My sister accuses me of being sentimental; hardly an accusation as I freely admit it, although I'd prefer to say I'm a sentimental rationalist.
When I was small ... not long enough for my feet to reach the end of the bath ... I would lie in the water for hours at a time. Often I would read a book end-to-end as I periodically topped up with hot water, my skin wrinkled, and a cup of forgotten tea would slowly go cold. Other times I floated with my head balanced on the back of the bath, and told myself long, detailed, and fantastical made-up stories. Eventually my mother would march in and order me out, to which I would respond "Just a little longer, let me finish telling myself my story". Since that time I've grown long enough for my toes to reach the end of the bath, but not much else has changed; I still like to tell myself stories in the greatest of detail. Granted, the stories are no longer about being able to fly or travel in time, but my stories still imagine the possibilities of "if", and are still plagued by the same recurring problem. The problem is this. I'd get trapped in finding ways to make sure the story was consistent with the laws of nature, or at least the laws as they existed in my story world. Many times my stories would never get finished because I ended up investing so much time in making up explanations for how it was possible for me to fly, or how the paradoxes of time travel could be reconciled. As a child this usually meant I invented whole new branches of imaginary physics and worked through all their interconnected consequences. But at least my imaginary world was consistent! (I once tried to write a story for my daughter, about the Oëbble Goëbble man, but after a hundred pages or so the story had barely moved forward because I was so bogged down by the multitude of footnotes, diversions, and explanations that I felt needed to be included ... I must finish it.) This issue was and is important to me, because it gave my fantasy a possible reality, and it allows me to interpret my experiences of the true reality. Perhaps this is why I became a scientist. As an adult I still have this problem. My reality needs rationality. I don't have to be able to understand everything, but I do need a system of reasoning that consistently fits the facts. If an explanation is not consistent with the evidence, then I won't trust it. I want to know how things can be true when all the intelligent idiocy in this world moves my emotions. All these stories (nightmares?) that we daily live out, I want to know how they can be real. The rationalist in me wants to make sense of it, and to understand the rationale for what I see and hear. For example. How is it be possible that the richest 62 people have as much wealth as half the world - that story is almost as amazing as being able to travel in time. Or, what laws of nature could let someone like Trump come within striking distance of the presidency? In which fantastical world do people deliberately undermine the global economic system simply to benefit themselves as they hurt others? Why are there so many religions? What is sex? Which system of twisted thinking makes people support Zuma? What does it mean to say "There is a God"? I want to know if there is a rationale to all this, for there is certainly an emotion. I don't expect to have to like the explanation, because "like" is merely a transient emotion rooted in incomplete understanding. But I like truth, so the more I understand what is true, the more I will feel the "like". In my childhood I created worlds with natural laws that any sane people would say are unreal. Yet, in this life there seems to be real natural laws that people want to call unreal. But in this case their unwillingness to accept is not because the laws are the product of imagination, but because they are desperate to find an explanation acceptable to their sensibilities. Many simply generalize the unexplained into an insipid "spirituality" ... but such relativistic spiritualities are full of internal contradictions. That is what is not acceptable to me - they're too contradictory to be true. And so to the biggest story of all (to me): my life! What laws of nature and super-nature give the reality to my experience. My working thesis is this: there is a God who exists apart from the physical universe, and this God has a personality. I've searched for this God, but the personality is inconsistently expressed in every religion I've explored, except one. All the institutions of religion seem merely to be fragile lenses that distort whatever truth may be behind them. Even atheism doesn't satisfy, and is probably the worst "religion" to explain the evidence. I find only Jesus is (disturbingly) able to integrate the apparent paradoxes of life, and does so by reconciling perfect love and perfect justice. Many reject this because the solution is unpalatable to their incomplete understanding, and they let their emotions lead them by the nose into self-defined realities that have about as much credence as some of my bathtub fantasies. I don't fully understand Jesus - far from it. But I have yet to find inherent contradictions that would collapse (t)his fantastical story - it bears the mark of consistency with life. The laws of (t)his nature are fully compliant with my experience; the suffering and injustices, the pleasures and the people, all the evidence is reconciled.
