I suppose that the question of expectations has been the one at the heart of my thinking for a while. I've been avoiding it for this very reason. If I can't answer this, I'm still stuck.
What should we expect? This is the realm of the cheesy pseudo-deep non-answer; "the unknown", "the unexpected", "the improbable", "the impossible". But the question deserves better. As much as life shapes our expectations and our experience of the world, we are powerful and meaningful beings; our expectations shape it back, and all along we shape ourselves. So it is fundamental.
And as much as what is, is - what we allow ourself to see is governed by our filters of expectation. What is possible may be limited, but our expectations limit us further, and there's a risk (and a prevailing reality) that we make the possible impossible by refusing it.
So what should we expect? What can we allow ourselves to expect? What dare we expect? Great and marvellous things happen, so do disasters. It seems that we can't expect something into being, but surely expectations cannot only function to be limiting; able to close doors but never open them?
I think it comes to a question of normality. Expectations need a frame of reference- are we aiming high or low? What do we have a right to expect? Maybe this is crucial.
But maybe we're getting the whole idea of expectation wrong in the first place.
After all, every expectation lives in a world view. We expect things; stuff, or events. Our expectations are structured from material conditions that can be satisfied or disappointed in fixed moments or periods of time. But, as we know all too well, these things are always riddled with unknowns and doubts. Yet God is against fear, and the most crippling fear is born of doubt. It seems that God expects confidence, but in what?
How should we handle our expectations? Not in events or objects, achievements or possessions it would seem. God doesn't seem to have a consistent policy in dishing out lifestyle outcomes, yet He insists that we can all expect His presence in our life experience.
Maybe we shouldn't be expecting things, but processes.
Actions and events have consequences. In the particular outworking of events or stories we cannot be sure, but God seems to be fixed on consequences. What we do matters. Our actions, decisions and relationships reverberate through lives and generations. This is the realm of deep causality, ruled by process, not event. And we understand it, this is the domain of the story, the growing seed, cycles of death and life and continuities of reality. In the end, we can't plan the future, but as humans, we can plant it.
Seeds sown will germinate, God has set the conditions for growth. And here, in the realm of process, we start to see some prevailing certainty. Good fruit proceeds from good trees, and vice versa, but with a bias. The universe, says God, is a weighted die. The ripples of the good outlast the ripples of the bad. There is a prevailing wind.. We live in a time of paradox, two worlds share the same substrate, a war is won but the battles go on. We are in the chase scene just before the end, and you just can't tell who's winning.
But back to the expectations of process. How do we set our expectation? I suppose, we look a little deeper for the ripples.. We expect a cause, and expect a purpose. Expect that someone's behind something, that if it feels significant, it is.
And here's where we get our power back. We cannot command our world, but we can shape it, a speaker I heard recently said it well, cultivation instead of domination.
To live out the story of nurturing people and the world like it will yield a harvest to us, to our will, is a model of love, of life, and, I think, our expectations. We cannot control, nor predict what will come, but this we can expect; that our response will affect it. We live for the long game, we trust in the bigger process.
In the space of a moment, everything is a discernible object. If you could press pause on the world, and observe it over an infinitely short moment, even a candle flame would look like a fixed, inanimate object. Yet not one atom, nor one Joule stays the same in a burning flame, it is a process, like the waves on the sea. Look over a longer period and you can see it; nothing stays the same, and "objects" are simply the momentary state of the substrate through which the processes ripple and flow. Over millennia, even forests are botanic oceans, a continuous process of growth, death and regrowth. No single cell remains, but a forest of pine will be a forest of pine, and oak, oak. In the end, over all of time, it all comes down to process.
To live in this reality, and have the expectations of process, changes our view of the present. Of course the state of the moment matters, but what we trust in is not what it will look like, but how it will get there. Here, God really gets His hands dirty; watch how Jesus tackles the process, the chain, and then the condition. God breaks the constraints of the ripples of our past then declares freedom. Where He less often changes objects, He extravagantly breaks and makes connections and consequences left, right and centre. God, it seems, is the Maestro of the process. In these matters, deep truths of story and humanity are our instruments, God is the architect and the world is our garden once again.
