Really?!

From CT:

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.

Chambers: abandon

“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.

Utmost, May23rd

Chambers: safety

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.

#9.....

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).

Postman: Burning books

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.

p71, 72.

Chambers: provision

...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. 

Utmost, May 16th

Keller: change is slow

Jonah stands as a warning that human hearts never change quickly or easily, even when a person is being directly mentored by God

Counterfeit Gods, p144

postscript to Jesus knows sign

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]

#10 Solitude Standing

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

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

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

Chambers: rare moments

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

Utmost, April 25th

Chambers: crushing and worship

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

Utmost, April 23rd

Postman: context-free

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

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

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

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

p69

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

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

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

 p70

Clergy Failure

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

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

(HB London)

#11 The City

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

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

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

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

Chambers: desirable fruit of the burden

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

(MUFHH April14th)

Boring evil

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

Simone Weil

Jesus knows sign language

From an inspiring CT article:

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

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

Postman: image-centred culture

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

Postman: tech trade-off

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

#12 Long Distance Voyager

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

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

Happy Easter!