servant sufferers

In Housegroups this week we were looking at 1 Peter 4 and the various ways in which people who follow Jesus can suffer at the hands of those who don't. That kind of perpetual ridicule and opposition can be very wearing; it can also make us defensive and insular, people who are turned away and turned inwards by suffering.

But in verses 7-11 Peter exhorts his readers to be sufferers who serve - people who pray, who love, who share with others and who serve with all God's might.

How does that come about? Maybe verse 7 is a help, and not just with respect to praying: "The end of all things is near". Knowing suffering has an end, knowing there is glory beyond the suffering, knowing that soon the Saviour will be seen and every wrong righted - knowing such things seems to be Peter's recipe for serving others in the face of suffering.

They were good times at the Housegroups.

the great songs (xix) - light my fire

Light My Fire by The Doors just bursts open from the very first note and delivers in spades. For once, I'm not going to comment on the words, they mean very little to me in this case (and are far more direct than most Doors lyrics, not being written by Morrison).

What I will mention is the music - surely one of the greatest instrumental sections in all popular music (far too long to be called an interlude, lasting from just over a minute in, right through to the latter part of the 6th minute of the song). I love the organ and its almost hypnotic effect and the cool sweep of the guitar. Yes, Morrison's singing helps it along but, in truth, it isn't his best and isn't the decisive factor in the song's greatness. It's the playing that carries all before it.

To be played loud.

the great songs (xviii) - mother

I realise this is an extremely hard song to listen to, for all sorts of people and for all sorts of reasons. I'm not including it here because it entertains (it clearly doesn't) but because of its cathartic honesty.

Mother was the opening track to the first post-beatles album by John Lennon (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band). Both John and Yoko had been exposed to Arthur Janov's primal therapy and the natural outcome was music that reflected their experiences (Yoko's response was the twin album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band).

The opening tolling of bells has been seen as signalling the passing of the Beatles-era for Lennon, a topic he addresses on the song God later on the album. Whether intentional or not, the effect is palpable. But even more they signal the sense of loss and rejection that the song goes on to handle, as indeed does the whole album in various ways.

A rewarding listen, but not an easy one.

chris wright: asking 'why?'

In introducing the section of his book, The God I Don't Understand, that deals with evil and suffering, Chris Wright makes this valuable observation:

Whereas we often ask "Why?" people in the Bible more often asked "How long?". Their tendency was not to demand that God give an explanation for the origin of evil but rather to plead with God to do something to bring about an end to evil. And that, we shall see, is exactly what God has promised to do.

(page 27)

the great songs (xvii) - the river

The River was among the first Bruce Springsteen tracks I remember hearing, along with Hungry Heart and Sherry Darling off the same album. I guess it must have been '81 and the album had a decidely lukewarm reception in NME (my reference point in those days).

It isn't necessarily the greatest individual song that the Boss ever recorded (although one of the finest on that album) but it's certainly representative of his expansive, storytelling style. And the lyrics inhabit familiar territory - the early death of idealism and the premature acceptance of an almost cynical realism, with the merest hints of a possible shot at redemption (the almost mythical river into which they'd dive) and the despairing realisation that the river is dry. It paints a stark picture of an ailing nation and of a failing humanity.

The question asked by the narrator, 'Is a dream a lie if it don't come true or is it something worse?' is worth pondering as a prime example of Springsteen's lyrical gift. But the lyrics deserve to be seen in full, so here they are:

I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school, when she was just seventeen
We'd ride out of that valley down to where the fields were green

We'd go down to the river
And into the river we'd dive
Oh down to the river we'd ride

Then I got Mary pregnant, and man that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle
No flowers no wedding dress

That night we went down to the river
And into the river we'd dive
Oh down to the river we did ride

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don't remember, Mary acts like she don't care

But I remember us riding in my brother's car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse
That sends me down to the river, though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Down to the river, my baby and I
Oh down to the river we ride

twitter & morality (wsj extract)

Ever worry that the ever-increasing barrage of status updates from Facebook, Twitter and every other real-time, hey-look-what-I’m-doing and look-what-happened-just-this-very-second service may be outstripping your brain’s capacity to process them?
You’re probably right, says a new study from a University of Southern California neuroscience group. Physorg.com:

“‘For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection,’ said first author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

‘Humans can sort information very quickly and can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others.
Admiration and compassion–two of the social emotions that define humanity–take much longer….’”

Too many words? Want to cut to the chase? OK:

“The study raises questions about the emotional cost–particularly for the developing brain–of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter.

