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!

Chambers: reality

The great need for the Christian worker is to be ready to face Jesus Christ at any and every turn. This is not easy, no matter what our experience is. The battle is not against sin or difficulties or circumstances, but against being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ at every turn. That is the one great need, not the facing our belief, or our creed, the question whether we are of any use, but to face Him.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, (29th March)

Postman: defining intelligence

Since intelligence is primarily defined as one's capacity to grasp the truth of things, it follows that what a culture means by intelligence is derived from its important forms of communication.  (p25)

(& therefore our definition of intelligence in the TV (and now internet age) is defined by what that medium is actually capable of communicating - which, in Postman's view is trivia, and therefore the trivial becomes a kind of intelligence, or the intelligent become more trivial.  Ridiculous!  Or, should we perhaps  be worried  about how many people with enormous amounts of qualifications worked very hard to produce Big Brother?)

Ethos reduces control

Purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of a healthy organisation.  To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control.  People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable and creative ways.  The organisation will become a vital, living set of beliefs.

Dee Hock, The Birth of the Chaordic Age, quoted in Organic Church, p124.

Blankets for relativists

Convinced relativists, like people everywhere, are not immune to difficulties and troubles. A global economic downturn or a devastating earthquake does not discriminate between relativists and exclusivists. When relativists are struck down by the exigencies of life, it is rare that cogent arguments for truth will draw them. More likely, it is practical care and concern shown by loving Christians. We cannot provide warmth to a cold relativism, but we can wrap a blanket around a shivering relativist.

Mark L Y Chan

Postman: the real danger of TV

...television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.  The irony here is that this is what intellectuals and critics are constantly urging television to do.  The trouble with such people is that they do not take television seriously enough.  For, like the printing press, television is nothing less than a philosophy of rhetoric. (p16-17)

Good digital questions

in this article.

Keller: money

When you see Him dying to make you His treasure, that will make Him yours.   Money will cease to be the currency of your significance and security, and you will want to bless others with what you have.

Money cannot save yo from tragedy, or give you control in a chaotic world.  Only God can do that.

Counterfeit Gods, p 67&68

#13 Jesus Freak

Having lost my original list I think my countdown order might go a bit adrift.  Ho hum.

Anyway, here is another musical turning point for me.   This time the profound affect was on my attitude towards Christian music.  When I became a Christian I was well into music (pirating albums every week from the tape library) and it never occurred to me that there was any such thing as Christian music.  I soon wished it hadn’t.  It was the era when being a Christian and owning a guitar meant you should start a band.  People’s attitudes to CCM are still badly affected by this;  although they are also affected by snobbery – I’ve watched people (including Christians) go off music simply because they discovered it’s Christian.  I think they might be afraid the big kids will laugh at them.

Well, it all changed for me in 1995.  Up til then I owned two increasingly-unplayed Amy Grant albums and a few frequently played Michael Card albums but nothing exciting because Christians don’t make that kind of album.   Then some of our YP lent me Jesus Freak and I went into shock.  Partly because it was grungy in places and included rap (anathema!) – but mostly because I had never heard  Christian music with such high production values, no bad tracks and which required being played very loud on a big stereo (the effect will be limited on Spotify, I’m afraid).  And it even had a poem at the end. And made fun of cheesy gospel singers.

Possibly no one else had ever heard these things either, as it soon became the biggest selling CCM album of all time and was, I think, the first to get its own rack in some big, secular US record stores.   DC Talk was, for a few years, the biggest Christian band ever.

And they didn’t just say “I love you Lord” 50 different ways:

Bombarded by philosophies that satisfy the surface
I flee to something deeper
At the risk of seeking purpose
How can I hang in this environmental state of being
When everything I'm striving for
Is nothing that I'm seeing

Anyway, I think it is a milestone album and opened up the door for me to a whole load of great bands.

Highlights for me.....?    I got into it through Coloured People, but soon just loved the album as a whole.  But probably Like it Love it Need it, Between You and Me,  and Mind’s Eye.  But it’s hard to choose.

Postman: the thing about eyeglasses

...the invention of eyeglasses in the 12th century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature or the ravages of time.  Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our bodies as well as our minds are improvable. (p.14)

(commenting on the idea that every new technological innovation changes the way we think)

Roll with it

From CT article by Carolyn Arends

But here's the thing: I would be fine with rolling my burdens onto God if I were guaranteed resolution. There's a joke that describes the effects of playing a country song backwards: Your spouse returns, your dog is resurrected, and your truck starts working again. I wish that surrender to God worked the same way.

But faith isn't like that. The biblical witness is that circumstances often get more challenging, not less, when one's way is committed to the Lord. So why roll it onto God if "it" (the need, circumstance, quarrelsome friend, or critical in-law) isn't necessarily going to get fixed?

There are stories about prisoners in Nazi camps who were made to move heavy boulders from one end of a field to the other, only to carry them back again. Many of the men were eventually driven mad, not by the backbreaking nature of the work, but by its futility.

It isn't the experience of being misunderstood (or suffering or poverty) itself that will undo us, but rather the sense that we are enduring hardship to no good end. That's why the apostle Paul emphasized that we do not labor in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). We discover there is no wasted effort or pain, because there is nothing that God cannot redeem.

I have a choice. I can wear myself out pushing the boulders of my life around my prison yard. Or I can be meek, and roll those burdens onto God. I'm not sure exactly what Jesus meant when he said the meek will "inherit the earth," but I've certainly discovered that this world is a better place when I roll it off my shoulders and into his hands.

Postman: Mumford: Moses' clock

Postman quoting Lewis Mumford:

"The clock is a piece of power machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes"

Postman continues:

In manufacturing such a product, the clock has the effect of dissociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences...

