Freedom

To be modern is to be torn in two. We celebrate freedom as if we can do anything we want, if we put our minds to it. At the same time, we bemoan the way our genes, our childhood, and social forces determine everything we do. When we grow bald, lose our temper, or get laid off, experts tell us that we really have no choice in the matter. Life is preordained by factors that outflank our feeble will. Yet at the same time we celebrate will power as if everything is contingent and subject to our control. The decline of providence has left us intellectually schizophrenic. We define freedom as the opposite of submission and obedience but end up feeling hardly free at all.

Stephen H Webb, Books & Culture, 31st March 2009

I really don't know...

...what to say about this:

http://pastorinabox.com/about.php

Civil War: America's Darwin?

Just started reading The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll. Only read the first few pages but a thought (unsubstantiated at the moment) struck me.

I think Noll's argument will be that the US Civil War accelerated the loss of the Bible perceived as authoritative in America. The crux: both sides of the slavery debate equally claimed the Bible as justifying their position. Suddenly, what many had assumed with confidence was a book which gave clear moral guidance for all of life, was now being used to argue two utterly opposed points of view. And this led to one of the most devastating wars in history. This shook belief in Scripture, and also opened the door for some to claim the Bible was OK but could be trumped by other matters of principle.

This sounds similar to the effect of Darwinism on Victorian Britain. And then: given that the majority of Americans today believe God created the world, it occurred to me that Darwinism has not had the same effect in the US as in Europe; at least not to the same degree. And yet the effective loss of Scripture as dependable for all society is similar. Perhaps the Civil War was, to some degree, America's Darwin?

Calvin: uses of Law

Given all the things I heard as a young Christian which denigrated the OT Law, it's nice to read Calvin on it and how he isolates three continuing purposes of the Law:

1. It makes clear to us that we have no righteousness before God, and so removes all pride in ourselves and drives us to God for mercy.
2. It restrains wickedness in humanity - in particular, people who do not want God but are afraid of His wrath against sin, and so moderate their behaviour. This benefits society. (And arguably this is what we see unravelling in the UK now)
3. For Christians it helps us to live according to God's will, exhorting us to progress.

Luther: assurance

Martin Luther once said, "I am so glad that God said He 'so loved the world...that whosoever believeth should not perish', because even if God had said that He loved Martin Luther , that if Martin Luther believed Martin Luther would not perish, I would be afraid He was referring to another Martin Luther."

Quoted RT Kendall A Man After God's Own Heart p 170

#14 Roll Over Beethoven

Here's one for the weekend.

OK I'm aware that there was a long period of time when owning an ELO album was not something to be admitted in public; borrowing Out of the Blue required a brown paper bag. I'm not for a moment suggesting they were deep and meaningful (although, alarmingly, I had a friend who said he was deeply moved by their lyrics - he was very intelligent, had a significant job and, worse, he meant it). But they were (after a certain point, and especially in the Jeff Lynne years) relentlessly cheerful and great fun to hear and watch - oh for a band that lands in a giant spaceship!

So...Roll Over Beethoven in the annals of fun rock was like a planetary conjunction: Chuck Berry rock'n'roll referencing the contrast with classical music, meets the rock band with classical pretensions - oh for a band that plays cellos on their heads! Just how pretentious can be seen in the Roy Wood years (for evidence that they were on herbal throat tablets, try this - is this really the man behind Wizard?). This is the band, believe it or not, that Lennon said represented a direction The Beatles would have taken if they had stayed together.

Anyway, here's the version I'm used to: LastFM Spotify
And here is what I have just discovered is the album version.
Not 'arf!

Invocation

The God of Scripture is not the God of a thousand names. The inventing of glorious names for God is not regarded as an open field for human creativity. That Jesus should teach us to invoke God as Father was a messianic act of unique significance. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is God's prerogative to reveal His name.

