Back on the road again.

The snow has cleared, so this morning I donned the running kit and Gary and I took to the roads for the first time in three weeks. Gary is a co- resident at the Anchorage and in the 80's was a pretty serious runner. Although various distractions took the edge off him for some years he is still way above my level, but without any desire to compete. So I jog along and he, without any effort, floats along beside me chatting. Company is great when you are running because it spurs you on to do that little bit extra. The course is three and a quarter miles (well 3.26 if you want to be picky), through Handsworth Park. This was my first run for three weeks, having looked out of the window at the snow several times recently and decided not to go out.

It feels good to be doing it again. As I have siad before on this blog, running mirrors life. Jsus talked about the second mile, that referred to the Roman occupational soldiers being able to get individuals from the conquered nation to carry various things for them. Jesus says "if they force you to go one mile, do another one as well" (another blow to human rights!). What is the second mile for me? That's not an easy question because I know what the bible says and I could do extra because I have got to and if I don't I am a bad Christian and get no reward because I am a whinger and it is all a waste of time. Help!

What Jesus is saying by this is not "this is how to qualify" but "I am introducing you to a new way of thinking, a way that will lift you and others out of the grabbing selfish adverarial kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light". Goodbye self - thinking, hello love - thinking.

Risk

I am not a natural risk taker and when I have taken risks in the past, because I am working against my basic character, it hasn't always had a good outcome. I am not talking about stupid risks like weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds. That is not risk but recklessness. To me the word has the meaning that the result is not certain, it's one thing or the other, the higher the risk the less chance of the desired result.

I love the phrase "calculated risk" because it means that we have weighed up the possibilities and resolved to act. In that situation the result does not matter as much because at least there has been action and determination. Doing nothing is both high and low risk you do nothing you gain nothing. Result?

The saying "Faith spelt R-I-S-K". is nonsense. Faith is different. Faith is putting your trust in God, risk is putting your trust in your own judgement (or at times the judgement of others).

Taking risks that others have instigated is another issue. Should we? Not without a lot of consideration. I quote from Alice Cooper:

What have I done to deserve such a fate
I didn't want to get involved in this thing.
Someone handed me this gun and I....
I gave it everything.

(Killer c. 1972)

Relationships

If we break life down into its component parts, what are the essentials? Food, shelter, clothing, warmth, keeping clean? These are outward things and in order to provide these we need some kind of income source. When these essentials are in place, what then? We spend so many hours a week generating the necessay cash to keep ourselves afloat. That is a necessary evil. What is an unneccessary evil is the way that the whole of our life and energy becomes tied up with accumulation and things. Everything is downgraded and becomes a commodity.

Two other essentials in life are human contact and spiritual food. Some people do not have deep relationships with others and their spirituality seems to be reduced to opinions and a set of rules. Friendships simply for the joy they bring seem to carry little value to such folk, or perhaps they have a massive void inside which they are unable to articulate, indeed they may not even know it exists.

Many years ago I remember being in a meeting and Noel was speaking about a certain kind of person he said something like this "You know the kind of person I mean, they have never looked up into the night sky and wondered"

I believe everything is about relationships with God and with our fellow humans. In the midst of stress, suffering and tragedy, hard work, pleasure, war and peace it is relationships that provide meaning.

Swaying the crowd

This morning's meeting was taken by Laurence, obviously a good speaker, his style was informal rather than oratory. Later on in the day I told him that I enjoyed what he said and that he had not come across as flambouyant. He explained that he can "do" flambouyant and I have heard him at various meetings giving poems the theatrical treatment. The way he spoke today was good because the content spoke louder than the delivery. Hopefully more people will get into the "contributary culture" because of it.

Is there a danger that eloquent people can hold sway over others through the force of their delivery? I guess Hitler is an example of someone who excercised this kind of power. I read a description of what it was like to hear him once. The person said that whilst listening to him there was an enthrallment but afterwards you could not really remember what he said. There have been many examples in history of those who have used the gift of communication wrongly to get people to believe a lie.

