It’s hard to remember, on days such as these and with anything other than that “well, I suppose” part of the mind reserved for understanding chemistry and the size of the universe – it’s hard to remember what it’s like for the weather to be cold, for the whole world to feel aggressive and invasive instead of yawning happily like a planet-sized living room. On the schoolbus I was hot, and loved it, and loved also the idea of getting home and throwing open the freezer and stepping inside smiling. But of course, once in the cool of the kitchen and with a jam sandwich in hand such an idea seems miles away and silly, and anyway, even at that age I couldn’t fit in there.
…or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
Wait till you hear this one…
Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast
…my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism…is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (1994-05-01). Orthodoxy (Kindle Location 2291). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
When I was a teenager I listened to this Christian pop band called Newsboys, and one of my favourites was called A Beautiful Sound. Don’t google it, it’s terribly cheesy disco, but the lyrics revolved around the concept of rediscovering Christ. Being a compulsive bedroom-carpet-liner-notes-reader, I remember being struck even in – perhaps because of – the immaturity of my spirituality by the songwriter’s enthusiasm about how the eternal God is always new, that the human who seeks him can find a different taste of the same thing every time. Embedded though it is in the bathetic, this was profound realisation for someone raised with faith; that if I persevere in pursuing this God character, he might offer me something that nobody in history – including my parents and the people in the faith community around me as a child – has received from him. Makes sense that an eternal God can offer infinite novelty, right? I mean, the guy is so alive.
Meh, as ever, Gilbert says it best.
Peace and the King
Yahweh said to Samuel, ‘How much longer do you mean to go on mourning over Saul, now that I myself have rejected him as ruler of Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have found myself a king from among his sons.’ Samuel replied, ‘How can I go? When Saul hears of it he will kill me.’ Yahweh then said, ‘Take a heifer with you and say, “I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh.” Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I shall reveal to you what you must do; and you will anoint for me the one I indicate to you.’ Samuel did what Yahweh ordered and went to Bethlehem. The elders of the town came trembling to meet him and asked, ‘Seer, is your coming favourable for us,’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh. Purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ He purified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. 1 Samuel 16:1-5
The story begins in Bethlehem. On the road into Bethlehem, in fact. A figure limps toward the city, and the elders have scurried out to meet him, for it is the great prophet approaching. Samuel is an old man now, but his fame preceded him here. He still commands authority, even fear – the elders, great men in their own town, are reduced to an anxious shuffling of feet in the dust like schoolboys with full bladders. “Do…do you come with a message of peace?” one begins warily as soon as Samuel is in earshot.
Samuel sighs. It is not an unexpected question, but he has no easy answer. He has not come to bring judgement on the town, as they fear. Not exactly. He has come on a mission that brings him little joy, a mission that pains him. The Lord has asked him to repeat an action that has broken his heart before. Saul could have grown up to become a man of good standing like his father, perhaps a little hotheaded at times, perhaps showing flashes of impetuous malice as well as flashes of stubborn righteousness, but all of these restrained to manifest themselves on a medium scale; the odd severe punishment of a light-fingered cowman, the odd immoderate sacrifice at a high feast. An emotional man, but a man whose emotional decisions were unlikely to have huge repercussions. Instead, God called Samuel to install this man as king, and his erstwhile forgiveable flaws have been amplified. The tall, likeable son of Kish, the one who hid in the luggage pile to avoid coronation, he has become a paranoid, filicidal, warmongering tyrant. And now God is calling Samuel to begin the whole cycle again. Why not be done with this whole king business, Samuel has felt like crying. It’s an experiment that has failed; haven’t the people learned their lesson? You be our king! But the word of the Lord was clear: stop mourning for Saul and go to Jesse of Bethlehem, for one of his sons is to be king.
And in his cloudy prophet’s eye, Samuel sees shadows of what is to come of this; murder, betrayal, demon possession, adultery, witchcraft, suicide, plague, all framed by a backdrop of war and weeping. Do I come in peace? I feel like I have come to bring a curse on a young man, a curse that will froth over and scald the whole history of our people irreparably. Except…in the midst of all the mysterious darkness I foresee, there are pure, glowing droplets of the beauty of Yahweh. A kinghood of repentance and forgiveness. A kinghood of humble victories and dignified failures. A kinghood of music, nobility, starving desire for God. And beyond all this, somewhere in the far distance of the mind shines an even fiercer light, smaller than a bead but almost blinding to look at, a thousand years beyond this king, another…and shalom?
So do I come in peace? “Yes, in peace. I come to sacrifice to the Lord.” And all else remains unsaid, what this sacrifice may really be, and what this sacrifice may really bring about; a scandalous, unspeakable hope.
