03 May 2004

Therapy One thing I like about having a blog is that I can come here any time I like and get things off my chest. I can say whatever the hell I like. It's therapy. I know we bloggers like to pretend we've got this deep profound message to share with the world and all that, but at the end of the day, it just works out a whole lot cheaper than seeing a shrink. I'm feeling pretty crap tonight. I have an interview for a teaching post coming up next week, and that's playing on my mind. I really need to impress my head of department this week, because last week was a bit shakey, and she's on the panel for the post I've applied for. She loves what I'm doing, but I just got bad vibes last week. For the first time I was getting picky, negative comments after a prolonged honeymoon period where the sun apparently shone out my ass. Oh, yeah, I found out that an assignment I thought was due in sometime later on in the week is actually scheduled to be in tomorrow. Fat chance of getting it done. Tomorrow night is choir practice, and I promised to be there because we have an anthem coming up in a couple of weeks, and I haven't graced them with my presence at a rehearsal in some time. Teaching is just too damn busy. So there's a big chunk disappeared out of my evening tomorrow. My course (I am still in the training phase of my teaching career, if you hadn't worked that out yet) finishes in just over a month's time, and there are going to be a gazillion and one loose ends to tie up. Can't believe God has taken me this far without me cracking up, actually. There have been several points during the past eight months when I seriously doubted my ability to cope with the pressure, and wondered whether I was even going to get to the end of the course. Somehow God's carried me through. I guess I should look on the bright side. My cherished aunt has decided to fly out from British Columbia to spend three months with us this summer. She arrives at the end of May. She is getting on in years, and there have been times when we doubted we would see her again. I'm sure she doubted whether she would ever fulfil her dream to get to see her nephews and nieces (my sister's children), who know her only from photos. Now it's only a few weeks away, and that's a blessing. And I guess the fact that all this anxiety will be over in five or six weeks' time is a blessing in itself. There will be the summer, and hopefully I won't have to worry about a teaching post for September. Actually, I don't feel half as bad now as I did a couple of hours ago. The Rachmaninov helped. Having a few faithful readers willing to listen to me whinge helped, too. Thanks. Dave 10:18:04 PM    comment [] Learning from Monsters, Inc. Being a former theological conservative, I have never quite been content simply to relax into a now-I'm-a-liberal-and-it's-us-versus-them kind of mentality. That would be, ironically, to revert to the black-and-white world I left behind. In light of that, let me share with you some thoughts I penned over a year ago. When worlds collide: Reflections on Monsters, Inc. (with a lesson for my fellow ex-conservatives) Monsters, Inc. is a penetrating tale about the clashing of cultures, a surprising awakening of minds and hearts that occurs when two worlds that fear each other come face-to-face. The story begins in the city of Monstropolis, where every kind of monster can be found. In the heart of Monstropolis is Monsters, Inc., where monsters are sent out every night to scare the children of the world as they sleep. On one occasion, however, a little girl by the name of Boo follows Sulley, a big, blue hulk of a monster, back into the monster world. She is playful and giggly, but the bulky, towering, furry Sulley is far from amused: Curiously enough, he is terrified of this tiny child. Just as in the world monsters are those terrifying, ugly things that come out to haunt us when the lights go out, so in Monstropolis human beings--especially children--are something to be feared. When news gets out that a child is on the loose, panic seizes the city: "She got me with her laser beam!" cries one hysterical resident. In Monstropolis, even monsters have their own stories and legends about life on the other side. They are scared too. They are as terrified of meeting someone different to them as we are. Children are the "monsters" in their world. A picture begins to emerge as we watch the story unfold. Allow me to mix metaphors for a second: Monsters are human too. It is no coincidence that the little girl is called Boo. Film fans met Boo Radley forty years ago in To Kill a Mockingbird. In that film, he was the son of a recluse, an unseen figure around whom the children in the neighbourhood had built up hideous stories and myths that fuelled their fear and suspicion of him. At the end of the film, Boo Radley is revealed as a hero, a rescuer: A human