Joy Upside Down

The life story of Henri Nouwen, a well-known Dutch theologian and author, has had a lingering effect on the decisions of the past few months. I have decided to move from the flash media world for a time and head back to ground-roots, working in a poor community in London. Part of this journey has been influenced by this theologian and so I tell his story.

Henri was a Harvard lecturer – an incredibly gifted teacher whose classes were always full and who had a profound effect on many young students’ lives. He also became a prolific writer and the success of his books led to speaking engagements across the world. Yet within this highly successful life he discovered a profound loneliness and struggled with bouts of depression.

A friend invited him to live at L’Arche where for the first time, living in a community that helped and lived with people with severe disabilities, he experienced a sense of acceptance and love that he had never experienced in his life. He was given the task of looking after a severely physically challenged boy called Adam. At first, he couldn’t stop thinking about all the writing he had to do and  all the time he was wasting by being with this boy and then slowly a transition happened within him. He focused on the job at hand and really started to value his time with Adam, to the point that it was this time that he valued above his writing. Although he couldn’t speak, Adam taught him much about living in the moment and being present, slowing down and discovering an “inner at-homeness”. He said Adam taught him what real peace was.

Since reading some of Henri Nouwen’s work and a commentary on his life – I keep thinking that the places where we think we will find fulfilment often leave us void and empty and it is sometimes the underrated places and people that we accept into our lives which hold the keys to our greatest growth and joy. Life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect but it is sometimes in these unexpected turn of events where we often find the treasures our heart is most longing for – a kind of  “upside down joy”.

I expected that coming to London would hold for me a high-flying job in marketing, radio or TV. I  couldn’t find work for 3 months and after much struggle, I ended up working at the English Foreign Language School I had worked at 10 years before, before my media career had got its day. It felt like I had gone back to zero – a humiliating and confusing experience. I moved on to another College for a full-time job and while I was there I could see some gaps in the running of the college that I could fill with my media experience so I offered my services and ended up being the Marketing and Student Welfare Officer.

It has been a journey where I have begun to understand that my identity is not found in my job title and that actually it is sometimes the works of service we give where we are placed that can be the most fulfilling . It is from this place of letting go and enjoying what the stage had to offer that I became more open to other career prospects. I can honestly say that had you asked me if I would consider doing Community Work in a poor area two years ago , I would definitely have said “No way”. I had other plans for myself. So with this new job starting in a week, I stand at a threshold excited at what this next phase has to offer. I am sure that not all of it will at first be what I might have expected but within all that I am sure that I can find again that  “joy upside down”.

“Are you a Facebook Narcissist?”

Article in Stylist Magazine 2010

I was struck by this title in a Stylist magazine I picked up in the tube last week. The sub-head read  ”Our whole lives are now played out online – is it harmless entertainment or the sign of an increasingly self-obsessed society?”

Something rings true in this. To do well  these days all seems to be about self-promotion, self-marketing and networking where we get to tell everyone how marvelous we are. Not only that but since we are living in a media saturated society, we not only do we tell people how marvelous we are (sometimes on an up-to-minute basis – thanks Twitter) but we get to show them in photos, videos and even cartoons of ourselves.

I have been struck lately reading AW Tozer’s “Pursuit of God” where he suggests that finding a higher more godly life means striking down the love of self. He talks about a veil which stands unmoved in many of our hearts which hinders a close relationship with our Maker and that veil involves the love of self in all its various forms: self-righteousness, self-admiration, self-sufficiency and self-confidence. He even goes on to reprimand the church for admiring such people who are naturally good self-promoters, who love the attention of standing in front of people and whose egotism and false sense of themselves have led others to follow blindly without questioning.

Tozer writes in a style foreign to us today. His 1950′s directness and talk of “sin” and “pride” is almost quaint in its tone. We live in a society so obsessed with not offending that we cannot speak with his authority. I find his manner refreshing and liberating and immensely challenging. If I look at the root of my heart, I can see there is a lot of ME kicking around. “Me” sneaks into conversations where I feel the need to tell people about the great things I have done, the places I have visited, the things I have read (ohh dear) and in those furtive glances in windows on the way to work just to make sure I am looking oh so good!

I realise that in all these things a balance is needed but I think the world is hungry for some “old-time” values and spiritual insight. The fashion world is obsessed with 1950′s style at the moment, people are making cup cakes and woman’s magazine’s bring up topics like the return in favour of  the “stay-at-home mom!” (women’s libbers block your ears!) We have come a full circle in many things. I think spiritually many of us have also come a full circle – looking to older theologians and even the monks and mystics from by-gone eras to find some depth, some wisdom, some amazing revelation. The superficialness and “quick-fix”ness of today isn’t satisfying the longings of the heart, a heart that I believe will only find its solace in its pursuit of God.

Tozer suggests that even being aware of our self-love is not enough to remove this thing which stands like a veil concealing us from God. It is really only He himself who can remove it and that we have only to come to Him. “Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust.” (Pursuit of God, AW Tozer) May we all find a life more filled with God and a genuine concern for others and less filled with ourselves.

Risky Business

Since arriving in London, my perception of the place has been coloured somewhat by John Caputo’s ”What would Jesus Deconstruct” (Thanks fakeexpressions for this gem!) He starts the book off speaking about the commecial success that’s been made with the “What Would Jesus Do?” slogan, reminding us that its origins are far from the American self satisfied gung-ho christianity that it seems to represent . The original text where Sheldon uses the phrase is ”In his Steps”. A heart-sick tramp in the story confronts a well-to-do church saying:

 “It seems to me there is an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do?” 

Caputo expands the idea further by saying later in the chapter, “ Were this figure of Jesus, who is the centrepiece of this poetics or theo-poetics, to return, what would he look like? An illegal immigrant? A child dying of Aids? A Vatican bereaucrat? And what do we imagine he would expect of us here and now? The questiion calls for a work of application, interpretation, interpolation, imagination and self interrogation and all that is risky business”  

I have wondered in the last few days that were Jesus a face in London, what would he look like? Its made me look at the people around me differently. One can’t help in this environment being slightly envious of the opinionated, overly confident city-slickers who hop on and off the tube in their latest fashion gear with their trendy cell phone, ipod and lap top computer. But whose body/guise would Jesus choose were he to come to London? Would it be the gypseys who walk around with their children asking for money, or the over-weight red head kid? Or maybe the Eastern European at the corner shop?

I am keenly aware that whatever Jesus would do, it would turn our expectations on their head and challenge us to the core .  Even as I approach the idea of working again (oh the reality must kick in too soon I fear) and finding a job, there is a sense of being in that amazing place of being able to redefine my direction. I could do a number of things. Motivation is always deadly apparent at times like this. Do I go for the big bucks or do I wait a bit and think where perhaps the face of Christ is most apparent? Challenging thoughts….and as Caputo says “risky business”.

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!!  

   

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.

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!!