Tune-in:fall-back
It was my second to last Monday drumming session today, and it really surprised me how my skills on the Djembe and Dun Duns have improved. The knack in playing African percussion is to be able to concentrate on many different things at once: the rhythm you’re playing, the tonality of your notes, the constant beat that determines the speed you play at, the other parts that your friends are playing, and what the lead drummer is calling for the group to do. When you play Dun Duns (the bass drums) you do all that and have two separate tasks: the cowbell and the Dun Dun parts. The thing is that once you’re able to do this, you don’t notice that you are doing it any more than you notice that you are breathing, or the sheer complexity of coordination that is required when we walk. When you start thinking about it things start going wrong – I can easily compare this to when I walk: as my ankles naturally try and turn in, when I start concentrating on walking I start to be less graceful and have even been known to trip over. When this happens you loose the rhythm – the only way to regain your former pace is to stop, take a few breaths and start again with a clear mind. This is also what I do when I loose my place when drumming, stop a little and just let myself fall back into the rhythm.
It’s a bit like this when leading worship as well – I find myself multi-tasking: lyrics – are they clear?, emotion – gotta mean it (as Eddie Izzard pointed out, Christians must be the only people who can sing Hallelujah! like it’s a funeral durge), face – keep smiling =), spirit – where’s it leading us?, prayer – time to add it, congregation – are they motivated?, worship – am I actually doing it? Sometimes I get caught out, and there’s this stumbling block – suddenly things don’t seem as natural as they did before. The thing is, as I’ve finally realised, all that really matters is that I’m worshiping and having fun: once I’m in the swing of that everything just seems to fall into place. It’s not just about not worrying over tomorrow, but it’s about not worrying about right now either – just fall back and let the rhythm take you. Suddenly you’re in tune with the world around you.
It reminds me of the Nooma called Rhythm (11).
In this Nooma, Rob Bell talks about being in tune with God and with life – it can be really easy not to be, or to be out of rhythm. I really like this video, not just because of the words but because of the music played – to me it says: chill out, relax, slow down – and once you do everything just seems to fall in to place. I’m not going to repeat what Rob says because I’d much rather that you actually watched the video – the music and the way that the talk’s been put together is like that for a reason.
Tuning-in is not about reading your Bible every day, it’s not about how often you say the Lord’s Prayer, it’s not even about how often you go to church – tuning-in is about relaxing, falling back and letting everything click into place. Once that happens you feel God’s presence, all around – just being with God, listening to the rhythm of the world is so much better for the spirit than going to Church three times a week. It doesn’t even have to be for a long time. Just: fall back, listen, then let yourself catch up with the world around you. You’ll find that everything suddenly seems much less of a struggle.
Drive-by Baptism: all the rage
I must say, the last thing I expected when waiting for the bus was to be hit by a water-bomb that had been launched from a passing car. Not so much The Godfather as Bugsy Malone. I had to make my way home with a soaked lap – though it causes some interesting ideas.
You see it all the time, street preachers who believe that the best way to show people the love of Christ is to shout at them and shove it down their throats. “REPENT NOW!!!!” they shout “OR BURN IN HELL!!!!” I don’t know about you but I’ve never felt such tactics to be effective. I prefer the more subtle ’show-and-tell’ or living by example approaches – having seen the consequences of evangelist mobbers first hand (many of my secondary school friends were almost permanently put off Christianity because of negative encounters). It’s not that much of a step to imagine people lugging water balloons filled with holy water out of car doors – the ‘I’m going to baptise you if you like it or not’ approach. If the place where I got hit didn’t hurt so much I’d find this concept funny.
Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say for today as I’m rather tired and my neck is rather stiff from too much head-banging yesterday. Ow.
No Trainers!
In preparation for tonight’s youth congregation (cafe worship) my friend and I opted to spend the day watching movies (specifically Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – arguably the two best Harry Potter narratives of the lot). Ok, so maybe we weren’t preparing and were just watching the movies – but that’s what we claimed we were doing when some of our young people turned up TWO HOURS early to the venue. As previously mentioned everything is interconnected, and watching those movies did aid us later on in our discussions – more on that later.
