Right...here we go: #15

Well...the problem with my first choice is that it’s incredibly long and involved, and is unfair to spring on someone for a week’s review.  But I have chosen it because, for me, it marked the turning point in music.  Now, you might think I should have turned somewhere else, but this was the album that changed everything.  Prior to this I had a tape of Russian classical music, stuff recorded off the radio, a Bill Hailey and the Comets compilation, two Shakin’ Stevens albums (honest)...and recently had branched out into Survivor (Eye of the Tiger had been a hit a few years before, and their album had been released on that £2.99 Woolworths label...those were the days).

Then, somewhere in 1984/85 The Complete Mike Oldfield came out – and, although it never appeared on an album, Pictures in the Dark was released as a single.  I saw the video on Saturday morning TV:  Oldfield had bought all his own video and computer gear and produced one of the early CGI videos, and I was really interested in that.

A friend said his dad had an Oldfield album and lent it to me.  I still have the incredibly long cassette!  And I had a bit of a shock:  not realising that 4minute singles were a recent imposition by Virgin records on him, I hadn’t suspected over an hour of mainly instrumental and live material.   It was noise!   Later I gave it another go, and another...and realised it was buzzing round my head.   I played the tape to distraction. 

In later years I recognised that the multi-layered sound-scapes were setting off  what turned out to be audio-visual synesthesia.  But more than that, these were vast audio landscapes, and as a morose and troubled teenager, I was lost in them, it was another world.  It was Lord of the Rings through my eyes, and Oldfield through my ears.

Anyway, here it is:  Exposed by Mike Oldfield.  It’s the first tour he undertook:  after the phenomenal success of Tubular Bells, the shy and mentally fragile Oldfield took to the hills (literally) and hid;  a one off incident with drugs to try to ease the anguish produced what we’re warned about these days with regards to cannabis: an instant psychotic episode that left him further damaged.  But In ‘77 he underwent a bizarre self-assertiveness course, and then put together his first tour – thus he was finally ‘exposed’.  With up to 50 people on stage, in an attempt to reproduce the complexities of Tubular Bells and Incantations, the tour nearly bankrupted him.   But Oh I wish I had been there!  Never before and never again would it be tried, by anyone.  I mean, Longfellow’s Hiawatha set to music?  And tens of thousands of people listening enthusiastically?  As they said in the 6^th form:  I’m a hippy born out of time...

It’s not on Spotify, but I found it on LastFM:

Introversion

Some interesting quotes from a CT book review on Introverts in the Church by McHugh:

McHugh identifies three primary characteristics of introverts. First, he says, introverts are energized by solitude and drained by social interaction. (Extroverts, on the other hand, derive energy from external sources and find both inactivity and too much solitude draining.) Second, introverts tend to filter information and experiences internally; thinking generally precedes speaking. Third, introverts prefer depth over breadth in both relationships and interests. They may look calm on the surface, but their brains are "bubbling with activity"; thus, they require less external stimulation than their extroverted neighbors.

...

The challenge for those who tend to focus inward lies in "distinguishing between the healthy components of personalities … and the coping mechanisms that are the symptoms of our wounds." Because introverts tend to be good listeners, we can get enmeshed in one-sided relationships and masquerade as extroverts in order to be accepted. Both tendencies drain us of vitality.

...

He wisely adds that "understanding our introversion is not the end of our self-discovery and growth; it is a beginning point for learning how to love God and others as ourselves," and concludes that "the introverted trajectory of growth is toward relationships with others and relationship with the outside world."

The reviewer is not 100% in agreement with the book, but these comments I found helpful.

One comment the reviewer makes struck me as needing investigation:  "Depression is an illness, not a function of temperament".  Any thoughts on this gratefully received.....

Resurrection effects

John Botkin notes that the first missionaries to the New Hebrides were murdered by the islanders;  later John G Paton decided to go, and this caused fear for many of the same fate.  Warned by an older man of their cannibalism, he replied:

“Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect
is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to
you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus,
it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by
worms; and in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as
yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”

So he went, and on this occasion things worked differently (this scenario sounds a bit like the Ecuadorian missionaries doesn't it?):

“Recall . . . what the Gospel has done for the near kindred of these
same Aborigines. On our own Aneityum, 3,500 Cannibals have
been lead to renounce their heathenism . . . In Fiji, 79,000
Cannibals have been brought under the influence of the Gospel;
and 13,000 members of the Churches are professing to live and
work for Jesus. In Samoa, 34,000 Cannibals have professed
Christianity; and in nineteen years, its College has sent forth 206
Native teachers and evangelists. On our New Hebrides, more than
12,000 Cannibals have been brought to sit at the feet of Christ,
through I mean not to say that they are all model Christians; and
133 of the Natives have been trained and sent forth as teachers
and preachers of the Gospel.”