‘If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,’ Immordino-Yang said.”

(from the Wall Street Journal)

indicative power

Willpower is a notoriously sputtery engine on which to rely for internal energy, but a right image silently and inexorably pulls us into its field of reality, which is also a field of energy.

Eugene H. Peterson, Under The Unpredicatable Plant, p.6

edward shillito: jesus of the scars

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars we claim Thy grace.

If, when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;
We know today what wounds are, have no fear;
Show us Thy Scars, we know the countersign.

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

the great songs (xvi) - the scientist

I know Coldplay come in for a lot of (sometimes deserved) criticism - taking themselves too seriously, overblown and underwhelming. But when they get it right, musically and lyrically, they get it well right.

The Scientist doesn't need much explanation, nor commendation; it's qualities shine through from first hearing onwards. It's simple, yet not simplistic. It is heartfelt, yet without angst. And the singing is probably Chris Martin's best.

Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart

So: enjoy.

the great songs (xv) - i want you to be my love

This song is deceptively simple and potentially inconsequential. It doesn't mean to deceive; it isn't a set-up or a falsification. But it will only really make its presence deeply felt in the light of what preceded it: the breaking-point marital tension of Ohio. You can read about the trauma here but you'll only feel it by listening (without company) to Ohio.

And then coming to I Want You To Be My Love becomes what it always was for its makers: fresh, vibrant satisfaction in the solidarity of tested love.

the great songs (xiv) - and i love her

Well, who would have thought this would have been the first Beatles track to feature on these lists? Many others could have been chosen (Hey Jude is almost without peer). But a choice is made and it is this. You could do yourself a favour and buy A Hard Day's Night; then you'll not only get this superb McCartney love song but more fab songs than you can shake one of Ringo's drumsticks at.

And I Love Her is a simple enough song but that's probably its greatest asset. As simple as, say, Here, There & Everywhere (on Revolver) but this has something extra. Being in love can be a hugely difficult thing; songs like this are what blokes like me have always needed in traversing those choppy seas.

One particular memory is stirred by this song: lying awake in my room at college, late at night, early months of 1982, listening in the dark to Radio 2 (probably dear old Brian Matthews) and they played this song. In the stillness of the night, its simple purity struck me for the first time. But not the last.

the great songs (xiii) - the winner takes it all

There was a time when I would never have admitted to having a song like this in amongst my favourite tracks...but no longer. August 1980 was a halcyon month in the charts - ABBA and David Bowie vying for the number 1 slot with this song and Ashes to Ashes respectively before The Jam took over in early September with Start! Heady days, if we had but known it.

The Winner Takes It All famously documents the marriage breakdowns within the band (although they denied it was quite so explicit). In doing so, they crafted the perfect pop song: great melodies (as ever), perfect singing, lyrics that resonate with people like us, a video that laid bare the emotional traumas being sung and the final, desperate vulnerability in the singing of the lines,

I apologise if it makes you feel bad,
seeing me so tense, no self-confidence
but, you see, the winner takes it all.

ABBA were a great gift in the 70s and early days of the 80s.

the great songs (xii) - raise the roof

I could have populated this list with a number of songs by Everything But The Girl (possibly Apron Strings or maybe Mirrorball or Flipside) but I'm going to go for one of Tracey Thorn's solo offerings, Raise The Roof (off her 2007 album Out Of The Woods). Again, she could have featured more than once on this list - I have an intense love for Too Happy, the song that closed her short-but-sweet debut solo 1982 album A Distant Shore.

But I've chosen this one because of its instantaneous impact, the infectious beat and the (as always) gorgeous singing - it's got it all really. A song that guarantees I'll be dancing round the kitchen. Play it loud!

Put the music on
put the music on
put the music on
they all wanna dance....

And you do it with love!

I guess I ought to apologise to the kitchen.

Mary Oliver: Ocean

I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each one of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.


(from Red Bird, p.15)

dilemma

if a poem
is a
work
of art

and i write
a poem
but don't
work

on it,
shaping, sieving, splicing;

does that mean
it is simply

art?

the great songs (xi) - tears in heaven

It's only recently that I've come to appreciate Eric Clapton - in particular, his albums Slowhand and 461 Ocean Boulevard are hugely enjoyable and full of class. This song is not his usual milieu but is worthy of any list.

The background to the song is well-known (the death of his young son in an accident) and it may well be that such a harrowing genesis puts the listener in a difficult position: to dismiss the song could be thought heartless, and to enjoy it, macabre. In that way it bears some resemblance to Yoko Ono's work Season Of Glass.

