This picture is Florence Morel - whose relational network crumbled when her 16 year old child disappeared while out partying, and was later found murdered. OK, it's a movie, but the close-up images as she navigates the trauma illustrate how a carefully composed face easily hides the real life behind it. How do we get behind a face without threatening others? How do we allow others to see behind ours when we're scared of being vulnerable? We might encounter tears, painful stress-raising blood pressure, or a deep unshared excitement hovering just below the surface. If we could see behind the face we might avoid a lot of hurt and embarrassment. Instead we blunder on blindly ignorant how our words touch emotions while we ourselves get taken in by the miss-direction of others. We're complex creatures shaped by nurture and nature, living an intricate web of experiences. To know someone requires a deep investment in their lives. Yet daily we meet new people and leap to conclusions about their lives, happiness, and stability -- most often when there's an incentive to maintain a façade. Two prime examples are cocktail parties and visiting a church -- both are risky face-to-face encounters fuelled by assumption, decision, and deception. A cocktail party puts the individual the focal point with the intent to show that "everything is good with my life, see how wonderful I am". This carries the threat that our inadequacies may be exposed as we strategically flit from person to person with our smiles and trivial chatter (seasoned with carefully dose of self-promotion). And the only resources we have are our face, our wit, and our appearance. Church? Visiting a church is risky because, of necessity, this requires some self-exposure. By it's nature church should be the opposite of a cocktail party, but sadly it isn't. If anything, people become even more guarded (and they don't even have the benefit of alcohol to help lower their defences). Entering a church is an implicit statement of self-subjugation to a "higher power" (as people fearful of God like to call him). This threatens us with possible exposure as a "sinner", and so up go the barriers. If we're not careful we may find our lives being probed by strangers ("So where are you from, what do you do, are you a believer?") or facing the routine of a beaming welcoming team ("So lovely to see you. Would you like to fill out this information card? The membership forms are over there"). The normal response is to firm up defences, compose our faces, hide the weaknesses, and approach life as if it were a 24-hour cocktail party. That's rather depressing. Why can we not, as T.S. Eliot put it, accept that “It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are." (the full passage is at the end of this post)? As Oswald Sanders observes, "More failure comes from an excess of caution than from bold experiments with new ideas." The first step is surely to examine how much we've committed to composing our own mask of confidence, and as a result spent little effort on empathizing with what’s behind the faces of others. Take for example Brian Douglas, who is a pastor in the USA (and apparently votes Republican - how does a Christian vote republican - isn't that a vote against the poor?). Douglas observed that members of his congregation were supporting Donald Trump, and realized his ability to pastor these Trump supporters was limited by his inability to empathize. Similarly, Cassie Curtis, a writer, speaks of the pains of 'singleism' as she recounts how people so easily miss-categorize her - they miss-read what's behind her face. The second step is to consciously decide to step away from all the bullshit of social deceptions (watch the video below). The third step is to have compassion. The fourth step is to respond. And then the fifth step comes when I realize I'm not very good at doing any of this, acknowledge my inadequacy to sustain my efforts, and say to God, "OK, so I need some help here" (that's actually the real 1st step - isn't it always!). Excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s 1949 play, The Cocktail Party
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are. You will find that you survive humiliation And that’s an experience of incalculable value. That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost The desires for all that was most desirable, Before you are contented with what you can desire; Before you know what is left to be desired; And you go on wishing that you could desire What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand. How could you understand what it is to feel old? We die to each other daily. What we know of other people Is only our memory of the moments During which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same Is a useful and convenient social convention Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. There was a door And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle. Why could I not walk out of my prison? What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone. Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle To think well of themselves. There are several symptoms Which must occur together, and to a marked degree, To qualify a patient for my sanitorium: And one of them is an honest mind. That is one of the causes of their suffering. To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence. I must tell you That I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me -- Because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong With the world itself — and that’s much more frightening! That would be terrible. So, I’d rather believe there’s something wrong with me, that could be put right. Everyone’s alone — or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I’m sure they don’t. Is that a delusion? Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations? Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable? Then one is alone, and if one is alone Then lover and beloved are equally unreal And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. I shall be left with the inconsolable memory Of the treasure I went into the forest to find And never found, and which was not there And is perhaps not anywhere? But if not anywhere Why do I feel guilty at not having found it? Disillusion can become itself an illusion If we rest in it. Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them. There is another way, if you have the courage. The first I could describe in familiar terms Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it, Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us. The second is unknown, and so requires faith -- The kind of faith that issues from despair. The destination cannot be described; You will know very little until you get there; You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession Of what you have sought for in the wrong place. We must always take risks. That is our destiny. If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning. All cases are unique, and very similar to others. Every moment is a fresh beginning.
