If I wanted a funeral, which I do not, this would have to be part of it. The words and the music!!!!
Category: Personal
comformist
No post – sorry. I have not spoken with anyone since the beginning of the year. So, maybe that helps?
I am reading. Lots of different books. I am trying for a book a week – non-theological and non-philosophical. I would like to read more literature. The first one is Never Let Me Go. A little slow at the start but gets a lot better. It has been banned in some states in the US.
Yesterday was a Desert Christian day. The following intrigues me:
We live in a society that is at once deeply individualist and deeply conformist; the desert fathers and mothers manage to be neither, and they suggest to us that the church’s calling likewise is to avoid both these pitfalls.
Williams, Rowan. Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert
The analysis is good. Yes, conformity is the only virtue. Perhaps it goes a little deeper:
Conformity is the tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behaviors in ways that are consistent with group norms. Norms are implicit, specific rules shared by a group of individuals on how they should behave. People may be susceptible to conform to group norms because they want to gain acceptance from their group.
Conformity
The modern tendency is to think, “If we can measure it, we can build it”. Perhaps Kierkegaard’s leveling?
Anyway, back to solitude and silence.
Day 0 – questions
With God’s help, I plan to spend January alone. I am praying for a retreat at home.
Sometimes, writing down the question you bring to a retreat is a good idea. So: do I have a vocation to the solitary life? At the moment, I feel like I am using it as an excuse and escape from me. The end of the year was extremely difficult. And I have simply stepped back into old habits and thought patterns. So, to expand the question, do I have a vocation, or am I just running away from me?
I have become more aware of the differences between my view of Christianity and the community/parish. And that has really hurt. I would like to offer the hurt to Jesus as a form of mortification – hand it over to him. But, apart from the spiritual impact, there are impacts on my life-arrangement. In that context, do I have the resolution to start again?
And, to be honest, I feel like it is all me. I am again in a position where I feel I am the problem. In the end, there is no escaping me. Am I, as a person, suited to this life?
So, 31 days of January to work it all out!
institutionalism
What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Luke 15:4
God leaves the institution to find the individual. Do I escape into the institution to ignore the individual? What happens when people do not fit into my “box”?
What do the “99” think of the “1”?
sometimes …
… it is just that obvious!!!!
Day 7 – all good
So, I tested again this morning, and I am all clear. Back to normal – or not!?
I said Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer this morning in my chapel. I forgot how meaningful (to me!) the words and actions are. A very blessed start to the day. No insight – apart from the Melbourne Stars are a really bad T20 side. I will need to shop today for some food, but I might wait.
Blessed Feast of S. Thomas, Ember Saturday in Advent, and Summer Solstice.
Day 6 – recovery?
Day 6, and I think I am back to normal – whatever that may mean. I am unsure what I did yesterday – did I read or dance? Anyway, here is a thought for the day.
During this version of a COVID lockdown, I learned that I have an issue with “the church” as a whole and not individuals. Yes, that sounds like Kierkegaard and maybe he is the driving force in my thinking. And the problem is not the institution but rather the emphasis people place on the institution. The modern church has replaced the individual before God with a collection of congregational members called to follow a faceless organisation. There is no accountability to God for my actions but rather an urging to conform. In more philosophical terms, I wonder if the modern world, post-scientific revolution, is stuck in actuality. And the institution of the “church” is living without hope.
Anyway! Maybe a fever-induced hallucination?
read and dance
I want to say, sleep. But that is a little boring and, in my case, predictable.
I read Kafka’s The Castle – that was super fun. It made me laugh, wonder, and cry. It was an escape into a different world that is a lot like my world. Also I watched Veep – that always makes me laugh. Especially when Gary goes to a vegan dinner and asks how many beans are in the soup. And it is good for my anxiety as I have watched it so often.
Play?! I danced to very loud techno, with my headphones on so no one could hear, in my dark room so no one could see, and with my eyes closed so I could feel the beat.
Day 5 – freedom
I am feeling better! I spent too much time on the phone yesterday – settling things for next year. So I am hoping for a relaxed day.
I like being alone. I like the freedom. So, this COVID isolation is a freedom for me. It is the lesson for this all – sometimes, things just happen for the best, even when I think it is terrible. (Sorry, that is very fatalistic – amor fati.)
I read a little yesterday – The Hammer of God by Giertz and English Spirituality by Thornton. The Hammer of God is a novel to which I am returning. Every time I pick a new side. Thornton is quickly becoming my favourite Anglican author, who has put some of my thinking into a larger context. (Also, I think his analysis of the Anglican context is very apt.)
Anyway …
serious personal guidance
At the time Thornton wrote his book, Anglican laity regularly complained that the clergy of the day were not properly equipped to give their flocks “serious personal guidance” in matters of the faith. Lay people believed their parish priests were “excellent and dedicated men, but they were uninterested, or frankly incompetent,” in this kind of work.
The Ascetical Theology of Augustine and the Book of Common Prayer, Mike Michelin
Today?
a fool and his prayer book 