By saying it is, we say beauty is only a subjective quality.
But by saying it isn’t – by saying that something may be beautiful without our being able to appreciate it as beautiful – we divorce ourselves from our experience and our association between words and description…
Is it possible to say
“It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it.”
Which I think I may have said, from time to time. In that I can see elements and aspects which, maybe I know, are considered beautiful, or perhaps I can see an underlying elegance and purpose, but aesthetically I find it displeasing… Some of Rembrant’s paintings would fall in to this category.
The thing is, am I just susceptible to the cultural conditioning of my upbringing in saying something like this? I have preconceived notions of what is beautiful and what isn’t? But then, my aesthetic sense is also formed (to a large degree) by the same…
So there’s a whole philosophic field based around these very questions.
But I guess I’m kind of wondering… how variable language is. How our thoughts are modified by the language and words we use, and yet the language and words we use are modified and morphed by our thoughts.
So often, everything seems so vague, so fuzzy, so indefinable, so inexplicable, so possibly variable, so uncertain and indefinate, and so futile. *sigh*
(I love this photo!!! Becky isn’t so keen on it though. heh heh heh)
Drank lots of coffee:
(I figure if I put a funny one of me, I’ll get less flak for putting a crazy one of Becky…)
The house had a log fire, where we made smores:
And generally had a wonderful time. Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding, helped us in so many ways, and gave us gifts and all that cool stuff. Getting married is awesome! Being married is even better.
So now we’re back, we’ve been playing with some new kitchen toys (real chef knives, a blender, breadmaker, new plates and bowls and pans and pots and a yoghurt maker… wow! I feel really thankful and very embarrassed in a good way…). Thus the food pictures:
(making pancakes using a blender to make the batter - is this the ultimate in laziness? Whatever - it’s fun! :-) )
Yes - we’re having fun. Not having to walk half an hour home each night is VERY nice too. I may well post more pictures too, as I slowly sort them out. We haven’t actually got all the pictures back from the wedding, we’ve seen some of them, but I’ll post some of those too, later.
Sometimes it seems a bit scattered - all over the place. I’d wondered for a while about the sermon on the mount, as He seems to jump from one topic to another in a somewhat haphazard manner.
Check this out:
Judging Others
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Ask, and It Will Be Given
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
The Golden Rule
12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few…
(ESV Bible - Matthew 7:1-14)
This is how the ESV sets out the passage. As you can see, it’s nicely broken up in to paragraphs, with nice easy to spot headings, different verse numbers, etc. Usual Bible Printing Style(.css). Same as the NIV, KJV, NASB, and most other Bibles you find these days.
The trouble is, I can’t imagine Jesus teaching quite like that. No pauses, just “1,2,3,59,60,61,10008,10009,10010” kind of thing.. No “Oh yes. By the way…” between totally unrelated topics.
Yes, OK. So they’re all related to love, and relationships. Kind of.
Try and find something Jesus said that isn’t, in some manner of speaking.
Anyway…
I was trying to figure this out.
In our study group, we’re using John Stott’s notes, which give a rough interpretation as follows:
1-5,“Don’t judge others”
6, “Don’t waste your time trying to preach to unbelievers who refuse to believe.”
So, returning to my original quote: love isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.
And I said, there’s some truth to it. However - I don’t think that’s the whole story.
We all long for love, and when we think of it, imagine the amazing soaring heights: long walks in the woods; laughter; passion; kisses in the moonlight; being held by someone who just wants to be with you; that secret, hidden spark; being known and knowing, intimately, deeply, unjudgingly; the look that’s meant just for you…
And Josh Harris et al. are right in saying it’s more than just the feeling we get from these things (incredible, inexplicable, wonderful and rewarding though it is…), and we must have something more, a decision, an act of the will, which keeps us going through the dark times. Though thick and thin, health and sickness, better or worse, richer or poorer. The thing which keeps us going though we’re angry and tired, and the one we love drives us mad. When everything goes wrong and we want to give up - that “not-giving-up-ness”, is also love. And without it, all of the first list are just a crashing cymbal, or breath of wind, cool, sweet, beautiful, but perishable, and of no lasting significance.
