I've got that Joy, Joy, Joy: Where? Feelings, Catharsis and a Monk

'Inside Out' takes us inside the head of an 11 year old girl, and the 5 emotions which direct her responses to the world. 'Joy' is in charge inside the girls head, but anger, fear, disgust and sadness all chip in.

One of the best things about the film is that 'Sadness' goes from being a marginal, misunderstood feeling to one that's indispensable, and there's a sense that maturity involves a more complicated mix of feelings than just being joyful all the time.

However there's also a missing ingredient: alongside the 5 emotions there's no role for reason, conscience, soul, or will. Character emerges from the interaction of the emotions. The emotions moderate each other, but the 'train of thought' only visits occasionally to take things into long-term memory, and 'abstract thought' is a hazardous and destructive zone hidden at the back of the mind.

On Sunday we used a clip from the movie in our cafe service, the following day I stumbled across this:

"there are seven principal affections that rise by turns form the one affective disposition of the soul: hope and fear, joy and grief, hatred, love and shame. All these can be ordered at one time, and disordered at another."

'Ordered' means directed towards the right thing - hating justice would be disordered, as would fear of something harmless. The writer? Richard of St. Victor a 12th century monk and theologian. Fear, joy, hatred (anger), shame (disgust) and grief (sadness). Together in Inside Out, the 5 characters all 'love our girl', so hope is the only one missing.

Richard writes of virtue being a state where our emotions are rightly ordered, and rightly moderated. I.e. directed towards the right thing, with the right intensity.

"one ought to keep cautious watch over all the virtues so that they are not only ordered but also moderated. For excessive fear often falls into despair; excessive grief into bitterness; immoderate hope into presumption; overabundant love into flattery; unnecessary joy into dissolution; intemperate anger into fury. And so in this way virtues are turned into vices if they are not moderated by discretion"

This makes a lot of sense, but can sound a bit uptight. I'm put in mind of the imam in Rev who occasionally declares 'too much humour'. Don't we need to let it all out at times? Digital Nun has this to say on the death of David Bowie:

A public figure many feel they knew personally, and who had attained some sort of iconic status, is publicly mourned in a way that may truly be called cathartic.

It is some time since I last read Aristotle’s Poetics, but I remember thinking how interesting it was that his notion of the purging of the emotions of pity and fear should be linked to the Greek word for purity, katharos. We are cleansed by the safe release of potentially destructive emotions. Isn’t that what we are seeing in the reaction to David Bowie’s death? Our own death and the feelings we have about it are somehow tied up with his. Add to that the power of the media to make us feel we have a personal connection with someone; its ability to scatter stardust over even the most ordinary activity or event; above all, the way in which it invites a sense of immediate engagement, all these contribute to the extraordinary scenes we have witnessed.

The counterpoint to this catharsis is that Bowie kept his illness a secret, something private, in one one commentator calls a revolutionary  avoidance of the private sphere in an age where more and more is done in public. Bowie himself predicted of the internet in 2000   "I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society both good and bad is unimaginable. I think we're on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying." In the few years I've been blogging, blogging itself has taken a back seat to the more immediate social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We've moved from sharing our thoughts to sharing our lives. The more immediate the media, the more immediate the catharsis. 

What would Richard of St. Victor make of all this? What is the place of catharsis, and moderation? If we are a generation that 'hears with our eyes and thinks with our feelings', how do we make sure we become more emotionally intelligent, not just more emotional? Or am I overthinking this?

Are you hiding a tightrope-walking dog?

A tightrope-walking dog won Britains Got Talent at the weekend, or did it? It was a remarkable act, but the dog which escaped from jail by tightrope during the routine was actually a stunt double for the star act, Matisse. The second dog was kept hidden backstage throughout the rest of the act, and it was kept hidden both from the judges and the voting public too, who all thought they were voting for a single dog and its trainer.

The routine is very clever, and very skilful, but its in danger of being overshadowed by what was kept hidden backstage.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but it keeps cropping up so I'll mention it again. Author Simon Walker talks of our 'frontstage' and 'backstage' - what we allow other people to see, and what we keep out of sight. Alison Morgan has done an excellent summary of his work, and here's a clip:

The two stages can’t be kept completely separate – what goes on in one will always to some extent leak onto the other. This is particularly so for social and spiritual leaders and those in caring professions – their own unmet emotional needs, pushed backstage, generate resentment, envy, pride, anger or even rage – and these things begin to leak frontstage. 