Well, anyway, we were watching the two movies and exchanging comments – such as how you wouldn’t act suspiciously if you were found at a crime scene, wouldn’t completely ignore the fact that HUNDREDS OF SPIDERS were gathering around you, and (most importantly) when you’re running into a hidden chamber that contains a deadly monster and the heir of Slytherin, you DO NOT throw your wand away as you run towards the person you’re supposed to be rescuing. Honestly. Don’t even get me started on the inconsistencies within Prisoner. Probably the most suspect thing within Chamber is the diary though. Both Ginny and Harry trust this diary, despite the fact that it a) knows about the chamber of secrets and has turned up just as all the hullabaloo is happening and b) is able to talk back (kind of like a wizardly version of msn). I shake my head. The problem is that this trust is something that I encounter pretty much every day at drop-in. Some of the young people allow random people (who they have never met) to add them on msn and then proceed to chat to them, give them mobile numbers, etc. And I can’t tell them more than to ‘be careful’ because I’m not supposed to be reading over their shoulders – it would be a betrayal of trust, and if anything bad happened they might not come to me for help.
Harry’s constant downfall is his abundance of trust, which considering his upbringing and past experiences is quite worrying. I may just be cynical, but even with a stable and happy upbringing I wouldn’t be as trusting as he – though I may be more forgiving. (The constant betrayal of his trust is, of course, the path that leads towards his disillusionment and angst.) The problem is that this trust seems to be cultural, we may be the most ’street-smart’ generation yet, but there’s still an ironic misplaced trust that you’re safe because of that knowledge. If I were Harry, and knew that Voldemort was trying to regain power via my death, I would not act as recklessly without thinking my actions through thoroughly. The young people at drop-in don’t seem to understand that the danger that they get taught about is very real. They live in their own little bubble where they are the centre of the world. Harry’s different in that respect because he actually IS the centre of his world. He’s also a book character.
Our session today was about choices, and how the choices we make have consequences that define our futures and also who we are. We started by watching the ‘red-pill/blue-pill’ scene from The Matrix, where Neo is offered the choice of forgetting all that he has learnt about the Matrix in favour of a happy life of oblivious-ness, or of realising his potential and breaking free of his slavery. There is, as Morpheus says, no going back once the pill has been taken – almost like eating from the Tree of Knowledge in Eden. This scene offers a similar choice to that of The Great Feast in Matthew 22 – you can choose to ignore the invitation and continue to live your own life, or you can attend the biggest party of all time. In Matthew 22, however, just attending is not enough. To stay in the party, and not be a gate-crasher, you have to follow the dress code (as Stringfellow would say: No Trainers!) – you must fulfill the conditions to get in (in this case wearing the ‘washed-clean’ soul that we get by following Jesus – this is His party after all: if you’re not His friend why should you be welcomed?).
After having this quick discussion, we moved on to playing a bit of a game – we read out some moral dilemma scenarios and discussed what everyone would do in each situation. After that we watched the ‘it’s not our abilities that show what we truly are but our actions’ scene from Chamber, following it with a short study of The Parable of the Talents – it’s not what we’re given but how we choose to use it.
You’re invited to a party – choose to follow the dress code, you won’t regret it.
Happiness is a fish…
Ok, so interesting title but we’ll get there in a moment…
Recently my friends and I have been compiling a list of our Top 100 movies, which has gradually expanded and is at over 200 at the moment. All this is in preparation for a ‘Faith and Film’ seminar that myself and my fellow gap-worker are headed to next week (the two of us and a whole load of clergy watching movies then having deep and meaningful theological discussions – fun, eh?). We started ‘ideas shower’-ing the list at Christian Union on Tuesday, writing about 30 movies on the classroom’s whiteboard and (instead of watching ‘Bruce Almighty’ as we had planned) we decided to play the link game.
For those of you who haven’t played the game before, it goes like this: The game follows the principle that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is/are interconnected. The aim of the game is to prove this by picking two random objects/people/songs/etc. and then link them together via common denominators in the least number of ’steps’ (this game is also known as the ‘Teneous Link Game’ in some circles). Well, this week we decided upon movies – stating that all our favourite movies must be interconnected in some way via actors/directors. It works. Take, for example ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ and ‘Blues Bros’:
The Day the Earth Stood Still-(Keanu Reeves)- Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure -(George Carlin)- Dogma -(Alan Rickman)- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – (Christian Slater)- The Name of the Rose -(Sean C0nnery)- Time Bandits -(John Cleese)- Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle -(Drew Barrymore)- 50 First Dates -(Dan Aykroyd)- Blues Bros (8 steps)
Needless to say, there are probably other ways to make the link, perhaps some with less steps than we came up with – Have a go, it really is a lot of fun.