In the process we have learned irreverence towards the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded.  Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events.  And, thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment;  that is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser.  Perhaps Moses should have included another commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time. p11&12

Postman: the changeover

...the decline of the age of typography and the ascendency of the age of television.  This change-over has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate the same ideas.  As the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television. (p8)

Hey!

That last one was my 400th post!

#14 Last Days of the Century

A change of direction both from Oldfield and Minty's jazz.

Al Stewart is a bit of a legend, but not because of this album.  It's got rather too much synth and is a bit too poppy in many ways. But I'd take it with me to my desert island because of the imaginative vistas it conjours. As usual, the historical references and allusions abound, not always I have to say in a way that makes sense. But it's a breath of fresh air from the usual grist of the pop mill.

The opening track feels a bit like Year of the Cat without the depth.  But after that favourites include Red Tope, Licence to Steal (an attack on lawyers), Josephine Baker (love it) and the extended metaphor of Antarctica.   Spotify also provides the bonus track about Helen of Troy (there's a phrase you don't often hear)

Badger worry

Not 'taking thought of the morrow' has been a key text in my life, though often I have failed it.  But a question which surfaces every so often is:  how do we plan, and organise for the future, whilst not worrying beyond the evil of this day?  I have frequently said we must do both (not worry and plan), but then kind of held them in tension: trying to do both, and then trying to avoid the apparently unavoidable consequence of being concerned about the morrow:  what will I need, what if it doesn't work, what if, what if...

I think the mistake may be investing oneself in the planning for the future.  That is to say, some planning is always needed - but then we tend to invest our hearts in it much more than we realise, as if our plans are the essential element in tomorrow and if they don't happen then it will disaster - and as a result, fretting then takes place to ensure that they happen. We start living in that hypothetical tomorrow - and a hypothetical tomorrow has so many more possible disasters than the real tomorrow will actually bring, so we start to deal with those unreal multiple disasters and find ourselves exhausted.  Our thoughts of  tomorrow become dominated by the urgency of tomorrow being the shape I planned for it, not with the thought that God is present there to provide.

I suspect the key is to plan for tomorrow, and next week and month and year - but 'on paper' only.  Draw out the necessary plans, but invest our heart in God in today.   We can plan for tomorrow and live in today.  Once we have planned and moved whatever pieces into place as far as we can, we have to say to ourselves: "But tomorrow does not exist for me, it isn't real yet - and therefore stop worrying about it, instead invest your heart in what is real: today"

Keller: surface & deep idols

There are "deep idols" within the heart beneath the more concrete and visible "surface idols" that we serve.

Sin in our hearts affects our basic motivational drives so they become idolatrous, "deep idols."  Some people are strongly motivated by a desire for influence and power, while others are more excited by approval and appreciation  [or comfort or security]....people with the deep idol of power do not mind being unpopular in order to gain influence.  People who are most motivated by approval are the opposite - they will gladly lose power and control as long as everyone thinks well of them.  Each deep idol...generates a different set of fears and a different set of hopes.

Counterfeit Gods p64&65

He goes onto show, as an example, how money can be an idol but expresses differently depending on the underlying deep idol - money used to control others or to attain social standing or to buy security etc.

Postman: tools of conversation

As the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television.

...the clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation.

Postman, p8&9

The power of individuals

from the same article as the previous post:

Bread for the World got two women in Birmingham, Alabama, involved. These women happen to be in the constituency of the congressman who was the gatekeeper for the debt relief legislation. They invite him to an event at their church, and he shows up. God works in mysterious ways. They thought, We'll invite all these members of Congress. Well, here comes this guy, and he turns out to be the gatekeeper for the legislation. They connected him to David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, and talked to him about the Bible and hunger around the world.

He starts using this language in the committee hearings, and the Clinton staffers are there. They hear this and go back and tell the White House: This conservative Republican is talking about starving kids in Africa in the finance committee meetings. As a result, the debt relief legislation passed.

Hunger and the Green Revolution

What did the Green Revolution achieve?

Agriculture scientists led by Norman Borlaug developed a new kind of breeding method that resulted in a wheat strain that was more adaptable. It turned out to be just what India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—which were the world's famine zones in the 1960s—needed. That seed goes over there and boom, brings a lot of people out of hunger. It wasn't long after that a country like India has surpluses of wheat and rice. The Green Revolution then moves on to other places in Asia. This formed the basis for the great economic growth seen in India and China over the past couple of decades. People were freed from the task of growing food to be able to do other things.

But Green Revolution techniques weren't applied in Africa. Agriculture development spending in the developing world fell off a cliff. In Haiti, the peasant farmers were told they should be working in factories making underwear. If you export the underwear, then you buy food. Maybe that works in theory, but what happens when the price of rice skyrockets? Suddenly, export earnings aren't buying enough rice. We have rice shortages. There are riots in the streets.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/february/27.40.html?start=2

John Venn on preaching

When I come into the pulpit, it is after study, prayers, and cries for the people. I speak as plainly and enter into all the cares of the congregation as minutely as I am able.

'Evangelist'

From CT

Q: You write that "Evangelism is one of those emotionally charged words that sends shivers of guilt running up and down our spine." Should we retire the word evangelism?

No, I think we need to think about it differently. These days the word evangelist is being used by lots of other people. There are car salesmen that call themselves "BMW evangelists" or "Chevrolet evangelists." They think, eat, drink, and sleep their product. Because of this marketing usage, it's actually become a positive word again.

