"What do you do in Sabbath time?" I am sometimes asked. I disappoint, I suspect, when I evade the formulaic answer. I discarded the gimmicks a long time ago. They didn't work for me. What became more important was outcomes. What do I do? Simple: whatever it takes for a renewed sense of conversion to Christ, a deeper awareness of the biblical way, an assurance that God's grace and power remain with me.
When I ask many leaders if there is time in their calendars for the pursuit of such outcomes, I get these kinds of responses:
I'm just too busy.
I don't have the slightest idea what I'd do if I took the time.
My mind is too full of thought; I can't concentrate.
I'm an extrovert. Being alone, being quiet, reflecting is not my thing.
There is no great religious leader - from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther - who offered people waht they want. Only what they need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is "user friendly".
.....
I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.
....
It is well understood at the National Council that the danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows, but that television shows may become the content of religion.
It seems to me that we have a right to be fairly happy about ourselves as long as we have criticism from both sides... For myself, as long as I am charged by certain people with being nothing but a Pentecostalist and on the other hand charged by others with being an intellectual, a man who is always preaching doctrine, as long as the two criticisms come, I am very happy. But if one or the other of the two criticisms should ever cease, then, I say, is the time to be careful and to begin to examine the very foundations.
(From "Test the Spirits" in The Love of God: Studies in 1 John, Crossway, 1993, p. 18.) via Redeemer blog.
...on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana.
[young students are] coming from a different universe of discourse altogether: the "Now...this" world of television. The fundamental assumption of that world is not coherence but discontinuity. And in a world of discontinuities, contradiction is useless as a test of truth or merit, because contradiction does not exist.
Wycliffe Bible Translators expects to have the Bible — or at least some of it — written in all of the world's 6,909 spoken languages by 2025. About 2,200 languages remain without a Bible, which represents about 350 million people — mostly in India, China, sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea. Portable computers and satellites get the credit for speeding things up by about 125 years. Previously, a Wycliffe missionary family or team could spend decades learning and transcribing one language in a remote corner of the Earth.
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. which is another issue altogether.
...televison is different because it encompasses all forms of discourse. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances...But everyone goes to a television set for all these things and more, which is why televisioon resonates so powerfully through the culture. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself...
...For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that stage is located in Las Vegas...
No man is born either naturally or supernaturally with character, he has to make character. Nor are we born with habits; we have to form habits on the basis of the new life God has put into us. We are not meant to be illuminated versions, but the common stuff of ordinary life exhibiting the marvel of the grace of God. Drudgery is the touchstone of character. The great hindrance in spiritual life is that we will look for big things to do. "Jesus took a towel…and began to wash the disciples' feet."
"People at various stages of life give us a vision for our own life at that stage," says Friesen. After Friesen's own grandmother died, at age 99, he was particularly struck by the testimonies from older members.
"My grandmother's influence on me started when she was 89 and extended to 99," he says. "In the eyes of our culture, she's a useless person. But her most productive time in my life was her final ten years." This is something that everyone approaching or in retirement needs to hear, Friesen says. "You think nobody's paying attention" because of your age. "Think again. You can have a tremendous impact on people in your final decades. And you're going to have more of them than you think." A major job for the church, Friesen says, is to "give people a vision of the good life in the seasons of fall and winter."
Well it had to happen sometime, much I am sure to Minty's depressed prediction, but this is a Yes album.
In my defence, it's not a 'normal' Yes album - it's not from the 'golden era' of side-long songs and completely incomprehensible Anderson lyrics. In fact it had a ll gone a bit wrong by this time, with Anderson and Wakeman leaving, and Trevor Horn (soon to be Buggles) drafted in. But neither is it the Yes-gone-pop of 90125 (though I like that one too).
It's somewhere between classic Yes and pop-yes. For me, Machine Messiah is OK, but it's Does it Really Happen and especially Into the Lens which lift this to desert-island status, with Tempus Fugit finishing well.
Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film-stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.
Many television sets are also large and sturdy enough to bear the wieght of a small library. The top of an old fashioned RCA console can handle as many as thirty books, and I know one woman who has securely placed her entire collection of Dickens, Flaubert and Turgenev on the top of a 21" Westinghouse. Here is still another use of television - as bookcase.
There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre.
For the loss of the sense of strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have been adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed.
At an average of 55 minutes, David Platt's Sunday morning sermons at the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, are already far longer than those of most pastors. But to Platt, they seem awfully short. He has been struck in his travels by underground Asian house churches that study the Bible together, under the threat of persecution, for as long as 12 hours in one sitting. He has imported this practice into a biennial event that Brook Hills calls Secret Church. Starting at 6 p.m., Platt preaches for six hours on a single topic, such as a survey of the Old Testament. About 1,000 people, mostly college students and young singles, turned out for the first Secret Church. Since then, other Secret Church topics have included the Atonement and spiritual warfare. It is now so popular the church requires tickets.
