Mozart's Clarinet Concerto

"When you painted on Earth -at least in you earlier days- it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too." C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

I can never quite forget that Mozart completed this piece as he was dying and while also working on the Requiem. There is such peace, such subdued joy in this work, it is truly amazing. Grace (and our responses to it) are both unfreezeable, but if you're going to try, do it well! So I'm posting this just for pleasure and also because I'm thrilled about this radioblog thingy.

(I've also edited this post)

Zoecarnate

This might be one of the best websites I've come across in months. It's things like this that make me happy I never got near a formal theological education, because I'm pretty sure that everyone who did would have known about this website in their first week of university. Well, I didn't. And boy, you should see the sheer look of excitement on my face right now!

There's something great about finding something when you've been looking a while. One of our profs over in the social sciences expressed this very well in the opening pages of a great textbook. While his book provides a wonderful framework through which students may fully "appropriate" the discipline, he argues that such a resource is probably best used by finalists. The book assumes that they had already picked up quite a lot of concepts in their previous years and now just needed to learn to see the whole. He'd rather provide lots of disjointed bits of information in the early years rather than start out with an empty framework "to be filled". He finds that imposing a framework on the students' minds at eighteen is a brutal way to teach. He'd rather they reached their third year, their minds brimming with interests and questions, desperate to know more, desperate to understand.

I think I'm unusually fortunate in this respect, because my curiosity on all things "God" is intact and (so far) boundless. I'm just desperate to find out more.

Overheard in yesterday’s small group

T: Okay now, do we have anything we could pray for?

P: Can you pray that I’ll manage to do all my work and still spend some proper time with God?

D. Suits me fine! 'Cause in the last few days I’ve been praying that God might go spend some proper time with someone else!

T. Dany!

This made me laugh...

(on whether recreational flying is "a symptom of sin")

This bishop is not very fun. A real Christian would be talking in terms of airflight being 'Wanton Harlotry afloat on the Devil's Own Breath' or words to that effect. If we could get more blood and thunder in the church's utterances they may get more credibility. For instance they could draw attention to the colour of the tarmac used at airports and say that 'Evil is that Black Expanse upon which the Godless artifacts of the Misbegotten, nay and thrice nay, etc. etc.' Let's have some good old Bible waving and shouting from the pulpit about lost souls in torment. Is there any wonder people stay away from the churches if all one gets from the clergy is the same old crap that the politicians are coming out with?

The comment was left by "Slightfoxing" on the Guardian's Comment Is Free page.

A Fan Art for David Hayward

Another one of my favourite hides...

Mr Sauder's Commencement Address

Yesterday while reviewing my notes I came across a passage that I had lifted from one commencement lecture given at the Faith Mennonite High School by a guy called Mr Sauder. This address is absolutely brilliant and quite possibly the number one best thing I’ve read this year so I thought I’d link to it. The initial link was provided a while back by Espiritu Paz, to whom I referred a couple of posts back. An exceptional blog in many respects.

"But the most important point I want to make in connection with this sort of sacrifice is that you must be committed to it, in the deepest parts of your soul, in order to go through with it. There will be difficult moments, perhaps when your investments have displaced the resources that another tribe survived on for centuries and you have to briefly glance at painful newspaper pictures of their starving bodies over your morning cup of coffee, or listen to sobering 25 second sound bite analysis of their deadly poverty during which Expert Economists try to explain that their deaths were unavoidable".

In some corner of England...

We had seen each other in Church before, but we met again on the way to lunch. It turned out that we had a lot in common, and that included a burning desire to go and explore the West Coast of North America. At lunch we found each other again and continued the conversation where we had let off. I noticed that he was wearing both a Star of David and a Hand of Fatima around his neck. I liked this. He showed me a third medal around his wrist. Then I noticed. His forearm was covered with scars. “Wow” I said, hoping to mean “man this is hardcore!”. “Yeah wow” he said, meaning “this is where I’ve been”. Shit.

We were having lunch at one of elder’s home who was in charge of the students and who had consequently invited them round to his place. There were quite a few 18-years-olds whose parents had phoned our church to make sure that they would be cared for. Most students were here for the first time. The weather was brilliant and the conversation was lighthearted. Most kids were fresh out of youth group and actually knew each other from yearly gatherings and camps.

So um, well. Conversation. There was definitely a blank, but not an awkward one. Rather a weird sense of fellowship. Though I’ve never actually self-harmed, I’ve been quite tempted to. On some days I could not verbalize the pain and I wished there was something else to take my mind off it, to escape from it. Also, it seemed like a way of expressing that I felt guilty somehow, guilty for not knowing better, guilty for not being better. I’d been quite close to that point. So in this silent fellowship we laughed. Wholeheartedly we laughed. There were two of us and we had found each other. Life is shit isn’t it? We were happy.

Anyway the scars looked very old (several years I’d say). They were white by now. And hell they must have been deep too. I still wonder whether it’s rather good or rather bad that I am always able to de-escalate things. Some days I think it’s bad because I’ve got no heart. On other days I think that’s good because I do have a radically democratic heart that refuses to construe others as pathological while it gets to feel smug and “functional”. So I de-escalate homelessness and I de-escalate self-harm. We’re in this together. You’re not that fucked up. You’re great.

I’m sure that it all sounds a bit reflexive on a screen. I.e. there goes Dany feeling all nice and warm inside because she was able to be supportive to some social charity case. This is not what happened. I was not reflexive at all. If anything, I was surprised that such a great guy had had such a rough background.

I thought his guy was awesome. I was so proud to have met him. I wanted to congratulate him: Well done! Well done for turning into such an engaging, soulful young man! Well done for making it to this University! Well done for thriving in it, despite a suicidal mother and non-existent father! Well done for caring so efficiently for her! Well done for joining this church and finding support in it! Well done for the all-out loveliness with which you simply enjoyed church and the company of normal church-going kids before university! Well done for the way in which you single-heartedly love them! I mean, you’re not just normal, you’re beautiful. I noticed that well before I noticed your arms.

I’m not sure our lousy church deserves to mumble its litanies next to someone who cries when he prays, but it is an honour to worship God next to someone like you.

(Absence of) picture credit: I really can't remember where I nicked that one from.