When the things we didn't want people to see are discovered, or leak onto the frontstage, the response can be as its been with BGT - quite a lot of upset. There are parts of our lives which, despite the running commentary of social media, are best not disclosed and put on general display. I've actually found that people use Facebook, Twitter and the like more to manage their frontstage - to project an image and the story they want other people to see, it's the brave exceptions who still attract admiring comments.

But it's best not to have secrets if we can possibly avoid it.  There is a merciful Judge who knows exactly what is going on backstage, as well as front, and, to our surprise, won't vote us off if we own up.

"Having HIV doesn't mean I can't have the quality of life that Jesus offers'

Very very gutsy thing to do:



Rev Hayley Young's courageous (that word again) explanation to her church about her HIV diagnosis following an attack. Good piece here on the BBC, including the struggle of being someone who's supposed to have 'the answers'. "There are times when God feels far away, but ultimately that peace and that strength are there".

Put your mushrooms in the sunshine

Jeremy Clarkson, mushrooms, Acts chapter 5, back stage passes. Its amazing the connections you find sometimes.

Yesterdays challenge was preaching on Acts 5, the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who conspire in secret to buy a good reputation in the early church, forgetting that God sees what we do when we think nobody is looking. Whether it was greed, or desire for the kudos which went with appearing generous whilst trousering some of the proceeds, we don't know. But they sell some property, present what they claim is the full amount to the church, whilst conniving between them to keep some back.

The result is pretty dramatic: God shows Peter the secret scheme, he confronts them with it, and they drop down dead. Be wary of what you put in the collection plate, it should carry a health warning.

Simon Walker has written some excellent leadership books, where he talks about the front and back stage. The front stage is performance, what we let others see. The back stage is private: fears, decisions, research, private crises, the things we normally keep people out of. The election campaign is all front stage: a frenzied attempt to manage what is seen and heard, and an equally frenzied attempt to keep all the 'back stage' stuff out of view. Nobody wants another Gillian Duffy moment. So, David Cameron was in my constituency yesterday, a fact I only discovered on the news later. Why? Because the only people who knew were Conservative supporters and invited journalists. God forbid he should meet a real voter.

Politicians dread the moment when the back stage mess falls through the curtain onto the front stage. Don't we all. It can be very public - Jeremy Clarkson has gone into some of the 'back stage' reasons for his well publicised blow up a few weeks ago. They don't excuse it, but a combination of divorce, bereavement, cancer and a high profile highly scrutinised job probably isn't a recipe for mental calm.

There was a recent food programme which mentioned that mushrooms, if exposed to sunlight for an hour or two, turn from nutritionally useless fungi into a rich source of Vitamin D. Something grown in the dark, when exposed to the light, becomes a health benefit rather than a mould.

Paul writes "you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light". If Ananias and Sapphira had let someone else backstage, had brought the mushrooms out into the sunlight, they might have realised that trying to decieve God was a stupid idea, and thought again. God already knows everything we're trying to keep secret, as we try with varying degrees of anxiety to manage our front and back stages. What a gift to find someone who we can allow back stage, and who treats kindly what they see. What a gift to find someone with the integrity and character to allow some of their back stage to be visible.

The more stage managed the appearance, the more we think 'you must be hiding something'. My draft question for our local hustings next week is 'in your personal life, or in your parties policies, what are you not telling us?' Just because a politician, (or a vicar, or a TV personality, or a friend, or...) doesn't admit to having a back stage, doesn't mean it isn't there. The church should be a place where we are aware of the damage it can do to keep things in the dark, and where we find sufficient trust and grace to bring things out into the light. Put your mushrooms in the sunshine.

Wacky BaccE?

With the resumption of the political football season, education is getting the usual kicking around. Michael Gove's announcement of the scrapping of GCSE's for an exam-based EBacc (if it's English, why not use an English word for it?); Nick Clegg's apology over tuition fees, and strong words from the Bishop of Oxford about the marking fiasco this summer.

An O-level style, final exam system bases success on a number of skills:
 - accumulating knowledge
 - short term memory
 - ability to think clearly under stress
 - exam technique (e.g. spotting questions)

one friend at theological college went into his exams armed with 6 7-letter words, an acronym for each question which was likely to turn up. It worked, he got a first.