When I'm on a plane now and a churched person asks what I do and I say, "I'm an evangelist," my response is a turnoff. But if it's a non-Christian in sales, or in any kind of business, they immediately know what I'm talking about. There's no negativity at all. They hear it as a synonym for enthusiast. But in the minds of long-term church people, it can be a negative. But I think we need to get over it. Its biblical roots are too important. When the angels announce the birth of Jesus, we see the Greek word from which we get evangelism—euangelion. So we are partners with the angels when we do evangelism. We are doing what the angels do. That's powerful.

deGroat: limping

Our wilderness leads to dependence.  It humbles us.  It doesn’t make us super-saints.  It doesn’t make us spiritual giants.  Emerging from the wilderness, we’re not marked by halos.  We’re marked by a thorn in our side, a limp, a weakness that is a testimony to Christ’s strength.

http://drchuckdegroat.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/we-continue-to-crawl-along-ever-reaching/

Mr Postman

I've been reading "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman, a book that is repeatedly quoted in many other books I have read.  Halfway through at the moment, and it really is a fascinating and well written examination of TV culture.   The only problem with the book is that it predates the internet, or even the possibility of the internet, and I just hope that somewhere he set down his thoughts on how it might affect the conclusions he forms in this book.

Anyway, it's tempting to quote most of the book, which I won't be doing, but here's a start.  His main thesis is:

...an argument that fixes its attention on the forms of human conversation, and postulates that how we are obliged to conduct such conversations will have the strongest possible influence  on the ideas that we can conveniently express.  And what ideas are convenient to express inevitably become the important ideas of a culture.  

Which is terrifying in a way:  what TV is able to communicate becomes, because TV is dominant, the content of our culture.  What TV as a medium struggle to communicate, vanishes from a culture.

...I do not know exactly what content was once carried in the smoke signals of American Indians [but] I can safely guess it did not include philosophical argument.  Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex...You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content....

...on television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to say TV gives us a conversation in images not words...you cannot do [political] philosophy on television. Its form works against the content. (p6&7)

Which is why politicians have image management not thinkers at the forefront.

Despair

The disciples went to sleep when they should have kept awake, and when they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of the irreparable is apt to make us despair, and we say - "It is all up now, it is no use trying any more." If we imagine that this kind of despair is exceptional, we are mistaken, it is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize that we have not done that which we had a magnificent opportunity of doing, then we are apt to sink into despair; and Jesus Christ comes and says - "Sleep on now, that opportunity is lost for ever, you cannot alter it, but arise and go to the next thing." Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ, and go out into the irresistible future with Him.
There are experiences like this in each of our lives. We are in despair, the despair that comes from actualities, and we cannot lift ourselves out of it. The disciples in this instance had done a downright unforgivable thing; they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus, but He came with a spiritual initiative against their despair and said - "Arise and do the next thing." If we are inspired of God, what is the next thing? To trust Him absolutely and to pray on the ground of His Redemption.
Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action. 

Oswald Chamers, My Utmost for His Highest, February 18th

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

#1......

You might think this was inevitable. And it's not unusual, as it is often voted the top novel of the 20th century. I'm not sure it would tick all the boxes for "the great novel", but if you have enough imagination to let elves and dwarves be among your main characters, then there isn't much this book can't offer you.

Like what?

Well for a start, elves and dwarves. What I mean is, when we normally encounter creatures of faerie, it's going to be twee, or kitsch-fantasy, or normal mundane life with short hairy people. TLOR is in a different category: Tolkien created the world first, (not the plot and then stuck some dwarves on it to spice it up). The development of Middle Earth began decades before TLOR was published - as a philologist he used his knowledge to create languages and melded these with peoples, and an entire coherent history (this is why, although they vanished from the movies, the poems and songs in the book they carry the air of ancient times and places - because, in effect, they do; they aren't artificially aged - they come from another time, so to speak). This multi-layered sub-creation provides a massive and detailed canvas, upon which JRRT later spun out the colossal tale of the Fellowship pursuing the solution to the ultimate problem.

It grows a landscape that lives in the imagination forever. For years afterwards, the sight of grey hills (and more recently, of mine-workings) bring a sense of Middle-Earth, a distant sound of the horns of Elfland.

The characters are fully formed, with real lives, no matter how fantastical. And their mutltitude of motivations and interply prevent one dimensionality. And there are selfless, noble acts of courage and friendship (often removed from the movies, presumably because we moderns know that you can't have true noble-heartedness - eg Faramir and the Ents)

It moves from homely to epic. The opening chapter could be a wordy sequel to the Hobbit. But once the hobbits encounter the Barrow Wight (absent from the films), and the menacing unseen presence of the Riders, an uneasy sense builds that we aren't in Kansas anymore. By the time they enter Moria we are on a crescendo of increasingly epic moments. And there are no simple solutions, but a final hundred pages that stays forever.

Basically, it's got everything - which is why most such tales that have followed have been pale imitations and always suffer by comparison. And it's much better to read than to watch.

If I had to have one novel on my island, this is it.

And thanks to Minty for another fun list!

Luther: texts for times

Do you think that some passages in the Bible only really make sense to us when we go through certain experiences? I'm thinking here of how I did not notice how much suffering there was in the first third of the Psalms until I read it whilst concurrently suffering - and then it came home to me. I mention that because I thought about this from Tabletalk (111)

The second Psalm is one of the best Psalms. I love that Psalm with my heart. It strikes and flashes valiantly amongst kings, princes, counsellors, judges, etc. If what this Psalm says be true, then are the allegations and aims of the papists stark lies and folly. If I were as our Lord God, and had committed the government to my son, as he to his Son, and these vile people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces.

And how this must have hit home to Luther as he faced down Kings and rulers - but the image of Jesus sorting out Kings has remained pretty remote from my feelings, until I saw today how it must have touched Luther as he refused to back down to Princes and Popes.

