Music and motivation

It's fair to say that I've been struggling a bit with motivation the last few weeks. The fact that my blog's suffered is just one little sign of this. My life moves at such a pace that from the outside looking in it's unlikely that anyone else would notice anything's changed, but hey, I'm just being honest. So what moves me to hit the keys now then when I've been unable to do so for weeks on end? Well, it's nothing short of the pure, undiluted power of music. Yep, just window-shopping in cyberspace I stumbled across a music-geek type blog, not the sort of place I'd usually hang out but on it I found a link to a mashup of one of the greatest club tunes of 1990 (which was a stunningly good year for club tunes) - the acapella version of 'Everybody Everybody' by Blackbox.
When I was 17 and at the peak of my raving career (ponytail - puffajacket - the works) my parents dragged me off for a holiday in Florida. I remember sitting in the back of a people carrier on Daytona beach while the sun scorched outside and tourists tanned their pale bodies. All I wanted to do was listen to this song at full blast with the windows up and the aircon on. My mum, dad and sisters thought I was proper wierd but in my mind I was back on the dancefloor (this one!) with a sweat-soaked t-shirt tucked in my jeans and the smell of Tiger Balm in my nostrils.
It was literally half a lifetime ago but behind my eyelids I'm back there again.
This is motivation.

Say One Thing

I've heard it said that whenever you're faced with a live TV or Radio opportunity the golden rule is to first think hard about what you want to say and then whatever question you're asked turn it around to say what you want to say. You can see politicians doing it every day on the 6 o'clock news. In practice its a heck of a lot harder to do than you might think. This morning I was interviewed on the BBC Radio Manchester breakfast show, it was a really good slot just before the news at 8. It seemed to open well enough, although I was worried that I perhaps came over a bit defensive at first. Then, fairly quickly we seemed to get taken away on a conversational detour away from the One Thing I really wanted to say. And the thing is, when you're the guest, the interviewer really is in the driving seat, it's really hard to steer it back on track.
So what was the One Thing I really wanted to get across? Well, I was really hoping I'd get a chance to talk about the way that whilst faith is always personal, it's never private. Nice little media-friendly soundbite there too. But it wasn't to be. Hang about, what am I saying, "It wasn't to be" - what a dumb fatalistic expression. Truth is, I missed the moment and am left feeling a tad gutted about that. If you were listening feel free to score my performance out of 10. If the general consensus was that yes, it was the worst moment in contemporary broadcasting history then in the immortal words of Tony Wilson (the other Tony Wilson, not my dad), "I'll commit suicide by throwing myself off my own ego."

The Secret of Happiness

For a while now I've resisted making reference to Facebook in my blog posts. Today however I need to succumb. You see during a dull moment I clicked on the little application that compares you to other people. 'Friends' basically answer questions about other 'friends'. All the answers then feed into a big league table. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a look at the table. Sadly I discovered that people don't consider me to be particularly sexy. Neither do they think I’m the slightest bit funny. Bizarrely though people do seem to think I come across as someone who is happy. I sat back and began to take it in. The experience was like smelling salts waking me up from unconsciousness. I realised I'm probably a lot happier than I generally give myself credit for.
So why am I happy? Well there's lots of big stuff I’m really grateful for - my marriage, my little boy, my health and all that stuff. But there’s definitely something else too that I would say adds to my happiness and I think that I’d describe it as ‘enjoying the little things’. For me the potential for happiness exists in every moment. God has given us a range of senses that, if we are paying attention, can give us pleasure every minute of every day. So here’s my 10 ways to find happiness in the ordinary:
1. Look for visual treats - enjoy the twinkle in someone’s eye
2. Chuckle at things - a silly typo in a newspaper
3. Taste the tang of life – always keep a crunchy apple nearby
4. Release some emotion - pray for an impossible situation
5. Give something away - make someone a brew
6. Aural enjoyment - soften the din of the day with an ambient soundtrack
7. Breathe deeply - open your car window and enjoy the breeze
8. Create something special - craft that boring email reply with pointless panache
9. Live grace - so what if you're right, just because you are it doesn't make them wrong
10. Keep learning – even when it goes tits-up you can find out something new

