The news is full of how tough things are going to get. There are many reasons to be angry. The scary aspects of human being are banging on our awareness like a noisy gong. It is tempting to hunker down in a bunker and block everything out with a wall of iron.
Like working through the experience of grief, where the feelings of loss never leave. Your world can become bigger, and grow, so that the awareness of loss eventually becomes momentary pangs rather than a freezing fog that dims your sight and grips your heart all the time.
Anger can be tempered. Cast iron is very hard, it will not bend until it breaks, and things bounce off it. However when it breaks it violently shatters into pieces. Steel can be hardened as well, but by bathing it in lower temperatures it can be heat treated to loose some of that hardness and gain toughness. This is why I chose the title “Steel Shirt” Rather than the “Iron Shirt” of the song. That, and I’m a blacksmith. Correct use of metal is important to me! If you are going to armour up and face the devil down, make sure you are wearing the best gear. Put on a steel shirt and face down the devil. Temper your mind, relax and let the hardness go. Pick your battles, and choose the battlefield well. Better still, seek peace and create spaces where conflict can be resolved through the recognition of authority rather than the imposition of power.
There will always be poverty, but if you are in a position where you can feast today – feast! and invite your friends to celebrate with you. Pour perfume into the room while the one you love is with you. There will be enough time to work at expanding the cage floor, and you will do it better if you spend time reminding yourself what you are living for.
And here is a recording of the songs composer which will hopefully help you do that.
Click on the picture or the link to go to the BBC website
I’m spending most of today exploring Myths from outside the canon of scripture, and tomorrow I’ll be telling Viking era stories that most will dismiss as simple children’s tales. Why would I be doing that?
The Church tradition I was brought up in laid a strong emphasis on understanding the meaning of scripture. Recognising that culture within their church congregations had diverged from that in society in general they also placed an emphasis on communicating scripture in relevant ways. Translating from Church english into “everyday”, or “Scottish”, or “youth” English. From books, to spoken words, films, music and the Arts in general.
The focus tended to be on explaining “The Truth” however, rather than on thinking about what was happening in society. I began to question whether efforts by church leaders to maintain a distinctive Church culture had led to the Church playing the role of “Teachers of the law” rather than “Jesus and his disciples” in it’s own stories.
I also became aware that we were reading a very small fraction of the documents from the history of Christianity, and that much of what was explained in them was explained by referring to stories, customs and myths which were general knowledge at the time, but not any more.
So I asked questions, and was blessed by finding people who even if they didn’t know the answers would reflect those questions back on me to help me ask better questions. Rather than dismissing the issue of how the people who built Gobeklitepe
10,000 years before Jesus walked the earth could relate to him, I was encouraged to explore possible answers. Some of these answers are relevant to how people born 2000 years after he walked on earth can relate to him as well.
Don’t let the grey granite wear you down.
Thinking at this scale requires contemplation of mythic themes, and the recognition that logical understanding of truth has it’s limits (anyone familiar with Spock, or Data from Startreck will be aware of this too). Instead of dismissing Myths as stories for children, it becomes helpful to think of them as ways in which children learn epic truths about becoming adults. Or indeed, for adults to learn, through contemplation as well as rationality, about what it is to be human. The rise in popularity of comic books and imaginative fiction to the mainstream when it used to be a geek subculture is evidence of this. This graph showing the rise in use of the word “mythoi” in English literature also indicates a shift in society.
But a search for the word “Cheese” should remind people that without correct labeling these are just pretty graphics that I could be using to distract you from exploring more deeply!
Most people aren’t looking for understanding of how mythoi function though. Growing up in a world where not even your biological sex is a fixed fact requires different life skills to those needed in a culture where your future job was often fixed by who your father was and if you were born a woman you were expected to be a housewife. People are responding to globalisation, changes in societal norms, and a climate crisis and finding help through exploring mythic themes.
Many of the age old myths in the Christian tradition have been edited out and replaced by modern pop psychology and self help books. Compared to the history of human storytelling these are a poor substitute for the wealth of ages. Myths can still be found though. Some are preserved in the lives of saints, some were recorded by mediaeval christians from pre christian cultures.
They are the ideological map of human being which makes sense in relation to the landscapes humans have evolved in. They talk of giants of ice and snow in the north, or fickle fire Jinn from the desert.
So tomorrow I will be telling tales for all who have ears to hear, and opening gateways for people to explore their being. They will hopefully laugh at the jokes too…
Toys and childhood play help us become the adults who have the luxury of asking such questions. Teddy bears have their own nostalgic niche. The process of experiencing feelings of attachment, separation and developing skills of emotional resilience can developed whether with a bear or a “my little pony” or simply a blanket.