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In "Voices" I talked of how I was struggling to make a decision about the future, and in "Voices from the dead" I talked about how the past steers us into a future.
This thing called the future: what is that? Is this the future where we joke "No, I am not single. I am in a long distance relationship because my boyfriend lives in the future"? Or is it the future where we despair "The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess"?(James Thurber). As George Burns said, "I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life." Its no surprise that we want to hear voices from the future. One organization (futurecoast.org) started capturing voicemails from possible futures - peoples ideas of what life might be like in a climate changed world. Strangely, rather than apocalyptic depression the voicemails mostly capture ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems under extraordinary pressures. Think: We exist in the instant that is continuously destroyed and created anew. Our present is forever a moment of decision, never anything else. We think we choose to make a decision about the future, but the present is really only a decision trying to create a future. We could choose not to choose, but that is also a choice, for the instant is always filled with choice. Even though our memories may be a guide to a future, yet neither the past nor the future exist in our instant of choice. That's all quite bizarre: I have free will, so when I make a decision I'm creating the future. But didn't God create everything? And doesn't God know the future (for those aware of that debate, I should be clear that I'm not an advocate of "open theism"). It's complex, isn't it? Either we have free will and a future gets created by our choices, or the future is fixed and I have no free will. Well, on all practical grounds I am convinced I have free will. So I create a future. But God knows that future, so ... ... hang, I'm confused. I accept that as a finite being living in a (probably) infinite universe created by a God who exists independent of the universe, then there's things that necessarily remain a mystery. We can experience the mystery, we can even describe it, but ultimately there will always be some mystery that we cannot understand. So it is, I believe, that its a mystery that a God knows the future that I have yet to choose to create. (Isn't thinking fun?) But for all that, I still have to live in the instants, and make my choices, and it'd be really, really nice to have some information about the future to help me choose. Knowing some things is easy: the world is going to get a lot hotter before I die - that's a certainty I can count on. But will the UK Brexit? Will Trumps ego implode, or if not, will he be elected and take the USA into an era of isolationism? Will Zuma take another wife? And will I meet my work deadlines this month? Not all information is relevant, and if relevant not all information is significant. The information I really need is the information for my choices. Here I have a problem, because I, myself, and me often argue. But if I listen instead to others who say things I like, well then I'm standing in an uninformative echo chamber. Conversely, I could listen to those who disagree with me - that certainly broadens my perspective - but everyone thinks they're the good guy and that their view is right, yet how do I know that? For months now my instants have been filled with decisions that have only served to defer a decision about leaving my Church. Finally I decided, and now my instants are filled with decisions about a "church next" future, and whatever that may involve. Of course there's been a myriad of other decision-instants (not instant decisions) that have dealt with all sorts of issues - but all have been decisions forming a future. God was quite good at helping out here by giving me a sense of reality, a lodestone, a reference. Because God's voice is inherent in the fabric of the instant, from his creative joy visible in the world (which, by the way, we're doing quite a good job of destroying) to his love seen in relationships - God's voice echoes all around. But I don't want only the echoes and the generalities, I want the specifics for my instant. Some of the specifics I already know, but sadly often try to deny. For I know good and bad, right and wrong (most times), but sometimes I ignore the fact that I know so I can choose what I want. The real challenges are those choices where there is no obvious right and wrong, and here is where I need a voice from the future. In deciding whether or not to leave my church of 12 years, I made a decision that shapes a future. If I stay, some people in the church would have a different experience to if I left. And certainly my own future is shaped hugely differently by whether I stay or leave. And so the instant of choice will determine the future I create. Not having an audible voice from the future whispering in my ear, the options were to weigh the voices of others, consider my memories of what we like to call the past, and to envision what the futures could be. Then, and this is the critical step, to give these to God and say "You know the future my choices will create, so please let me know which one gives peace". Because he told me not to be anxious and to let my requests be made known. Then he would give peace that passes understanding, i.e. the mystery. So I tried. I did all that. Then in one of those instants I weighed everything up and decided to write a letter. After I wrote the letter, I asked, "Am I at peace so far?" And having considered that, in my following instant of choice I pressed "send" and created a new future. