Not so cynical

I was a bit grumpy last time wasn't I?! I'm thinking about/trying not to be so cynical. There is a subtle difference between "keeping it real" and "being a miserable cow" that can't really be identified analytically but most people can sense (like trying to measure body heat with clos when you can just ask if they're comfy). I sense that I was being my "other me" then.

This "other me" thing is what I'm gonna write about tonight. I don't really have the time to craft a perfect blog post but I've really missed writing and have got about half an hour to spare this evening before I travel across London (where I work) and get a late night bus back to Bristol (where I live). So you get a bit of what I've been thinking about with no attempted at precision or clarity.

'A job?' I hear you say. I do believe I haven't mentioned it but one of the reasons I don't write much at the moment is that I started working! I know, someone gave me a job?!? It isn't as drastic as traveling 6 hours everyday but I am still based in Brizzle whilst coordinating the education programme for a charity in London. We work to try and change the circumstances of young Afro-Caribbean boys from a deprived borough in the east, who are identified at being at risk of social exclusion. They show "leadership potential" just not in very constructive ways... IT'S HARD. It's heart-wrenching too.

I'm not so crass as to say 'They got it so bad it makes me rethink'. We can all be "justifiably" (well, by some definitions) cynical about stuff in our lives. The main thing I am thinking about is how we have these two sides: the one-that-wants-to-do-well and the one-that-wants-to-fuck-the-other-one-up. Here in this place I have met perfect examples of those who know what is best and are desperate to succeed, yet still repeatedly interact with the world in destructive ways - sometimes moments after they express willingness and longing. Wow, Romans: 7 21-24 never was more real to me:

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?

I mean, don't get me wrong I see it in my own heart all the time but to witness it in action with things that might be "obvious" or "easy" really rams that home. I was talking to them today about the "other side" of human nature and I tells you what, dese youts really get it a lot better than some of the more educated people I know. They've experienced that hold on them... they understand how they have the responsibility to choose the right path, because they've struggled so hard to stay on it.

I see the little ones, some of whom haven't learned the difference between right and wrong. If anyone comes in with any post-modern bullshit that says there is only convention I'd be tempted to punch them - when it comes down to it they need deep rooted, real morality. How long will these boys last not discipline or loved? How can society cope having taken such little responsibility for their young? All of their young. Collectively.

But I can't be so cynical even here, where the dark-side of humanity is so evident (and I don't mean in the kids... or in their skin colour!). They're just so darn cute. Today several of the primaries asked me if I was wearing a wig - I never realised straightening my hair makes that much difference! There is such a light alternative, a bright loving vibrancy that kids personify so well when they want to. It's the stereotype that, to them, the world is black and white. I think perhaps they may have a point... we just mess it up as we get older by compromising our characters and allow the grey of corruption to be the norm.

I will write at further length about this whole "two-sided heart" thing I reckon, 'cause I've been so struck by it myself in recent months. It feels like the message of the moment...

The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armour of right living.

That's what Miss Love and I read this morning. I wonder how many clos the shining armour of right living measures...?

The question of 'How?' still hangs around though. How can we not be shit? How can I lose the cynicism and keep a hold of that uncompromised shiny suit vision? I will write more... got a bus to catch...

Tatters

I've been struggling a lot with depression recently. It's part of the whole "burnout thing" but it isn't the first time this has happened... it is the worst since I have been a Christian though.

I can't really estimate how long this has been around - it's hardly a binary state - but though life got particularly hard this last term it wasn't until the middle of June, when my degree ended and the change of pressure inevitably hit, that I have been steadily failing at keeping on with God... Often, you see, it was a way to draw near to Him; a place where being dependent resulted in intimacy, no burden was too great and every struggle could also be seen as a blessing. Not a place of perfection but somehow different to how things are now... where, though nothing much has changed in my actual world, it just sucks. I have been rubbish in no uncertain terms and I ain't gonna dwell on my Roman's 7ish tendencies (link). Nor will I exhort the Romans 18:28-ing (link) of them with any stories, though I have them (God is good). Rather I have an analogy.

