Happy Bubbles

My friend Ryan Schroeder dared me to blog about this, from whence the above picture was obtained. My first thought was, well that's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it?

It did get me thinking about artificial bubbles of reality (which gives you some idea what I think of the above picutre). So I'm going to cop out and not touch the above picutre with a ten foot pole. Instead I'm going to talk about a documentary and let you make the connections between the documentary and the picture above. 

The documentary is about North Korea.

YouTube links:

Hopefully the links don't break, just in case, original source is on vbs.tv

[WARNING: MOM. BEFORE YOU CLICK THAT LINK. vbs.tv is NOT Vacation Bible School TV. The Vice Guide to Travel isn't a site you'll want to visit. I intentionally provided aseptic Youtube links. Also, the documentary contains swearsies. That is all.]

So, for a year and a half these guys try to get into North Korea (DPRK) to film. They can't. They end up going to China, handing over the appropriate bribes, heading to the DPRK as tourists and filming on the sly. Smart? Probably not. But what an amazing glimpse into this strange strange place. The short version is the DPRK is like cold war Russia in the 50's, it's the land that time forgot in a really scary and bizzare way.

You'll have to watch the documentary to get the full jist, but afterward I thought, man a whole bunch of Korean people are going to be pissed off when they find out about the outside world. I'm pretty sure the cognitive dissonance between party speech making and their actual lives is fairly evident to them. But, being cut off from the outside world, the cognitive dissonance has no matrix by which it might resolve. They have nothing to compare their lives to, so the cognitive dissonace waves just bounce off the inside of the cultural bubble. It must make them nauseous at times, but they wouldn't be sure why.

Then I realized this all felt oddly familiar. I recognized that land-that-time-forgot feel, the disconnect between the words spoken and action on the ground. The rabid fear of anything "outside." The drive to control how things worked inside the bubble, the drive to control what of the outside got in. The control was maybe originally out of a desire for the better good of those under one's care, but, seemingly more and more, the control was ostensibly for the better good of those in one's care and had just become comfortable for those in charge. In short, it was a lot like the way I experienced evangelicalism in the 70's and 80's.

I've come a long way in sifting out what is my own broken anger and what is to be legitimately left as part of a prophetic calling speaking back into the church for the sake of the church. I take to heart Jeremiah's charge to "take apart and demolish and then start over, building and planting." (Jeremiah 1:10 MSG) In my anger I found that "taking apart and demolishing" came pretty easily. I'm slowly maturing into the much more demanding "building and planting" part.

Here's the thing though, the taking apart and demolishing part comes from hope. It has to, otherwise it isn't worth it. Jeremiah always lived in hope. Most of the people I know who are accused of being nothing but taking-apart-demolishing party poopers are actually people of hope. I live in hope. I constantly live in hope, for the the church, for my neighbourhood, for my city, for the world. It's a fools errand most of the time, but I can't help it. I naturally look to the future and I can't help but hope for a better one. No matter how much I get the stuffing kicked out of me I end up, sometimes to my own consternation, coming back to hope.

Okay, I've picked up the ten foot pole, let me make some connections. Recently I've fallen in love with the word "generative." I'm on a building and planting kick. I'm around generative, hopeful, building and planting people. I've gotten very used to looking ahead. So, when I see an image like the one at the top of this post I get a bit of whiplash. Wow. I get that post-North-Korean-citizen-whose-seen-the-world feeling. I get that thing I used to get so often back when I was in the bubble, a little taste of bile in the back of my throat from sitting there so assured of everything being as it should be, but deep down feeling slightly nauseous from vertigo because something is askew, something is off, something is not right. It pains me to think people are, and there's no way to say this without sounding like a arrogant git, but it pains me to think people are still in a place I have come to consider "back there." I imagine the pain and sadness is similar to what one would feel looking at North Korea from the outside.

When I look at the top picture, whether taken literally or as a metaphorical view of the inside of a religious subcultural bubble gone awry, I feel most for the prophetic voices with that exact view from that exact perspective. I see the artists, the poets, the prophetic voices sitting right there seeing that very scene. They are the voice that reorients God's people and they have been bullied into silence. How else is that picture even possible?