I've been mulling over whether continuous assesment or a final test is more Biblical. Probably neither/both: the bible does talk about a final judgement, some kind of test where everything is evaluated. At the same time there is continuous assesment - Jesus continuously reviews his ministry and priorities in prayer, the Psalmist asks God to search his heart.

More Christian thinkers and leaders are writing about discipleship, and best practice in discipleship - for the development of skills, character and holiness - is about 'a long obedience in the same direction'. The church has centuries of experience of 'continuous assesment', though whether the confessional, or the daily examen of Ignatius, produced the fruit of holiness is questionable. Methodists had their class meetings to help one another grow in Christian virtues.

It all depends what we want to happen in education. If it's merely about knowledge and fact retention, exams are fine (up to a point). But what about growth in skills and character? Instruments are learned through regular practice, tutorials, and a series of grade exams, it's the same with sporting skills like swimming and gymnastics. Together with those go the character qualities of patience, perseverance, coping with success and failure. On the one hand it will be good to remove from students the pressure of continuous assesment, some learning is best done in a more leisurely way, rather than cramming facts in order to pass a test/assignment. But continuous assesment also gives the opportunity to develop skills and character in a way that exams don't.

I've recently become a 'Training Minister' on STETS, a local training course for church leaders in the CofE, Methodists and elsewhere. I've been impressed by their course structure - the academic is integrated with personal spiritual disciplines and growth in character. All three are addressed together. This is a million miles from the segmentation of my own training in the 1990s, where character and holiness issues were hardly ever addressed. And guess what? Most of the ministers dropping out of parish life, year in year out, are doing so not because they can't do the job, but because of character and personal issues.

One other thought: as a political football education is now much bigger than it was, as successive governments have tried to wrestle children from their parents at an earlier and earlier age. This is partly to get parents back into the job market, and partly to offer a better environment for growing up than some of the more troubled homes. Parenting is being progressively nationalised. But children still go home at the end of the day, and parents are still the prime educators. There shouldn't be a rigid division of labour between home and school (facts at school, character at home), but it's hard to build a partnership approach without a shared public ethos of what a good life and a whole person actually looks like.

Sleep, the path to Holiness

"If we really intend to submit our body as a living sacrifice to God, our first step  may be to start getting enough sleep. Sleep is a good indicator of how thoroughly we trust in God. The psalmist, who knew danger and uncertainty well, also spelt well: 'In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone O Lord make me to dwell in safety' (Ps4:8)

...for if we are not rested, the body moves to the centre of our focus and makes its presence more strongly felt; the tendencies of its parts call out more strongly for gratification.... Rest, properly taken, gives clarity to the mind. Weariness, by contrast, can make us seek gratification and energy from food or drugs, from various illicit relationships, or from egoistic postures... they pull us away from relying on God, and from living in his power."
(Willard & Simpson 'Revolution of Character' p141-2)

Read this today, and it rings true for me. I must admit I'm far more likely to faff about online if I'm tired than if I'm fully rested and alert. Does that happen to anyone else or is it just me?

'After You Believe', new Tom Wright book

Tom/NT Wright has a new book due out in March, called 'After You Believe'. The book tackles the problem that many churches see their job as warehousing people for heaven: counting the souls in through the door, and then keeping them safe but otherwise unchanged until the next life.

The book is about Christian character, and how it's formed. Interesting to note that 'character' is a current issue in various places - witness Mondays' Demos event with David Cameron at the start of their enquiry into character and it's place in the good society. Here's an extract from an interview with Wright:

N.T. Wright: The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character.

I remember Rowan Williams describing the difference between a soldier who has a stiff drink and charges off into battle waving a sword and shouting a battle-cry, and the soldier who calmly makes 1000 small decisions to place someone else’s safety ahead of his or her own and then, on the 1001st time, when it really is a life-or-death situation, “instinctively” making the right decision. That, rather than the first, is the virtue of “courage”.

In the book I use, as a “secular” example, the lifetime forming of habits exemplified by Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot who, last January, brought the US Airbus down safely in the Hudson River after a flock of geese got into the engines after take-off from La Guardia. All his instincts had been trained so that when the moment came he didn’t have to stop to think what to do; it just “came naturally”.