Well, it isn't enjoyable and it ought not to be dismissed. It is harrowing and painful. It asks profoundly difficult questions. Isn't that what music ought to do, if it is being honest? This is not art as artifice; it is the expression of life on fetid ground, within a stained cosmos and in search of genuine hope.

The question, 'Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?' is heavy with pathos; how could a parent bear an answer that was negative? And his observation, 'I know I don't belong here in heaven', is searing. Why not? Because your life is not yet ended? Or because it is a place of innocence and innocents and you know you're neither? It is a comment that ought to compell all gospel servants to stand alongside the broken and lost.

Too profound for a list like this.

Too important not to be on it.

two new books

I know, this seems to go against what I blogged a few weeks back - I'd only buy a new book when I'd finished three old ones. But who's to say I haven't just finished six books that were already on my shelf? Prove me wrong if you can....

Anyway, I'm 'fessin up to the following new books and will try to write mini-reviews in due course.

Darkness is my only companion - Kathryn Greene-McCreight (subtitled: A Christian Response To Mental Illness)

The God I Don't Understand - Christopher J h Wright

Worth checking out, methinks.

thhe great songs (x) - thrasher

Agricultural mechanisation as metaphor for the challenge of time and change in personal relationships? It could only be Neil Young.

His 1979 offering, Rust Never Sleeps, marries one side of acoustic material with one side of full-out rock. It opens and closes with the same track, giving the album its thematic cohesion but the two tracks that ultimately define the album and corral its essence are Thrasher (acoustic) and Powderfinger (electric). Both are worthy of appearing in this list (and checking-out on Spotify) but the former will have to suffice.

Many have seen references in the song to Young's relationship with the other members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and it's hard not to see their shadows in its lines:

I searched out my companions
who were lost in crystal canyons,
when the aimless blade of science
slashed the pearly gates.
It was then that I knew I'd had enough
burned my credit card for fuel;
headed-out to where the pavement turns to sand.
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
and my suitcase in my hand
how I lost my friends
I still don't understand.
They had the best selection;
they were poisoned with protection.
There was nothing that they needed,
nothing left to find.
They were lost in rock formations
or became park bench mutations;
on the sidewalks and in the stations
they were waiting, waiting.
So I got bored and left them there;
they were just dead weight to me.
Bbetter down the road
without that load.

And yet the song is not merely personal; the metaphors work well and burrow deep. Time works ravages - for persons and societies. Not all progress is really so. And a day will come when hands will be raised, no longer in resistance and yet not in surrender; rather, they will be raised one final time to herald the end with dignity:

And when the thrasher comes
I'll be stuck in the sun,
like the dinosaurs in shrines.
But I'll know the time has come
to give what's mine.

A long, rambling song, fit for a long and rambling life. Long may you run, Neil.

again: Mam

Mam

mary oliver: red bird

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-coloured darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason -
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens -
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.


(Mary Oliver, Red Bird, p.1, Bloodaxe Books 2008)

becoming real

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I supose you are Real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

extract from The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjery Williams

Ferguson on Calvin on Jesus' humanity

From this interview, these words:

In my own view probably no theologian has understood the deep humanity of the Lord Jesus better than Calvin, and it seems to me that is often the measure not only of a man's mind, but also of his heart.

the great songs (ix) - pressing on

This great song is off the much-vilified Bob Dylan album, Saved. Because of his declared Christian faith, many people disliked the previous album Slow Train Coming but it seemed to fare better in the review-stakes than its successor did. But I've always had a soft spot for it and this song in particular (I ought to add that I only came to know it much later than when it first appeared in about 1980).

What I like is the intensity of the song and the way it builds & builds. I also love the observation,

Temptation's not an easy thing,
Adam given the devil rein;
cos he sinned I got no choice,
it run in my veins...
but 'm pressing on.

That's what I want to do, too.

84

was your mother's number
and now you've made it
yours,
but not by
choice or design -
too early
and far
too soon.


(for Mam)

r s thomas: a marriage

We met
       under a shower
of bird-notes.
       Fifty years passed,
love's moment
       in a world in
servitude to time.
       She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
       closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
       'Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
       partner for
the last dance. And she,
       who in life
had done everything
       with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
       for the shedding
of one sigh no
       heavier than a feather.

spotification

Just wanted to say what a great thing spotify is - ok, so the free version means you get a 15-second or so advert now & again (roughly once during an album's worth of music) but it's definitely worth it.