How can a Gen-Y kid keep his way pure?
If you’re under 30 and living in the West, skip to paragraph three; you’ve probably already discovered the new bad guy this week. If you are a social media refusenik, allow me to catch you up. Joseph Kony is an indicted war criminal who has consistently evaded capture and who, until this week, largely flew under the radar of mass media attention. On March 5th, an organisation named Invisible Children launched a phenomenally effective social media campaign, spearheaded by a 29 minute Youtube video, to raise the global profile of Kony and his painfully named Lord’s Resistance Army. Their strategy is to raise Kony’s notoriety in Western countries, leading to a military response by those country’s governments. To catalyse the process, the campaign plays heavily on the empowerment social media offers: in our generation, it stage-whispers, everyone is connected, so everyone can make a difference.
Invisible Children reportedly hoped to reach 500,000 viewers with their video. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter shares, they reached over 70 million…in four days. The popular response has been huge, but the backlash of scepticism has rivalled the scale of the “Yes We Can” euphoria. Concerns have been raised about the distribution of funds from donations, about a number of misleading simplifications in the video, and about the “white man’s burden” taste of the campaign. As a result, many well-meaning, thoughtful people have found themselves paralysed between two responses: throw in enthusiastically with Invisible Children with a blind eye turned to the inconsistencies and reportedly questionable ethics of the campaign; or accept the cynical blog posts, risking the guilt of knowing you have simply given yourself an excuse to believe the lie of charity’s futility.
In all of this I am moved to cry with the psalmist, “How can a young man keep his way pure?!” How do we, the overinformed generation, discern the right path, when every path appears tainted with the shadow of uncertainty or compromise? Thanks to today’s unprecedented flow of information and opinion, it is tragically easy to find sound reasons not to do what seems superficially good – to poke holes in the motives and efficacy of politicians, preachers and NGOs. But it is not so easy to find salve for the guilt of inaction. If there is no pure path, should one simply choose neither, and remain at the fork in the road? Surely that cannot satisfy the deep hunger for rightness that is set at our core, the echo of God in our being.
I’m sorry. I don’t have any clearer answer than the psalmist: a young man keeps his path pure by living according to God’s word. And the Word says this: I am to love the Lord with all my heart, soul and mind, and love my neighbour like I love myself. And the Word says this: I am a neighbour to the next battered, half-dead, naked man I find in the gutter of the road, regardless of where he is from; Uganda, Haiti, or the high-rise blocks I can see from my study window. And the Word says this: when I find him, I – me personally – I sling him over my own donkey and into my own life. I take him somewhere safe, I make sure he is helped back to health, and I pay for it. When I’m getting this guy to help, I don’t dump him off my donkey to make space for the next guy, who has had a sexier, trendier Youtube video produced urging me to get him out of the gutter, and who George Clooney is telling me to help. But equally, I don’t just cruise through life without dismounting my donkey, ignoring every gutter-dweller simply because there are too many of them, or because by helping them out of the gutter I might deprive them of the dignity of clambering out themselves.
So it seems that a young man keeps his way pure, not so much by choosing the right way, but makes it pure, by paying undistracted attention to the people dying by the wayside – whether they are dying physically or spiritually, whether they are rescued child soldiers or those without hope in our workplaces and our lecture theatres. I struggle and fail in this. I allow the abundance of need that’s out there to distract me from the needs I am called to attend to. I thank God for all the good neighbours that have bandaged my wounds and taken care of me, and I pray that I would become a good neighbour; that wherever I am, I would not let the people around me be invisible.
Is there room on your donkey for someone who needs sacrificial love, and do you have the fortitude to keep them on there until they are safe? Can we truly be neighours to those we are unwilling to allow into our lives beyond donations and Facebook exposure? Is it more important that we strategically figure out the most efficient way of loving people, or that we become Christlike by the determination with which we love the people around us?
The Great One
The Great One
This blog is in danger of simply becoming my personal ‘Best of NPR’ reel, but this is something that fascinates me for two reasons – passion, and hockey, which is probably my favourite American sport. I’m not always convinced by Malcolm Gladwell’s thinking, but in this interview he makes a pretty beautiful case for the idea that love for a thing is the foundation of what will make you a genius at it.
Why are people so hostile to the notion that what genius is is an extraordinary love for a particular thing? Why are we so hostile to the notion that what separates the genius from the rest of us is the genius loves what he or she does more than we do? Love is not the complete explanation, love is the way in.