Forming character by deliberate choices goes against the grain of just doing what we feel like, and expressing ourselves - another extract from the same interview on Prodigal Kiwis makes this point. The goal of character formation is that holiness becomes 'what we feel like' and 'what comes naturally', rather than just a random splurge of what we happen to be thinking or feeling.

I'll be interested to see what Wright sees as the path to character formation. My suspicion is that a lot of it will be about getting a correct understanding of life, God, the future and the present. We're currently talking about character and change on our Growing Leaders course with a group of lay leaders, and exploring what helps this process, including spiritual disciplines, accountability, reflection, suffering, overcoming at the points where we're tempted to quit etc.

Making disciples is the great challenge for the modern church, so if Tom Wright is applying his mind to this then so much the better. What I'd really like to see though is not a book, but a curriculum.

Winning Through

Had this on a leadership circular yesterday:

Last night I was gripped by the five-setter Murray played against Wawrinka. Would he win through or once again be knocked out before he got to the final? He was evidently struggling in the final set.

We’ve just completed a residential on the theme: Going the distance. Will we or won’t we? I love the words Paul writes in 2 Timothy: ‘I have fought the good fight, run the race, kept the faith.’

Most of us are a long way from the final set, but the decisions we make now will go some way to determining how we will do in later years. Overwork now, pay for it later? Cut corners now, pay for it later? Neglect loved ones now, pay for it later? Miss days off, skimp on holidays, pay for it later?

Now of course things aren’t as neat or tidy as that. And there is always the grace of God that sees us through the ups and downs of life and leadership. But if we are going to join Paul and look back on life and say we’ve run the race, kept the faith, fought the fight, there may be some things to attend to now for the sake of the future.

For me this means facing some hard issues over the summer that I need to find some way through. .....

What might it mean for you?

Will he or won’t he? Murray won the final set. Will we or won’t we? By the grace of God so can we.

Twit Wisdom

"Calling someone a coward via the internet isn't courage"

Discuss.

(context: a debate over whether MP's who spoke up for Brown to leave at Mondays meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party were 'courageous').

Grace Under Pressure?

“What a man is on his knees, that he is and nothing more.” (Robert Murray McCheyne)*

The Toothpaste Test: what comes out when the pressure is on? It’s easy to put on a facade when everything is fine, but there’s nothing like a tight squeeze for revealing what we’re really like:

- Gordon Brown has displayed a spectacular level of resilience (or desperation?). Both James Purnell and Caroline Flint may have thought they were delivering the ‘Geoffrey Howe moment’, but Brown has clung on. Most people would have ended up in the Priory after the sort of week he’s had. You have to admit his toughness, even if you’d rather he wasn’t there. I rather admire his dutiful refusal to give up and walk away.

- Caroline Flint’s resignation letter sadly comes across as a petulant response to not being promoted in the reshuffle, rather than a principled refusal to be ‘window dressing’. It reflects badly both on Brown, but also on Ms Flint herself.

- Brown has also displayed, again, his misjudgment of character. On one day Brown talks about his ‘Presbyterian conscience’, then the next he appoints Alan Sugar to a top government role. In one week, the PM has gone from Simon Cowell to Alan Sugar: you wonder if he put together his Cabinet by browsing the Radio Times.

As the public clamours for honest MPs in the wake of the expenses scandal, Sugar is a man who awarded the Apprentice crown last year to a man who was found out for lying in his CV. His public persona is a mixture of grouchiness and greed - you might argue that this is only a persona, but frankly I’m sick and tired of people who put on an act for the cameras, but behave differently in private. Dizzy also notes that Sugar has a bit of history with Gordon Brown.

Squeezing Dave
For an observer, its certainly been an exciting few days, but I’m glad Brown is staying. Why? Because his rivals haven’t yet had the Toothpaste Test. We don’t really know what David Cameron is like under pressure. The Tories have floated to the top of the polls without, as yet, serious scrutiny of their policies, their character, or their principles. Cameron’s calls for an election have been irresponsible - how can we possibly have a sensible election in the midst of the current mess? What kind of mandate would it give to whoever won?

Britain’s Got Talent reminded us that the spotlight can reveal our frailties, as well as our gifts (and whilst we’re on the subject, any show that hospitalises its contestants needs to be taken off air, no matter how popular it is). Brown used to have a reputation for rising to challenges - remember summer 2007? In a years time his response to the economic crisis may be judged more kindly too, as we remember that the Conservatives failed in their Opposition duty to blow the whistle on a debt-fuelled boom.