Sunday 7 October 2012
Friday 13 April 2012
Fatherhood
Last night, as a I enjoyed the company of a few of my comrades, someone asked "What's the biggest challenge of being a father?"
For me, the biggest challenge is supporting a mother. Don't get me wrong, I know that bringing up a child is a massive task, so please don't think I'm underestimating or under-rating it. Also please don't read anything about my wife out of this statement!! No, the point is that I can love a child as a father; give them cuddles, protect them, play with them, listen to them, lots of things. But how do you look after a mother? Some loads are hard to lift- I'm out most of the day during the week, and I don't have the equipment needed to feed, and to some extent comfort, babies when they're young. I can support, facilitate, encourage and be present and available. But it often feels weak and insufficient. For me, this is the biggest challenge.
We also discussed more direct matters to do with interacting with our children. How we communicate, how we handle and express our emotions.
We also realised that, as fathers, we form part of our children's image of God.
That got us thinking.
The challenge is two-fold.
One: We are commissioned to show our children the type of unconditional, ever patient, ever believing, ever freeing, ever empowering, ever hoping love that God has for us.
Two: What we do end up demonstrating can be a bridge or a barrier to our children realising God's character and interacting with Him consciously in their lives.
That was a bit heavy.
We talked about "society", and how our young generations really need to have more contact with adult men as positive influences and models.
The thing that struck me the most, though, was that we had the conversation at all.
Here's the challenge. To engage with the real stuff- not concepts and ideas. The reality of plain regular daily grind recognising that what we do, and the little interactions, matter in some kind of transcendent way.
Difficult mess is our medium. Let's talk about it.
For me, the biggest challenge is supporting a mother. Don't get me wrong, I know that bringing up a child is a massive task, so please don't think I'm underestimating or under-rating it. Also please don't read anything about my wife out of this statement!! No, the point is that I can love a child as a father; give them cuddles, protect them, play with them, listen to them, lots of things. But how do you look after a mother? Some loads are hard to lift- I'm out most of the day during the week, and I don't have the equipment needed to feed, and to some extent comfort, babies when they're young. I can support, facilitate, encourage and be present and available. But it often feels weak and insufficient. For me, this is the biggest challenge.
We also discussed more direct matters to do with interacting with our children. How we communicate, how we handle and express our emotions.
We also realised that, as fathers, we form part of our children's image of God.
That got us thinking.
The challenge is two-fold.
One: We are commissioned to show our children the type of unconditional, ever patient, ever believing, ever freeing, ever empowering, ever hoping love that God has for us.
Two: What we do end up demonstrating can be a bridge or a barrier to our children realising God's character and interacting with Him consciously in their lives.
That was a bit heavy.
We talked about "society", and how our young generations really need to have more contact with adult men as positive influences and models.
The thing that struck me the most, though, was that we had the conversation at all.
Here's the challenge. To engage with the real stuff- not concepts and ideas. The reality of plain regular daily grind recognising that what we do, and the little interactions, matter in some kind of transcendent way.
Difficult mess is our medium. Let's talk about it.
Saturday 24 March 2012
Reality
So here's some thoughts on reality;
We each have our own little world in our head. We make sense of the world around us through a kind of story that identifies us, and in which we try to place every new experience to help us orientate ourselves with the world. The story is constantly adjusted and reassessed, especially when new experiences don't fit the old story. It gets updated and we carry on using it. In this story are our failures and fears, but also our triumphs and expectations. Popular culture would tell us that it's ok that everyone's little worlds are different. Each is equally valuable and valid. Each one is true to us, which is true enough. Furthermore, we are not entitled to tell anyone else that their little world is wrong, especially if ours also happens to be right (which of course it is).
