Strange that God should draw closer
In the time you have been away
So that turning to Him should become easier
If it were possible.
Oh that I had walked the hard way,
But the paths are gentle now,
The view of hills, not mountains,
Cloud, not sky.
Monday, 14 September 2015
Monday, 16 March 2015
656 - Leaves Blown by Wind
Four and a half years ago, or twenty, depending how you count, I had a mental breakdown. It's like this: the tree you are, which is the tree you are nurturing, loses its leaves - young leaves, vibrant, signs of hope. There they go, scattered in the wind.
Let's say twenty. I was pursuing a career in the Church. I found out that I was not prepared to do what I believed God was asking me to do. Repeatedly I came to the conclusion that I was evil. I resolved to live what was left of my life away from the Church. I became a librarian; I married my beautiful girlfriend.
Twelve years ago, after a hallucinatory experience, I re-engaged with religion. I was cocky. I also grew isolated. Leaves swirl and eddy, gathering in piles, before they scatter again. Sometimes they form beautiful patterns, order, briefly, in some sense. I began to suffer from depression. I didn't notice it. My thoughts became wild and erratic, and I ignored them.
Four and a half years ago a tremendous wind blew the last of the patterns away. Depression and many psychotic episodes followed. The crisis team were called in, a regime of pills implemented. The days were filled with events overladen with significance. I found myself back where I was twenty years ago, repeating tropes I thought were long gone. My wife coped, because she had to.
There is a bible story about a king, Nebuchadnezzar, who dreams he is a tree. The tree is stripped and cut down. Only the stump remains. Nebuchadnezzar lives for seven years as an animal, naked and beaten by the elements. But through those years he is humbled and restored to his kingdom. I don't think I am there yet - I am still fixated on those leaves - but this story gives me hope.
One day I will find myself alive again.
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
Sunday, 26 October 2014
658 - Mistral
A warm wind blowing through Whitley Bay tonight. So despite the clocks going back this morning (by the way, I forgot) the town feels Mediterranean. A little bit.
Tuesday, 21 October 2014
659 - Back to Business
It's been a long time, and a lot has been happening in Whitley Bay. And I have been indulging myself on this blog and not writing about any of it.
Okay, sometimes I have. But mostly, recently especially, I've slipped tracks and written for and about myself, and that's not what this blog is for. This blog is for Whitley Bay. Exciting projects like the Big Local and the Station Master's Garden and the Whitley Bay Film Festival have been taking root. There's a food bank, and a venture to develop culture in the Bay called 'Under the Dome', which I have a small interest in. Friends of the Brierdene, with which I am also involved, albeit sparingly, dig weekly in a dene at the northern end of the bay. My wife co-ordinated a fabulous festival there last summer...
And so on. Exciting Church things too, but for all my preachifying I've not actually been involved in them.
Verdict on 'A Whitley Bay Thousand': Could do better. From now on I will attempt to.
Okay, sometimes I have. But mostly, recently especially, I've slipped tracks and written for and about myself, and that's not what this blog is for. This blog is for Whitley Bay. Exciting projects like the Big Local and the Station Master's Garden and the Whitley Bay Film Festival have been taking root. There's a food bank, and a venture to develop culture in the Bay called 'Under the Dome', which I have a small interest in. Friends of the Brierdene, with which I am also involved, albeit sparingly, dig weekly in a dene at the northern end of the bay. My wife co-ordinated a fabulous festival there last summer...
And so on. Exciting Church things too, but for all my preachifying I've not actually been involved in them.
Verdict on 'A Whitley Bay Thousand': Could do better. From now on I will attempt to.
Monday, 6 October 2014
660 - Adam and Eve
I'm not sure I understand the story of Adam and Eve. Mainly I don't understand why a loving God would load additional punishments on the two first humans besides death, which is I suppose fair enough, after they eat the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil. These include pain in childbirth and exile from Eden. Perhaps they should be considered somehow as death itself or inevitable consequences of death. But they do seem to be sprung on Adam and Eve after the event. I'm not sure I understand why future generations should have suffered either.
Why should this matter? It's just a story. But even if it is just a story it is the lens through which the New Testament makes sense of the actions of Jesus. If it is, somehow, true, then concerns like mine become problematic.
