work & dreams

It’s transition time again! I’m starting a physio job (temporary!) soon so I’m finishing in the wee nursing home I’ve been working in. Besides wrecking my back, it’s been good & I have enjoyed being able to help take care of people well. Definitely have had a sense of satisfaction in it for which I’m thankful and I might be back depending on physio job outlook! For now, I'm excited to start my first physio job! :)

I’ve been reading a few different books recently... one of them, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, was recommended to me by a friend on a climb up Ben Nevis in the summer, but I’ve only just got around to reading it. It has great insights as to how what we believe can shape everyday life... the glorious outworking of faith in creation, history & community. A couple quotes...
“God’s great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be. God deals with us where we are and not where we would like to be...” p75

Peterson also talks about the idea of ordinary life lived in light of eternity but I found the way he explained this so helpful:
“...ordinary time... is a gift through which we participate in the present and daily work of God... end time influences present, ordinary time, not by diminishing it or denigrating it but by charging it, filling it with purpose and significance. The end time is not a future we wait for but the gift of the fullness of time that we receive in adoration and obedience as it flows into the present...”

Today, I’m thankful for purpose in the daily work and dreams of my common life...

laughter and forgetting

Just finished an interesting book that has so many quotes that I want to try and get my head around. Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting sounds lovely and rosy... but most of it is anything but. I've been thinking about this quote...

“Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:
(1) An elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
(2) A high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
(3) The absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life....
But by a backlash, the effect affects the cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside.” P127

Could you substitute the writing books with writing blogs?? Useless activities? Isolation? Wall of mirrors?

Although it is talking about life in communist Prague, reading the following cynical quotes I couldn’t help thinking about the conversations in Irish/UK politics at the minute about the abuse and expenses scandals...

“...like all political parties, like all peoples, like mankind...they shout that they want to shape a better future, but it’s not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past.” P30
“The struggle of a man again power is the struggle of the memory against forgetting.” P4

Anyway, not sure if I’m recommending the book (as slightly disturbing) but definitely thought-provoking.

blood river

Just started another book last night... (why do I always read more when I’m putting off doing my actual work?!). But I got sucked in! It’s called Blood River – about a journalist who decided to follow the Congo River in the same way that explorer Stanley did decades before. It’s fascinating reading. Definitely brushing up my African history which should be better than it is...

He captures the sense of adventure, the risk, the hassles and the people he meets along the way while trying to understand the complexity of the region’s painful history and current conflicts. Anyway, I haven’t finished it yet. It’s kind of depressing in many ways, for obvious reasons. It’s places like DRC that I think the world forgets about, like we’ve heard it all before. 1200 people die every day?! The author does a good job of trying to explain the link between colonialism and the present day conflicts/economics which I’m finding helpful and his descriptions definitely draw you in.

I wonder, though, if people from DRC read the book would they agree with his thoughts on it? As someone who grew up in Africa (albeit a much calmer part) I still get annoyed when people make sweeping generalisations about how things are and why unless they’ve actually lived there for a while... Even though I know the situation in DRC is pretty grim, does this kind of book just perpetuate the myth of Africa as the heart of darkness?

just another patient?

I’ve just finished a book one of my lovely doctor friends gave me for Christmas. I’ve actually been meaning to read this book for ages – it was recommended by one of my lecturers 3 years ago during an in-depth discussion about caring for patients with communication difficulties and the perspective of the patient. It’s called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly written by a guy (the former editor-in-chief of Elle) who had a massive stroke and could only communicate by blinking one eye – that’s how he dictated the book. It’s a reflection on life (past and present), his relationships, emotions and thoughts in this ‘locked in’ world. Some of the most interesting parts for me were his impressions of the hospital staff...

“...gentle, rough, caring, indifferent, hardworking, lazy, the ones you can make contact with and the ones to whom you are just another patient. At first some of the staff had terrified me. I saw them as my jailers, as accomplices in some awful plot.
Later I hated some of them, those who wrenched my arm while putting me in my wheelchair, left me all night long with the TV on, let me lie in a painful position despite my protests. For a few minutes or a few hours I would cheerfully have killed them. And later still, as time cooled my fiercest rages, I got to know them better. They carried out as best they could their delicate mission: to ease our burden a little when our crosses bruised our shoulders too painfully...”

It reminded me of a quote I read in one of my ‘required reading’ articles a few months ago... “One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient” Francis Peabody 1927

I'm back to the hospital world on monday :)

sense of sweetness

Tim Keller in his book The Prodigal God (great book!) quotes Jonathan Edwards saying:

“The difference between believing that God is gracious and tasting that God is gracious is a different as having a rational belief that honey is sweet and having the actual sense of its sweetness.”