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” [G.K.C] In "Voices" I alluded to the cacophony of voices that have (till recently) had me in a state of indecision (about which I will come to another time). In "When a church dies" I wrote "The church is not designed to be stuck in 17th century architecture with 18th century lyrics and 19th century organs using re-worked 20th century liturgy ... The church is made for change; we've clothed it in a straitjacket" However, as G.K.C. points out, tradition is the democracy of the dead, so who are we to arrogantly supplant their views? But think about that for a moment (this blog is about thinking, after all). A cursory response to G.K.C.'s point would be that we should not fight the traditions in church, instead we should embrace it with open arms. To that I cry a whole hearted "Yes", and with a loud "No", I reply. For there are two issues to consider: the permanence of the past and the fluidity of the future. The past is present in tradition, it is the very stone that forms foundations. But not all foundations are firm - we have to test them for their solidity - because foundations dictate the building on top. Is the Victorian tradition of child labour a firm premise? How secure are the values that give us the subjugation of woman's rights? Such foundations only dictate relative values of power and preference. They give us Trump'ism blowing whichever way the ego leans, deviancies insisting on normalcy, and every minority view clamouring for legitimacy. Solid foundations, on the other hand, are trans-generational, accepted as truths that can be trusted, and move us from preference to the practical. If firm foundations are a legacy from the democracy of the dead, and if these are to frame the fluidity of our future, then we need to say "how would the dead choose to vote?" A presumption that their vote today would give us the practices of yesterday is fallacious and dangerous. To explore this we need to think about how the dead voted. In the first centuries of the church they creatively developed structures and practices based of the creativity of Jesus' life. These helped ground the church in a world of divisions and desires. Then things went off the rails; dogma became dogmatic, and rigid power hungry popes turned the church into a rule of oppression; radical inquisitions and impositions that suppressed the vibrancy of the Spirit, turned woman into witches, thinkers into heretics, made the sun go around the earth, and turned sins into marketable goods to create a business out of belief. Then life broke through like a germinating seed, and pushed back these brambles to give birth to renewed expressions: Luther, Wesley, Finney, Murray, Edwards, Whitfield, and more. Pub tunes became hymns, decorum was disrupted, and theology revived. These outpourings became captured in the writings of thinkers and soon great works emerged on which the church as we now know it was matured. From this have emerged new tensions. As the church of today wrestles with relevance, what value does the democracy of the dead hold? We must differentiate first between the dead who voted for rigor mortis, versus the dead who voted for taking the church into the streets. If we allow the voices of the radically dead (versus the oppression by deadly radicals), what would they vote for today? I think it is clear: they would vote to turn the church upside down, inside out, and around and around. They would stand on the first foundations that are firm, and creatively construct a new expression that takes the church to where the people live. For those who still look for Christian community in the traditions of the institutional church, then "Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick." It's not the tradition of the institutions that makes firm foundations, is the foundations of a church alive that make firm traditions. That is: a tradition where the secular get sanctified. To do that requires the sanctified to drop the barriers that push away the secular. Who was it that said "be in the world but not of the world"? To be continued ... I'm emerging from a long period of indecision amidst competing voices ... Do you ever get captured by a voice? I don't mean the voices in your head (although I admit that I, me, and myself like to talk to each other). I'm thinking more of the attractive lilt of Scandinavians speaking English. Or of an Irishman waxing lyrical. Or a singer so embodying expression that you can close your eyes and see the emotions. (Conversely, some voices you'd wish would simply shut up because they're showing something you'd rather not see!) Your voice gives visibility to your soul ... now there's a scary thought. Authors are encouraged to find their voice through how they build words into towers of imagination (but what do tweets reveal?). Photographs speak of the photographer's fixations (and what do selfies say?), while artist's paintings and musician's notes are the whispers and shouts of tortured creativity seeking an escape. A voice is our creative mix of inflexion, tone, volume, accent, timbre and tempo in whatever form it may take. Your voice has power to effect change. What does God's voice sound like? I'm not referring to the whisper that Elijah heard, but the voice that reveals God. For if words are the voice of the author, paint the voice of the artist, and melody the voice of the musician, then what is God's voice? to be continued ... Some different types of "voices" that made me stop and listen.
See them play it here ... look at the voice in their faces: https://youtu.be/bAtPeX6Xuxo
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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
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