My second 'don't get it' is related. If God hadn't exiled Adam and Eve from Eden, He could presumably have forgiven them and given them the chance to make good their actions. Instead He waited two or more millenia, then allowed his Son to sacrifice himself.
Can anyone please help me?
Why should this matter? It's just a story. But even if it is just a story it is the lens through which the New Testament makes sense of the actions of Jesus. If it is, somehow, true, then concerns like mine become problematic.
My second 'don't get it' is related. If God hadn't exiled Adam and Eve from Eden, He could presumably have forgiven them and given them the chance to make good their actions. Instead He waited two or more millenia, then allowed his Son to sacrifice himself.
Can anyone please help me?
Monday, 29 September 2014
661 - Antonio Damasio
This man has written a book called 'The Feeling of What Happens: body, emotion and the making of consciousness'. I am excited to be reading it, because the ideas within it are so beautifully put. Here, for example, about the capacity of the conscious mind to hide as well as reveal:
"Perhaps it was easier to get a more balanced perspective in earlier times when there was no veil, when the environments were relatively simple, long before electronic media and jet travel, long before the printed word, before the empire, and ahead of the city-state. It must have been easier to sense the life within, when the brain provided a lopsided view in the opposite direction [to the present], tilted toward the dominant representation of the internal states of the organism. If it was ever like that, perhaps at some magic brief time between Homer and Athens, lucky humans would have perceived in an instant that all of their amusing antics were about life and that underneath every image of the outside world, there stood the ongoing image of their living bodies." [p. 29]
It would be fascinating to read the Bible on Adam and Eve in the light of this passage.
"Perhaps it was easier to get a more balanced perspective in earlier times when there was no veil, when the environments were relatively simple, long before electronic media and jet travel, long before the printed word, before the empire, and ahead of the city-state. It must have been easier to sense the life within, when the brain provided a lopsided view in the opposite direction [to the present], tilted toward the dominant representation of the internal states of the organism. If it was ever like that, perhaps at some magic brief time between Homer and Athens, lucky humans would have perceived in an instant that all of their amusing antics were about life and that underneath every image of the outside world, there stood the ongoing image of their living bodies." [p. 29]
It would be fascinating to read the Bible on Adam and Eve in the light of this passage.
Monday, 15 September 2014
662 - Nebuchadnezzar's Dream
This is a story about madness. It can be found in Daniel, chapter 4. King Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a mighty tree which is cut down, leaving only the roots and a stump, which is bound in iron. Daniel interprets the dream to mean that the king is to be cast out for his pride, to live amongst animals for seven years, unless he changes. The experience of being cast out into madness will, however, purify him - the stump will remain, ready to shoot again when he acknowledges 'that Heaven rules'. In the story this is what happens.
I draw great comfort from this story for myself, because it suggests that God will allow madness to intervene to prevent evil taking place, after which there is redemption. Nebuchadnezzar is not a Jew but a foreign king, yet this redemption is available to him.
That's how I read the tale, anyway.
I draw great comfort from this story for myself, because it suggests that God will allow madness to intervene to prevent evil taking place, after which there is redemption. Nebuchadnezzar is not a Jew but a foreign king, yet this redemption is available to him.
That's how I read the tale, anyway.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
663 - Jesus
I have a vision which I'd like to get out there; hence the return to this blog. It is of standing before Jesus, and He standing before me. He calls irresistibly to me, each aspect of Him calling to the corresponding aspect of me. How can I refuse Him? His strength calls to my strength, His body to my body, His mind to my mind, His spirit to my spirit, His heart to my heart, His soul to my soul. This patches the hole in me. I love Him.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
664 - Vandana Shiva Quote
Quoted in Pip Pip (Jay Griffiths, 2000):
The more effectively the cycles of life, as essential ecological processes, are maintained, the more invisible they become. Disruption is violent and visible; balance and harmony are experienced, not seen. The premium on visibility placed by patriarchal maldevelopment forces the destruction of invisible energies and the work of women and nature, and the creation of spectacular, centralized work and wealth.