Sunshine on a rainy day

Today, with some mates from churches around Manchester, I got down and dirty doing a local Ground Force style project on a street in one of the city's really poor neighbourhoods (and doesn't my back know about it - ouch!). The weather forecast predicted a typical Manchester weekend - very rainy - so we all turned up with our Gore Tex expecting the worst. It wasn't long at all before the grey clouds overhead began to open up in a major effort to spoil our fun. It was at this point that the organiser of the project picked up the microphone that was attached to the little hifi system that had been bleating out groovy tunes and asked everyone to break from working so we could pray for the rain to stop. There were lots of people around including lots of local residents who were joining in with the effort. So yes, I was cringing. Big time. I just stood there wondering if God was really bothered whether we got wet doing the job or not. And then when the prayer was over I just zipped up my coat and got on with it hoping that the locals that the project was supposed be a 'witness' to would soon forget about it and not berate God later for failing to answer our prayer. Or worse, they might add this little incident to all the others in their mental file labelled 'Reasons Why God Does Not Exist'.
Except that literally within two minutes it had stopped raining and we even saw a little bit of blue sky exactly as requested. What a fluke! Except that about an hour later it all happened again... the rain started, Simon prayed, and the rain stopped. And then it happened again. 3 lucky strikes?! We took a break for lunch and then Simon had to leave to do something or other elsewhere. Not too long after lunch the heavens began to open again. Aha! No Simon now so no more crazy commanding of the elements. Except the foreman, Des, also a passionate follower of Jesus took on the prayer challenge. Once again, within a minute or two the rain abaited and we were able to work without getting soaked. Then, probably just less than an hour later those pesky clouds had yet another attempt at keeping us from our task. This time Des grabbed the mic and announced, "Quit what you're doing for a minute, Matt is going to pray for the rain to stop!" The thing is, by this time my faith had been so totally stoked by the 100% track record that I took the mic and did pray. I took a deep breath, looked at the sky, thanked God for the favour he'd shown us all day and then claimed blue skies over Argyle Street. I kid you not, within 30 seconds the skies were blue. Amazing and utterly baffling! My head's spinning...

The Doubt Catcher

I went for a coffee and a chat yesterday with a new buddy, a tutor at one of Manchester's theological colleges. Calling him a buddy might be stretching the truth a bit as this was only the third time we'd met - but the aim of the chat was to get to know each other better, so buddy will do I think. Right off the bat it was clear that we had a fair bit in common and seemed to share similar perspectives on faith, church, leadership, mission and stuff like that. But the revelation that ultimately made me feel a real connection with this guy was when he described a period during his own undergraduate studies in theology when his faith underwent real trial. He described the experience by conjuring an image which I've done my best to capture for you above - let me explain...
There are questions and issues that are strictly out of bounds in most self-respecting evangelical churches. Major themes deftly avoided or cleverly camouflaged range from the Genesis account of creation through to the unlikely dates and authors of various books of the bible, internal scriptural conflicts, dubious Old Testament morality and a whole lot in between! Put simply, if you are curious child, and naughty enough to sneak open that dusty old door with the 'Keep Out' sign, you may be in for the fright of your life. Like me, my buddy had been cocky enough to open that door and step inside. Also like me he'd found that once inside the creeping darkness and loneliness can quickly chill the soul. The language he used was of doubt-laden questions multiplying at an alarming rate until their presence became completely overwhelming. At this point I could really empathise as I recalled my own feelings of claustrophobia when unable to cope with a headful of questions far too big for me. He went on to describe how, in a very pragmatic sort of way, he'd slowly but surely begun to capture these questions one by one in jars, rather like the BFG catches dreams. Eventually, over the course of more than a year, he had them safely shelved. With the air fresh to breathe again he could now examine the infinate varieties one by one, at his own pace. There's always the danger of course that when he reopens a jar the specimen may have died, which is always a terrible shame, because doubts can be really fun as pets - it's only when they're wild they're a nightmare.

Fighting the Fear

...continued from 'Flickering Faith'.

In my last post I drew a comparison between the flickering lighbulb in my kitchen and the flickering of my faith, which started quite unexpectedly about 8 years ago. I use the flickering light image because at an emotional level I've found that my faith doesn't seem to work like a dimmer switch, it doesn't just fade away and then fade back again. It's either there or it isn't - and frustratingly, like the lightbulb in my ceiling, I have no control over it and can't seem to fix it. Or so it seemed in the early stages of this difficult season of my life. Looking back I can see that it wasn't actually that I couldn't have control, I'd just never developed the 'psychological muscles' required to control the primal fear that accompanied the doubts in my mind. Perhaps I need to employ a metaphor here to explain myself more clearly...
Imagine you're travelling in a plane - a private jet! There's just you on board, and the pilot of course. You're enjoying the view, the sunshine, the curve of the earth, generally chilling and taking it easy. Then it starts to get dark. And then it gets turbulent. And the turbulence throws open the cabin door. From your seat you can see inside and to your horror you discover that there's no pilot after all, the plane has been on autopilot. In that split second lighting flashes, there's a deafening sound and the plane plunges into darkness. You panic. You're paralysed as utter terror overwhelms you. The plane starts to lurch and lunge wildly. After what feels like a lifetime you find yourself stumbling around, reaching towards the cabin door. Somehow you manage to find the pilot's seat and you haul yourself in. As your hands grab the controls your arms are almost wrenched out of their sockets - the strength required to gain any sense of stability is more than you've ever needed to call on. Is total oblivion the only certain scenario? How soon will it come? How long can you fight it?
And that, in a nutshell, is what I had to learn to do with my fears of God's non-existence (and the related and more pointed fear - my own eventual non-existence). I needed to learn to fight it, even though at the start I was totally unequal to the task.
...to be continued.