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on.” Matthew 6:25
Jesus sums up common-sense carefulness in a disciple as infidelity. If we have received the Spirit of God, He will press through and say - Now where does God come in in this relationship, in this mapped out holiday, in these new books? He always presses the point until we learn to make Him our first consideration. Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion. "Take no thought . . ." don't take the pressure of forethought upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is infidelity, because worrying means that we do not think that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never any thing else that worries us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the word He puts in? The devil? No, the cares of this world. It is the little worries always. I will not trust where I cannot see, that is where infidelity begins. The only cure for infidelity is obedience to the Spirit. The great word of Jesus to His disciples is abandon.
Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there. "Shall tribulation…?" Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may - exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you. "Shall anguish…?" - can God's love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice? "Shall famine…?" - can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved? Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it - the love of God in Christ Jesus. "Out of the wreck I rise" every time.
OK I have struggled here: the thing is, in the ongoing sedate mid-life crisis that Minty & I are sharing like two teenagers who have just bought a tape-to-tape deck, I have a problem. My biggest musical influence, indeed the 'spiritual food' that held me up until I found real Bread and real Water, was the impractically long sound-paintings of Mike Oldfield. And that's the problem: given we listen to these albums in snatches on Spotify, an hour-long track is a push.
So I have cheated here - I'm giving two albums BUT only one of them counts: it's your choice. Here's the one I wanted to choose but is probably impossible to listen to in a week because it is an hour-long track - which means Spotify can't interrupt with adverts, but neither can you listen to a bit, log out and come back later and carry on.
Amarok was Oldfield's penultimate album for Virgin, before he got his life back. And he managed to persuade them to let him do his own thing, rather than what Virgin had been demanding for some time. The first really long, real-instrument work for years. The problem is he does seem to have wanted to fit it into an hour: and with all those years of pent-up ideas ready to flow, he shouldn't have edited down to an hour, but let the themes develop. However, I love it. it is very silly - but exuberant: a return to classic Oldfield, but sadly possibly the last time it would really happen. After this the long slow sale of his instruments and the slide into electronica began. By the way, some of the odd bits are clues: there was a prize buried somewhere in Britain, and the album sleeve and the music contained the directions. Sadly, Virgin never bothered to tell anyone...
In some ways, Amarok was a future echo of Ommadawn (the cover is a giveaway). And here is the alternative if one hour long track is too much: Tubular Bells 3, which is TB reimagined. So reimagined that many critics said it was only the name that had anything to do with the original. Not so: we anoraks will tell you it's all here - from the shout of Piltdown man, to the frantic bass-work from the end of TB1 reappearing in the closing sequence of this one. And it's split into smaller tracks. I wasn't looking forward to TB via Ibiza, but actually I think he did pretty well (even if Man in the rain is shamelessly Moonlight Shadow with different words).
A book is an attempt to make thought permanent and to contribute to the great conversation of authors of the past. Therefore, civilised people everywhere consider the burning of a book a vile form of anti-intellectualism. But the telegraph demands that we burn its contents. The value of telegraphy is undermined by applying the tests of permanence, continuity or coherence. The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.
...telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.
...we talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off with a shilling! We think it a sign of real modesty to say at the end of a day - "Oh, well, I have just got through, but it has been a severe tussle." And all the Almighty God is ours in the Lord Jesus! And He will tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will obey Him. What does it matter if external circumstances are hard? Why should they not be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God's riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it obliterates God and puts self-interest upon the throne. It opens our mouths to spit out murmurings and our lives become craving spiritual sponges, there is nothing lovely or generous about them.
Wycliffe Bible Translators and a ministry to the deaf — Deaf Opportunity Outreach International (DOOR) — will work with teams of deaf translators from various nations to bring the Scripture in video form to different groups of deaf people. Since early 2009, Wycliffe Associates has worked closely with DOOR, starting with construction of DOOR's international headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.
"Being blind separates you from things, but being deaf separates you from people," explained Bruce Smith, president/CEO at Wycliffe Associates, citing American author Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf as a young child. "We want to make sure that being deaf doesn't separate you from God," Smith said.
Contrary to popular belief, many people who use sign languages are like oral learners and cannot read the Scriptures. Moreover, sign languages are not based on the spoken language in the country of origin. A person from Latin America, for example, would not be signing in Spanish, but in their own unique expressions.
According to Wycliffe Associates, which mobilizes volunteers and resources to support Bible translation efforts, there are more than 200 identified sign languages being used in the world and some 70 million people worldwide who communicate with sign language. Only people who use American Sign Language have the New Testament in video form, while video recording of the Old Testament is in the process. No other known sign languages in the world have the Bible in complete form.
Wycliffe Associates has sent construction volunteers to San Jose, Costa Rica, where they completed the remodeling of a building that will be used as a studio to record the video translation. They plan to build two more studios in Latin America and as many as ten more studios in the years to come to help with sign language translations. [ChristianPost.com]
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
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.
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)
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)
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).
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)
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?)
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.
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.
...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)
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.
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 heardChristian 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.
...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)
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.
"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
...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)
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)
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 6th form:I’m a hippy born out of time...
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.....
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.
"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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
[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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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,.
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?!
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...
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.
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.
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!)
A minister in the UK who prefers to remain anonymous, in case one of his posts becomes a rant and he lives to regret it. Also known, at least once, as Bernard Dweeb.
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