I think that any response to a word or exhortation where the change of behaviour is based on ones fear of the person speaking or an emotional one following an impassioned appeal can be suspect. Because it is God who turns the heart. God has spoken to me through various means and people not all christian. I received a strong conviction once reading an Anthony Trollope book. In the Bible God even uses an donkey to speak to someone. He always gets through to the heart. I have often found that where I have responded out of fear or emotion to something that has been said in a meeting, that response has only been temporary no matter how much I meant it at the time. Later on maybe God has really spoken to my heart and his word has carried the grace with it for me to change.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the Lord can speak through men and women of eloquence and power. However the danger of the word being eclipsed by the skill of the speaker is much greater in that case.

Those of us who are never going to sway the world with our eloquence can praise God for Baalam's Donkey!

Golden moments

Yesterday evening before tea some of us were washing up in the kitchen. Suddenly everything came alive there were people dryingup people putting stuff in cupboards and two small children getting involved and generally having a good time. Afterwards I realised that for no apparent reason I had experienced a golden moment when everything was just good. My mother has a special "red letter day" book and when something good happens she will write in it, often after doing something enjoyable she will say that she plans to make an entry.

What makes things memorable? Someone recounted a memorable event to me as shared by a mutual friend. I am pretty sure I must have been there but have no recollection of it.

As a young man I played football for the local second eleven yes Lower Willingdon second team. As a full back I did not get many scoring opportunities and I remember each of my four goals (The one that went through the goalies hands, the one that skimmed off my head but was probably going in anyway, the one that I thought had gone over the bar there being no net and the one where one on one with the full back he miss kicked and I was through on goal, scoring in low in the bottom hand corner). That was 37 years ago. Why remember that stuff?

Golden moments, God's gift.

St Ignatius Loyola - not P.C.

Teach us, Good Lord,
To Serve Thee as Thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To labor and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do Thy will.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.

This is a prayer that we often said together at School and Church as I was growing up. As I sit at my desk knowing that a large part of my work involves justifying the good I and my colleagues seek to do, producing evidence; literally "counting the cost", I wonder where it all went wrong. This Ignatius chap is going to get on the wrong side of the health and safelty executive, the funding providers, the campaigners for shorter working hours and so on.


I don't know about you but I think I'm with him.

Community

During the agape meal this evening we were speaking about our longings for change in the world. Someone said that they wanted to see justice, everyone treated the same. Obviously that is not going to happen but it caused me to think about community. That is the nearest you are going to get, in my opinion, where all share all. It doesn't matter if some are more capable or more intelligent, more creative or more practical. Where noone is striving to be the best, all gifts are for everyone.

Another thing that happened  during the eveningwas that an elderly brother who has a bit of memory loss, proclaimed as he does most weeks that for the first time in ages he has felt that he is in the presence of God. I have found this pretty annoying in the past but have recently realised that he does not remember and I can't blame him for that and have no right to be annoyed. What he has got is a continual joy as he experiences God's life "for the first time". It's always new, literally - how blessed is that!

Awareness

As a child I was not really aware of other people, happy in my own little bubble. I did not realise that I was selfish until one day when I was about 16 I was starting off cycling home from school and another lad who normally came with me berated me for not waiting for him. Even though we nearly always went togethe it had not occurred to me to wait. Over the years as I have become more alert to others, I have sought to moderate my behaviour but underneath I suspect that |I am just the same old selfish person as I  always have been. I am capable of quite unselfish acts of service, however it irks me that they do not spring out of a spontaneous love of humanity but from learned behaviour. All around me holy and heathen alike seems to have natural acts of goodness springing from them whilst crabby old me has to work at it. My spontanaity is pre meditated. I suuppose that provided the job gets done and people are blessed it doesn't matter and the fact that I get little reward and a feeling of insincerety from it is of no consequence.

