasp of worth and understand that you are as valuable as every single other person.

This is vitally important - knowing that your worth is not determined by your looks, your intelligence, your creativity, your popularity, your accomplishments, your possessions nor your power. These do not determine your value because, fundamentally, they are not you; they are only what you have. They merely determine your usefulness or your appeal. Equating usefulness or appeal with intrinsic value is absolutely evil - I choose that word with care - and also habitual to us.

As I said in the previous post, every person who has walked this earth wants to know they are valuable. The perception that what another person has or does makes them more valuable than ourselves is at the root of our discontent with who we are. It gives birth to envy, malice, self-obsession, cruelty, lust, hatred, selfish ambition - behaviour that objectifies others, making them less than human in our eyes, just a measure of value we use to judge or justify ourselves.

Your value is fixed and equal by the very fact that you are a human soul, as is every single other person's value - there is no other measure of intrinsic worth. And once you accept that of yourself, you can accept that of others - and treat them accordingly, which takes us back to the whole "loving others as yourself" bit - what a surprise.

No longer making unreasonable demands of yourself and holding yourself to the world's standards of worth - accepting yourself as you are - frees you to do the same with every other person you meet, no matter how unlikeable - or how intimidating - they might at first appear. Your peace, and the basis for it, offers everyone else that same peace.

I don't want to imply that maturity is not making demands of yourself or holding yourself to standards - only that your track record in this regard does not make you better or worse than anyone else. Part of self-awareness is understanding exactly what demands and standards you should ask of yourself - and knowing what is reasonable and appropriate to ask of others, as well as how to act wisely and compassionately when they fail - as we all do.

That's plenty for now, I think - I'm sure there's a whole lot of stuff I've overlooked, and probably more aspects of maturity that I haven't thought of, which I'm sure will be pointed out to me by you thoughtful people. I'm looking forward to it! But in the meantime, I will continue to ponder that which Women Want - and hopefully not take so long to post about it...

What Men Want

2006-11-06T06:24:00.000-06:00

A recent conversation turned up the idea that there is a core, driving question at the heart of every male; that of measuring up as a Man. (The women have one too, don't worry - we're not left out of the identity and esteem crisis stakes.) "Do I measure up?" they apparently ask themselves, if not always consciously - often the question expresses itself subconsciously in their ambitions and actions. "Do I have what it takes? Am I a Man?"

Now at the very basic level, both the man's and the woman's question are seeking confirmation of worth, value, merit, whatever you want to call it. It's universal - every single person on earth wants to know that they are valuable, but men and women assign worth according to different criteria, hence the different questions - besides which, a woman affirming her own worth by measuring up as a Man is not only silly but was the basis of the feminist notion of equality, which only goes to show.

But this core question got me to thinking, pondering on the methods men employ to obtain an answer, a rating of Manliness. Of course I should point out right out of the gate that I have no training in psychology and have done very little reading on the subject (I'll get around to it... someday...), and that everything I have to say comes from personal observations and reasoning, so the probability is high that I'm going to get this... well, wrong. Plus I'm not a man, let alone a Man, so I have no insider's insights to offer; just outsider's insights. On the other hand, although I'd never heard the question put so specifically, I have long been interested in the hallmarks of maturity, which has a lot in common with this issue.

The first thing that came to mind was who are they asking the question of? I mean, that determines everything, surely - what criteria and standard is set to determine Manliness, and ultimately the authority the answer is given with. I'm not so interested in exploring the variations in how men in different societies have decided they are Men, but I will say that the second thing that occured to me was that this makes a lot of sense out of initiation rites. They set everything out, nice and clear and binary: those who have been through them are Men: those who haven't aren't. Simple. Saves a lot of confusion until someone starts thinking outside the box and asking pesky questions such as: what gives you the right to judge me, and according to this criteria? Is this really the only way to be a Man?

And it ought to be noted that those questions often do have valid answers. But, let's face it, often they don't even get asked; especially when the initiation rites are unacknowledged, subtle and fundamentally hard to define, as they are in our kind of society. Then you have to spend time just working out who's judging and by what criteria before you can get around to asking whether they are valid.

It's not easy being a man these days - let alone a Man! Everyone has their own idea of what Manliness entails, ranging from James Bond to Arnie via Ghandi, and let's throw in Martin Luther King, Jr for good measure, because we're certainly not confused enough yet. It seems like a lof of guys simply pastiche a conceptual Man by combining characteristics of whoever they happen to admire and aim for it, hoping that they'll get close enough to qualify.

Look... and this is just my two cents, by the way... it seems to me that most of these approaches are entirely wrong, if only for practical reasons. If you're waiting for someone else to tell you you've made the grade, A-1 certified Man, then apart from anything else (and there's a lot of else), your Manliness is never your own. Other people have approved you, and so other people can disapprove you - and that doesn't seem to satisfy. Men want to know they are Men.