Luther: hating myself

God styles himself, in all the Holy Scriptures, a God of life, of peace, of comfort, and joy, for the sake of Christ. I hate myself, that I cannot believe it so constantly and surely as I should; but no human creature can rightly know how mercifully God is inclined toward those that steadfastly believe in Christ.

Tabletalk 110

#2 To Kill a Mockingbird

So, phase two of our ever-extending mid-life crisis is nearly at a close - and my penultimate is in fact identical with Minty's number 8.

Back when we were obliged to buy a TV, I was ready for the onslaught of drivel, only to find to my astonishment that BBC2 was in the throes of The Big Read. Mainstream TV devoting hours to books! Wonderful! Of course it was a crushing blow to realise this was the exception...

Anyway, John Humphries (I think) was arguing for Harper Lee's (only, I think) novel. And, having an interest in slavery and the civil rights movement, and sold on it by Humphries enthusiasm (and the mysterious reclusiveness of its author) I bought it for my wife for that Christmas. She thought it was great and I read it after her...

Now, bearing in mind the majority of my reading diet has been SF and fantasy, theological and Christian, and history, I'm not sure what I was expecting from a fictional novel set in the real world and no elves.

I was utterly spellbound.

I'm not sure I can quite explain what its qualities are. It wasn't even the book I expected - some kind of black/white struggle played out I imagined. I was amazed to find most of the book was about a smalltown childhood, and the controversial issue does not come to the fore for many pages. And despite this I was still captivated - the warmth, the detail, the humanity. And so when the socio-political crux is reached it is not as though we have been subjected to a didactic build-up. It's just drawn in on a wider, folksy but not by any means twee canvas.

As well as the lack of sweet conclusion to the racial theme which must have left a lot of people with an uneasy feeling, high points for me....: how Boo Radley is dealt with sympathetically, Scout's view of the world as a rough and tumble tom-boy and especially (I bet I'm not alone here) the moment when Atticus takes care of the rabid dog. For me, it is one of my top moments in literature.

Spread of the gospel

We [Christians] are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate, and forum. We have left you only your temples.

Tertullian

Luther: trials and temptations

God delights in our temptations, and yet hates them; he delights in them when they drive us to prayer; he hates them when they drive us to despair. The Psalm says: “An humble and contrite heart is an acceptable sacrifice to God,” etc. Therefore, when it goes well with you, sing and praise God with a hymn: goes it evil, that is, does temptation come, then pray: “For the Lord has pleasure in those that fear him;” and that which follows is better: “and in them that hope in his goodness,” for God helps the lowly and humble, seeing he says: “Thinkest thou my hand is shortened that I cannot help?” He that feels himself weak in faith, let him always have a desire to be strong therein, for that is a nourishment which God relishes in us.

Luther, Tabletalk, para.90

Akenfield: re-incumbent

When you bury a Parson you always bury him re-incumbent - the opposite way to everybody else. Everybody lies with their feet to the east so that when they rise they face the Lord. But a Parson, you see, you bury him with his feet to the west, so that when he rises he faces his flock. And serve him right, I say.

William Russ, Akenfield, p324

Gravedigger

Just finished Akenfield, which was published in 1967, chronicling a rural way of life that was passing, and is now long gone. It has been fascinating (and blows a hole in the rural idyll of yesteryear, big-time) , but especially the last chapter about the village gravedigger. Here's one section:

The clergy don't stick to religion as we knew it. They do things that are forbidden. They are pulling the Bible to pieces. Altering, altering...I said to the Bishop, 'What do you think of Parsons, my Lord?' He said 'What do you?' I said, 'Well, they don't preach hellfire. They used to, why don't they now?'

He said, 'What, are you blaming the Parsons?' 'Certainly,' I said. 'All these Parsons preach is the love of God. But they leave out the wrath. What is the use of love without wrath? Tell me that,' I said, 'You are told what will happen if you obey His will, so it is only fair that you should know what will happen to you if you don't.'

People aren't frightened any more, that is the trouble. If they had to do my work they would know that life is a frightening business.

Wiliam Russ, gravedigger, Akenfield by Rinald Blythe, p327

#3 Perelandra

Sorry, yet another Lewis book, and the second of the SF Trilogy.

Sometimes published as Voyage to Venus, Professor Ransom returns in another space travel, spiritual adventure. This time, at the request of the supernatural being met in the previous book, he is asked to travel to Venus (still assumed not to be, at this point of history, utterly uninhabitable).

He finds an ocean world, where life takes place on large, flexible floating islands made of some kind of matted vegetation (if I remember rightly, I read it over 20 years ago!). Dwelling on the islands is the queen of Venus, a human being newly created by God, and somewhere around, the King as well - though we don't see so much of him. They are living in innocence and will continue to do so as long as they never spend a night on the one point of fixed land on the planet (see where it's all going?). But soon Ransom finds they are not alone, when a figure from his past also arrives, and he has not been sent by the forces of good...

Another great read from Lewis (really, he is a brilliant writer) this book marked another introduction to me into theological thinking. Rather than sledgehammering Christian themes into a conventional story (as so many "Christian novels" do), the story and the theology are woven seamlessly and neither works without the other. What did I, in my formative years, find injected into my thinking from this book, probably subconsciously? The first inkling (ho,ho) of how the Fall 'works', and why, by implication, biting a fruit from a tree is not a silly mythological idea; the idea of indwelling - that Christ (and satan) can be present in people; the sense of preFall innocence, and how being caught up in the wonder of God might fill up all one's capacities to overflowing.