But the thing is, I don’t think that just the decision is love.
And I think we can - by looking at it, or teaching it this way - miss the fact that 90% of the time*, life isn’t passionate highlights, nor terrible lows, but plodding along in the day-to-day mundane boring normality.
[*Yes, I know. Fictional statistic for the sake of rhetorical prose. Forgive me.]
Does that sound bad?
If you get married, and have kids, then by the time they are old enough to leave home, you’ll have spent two thousand HOURS … doing the dishes.
Is that bad?
No. It’s an integral part of love. Without the details, picking up the trash and the dishes, vacuuming the carpets, driving to work, none of the “perks” of love can exist - nor would they mean anything if they did.
What we need, I think, is not to say “I have decided to love”, but “I am love”. Following God’s description of Himself in John’s gospel as love. The famous passage in 1 Corinthians comes to mind, of course, as well. So instead of thinking, “I’ve decided to love Becky”, or “I feel in love with Becky”, I must say, “I am love Becky.” (grammarians, have fun)
Then the things I do, the things I think, the things I say, will all come from that. The who I am.
And it must become part of the who.
So then, how does this all reflect back to theology, and the my thoughts about our perspective on God?
Well, I struggle to connect a lot of the bits and pieces of Christianity.
The theology, on one hand, with the practical out-working on the other, loving people on the third hand, loving God on the fourth, loving myself with the fifth hand, spiritual experience with the sixth, and by this stage, I’ve more than run out of arms.
I played a bit with trying to make Venn diagrams in 3d. Using different shaped spheres, and so on. It’s quite hard to make diagrams which actually help to make the subject clearer. Usually it actually becomes less comprehensible.
But here’s the best I could come up with, showing 3 ‘winds’ I believe are currently blowing through the Evangelical world:
Obviously, there’s a heck of a lot more going on - just as in my previous post there are an awfulawful lot of groups who don’t fit into those gross generalisations. But I’m just focusing on a few areas - humour me. You can extrapolate the concepts out to whichever field of theological hooha you like.
So anyway. The 3 “winds”:
Proclamation: A lot of people, especially amongst the Reformed Christians, but also amongst the Positive Christians are very ‘preachy’ – in that their primary effort seems to be going in to telling the rest of the world their position. All the traditional study aids go into this: exegesis, hermeneutics, preaching, everything goes into ‘Tell the world the truth!’. And it’s not just the Reformed groups, but all across the spectrum. There isn’t a lot of open-minded-ness, because there IS an absolute truth, and our job is to tell everyone about it! One of the major shortfalls is that the people most influenced by this wind tend (I observe) to not be willing to challenge their own beliefs, but once they’ve “got it sorted” and have answers they’re happy with, are happy to debate for the sake of convincing others, but aren’t open to changing themselves. I met some Mormons a few months ago who told me, ‘We’d like to tell you about what we believe, but if you want to just discuss and try to tell us about your beliefs, then we’ll just go elsewhere. We’re not going to be converted.’
Discussion: Especially in the so called ‘Emerging Church’, much effort seems to go into ‘The Conversation’. In many ways, I suspect this is a reaction against the proclamation group - who were very much deregueur during the ’80s, and are perceived to have built into almost a fortress of dogma. The Discussion seems to be reacting away from that, saying, ‘Maybe Wayne Grudem didn’t have everything right. Maybe the world is a bit more complex than a quick Systematic Theology can describe. It’s certainly open for discussion. I don’t know, but it’s interesting – what do you think?’ And in a sense, that’s the big difference. What do you think? vs. This is the truth!And it’s not just one group saying this – I think it’s across the whole Church. Some people are becoming more open to uncertainty and relational discussion – which is positive, I think. And also, everything being open for discussion is also positive. It helps us to not become blinded.