God's Strategy

I lay in bed in the early hours of this morning wondering about the life of Jesus. Apart from the part of his life (on earth that is) that we all study and a snapshot of him as a young boy we know nothing about him. During the "hidden years" (I read a book of that name once - pure conjecture, but a good read nonetheless), there is no evidence that he lived anything other than what you might call a normal life. After his ministry started the change was so drastic that his own family thought he had gone crazy, they didn't say "Oh well he has always been like this" and carry on regardless. It was a shock to them as well. So God's strategy with Jesus was 10% full on ministry 90% just a regular life doing a job, supporting the family etc well we don't know do we?

3 years as a public figure then away. We see the pattern in history; people come to the fore, get elected, reign, gain celebrity and then fade another  person rises up. What about us? Do we have a time of prominence, of anointing? Is there a period in our life when we are in some way a public figure and then we merge back in to the crowd? Is that God's way? Jesus is a special case.  How much urgency should we have?

Another Sunday

Today was a bit different. Because of the weather we had both meetings at home. The advantage of that was of course reduced travelling and the minus was that I took the morning meeting. I spoke about God's enormous heart towards us. Just recently I have been experienceing a bit of a U - turn in my thinking. It was brought about by reading "The Shack" which is the kind of literature (if you can call it that) that I usually run a mile from. After I read it I thought all the stuff that I usually do bascically that it was a bit over the top. A day or two after finishing it, I was praying and a part of the book came back vividly to me. It was about judgement, more particularly about us judging God. The merits of the book are open to discussion but this thought it has provoked in me crys out for my attention and the question I have had to ask myself is this: How much of my veiw of what God is like is based on my own ideas? I think it may have suited me to carry the "good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell" theory because the alternative is that each person is precious, loved by God and that knowledge demands a response not of condemnation but of grace. Grace is dangerous because it takes us into the unknown. My conclusion (about God) is that he is much much larger than I have ever allowed myself to realise, because I saw him as a kind of schoolmaster/policeman type.As the day continued there was a lot of opportunity to show grace and also a lot of opportunity to be cynical about other people.

Running

"Although bodiliy excercise is of some value, godliness is of value in every way" (St Paul). I started running just under four years ago as a response to a suggestion from a friend. What St. Paul did not say was that bodily fitness can contribute towards godliness. The increase in alertness, better sleep pattern not to mention the reduction in size was life changing. Running about 10 miles a week is not exactly enjoyable but the advantages outweigh the cost. The hardest part is getting out of the front door. Having to push the body and overcome the urge to give up trains the soul. How easily I choose the more comfortable option! These days, diet has come in to play. My love of cheese and other high fat foods pushed my cholesterol up to the level where the doctor said it needed addressing, so goodbye cheese, ice cream, cake and so on.

Silence

Silence is a big issue at the moment. I spent some time being quiet last night. I find it quite limiting at least to start with. If I move atall I become fidgety, if I don't close my eyes I get distracted by looking at things if I do close my eyes there is always the danger I will drift off to sleep. For my inner motor to stop spinning takes around 20 minutes on average, sometimes it doesn't stop at all. Silence to me is like gazing up all night at a black sky. At sometime in the night a shooting star flashes acroos my vision then all becomes black again. Sometimes in silence I see the star, only for a second or two but the brightness is so intense that the after image remains in my spirit for days. Sometimes there is no star, probably the majority of times. I am convinced however that silence and stillness is a doorway into change.

New things

Well here is the first entry on my blog. These are uncharted waters. I have been encouraged to write a journal but don't think I can do it. Maybe this is the next best thing.
What do I believe? What does God believe about me? Does God have beliefs? He knows all things. A belief is something which is not universal and some things that some people believe will not be true. As God does not have any variables he cannot have any beliefs, only certainties. Therefore believing is confined to humans, or maybe lower spiritual life such as Angels and Demons. After all Satan was responsible for encouraging the crucifixion of Jesus Christ which was by all accounts a big mistake which he believed would have a different outcome.

What is truth?