The media seems to enjoy bringing people to its knees - Tony Blair once famously called them a pack of feral beasts. There’s a fine line to tread between vigorous scrutiny, and respecting the human dignity of those you are calling to account. Brown needs to be given the chance to stand up and get on with his job.

Meanwhile I wouldn’t want to see Cameron brought to his knees, but I still don’t believe we’ve really seen him tested, and that worries me.

*The full quote is “What a man is on his knees before God, that he is and nothing more.” McCheyne was a missionary, but I’m not sure if he was a Presbyterian. By way of contrast, I'm currently reading a biography of the missionary Hudson Taylor, and one thing which stands out is his constancy of character, rooted in prayer and dependence on God.

This is a cross-post from 'Touching Base', a weekly column hosted at the Wardman Wire.

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

As 'troughing' becomes the latest neologism in the English language, the question is whether the body politic can recover from this bout of swine flu. Politicians elected to serve the public have, instead, exploited their office for personal gain, and built a system which winks at greed whilst at the same time cloaking the truth from public view. Political leaders have been at pains to blame 'the system', as if it is only structures which sin: that's not really good enough, but reforming the systems and culture of politics is key to reforming the soul of the body politic.

The vocation of politics has become seriously tainted. It's not alone: the report into child abuse within the Roman Catholic church in Ireland is due out today, and it will be horrific reading. Here again is a vocational profession which has not just become sick, but has died, decomposed, and spread the stench of death across a whole society.

Is the idea of vocation ('calling') still a viable one? Many of the classic vocations seem to be in decay: the vocation to entertain has mutated into celebrity culture, the vocation to justice has become the much-scorned legal profession, teachers are leaving in droves rather than prop up a system built not on education, but on league tables.

Rob Parsons tells of his father, who as a postman used to polish his boots every night in preparation for the morning round. He questioned him, asking why he bothered, since nobody would see him, and he was only delivering the post. "It's not the post", replied his dad "it's the Royal Mail".

The difference between a job and a vocation is that sense of higher purpose, whether that purpose is as a messenger, a seeker of justice, a mediator between people and God, or as a leader in political life. Over 2500 years ago the social commentator ('prophet') Isaiah spoke of the decay of leadership in his own society:
"I will make boys their officials, mere children will govern them
People will oppress each other - man agasint man, neighbour against neighbour...
A man will seize one of his brothers at his fathers home, and say
'You have a cloak, you be our leader: take charge of this heap of ruins!'
but in that day he will cry out
'I have no remedy.....' "

A few hundred years later, church leader Peter encouraged his readers to 'make your calling and election sure' (2 Peter 1 v10). He wasn't talking about getting a seat in the European Parliament, but the fact that though we may be called by God, but we have responsibility for maintaining that sense of calling through attention to our character.

Peter gives list of character qualities - faith, goodness, kindness, self-control, wisdom, love - for his hearers to add to one another and to work on. Whether you believe in God or not, the same truth applies: if your character doesn't keep up with your level of influence, then there is trouble ahead.

Some of our politicians have been so busy that they've forgotten to pay attention to themselves, to look in the mirror and ask whether they've made their calling sure, or whether they've traded it in for pig food.

Character and calling also depend on the quality of community: if you're surrounded by people who collude and wink at corruption, then it's easy to become corrupt. If you determine to be accountable to people who will strap you to the mast as you sail past the Sirens of money, sex and power, then your character and calling have a chance of making it to the end of the journey intact.

It's time to recover political leadership as a vocation, but not to kid ourselves that this solves everything. Every leader has the responsibility (and needs the support of others) to 'make your calling and election sure'. Neglect your calling and character, and you lose your place. Look after your calling and character, and your election will probably look after itself.

Learning about evangelism from an Atheist

a quote from the clip: “I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, ‘Well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward’… How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?”

Ht Backyard missionary, via Digging a Lot.

Anyone Seen My Moral Compass?

A thought-provoking Steve Tilley post:

most leaders live with axioms - statements that they tend to bring out regularly which guide their decision making.

and Steve lists a few of his own. Bill Hybels apparently has 76, which makes me wonder how he manages to decide on anything. So here's a few of mine, off the top of my head.