It is a harder line to walk with integrity, though, I think, as if everything is open for discussion, how do you really know what you believe? And do you really believe it? It can also turn very easily into ‘There is no absolute truth? Right? ‘Cos, everyone has their own perspective, innit? Whaddya say?’
We frequently get told the typical ‘Love isn’t a feeling - it’s a decision’ aphorism beloved of the Joshua Harris school of thought.
And, of course, there’s a lot of truth in that.
Going by the Self Help philosophy, virtually everything is a decision. You can decide to be happy, sad, excited, motivated, depressed, whatever - and Make It True In Your Life™.
And of course, we do have an element of choice in how we react to situations; our responces are not all pre-determined by DNA, our upbringing, nor instinct. Choosing to live purposefully (not in the Purpose Driven Life sense) - saying ‘I’m going to sail to this specific place, whether or not it’s easy, whether or not the wind is against me, whether or nor it’s raining.’ is more likely, I feel, to lead to something meaningful than simply being tossed around by whatever weather (whether favourable or not).
Ha! I managed it. Weather followed by whether in a sentence. Betcha didn’t see that one comin’. All this blogging stuff is helping my spelling to impruve.
Now the Perciever (MBTI) in me says ‘hang on a second, mate - you’ve got the whole thing backwards. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. So actually, taking what weather comes at you along the way - being flexible; able to adapt to the situation; enjoying the mood - is more important than whether you’re actually got some place to finally end up. And when you end up there, you’re really just en route to somewhere else! There are no desinations, only stepping stones.’
So here’s now an interesting concept. Totally un-scientific, un-tested, un-official and un-ilateral (OK, OK, superfluous punctuation for the sake of continuing the sequence humour. Sorry). The Church, in general, especially the Reformed branches of it, are dominated by J types. The theologians, especially, of the NTJs. This leads very easily to Us/Them; Saved/Unsaved; Elect/Damned; Christian/Heathen; Religious/Secular distinctions. At some level, this is fine. When it’s implimented by well integrated balanced and loving Js, it can become an inspiration to many, and allow huge, complex theological issues to be understood slightly better by us plebs. The trouble comes when we don’t realise that it is an abstraction, and that every piece of theology that we come up with - no matter how brilliant or water-tight it seems - is merely the wrestling of a fallen finite mind with concepts of an infinite perfect God.
Those of us who are not NTJs, when we pick up on NTJ thought patterns, and try to live that style, often pick it up very badly, and express the worst elements of it. I feel that myself, when I try to think or live as a Calvinist, become the worst form of Calvinist. I don’t have the capacity inside to take those black and white and apply them without either falling into Lord of the Flies over-bearing judgementalism and pettiness, or else wishy-washing it out into something which would have me burned at the stake for relativism - should the Reformation Inquisition ever catch me.
So I thought it might be interesting to post about some things which are adding to my life here.
First post is coffee. I’m quite the coffee fan, over here. Compared so some people, not so much, but for Carlisle, quite high up the coffee freak ladder.
Unless there is a hidden coffee community I’m not finding somehow.
I don’t have a massive budget for going to flashy cafes or expensive bistros or whatever all the time, so what I’m more interested in is good tasting home coffee.
Here’s my current collection of coffee related clobber.
First a fun story, and then I’ll go into more detail about everything else, so if you’re not interested in coffee, then you can skip the end. :-)
So when I moved into this house with Euan, there was a french press / cafetiere in the cupboard, so I thought “Oh good - I don’t need to buy anything for making coffee, I can use that”. So the first morning I boiled the kettle, let it cool for a while I put some ground coffee in the cafetiere, and then poured the water in.
I thought it was a pyrex pot, but alas, I was wrong. There was a tremendous ‘crack!’ sound, and coffee started to leak from the bottom. Oh no! What to do, lah?
