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.

If reality bites, why be bitten?

I love the cynical humour of Scott Adam’s comic strip ‘Dilbert’. In a recent strip on my daily calendar, Dilbert’s cat stands on a table facing Dilbert, who sits in a chair nearby. The cat says to him, ‘Dilbert, you’ve become too aware of reality. I’m sending you to “Cynics Anonymous.”‘ In the next frame, the cat continues, as Dilbert looks increasingly annoyed, ‘A higher power will help you regain the naïve optimism that once made you a perfect employee.’ Brows furled, Dilbert asks, ‘Why can’t the higher power change me while I’m sitting here?’ The cat answers, ‘Fluorescent lights block his power.’I wonder how typical these notions are about reality and God. Do most people believe that an awareness of reality makes us cynical, and thus is not to be desired? Is the role of the god-like power to help us to become naïve or avoid reality?

God is the author of all reality and can see and fathom all of reality. Humanity is at a disadvantage when it comes to comprehending reality, because our comprehension is limited by our context, experiences and preconceptions. However, I believe that a person who seeks to know God should have a firmer grasp on reality than those who do not.

David, King of Israel, sings that ‘The Lord is my light’ and asks the Lord, ‘Teach me your way, Oh Lord.’ His heart tells him to ‘Seek God’s face.’ (Psalm 27) Does David believe that knowing God’s ways will bring to light the reality of his situation? Does ‘seeking God’s face’ entail a desire to know what is real? At the end of his life, David prays before the assembly of Israel. In the midst of a prayer of dedication of the temple project and handing it over to his son, David says, ‘Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.’ (1 Chronicles 29:15) This sounds cynical and not naïve in any sense. So, if a man who has sought to know God all his life perceives this harsh reality, is what is in store for all who want to know God?

The writer of Ecclesiastes observes, “As a man comes, so he departs, and what does he gain, since he toils for the wind? All his days he eats in darkness, with great frustration, affliction and anger.” [5:16] And in 12:8, “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless.’” In the end, all the writer can say to make sense of his glimpse of reality is, “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” [12:13-14]

Is knowing what is real something that we should desire? It seems that perceiving reality could be depressing. In The Matrix, Neo had a longing for the Real, but he didn’t initially comprehend that reality was what he desired. And reality turned out to be a ‘desert’, to use Morpheus’s words. If reality is a desert-like, futile understanding of the world, then it is no wonder that people wish to avoid engaging with it.

But, do people actually want to avoid reality or do they deep down desire to experience reality? Zizek argues that most citizens of consumerist societies live separated from reality. Do they desire this separation? From a spiritual perspective, I do not believe that Christians should try to be separated from reality. In fact, I think that the role of the church in society be to wake people up to reality. But we must be careful of what reality do we wake people to – the church at times has been guilty of presenting people with another false idea of reality to replace their worldly idea of reality.

Jacques Ellul, a French Reformed theologian and sociologist, believed that the task of the believer is to seek reality and be a sign of the truth in the world. He argued that the Christian has been equipped by God to face up to the spiritual forces of the world (Ephesians 6:10-20) and thus is not bound by the fatalism of the world’s reality. But the Christian, living in the world but not of it, exists in tension. “On the one hand it is impossible for us to make this world less sinful, on the other hand it is impossible for us to accept it as it is.” (Ellul, J., The Presence of the Kingdom. 1951, London: SCM ) The believer should not attempt to operate on the same level as unbelievers who cannot see reality, because this would be futile. Instead, Christians should discover the real spiritual difficulties that every political or economic situation contains. And the solution may not be rational, but it will point to life and to the gospel, “which alone permits us to discover the true social situation; it alone helps us to respond to it by a human attitude which is not a lie, nor an illusion.”

Drawing close to God could make us more aware of reality. First, this awareness of the spiritual reality would help us understand some of the forces at work and in tension around us. This perspective can give us joy, knowing that God is at work here and now and throughout history. But, this insight can also be distressing because we will see how meaningless people’s lives really are. Second, this awareness could give us an eternal perspective on our current situation, which can help us deal with the futility of our present reality.

Charisma and the Bell Tower

Breathless and late, we arrived in the midst of a snow storm at the top of the bell tower in the Kyiv Persch Lauvra, an ancient Orthodox monastery. It was 16.35 and a single, deep bell had been sounding as we climbed the many stone steps. As we stepped onto the platform near the top of the tower, a voice from a small platform above us called us to pray for Ukraine. I peered into the semi-darkness, but all I could see were the silhouettes of two dark forms hunched over pedals and ropes.

Then, beginning with one bell and rhythmically introducing the others, the men brought forth incredible sounds which caused the entire tower to resonate with their power. At various intervals, the bells would stop, and those listening would be asked to pray for their health, or for the unity of the church, etc.  At the end, the bell ringer descended from his platform and although most people left, a remaining ten or so gathered around him. He took out some incense and a small brush, and anointed people with the oil/myrrh mixture. He brushed the oil not only on people’s foreheads, but also on their nose, their cheeks, in the ears, on their necks. He said that when his leg feels stiff, and he feels like he will not be able to push the pedal to play the bell, he just anoints himself with this oil, and within an hour he feels better.

He also had messages for individuals. One man whose eyelids he painted with oil he told, ‘God will heal your eyes. But you must stop looking at bad things first.’ He had a message/prophecy for each person. 

The only other time I have been anointed with oil and prophesied over was in a charismatic Pentecostal church in the USA. This experience in the bell tower brought back Andrew Walker’s words, ‘The Orthodox are charismatic and have been for a long time!’