It pains me to think of the artists, the poets, the prophetic voices sitting right there in that exact spot and thinking something is wrong with the way they see the world, something is wrong with them because of the way they see the world. They don't even know they're prophets. They don't even know we need them. They don't even know God made them the way they are and that he did it on purpose. How can the church hear the prophets when the prophets don't even know they're prophets? Crazy fantasy words and fear bully people into silence, or happy shiny words and fear bully people into silence, in the end is there a difference?

Artists. Poets. Prophets. It's time to think and consider. It's time to taste the bile. It's time to live into the person God made you to be. It's time to take apart and demolish and then, more importantly, it's time to build and plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted via email from The Broken Wing

Cultural Onanism

Image source

 

Looting is a manifestation of scarcity and fear. Why would looting manifest itself in a city that has never known scarcity? Why would looting manifest itself in one of the safest places on earth during one of the safest periods in human history?

From our comfortable armchairs in Canada we've witnessed a collaborative anarchy that stands up to oppression in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. From the same distanced perch we've also witnessed the worst of predatory anarchy in places like Rwanda and Somalia. So what are we to make of the mutant deformation that reared it's head in downtown Vancouver last night? What are we to make of the petty anarchy we witnessed?

GRASSROOTS?
First of all, yesterday's grotesquery seemed to imagine itself as some kind of grassroots anarchistic uprising. Hardly.

Yes, the smell of tear gas triggers powerful human urges. The urge to move toward justice, to fight against oppression, to tear down principalities and powers and strongholds that keep us from our true humanity.

If such urges were activated yesterday, they were activated in vain. No injustice occurred. Therefore justice could not be moved toward. Incredibly naive persons in an embarrassingly inappropriate context moved toward some wildly imagined justice and spent themselves in an orgy of cultural onanism.

These faux libertarians know nothing of the realities of Egypt, Tunisia or Syria. They will most certainly never know the realities of Rwanda or Somalia. They are petulant and bored and their imagined seeds of imagined justice are wasted. They are a parade of masturbating dandies. 

The very possibility of such misguided earnestness speaks to a deep deep spiritual ennui, a profound collective boredom of the soul. Without real scarcity, without justifiable outrage, without any tangible or logical opponent, the impetus to fight oppression becomes a ridiculous and sad parody. It becomes a protest against one's own good fortune.

LOOTING?
Second, how can looting be anything but yet another masturbatory exercise when you've never gone hungry and you lack for nothing? These people are masters of futility. Sated dullards engaging in looting as some triumphal act of resistance is worthy of pity and loathing. Their self-loving self-hatred compels them to the lazy petulance of lashing out at nothing in order to feel something and this response is so sadly predictable so as to be mundane.

THUGS?
Lastly, does snapping facebook pics in front of a fire really make someone a badass? Honestly. True predatory anarchy is a world in which the strong maim and kill and take from the weak. Look at the downtown dandies strut and posture, they imagine themselves thugs, they imagine themselves strong, they think anarchy is their métier. Consider the human condition from a global perspective. In a world of true predatory anarchy, these prancing peacocks would be among the first of the weak to be maimed and killed. They are tourists visiting a game farm they take to be the jungle. They act from secure comfort knowing they will awake tomorrow and life will continue as usual. How brave.

FALL OUT
So what kind of damage did the peacocks do? What have we lost? A couple of cop cars and some consumer goods? If that is your delusion, you are dangerously mistaken. The losses are profound and deep. Our city is more than buildings, pavement, trees, cars and collections of consumer goods. Our city is knit out of the threads of human interaction. Those threads coalesce to form a spirit, something that is separate from us, but emanates from us. The spirit of our city isn't borne out of our collective intentions, it's borne out of how we actually behave toward one another.

If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I throw a rock through a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly more anxious, fearful and mean place.

If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I stop to wash a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly place.

If the above illustration is true of the physical stuff of our city, it is also true of the threads of human connection that constitute the spirit of our city. I can cut threads or I can create threads and both will impact the city I live in. If I create threads of human connection I make the spirit of our city an ever so slightly more livable one. If I go on a self indulgent riotous rampage that infects all kinds of human connections with anxiety, fear and meanness, I have just made the spirit of our city a drastically less livable one.