The picture at the top of the page is the cover on the edition I now own (I read it originally in an old Pan Books 70's paperback) - I accidentally (don't ask) ended up buying a hardback first edition for just a few pounds. So the next time I read the trilogy, I will be reading book 2 in exactly the same format that The Bodley Head would have sent Lewis on publication! I might buy a pipe for the occasion...

Keller: prayer

Just finished listening to a freebie from Redeemer; here's two (misquoted, I expect!) quotes:

Turn your sighs into prayers; what you can't pray about, forget - take yourself in hand

Romans 8:28 - God always gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knows.

Intellectual rude words

For many years I've struggled with the modern notion that art which is truly grown up has to include lots of rude words, swearing and general profanity. These days almost nothing can be taken seriously without wall to wall profanity (how did Dickens manage?) I've often been put in my place by people telling me that it reflects real life, shows artistic integrity and bravery. Which is strange cos when I was little we were told it was childish.

Anyway, my wife (of all people!) put me onto the fact that Flanders & Swann had already noticed this over 50 years ago, when such artistic freedom and wonderment was just starting to become trendy, and sang a jolly nice song that (I think) puts it in the right perspective.



And below are the words, so you can sing along (actually, don't sing along, just read, or you will become an artistic person of integrity by accident).


Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers

By Flanders and Swann

Ma's out, Pa's out, Let's talk rude!
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Dance round the garden in the nude,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Let's write rude words all down our street,
Stick out our tongues at the people we meet,
Let's have an intellectual treat for
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.

Sunday again on CBC,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
And Norman Mailer's coming to tea,
Pee Po Belly Bum Pants!
Alan Ginsberg reads on and on,
But we're having a happening when he's gone,
Come to the party in the John,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.

Disney's planning a double bill,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Christopher Robin meets Fanny Hill,
Pooh Bear Belly Bum Drawers.
On stage and screen we all work hard,
Throwing toilet rolls in our own backyard,
Who's afraid of the avent garde?
Pee, Pee, Po, Po, Belly, Belly, Bum, Bum, Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.

What gets prizes and wins awards?
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
What did prince Phillip tell the Lords?
Well, never mind that.
At Oxford and Cambridge, and Yale and all,
At Berkely, they really have a ball,
'cos the higher the brow, the harder they fall,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.

Dickson: enthusiasm

I would go as far to say that, over time, the number of visitors in our church services is directly proportionate to the level of enthusiasm felt by those who regularly attend.

Promoting the Gospel, p123

Fascinating quote

From Professor Rodney Stark:

...I’ve never been an atheist. Atheism is an active faith; it says, “I believe there is no God.” But I don’t know what I believe. I was brought up a Lutheran in Jamestown, North Dakota. I have trouble with faith. I’m not proud of this. I don’t think it makes me an intellectual. I would believe if I could, and I may be able to before it’s over. I would welcome that.

Luther: wealth & plenty again

God could be exceedingly rich in temporal wealth, if he so pleased, but he will not. If he would but come to the pope, the emperor, a king, a prince, a bishop, a rich merchant, a citizen, a farmer, and say: Unless you give me a hundred thousand crowns, you shall die on the spot; every one would say: I will give it, with all my heart, if I may but live. But now we are such unthankful slovens, that we give him not so much as a Deo gratias, though we receive of him, to rich overflowing, such great benefits, merely out of his goodness and mercy. Is not this a shame? Yet, notwithstanding such unthankfulness, our Lord God and merciful Father suffers not himself to be scared away, but continually shows us all manner of goodness. If in his gifts and benefits he were more sparing and close-handed, we should learn to be thankful. If he caused every human creature to be born with but one leg or foot, and seven years afterwards gave him the other; or in the fourteenth year gave one hand, and afterwards, in the twentieth year, the other, then we should better acknowledge God’s gifts and benefits, and value them at a higher rate, and be thankful. He has given unto us a whole sea-full of his Word, all manner of languages, and liberal arts. We buy at this time, cheaply, all manner of good books. He gives us learned people, that teach well and regularly, so that a youth, if he be not altogether a dunce, may learn more in one year now, than formerly in many years. Arts are now so cheap, that almost they go about begging for bread; woe be to us that we are so lazy, improvident, negligent, and unthankful.

Tabletalk 86

Luther: wealthy people

Great wealth and money cannot still hunger, but rather occasion more dearth; for where rich people are, things are always dear. Moreover, money makes no man right merry, but rather much pensive and full of sorrow; for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people. Yet is the world so mad that it sets therein all its joy and felicity.

Tabletalk 82

#4 The Complete Works...

of George Herbert.

I think there is so much to say about this man, that I will say very little instead, as I need to go to bed at some point. Why would I take this to my island?

Firstly, he was a genius. His use of imagery, rhyme, rhyme-schemes, the shape of the poem itself, interweave like a complex dance. On first reading I find I understand little of what is going on - it's just a load of words, communicating little. But repeated readings reveal a depth of exploration of a subject and expression of its heart that is stunning. The sense of what he is saying is not simply stated in the lines of verse; it's in the words chosen, the structure, the way phrases resonate, and in the poem as a whole.

Second, he understands the frailty of the human heart, the grace and strength of God, the source of life. He never downplays the mysteries of providence, the unanswerable questions; but he always finds refuge in repentance and grace.

If you want some examples, then just click on Herbert in the tags.

The Everyman edition, as well as being the usual high quality hardback at barely more than the price of a paperback, also contains (and as yet I have not read these parts) Herbert's collection of proverbs, his advice to clergy and Izaac Walton's biographical sketch.

Herbert was really the doorway for me in appreciating poetry; but not simply a door to other things. His genius is such that he is, for me, warp and woof of true poetry,.

Punk

Luther was rude, Luther was a revolutionary, Luther was a punk.

