fool's paradise?

I’ve been thinking about travel recently... probably due to future decisions but also from various things I’ve read in the last few weeks on blogs/in books:

Chesterton: “He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things... Travelling is a fool's paradise.”

Emerson: “Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from... But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home.”

Andrew Sullivan (who quoted the guys above) puts it this way: “Seeking new superficialities at the expense of familiar depths is a neurosis, not an adventure.”

While I understand where these writers are coming from, reading these quotes just goes against everything I thought growing up. Travel is sort of in my blood and my philosophy is usually with Augustine who said: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” I have treasured the opportunity to live overseas and travel some... but I think especially in the first few years I was back in Northern Ireland, I had a sense that people who had never been out of Northern Ireland could never begin to understand me or the world; looking back it probably was me that was being narrow-minded by putting people in boxes. I’ve come to realise it’s more about whether people think about the world/things outside themselves rather than whether or not they’ve travelled. And to be honest, short-term teams and sun holidays often do little to broaden horizons – (although seemingly living somewhere else can make an impact on creativity).

Then I read this yesterday:
“I’m sure that some people serve the Lord well as they buzz around the world for six months at a time. And I’m sure some young folks are making a difference for Christ as they float from job to job and place to place. But I’m equally certain that many of these same individuals are actually making self-centred decisions in the name of experience, cultural diversity, and sometimes, I hate to say it, under the guise of short-term missions.... My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is, “How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?” I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians avoid long-term responsibility and have less long-term impact.”
P36 Just do something, Kevin DeYoung

Anyway, food for thought. Don’t think the itchy feet will ever go away but just trying to make a case to myself for the other side of the argument...

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.

end of an era

So, it’s the end of an era. Thankfully. I endured, I mean enjoyed one last night of the Bot... the centre of the Belfast student world (and you thought it was a university?), along with the bizarre conversations you have when your friends are wasted. I felt like I wanted to go and just see my class people one last time before we all scatter/emigrate/etc. The night began at a mad house party in the notorious Holylands (where council people arrived mid-party to tell us to shut up – rightly so...). And then to Lavery’s (?!) to hear a culchie band from Co. Tyrone who are friends of friends... not my cup of tea but was amusing! Then to the Bot where it was lovely to see everyone, but you had to shout in each other’s ears or else be content with the smile and nod approach... although to be fair, we all were saying the same thing ie: good to be done, what are you doing next (no idea) etc, so you could get away with the nod/smile even if you couldn’t hear!!! I lost my voice in the process though. Give me a quiet pub any day. Maybe I’m just getting old. Then about 12ish, a friend and I decided to head to another classmate’s house for a couple hours to catch the end of a quiet barbeque, beer and chat with a random mix of interesting people – much more my cup of tea. It was a good, celebratory night in the end, even though I started out dreading the Bot part - it is still a whole different culture that I have never come to properly appreciate and don’t think I ever will but sometimes when in Rome and all that....

I have made a few good friends that I hope I can keep. Sometimes friendships are easy when you see people most days for four years.

And so to the start of summer, the month of research for one of my lecturers in June (not quite away from the university yet, but at least it’s paid!) graduation no2 and then to whatever’s next!

In the short term, 2 books just arrived in the post and Donegal is beckoning... not a bad start to the rest of my life.

prayer is...

the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage.
(George Herbert)

I've been mulling over this line for a couple weeks and I love the imagery both ideas portray... one of imperfect, spontaneous even rambling expression, trying to communicate something of our worship, desires and confusion to our Creator. The other of journeying with purpose (and often with others) - looking back along the road with tired feet and weary minds, yet with wonder and thankfulness; looking forward with humility and a sense of dependence for each step, seeking guidance and grace along the way....

ordinary sunday...

"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it." (Gilead)

emotions: positive v negative

I found this Atlantic article on happiness so interesting.... (thankfully the conclusions are mostly not easy pat answers... ie: we're complicated!!) but here's one part of it:

“...positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.”