John Owen talked about this head/heart perspective this way:

“When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth—when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us—when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts—when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for—then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men. And without this all our contending is, as to ourselves, of no value. What am I the better if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense of sweetness in my heart from hence that he is a God in covenant with my soul?”

Here’s to 2009 – a year I long to have more sense of that sweetness...

Gilead

I just finished a book tonight called Gilead. I was one of those books I didn't really want to finish because I've been meandering through it a few pages at time over the last few weeks and I just wanted to drag it out a bit longer. I loved it. It's a book about beauty, grace, memories, family, love... mixed in with thoughts on age, death, regret, heartache, loneliness... It's written as a letter from a old pastor to his young son as he approaches the end of his life.

Here's a couple quotes I read tonight... (it's not all this intense!)

"There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it be subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"

"There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparant, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. 'He will wipe the tears from all faces." It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required..."

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. It think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us...to make ourselves useful."

Anyway, read it if you get the chance. It's was the perfect book for a night like mine - a quiet night in a cosy room with christmas lights. It made me laugh, cry, think and hope. The best combinations.

scribbled notes and old photos...

I learned something about my grandfather this week. I knew he was a man of God and man of prayer, but I think that I missed out on a lot of his wisdom by growing up 1000s of miles away from him. He died the year I moved to Belfast. This week, I raided his bookshelf (a trait I picked up at home). The thing I've discovered (which I love) is that my granda's theology books are full of wee scraps of paper and backs of envelopes that he scribbled notes on as he read, which are still scattered through the pages. I feel like I'm retracing his steps, seeing what resonated with him as he read. It makes me wish I had known him better.

One scrap reads, "the danger of introspection p19..." which led me to this marked quote:

"Our thinking about who we are as Christians should not begin with what we can discover about ourselves by self-analysis. Rather, it begins with what God says about those who trust in Christ."

Sinclair Ferguson's Children of the Living God

And underlined and written again at the top of the first page of the next book is scrawled, "union with Christ is the root of holiness" in J.C. Ryle's Holiness.

Speaking of the past... loads of old images/photos (from 1750s on) from LIFE have now been added to google... Here's one from belfast in 1941:

A view showing the junction of Royal Avenue and Donegall Place with the City Hall in the background. Photographer: William Vandivert

emotions

I had a great conversation over coffee with a friend today. We were talking about many things, but we started discussing emotions and faith. The psychology-freak in me probably makes me over-analyse on this one! This is what we discussed: I wonder if sometime we think that negative emotions are always seen to be a bad thing that we have to get sorted in order to be right with God/people? Do we say I’m down/angry/depressed at the minute, but I’m trying to get back to normal... (what is normal? coming from a psyc degree, we’re all on a spectrum anyway!) And sometimes, don’t you think that it is often our deepest, negative emotions that ultimately can draw us closer to God and point us to real hope. Maybe that sounds like a contradiction, but it’s just been something I’ve been thinking about over the summer too. It stems from two books I’ve just read: The Consolations of Theology which looks at various topics such as anxiety, depression, obsession, disappointment, pain etc from the perspectives of some great theologians, and The Cry of the Soul by two guys my dad studied with (here's one review). Some quotes to help explain what I mean:

“Anxiety is not something to flee from; but it is here, in the midst of the anxiety that is built into the fabric of our fallen world, that we can hear the promises of the gospel most sharply. It is here I am summoned to believe, to stake my all on the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. -Kierkegaard

“In an important sense we must despair of all else in order to wholeheartedly rely on Christ and what he has done for us.” – Martin Luther

“Despair is an absence of hope – a loss of desire in the face of disappointment in relationship. Oddly, however, this difficult emotion can open the heart to grasp something about a hope that transcends mere human relationship. Despair can open the heart to taste hope in God.” Allender & Longman p145

“Don’t assume that resolving your turbulent emotions is the key to meeting God. It is actually within the inner mayhem of life that a stage is built for the intrusive story of His light and hope. The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation.” Allender & Longman p27

I guess I’ve had one of those emotion-filled weeks... mostly negative. I’m not saying we should want to cling to those negative emotions, but I think I need to realise that in different seasons, it’s normal and maybe in the midst of when I’m struggling the most, ideas like grace and hope become so much more real. It’s completely different than some of the songs I remember singing as a child: like, climb up sunshine mountain/i’m in-right out-right upright downright happy all the time... What kind of crazy theology was that??