It is of course resistance training. When you work out it isn't the rep's you can do that are building muscle, but the ones you really can't. Before I was coping, so up goes the pressure. Simple. I am getting strengthened for the next fight I gotta be in (link). Turns out the stuff from before wasn't enough to grow me beyond my limits. I signed up for it with some reckless enthusiasm about being refined and thus made ready to defeat the nasties in the world, and it seems that prayer gets answered... so I am broken, like the ragged, sinewy fibres of a pumped and aching bicep.

I am not going to tell you that I am ok with this. I sometimes am (rarely) and I will be in the future but it is chronically painful a lot of the time and I am very very shaky in my sinful - that is unloving, lifeless, hopeless and generally dodge - attitude and actions. My faith is a wreck, nothing seems to be working out, and I'd rather I was driving along just dandy down the motorway that is my life instead of stuck on a back road with a girt fat tree across the path... or some such. But something put into words by the father of Sam (link), whose tragic death can teach us all a thing or two about putting up with crap, has spoken to me with a far better analogy:

I had a thought today.

It may seem a little random to you but whatever.

As I was thinking about my faith it seemed that it was in tatters around my feet. shreds of it lay all around.

And then I thought perhaps a good way to picture what faith is like would be to imagine a warehouse full of expensive material, sillk or something like that.

Then imagine that someone had placed a bomb right in the centre of the warehouse and blown it up. bits of cloth would fly all over the place and the once beautiful rolls of silk would be chard, ripped and ruined.

and now imagine me (or you?) standing amongst all the bits, the rags that were once silk sheets but are now no more than tatters.

Surely that cant be can it?

Surely our faith is so precious that it must remain in tact. Surely there are things we cannot question!

As I am thinking these thoughts I run around and try to find matching shreds and try to piece them together but I reject the idea of trying to put them back together since they can never again be the beautiful thing they once were, they will never, ever be beautiful, silky smooth, unblemished rolls of perfect silk.

But thats all I have left.

So, I gather the bits together, I carefully and lovingly sew each piece to its partner, and slowly, very, very slowly I rebuild. eventually, after the most amazing ammount of effort I get to the point where I have connected all of the pieces together and now I have a roll of silk again.

But my roll is scarred, stitched together with unskilled hands, threads sticking out here and there, a piece connected back to front and not exactly pefectly straight edged. no longer perfect, not by a long chalk but its there. All my work has seemd to have been for nothing.

How can I present my broken and ripped faith to Jesus? how will this inadequate, distorted thing ever be good enough to get me into heaven? Can I ever use it again? How dare I? what would Jesus, the "author and perfector of our faith" think.

I have not the first idea but in fear, I approach Him and present what I have.

I hold out my faith, falling apart at the seams, ragged and torn to my Lord.

He reaches out a hand to take it.

His hands are the strong hands of a carpenter, hard skinned and knocked by years of practice, but most of all I notice his wrist, torn through, a ragged hole where a nail once ruined his perfect body, I look up and see his eyes, lovingly examiniging my broken faith, his head is marked by thorns, his back is ripped to shreds by a whip that broke his body and his side is ripped open by a spear "just to see if he was dead".

and then I realise, the author and perfector of my faith understands better than I can ever do what it means to be stood among the pile of shreds that was once your beautiful faith. He knows what it means to be crushed, broken and seperated even from God in a way that I will never know.

So now I can try.

At least I can try to pick up the piecses of my faith, find a needle and thread and start to work out how it all goes together.

Thats where I am at right now...

"For it is by grace that you are saved through faith and this is not the result of your own good deeds so that no one can boast."

any one got a needle?

Thinking like this doesn't come easy to me, mind; I don't always have the 'give-a-damn'-ness to want to do that, even having realised the grace both in this parent's attitude and Jesus's actions. But the very nature of that grace necessarily says that I don't have to bring anything myself to the table to be changed. Two days after starting this post I already feel a bit more alive... and if my experience and (meagre) trust is anything to go by then this fight is not over yet...