Without vision, the people perish
Communication is about who you are as much as what you say
Sabbath
Don't let your ministry outgrow your character or your prayer life
The local church is the hope of the world
Mission is the agenda
The everyday is spiritual, if you look hard enough
Family is a sacred trust
Action and reflection, not either/or
Everyone is here for a reason.

Who is going to do this, and when?

How does this help the person who's not yet a Christian?

Fun

Take responsibility for your own growth: we only spoon feed babies.

It's better to win people than win an argument

Big rocks in first.

Some things are too important to be left to chance.

Don't copy my list, blog your own......

...and Tale Spin has some excellent maxims for a happy marriage.

Doctor Who Discussion notes: 'Midnight'

For the first time this series I got to watch a Dr Who episode when it was broadcast. This week was 'Midnight', a holding operation before the return of Rose, and probably the Daleks.



Last week there was a lot about death, and in what way we're able to live on after death, using technology as a way into some big questions. This week it was all about human nature.

So if you've split coffee on your John Stott notes, watch the 45 mins on Iplayer and discuss it. Plot summary and a few sample questions below...

Plot summary (warning: spoilers). The Doctor and a small group are travelling on a tour around the planet 'Midnight', which is very beautiful, but completely lifeless because of the toxic rays of its sun. The ship stalls, in the middle of nowhere, and whilst they are waiting for a backup ship to collect them, something starts knocking on the hull.

Next thing you know, one of the passengers, Sky, has been taken over by something (we never see what it is), and she starts to repeat everything that people are saying, copying words, inflexion, body movements. The 'creature' develops, until it is saying people's words at the same time, and then before folk actually say them. The other thing that develops is paranoia, as the other passengers (whipped up particularly by Lindsay Coulsons mother figure), become more and more frightened, and agree first to throw Sky off the ship to certain death (though she hasn't harmed anyone), and then the Doctor because he is too sympathetic.

Soon the creature begins to control the Doctor as well, and the passengers start to drag him towards the exit. The officious stewardess suddenly realises that the Doctor has been right, and takes herself and Sky out of one of the exits, sacrificing herself to save the others. The Doctor comes back to his senses, and everyone else realises they nearly killed an innocent man. He asks if anyone knew the stewardess's name, and nobody (not even the man who'd done the trip 14 times before) knows it. (nod to the Shawshank Redemption here?) Lots of awkward silences.

Issues:
It's a bit 'Lord of the Flies', what happens when mob hysteria takes over in a confined space, and turns a group of normal people into (almost) murderers.

Questions
- What does it take to turn normal people into murderers? It happens - Rwanda, Germany, etc.
- The mother figure doesn't try to drag the Doctor overboard, but incites the others to do so. What voices in society, or our own circle of friends and family, are the ones loading bullets for others to fire?
- Standing with others is risky - the Doctor is nearly killed for trying to protect Sky, even when he doesn't know if she's benign or evil. Who are the people we're afraid to stand up for? What have we suffered for defending the victimised?
- The Doctor openly states that he's the cleverest person on the ship. Is this vanity, or just truthful?
- The other passengers are quick to take offence at the Doctors words: how does this affect their conversation? Could they have responded differently? What else could they have said?

- If the episode shows us as we really are, then we clearly need protecting from ourselves. a) Is this how the Bible sees it? b) In the light of this, are government plans for ID cards and extra detention a good thing? Or are institutions even more dangerous than individuals?

Hope of the World

Mark Meynell is blogging from the European Leadership Forum, and relays this quote from a talk given by Lindsay Brown. Inspiring.

In Zimbabwe, during the bloody civil war on racial grounds during the 70s, that troubled country seemed as divided and traumatized as it is now. And race was the heart of the problem. And the University of Harare (or Salisbury as it then was) was as riven as the rest of the country - particularly vividly illustrated by standard operating procedure in the uni canteen. Whites on one side, blacks on the other.

Except, that is, for the Christians. They were an integrated group - and deliberately sat together on tables right in the middle of the dining hall. During the first course, the white Christians got up and fetched the food and then served it to their black brothers and sisters; then for pudding, the blacks the same, serving their white brothers and sisters. And the effect on the rest of the university, without a single word of explanation or proclamation, was scandalously but marvelously electrifying. For it was clear to all that they were ONE body, united and mutually serving.

New 'Touching Base' - is there such a thing as too much choice?