John concludes:

This is what a realized belief in the resurrection can lead to: men and
women who are completely unafraid of what this world con do,
because they were saved into a hope of the future—an eternal future
with the risen Christ in a risen body.

John Botkin, Spirit Powered Living, p68

Chambers: Look and think

LOOK AGAIN AND THINK
"Take no thought for your life." Matthew 6:25 A warning which needs to be reiterated is that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, will choke all that God puts in. We are never free from the recurring tides of this encroachment. If it does not come on the line of clothes and food, it will come on the line of money or lack of money; of friends or lack of friends; or on the line of difficult circumstances. It is one steady encroachment all the time, and unless we allow the Spirit of God to raise up the standard against it, these things will come in like a flood. "Take no thought for your life." "Be careful about one thing only," says our Lord - "your relationship to Me." Common sense shouts loud and says - "That is absurd, I must consider how I am going to live, I must consider what I am going to eat and drink." Jesus says you must not. Beware of allowing the thought that this statement is made by One Who does not understand our particular circumstances. Jesus Christ knows our circumstances better than we do, and He says we must not think about these things so as to make them the one concern of our life. Whenever there is competition, be sure that you put your relationship to God first. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." How much evil has begun to threaten you to-day? What kind of mean little imps have been looking in and saying - Now what are you going to do next month - this summer? "Be anxious for nothing," Jesus says. Look again and think. Keep your mind on the "much more" of your heavenly Father.

DeGroat: addicted to security

Throughout my life, I’ve noticed that the times when I feel most drained and lifeless are the times when I’m expending a lot of energy on managing my life impeccably.  In these times, I find myself addicted to security, to people’s approval, to extreme control of my schedule so that unpredictable things cannot happen...

http://drchuckdegroat.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-recovery-of-desire/

Suffering and perseverance

We live in a sinful world, and as a result we will suffer under the effects of that sinfulness.
As we consider this, surely we then ask, why we must suffer with Christ in order that we might be glorified with him? The answer is simply this—suffering works the perseverance of faith. Earlier in Romans 5:3, Paul says, “we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance.” But how does this work? How does suffering or tribulation bring about perseverance? Suffering forces us to trust in God rather than ourselves. It forces us to depend
on him and his strength, not on what we can muster.

Spirit Powered Living, John Botkin, p51-52

Mid life continues

Well, me and Minty have been having a nice time reliving our mispent youth and latter years in our blogs - and we see no reason to stop yet, especially as for me, I am (or will be in the next 20 hours) unequivocally off the waiting list.

So we thought we would do LP/Albums next!   Oh yes.  But we have encountered a problem:  we wanted to make sure anything we choose is on Spotify or the like, so we can inflict our key musical moments on each other and the rest of the world.  But, although Spotify does seem to be almost limitless, suddenly we find when pegging our turning-points, things are missing!   It does have limits! 

In order to do justice to the past, we felt we should do some posts on what isn't there but should be as well as the list that will include available online material.   So...well, indulge me - I'm on the turn this weekend...

Given that my musical interests were limited to a tape of Russian classical music, bits taped off the radio and a couple of (gulp) Shakin Stevens albums, in 1984 a bit of a revolution took place...

(more to follow once festivities ease...)

psalms

One thing evangelicals are good at is gaining information for the Bible:  for doctrine, for building up, for guarding the heart and the flock.   And all this is essential.

But there have been many times when the head feels stuffed with data (somehow we have made life giving words into intellectual filing) and, certainly within reformed evangelicalism, one can cry out "But were is the life, the feeling, the experience - what does it look like?"

Slow on the uptake, one significant, probably the most significant, help falls into place:  Psalms.   Regarding it simply as the songbook of Israel can make it sound like an ancient hymnal, which needs reworking for a contemporary audience.  Whereas, I think, it is the place to see how the God-ward life is worked out in the human heart:   here we see what happens when life in a fallen world pours in, and when the truths of God's word pour in.  

Good but not easy

[we are truly human when ] "...when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live."

GK Chesterton