The problem is that this isn't the case. There's one reality. One world, one history, one Earth. We can't all be right, and this is our experience, but it hurts. Isn't it interesting that we get really stressed when our expectations aren't met, however unrealistic they may have been. When human beings with a non-functioning or paralysed limb can see it but not control it, they experience physical pain. People who are blind often find that sounds around them become "noise" when they can't mentally assign them a source - thinks that don't make sense to us frustrate and upset us. The point is that when people get their world-view wrong, it causes pain, first to themselves, but often soon after to those around them. These discontinuities confuse us and introduce doubt and fear. Fear imprisons us, and we live half-lives filled with empty expectations, self doubt and general unease.
To be free, we need to live in reality.
Realistic expectations don't breed disappointment. Sometimes we see this, and we see the freedom. Think of it like "living in the moment". It comes like simultaneously holding life lightly and embracing it enthusiastically.
Here's the next thing, there's more to reality than we see if we just look on the surface. To make my point, here's some physics as an analogy (stay with me here)..
Sound (yep; noise, music, voices etc) is simply ripples of vibration in the air. The average position of tiny air molecules vibrates back and forth, transmitting the vibration onto the others around it. You can measure it, you could set up a microphone, and draw a trace of these vibrations over time. To be honest, it wouldn't look that great. In fact, it would pretty much look completely random most of the time. You could tell when the sound was loud or quiet by looking at the amplitude, or height, of the peaks and troughs, but that's about it. In fact, when people like engineers, scientists or music producers look at sound, they don't normally look at the vibration over time. Instead, they look at frequency. Frequency is how many times the vibration happens in a given period of time. A frequency of 50 Hz means fifty full vibrations per second. There's a whole load of very clever maths that's used to turn the time-based information into frequency information, and mathematicians who use it talk about the time domain when you look at what came straight from the microphone, and the frequency domain when talking about the analysed frequency distribution. With the frequency information you can start to recognise pitch, musical notes, voices, even words. Frequency is the first killer-app with sound. Frequency is true: You can use this analysis to measure the energy distribution in that sound wave, you can do maths on it, it's not a quirk or trick- it's valid physics, just like the original time-based signal.
Maybe the world's kind of like that. Look on the surface and you see something, but it can fail to make sense, or appear to be random. Sure there's some cause and effect going on that's very consistent, but to understand it, really understand it, can be tricky. Perhaps impossible. But in the very same physical matter, the same motions, mass, energy and events, deeper patterns exist. There's the "physical" domain, where we see consistent laws at work but seemingly random (or at least highly unpredictable) high-level outcomes. But this is not the whole story. Filter the same reality with a higher-order analysis, and there's more meaningful things afoot. Call it another domain if you will.
If you walk into a room, God's already there. If you go somewhere that nobody's ever visited, God's already there too. If you go somewhere where truly horrific things have been, or are being done, God's there too (although I put it to you that He's not particularly enjoying the situation). He is in and through and beneath everything. If the universe is the substrate through which our existence ripples and moves and expands, interacts and plays out, then He is the substrate on which the universe finds it's being.
And above all, He's personal. With God it's always personal. He doesn't work to a broad set of policies, a divine manifesto laid out before the making of the world by which we can live or fall. No, that thing we know as love, that roaring fire in our bellies, that blazing light that ignites our hearts, that desire for right and life and liberty, that thing that makes your heart jump, that's God. He's so relational that somehow he's sort of multiple- even within His very self is sacrificial love and intimacy.
Put all that together, and you start to realise that in every room He's not only already present, He's got a very distinct intention for that place, and even more so, the people who occupy it. He is specific, precise, intentional and focused. He is incredibly down-to-earth.
So there's this other domain present and active in the very fabric of our surroundings. God is here at work. So how to live in reality..? How do we engage with this implicit meaning? It has to be in partnership with God, because it's not about Him, it is Him. His intentions are not to make the world His kind of way, be precisely to His specific plans (which include our freedom). Only with His view can we tap into the absolute reality around us. But this is no distant challenge or pie-in-the-sky dream. It is imminently available. God is right here right now and He's made it staggeringly clear that He is accessible to us in the very present. In one sense, all there is to do is choose, trust, and receive. But that's all a bit passive isn't it? How about this: Search it out, look for reality everywhere, like lost car keys- turn your world upside down and put everything on hold. It's there, everywhere (unlike the car keys!), so get personal, look for Him and His specific plans. Find out what God is up to in every room you enter and join in.
