Labelling

I have added 'labels' to my blog which means you can go back and re-read your favourite posts.

Ha! Haven't you been wishing that would happen. It's like a revolution in your life, isn't it.

And I'm sure you'll find it hard to believe that my most common label, after 'diary style' (posts about what's happening in my life) is 'me'. My favourite topic is myself! What a testament to my character that is.

Remembrance and Loss – a meditation on Psalm 137

I wrote this for a remembrance event at church. It is also posted on my other blog, which is rather frugally updated!!



By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.

We have not been to Zion. And yet in our deepest being we feel something like a memory of it – a longing for a hidden kingdom. A memory of a place where we belong. And we weep for its loss.

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.

Is it possible to be creative in the face of loss? At times, we give up on life and worship. In pain, bereavement, betrayal, illness, abuse, loneliness, shattered hopes.

We want to live and play our music. We long for healing.

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

We feel weak and guilty – mocked, at times. Sometimes, we are victims of circumstance. Sometimes, the mess is our own doing. So easily we let ourselves be overrun by selfishness, deceit, suspicion and greed. We feel like a joke, sometimes.

Forgive us. We do not want our songs of praise to seem ridiculous.

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

This land is kind to most of us. But our brothers and sisters live at war and risk of death; burdened by corrupt governments; alone – forgotten; in pain, unable to be fully themselves; abused, bullied, persecuted or threatened – living in fear; dying from lack of food, medicine, clean water or shelter. We remember them and ask what we can do to free them to sing your song again?

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying. ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!

Our heritage is the stories of Adam and Eve; Noah; Abraham; Moses; Jacob; David. Betrayal, greed, violence. Creation, mercy, rescue. We want to tell these stories in our own voices, our own language We want to feel part of this heritage. We want to pass your memory on.

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying. ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

It is so long since you walked among us. Since Moses saw your face. Since your prophets shouted your words.
And so we forget. We eat, work, maintain comfortable lives, fight our little battles. Build a safe corner for you. Remind us, whatever it takes, that we are a waiting people: a people not of this world. A people whose God gives them meaning.
And may our memories season our days like salt.

By the Rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying. ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations! O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

We are ashamed this Psalm ends with such violence – is it in us too?

Perhaps not - but we are good at subtler cruelties: desiring others’ pain or humiliation; fascinated by others’ suffering; gossiping about misfortune; careless with the hearts of those who love and trust us; wilfully ignorant of our suffering neighbours. Obsessed with protecting ourselves at all cost; accepting of revenge; lacking your compassion.

You died in protest against our fear-driven violence. Most of all, we want to remember you. Your determination not to give into the ways of this world. The hope you offer in our darkest moments - because you knew darker and overcame.

We do not want to forget you.

We do not want our song to end in darkness.

Chepstow Acoustic Music Club

One of Cheppers' local pubs hosted the first of these nights yesterday.

Having not read the flyer properly, I was expecting a tiny bar enlivened in an either deafening or muffled manner by young men playing moody indie/rock. It was more of a well-behaved, properly organised folk event, in fact. Folk music is big in this neck of the woods.

We were among the youngest, thinnest and most conservative of hairstyle in the room. But it was nice. High standard of music; a genuine sense of community; a bit sentimental and a bit of a laugh.

I think we'll go back. Maybe even to play. I can see the Pottersons in ten years time being right at home in such a club. But Jon won't have a ponytail. And I doubt I'll become buxom.

There's no I in Team. Or something.

A couple of recent events at church have focused on change/looking back on what's past/moving into what's new.

It's pretty easy to come up with biblical characters who went through huge personal or societal changes (be that by determination, accident or even under duress.) From Adam & Eve to the prophets to the disciples. A veritable shedload of examples.

This, combined with the unnerving habit churches get into of treating their congregations like misbehaving sales reps, means we are easily duped into believing we're the dormant key to a Christian revolution. If we could just figure out how to change that little, inscrutable thing we must be getting wrong, we'd awaken our potential and find ourselves swept away by a revival.

Thing is, I guess stories were included in the bible because they covered moments of significance. And even given the understandable editorial preference for activity as opposed to inactivity, the book lists generation after generation of people who saw God do nothing at all worth noting.

It's ever so slightly difficult to accept that God's call on my Christian life may just be to plod on faithfully and pass my understanding of my faith onto my friends and any children who may come along.

You often hear "what would you do if you knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow?". Well, yes. But to nick a phrase from Brian McLaren, "what would you do if you knew he wasn't coming back for 10,000 years?"

Takes more guts to face up to the latter, in my case. I'd much rather believe I'm about to usher in the new kingdom myself. With humility, bien sur.

murder most foul (NB spoilers)

I have (re)watched a few films recently in which hordes of people meet gruesome ends.

The Departed (Scorcese) I've seen four times. It's still gripping. Murder abounds. I feel like screaming at God when Leo gets shot in the head. HASN'T HE SEEN ENOUGH SUFFERING ALREADY? GIVE THE GUY A BREAK!

This screening of Fargo (Cohen brothers) was my third. Not quite as many deaths, but it's a bloodbath nonetheless. One of the more unfortunate characters is forced through a wood chipper. It's with mild exasperation and wonder at the human condition, a bit of a chuckle and a sense of great inertia that you watch them all go.

It was the first time I'd seen Surveillance (Lynch - Jennifer) and I expect will be the last. It's clever and well acted with a twist that gets you in the gut. But it's lacking in characters to like or even understand. The violence is disturbing. And its inescapability is the point, the whole point and nothing but the point.

I don't mind a bit of gore and grit. But a movie has to take me beyond that stuff in a redemptive fashion. Happy ending? Not necessarily. But if by the end I don't want any of the characters to be rescued and I don't feel that a world I recognise has been revealed to me in a true or new way, then I'm unlikely to revisit.

No doubt I'll continue to enjoy Leo getting his brain mashed, though.