Markus Spiekler, Christianity Today

#5 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

My favourite Narnia book is either The Silver Chair or this one. The reason Dawn Treader is on the list, is not that it is the better book necessarily (in fact it's quite episodic and not quite so unified as Silver Chair) but the atmosphere, sense of voyage adventure, and sheer numbers of ideas that fill its pages. Oodles of characters help offset the loss of Peter & Susan, and the images echoing aspects of the Christian life and faith abound.

And especially it is the feeling of light that pervades the book, as the ship draws closer to the mysterious edge, and Reepicheep's desires mirror the person caught up in the pursuit of God and heaven. If The Lion, the Witch &the Wardrobe helped many to grasp the idea of substitutionary atonement and let it settle in their subconcscious until they heard the gospel, then Dawn Treader engraved a sense of the comfort-terror of the pursuit of heaven, of the longing for joy, onto mine.

Plus, using my 'stuck on a desert island' criterion, what book could be better?!

Calvin: is he serious?

Whilst reading Calvin on baptism, he makes an interesting argument as to why re-baptism is wrong. Now, what I want to know is - is this his sense of humour coming through? Or has his teaching that baptism has continuity with circumcision, blinded him to a certain...well...ahem...biological fact? His reasoning is: we do not baptise a second time because OT Jews, even if originally processed by an unfaithful priest, were never required by God to later undergo a second or re-circumcision...

Err...

Keller: disappointment v idolatry

Q: Is it necessary to suffer disappointment before seeing that idols don't satisfy?

I fear you may be right. I don't want that to be true. Very often it's much stronger than disappointment. It's hard for me to look at a young person and know what their idols are, because usually something has to happen in their life to frustrate them for them to see that something has inordinate power over them. No one learned about their idols by being told about them.

CT October 20th 2009

Keller: prayer v idolatry

Q. How do we get rid of idols?

I confess that I don't say much about that. Practicing spiritual disciplines is another book. I do say that analyzing and recognizing an idol is a step away from its power over you. You also have to have a heck of a prayer life. That prayer life can't just be petitioning. There has to be encounter, experience, and genuine joy. You have to have Jesus Christ increasingly capture your affections.

Christianity Today, 20th October 2008

#6 Greenmantle

So here's an interesting one: Minternational quite rightly placed The Thirty Nine Steps as a great book, but not so much Greenmantle. I think Buchan's first Hannay novel is also a fab read (ritually slaughtered by most TV productions), but actually I feel Greenmantle is the best of Hannay's adventures, and is unlike all the others. Most of the five novels follow a roughly standard thriller motif (though' standard' is a bit of misnomer, as Buchan helped to invent it). But this second Hannay story is a much broader and unexpected canvas - and alarmingly contemporary in many ways: an evil force has realised it can stir up the Muslim world to holy war by religious means, thus tipping the balance of WWI.

We also have some established characters from the first novel, whom it is nice to see again; but the addition of new, interesting men - the mysterious, almost supernaturally gifted Sandy, or Peter Pienaar - who have large parts to play in later novels.

The huge quest, the travels, the local culture and the complexity of the plot, make Greenmantle, for me a quite unusual Buchan novel, and probably my favourite (so far!)

Augustine: prayer

A quote I copied from my friend Doug, over at Triocentric:


Prayer is the affectionate reaching out of the mind for God



Wow. That fits so well with how this year has gone, prayer-wise; and is so encouraging.
There's lots of other quotes on the same post too...

Lewis: democracy

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason.

Equality in Present Concerns (p17)

Po-mo definition

Postmodernity, then, can be described as a period of cultural disquiet. In the face of the betrayals and failures of past overarching metanarratives, culture-wide suspicion and incredulity takes hold. A single story, providing coherence to personal identity, grounding for ethical action and passion for life in history, is displaced by a carnivalesque existence of fragmentation, numbness and boredom. Final decisions based on rational analysis give way to the undecidability of keeping all options open, and the spiritual promiscuity of pop religion.

Walsh & Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed (p25)

#7 Everyman Pocket Poets...

Gerald Manley Hopkins.



It's possible you might expect John Milton to be turning up about now. But although my sympathies are far more Miltonic (Puritan, thrived under the Protectorate, disliked by Charles II) than Hopkins (introspective Jesuit priest), my desert island criteria lead me to choose him over Milton. Or rather his selected poems (in this rather lovely pocket edition from Everyman). If it was a case of 'complete works' I'd probably go for Milton - but in terms of the 'best of', it would be this volume.

When I first read GMH I wondered what I had come across, as it didn't sound like English. Which it wasn't really. I mean, the poems were made up of English words, but frequently the rules of grammar and syntax had vanished. Now, in some modern stuff I think this is just pretension. But with Hopkins I discovered there was reason to it. It's his 'in-scape' thing, which shows best in his nature poems - that (if I have this right) all created things have this inner dynamism, this self-existential energy, life and beauty - and in bringing this out in poems, normal language-rules take a back seat. But it's not a tumbling of words together that emerges; rather, the words must have been painstakingly selected, because not only do they reflect the inner sense and feeling of what he sees, the words also slot together, or blend, or build cumulative force - and almost it seems he is making the words 'taste' of the thing described.

Or possibly I have been eating too many herbal throat tablets. But I think I'm right.

For example:

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon (The Windhover)

which would get you marked down in class, but makes me almost taste a morning when one sees a hawk flying in dawn's light.

Or what I would think of as GMH's finest hour, God's Grandeur, which also (in lines 9&10) gives a tiny explanation of his 'in-scape' thinking:

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Read it and weep - no one, I think, could ever write anything quite like that. As someone once told me, "That's the best 'ah!' in English literature".

