Vulnerable All-Knowing

Apologies for the tardiness in the blogosphere... life just seems to happen whilst we're busy making other plans... In lectures recently, we explored the contours of an existentialist worldview. This generation for all of it's post modern posturings still pangs for the existentialist ideal and deep down I intuitively sense is deeply pessimistic of the po-mo excuses that arise from being defined as a fragmentation of social constructs. Perhaps this has been existentialism's enduring legacy...inconspicuously flying under the radar of the post modern juggernaut, yet establishing a foothold in the hearts and minds of an entire generation mistakenly labelled "post modern" when in reality their existential longings to be defined and transcend the mundane prisons of empty existence are perhaps the real motivators for the plethora of choices at their disposal. Existentialism at least stands unashamedly honest in its complete reliance upon the onus of responsibility for one's actions. Condemned to be free as Sartre would say, this age longs for the transcendent leap into the fullness of anything that will give meaning and purpose, however irrational... the "one thing" of blind illogical abandonment that takes us into the mystery of the "other", be that God or just our daily "distractions". I caught the last glimpse of the British series "Life on Mars" the other night - what a vivid representation of classic existentialism that was!

Straylight Run encapsulate the existential quest so poetically in their great song "Existentialism on Prom Night":Sing like you think no-one's listening... you would kill for this, just a little bit...sing me something soft... sad and delicate.... loud and out of key... sing me anything... Vulnerable all-knowing... Or what about John Mayer's classic existentialist declarations - I want to run through the hall of my high school, I want to shout at the top of my lungs. I just found there's no such thing as the real world... just a lie you've got to rise above. I'm bigger than the my body gives me credit for... Ahh Transcendence... the quest to "rise above" is embedded deep within us all. We crave for otherness, with every heartbeat we long for something to transport us from the miry clay of our empty, earthy existence.

But we don't talk about existentialism any more, do we?? As a young Christian, armed with my five volume set of Francis Schaeffer, I quickly dismissed existentialism and its upper story dualism. But the more I observe my own generation, the more I see that whilst po-mo rules the rhetoric, the existential longings remain deeply ingrained as the veiled zeitgeist and the desire to "bleed just to know we're alive" (Goo-goo dolls) , and "to wake up kicking and screaming and know our heart's still beating... still bleeding...we're awakening" (switchfoot) have not been diluted by the plethora of po-mo choices available to us. Perhaps it is time for our own re-awakening and to re-read the morose musings of the melancholy Dane with fresh new eyes and new ears in our current generation... and perhaps, re-discover that existentialism is far from dead - but kicking and screaming and beating and bleeding in the most unlikely places.

How We've Lost Our Story

Today in one of my worldview classes, I touched on the issue of how we have had "our" Christian worldview story distorted and how it has somehow become "lost in translation" to this generation. If meaning equals communication then so much of what is represented and communicated currently as the Christian story has become meaning-less. Of course not only the christian story has become meaning-less - the whole world has somehow lost its story, both individually and corporately, in our generation. We search for someone to blame, someone to vent our anger at, but the story's been lost and all we can do is plead like Neo in the Matrix- "Can you please tell what I am to do"... Ivan Illich once commented that "if you want to change the world - you must tell a different story". A meaning-full story...Meaning-full stories are those that capture our imaginations and take us to other worlds. Meaning-full stories transport us out of our mediocrity and into a world of uncertainty, risk-taking and daring adventure. Meaning-full stories make heroes and heroines out of the ordinary and the everyday. Meaning-full stories inspire us to live lives of significance and purpose. Meaning-full stories have powerful resolutions to even the most complex of problems and obstacles... and meaning-full stories have a redemptive climax that always sees good triumphing over evil in the end. The dialogue between Sam and Frodo in the The Two Towers wonderfully encapsulates the desire to live the true Christian story in all of us: "We shouldn't be here at all [Sam says to Frodo], if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way... in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually ... I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?"

I wonder what tale we've fallen into... and what our response will be to watching generation that is unknowingly longing to find meaning in the greatest story ever told?