The (few) Men I have met don't ask the question - well, obviously. They don't have to. Nor is their confidence based on having had the question answered for them.

Put it this way: they don't ask "Am I a Man because I do this?"; nor do they say, "I am a Man because I do this"; they say, "Because I am a Man, I will do this." Figuratively, of course. I don't know that many bother with the first part; the simple (yet hugely significant) assumption of responsibility and acceptance of consequences is summed up in I will do this. They don't need anyone else to approve their Manliness because they're living it.

Now, no doubt there's a whole lot to it that I haven't grasped because blah blah blah and I'm not male and I don't get it. If that's the case, I'd love the insiders' insights. In the mean time, I'm going to have a think about the women's question, which is both closer to home and more complex - or at least seems to be.

one supreme, hold the anchovies, with extra love

2006-10-29T20:53:00.000-06:00

Wow, haven't been here for a while. What with one thing and another, and having too much to write about, I've had nothing to write about and no time nor inclination to do so. I have a Word document floating about the place which is shaping up into a blog on suffering and insanity and, as always, God - but, heck: it's a pretty spring day and for the moment I'm not experiencing turbulence. Why dive back into the subject while enjoying a reprieve?

Life is just too big to yak about today. The heart is a strange wilderness, full of thorns and beauty. God's spent the last year - with increasing intensity in the last month or so - teaching me how important relationships are, whispering in my ear at every turn of events: "Relationships!" No matter what kind, they are of supreme importance to him, and therefore to us, because he made us like him.

And supreme in the mechanics of relationships is love. Not the goo-goo talking warm fuzzy feelings, or the weak-kneed brain-fused wantings; the love that is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeping no record of wrongs, not delighting in evil, rejoicing in the truth - love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres; love that does not fail.

Praise God I didn't have to think up that definition, since he did it for me (1 Corinthians 13, if there could possibly be anyone out there who doesn't know the reference). I mean, what an incredible list! And what a definition in light of "love your neighbour as yourself"! I have to treat everyone around me like that? I have to treat my enemies like that?

I mean, it describes the behaviour that stems from being fundamentally more concerned with the welfare of others than my own. Every single item listed up there deserves profound meditation and could take up an entire blog. Every day shows me how far I fall short, and simultaneously how perfectly God loves me - he is both the source and fulfilment of love.

How he longs to change me to be more like him! And in my right-thinking moments, not dulled by self-pity or blinded by self-interest, I long for it too. I mean, it's hard - but perhaps that's part of the point, part of the inestimable worth and glory of love: it is not just a snap of the fingers.

I guess that's where the joy comes from, too; joy from the true worth of love. It's not from thanks, or even from being noticed by others, but that the work of love has extraordinary eternal value which will never depreciate. The effort of love that is invested in others is never wasted. In fact, it's the only thing we can spend our time on that will last... our heads and hearts need serious rewiring to get this priority right, and only God can do it - and only when we ask him to and let him.

Hm. This was supposed to be a lighthearted blog. I guess there's still too much weight in my ticker for that, but nevermind. At least I've written something finally, even if it turned out to be a meandering reiteration of bits of 1 John.

an Emo Emu would be a sight to see

2006-10-04T10:36:00.000-05:00

"It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things," she said gaily.

I find myself agreeing with the sentiment, though it was uttered by the artlessly delightful Anne Shirley, eliciting her the admiration of an archetypal Tall Dark & Handsome - even so I, even I, can sympathise, despite my far more prosaic circumstances of being sleepy and cranky in front of the computer in an ugly oversized sweater at three in the morning when the stupid blogger site throws away half of the post I was writing dammit!

And I can already tell it's not going to lead me to an eventual proposal from a romantic, wealthy man with a deep dark velvety voice, which is just further proof of the injustice of this world.

Total depravity. There's no better way to put it.

I didn't have the heart to start again until this afternoon, although the general tenor of the post was that I am often surprised at the ways people perceive me. I was considering going into a long angsty emo tribute about how I am sometimes, like, totally misunderstood... but realised I don't care enough to make sustained fun of them. The indifferent drive-by works for me.

But, really... I've been trying to figure out where some people get these strange ideas about me. I think Anais Nin provides a clue when he pointed out that "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." And it makes sense that the less self-aware someone is, the more it applies.

Probably only our closest friends see us as we are; everyone else sieves us through their own personalities and understands us accordingly.

The schism between how others see me and how I see myself is likely exacerbated because I don't tend to compare myself to anyone else. It has been pointed out to me that most people form a picture of themselves and their world by comparing themselves to those around them, working out where they fit in. Now, I'm not the "fitting in" kind of girl. I've never in my life fit in. I wouldn't know where to start to try even if I wanted to.

