Four Walls

I just have to look at the M&G website – with its flashing headlines and a million and one things to click on and I start feeling overwhelmed. This information age is hard work. One always has the feeling of running to catch the “Information” bus that’s leaving down the dusty road. 

Sometimes I envy my father who can bearly operate a video machine let alone a computer. On the telephone he tells me how he spent the afternoon watching the sea counting the whale pods!!

Even spirituality seems to have become a whole host of choice and selection. A million books on faith. I feel like I should have read them all to earn the right to an opinion, the right to believe the essentially simple things that I believe. Am I simple in having a relatively simple faith? I ask myself this question. But even then – if I look closely – I realise that simple faith is actually quite complex in the way that it arrived at its simplicity!! Oh dear!

My sister-in-law went to the talk the Dalai Lama gave in Cape Town a while back. She laughed when at the press conference, he basically reprimanded a Capetonian devotee telling him to stick to the faith of his own culture! I can’t help feeling the same way sometimes. We’ve all got so adventurous, I feel we are sometimes losing ourselves in the process.

It was much easier when there were just four walls with a great view!!  

   

Star Wars-styled Enlightenment

Working hard is very important. You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take those risks, to be able to jump over the hurdles, to be able to break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you.
George Lucas

Back to the Beginning

“Ask Square Pig how much she paid for that box,” says Square Pig Senior, chuckling under his breath and staring at an old green kist in SP’s lounge with the paint peeling off. Square Pig’s friend turned around and raised an enquiring ear.

“Five hundred rand,” Square Pig mumbled through her snout. Senior roared with laughter.

“Well I like it – it’s old!!” she stated, stamping her hoof into the ground. They all stared at the green box in Square Pig’s lounge. It WAS old – there was no doubt about that!!

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels comforted by old things! In a world of microwaves, overnight building developments, shopping malls and quick fixes – there is something reassuring about old things; the amount of time it took to make them and the clues they give us to a by-gone era less superficial than our own. 

I went to the Irma Stern museum a while back and was literally transfixed by the figures she had painted on her dining room furniture. Not only were they hand-painted but they represented all the mystery and strangeness of Medieval times. I loved them.

I don’t think I’m alone in this fascination. “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Rings”, victorian wall motifs, ”stressed” furniture, retro chic and a thousand Long Street antique shops (all with exorbitant prices) speak of a generation’s longing for something old and mysterious, something grounded in the tried and tested, something which instinctively we know has inherant value, something we’ve lost and desperately want back! 

In spiritual terms, I see this longing too - yoga,  mysticism, monasticism and meditation, in the pilgrims we make to England, India, China where we hope the “ancient” walls will tell us something we don’t already know, something which can’t be listed in “wikipedia” or “iol”!!!  

So it was with some delight that I found this quote in the emerging conversations about Christianity:

…it seems as if those involved are charting a new direction for Christianity. Yet time and again familiar – sounding place names gently remind us that this discovery is at the same time a re-discovery…and my conclusion is this: the terrotory I thought I was helping to chart was actually discovered a long time ago by my ancestors. It is both frustrating and comforting that no matter how fast I run, those who have long since died have already arrived at where I am attempting to go. (Peter Rollins “How (not) to Speak of God”)

      

I’m sorry, I forgot!

Possibly one of the most pathetic lines in the story of Joseph struck me this week. Joseph has just pulled off a most incredible feat. He interprets the dreams of Pharoah’s cupbearer and chief baker, while they are all in prison. The first guy, he tells will be restored to his position in three days and the second he says will die. Quite out there things to say in the first place but the fact that they came true is even more remarkable – or so one thinks. 

Then comes the winning line. Things happen just as Joseph says they will. The cupbearer (lucky lad) is restored to Pharoah’s house and one is waiting for him to get ol’ Jospeh out the slammer. No go!  ”The chief cup bearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him” 

I couldn’t believe it when I read that. The guy had the power to do something. He just had to say a word or mention it to Pharoah as he poured him a beautiful glass of vino. “Mmmh Pharoah you would never believe what happened to me..” It would even have made a great dinner story. But no – he forgot! He just forgot.

I am struck by how often “I forgot” is my excuse. “I just forgot – it happens, you know!” But maybe I’m missing out on the biggest opportunity of my life in conveniently forgetting. Maybe someone else is…just a thought. An uneasy thought at that! 

Proverbs 3:27 Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.

Just like Harry

Square Pig was reading Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles Vol 1″ because she’s been trying to improve her musical sense of things and Taize singing wasn’t helping much. (sorry Nic) 

Anyway, this quote appealed to her (because it has absolutely nothing to do with music)  

“Harry was that rare type of character that radiates greatness, and you hope that some of it rubs off on you. The man commands respect. You know he never took the easy path, though he could have.” (pg 69)

Square Pig takes a moment to think about what NOT taking the easy path could mean…mmmh maybe eating 2 doughnuts , instead of 6!!!

Humming a “Square Pig” tune!!

Square Pig woke up today hummmming a little Square Pig tune. The problem was, it was one of those tunes that only likes to be inside your head. Everytime Square Pig tried to sing it – it sounded more like a strangled cat than a dignified little piggie! (all the Taize singers will relate)

Anyway, ideas on a Square Pig song (sung to the tune of something we all know) are needed here! I’ve got “Square Pig , Square Pig tastes REAL good!” (the Royco ad). Mmmmmh but not sure I want to encourage any uncivilised practises here….so over to you.  

   

Outta the Pig Sty!

This morning I looked out the window. I do that every morning but on this particular one it felt like the world had taken a breath in. It had an unearthly quietness and through this stillness a woman was jogging – silently. Quite surreal. But somehow in that ordinary moment God breathed “I am here!”

The moment made me think of Moses and the burning bush. He had just led his flocks to a new place. It was an ordinary day, an ordinary bush and yet somehow God gets his attention. God makes the bush burn and says “Take off your shoes, you are on holy ground.”

I am sure there holy moments every day that we miss because we are just too busy.

A couple of years back I wrote this:

You’re the poetry/ You’re the words that make and move me/ You’re the innocent/ You transform for me the beauty/ Of simple things/ Like a packet in the wind…

Christian Karaoke!

When I brought my cousin to church for the first time, he found the singing thing completely weird. He told me it was like singing Christian Karaoke. When I think about it though – there is something quite odd in it really. We follow words on a screen in a happy sing-a-long. Maybe this is out of place for most people outside of campfires and Irish bars!!

The Psalms encourage us to siiiiing to God in countless places. But how do we do it in a way that doesn’t just seem like a Karaoke session? How do we make it full of meaning and intent? And how do we allow a space where someone new in the group can understand it better?

My squeak for the day!!