What I carry in my pockets

Today I discovered the old Hasidic saying that each of us should carry around two pieces of paper, one in each pocket. One piece of paper says "I am but dust and ashes": this is what I read when I'm feeling proud and self-important. But when I'm feeling worthless or ashamed, I read the other piece of paper, which says: "For me the world was created."

(With thanks to http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-butterflyfish-great-and-small.html)

An introspective string of words (Not again!)

Like a patient I come to you
Like a doctor you diagnose me

Introvert? Extrovert?
Intuitive, A Feeler

Likes to keep her options open
Must be a Perceiver.

Ahh yes...

You've worked me out now.

Placed ticks in boxes
Chalked up the score

Pin me up
Like a recipe, a list

A judgment pre-made.

But these letters, these percentages
This definition of me

What do they know of ...

Cool linoneum on hot dusty feet

The lifting of heart
When seeing a kite
straining against the wind

The blood sizzling in the brain
At an idea

winding its way through airless tunnels
straining for words
the breath of life

The jump in the pit of the stomach
Upon sighting a small bird at one's feet
Fearless

What does they know of ...

Weeping that doesn't stop
with the coming of dawn?

Does it remember the barely audible roar
Like a beast in pain

The quaking within
What can you do with this humanly beast

Does it know of the waiting
Waiting for the remaking

Grant me death
So that in the drowning of life
A new creature might begin

There will come a time
When this brokenness will no longer contain

When the sunlight shall stream through my veins

I will not be contained


I will hold on
I will wait

My favourite blog of 2010

Alright. I've been keeping this hidden from you - yes, all of you, numbering four, who subscribe this silent simulacrum of a blog...

But I think I'd better share. (And, in fact, I have emailed posts to one of you already.)

My friend Arthur linked me to an article from this blog http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/and I've been hooked since. It's a veritable treasure-trove of all my favourite things: theology, German writers, fiction, writing, philosophy, literature ...

I don't agree with everything, but the writing is so seductive and pungent that I am often tempted to agree with it, just to have the joy of form and content cohering into one perfect happiness.

But disagreements make one think harder, and it's a pleasant business.

Check out the series of 3 gelato stories, and generally the entries in "August 2010", which includes some poignant reflections on writing from Flannery O'Connor, Rowan Williams, and my favourite, the moving entry "On Theology and Friendship."

The Visual Mixtape on the Behance Network

These be rather cool posters.

The Visual Mixtape on the Behance Network

Musing

This shall be my shortest post ever. Here's a question:

I wonder if reading the Narnia series' particular brand of mythopoeia as allegory is reductionistic and ultimately stagnating. What do you think?

Three-Dimensional Human Beings

Well, the posts here have been few and far in between. There's a lot of reasons for this, I suppose, when one sits down to think about it. I'm often very tired and my brain is mush; I haven't much time for reading and reflecting, and, in generally, don't have much time which isn't taken up with work, or friends/family, or just sleeping.

Perhaps it's a sign of intellectual rigour (what little muscle I had!) gone to flab. More positively, perhaps I am spending more time "out there" in the real world, with people, than sitting at home in front of the computer by myself.

In the final analysis, however, it boils down to "I ain't got much to say."

I do seem, however to have ample time to check Facebook, post articles, and click through the various albums of "a friend's friend's cousin's little sister's photos of her trip to that hip bar in Boronia."

Hmmm!

The internet is taking over my life!

While there's merit in just taking time to unwind, and allowing your brain to rest by clicking through a collection of cool photos on the internet, there comes to a point where you're simply wasting time. (Sounds obvious, huh?)

I've been mulling on the words of writer and English professor Alan Jacobs. On the enormous amount of internet "sharing" (blogs, FB updates, Flickr &c.) and passive online consumption that goes on, he comments:

What is necessary, I think, is for all of us to be engaged in some activity that challenges us, that tests our intellectual limits. For some people that might be reading Tolstoy, while for others it might involve writing code or learning Klingon. But as Lanier says, “You have to be somebody before you can share yourself,” and being somebody is an achievement. It requires intentional labor, and a degree of personal ambition — and anyone can work and strive, though some have farther to go than others. But a lot of fooling around on the internet is just that, fooling around: it doesn't test our resources or stretch our capacities. In many cases that’s fine, because we shouldn't be working all the time: but even if fooling around on the internet really does somehow increase social creative capital — which I have no reason to believe — it doesn't achieve a damned thing for the person doing it.

