The future comes to us

Bizarrely, this crazy Japanese human tetris game reminds about what Orthodox Archbiship Anthony Bloom writes about time:

“There is absolutely no need to run after time to catch it. It does not run away from us, it runs towards us. Whether you are intent on the next minute coming your way, or whether you are completely unaware of it, it will come your way. The future, whatever you do about it, will become the present, and so there is no need to try to jump out of the present into the future.”

 We are standing still and time comes toward us. Bloom tells us to stop and embrace the NOW and appreciate our present situation – this very second of time. This, he tells us, is where we will encounter God, and where we will be most able to meet with others.

Celebrity Sages

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phenomenon of celebrity lately. I was watching a late night film which was interrupted with an ‘Entertainment Report’. I was informed of all the latest news/gossip about famous people.

It seems that as a society we just love to consume the images and lives of celebrities. Maybe these famous people attract us because they are living out our dream of what our lives could be. For many people, this may be the only transcendence they ever experience - imagining the life of a star.  

What disturbs me is that if someone is famous, they gain some sort of platform to give us advice on almost anything. For example, a person may be a well-known actor, and people will want to buy their book about parenthood. We look up to celebrities and make them role models. I guess subconsciously we think, ”If I go on the same diet as Jennifer Aniston, maybe I will be attractive and wealthy like her someday.”

 Today I read Proverbs chapter 16 in the Bible, and discovered a number of wise sayings, a few I’ll include here:

 Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers,
       and blessed is he who trusts in the LORD.

 The wise in heart are called discerning,
       and pleasant words promote instruction.

 A wise man’s heart guides his mouth,
       and his lips promote instruction.

 Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
       sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

 There is a way that seems right to a man,
       but in the end it leads to death.

Nothing to believe in

 As an American living in England I live between these two cultures. I don’t even notice whether people have an English or an American accent anymore. It all sounds ‘normal’ to me.

So, American TV seems normal to me too. I wonder whether British people are ever fed up of all the television programmes and films that are imported from America. I’ve been thinking about Razorlight’s song ‘America’ after I heard it on the radio today. 

 Here’s an excerpt of the lyrics of the song:

All my life
Watching America
All my life
There’s panic in America
Oh Oh Oh, Oh
There’s trouble in America

Yesterday was easy
Happiness came and went
I got the movie script
But I don’t know what it meant

I light a cigarette
‘Cause I can’t get no sleep
Theres nothing on the TV nothing on the radio
That means that much to me
Theres nothing on the TV nothing on the radio
That I can believe in

I know how they feel, in a way. We now have loads of digital channels with our new freeview box, but still it seems like there’s nothing worth watching sometimes.

It made me wonder what if feels like to look to pop culture for meaning. Do people find anything there that they want to put their faith in?

Here is Razorlight’s video of ‘America’:

I am Legend

Warning: spoilers follow

I saw the film ‘I am Legend’ last night at the cinema. It’s a film about a scientist, Robert Neville, in New York city in the year 2012 who is the sole survivor of a terrible virus which has killed most people and turned the few remaining into horrible monster creatures. For the most part I liked the film - the tension throughout kept me gripped (literally – to the person sitting next to me) until the end. However, I was surpised that it felt like a thriller – I think I expected to see more of Will Smith save the world and less of the light-fearing monster/humans leaping out of dark corners.

The scenes where he is in the city in the day-light with only his dog for company are eerie. The city appears abandoned, with grass growing in the middle of the streets, no traffic and no activity anywhere to be seen. At one point Neville hunts deer in the centre of the city, another time he stands on a military ship in the harbour and drives golf balls into a parking lot. These scenes were powerful because it is close to impossible to imagine what New York City would be like if I was the only human there. It reminded me of Douglas Coupland’s book Girlfriend in a Coma, in which a group of friends suvive an atrocity that kills everyone else on earth.

 Neville is a biologist who is trying to find a cure for virus. Since he is immune, he is convinced that he can save everyone left if he finds a vaccine. However, when his dog, his sole companion, is infected, his lonliness overwhelms him and he gives up on living. Anna, another survivor, appears and saves him at the last moment. She tells him that God sent her and has told her about a colony of survivers. Neville is dismissive of the idea of God. Although he admits that humans are responsible for the virus, he feels that God has abandoned them.

 In the end, he realises that in his final trial he has discovered a cure for the virus. He gives up his life to protect Anna so that she can take a vial of the cured blood to the colony.

 Neville makes for an interesting Messiah. He is so painfully alone in New York but still managing to survive and continue his research, trying to rescue the infected humans. But cracks appear and the would-be-saviour gives up on everything and tries to kill himself. If he is a legend, then he is a flawed one.

Is this what people want in a saviour? Someone who is very human, who gives up and gets things wrong sometimes? Are we only willing to be saved by someone who is flawed like us?

Finding inward impulses

I have been thinking lately about the affect my soul has on what I do and say. I’ve begun to suspect that most of the time I do things in reaction to an outer impetus. Someone says something to me, and I respond. I see an advert for something and I think about buying it. I see a scenario played out in a film and I contemplate what I would do in that situation. These outer influences are not necessarily negative, but they come for outside myself, causing me to react. I’ve been thinking that I’d like to see what it might be like to act instead of reacting. I beleive God is present within my spirit and I’d like to see what life might be like if I responded to this inward impulse more often.

Anthony Bloom, in Beginning to Pray, writes that it is greed, fear and curiosity which make us live outwardly. Our personality becomes extroverted, engaging with everything around us. He says that we cannot go inwards if we are completely focused outward. It’s as though we have tentacles that reach out and attach themselves to everything around, leaving us empty inside.

I long to tap into that life-giving, creative force within my spirit.

National Treasure

I saw this film for the first time last night. It felt like the Da Vinci Code but with a thoroughly American patriotic twist. The Hero, Ben Gates, hunts for a treasure hidden among national treasures such as the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell by a group of Founding Fathers who were also Masons. The ruthless baddies are chasing him at every turn and of course he is joined in his hunt by a beautiful and intelligent woman who falls in love with him. Despite a predictable plot it is an entertain watch – with suspense mixed with humour and a few stunts thrown in.

I can’t help but wonder, though, why people who want a treasure to remain hidden would draw a map that reveals the location of their riches? On some level they must want the treasure to be found by someone, but it has to be the right person. Underlying this type of story is the assumption that the ability to follow the clues makes the person worthy to find the treasure.

 Is this part of our worldview? Do we believe that if we are smart enough, if we work hard enough and stick to our convictions, we will find that the treasures of life can be our’s? At the end of the film we see Ben standing outside his new big house holding hands with a beautiful woman. He has the girl, money and fame. It’s a happy ending because we can see that he has found the treasure that life has to offer him.