The more effectively the cycles of life, as essential ecological processes, are maintained, the more invisible they become. Disruption is violent and visible; balance and harmony are experienced, not seen. The premium on visibility placed by patriarchal maldevelopment forces the destruction of invisible energies and the work of women and nature, and the creation of spectacular, centralized work and wealth.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
665 - Shrinking News
At the weekend E and I walked up to the High Street to find a cordon manned by the police blocking our way. The blue and white ribbon extended around the Northern Rock building, across Laburnum Avenue, around Subway, over the High Street to the Townhouse, and back to Northern Rock. Buses and cars were being directed as far away as Cullercoats to get around the obstruction.
We wondered what had happened. I leant towards armed robbery, E towards an electrical fault. But short of approaching one of the police to ask, there didn't seem to be a way to find out. Before the News Guardian comes out this Thursday, that is.
It took a bit of nebbing on Monday, in the end. I asked at the Co-op. Shrinking news. E was right, though the police had feared a gas leak at first. Some cabling had been disturbed and it could have been a gas pipe, but wasn't.
The cordon was down by the end of Saturday, but little plastic rag-ends remain attached to signposts at the street-corners, like old Christmas decorations. I expect they'll be there for some time.
We wondered what had happened. I leant towards armed robbery, E towards an electrical fault. But short of approaching one of the police to ask, there didn't seem to be a way to find out. Before the News Guardian comes out this Thursday, that is.
It took a bit of nebbing on Monday, in the end. I asked at the Co-op. Shrinking news. E was right, though the police had feared a gas leak at first. Some cabling had been disturbed and it could have been a gas pipe, but wasn't.
The cordon was down by the end of Saturday, but little plastic rag-ends remain attached to signposts at the street-corners, like old Christmas decorations. I expect they'll be there for some time.
Friday, 18 February 2011
666 - Resurgence
Yesterday I attended a small get-together with friends who have been inspired by Resurgence Magazine to try and reconnect with the natural environment. We wrote a poem together by linking phrases we had jotted onto strips of paper, then rearranged like fridge-magnets. It was an attempt to capture something of the tentative start of spring, the first light of the new season.
I walked home afterwards buzzing, but forgot to look up to see whether the Northern Lights were visible.
I walked home afterwards buzzing, but forgot to look up to see whether the Northern Lights were visible.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Thursday, 9 December 2010
672 - TV
Just wondering to what extent TV schedules throw up festival experiences in place of real life carnivalling. Participation in watching and water-cooler moments afterwards could be distant cousins to shared feast-days and acts of revelry like apple-bobbing or wassailing.
Monday, 8 November 2010
673 - Gerard Manley Hopkins Quote
She caught the crying of those Three,
The Immortals of the eternal ring,
The Utterer, Uttered, Uttering.
(from his poem, Margaret Clitheroe)
The Immortals of the eternal ring,
The Utterer, Uttered, Uttering.
(from his poem, Margaret Clitheroe)
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
674 - Ludic Self
Nice quote, Pat Kane, The Play Ethic: A Manifesto For A Different Way Of Living (2004), p.48:
"But the idea of a 'playful self', of a self that plays with its boundaries and masks, was birthed long before tricksy ad campaigns and postmodern theory. The clear starting point is Renaissance literature, and that list of writers - from Rabelais, Erasmus and Machiavelli, to Shakespeare, Donne and Marvell - who used their art to imagine a self that was not validated by Church, nobility or tradition. And their most favourite strategy was the ludic self - a literary persona that toyed with the very idea of being a single unitary consciousness."
Also, earlier in the chapter, a telling reference to the effect that the opposite of play is not work, it is depression.
And for the record, the chapter explores Brian Sutton-Smith's six rhetorics of play, which are:
"But the idea of a 'playful self', of a self that plays with its boundaries and masks, was birthed long before tricksy ad campaigns and postmodern theory. The clear starting point is Renaissance literature, and that list of writers - from Rabelais, Erasmus and Machiavelli, to Shakespeare, Donne and Marvell - who used their art to imagine a self that was not validated by Church, nobility or tradition. And their most favourite strategy was the ludic self - a literary persona that toyed with the very idea of being a single unitary consciousness."
Also, earlier in the chapter, a telling reference to the effect that the opposite of play is not work, it is depression.
And for the record, the chapter explores Brian Sutton-Smith's six rhetorics of play, which are:
- Play as progress
- Play as imagination
- Play as selfhood
- Play as fate and chaos
- Play as shared identity
- Play as contest
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