Flickering Faith

We moved out of our flat last weekend and so we're currently shacked up with Grace's mum and dad. Living in the city centre was great but one of the things I won't miss is the flickering spotlight in the ceiling of our old kitchen. After a few years of happily providing light it developed a will of it's own. Sometimes I'd click the switch and it would come on obediently in perfect syncronisation with it's three other siblings. But more often than not it would decide to stay unlit, or it would briefly say hello then turn itself off again. Then back on. For a minute or two. Then off again. I took the thing apart several times but couldn't seem to do anything to fix it.
When I was blogging recently about Britney I divulged some personal details about struggles I've had in my faith journey over the last few years. One of my mystery guests asked to know more about this aspect of my life. The flickering light image came to mind as I considered how I might respond. I'll probably need to post on this theme quite a few times from different perspectives to fully describe what's been going on over the last few years but flickering lights seems like a good place to start.
Some people talk about having a childlike faith (not childish faith) and I really envy that. I've even aspired to it, tried to possess it, but it's proven too illusive. My faith is complicated, it's a compound of ideas, experiences and longings. About eight years ago it switched itself off for the first time, very briefly, for about ten minutes, right in the middle of a time of worship. I remember it vividly - I fell to my knees like someone had punched me in the stomach. Fortunatley it was a fairly expressive worship time and the people around me must've just thought I was enjoying a Holy Spirit moment. I wasn't. I was experiencing a waking nightmare. My head was spinning through space and my heart felt overwhelmed with the nothingness of everything. From deep inside my psyche I remembered and relived the fear I felt one night as a child when the hallucinations of a really high fever had washed over me. That fear is familiar to me now. It walks proudly like a truth as it proclaims with empirical efficiency: There is no God.
...to be continued.

Dying for a conversation

This new ad from Kleenex makes me really jealous. I'd love to have that gift of being able to sit down and just connect with people. Anybody. Maybe the ad is staged using clever actors (some of my friends think so). Maybe it's for real (the gullible fool in me wants to beleieve this). Either way it doesn't really matter - the point is that the art of conversation seems to be dying. I wonder if that's why blogs are becoming more popular these days? Here I am, wanting to talk so I just type some thoughts into the screen and come back tomorrow to see if anyone might have responded, just a little one liner to make my day and remind me that somebody out there affirms my existence!

If I was brave enough (and if it was July not January) I might drag a sofa into Piccadilly Gardens and erect a sign saying, TEACH ME TO CHAT! I'd ask passers by to share with me the Tai Chi of conversation - how to get it started - how to keep it going - how to wrap it up. But who am I kidding? I've become far too safe for all that nonsense... the house is warm, the keyboard is convenient and somebody out there in cyberspace might just want to talk back...

The sacraments of daily life

Sacraments are conduits through which the mystery of God's grace can touch our lives. Historic Christianity has formally recognised and practised a range of sacraments including holy communion, baptism, confession and marriage. Recently I've starting becoming aware that there is a way to live daily life which can have a profoundly sacramental (note the lower case 's') dimension to it. Things I currently find revealing God's grace to me are not the things I've been traditionally taught to practice. For instance I often feel closer to God in the brief but sincere prayer of thanks my wife and I share before mealtime than I do in a set 'devotional time'. I have found feeding my baby boy his milk at bedtime and stroking him to sleep develops greater intimacy between me and my heavenly father than the most energetic of worship events. And strangely, I have been finding blogging to be as much a revealer of divine truth to me than most bible reading programs I've ever used.

What are your daily sacraments?

Evolution? Reincarnation? Resurrection?

Readers of my established blog Urban Faithscape will be aware that I recently threatened to commit blog suicide. And I did. Except I'm clearly not dead - I'm here. So 'Hi, happy new year!' What's happened to me in the transition from 06 to 07? In short, I've changed. Will you notice the change? I hope so - I hope it's a change for the better. Unlike Neo in The Matrix I don't seem to have gained any special new powers on this side of my resurrection, which is a tad disappointing. What I do have though is that new level of determination and focus that a new year brings. What am I determined and focused about? Simply this: to write a blog which is useful to people other than myself. Over the 18 months or so that I've been blogging it's been basically a cathartic exercise. I empty out my thoughts and, rather like Dumbledore with his Pensieve, stir them around a bit to try and make sense of them. This meant that Urban Faithscape became a highly eclectic mix of news and views (it's all archived so you can see for yourself). My desire for Faithscape 21 is to attempt to deal more consciously with issues relevant to 21st century people trying to live in a way that will make Jesus smile. I hope that lots of you will join me on the journey.