Like the clever maths used on sound signals, we can be translated, transposed, transformed into this world-within-the-world. We can live a kind of transcendent life more fully in the here and now than we imagined possible. The domain is at hand, the domain of life in, and with, and in partnership with the Life Force, the Ignition and the Fire of the universe. He wants to be known.
Reality is at hand, engage!
We each have our own little world in our head. We make sense of the world around us through a kind of story that identifies us, and in which we try to place every new experience to help us orientate ourselves with the world. The story is constantly adjusted and reassessed, especially when new experiences don't fit the old story. It gets updated and we carry on using it. In this story are our failures and fears, but also our triumphs and expectations. Popular culture would tell us that it's ok that everyone's little worlds are different. Each is equally valuable and valid. Each one is true to us, which is true enough. Furthermore, we are not entitled to tell anyone else that their little world is wrong, especially if ours also happens to be right (which of course it is).
The problem is that this isn't the case. There's one reality. One world, one history, one Earth. We can't all be right, and this is our experience, but it hurts. Isn't it interesting that we get really stressed when our expectations aren't met, however unrealistic they may have been. When human beings with a non-functioning or paralysed limb can see it but not control it, they experience physical pain. People who are blind often find that sounds around them become "noise" when they can't mentally assign them a source - thinks that don't make sense to us frustrate and upset us. The point is that when people get their world-view wrong, it causes pain, first to themselves, but often soon after to those around them. These discontinuities confuse us and introduce doubt and fear. Fear imprisons us, and we live half-lives filled with empty expectations, self doubt and general unease.
To be free, we need to live in reality.
Realistic expectations don't breed disappointment. Sometimes we see this, and we see the freedom. Think of it like "living in the moment". It comes like simultaneously holding life lightly and embracing it enthusiastically.
Here's the next thing, there's more to reality than we see if we just look on the surface. To make my point, here's some physics as an analogy (stay with me here)..
Sound (yep; noise, music, voices etc) is simply ripples of vibration in the air. The average position of tiny air molecules vibrates back and forth, transmitting the vibration onto the others around it. You can measure it, you could set up a microphone, and draw a trace of these vibrations over time. To be honest, it wouldn't look that great. In fact, it would pretty much look completely random most of the time. You could tell when the sound was loud or quiet by looking at the amplitude, or height, of the peaks and troughs, but that's about it. In fact, when people like engineers, scientists or music producers look at sound, they don't normally look at the vibration over time. Instead, they look at frequency. Frequency is how many times the vibration happens in a given period of time. A frequency of 50 Hz means fifty full vibrations per second. There's a whole load of very clever maths that's used to turn the time-based information into frequency information, and mathematicians who use it talk about the time domain when you look at what came straight from the microphone, and the frequency domain when talking about the analysed frequency distribution. With the frequency information you can start to recognise pitch, musical notes, voices, even words. Frequency is the first killer-app with sound. Frequency is true: You can use this analysis to measure the energy distribution in that sound wave, you can do maths on it, it's not a quirk or trick- it's valid physics, just like the original time-based signal.
Maybe the world's kind of like that. Look on the surface and you see something, but it can fail to make sense, or appear to be random. Sure there's some cause and effect going on that's very consistent, but to understand it, really understand it, can be tricky. Perhaps impossible. But in the very same physical matter, the same motions, mass, energy and events, deeper patterns exist. There's the "physical" domain, where we see consistent laws at work but seemingly random (or at least highly unpredictable) high-level outcomes. But this is not the whole story. Filter the same reality with a higher-order analysis, and there's more meaningful things afoot. Call it another domain if you will.