Because Wayne Gretzky loves hockey so much, he thinks about it all the time, and does more than that, he engages the sport in a way that no one else has ever engaged it. There’s this thing that he famously did once, where he scored a goal from behind the net; he flips the puck over the net and it does a little thing and goes in. The reason no one had ever done that before was not just that no one could do it, lots of people could do it – it had never occurred to anyone else before, no one had engaged the sport on that level.
So why is Gretzky engaging it that way? Why is he thinking about it that deeply and creatively? Because he can’t get hockey out of his head. Whenever I encounter someone like that, I cannot get past that sense they give off that they have found their calling, that they are actively in love, almost in a romantic way, with the thing that they do. Absent that, you can’t be a genius, I’m sorry, you can’t.
- Malcolm Gladwell, paraphrased from an interview with Robert Krulwich, as heard on WNYC’s Radiolab.
Tragically, the internet comes up short when one tries to find a video of Gretzky performing this manoeuvre, but it happened.
It’s an intriguing path to go down…that we need a passion for an activity if we are to excel in it. An exception that comes to mind is Andre Agassi – my roommate is reading his autobiography, in which he describes how much he hates tennis, and was pressured into playing by his father. Nevertheless, it’s pretty much inarguable that passion clears a path to greatness, even if there are other paths. What interests me is the connection between passion and imagination. For me, a genius isn’t just someone who does something better than it’s ever been done before; a genius is someone who raises the standard for doing something because he applies an imagination to it that no one has applied before. Gretzky’s passion fed his imagination; he obsessed over hockey to the point where he mentally deconstructed the sport and remade it in a new shape. What does it cost us to invest so much love that we get to that point? Do we dare love enough to become geniuses?
Uneasy Rider
Recently, while listening to this, I read an amazing story recently, that begins with the words “When I was 21, I found out I’m H.I.V. positive.” Obsessed as I am with the art of storytelling, I thought I’d simply share it. There’s something very touching about the delivery of the story, as well as the story itself – a weird kind of tough delicacy.
Mike DeStefano was a very funny man, who swears like a champion – there are two truly great accents to deliver a four-letterer in and those are Glaswegian and New Yorker – and judging by this interview, he was also a man of some depth. I hope he’s in the right place.
Songs of 2011
In no particular order, here are my top 11 for the year ’11 (or as some people persist in saying, “oh-eleven”), based on nothing other than sentimentality and/or how much they make me want to dance in my chair. HEY – I want to hear your list too…
Bon Iver – Perth
I expected to love the new Bon Iver record. I did not expect to love the new Bon Iver record for its drumming. That’s why I chose this over the beautiful acoustic version of Beth/Rest he did on World Café; the drumming, that and the fact that the first time I was listening to this I was sunbathing on a patch of grass in the middle of Bilbao. Don’ hate.
Caroline Smith & the Good Night Sleeps – Tanktop
I basically know nothing about this singer/band, except vaguely that she has something to do with Cloud Cult, who I’ve only just fallen in love with. This is a belter though, similar in its repetitiveness to the Iron & Wine track, but it has this blend of dreamy fuzziness and just enough funk that I love.
Iron & Wine – Walking Far From Home
Kiss Each Other Clean was my biggest love at first listen record of the year, and this song was a nice reference point for someone living…far from home? Is that too gooey? Tree by the River might be better songwriting, but this one grabs you, the production variety mixed with the melodic simplicity, that high note…yuh.
Lupe Fiasco – The Show Goes On
The single was only just a 2010 release, but the album was 2011 so I’m going for it. And unless The Roots new album makes such an immediate impact on me that I need to come back here to re-edit and add a track in, this will be the only rap song on my 2011 shortlist. Shocker. This was a bit of a theme tune for our East Coast road trip, so don’t hate for such an obvious pick or for questionable recycling of a Modest Mouse riff.
Fanfarlo – Replicate
1.28 – best kick in of the year? I like rock bands who do it without electric guitars from time to time. That’s about all I have to say about this – it sounds a lot more complicated than it really is, it’s a stadium rock chamberpop thing Coldplay would have been happy with.
The Milk Carton Kids – Permanent
Best harmonies of the year. This is a very timeless track, I love that, that’s what I love about M Ward and Joe Purdy and I love it about The Milk Carton Kids, they could have been on stage at Woodstock. That’s a cliché right? But it’s nice to feel like there’s some sounds being made nowadays that have the authenticity to last.
Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
The title track, and the standout track, on what I thought was a pretty disappointing album. A youtube search indicates that he seems to only play this acoustic live, which is a shame, I think the band on this track is class, so here’s the grooveshark link.
The Alabama Shakes – Hold On
This might be a bit hotheaded; I heard this song for the first time just a few hours ago, but I can’t get away from it. Makes me think Black Keys, but somehow with some old Chess Records singer from the 60s…lovely.