So that's the deep and profound loss here. Not glass and plants and stuff, but the subtlety of millions of threads of human connection, the spirit of our city. What happened yesterday left a large and cankerous wound on our collective spirit. A lot of threads got cut, or damaged, or pissed on. Our city is potentially a much more anxious, fearful and mean place. But we don't have to let it be. We all have the capacity to create threads of human connection. If we all start doing little things that make our city slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly, it'll soon add up to a riot's worth of good, and then we'll have our city back.

 

Posted via email from The Broken Wing

The book is here!

Actually, it's been here for a while, but I kept forgetting to post something about it. The book is called "Psalmist's Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament." We (The Work Of The People) pitched a wacky project to The House Studio, and this is the result.  A DVD with 5 interviews with Walter Brueggemann produced by TWOTP and a companion resource in the form of a book (written by yours truly) published by The House Studio.

Someone asked me "What was it like to work with a publisher?" In a word, wonderful. I'm keenly aware that all writers need an editor. Never more so than when I'm scribbling these babbling blog musinging all by my lonesome. That last sentence, unecessary. The self reflection in the last sentence reagarding the second to last sentence, even more unecessary. See, I told you.

It was wonderful working with Kristen Allen, editor at The House Studio. Apart from being a kind and gracious person, at the core she provided a different perspective that was outside of myself. Sounds kind self evident. Well, okay, it is self evident. But I think it's one of those "so simply true it's profound" things. I think we as humans need input in our lives that is both different from our perspective and outside of our perspective. We can imagine a different perspective (which is empathy, which is the gensis of compassion) but it's imagined from within our own perspective. Nothing is a substitute for the unassailable truth of the perspective of another human. As a writer, it's invaluable. The editor/writer metaphor is quite handy and extends to many aspects of life in general. Every writer needs an editor, every editor needs a writer.

I've told my friends Don, Stephen and Travis, that they're on every page of this book. Not just indirectly in that their friendship shapes me and shapes how I see the world, but in direct ways too. Their ideas, experiences, strenghts and foibles get cooked together with my ideas, experineces, strenghts and foibles in jambalaya brain stew. Our conversations (my words and their words) bring language to otherwise ethereal thoughts. That's a pretty important part of writing. Again, writers never write alone. Writing is a much more collaborative process than we hero worshipping Westerners might like to think it is. Yes, someone has to sit down and do the work of getting ideas into language. I'm not denying a writer has the critical role to play in brain mist becoming "a book." But the criticality of one role doesn't have to conflict with the intrinsically collaborative nature of the process.

It isn't like the writer is the only one with the thoughts captured in a book. Lots of people have similar thoughts, or related thoughts, or tangental thoughts. The writer just pulls them all together in way that's accesible and rememberable. [rememberable? editor!] No one reads a book they completely disagree with, or in no way understand. When you read a book you get confirmation on some of your thoughts, you stretch them, flesh them out, add to them, and then you discover a few completely new thoughts along the way. When you read a book, parts of the book are alreay in your head, a good book helps you get a hold of the bits and pieces already floating around in there, and, as an added bonus, gives you a few new bits and pieces.

So a writer isn't like this lone hero toiling away in the sequesterd bowels of creative frenzy in order to bestow upon the world his or her unique and startling perspective on things. Writing is like collaborating with the people around you, near and far, to make a book you'd all like to read.

With that in mind, I think I'm going to start using this blog, at least in part, as a collaborative platform for the manuscript I'm working on. Maybe it'll become "a book" that we'd all like to read. Yay books.

Posted via email from The Broken Wing

A Modern Day Parable

 

There's something inside of you that makes you, "you." You think you've lost it, but God knows you haven't. God see's you thinking you've lost it and he feels like you did when you watched this video, he really does. He knows you haven't lost the thing that makes you "you." He's not mad at you and he's certainly not going to kill you. He wants you to have it back because he knows you never really lost it.

How about today you live the whole day in the "I found it!" moment? You can, because you've never lost it. Honest.

 

 

"Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me." (Matt.18:3-5 The Message)

Then he said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'

"So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.

"That brought him to his senses. He said, 'All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.' He got right up and went home to his father.

"When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.'

"But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time.

"All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, 'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.'

"The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!'

"His father said, 'Son, you don't understand. You're with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he's alive! He was lost, and he's found!'" (Luke 15:11-32)

 

Posted via email from The Broken Wing