So since it was only leaking very very slowly, I thought, well, I won’t waste the coffee, I’ll let it brew, plunge it very carefully, then pour the coffee out - if any glass did shatter, the plunger/filter will clean it out, and then I can see how bad the damage is.
So duely I followed the above plan, until the pouring bit. I lifted up the pot, only to find that in fact the crack had been ALL the way around the base! So when I lifted it up, the base stayed on the work surface, and the rest of the pot came up in my hand.
The coffee, alas, followed the laws of physics (I know, I can hardly blaim it…) and went everywhere.
No coffee for me that morning.
So I bought a new french press to replace the one I’d exploded, but by that time, I’d already found
…
A Krups espresso/filter machine.
…
in Charlie? (the used clothes / stuff team cupboard, when you leave, you can leave anything you don’t want to take with you for others to have).
So I was quite surprised to find this in Charlie - until I looked it up online.
It has terrible reviews.
Here’s my take - it’s kinda fun to play with, but I’m not convinced by the ‘crema’ that the espresso part produces. It feels kinda fake to me, almost like the machine is somehow ‘frothing’ it to make it seem more real or something. The coffee doesn’t taste too horrible, just … meh. Not really rich and interesting. Maybe un-set up temperature and pressure stuff? I dunno. I’m no expert on any of this! The milk steaming wand is very cheap and plasticy, as well as seeming near impossible to actually steam milk in proper microfoam also seems to taint the milk with a kind of rubbery aftertaste. Maybe it’s just me though…
Hello Blog.
Hello everyone who reads this blog.
Hello google-bot.
Hello world.
It’s me. Daniel. Back again. Exciting, wot?
So, we’re back in the UK. I arrived back here literally 4 hours before getting on to a bus to go to TeenStreet in Germany, which we (OMNIvision) were doing video and some sound and lights and so on for. After two weeks of running this event, which I will tell you all about - later, which was very cool, we came back to the UK.
10 days later, Adam, Becky and myself went across to the Nederlands for our friends Jurgens and Eleanor’s wedding. Which was lots of fun. We came back after that to the the UK again.
Bridget (from that biggish place near New Zealand… um, forgottern what it’s called. Aus something? Something with trailers? or something?) also came with us back to the UK, and was here with us for about a month, hanging out, working at OMNIvision, and so on.
Then 10 days ago (or so) Bridget took us over to Malta, so see the Logos Hope for a few days, and also Becky’s dad and church there. I’d never been to Malta before, but Becky grew up there, so that was VERY cool. Malta is beautiful.
I’ll be posting more detailed stuff and photos later.. This is just to catch y’all up to date, you know.
So. We then came back to the UK, last week.
Now for the next scattered layer of events in between those all.
Yesterday we ran the video and lights for the Northern Women’s Convention, which we’ve been doing for the best part of a decade every year now, I believe.
On friday morning, we set up our whole smaller OB unit (the bus - aka “The Tardis”) at the main office for devotions, we filmed a bunch of stories people were telling. We hadn’t set up the unit in a while, so this was good to check everything was working before the Women’s convention… one bad camera cable, one missing focus adaptor, not much else actually wrong.
Two weeks ago, just before going off to Malta I ran sound and we did a spill-over room for the local Baptist church - as they had a new minister arriving (for the first time in decades) and so there were a few hundred people along. I’m in the middle of overhauling our sound equipment / side-racks stuff, so it’s good as well getting these smaller gigs to test things on.
I also went down to the Quinta and ran sound for them for their big 30 years Quinta+OM celebration a few weeks ago.
I do enjoy doing live sound stuff. I still wonder quite frequently if I should somehow go and do some more official training for it…
Oh well.
So, that’s the grand scope of my last few months, I’ll post more details soon.
You can’t work efficiently in blender on a laptop without an external keyboard and mouse.
Beautiful Greek letters! I find keyboards and mice from supermarkets are the cheapest, and the longest lasting. Apple and Microsoft branded mice - just say NO!