Luther: joy of the Bible

Oh how great and glorious a thing it is to have before one the Word of God. With that we may feel at times joyous and secure; we never be in need of consolation, for we see before us, in all its brightness, the pure and right way. He who loses sight of the word of God, falls into disrepair; the voice of heaven no longer sustains him; he follows only the disorderly tendency of his heart, and of world vanity, which lead him on to his destruction.

Tabletalk, Word of God, 20

Three Men in a Boat #8

...by Jerome K Jerome...

It's a unique piece of literature, that was then emulated endlessly by other writers on other journeys. But the original is a classic. Narrated in the first person by 'J', it is on the one hand a genuine account of travel up the Thames in a bygone era, replete with historical and dramatic vignettes (wherein TV series like Griff Rhys Jones recent one on rivers, derive their origin); and also an utterly absurd comedy - Victorian manners, hypochondria, boating, pets...everything has that delightful, English silliness. There are daft events, but often the humour is wrapped up in J's monologues and digressions on dozens of subjects - sometimes silly in themselves, sometimes he is deadly ernest and only we know it's funny.

I think it's a lovely book, and would happily take it to a desert island: England described from a boat, and England unfolded from the observations of life, and England seen in the gentle comedy of life.

Luther: ultimacy of divinity

Let us not lose the Bible, but with diligence, in fear and invocation of God, read and preach it. While hat remains and flourishes, all prospers with the state; 'tis head and empress of all arts and faculties. Let but divinity fall, and I would not give a straw for the rest.

Tabletalk, Of God's Word, 6

Luther: strength from Scripture

When I find myself assailed by temptation, I forthwith lay hold of some text of the Bible, which Jesus extends to me; as this: that he died for me, whence I derive infinite hope.

Tabletalk, Of God's Word, point 4

Choosing where to act

There is an interesting interview with Dean Jones (the man who appeared in all those Disney films when I was a kid) at Christianity Today. Here's just one quote I liked (real arty types can take issue with this if they like, I don't mind) - on the criteria he uses in picking a film in which to appear:

How does your faith come into play when considering a script?

Jones: First of all, I won't blaspheme God. This immediately eliminates most scripts, but I see no reason, since I need all the help I can get, to encourage God to vacate the premises.

Herbert: Joseph's Coat

As usual, I had to read this a few times before it changed from confusing to touching (and I had to look up 'indite' in the dictionary). But then I saw it captures how God takes our suffering and changes it, does something with it:

Wounded I sing, tormented I indite,
Thrown down I fall into a bed, and rest:
Sorrow hath chang’d its note: such is his will,
Who changeth all things, as him pleaseth best.
     For well he knows, if but one grief and smart
Among my many had his full career,
Sure it would carry with it ev’n my heart,
And both would runn untill they found a bier
     To fetch the body; both being due to grief.
But he hath spoil’d the race; and giv’n to anguish
One of Joy's coats, 'ticing it with relief
To linger in me, and together languish.
     I live to show his power, who once did bring
     My joys to weep, and now my griefs to sing.

#9 Hamlet

That's right, I'm feeling inadequate because of Minternational's quantity of prizewinning books, so I'm pulling rank - Shakespeare! Kudos! Unless you have Homer on your list, I win!

I sometimes wonder why literature is taught to young teenagers, or at least why it is taught without context and preparation. Shakespeare was fairly unintelligible to me and to most of my colleagues; picking Macbeth because "it has lots of blood in it, and I know that will appeal to you" was not, in retrospect, the best way for our teacher to get us into the bard.

However, during my later years at school, and taking lit. at A level, I had to write an extended essay and I needed a unique theme. I chose Mental Decay in Shakespeare; if you know me, you may know why. And with my context for this theme, King Lear started to have some relevance, Macbeth started to make sense. But Hamlet stood out.

I'm not overly sure about taking it to a desert island, given its lack of cheer (although it does have that glimmer of the light of the dawn of hope at the very end). And I'm not someone who relishes all of his work by any means (I think many of the comedies are, far from works of genius, in fact proto-Carry On films, with lots of innuendo and rude jokes; I'm surprised no one shouts "Oooh Matron!"). But for me Hamlet is a practically seamless work of splendour, with the unfolding mystery, the moral dilemmas worked out in tortured but glowing lyricism, and the brooding atmosphere with a sense of timelessness, yet knowing time is ticking away to some kind of showdown. And I love the castle as the stage: it's a silent presence - not like Gormenghast, vast and terrifying in its labyrinth; but as a self-contained world which shows up the characters and story.

Anyway, it's pretty good. And actually, I quite liked Mel Gibson in the role, as improbable as that sounds. Aside from his death scene which would make Ernie Wise jealous, it was great to have a manly Hamlet for a change, and not someone flouncing about in tights. Lots of stuff was missing, but he spun that sword with verve.

#10 Out of the Silent Planet

At some point CS Lewis was bound to appear.

This is one of the firs SF books I read, and maybe one of the first Christian books, as there's a good deal of theology in it too. It's the first of three books featuring professor Ransom (whom, I think, bears some similarities to Tolkien).

On a hike in the English countryside he finds himself a victim of, effectively, a cosmic satanic plot. Drugged, kidnapped and placed on a space-ship he is propelled to Mars - a planet of entirely different creatures ans spiritual forces, and not effected as Earth by the ravages of the Fall.

I got caught up in Lewis' precise and easy prose from page one, and can remember being spellbound to the end, as a teenager, through the exploration of an alien world, and the weaving of the plot around effectively theological ideas.