If you walk into a room, God's already there. If you go somewhere that nobody's ever visited, God's already there too. If you go somewhere where truly horrific things have been, or are being done, God's there too (although I put it to you that He's not particularly enjoying the situation). He is in and through and beneath everything. If the universe is the substrate through which our existence ripples and moves and expands, interacts and plays out, then He is the substrate on which the universe finds it's being.
And above all, He's personal. With God it's always personal. He doesn't work to a broad set of policies, a divine manifesto laid out before the making of the world by which we can live or fall. No, that thing we know as love, that roaring fire in our bellies, that blazing light that ignites our hearts, that desire for right and life and liberty, that thing that makes your heart jump, that's God. He's so relational that somehow he's sort of multiple- even within His very self is sacrificial love and intimacy.
Put all that together, and you start to realise that in every room He's not only already present, He's got a very distinct intention for that place, and even more so, the people who occupy it. He is specific, precise, intentional and focused. He is incredibly down-to-earth.
So there's this other domain present and active in the very fabric of our surroundings. God is here at work. So how to live in reality..? How do we engage with this implicit meaning? It has to be in partnership with God, because it's not about Him, it is Him. His intentions are not to make the world His kind of way, be precisely to His specific plans (which include our freedom). Only with His view can we tap into the absolute reality around us. But this is no distant challenge or pie-in-the-sky dream. It is imminently available. God is right here right now and He's made it staggeringly clear that He is accessible to us in the very present. In one sense, all there is to do is choose, trust, and receive. But that's all a bit passive isn't it? How about this: Search it out, look for reality everywhere, like lost car keys- turn your world upside down and put everything on hold. It's there, everywhere (unlike the car keys!), so get personal, look for Him and His specific plans. Find out what God is up to in every room you enter and join in.
Like the clever maths used on sound signals, we can be translated, transposed, transformed into this world-within-the-world. We can live a kind of transcendent life more fully in the here and now than we imagined possible. The domain is at hand, the domain of life in, and with, and in partnership with the Life Force, the Ignition and the Fire of the universe. He wants to be known.
Reality is at hand, engage!
Saturday 7 January 2012
Revisions
So it's a new calender year and I haven't blogged for a while. Time to give my innate creativity a chance.
My thoughts are still on the Road Back. That leg of the hero's journey where the crisis is over but the climax is still to come. Where the war is won, but not the battle. The occupying enemy is inevitably destined for utter defeat, yet the empire stands. Spot fires of the New Order pop up spontaneously as the cracks in the old way show themselves, but they are quickly snuffed out as the enemy seems to have the upper hand. It can feel like one step forward precedes two back, this is the time of the Allies. The hero is away, or making his final ascent, and it falls to the friends and followers to stand in the gap and show their colours. Here, the friend becomes the hero, the weak show their inner strength and the Hero's influence on his company is finally tested. This is the hour of the follower, as the hero charges for the final confrontation and the fulfillment of the journey. I am dwelling on all this as I try to write songs for our time. If we can understand when we are, we can better work out what to do.
I am also very much enjoying my wonderful and life-full family, especially following a good break for Christmas. I'll write more about this soon. Right now, time to get something out, and hope the creativity is unstoppered.
My thoughts are still on the Road Back. That leg of the hero's journey where the crisis is over but the climax is still to come. Where the war is won, but not the battle. The occupying enemy is inevitably destined for utter defeat, yet the empire stands. Spot fires of the New Order pop up spontaneously as the cracks in the old way show themselves, but they are quickly snuffed out as the enemy seems to have the upper hand. It can feel like one step forward precedes two back, this is the time of the Allies. The hero is away, or making his final ascent, and it falls to the friends and followers to stand in the gap and show their colours. Here, the friend becomes the hero, the weak show their inner strength and the Hero's influence on his company is finally tested. This is the hour of the follower, as the hero charges for the final confrontation and the fulfillment of the journey. I am dwelling on all this as I try to write songs for our time. If we can understand when we are, we can better work out what to do.
I am also very much enjoying my wonderful and life-full family, especially following a good break for Christmas. I'll write more about this soon. Right now, time to get something out, and hope the creativity is unstoppered.
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