Alert and Orientated Times Zero

Matters of the heart intrigue me. Whilst tomes of text have been written on the subject, there remains something elusive about that phrase "whole-hearted". Perhaps it has been my life experiences that have fuelled this fascination but one thing is certain - out of the heart flows the wellspring of life. I was born with a congenital heart defect. You could say I've been "broken and half-hearted" since birth. I learnt from an early age to conceal this defect and covered my deficiencies remarkably well. I became very successful in a range of sports, ignoring the warning signs and pushing myself to be the very best on the playing field. But despite my efforts, I was living with half a heart. That's the first thing I learnt about heart matters- Broken hearts often don't even know they are broken. A life of half-heartedness becomes the norm before we know it... John Eldredge suggests in his excellent book entitled Waking the Dead that such a life is like being alert and orientated times zero - a reference from the book "The Perfect Storm" and the para rescue code whereby the injured seaman's understanding of the world is reduced to the fact that he exists and nothing more. Tragically, so many people live lives that are alert and orientated times zero, aimlessly meandering through life without direction, purpose and intensity - put simply living life with half a heart. We get up, go to work, go to school, perhaps go to church (when convenient), do the stuff, read the books, see the movie, grab the CD but never really embrace the magnitude of our strategic role in His unfolding grand story. The tyranny of mediocrity sets in and before we know it we forget how broken are hearts actually are.

But inevitably every broken heart needs to be repaired... and every broken heart needs a healer... I have experienced this twice - that's right 2 open heart surgeries and I have just turned 40 - but when hearts are broken, when life is lived half-heartedly, we need to have them "fixed". I've also learnt that getting a broken heart repaired is a long, lonely and painful process. There are no quick fixes, no pills or panaceas to make things better quickly - just patience, dark nights, long, lonely days and a dependent, childlike trust in the healer.

The one thing that gets you through the pain... the lonely nights, the limited movement, the frustrations of the road to recovery is that someone else shares my pain, someone else knows the feeling, and someone else bears the scars... Four times in scripture three words are written that put this whole heart process in perspective - "His heart broke".

Another lesson I've learnt is that broken hearts always live with their scars despite their healing. I love teaching Christian worldview. But Christian worldview can at times become so "heady". That is why I regularly view my scars; they remind me not of the pain of my past but of the promise of my future. What a miracle of transformation it is that broken hearts can be made whole. There is hope for the broken hearted, hope for the half-hearted, hope for those who are alert and orientated times zero... just gaze upon His scars - touch them, see them, feel them, accept them, embrace them... For out of a truly whole heart will flow the full wellspring of life. That is why, in Christian worldview as in life, - the heart matters more than anything.

Is anyone out there?

Welcome to my very first attempt at blogging. The title of my blog reflects my own hesitancy in writing in blogworld... Writing of any form can at times appear to be such a narcissistic activity. Is anyone really interested in what I have to say? Will anyone really care about my inklings and musings? Indeed, who am I to voice my perspective? An author must, after all, possess some inflated sense of self-importance to even contemplate putting words to paper or in this case bytes to blogspace. Of the writing of books there may be no end... but of the writing of blogs there appears to be no shame... we part of the "express yourself" generation - where personal opinions are the opiate of the masses. I would like to think that my intentions for commencing this blog are far more noble... but my own awareness of my predilection towards self-importance suggest otherwise.

But sometimes things have to be written. Sometimes ideas must be questioned, sometimes differing beliefs need to be challenged, sometimes we really do have something to say and sometimes the only person who can articulate it quite like me is well... you know. The title for my blog also is a reaction against my own vocational compliance to audiences and readerships. Academia and higher learning is so much about writing to please others, appease others, placate others, refute others, impress others. Rare is the scholar in this or any age who actually dares to write truth that flies in the face of his mentors and editors. So perhaps this blog will be somewhat cathartic for me - writing for no other purpose but to express those passionate, resolute, creative urgings and personal longings for a voice in this scholarly sea of semantic syncretism.

We are sometimes told to sing like no-one's listening, to dance like no-one's watching, so why not write like no-one's reading? It is a paradox, I know. Isn't the whole purpose of writing to be read? Isn't the task of the truly great writer to know their audience? All true... But perhaps, in this seemingly paradoxical process, this writer could discover and truly know himself... finding authenticity and voice in new and novel ways... I'll keep you posted on the journey...