Wearing suffering

Some days—but not most days, thanks to the manner of Jesus' life and death. Imagine Barack Obama putting on a bad suit or Angelina Jolie wearing an ugly dress. The suit wouldn't look bad, and that dress wouldn't be ugly. These are incredibly attractive people whose attractiveness spills over onto their clothing, changing its meaning and the way other people respond to it. If Obama or Jolie wear it, it's a good-looking outfit. If they wear it often enough, it becomes a good-looking outfit even when you or I wear it. God's Son did something similar by taking physical pain on his divine yet still-human person. He did not render pain itself beautiful. But his suffering made the enterprise of living with pain and illness larger and better than it had been before. He elevates all he touches. Just as his years of carpentry in Joseph's shop lend dignity and value to all honest work, so too the pain he bore lends dignity and value to every pain-filled day human beings live.

William J Stuntz (the article briefly lists his piercing sufferings, so we know the above is not abstract)
Christianity Today

#11 Sophie's World

Already a tussle to know which one to choose - it was nearly Tutus Groan, but on the basis of staying cheerful on a desert island, I've gone for Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder.

It's a mystery novel and a history of philosophy at the same time. As Sophie tries to unravel the mysteries of the plot, so she needs to understand the development of Western philosophy. So the book is really didactic, but given the subject, Gaarder does a good job of making it as pleasant as a story. The section on Jesus is a bit disappointing: even for a po-mo philosopher it doesn't credit Jesus with much influence, and he passes on quickly to more important things. But that aside, it's a painless way of learning the history of western thought.

Goldsworthy: NT effects on Psalms

Just started slowly wandering through Graeme Goldsworthy's Prayer and the Knowledge of God. Early on he makes an interesting point (I don't yet know how he is going to develop it), that we apply the coming of Jesus to a lot of OT issues, but not prayer...

[this issue occurs when] reading a passage from the OT and thinking about it without consciously relating it to the fulfilment of the OT in Christ. Some OT texts, such as those that deal with certain details of Israel's ceremonial law, cry out for us to make some adjustment for the fact that Jesus has come...But other faith matters in the OT, such as the prayers in the Psalms, are quite easily read as they stand and we simply assume the connection with ourselves.

Goldsworthy, p15.

Nouwen: choosing hope

"You are constantly facing choices. The question is whether you choose for God or for your own doubting self. You know what the right choice is , but your emotions, passions, and feelings keep suggesting you choose the self-rejecting way.
The root choice is to trust at all times that God is with you and will give you what you most need. Your self-rejecting emotions might say "It isn't going to work. I'm still suffering the same anguish I did six months ago. I will probably fall back into the old depressive patterns of acting and reacting. I haven't really changed." And on and on. It is hard not to listen to these voices. Still you know that these are not God's voice. God says to you,'I love you, I am with you, I want to see you come closer to me and experience the joy and peace of my presence. I want to give you a new heart and and new spirit. I want you to speak with my mouth, see with my eyes, and hear with my ears, touch with my hands. All that is mine is yours. Just trust me and let me be your God."
This is the voice to listen to. And that listening requires a real choice, not just once in awhile but every moment of each day and night. You can think yourself into a depression, you can talk yourself into low self-esteem, you can act in a self-rejecting way. But you always have a choice to think, speak and act in the Name of God and so move toward the Light, the Truth, and the Life.

Henri Nouwen

Addendum:
I recently found a bit more of this quote-

As you conclude this period of spiritual renewal, you are faced once again with a choice. You can choose to remember this time as a failed attempt to be completely reborn or you can also *choose to remember it as the precious time when God began new things in you that need to be brought to completion.* Your future depends on how you decide to remember your past. Choose for the truth of what you know. Do not let your still anxious emotions distract you. *As you keep choosing God, your emotions will gradually give up their rebellion and be converted to the truth in you.*

The Day Off ends

I don't often do this, in fact I never do this, but I want to briefly mention an obit from the news in a vaguely fanzine type way. Writer and director John Hughes died today.

The reason I mention him is, along with millions of other people of a certain age, his work kind of defines my late teenage years. OK, some of his stuff definitely plumbed the depths of teenage prurience (I wouldn't bother with 16 Candles again, and bits of Breakfast Club put me off permanently - though compared to contemporary teen-fare they are fairly AndyPandy).

But Ferris Bueller, Some Kind of Wonderful and, more relevant to a little later in life, She's Having a Baby, were kind of formative moments for me - just hearing the titles brings back endless summers, A-levels, and possibilities. On top of that was his ability to put a soundtrack together - outstanding compared to other fodder of the time. Would Suzanne Vega have made it so big without Left of Centre? Would Don't You (forget about me) be quite so iconic? Yello, Furniture, Flesh for Lulu, Psychedelic Furs, Bryan Ferry covering Van Morrison's Crazy Love.....And so on...

Well, I'm going to stop before I start sounding like a real blogger. But the end of an era all the same.

#12 Silver Hand

Actually this book was going to be the next one, but the #12 spot contains two books having a fight at the moment, so I thought I'd cheat and bring this one forward whilst the outcome is decided.

Stephen Lawhead is probably the most successful of modern Christian novelists (Left Behind excepted) and built up something of a cult following in the 80s and 90s. He started off with what, in my opinion, were great ideas and fairly mediocre writing, which then developed into really good ideas and good writing, and finally ended up as good writing with ordinary ideas. I have to admit I have not read his recent reworking of Robin Hood which is getting good reviews.

Bang in the middle of the good ideas and good writing came the Song of Albion trilogy. A celtic fantasy which intersects with our own time as the barriers between worlds is breaking down and wolves rome the dark streets of Oxford, it also had one overarching metaphor (which I won't spoil by revealing here, because it doesn't become apparent til the last chapter of book 3). It's a good adventure in a solid fantasy tradition, with some nice touches and only rare moments of kitsch, as an ordinary bloke from here ends up over there, but has to do something extraordinary to save both worlds.