Point in case - this has led to some people thinking I go out of my way pretending to be weird or whacky or look to see where the flow goes, execute an about-face and head the direct opposite way. - By no means! I do nothing of the sort; I simply am who I am and act accordingly. I lack certain basic social skills and wouldn't in fact know which way the flow goes if it bit me on the bottom.

Yet I don't see a good reason why who I am should be dictated by others - others who probably don't even care about me and only want me to conform because it makes them feel more comfortable - I just don't see the sense in that one.

Now, in closing: there is one poor, deluded (but quite sweet) friend of mine who keeps insisting I am cool. Initially I think he actually meant it, although these days I suspect he just does it to annoy. He also pestered me about why I haven't devoted space to him in this blog yet; I don't imagine he was serious but he's a persistent little sucker, so to this fellow I say: consider yourself Mentioned. Now shut up.

Oh, and also: I am so not cool.

slow news month

2006-09-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

It's not hard to see that I haven't found time nor inclination to write anything for a while. Part of it is that I went away for a week and things have been kind of unsettled for me since I got back. Sometimes it feels like I just drift from one thing to the next - I've never really had the knack of ambition and drive and all that stuff.

I will attempt more soon, when I get a bit more inspired. If anyone feels like leaving a suggestion for a topic to write about, I promise to take a shot at doing so - I just need a bit of a kick-start. No topic too outlandish, no concept too extreme, no idea too boring... something, anything!

In the meantime, I seem to recall an idea I had of writing about a colour if I ever couldn't think of anything else, so...

Red.

I like red. However, when writing about it there really needs to be an initial shout out to its neighbour, orange, because they have so much to give to each other. I mean, they kind of share heat and passion - red has more spice, but doesn't quite glow so hot as orange. Still, one colour at a time; there's no telling how long this writing dry spell will continue.

Red is slinky, sexy, bold, deep, simmering, dangerous, flagrant and unashamed. Red never sits still, it leaps out; red is the colour of passion and blood and tomatoes. It's the closest there is to a colour of life. Nothing properly red is bland (I won't even get started on how crap a colour pink is or we'd be here all week); it is rich and flavourful and striking.

There is music that sounds red - the first and most obvious one that comes to mind is "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana. Or, for those who prefer their tunes not bastardised by beer ads, Jimi's Voodoo Child or Zeppelin's Immigrant Song are gorgeous, the dark red of ripe cherries... in my opinion.

If you had to find the essence of redness, you'd probably think of blood, roses and wine - a very evocative soul! Intimate and intoxicating; anything but small doses is overwhelming (as you can see). But how boring the world would be without it! Like the click of a flamenco dancer's castanets, red daubs the world in brief flashes, intense and exotic. And that thought may just help you next time you're stopped at the traffic lights.

Then again, it might not. Either way, I've had fun - like a monkey with the keys to the banana closet.

safely in the fire

2006-09-06T22:06:00.001-05:00

Thunder, lightning, sun, wind, rain - I love when the weather throws its weight around. It's a dark delight to tune into this song of the sky. It's melancholy, too, this last bite of winter...

I am at a low ebb here; I have been sliding erratically and quietly south for some months at least. I'm not that worried about it - I have no compulsive need for happiness - I have peace about where I am, even when it's black and painful. God is here with me, and what more could anyone ask for? There's refining going on; my crucible of silver sits in life's furnace and God's masterful hand is on the thermostat. Although the high energy imagery of that metaphor is contrasting strangely with that of the low ebb...

Ah, well. I'm a box of paradox.

There's a weird joy to absolute surrender; a freedom from yourself. In the depths of helplessness it is undeniable: I am out of my hands. I've come to love that - only because the hands I'm in are ones I trust completely. It's taken time to trust myself to God utterly, hundreds of little lessons and a few big, glaring ones. But, as ever, God's timing is flawless. It is sublime.

I'm neither flawless nor sublime, though. I forget, and I take my eyes off God to run after temporary distractions - yet he is ever constant, ever trustworthy, ever waiting with open, beckoning arms for me to turn to him. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is! That in itself makes it impossible for me to ignore his call to return; it is gloriously un-human that he never forces anyone to come to him. God is the perfect parent - and if that sounds too good to be true, I bear witness that God is both Good and True.

This is no comforting fairytale for those dissatisfied with their own parents, believe me - and God is no mere scaled-up human. But the question of the nature of faith, and how you can possibly imagine you know who God is, has come up with several people recently. I've had trouble. How can you explain this trust, this total assurance, this head-and-heart knowledge to those who've never jumped?

It's simply not transferable. For someone fascinated by communication, like I am, this can be a little frustrating - but it's true. There are some things you just can't explain, you can only experience. Like skydiving or being in love, description falls far too short! And the experience changes everything, because it changes you.