It’s back to a Spurgeon quote to round off this thought:
“What is my desolation? It is the black setting for the sapphire of His everlasting love.”

waiting with murray

I hadn’t heard much about Andrew Murray until this summer. And I’m not talking about the tennis player. I drove past a statue of him in Wellington, South Africa this summer on a mini road trip. Then he was the answer to a random question in a South African Trivial Pursuit game played in a wee backpackers. (We played for hours huddled up outside with our blankets and hot water bottles in Oudtshoorn, SA - the ostrich capital of the world apparently... I also learned the important information that day that ostriches eat stones!) The third time Murray came up was on my dad’s bookshelf in Nigeria. I always raid my dad’s hundreds of books when I’m at home and this summer was no exception. I read a book called Waiting on God by Murray (which I discovered is only one of his 240+ books). Much of what he said resonated with me. It seems like he had such a heart for abiding in/waiting on God... Talking about waiting he said this:

“This is the one thing we need. If we but saw our God in his love, if we believed that he waits to be gracious, that he waits to be our life and to work all in us—how this waiting on God would become our highest joy, the natural and spontaneous response of our hearts to his great love and glory.”

all hype?

I've just finished the book The Shack... a book that seems to have had instant success in the US (NY Times bestseller/sold 1.7 million copies etc) and has been hotly debated all over parts of the blogosphere over the last year. It's recently been released here so it will be interesting to see if it will make any waves. I have to be honest, the only reason I read it was to see what the fuss is all about....not the best motivation! (Curiosity & controversy = successful marketing?). Conclusion? I thought it was just ok. Because I went into reading it with my sceptical hat on, I found loads of things that didn’t agree with; but maybe that meant I didn’t get into the book as a story/work of fiction. But to be fair, it is a theological perspective weaved into a very basic storyline (in my opinion!), so that’s how I read it. I appreciate some of the ideas the author wanted to put across about the God of love, the importance of relationship (not religion), not putting God in a box etc, but it only tells part of the story and I think parts of it incorrectly. I’m not going to expand – there are many, many reviews out there if you want to know more.

If people are reading it like it is an accurate revelation of what God is like and see the book as spiritual guide (ie: prayer of jabez fiasco etc), then I’m worried. If it’s another book that people read to critique / not swallow whole and to promote a healthy discussion about life/faith, bring it on. I’m not going to recommend it, but to be honest, I’m not going to say don’t read it either (unless you have no idea what you believe about anything - in that case, I'd start somewhere else!).

surprised by sunshine

This was the perfect way to spend a morning - reading in the sunshine at the park five minutes down the road. (so far, good book by the way...) Sometimes I think I forget that Belfast can actually be really beautiful when the sun shines...

AND, not just either / or

I’ve just finished a book called Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be). Having read a few books recently by authors in the emergent movement, I felt like I wanted a different perspective on some of the things I was reading. (This book is more about emergent than emerging.) I think this book tried to give an honest critique of key issues - while commenting on many positives they are honest about some problems they see. Some things they discuss include: the idea of a journey without a destination, if doubt and uncertainty should really be seen as humility, the emergent view of modernism, the need for propositions, boundaries, and recognition of theological error, problems with “give me Jesus, not doctrine” perspective, an over-realised eschatology, the emergent view of scripture, the place of preaching, penal substitution, God’s wrath and much more. But I think they manage to join the ‘conversation’ in an often humorous, but humble way. You can check out part of the book on their website here. And here are a few reviews from various sides: Tim Challies, Dan Kimball and theooze.com.

In the last chapter (the best I think), one of the authors reflects on the churches in Revelation and highlights the need for emergent and non-emergent churches to be careful not to be lopsided churches; learning the beauty of AND, not just either / or:

“...my hope is that [the church] could be marked by grace and truth, logical precision and warmhearted passion, careful thinking and compassionate feeling, strong theology and tender love, Christian liberty and spiritual discipline, congregational care and committed outreach, diversity without doctrinal infidelity, ambition without arrogance, and contentment without complacency...I believe this is God’s vision for the church.” p257

cry, the beloved country

It’s so sad to read about what’s going on in South Africa at the minute. On this day 14 years ago, Mandela said this in the opening of parliament in 1994:

"Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual. We must construct that people-centred society of freedom in such a manner that it guarantees the political liberties and the human rights of all our citizens." (speech at the opening of the South African parliament, Cape Town 25 May 1994)
His dreams of a peaceful rainbow nation seem a far cry from the reality of the last week. Growing up in Africa, violence that often accompanies deep-rooted tribalism is all too familiar - unfortunately. It makes me think about this quote from Paton's great book, written about a different time. But it may still resonate this week in the fears of foreigners living in SA:

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.” — Cry, The Beloved Country, Chapter 12.

