#10 Solitude Standing

She's probably the person who got me into poetry.  I remember remarking to a 6th form friend, "Do you think she's obscure on purpose?"   But thus far in my career I had not "got"poetry and never re-read poems (which is essential with the good stuff).  What happened with Suzanne Vega's first album, and even more-so with this, was that I kept listening because I liked the sound, and then suddenly realised what she was on about.  It quietly dawned on me that poetry is powerful because it repackages thought in transformed and intensified ways, that then requires the dilution of time for it to unwind in the mind and ingrain itself.   I think she kicked me in that direction.

In many ways, Solitude Standing was more accessible and less sparse and obscure than the first album.  This was shown in Luka providing a chart hit (I'm not sure a lot of us initially realised it was describing violence towards children), and the remarkable Tom's Diner was later picked up by DNA and remixed (not a lot of people know this, but Tom's Diner was the test track used in development of MP3 compression, because if the purity of her unaccompanied voice could be preserved, it must have worked).

High points for me....the unnerving In the Eye, the title track's evocation of loneliness, Night Vision's rendering of a universal human experience, and just the general unfathomable loveliness of Gypsy.

Chambers: rare moments

One of the great snares of the Christian worker is to make a fetish of his rare moments. When the Spirit of God gives you a time of inspiration and insight, you say - "Now I will always be like this for God." No, you will not, God will take care you are not. Those times are the gift of God entirely. You cannot give them to yourself when you choose. If you say you will only be at your best, you become an intolerable drag on God; you will never do anything unless God keeps you consciously inspired. If you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments. 

Utmost, April 25th

Chambers: crushing and worship

Beware of any work for God which enables you to evade concentration on Him. A great many Christian workers worship their work. The one concern of a worker should be concentration on God, and this will mean that all the other margins of life, mental, moral and spiritual, are free with the freedom of a child, a worshipping child, not a wayward child. A worker without this solemn dominant note of concentration on God is apt to get his work on his neck; there is no margin of body, mind or spirit free, consequently he becomes spent out and crushed. There is no freedom, no delight in life; nerves, mind and heart are so crushingly burdened that God's blessing cannot rest. But the other side is just as true - when once the concentration is on God, all the margins of life are free and under the dominance of God alone. There is no responsibility on you for the work; the only responsibility you have is to keep in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your co-operation with Him. The freedom after sanctification is the freedom of a child, the things that used to keep the life pinned down are gone. But be careful to remember that you are freed for one thing only - to be absolutely devoted to your co-Worker.
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." 

Utmost, April 23rd

Postman: context-free

Postman argues that the telegraph introduced communication of information that had no context, didn't necessarily serve a function - and TV carried this much further:

How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?

[he goes on to make the point that this does happen, and we might point to the current volcano ash - but the exception proves the rule:  mostly it has little effect (except possibly to depress us)]

But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.

p69

Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: the news illicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

Prior to the age of telegraphy, the information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had a sense of being able  to control some of the contingencies in their lives.  What people knew about had action-value.  In the information world created by telegraphy, this sense of potency was lost precisely because  the whole world became the context for news.  Everything became everyone's business.  For the first time we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.

We may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify impotence.

 p70

Clergy Failure

For years, I have been teaching that there are at least three things that lead to a failure, regardless of the category.

• Limited time alone with the Lord
• Unresolved issues at home
• Inadequate accountability

(HB London)

#11 The City

I only own two albums by Vangelis - people assume if you're a devotee of MO you must also have scores of Jarre and Vangelis.  Not so, different fish, different kettles. 

Aside from Bladerunner and Chariots of Fire, I was ignorant of his vast output.  But whilst at a friend's house I borrowed The City, and then bought my own copy. 

It's a day in the life of a city, not in vast metropolitan detail but in essence  - and I think it's well-captured.  Raised in the country, then frequently in cities, and now back to rural-tania, I have a sense of 'city': the movement, the anonymous sound of a million people in close proximity, the electric glow, the never-quite-alseepness.

Anyway, I'm not really a synth kind of person, but I love this.

Chambers: desirable fruit of the burden

The joy of the Lord is your strength." Where do the saints get their joy from? If we did not know some saints, we would say - "Oh, he, or she, has nothing to bear." Lift the veil. The fact that the peace and the light and the joy of God are there is proof that the burden is there too. The burden God places squeezes the grapes and out comes the wine; most of us see the wine only. No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.

(MUFHH April14th)

Boring evil

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” 

Simone Weil

Jesus knows sign language

From an inspiring CT article:

If we don't reach deaf children, there won't be deaf adults going to church," said DVC founder David Stecca. "The deaf decide as children that church is something hearing people do, because there is nothing they can understand.

Lawrence tells of a 6-year-old deaf girl who long refused to participate in dinnertime prayers despite her mother's ASL translation. After the girl saw a deaf boy signing his prayers on a deaf ministry video, she excitedly signed to her mother, "Mommy, Jesus knows sign language!" Now she insists on praying at every meal.

Postman: image-centred culture

It is quite likely that most of the first 15 Presidents of the United States would not have been recognised had they passed the average citizen in the street.  This would have been the case as well of the great lawyers, ministers and scientists of the era. To think about those men was to think about what they had written, to judge them by their public positions, their arguments, their knowledge as codified in the printed word.  You may get some sense of how we are separated from this kind of consciousness by thinking about our recent presidents;  or even preachers, lawyers and scientists who are or who have recently been public figures.  Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of a face, most likely a face on a television screen...  Of words almost nothing will come to mind.  This is the difference between thinking in a word-centred culture and thinking in an image-centred culture.  (p62)

Postman: tech trade-off

Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the history of communications knows that every new technology for thinking involves a trade-off.   It giveth and taketh away, although not quite in equal measure. (p29)

#12 Long Distance Voyager

I'm not a full-on Moody Blues fan, but I drop in and out from time to time.  This album has a lot of memories for me from the era when Saturday mornings inevitably found me at the second hand record shop seeing what I could get for £2.   One day I picked up this.  The gatefold sleeve did it for me, plus I think I had heard Gemini Dream somewhere - but you will need some hi-res version to see what it was about the cover that attracted the teenage SF reader.

Anyway, I love the atmosphere of the album, the contemplative, slightly morose, dreaminess.  Key tracks for me:  Talking out of Turn, Meanwhile, 22,000 Days and Veteran Cosmic Rocker (which of course is probably about Minty).

Happy Easter!