There's a verse that someone sent me recently which I want to finish up with, one which I know those who "know" God and those who don't will read completely differently: Zephaniah 3:17.

The Lord your God is with you,
- he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you
- he will quiet you with his love,
- he will rejoice over you with singing.

(Hint: the subject of the writer's praise, glory and joy is not the people.)

the (nerdy) joy of hypotheticals

2006-09-02T08:47:00.001-05:00

In amongst the idle chitchat and get-to-know-you questions that happens at barbeques where you're meeting friends of friends, you sometimes find yourself in rather odd culs-de-sac of conversation. For example: tonight there happened to be two high school teachers in the group, and the quite normal discussion of their profession led to a somewhat in-depth exploration of who would win a hypothetical interfaculty war.

Now, the two teachers present were IT and PE respectively. It was pretty much agreed that the IT bunch would have no chance, and the English and maths departments were similarly written off - protractors notwithstanding. It was thought that the PE teachers stood a pretty good chance on an open field, but might not be so good at close-quarter fighting where there isn't so much room to swing cricket bats and javelins.

DT likewise was a favourite, due to their substantial arsenal, but we figured history was probably exactly that unless they formed an alliance with the DT crew and taught them how to make trebuchets. Nor to be discounted is the wiley science department, who presumably know how to blow stuff up.

The IT teacher was quite keen to know who would win, so he'd know who to side with, seeing as how laptops don't double well as body armour. I think the PE teacher was bored. Me, I'm thinking there's a reality tv show in this idea somewhere...

accept no substitutes

2006-08-20T08:06:00.001-05:00

That was a lot of fun. Church in the morning and particle physics in the afternoon, plus a little cosmology in the evening, and a touch of British rock? Priceless.

Actually, it was - all free, I mean.

Remember that song Things Can Only Get Better, by D:Ream? If it helps you to place it at all, it was the official song of Tony Blair's re-election campaign. Well, the keyboardist from that band, Brian Cox, also played for the band Dare, who among other things toured with Jimmy Page. And Take That. And Europe. And he got a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, and is currently working at CERN in Geneva constructing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

I went to the lecture he gave this afternoon, at UTS, with my father and brothers, and it was very groovy. Leaving aside the rock music angle, and even his beautifully understated humour, particle theory and experimentation have an elegance and sexiness all their own.

Dr Cox spent most of the hour-and-a-half simply explaining the progression of our understanding from atoms to particles, the behaviour of particles, and the picture we are constructing of the very first billionths of a second of our universe. He talked about how colliders work and how they collect data, and what they're hoping to discover when the LHC is finished and switched on next year.

He touched on antimatter, sparticles, the mathmatical equations describing the interactions of electrons, the problems introduced by a force-bearing particle (of the Weak Force, the boson) having apparent mass and the theories they have developed to account for it, and how they intend to test these theories. He gave only the last five minutes to string theory, which is not his field, but may perhaps be included some day in the future - when they can figure out how to begin to test it!

Well, hardly satisfied with that hour-and-a-half - it felt like we'd only just got started - we were very happy to learn that Dr Cox would be joining Charley Lineweaver, a cosmologist, and Chris Tinney, a "planet hunter" astronomist, in the evening for a panel discussion. Very informal, held - in a stroke of genius - in a bar in the UTS building. That was a very entertaining, involving, thought-provoking and downright enjoyable way to pass two hours.

Not only was the discussion lively and well-spiced with humour, but the interaction of the three distinct personalities was fun to watch, too. There was the laid-back, self-deprecating ex-musician describing the beauty of certain equations with the sensitivity of a poet - in a Manchester accent - tall, lean, youthful, peering out from under his Beatles mop haircut. There was the vigorous enthusiasm of the bespectacled American, proudly wearing his labcoat - Geek Power through-and-through - unable to sit anywhere but the edge of his seat as he addressed the topics. And then you had the Aussie, pragmatic, nonchalant, unmoving with his jeans-clad legs on the coffee table, wry observations punctuating the exchanges and bringing the flights of theoretical speculation to heel with a reminder of the need for observational verification.

One thing they all had in common was the frank willingness to say "We [scientists in general] just don't know", which was refreshing, although they often added the hopeful "yet" to the end of the sentence.

The evening went a little flat for me, though, when we got home in time to watch a program on SBS about string theory. You'd think it was the ideal way to round things off, but by the time we realised our mistake it was a bit late to do much about it. The problem is, of course, that tv programs both dumb things down and "sex" them up; modern audiences aren't trusted to consume anything else. No doubt there were good intentions and some educational value in the show somewhere. In contrast to the sparkling and lucid - and uncompromised (as far as the circumstances allowed) - engagement with the concepts earlier in the evening, the program felt simplistic, muddy and a little sordid.

Particle physics - demand the Real Thing.