After establishing relative peace and unity in government between the two sides of the community, the attacks start to become against the migrant population... does this sound familiar.. ie: here?

morality?

I thought that this was a terrible opinion piece in The Guardian today regarding the debate in parliament this week. I guess that’s what it is though – opinion. At the end of the article she writes with a depressing, sweeping brush implying that “religious teaching” is against science, is not progressive, does not care about relieving suffering, and that it abuses minority groups... such a misrepresentation of faith. I find it interesting that the morality argument has been taken up by both sides of the argument with Gordon Brown saying that the research was an “inherently moral endeavor”.

With the passing of the “saviour siblings” part of the bill today, somehow I can’t help but think about a book I read a few years ago called Never Let Me Go - a very far-fetched strange book by Kazuo Ishiguro which presents a hypothetical world with cloning for the purpose of providing organs. But somehow there may be echos of the same issues in relation to the ethics of someone being created for a specific purpose of the health of another person. But again in the debate today, the moral argument was used with Labour ex-minister George Howarth saying: "There is a powerful moral argument in support of the measures contained in the Bill.”

It has got me thinking about the relationship between morality and religion. Coming from my psychology background and having Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene as a core text for one of my classes has introduced me to the evolutionary perspective that generally people are dominated by ruthless selfishness (with the possible altruistic action if it benefits the individual). The question is, as I read about these politicians giving their moral arguments for these laws, it makes me wonder if it really possible to be moral without being religious or having some basis for that sense of objective morality?

In trying to think through the issues, I came across this article asking whether we can be good without God – here’s an excerpt:
“I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.”

I guess would rather have a politician who is still has some sense of moral objectivity rather than moral relativism but somehow is the debate today, both sides are claiming the moral high ground.

alone and community

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone..."

"Only as we are within the fellowship can we be alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship."

"The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us."

Just some thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together that I read recently. He understood the need to both be in community and yet still to be able to be alone... I'm craving community at the minute and just feel like I'm floating a bit. But at the same time, I have so much to learn about being alone before God... learning the freedom to be alone...

"What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more."

-Robert Murray M'Cheyne

The Road

Just finished a book called The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I only bought it on Saturday but it has intrigued me... so I had to finish it quicker. It’s one of those books that, on the face of it, is completely depressing, with no sense of hope or direction or even clear storyline. But it manages to still show beauty through the use of language and the depiction of the relationship between a father and son. In a funny way, it is a case of reverse psychology. By presenting a world that is mostly terrifying and ugly and a future that is utterly bleak, it emphasises the few portrayals of goodness. It also makes me reflect more on the wonder of our “real” world and maybe even makes me think about the hope of heaven in complete contrast…

McCarthy writes… “All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain.”

I went for a walk along the shore when I finished the book today. I think that the sea was that little bit bluer and the world even more beautiful than I remember…
The song on the radio is blaring Biffy Clyro’s line… I’ve forgotten how good it could be to feel alive…

moondust

I'm nearly finished reading this fascinating book, Moondust. It's a journalist who goes in search of the remaining nine moonwalkers... to learn how their lives, and ours were changed by this surreal adventure...

One quote that made me think... the author is asking a question that he thinks we all ask in some way...

"do i stick with life as I know it, be happy and content with the considerable challenge of appreciating and improving that, or shoot for the moon and risk being dissatisfied, finding that it wasn't what I expected, or that nothing else can ever match it afterward?"

**

the moon was really bright last night... and reflecting on the water... maybe i only noticed because i've been thinking about the moon...

time

there were two games played today that i was interested in... unfortunately only one of them went the way i wanted but it has to be said that the last 10mins of both matches proved to be crucial. ireland's heart-wrenching loss to france in the last minute (after all the hype about it promising to be a historic game at Croke Park) and arsenal's saving-face comeback from 1 down to win 2-1 to wigan at the emirates. who says sport's not exciting?



on another note, (although related to time!) i've decided i want to read some nigerian authors (maybe due to a bit of nostalgia as well as finding a friend's blog who is very into her nigerian literature...) so have just ordered a book called 'measuring time' by helon habila. Here's a review in the guardian for it... should bring welcome distraction from learning my cyriax's assessment of the peripheral joints...