Josh Garrels – Million Miles
All of a sudden we were all listening to this guy in like, May, right? I guess that’s what happens when you give a great album away online. I chose this track over Ulysses because it’s a bit less melodramatic, and a bit more varied in tone. Another great kick-in. I’m all about my great kick-ins.
LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem
Because if you didn’t find time for shuffling every day, then you’ve wasted a year. Did I mostly include this for the video? Maybe.
Foster the People – Houdini
I’ve included a lot of tracks for dancing to, and this one probably tops them all – yeah, including you LMFAO. That hook does the same thing to me as Sleepyhead; I still rate this higher than Pumped Up Kicks. Does for Casio keyboard brass what Halo did for Casio keyboard handclaps. Bravo.
Here’s the whole lot on a grooveshark playlist. Funny how little attention I paid to Coldplay, Radiohead, Kanye & Jay-Z’s release…well done 2011 for distracting me so much. What do you guys think?
Poem – “The Washing”
Anyone who was reading this time a year ago will know that autumn makes me go all woolly and smiley and sighy and acoustic-sessiony. Well today I was shuffling through everything that ends up on the ground on November’s first days and then I wrote a poem. Enjoy lads.
The Washing
Tuesdays are the autumn of my trousers.
Receipts fall, and tissues, sweetie papers,
red, brown, yellow, purple, white,
crunching happily underfoot with all
the satisfaction of the leaves who carry
memories of summer’s freshness to
the ground. Winter comes in quickly with
a light sprinkling of white powder.
Things That Sound Awful But Are In Fact Awesome #6391: Reading About Old Germans
There is something overwhelming about updating after such a long hiatus, something intimidating about this feeling that I will have failed unless I explain in a pithy 200 word paragraph absolutely everything that has happened in the past 3 months – I went to Spain then Scotland now England, by the way – with some thematic strand of insight threaded through it. So intimidating, in fact, that I’m not going to write about any of that at all, and instead I’m going to shoot from behind the cover of a book I read recently.
Nothing deep by the way – this is going to be some good old-fashioned blood and guts history fun. Ready? No? OK, here’s a picture of me eating a rainbow:
Living in colour
Now, it’s either more of that nonsense or you can read with me…claro?
Drinking bouts lasting all day and all night are not considered in any way disgraceful. The quarrels that inevitably arise over the cups are seldom settled merely by hard words, but more often by killing and wounding. Nevertheless, they often make a feast an occasion for discussing such affairs as the ending of feuds, the arrangement of marriage alliances, the adoption of chiefs, and even questions of peace or war. At no other time, they think, is the heart so open to sincere feelings or so quick to warm to noble sentiments. The Germans are not cunning or sophisticated enough to refrain from blurting out their inmost thoughts in the freedom of festive surroundings, so that every man’s soul is laid completely bare. On the following day the subject is reconsidered, and thus due account is taken of both occasions. They debate when they are incapable of pretence but reserve their decision for a time when they cannot well make a mistake.
This is from Tacitus’s account of the Germanian people, published in the year 98 AD. The book is in no way as academic as it sounds; chapters are in ¾ page-length chunks (which makes for excellent bathroom reading) and it reads like a slightly more sarcastic Horrible Histories, just straight from the Roman’s mouth. I thoroughly recommend it.
Even though on a cursory reading some parts appear a bit arrogant or racist, these often reveal themselves to be a thinly veiled criticisms of late Roman decadence – note his coupling of “cunning or sophisticated”, as if, to the Roman, these may as well amount to the same thing, with no space for such primitive concepts as honour or honesty. For Tacitus, greed and hedonism were crippling his beloved, once-great Rome. In The Germania he implicitly criticises his generation’s leaders, speaking of how “[n]o one in Germany finds vice amusing, or calls it ‘up-to-date’ to seduce and be seduced” and how “[s]ilver and gold have been denied them – whether as a sign of divine favour or of divine wrath, I cannot say.”
It strikes me that the model of decision-making in the extract above may be due a trial comeback period, especially in such a line of work as student ministry, where professional and social pursuits flow so freely, often confusingly, into one another. Certain questions come to mind though; does its efficiency transfer to non-Germanic peoples like Celts, Arabs or Native Americans? How consistent is the correlation between “the freedom of festive surroundings” and “noble sentiments”? And perhaps most importantly, what allowance is made for hangovers?
G’b'wi’ye,
PM
Read, or download for yer Kindle, Tacitus’s The Germania for free on Project Gutenberg, or buy a good old-fashioned dead tree version from the Amazonian Rainforest.