Well, anyway, the ultimate idea that arose from this seemingly pointless activity (other than being a very fun game and useful sat-in-the-pub talent) was that, no matter how random, everything has meaning and relation to us in one way or another. Any person who has ever read ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’ will understand this principle – and it’s one that myself and my boss work by: ‘It’s all revelant’. And it really is.
Take this week for example: in compiling the list myself and my friends re-discovered some films that we wanted to watch, and consequently got together to watch The Neverending Story and Dogma. Watching Dogma resurfaced my rather-odd-but-entirely-explainable obsession with Alan Rickman and spurred me on to re-watch the Harry Potter movies the next day. That evening the three of us then went out for a drink, and then had a rather loud discussion about the nature of God at a bus stop and on the bus. This will have led to the other people on the bus hopefully questioning their own beliefs (eavesdrop evangelism – you’ve got to love it!).
The discussion we were havingwas two of us struggling with the concept that God-has-everything-mapped-out-for-you-so-you’re-not-allowed-to-worry (TM). If that’s so then doesn’t that mean we don’t have free will? That’s scarier. And if God doesn’t know what’s going to happen? That make’s God fallible right? We battled for ages over different ways of viewing the situation, and where God could be. We came to the conclusion that, as humans, mortals, we would never be able to grasp the true nature of God – but that caused questions of it’s own. We’ll understand in Heaven but what is Heaven like? We bothdisagreed. What if I was wrong and my friend was right? What if we’re both wrong? And then I remembered. I remembered something that one of the characters in Dogma said. The speech went like this:
“It’s not about who’s right or wrong. No denomination’s nailed it yet, and they never will because they’re all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn’t matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up.”
So, it doesn’treally matter if we get an idea right or wrong – it’s about having faith in God. As long as we ultimately have Faith in God, whatever ideas we have about God don’t matter (as long as they don’t contradict the Ultimate Truths and what we’ve been taught by God). As another character says:
“I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.”
This fits well with Rob Bell’s ‘Trampoline’ theory: that instead of building our faith from brick walls (which are easily knocked down) we should instead have a trampoline. There are ultimate truths that act as springs, but our ideas and beliefs act as strands of the fabric woven together. The more we jump, the more ideas we test, the higher we are propelled and the closer we get to God.
It’s not about whether I’m right or wrong. It’s about God being right. Always.
So, all this just clicked in to place for me. It was like a whole load of worries were suddenly lifted off of my shoulders. I felt light. I felt…happy.
Now, happiness is a strange thing. The current generation is driven by a need to be happy. To feel at ease. An escape from guilt. I was talking to one of my young people at drop-in today. She was asking about forgiveness. But she wasn’t really (this is where the holistics fit in). What she was really tellingme was: ‘I’ve been insulted by this person. Tell me I’m not bad for not forgivingthem.’ She was, in some sense, feeling guilt. She eventually forgave the person but it raises an interesting point – why do we forgive? Is it for our own selfish reasons? How often are we supposed to forgive? 7 times? 77 times? 490? The answer, of course, is always. It’s not up to us to judge someone – that’s God’s job.
It’s not about whether I’m right or wrong. It’s about God being right. Always.
They say (who’s they anyway?) that when you’re drunk you never act out of character. You just lose contact with the bit in the brain that holds you back (your mental auditor if you will). You think something, you do it. So what’s my point? My point is that everyone has undesirable traits. Our redeeming factor is that we choose the right path. My young person, for example, chose to forgive her friend.
And now I come back to Harry Potter. I mentioned that I’d been re-watching the movies. I was, in part, scouring the films for clips to use for discussion. In Chamber of SecretsHarry battles with the fact that he shares many traits and talents with Tom Riddle (Voldemort). He worries that it is pretty much already determined that he will ‘go bad’ because of this. He is not happy. When he mentions this to Dumbledore, the Headmaster comes out with what is, perhaps, the best quote in the movie: “It’s not our abilities that define us, but our choices.” I like that. We may have bad qualities, we may hold guilt, but we can still make the right choices.
Happiness is knowing that no matter how wrong I am, God will always be there with the right choice.
Happiness is not having to live with the guilt of my wrongdoings once I’ve been forgiven by God.
Happiness is knowing that God is infallible. God is right, always.
Happiness is, as I’ve said, a fish:
Isn’t it wierd how everything that’s happened this week has led me to this point? That’s holistics for you.