being. Monsters, Inc. envisages the same scenario, this time in the setting of child-monster relations: Here we have two worlds that fear each other, afraid to get close, never imagining that they might have something in common, that the bridge might be closed and the gap of suspicion and fear narrowed. Monsters, Inc. is the story of two cultures clashing, hearts transforming, and conflicting worlds finding reconciliation. When we were straight-down-the-line conservatives the world we inhabited thrived on stories. Chief among these were the stories of unbelievers and liberals. They were part of a conspiracy to discredit everything Christian. They knew deep down they were rebelling against God. They put on a show of Christian love, but we knew they were really faithless, in cahoots with the enemy. We feared them. Any story that made them sound evil or loathsome was bound to be latched onto because, after all: They were liberals and unbelievers; They were monsters! Now we're on the other side of the fence. Now we're the monsters. Of course we know now that all the stories we were told were false, myths generated from fear of people different to us. But might we need a Boo to break into our world and show us that the other side is not quite the monstrous world we imagined? For we ex-conservatives (I hesitate to say liberal, though that is how we are at least perceived) create our own stories too, also bred of fear. The conservatives are the bogeymen, the hairy monsters that hide under the bed to scare an unsuspecting world: Their every doctrine is bred of intense hostility; Belying their talk of love is an agenda of absolute hatred towards others; Their motivations are always suspect; Their programmes and projects are only ever cover-ups for promoting their own selfish, greedy interests. What might happen if a conservative followed us out of the bedroom and into Monstropolis one day? It is always an uncomfortable thing when cultures clash, as Sully and his pal, Mike, discovered when they came face-to-face with their fears. In the end they discovered a child they could love, and they dared to break the mould. Can we come face-to-face with the conservative monsters in our religious closet? Might we just discover that conservatives are human too? Dave 9:38:10 AM    comment [] Why I can't not believe in grace Why do I believe in grace? To me, that question is rather like asking why I believe other people exist, or why I believe that the world around me is real. I believe because I cannot not believe. Firstly, grace is the only hope for someone like me. I am only too aware of my own failures, my own weaknesses and my own sins. I can't escape the feeling that if my destiny depended on my own success at this thing or that, I wouldn't make it to where I'm supposed to be. Well, let me be honest here. It is more than a feeling. I know damn well I don't cut it. Either I believe in grace or I'm doomed. But secondly, I have noticed an ironic thing about people who do believe they have to meet some criteria or make the grade: Their weaknesses, failures and sins are apparent to everyone but themselves. They damn everyone else to hell because they didn't believe enough, because they weren't faithful enough, because they weren't moral enough or they didn't repent enough. They seem to think they have done whatever is necessary to be counted in as a member of God's club -- and yet their shortcomings are only too apparent to me, funnily enough. It is a strange thing that all the preachers I ever knew who preached you had to do this or that, give up this thing and that, or avoid this sin and that sin to make it to heaven, had glaring sins that were starkly obvious to all but themselves. Fact is, I know I don't make the grade, and I have yet to meet anyone who does. (And, I might add, usually the minute someone tries to convince me they do make the mark, their pride, arrogance and over-inflated sense of self-importance is immediately exposed!) And lastly, I believe in grace because it is the thread that runs right through the gospel. Our God was a loving father who refused to abandon Israel when she abandoned him. He is the father who comes running to the prodigal son, receiving him and embracing him before he even has chance to confess his sins and fix himself up. He is the Father God who came running to us in Jesus Christ, dying for us even when we were sinners. How can we read that parable of the lost son and not hear the Father shouting in our ears that he really could care less what we have done, that we are home forgiven and gloriously free in Jesus? Three good reasons to believe in grace, and not a single good reason I can think of why I shouldn't. No matter which way I cut it, I can't not believe in grace. It's the only good news for folks like me. 8:46:02 AM    comment []

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