Beggars and Choosers:

In a consumer, choice-driven society, the question of British identity will never be settled. Consumer choice is all about the now, but the present without the past is a place without memory, a social form of dementia as the memories which created and sustained meaning are lost.

I enjoy the freedom to choose, but choice can never fully define who we are, or be the trump card in debates about morality, science, and economics. The Christian vision of identity - people created in love in the image of God - includes free will, balanced by reason, creativity, love, community, and a sense of place within creation. (Interesting that one of the upsides to recession is that we’re told we’ll all get more creative, as we’ll no longer be able to buy a solution to everything.)

In a couple of weeks I’ll be doing my first wedding of the summer. For the happy couples, the most amazing thing is not that they have chosen, but that they have been chosen. It’s in that context that love and identity can grow to their full extent.

more at the Wardman Wire from early this afternoon.

Downsizing our Pop idols

Justin Thacker at CommentisFree has some good things to say about the recent Joseph Rowntree foundation report on social evils. The JRF concluded, from a survey of 3500 people, that the greatest social evil was individualism and consumerism.

Feeding this worship of the self were the twin gods of consumerism and celebrity culture. Consumerism feeds it because every act of consumption reinforces the idea that I exist purely for my own sake. The celebrity culture fuels it because as soon as we start worshipping people for no other reason than their ability to attract such worship then our locus of admiration has shifted from an aptitude, such as artistic ability, to the individual as an individual.

In the report, the responsibility for this plague of self-indulgence was laid squarely at the doors of politicians, financial institutions and in particular the media (understood broadly to include advertising).

Thacker goes on to ask:
What if instead we pursued the logic of satisfaction whereby our goal is not the endless pursuit of desire itself, but rather contentment with what we already have? Indeed, what if contentment was found not in satisfying new desires, but in the deliberate relinquishment for the sake of others of what we already possess? What if personal downsizing became not just the mantra, but the practice, of our age?

It is more blessed to give than to recieve.(Acts 20:36)
Godliness with contenment is great gain. (1 Tim 6:6)

Touching Base: Confession and the AA 12 Steps

The latest 'touching base' column is now online at the Wardman Wire (link should work now!). Here's a snippet:

As a spotty youth I worked in East London with alcoholics, and realised that the (Alcoholics Anonymous) 12 steps were more than a recovery programme. They made a great rule of life. If you lived by these principles, then there wasn’t a much better path to personal maturity and character.

It’s a tough path, with no short cuts, and requires a level of honesty and stickability that might look frighteningly high. But most alcoholics are desperate enough to have a go, and the 12 steps have yet to be bettered as a recovery programme.

And here’s the sticking point: though we’d all become better people if we followed the 12 Steps, most of us wouldn’t even think about it unless we became desperate. As with climate change, so with personal change - we need to be right on the brink before we’re motivated enough to do anything.

and for the rest go here.

Cricket, Saviour of the World?

...is the title of the latest Touching Base, my other bit of blogging, over at the Wardman Wire. Before you start misquoting me, read the thing in full....

a snippet:
(cricketers) Tait, Harmison and Trescothick have all asked themselves an important question. A few years ago, months after the birth of our first child, I stood in a field somewhere near Darlington and thought ‘what am I doing here, playing cricket, when my family needs me at home?’ Maybe its a contagious disease of the North East, or maybe it’s about priorities. There comes a point when you find yourself standing in the corner of a field (or sitting at a desk, or about to board a plane on another trip), and the question ‘what am I doing this for?’ arrives, bags in hand, ready for a long stay in your psyche.

Not Having Enough Fun

More from John Ortbergs 'The Life You've Always Wanted' (the rumour is that planned follow up volumes include one for single men: The Wife You've Always Wanted, and for failed bakers: The Loaf You've Always Wanted. My apologies.)

In a chapter on the spiritual discipline of joy, he cites Dallas Willard:

"Failure to attain a deeply satisfying life always has the effect of making sinful actions seem good...normally our success in overcoming temptation will be easier if we are basically happy. To cut off the joys and pleasures associated with our bodily life and social existance as 'unspiritual' can actaully have the effect of weakening us in our efforts to do what is right."

In other words, joy is the best antidote to sin, because the more fun we are having, the less we'll be attracted to sinning.

He also quotes a beautiful passage from Chesterton, also used in this cracking sermon on how to be childlike by Tony Campolo :

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.