It might be difficult to put into words the significance of your particular childhood toy, but it is likely that someone else has had a similar experience with their childhood toy. #SensingSpirituality is about recognising this, and then learning the words to communicate it. Or, perhaps, the art, craft, action or music to communicate it.
Quartz is installing a labyrinth to provide time for reflection, after all, bears are found in the woods and that’s where Forest Church is heading.
There will be a Teddy Bear festival in St John’s from the 7th to the 9th of July. More details on the St Johns website and the featured image of this post.
There is an importance in places. I sometimes wonder what it is like to grow up in the digitally connected world. It is quite possible that many who are now in their 30’s have never been in a place where it wasn’t possible to pick up a device and phone, or latterly video message, a family member and get an instant response.
Homesickness was a part of the whole experience of going to organised summer camps in my childhood. Camping meant heading into the hills for a weekend, or week, with all that you needed and no contact with home. Scotland is small so even then you were usually only at most a day’s walk from a house or a payphone, but still the experience of being disconnected from home started a process of being at home with yourself and companions (if you travelled with some).
When Jesus passed through death the recorded stories describe him meeting his friends in the rooms where they ate together. They met on the beaches of the sea where they had often eaten fish and he had talked to the crowds. I wonder if Jesus walked in the hills, meeting other people in ways that are not recorded. Did Jesus go home to the places of his formative years, and experience them with new eyes?
These stories are part of our creation/alienation/reconciliation story of good news. Feelings of homesickness are real experiences which require us to develop resilience (in many diverse ways!). Feelings of dissonance between our experience of places and our ideas of what they could be or have been can be like losing a limb, or falling physically ill.
When Jesus calls out for his father on the cross this experience of alienation is set in the foreground of the story of the good news. However, perhaps in stories when Jesus is eating fish with his friends on the beach or walking down a dusty road having a chat, we can glimpse the feeling of home which the aching chaos of absence is pregnant with.
Is this why people go on pilgrimage? We don’t seek out suffering, but by placing ourselves in a position of adventure we can heighten our ability for #SensingSpirituality. In leaving home we can develop skills in making ‘place’. In entering the experience of absence, and encountering doubt we can grow in Faith.
… but as friends of Jesus. Not as servants driven by a need to impress a master whos purpose we cannot guess.
A place to make a “sitting place” on the Crichton estate?
There was a full weekend at Allanton. We were working with Cluaran and many others using heritage crafts, storytelling, and the experience of fire to help people find peace. On the Sunday we prayed for peace worldwide, and joined with people worldwide via the internet.
There was a lot of packing, unpacking, and sorting too, of course.
A wee snapshot! More to follow…
Today I’ve been working on some “Calling Cards” for the St Johns contemporary service. We will be thinking about vocation. This has a specific meaning in the church setting, but is also an experience that shapes human being in general.
Something to keep in your phone case to remind you…
The Quartz Christian Life Community will meet again on Monday evening. So if you found the Lent group helpful this is a chance to continue the habit of meeting together. Everyone is welcome!
Keep an eye out for forest church, the teddy bear festival, and other developments as the summer opens up before us.
With supermarkets and global supply chains it is easy to forget that for thousands of years eggs were only available when the sun returned and daylight hours lengthened.
As well as looking like the stone which could be rolled away from the tomb for Jesus to walk out, these eggs are a symbol of potential ready to be revealed.
Do you expect that which comes out of an egg to look like an egg though? Continuity of identity is a mysterious thing. The egg shares something in it’s nature with the chicken that is before and after it, but it is healthy and normal for even one particular animal to change dramatically. All followers of Christ’s way share something – can we embrace diversity and remain in unity, continue in a sense of shared identity?
Enjoy the day – and eggs if you are eating them – whatever style you have them in. We will be meeting on the beech opposite Lincluden abbey if you would like to join us
If you are truly searching for reality, do you need to tear down the structures that frame reality?
To find the house of God does the curtain need to rip, and the temple be destroyed, so that it can be rebuilt three days later?
Strong language, but perhaps art can provide the means to to this in non violent, consensual, ways.
We don’t expect a tree to look like the seed it grows from. If we can free our minds from expectations laid upon us, then perhaps we will be better able to recognise God at work. The task then becomes one of recognising God at work and joining in with the growth, rather than planning and imposing a predetermined form.