Been listening to the new U2 album on spotify this weekend (No Line On The Horizon) - it's certainly a grower. Looking forward to turning-up the lyrics somewhere to find out what it's all about. They were playing on the Jonathan Ross show last night and I went to bed listening to U2's Zooropa on headphones - it's a far better album than I ever realised; perfect late-night listening.

Alongside U2 I've been llistening to Bob Dylan's aged Shot Of Love album from yonks ago - now that's really worth a listen too. Suprisingly so.

So thumbs-up to spotify from this corner of the room.

formed by the form

Commenting on the form that is the Gospel (of Mark, in this case), Eugene Peterson makes these observations:

"Gospel story" is a verbal way of accounting for reality that, like the incarnation that is its subject, is simultaneously divine and human. It reveals, that is, it shows us something we could never come up with on our own by observation, experiment or guess; and at the same time it engages, brings us into the action as recipients and participants, but without dumping the responsibility on us for making it turn out right.

This has enormous implications for the way we live, for the form itself protects us against two of the major ways in which we go off the rails: becoming frivolous spectators who clamour for new and exotic entertainment out of heaven; or becoming anxious moralists who put our shoulders to the wheel and take on the burdens of the world. The very form of the text shapes responses in us that make it hard to become a mere spectator or a mere moralist. This is not a text that we master, it is one that we are mastered by.

Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places, p.182

the great songs (viii) - a man is in love

For years, all I knew of The Waterboys was the monumental Whole Of The Moon and that they employed a big music sound.

Things move on. People change. They grow. So here is A Man Is In Love from their album, Room To Roam.

A delightful song, showcasing how great Irish folk music can be but, more than anything, I'm posting this one as a very, very fine example of that overlooked yet necessary genre: the love song.

Here is writing that displays great craft and music of joy and vibrancy. I don't think any more needs to be said.

the great songs (vii) - walking on thin ice

I've held back a little from this one but it had to come at some point. Yoko Ono's Walking On Thin Ice is an achievement that it has never been possible to dispassionately assess or appreciate separately from the circumstances in which it appeared.

This is the song John & Yoko were working on the night that Lennon was murdered. The value he placed on the song is seen in the comments about it that formed part of Yoko's statement that filled the back-cover of the single sleeve.

When John and Yoko said in the summer of 1980 that their new work was dance-oriented, some of us (me especially) lamented the impact of the disco genre on their work. What we didn't know was that the dance club scene of New York in those days was anything but disco. This is dance music of a different order.

There is so much that can and ought to be said, somewhere, about the musical art of Yoko Ono. This is undoubtedly not that place...but I'll happily add a little grist to that particular mill.

The title is resonant of a deep stream of imagery in Yoko's musical work. The images of glass and ice recur regularly and stand as metaphors of pain and of a suffocating quiesence, a use made all the more startling by the anger that often surfaces with its own jagged edges. The pairing of 'knife' and 'life' is also the expected one; only the bleeding is absent here.

Yoko's winter mileau may be due to being raised in Japan (one assumes it cold there) but, whatever the origin, it's the dominant season in her work - Winter Song; Is Winter Here To Stay? and Looking Over From My Hotel Window on the album Approximately Infinite Universe all trade in its currency.

And so it's no surprise that this girl is walking on thin ice. There is danger - imminent danger. There is freedom - but it is fragile and threatened. There is death - and it is inevitable and irreversible.

It's a long track and benefits from a return (in the middle & closing sections) to some of the non-verbal vocal expression that marked Yoko's earlier work (one reviewer of the album that followed that summer, Season of Glass, asked where the primal screaming was when we needed it most - a rather lame grasp of the nature of her grief, and of her art).

The guitar work on this song by John (the last he would ever record) has been celebrated and it is certainly in keeping with the song's vehement fragility. The song would never have fitted on either Double Fantasy, nor what would become the posthumous release Milk & Honey. It was always intended to be a single in its own right, with Yoko both A and B-side*. Rightly so.

They say the lake is as big as the ocean.
I wonder if she knew about it?

Its dimensions and depths were only just to be discovered.

I may cry some day
but the tears will dry, whichever way;
and when our hearts return to ashes
it'll be just a story
it'll be just a story.

*The actual B-side is an older song of Yoko's - It Happened opens here with dialogue recorded between John and Yoko on a stroll through Central Park. The song is both sweet and sad and carries, along with its A-side, an almost prophetic quality ("It happened at a time of my life when I least expected...and I know there's no return, no way").

nb: Happily, but unintentionally, this has been posted on Yoko's 76th birthday.