1 Comment
(this morning was Déjà vu - all the same old issues came up again)
This morning someone told me about her friends - all her many spiritual-but-non-religious party-going social circle friends who like to play at "deep" philosophy while they pretend to be on top of life - these friends don't like to go to church because, to quote, "it makes them feel dirty". It made me think about their race. It's an odd race, very much like Alice’s Caucus Race. Most people are running in parallel races with no finish line. For many its running after looks, success, wealth, fun, drugs, sex ... we know the litany, because we've all tried to sing the chorus. We understand its the common nature of this life; to invest in looking good, achieve peer-accredited success, grow wealth, have fun, experiment with drugs, hop through each other's beds. Its the same old race that's been going round in circles for centuries; no prizes, no rest, no finish until we die. Not surprisingly this same society is fixated on Oprah-type palliatives of mysticism and self-help books that focus on providing relief from the symptoms and stresses of running after who-knows-what. Palliatives work; so why not try and relieve pains with pleasures, because basically we running till we die? So here's a problem; most people running the race, if they're brutally honest, would admit that the momentary pleasures do not compensate for the persistent pressures; is my body looking good enough, what accomplishments can I crow about, and which bed is next. In reality its a race along an endless beach with beautiful views to the left and the right, and endless sand before and behind while we carefully watch each other as we pant from exertion. Any thought of stopping for a moment, or of going for a refreshing swim is quickly suppressed by the awareness "but everyone else might get further ahead." Further along where, may I ask? More sand, more beach, more sunburn, more sand rash? So these people don't like church because it makes them feel dirty? Ok, I'm not surprised given the sad way most church engagements are constructed. So now what? Well, at the very least let's genuinely empathize with the fact that people are tired, people are troubled, and people feel a pain even though all the make-up and clothing and gym time and job achievements might cover it up nicely thank you very much. That solution does not begin with going to church, it begins with the people who also happen to go to church. It begins with the individuals who are running a race that is not parallel to everyone else. In fact, these people are running a completely different race; its a race that is orthogonal - at right angles to the rest of the world - a race with a finish line, a race that runs straight into the ocean. Some have got wet their feet, some are in it up to their shins, some are to their chests, and some are swimming strongly. It doesn't matter where they are in this race, it matters only which race they are in. But these runners ... the ones running into the ocean ... well, many of them don't recognize that they're running straight through the crowds of Alice's caucus race. Instead a triumvirate of idols (place, past, and programme) seems to undermine their ability to recognize these words: "Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, non-religious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message [about the different race]." If you're one who doesn't like church because it makes you feel dirty, you have my deepest sympathies, because I agree that for many its a discomforting place even at the best of times. Yet if I meet you somewhere else, can we talk about what's behind all that? And if you meet someone running the same race I'm in, why don't you talk to them about alternatives to this endless quicksand you're running on before you fall flat on your face.
Music comes in all forms, not only the audible. There's music in action and motion, in words and images, and even in body expression. Music is heard in how situations develop, and is even made by the pressures of stress. Music permeates our lives with discords, strident clashes of noise, singular notes, and a droning dirge. In my post "Wading" I've epitomized my dominant experience of 2015, yet this fails to reflect the singular bells of pure notes, for like a scarlet thread there remains an ever-present melody of grace fighting to be heard. Here's a reflection on the sound of 2015.
I started 2015 optimistically, enjoying my self and perhaps presciently quoting Melanie Penn's "Shadow of doubt". I followed this with a post on "isms", notably on mystics and mysticism. This has been an emerging undercurrent as I've become disillusioned with how readily people will substitute a nebulous fell-good massage of their conscience for the hard reality that is life. These beginnings translated into both workspace and personal life. On the one hand I was wrestling with the ills of the politics of climate change and multi-generational suffering, and on the other hand trying to think through the role of a Christian in a world gone wrong. Both aspects are rooted in the same issue; who am I before God? Once again I found my thoughts and feelings expressed through life's music, like in Jenny and Tylers "Faint Not" By now the stage was set for the year, and I quickly wrote my way through ideas about Liberal Theology and institutionalized religion, reacting to platitudes that avoid reality, considering the hard grey decisions about marijuana and sex (and including at the end Gray Havens' multi-faceted song "Gray Flowers"), as well as touching on the political stupidity around climate change. And that was only January! These grew into what seems to be the recurrent 2015 sub-themes:
But all the time was this meta thread; reality is not what I say it is, reality simply is. As is my penchant, images and music remained a hugely evocative (and obtuse?) way to capture thoughts when words fail. I don't know how many who read here saw what I saw in the images I used (e.g. here, or here), or some of the music I included (e.g. here), yet for me there are so many helpful layers of meaning that only await someone taking time for contemplation. By the time it was approaching mid-year my life was an entangled web of stresses. There was too much travel, pressures of work, and a growing anger at the intransigence of the church to get to grips with inner-city reality. While I tried to find a positive conclusion in each post, this was a depressing time amplified by perceptions of idiocy. By the time July rolled around I had a head full of frustration. Yet the ever-present music (see the double meaning there?) still kept my mind from drifting into a void, and led me to include songs in posts such as the one from Katie Herzig at the end of Anger. At this stage of the year I was blog-bottoming out, and after a few splashes of rhetoric trying to capture my thoughts on spirituality (here, here, and here), I basically stopped thinking much while I did battle with the immediacy of needs. Music in all its forms ultimately broke through and came to the rescue once again. In Nov I re-emerged into blog space to frame some words to my thoughts, and twice included Katie Herzig (again) with her songs "Lost and Found", "Walk Through Walls" and "The Best Day of Your Life" in a post titled "What's your face say". December arrived, and I began to think again. "Wading" was an attempt to capture how I felt about the year's experiences ... mostly about the church, but paralleled by the work place. This is my favourite post of the year and simply rolled off the fingers; almost as if it were saying "Finally, you're typing me". The year closed on a note of "let's think again"; a new start to reflect on things (e.g. Fathers, and Metrics). At the end of the day I write to think and think to write, motivated by the models of Hadassah and Mordecai, as therapy for hubris, and to crystallize the deceptions of the mind. If others find value in these words, all the better. Now 2016 has landed like a lump of wet clay embedded with a structure to guide my blind fingers. Happy New Year. |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
|