I ain't got nothing to say, because there's not much of me that is solid, and substantial.

Jacobs is a Christian, and no doubt hidden behind this statement is also a theology of humanity, that sees the inherent richness in each person - beyond personality, beyond mere intellectualism - that comes when we lose ourselves in Christ. He who created us knows that we are beyond a body to be fed, a functioning participant of society. We are ourselves, fearfully and wonderfully made, and there is no-one like us. Only, paradoxically, one must give away blindly, throwing 'self' away, to receive the mind and likeness of Christ, and in him made fully ourselves. For who knows us better than God who made us, "intentioned" us in our mother's womb?

Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. - CS Lewis.

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. - Jesus.

On Revivals and History Lectures

Tonight I attended the annual Charles Perry lecture at Ridley College. Named for the 1st bishop of St. James' Old Cathedral, the lecture series began in the 1990s; was abandoned some time after; and was then resurrected last year, with its inaugural speaker being no less that the Scottish historian David Bebbington.

The purpose of the lectures is for evangelicals to reflect and learn from their past.

As we were celebrating the 100 birthday of Ridley College, the lecture this year was on the state of evangelicalism in Victoria in and around 1910, with a particular concentration of the revivals that were happening around this period.

There was a lot of stuff going on - dates; references back to revivals in Britain and the US in the 18th and 19th century; influential figures who travelled to Australia ...But what I got out of the lecture were 2 things:

- Revivals happen because of prayer. "Extra-ordinary Prayer Concerts" was the phrase often employed to describe committed groups of Christians, gathering together regularly to pray specifically for God to work. These prayer meetings often lasted for years, before seeing fruit in revivals. They were also serious commitments. The Moravians, for instance, took shifts in praying, so that they were literally "praying unceasingly" day in, and day out.

- With regards to theology, all the leaders of the great revivals (Wesley, Edwards, Whitfield et al), had a sense of following in the footsteps the theology of the Reformers of the 16th century, without emendation. There was, however, one additional point which proved crucial: they were all deeply convinced that what happened at Pentecost with the Apostles could, and indeed, should be replicated in their current situations, within their community of believers. Their understanding of the Holy Spirit and what he could do in the present day was therefore paramount to fueling their revivals.

I came away from the evening with a deep sense of the power and need for prayer, before we come up with any strategies for how we do mission, or evangelism, or attempt to "transform the world for God."

Of course, the lecture raised more questions than it could possibly answer. Being a total ignoramus when it came to revivals, I wanted to know what exactly constituted a revival? And how do we measure, historically, what was a period of revival or not?

What is our theology of the Holy Spirit? Should we plead for revival now? And why didn't the 16th Century Reformers go for revivals, Day of Pentecost style? (Actually they were probably preoccupied with clearing the air re: Salvation by Faith alone - which the 18th century benefitted from).

******************

For someone who was reading the lecture out word for word, the speaker was quite engaging and clear in his presentation. However, the lecture would have confirmed the general suspicion amongst the populus, that, while history is Very Important and We Need to Know about It, the past is entirely and utterly Dull.

I hasten to add, that I doubt I could have done better with the material - dense and statistical - but it did lead me to ponder what makes a good lecture, and, in particular, a good history lecture.

Here are some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. judicial use of visuals: Speaking about historical figures is always so much more interesting when you chuck up a portrait or two, and there are so many wonderful paintings if you're in the right period.

2. ditto audio material (I once attended a lecture on Elizabethan England at the beginning of which the lecturer gave us a fine baritone rendition of "Greensleeves". It was relevant too!)

3. beware of chronology, for it's likely to slip into "and this happened, and then this person did this, and then this happened."

4. include funny anecdotes and quotations to "colour" the past (and because the truth is always stranger than fiction).

5. indicate at the beginning of your lecture the lay of the land - what you're going to cover, splitting the history thematically, if possible.

6. explain why you're covering the ground you're covering, and wherever possible, help make analytical links for your audience.

7. be excited! History is a great and exciting story, about real people, real passions, and often situations that no fiction writer could dream up. Tell it therefore as the ripping yarn that it is.