It makes me think of two other thoughts:

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." CS Lewis

And from Foy Vance’s Two Shades of Hope...
“Now hope deals the hardest blows
Yet I cannot help myself but hope”

For some reason I’m more hopeful these days... I think it’s because I’m just about to enter a new chapter of life, which fits with what the article says about positive emotions being more ‘future-oriented’... but it does sometimes seem wonderful and terrifying in equal proportions.

random reminiscing

I had a lovely dinner last night with 6 random people from my Queen’s days... random but in a good way! It’d been five years (almost to the day) since I’d talked at any length to most of them so we had a proper catch up and put the world to right.... everything from cheesy jokes and legendary quotes... to conversations about the beauty/struggle of ‘doing life’ with the people around us. In a letter my friend sent organising the dinner, she said it was to “mark these past five years... and freely look ahead with hope and faith for the next five years, longing for more of what God has for us all and this land...”

We’ve all gone in different directions, from designing sewage works, to teaching physics, to training to be a minister, to the Belfast music scene, to Newry solicitor, to getting married/engaged, to journalism, Kansas and back again, (to *ahem* still being a student)... but it was great to just touch base, even if it was a bit of an unlikely group of people round a dinner table!

Here’s to the next five :)

patches of sunlight

"We - or at least I - shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have 'tasted and seen'. Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are 'patches of Godlight' in the woods of our experience."

CS Lewis, Prayer: Letters to Malcolm Ch17

(Ok, so I know just posting a quote is blatant lazy blogging... but I love them... and YAY for sunshine and experiences in life to taste and see that He is good...)

the birth and death of the day

So my ticket has just arrived in the post! Explosions in the sky, Sept 6. Don’t ask me why I bought a ticket for something in September when I have no idea where I’ll be by then. Part of me doesn’t like the idea of not knowing and so maybe having a date in the diary makes the next few months less daunting.

Anyway, I’m excited already.... Wahey! I blogged about them 2 years ago, but it’s taken them a while to make it to Belfast. Mousemutiny (who says they’re amazing live) says she might even come from texas for it... (prettyplease?)...

If you haven’t heard of them, go listen on spotify. What’s not to love?

2 song titles seem appropriate today....
The long spring and With tired eyes, tired minds, tired souls we slept.

But my two favourites at present:
The Birth and Death of the Day & Your Hand in Mine

rough edges

One of the things I don’t like about blogging is that I love handwritten things (except essays in exams and the scrawl in hospital notes...) but I love the idiosyncrasies and variety in handwriting. A few years ago I started ‘journalling’ of sorts on the computer... but I had to return to the proper journal and pen again... it just seemed too clinical or something.

For comparison’s sake, I’ve typed half the quote below, and written out the other half... does handwriting seem more real, more personal, less aloof, less predictable even if less convenient? Maybe like Christianity.*

"...the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity which leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. CS Lewis, Prayer: Letters to Malcolm Ch14

*While this analogy makes sense in my head, it’s a bit random...and it’s been a long day, so if the paragraph above doesn’t make sense after you’ve read the quote, just ignore it and take what you want from the quote itself!

true

grace, community - these two words keep coming up in things I’m reading...

“There is in true grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving, thirsts for more.” Thomas Shepard

“In true community we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives.” Henri Nouwen

unremembered skies

This got me thinking about memory/memories... In my psychology degree (which seems so long ago now), I had whole module on cognition that looked at all the processes of memory and recall, but looking back it all seemed a little reductionist.

Marilynne Robinson writes that ‘memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it’.
Sometimes that seems true for me about my memories of Nigeria. However good the memories are, they are sometimes tinged with a sense of loss and many painful goodbyes. Sometimes I think that many of my memories (especially as a child) are shaped by photos, but we usually don’t take photos of the depressing days, so does this give an inaccurate record of what we remember?

This is one of my favourite family photos from our early days in the south of Nigeria. It must have been a Sunday because in those days my sister and I only wore dresses (and shoes for that matter) on a Sunday. My dad’s so skinny too... when we returned from Nigeria after the first two years my aunt cried when she saw my dad because he was so thin! Guess I blinked. And yes, I looked like a boy... blame it on my mum’s haircutting... she says it was so short because of the heat, but seriously, I was called ‘fine boy’ in the market for about 3 years of my life... or else I needed my ears pierced like all other Nigerian baby girls...
--
Or is it the forgetting, but not wanting to that brings the sense of loss? Dylan Thomas writes...

"My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from some magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snows."

And Robinson again on remembering people we love...
“There is so little to remember of anyone – an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

Anyway, back to the short term memory cramming...