Hughes Oliphant Old, Leading in Prayer, p12&13

Caffeineated spiders

Apparently this is absolutely legit

Trials of calling

Perhaps God has chosen you for a task that no one can do but you. Is he trying to get your attention? Is he testing your mettle. God was right in choosing you, but you justify his choice by the way you react in times of trial. Do you despair, indulge in self-pity or become angry with God, or do you find your strength to overcome in him alone?

RT Kendall, A Man After God's Own Heart, p.169-70

Caffeinate

On the basis that no matter what anyone says about coffee, one is still likely to drink it - here are some figures on what's likely to fuel/fry your brain most. For me, more than one cup of filter coffee in any 2 hour period and I start to oscillate, bodily, and talk fasterandfastandfaster. So I'll stick with where I am. But notice the pointlessness of energy-boosting-fizzy drinks compared to an espresso!

In milligrams of caffeine per ounce of beverage:

• Coffee (brewed): 13.44
• Coffee (drip): 18.12
• Coffee (espresso): 51.33
• Coffee (instant): 7.12

• Coca-Cola Classic: 2.88
• Diet Coke: 3.75
• Dr Pepper: 3.42
• Mountain Dew: 4.58
• Red Bull: 9.64

#13 Sold Me Down the River

Over halfway!!! So time to up the volume...

Change was three songs to long and got a bit samey, but was still good for at least two reasons:
1. It encapsulated the Angry Young Welshman, bitter at what had happened, but trying to find hope (eg A New South Wales)
2. It had several guitar-hero-I-want-to-be-a-rock-star moments.

Here's my favourite: Sold Me Down the River (only on Spotify cos I want the album version with the big instrumental break)

Sayers: cross shock

It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#12 Music for a Found Harmonium

I've been mulling over where to go next, especially as Minternational's songs have all been taking a definitely meaningful turn...and quite a few of mine aren't...errr...quite so meaningful. So I have paused on the loud and shallow for a moment, and cheated by going instrumental.

There was a time when mostly everything I listened to was instrumental: multi-layered, long, involved pieces. It might be the sound-colour synesthesia, which means the more layers and activity, the bigger the 'pictures' (I could get quite spaced out as a teenager on long, complex compositions). That hasn't changed but is more dilute with other kinds of stuff. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra isn't a 'band' I have submerged myself into as much as some others: it's generally not as layered or developed BUT some of their short pieces are great.

The mind behind them was Simon Jeffes, who sadly died from a tumour many years ago. Trying to find a way between the structure of classical music and the limitations of the rock format, he became influenced by ethnic music - and somehow it all got fused together in dreamlike tracks. The story behind the band's name is lovely: lying on a beach one day, he suddenly found he was writing a poem in his mind:

I am the proprietor of the Penguin Café, I will tell you things at random...

He goes on to describe the freedom of spontaniety etc. And the Orchestra is the in-house band for this cafe.

As usual I could have chosen a number of tracks, but I have plumped for the archetypal PCO track - which I first heard on a film trailer in the late 80s, and tracked it down; more recently a guitar version was used on the re-launch adverts for the ill-fated MFI furniture company.

So here is Music for a Found Harmonium. But also check out, Perpetuum Mobile (which is one of those tracks running through my head whilst trying to work out God's plan for our future, over the last 18months)

Herbert: An Offering

I read this through the other night and was initially bemused. I suspect most poems seem like verbal noise until read several times. By the third time through I realised this was a profound presentation of uniting the heart in a life of worship to God:

Come, bring thy gift. If blessings were as slow
As men's returns, what would become of fools?
What hast thou there? a heart? but is it pure?
Search well and see; for hearts have many holes.
Yet one pure heart is nothing to bestow:
In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.

O that within us hearts had propagation,
Since many gifts do challenge many hearts!
Yet one, if good, may title to a number;
And single things grow fruitful by deserts.
In public judgements one may be a nation,
And fence a plague, while others sleep and slumber.

