The sniffles of the past

It creeps up on you sometimes – the past – like being lost in a moment and realising someone has been calling your name for a while. Its not that it hasn’t been stuck to the horrific tree and somehow released from me. We must learn from our pasts–and not make the same mistakes–there is much to remember… yes, yes i recognise such things but i also reflect when i am driving that its pretty near impossible (someone probably knows) to drive forwards and backwards at the same time. It is hard to ignore the reality that contemporary culture is often stuck, or should i say moving between fixed and flexible periods of time, memory and direction.
which way is it now, i am sure it was this way
get yourself together and look for something better
I miss I on al
Lists keep getting longer and i was chatting to someone today who was asking the question of how do you stop trying and let go… i spoke about the power of choice and the process of choosing and that somewhere and sometime and somehow we let go… yes, poor suggestion but did the big P beat himself up through his journey to Rome thinking the bigger J wants me to live both in and in reflection of my past-unlikely… he had too much going on for that. Ah! Here is certainly one point, what is filling the focus of our attention… i know when i take the L Cole cd out that i am choosing to say like Jansch i am strolling down the highway (to remembrance). So the past holds treasure and pirates, one is a gift and one a taker.
now somewhere around here i left it
yes
here it is!

What More Do We Need?

OK. Just watched ‘chumscrubber’ – a diffusion of teenage angst and dis-connectedness between inter-family relationships. Pill popping culture for avoidance answers, fictional computer characters replacing physical maternal and paternal links etc. Then i thought of camping, the joy of camping – no seriously i can be one in such an experience, my family by my side literally (well at night!), the seasonal clock dictating sleep patterns, the community of fellow campers and the surreal experience of such a community. We share nothing in common but our humanity and ‘hi, are you off today…ok…well take care’. Question to all is, c’mon really what more do you need right now in your life, c’mon what is it? eh eh eh?!?

OK

OK! What a good place to start, okay it sounds like the total antithesis to risk – a board game i was made to play by a mad wizard-like-thing! But OK gets us through most days – at the moment i am neither a cloud nor a stone but a mixture of both slightly near the entering phase of a dream and the coming out of a sleep! OK – a computer generated device for superficial and yet plausible responses to most questions or directives. Are we going the way of V and nanny-state (although i respect most nannies) – OK, should we stick our heads in the political oasis and sing songs about NOT looking back in anger – OK, does viruses spread and rot the land from labortaries -OK. Are you OK, yes i’m OK

Looking Backwards!

Do you ever have times when you are in a cloud and keeping look back. Maybe because i have a melancholic tendency but sometimes my head gets stuck trying to find friends from 10 14 years ago. search on the internet – sometimes it is healthy – looking for closure etc Am i having a mid-life crisis? Or sometimes i just wake up and suddenly remember someone and miss them – want to know how they are doing. The problem is that we are called to look forward, proactive, energetic. Of course, we also remember what has been done for us or where we once were but how much did J look back – did he have time to look back – did he reflect and cry and remember – perhaps John after his death etc etc. Is this making sense, i am not unhappy, i am not empty or feeling particularly like escaping a future event – so what cloud am i floating on at the moment? I have not even mentioned being in the here and now – a very different story!!!!?

Time Out!

I have been away recently – took some time out with a friend in St Ives – he has a lovely studio place next to the beach. You can listen to the waves as you enter dreamland! Started me thinking about how important it is to take time out. To see the bigger picture, to briefly forget or re-align your current situation. It helps me to not lose sight of my tiny role in part of the whole. Then i started to think of friends and people i know for whom it is a great idea also and yet not as simple as for me. People whose finances do not accomodate time out, or people due to their responsibilities cannot. Then i thought of the Christian retreat centres and wondered if there are ones where such folk can go for free. A community that recognises the need for people to get away, have a break, enjoy silence etc. In a similar way to the projects in New York which take children out of the concrete jungle to nature so they can breath and experience things they generally only read about. There are families that need that same experience within the inner city here. One theologian (whose name escapes me) suggested that ultimately human beings are farmers, we need to stick our head out and check the weather, we want to eat seasonal food and to take nature in our hands and souls and get dirty and free with it. That is fine but now we (city folk) are generally trying to reconnect with nature at the same time as trying to find our identity within a fragmented techno-concrete-fashion-stalenoise-ladder culture. In what way can the revival of spatial-natural awareness grow? In what way do Christian communities find time out within an already time-full domain?

Goats Rock Beach

I remember (97) getting a fantastic lift out along the californian coast road. It was strange because the guy driving seemed so similar and we had so much in common.

He dropped me by the beach and i said why don’t you come down and we can chill have a smoke because it was a cracking sunset.

When we got down to the beach it suddenly became painfully apparent that taken out of the car enviroment and the hitching context that we had very little in common.

We became strangers, spoke a different language – two people who normally would rarely communicate and so in the end we just kind of said goodbye and walked away.

How much of communication is context? Can we use certain enviroments to be someone else or to mask who we are once we step out of that distinct place? When do we make the decision that we can no longer walk in the same direction as someone else?

Just here!

Just spent sometime with someone who spends more time in the courts than in his own home! Someone who spends more time fighting than resting. I am back here at the place where hunger stills aches. Where desires still rage. Where i wonder if i have wasted one day which brings me closer to days i do not seek. What does church and christian spirituality mean  to those whose questions are so beyond frameworks, theses, books – questions which are relevant now, in the moment, answers needed now not tomorrow? I remember a shaman i met in oregon – so trapped within a given framework – so unsure how to be outside of a distinct context and i ask myself what fluidity (?) must be present within the living out of the good news. What is good news if you cannot understand the headlines? i am pleased that i still want more, i am grateful that there is so much more but i struggle with meaningless applications of a story which becomes barely a myth to the hearers. I am just here, this is me and yes sometimes i dream of being a different me but ultimately i would not be just here if it was not for Jesus. Maybe you are just there, maybe you are there! And all seems straight forward and thankfully i also have similar days from time to time but i am glad that i am just here because i know where just there might have meant – where are you?