But all I fear is lest thy heart displease,
As neither good, nor one: so oft divisions
Thy lusts have made, and not thy lusts alone;
Thy passions also have their set partitions.
These parcel out thy heart: recover these,
And thou mayst offer many gifts in one.

There is a balsam, or indeed a blood,
Dropping from heav’n, which doth both cleanse and close
All sorts of wounds; of such strange force it is.
Seek out this All-heal, and seek no repose,
Until thou find and use it to thy good:
Then bring thy gift, and let thy hymn be this;
 

                         Since my sadness
                         Into gladness
Lord thou dost convert,
                         O accept
                         What thou hast kept,
As thy due desert.

                         Had I many,
                         Had I any,
(For this heart is none)
                         All were thine
                         And none of mine:
Surely thine alone.

                         Yet thy favour
                         May give savour
To this poor oblation;
                         And it raise
                         To be thy praise,
And be my salvation.

#11 Heartbeat City

Not really reflecting the depth of Minternational's last selection, this track is by post-punk new-wave electro pop The Cars. However, they were pretty clever and a lot of fun and (this is important) they barely moved whilst on stage, preferring robot arms with TV screens on them to do the visual dynamics. And one profound item in their favour: they proved you could be really geeky looking and still be a rock star and marry a supermodel (look up Rick Ocasek). For me, that was inspiring. Ah! The 1980s!

I liked lots of their stuff, but this is probably my favourite - one of those mood-moments I suspect, it's a staring-out-the-window, or urban commute in the dusk tracks.

Only on Spotify and youtube I'm afraid.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0a8IsvS3FmdKQKZZRrVdn7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOIfVvDeu24


(if you want a sample of their more cheerful stuff try You Might Think)

#10 Home Town

I was very impressed with Pressing On. No.10 isn't much like Dylan though.

I bought the best of Joe Jackson on the strength of having heard Is She Really Going Out with Him? and Stepping Out. But this song stuck with me. I suspect it was my time of life (!) - about 20. The album contained 19 Forever which resonated with my awareness that actually that wasn't going to happen. And then Home Town: about how as we grow older and get caught up in so much stuff we just forget what lies at the foundation, what used to be...

Of all the stupid things I could have thought
This was the worst
I started to believe
That I was born at seventeen
And all the stupid things
The letters and the broken verse
Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer
They'd always been.
And now I plough through piles
Of bills, receipts and credit cards
And tickets and the Daily News
And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town

And how we just don't bother, the past seems so small - but we have lost something.

We're never married
Never faithful,
not to any town
But we never leave the past behind
We just accumulate
So sometimes when the music stops
I seem to hear a distant sound
Of waves and seagulls
Football crowds and church bells
And I . . .
Wanna go back to my home town

Strangely, I now once again hear church bells, seagulls, and waves!

This really is an all-time favourite and it deserves to be well known (but isn't!) - here it is.

Parabolic

A friend of mine is, I think, a good poet. Here's one of his I like:

On this October beach, as the pale sun sinks,

the mind’s tide slides back across the naked shingles,

and the flotsam and jetsam of some thirty years,

till I am the skinny silhouette of a lad

skimming stones with his dad:

stooping together to look for the best ones;

hooking them into the sling of the finger;

copying the slope of his stance, the swoop of his action;

trying to make them skim, like him.

But sometimes a stone that seems the part,

sits flat in the palm, fits fine in the finger,

will fail at the first

as it slices a cynical slot in the water

and sinks like the stone it was from the start.

Though such a stone can skip

a beat, loving to leap through the falling dark,

tracing its single spectacular arc

above the horizon’s straight, grey axis.

Yet best of all is sometimes when;

One, two, three, four, five sixseveiniten;

it bounces beyond the logic of number,

walks on the water, slides to a standstill,

and winks a watery eye at the frowning sky;

defying density,

momentarily.

Copyright Martin Yates