Breathe

I'm really enjoying the lyrics and song Breathe from No Line on the Horizon.
It wasn't an initial track that caught my attention - but the reference to the cockatoo is one of the album's most humorous moments.
The song is a signal to us all of what posture we take into life, especially when we are bombarded by bad news stories, worst case scenarios (bird flu, global recession etc), and people peddling self-help ideas based on their doom-based theories. 'There's nothing you have that I need' is a great line for people who seem to think they have to have everything and get devastated when inevitably the bottom falls out of their extravagance.
There is an alternative: 'got a love that you can't defeat' is a great line to use as you poke your nose at the doomsday soothsayers who are alive and well in the church as anywhere. The closing lines sum up the God-centred alternative ... have a read:
"Breathe"
16th of June, nine-oh-five, door bell rings
Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer
There’s a few things I need you to know
Three

Coming from a long line of
Traveling sales people on my mother’s side
I wasn’t gonna buy just anyone’s cockatoo
So why would I invite a complete stranger into my home
Would you?

These days are better than that
These days are better than that
Every day I die again, and again I’m reborn
Every day I have to find the courage
To walk out into the street
With arms out
Got a love you can’t defeat
Neither down nor out
There’s nothing you have that I need

I can breathe
Breathe now

16th of June, Chinese stocks are going up
And I’m coming down with some new Asian virus
Ju Ju man, Ju Ju man
Doc says you’re fine, or dying
Please

Nine-oh-nine, St. John Divine on the line, my pulse is fine
But I’m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it
Walk out into the street
Sing your heart out
The people we meet
Will not be drowned out
There’s nothing you have that I need

I can breathe
Breathe now
Yeah, yeah

We are people borne of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown
Walk out, into the sunburst street
Sing your heart out, sing my heart out

I’ve found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it’s all that I found
And I can breathe
Breathe now

The real America - a John Oliver perspective

If you want to be scared and humoured all at once take a look at this John Oliver interview (from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) out on the campaign rallies of Obama and Palin.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=189163&title=Obama-and-Palin-Rallies-of-Fear

I think John Oliver is quite wonderful!

Leunig on Anzac Day

Michael Leunig usually reserves his words for the characters in his wonderful cartoons - but a few years back he wrote an opinion article for Anzac Day in the Melbourne Age newspaper. I uncovered it this week - it is worth a read...

Here's a snippet:
"Anzac Day, it seems, must now be done with bluster, hoopla and media hypnotism. Like the landing and the campaign itself, there is something appalling about this in the eyes of many Australians new and old - some disgraceful misuse of humanity by the wielders of political and economic power."

And I cannot resist another snippet, as he has a go at the appalling Onward Christian Soldiers hymn that in 20 years in ministry I have never chosen for a service (though once someone else chose it and I had to put up with it)...

"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; Forward into battle see his banners go!" This drab, common little hymn, this melodramatic Anglo jihad song was taught to us in the 1950s, and in Sunday school or religious instruction class we were often heard singing it. The volume and gusto we usually displayed came from the intuitive belief that if we sang loudly and vigorously enough we would somehow have the choral momentum to go the distance and get through it quickly - a bit like running fast over hot coals.
To sing it on the back foot might mean that the song would become so feeble as to break down and groan to a halt, leaving us stranded forever in the dull wasteland of its meaningless words.
The lyrics seemed to be more about a rampaging gang of morons than a wandering prophet who espoused radical love.

My grandfather Lloyd Campbell Stewart fought in Italy in 1943-45. He returned but said little - my father recalls that he came back a different man - dark hair replaced with grey - but more than that, distant. On Anzac Day I want to remember the cost and sacrifice without glorifying warfare. I believe that war is ugly and dehumanizing - a denial of God's creativity. Even though at times a stand has to be taken...

Read more...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/04/26/1177459869956.html

Power, madness & victory Part 2

the rant on power etc from last Tuesday turned into the following sermon by Sunday...

http://www.ststephens.co.nz/ministry/sermons/collection/20080127.1201313698.php

Power, madness & victory

Today's news... kind of bleak really - that five top military advisors to Nato and the US are promoting the idea of pre-emptive nuclear strikes as a way of the West protecting their way of life and dealing with other countries that are going down the nuclear weapons road. Great! Here is the way to handle people different from us - hit them with the very thing we want to discourage them from having! Yeah right! Why is the military option always the only option? In what ways does escalation and threat prevent a repsonse of escalation and threat?
God help us!
I popped onto the website of The Press the Christchurch daily, and here is a fairly sad list of what else is going on...

More World Stories
Zimbabwe opposition challenges protest ban
Sick Indonesian man has bird flu
Russia to investigate opposition challenger
Militants kill five Pakistani troops
Chess champion Bobby Fischer buried in Iceland
Transport problems persist in flooded UK
No peace deal if Israel keeps building
Diana bodyguard to reveal details of her final moments
Double killing shocks Tonga
Israel agrees to ease Gaza blockade after protests
Italy govt wobbles as party withdraws support
US White House contenders celebrate King legacy
Musharraf pledges free elections
Beijing denies 10 deaths at Olympics stadium
Heavy rains kill 17 canoeing on Zambia lake
Parliament challenges Brown on EU treaty
Bomber kills 15 at funeral in northern Iraq
Israeli blockade deepens hardship in Gaza
Security breach after UK defence ministry laptop stolen
Ukraine family seeking asylum saved from Swiss Alps
Kenya condemns opposition 'sabotage' plan
France's oldest man - a WW1 vet - dies
Top Fiji businessman slams military regime
Graffitists swept to death in Sydney drain
Nationalist ahead in first round Serb president vote
New pictures of Madeleine 'suspect' released
Metal detectors to fight knife crime in British schools
McCain, Clinton look to next White House battle
Lights go out in Gaza as power plant shuts down
Man dies after police taser gun shot
Cambodian police block Mia Farrow's rally
McCain expects to do well in Florida
Japan follows Europe by tapping offshore wind for power
Three killed in Kenya clashes, opposition defiant
Pakistan forces press attack on militant stronghold
Georgia, Russia pledge better ties at inauguration
Mountain searched after Angolan plane crash

Sometimes it is getting hard to breathe and I need to go up for air...
I subscribe to a daily 'thought' from the Church of the Savior in Washington and got the air I needed today from these words of William Stringfellow (one of my heroes)

"It is worse than you think it is and you are freer than you think you are. The powers are raging beyond your control and they are already overcome in Christ. The division is an uncrossable spiritual chasm and it's been crossed."
Source: Conference on Religion and Race, Chicago, 1963

We Christians live into another reality - the victory won and the kingdom coming... it is our Christ-given, hopeful, radical posture before ther world with all its travail and woe... "God help us, God give me hope. Amen."

http://inwardoutward.org/

on Christian political parties

I've submitted the following letter to the editor of The Press in Christchurch...
Destiny & Future NZ
I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be reduced to political slogans or a set of policies, thus the notion of Christian political parties bothers me.
Destiny/Future NZ say they want to put families first, bring ‘morals’ into the political arena, and that ‘life means life’ in relation to how we treat violent offenders. But how can this be done in a way that doesn’t a)marginalise people who don’t fit into traditional categories; b) look out for those who are different from those in the Christian party, and c) restore offenders to a meaningful life with the possibility of release being the incentive for the changes they make? Aren’t these also gospel imperatives?
Jesus associated with those who the religious powers of his day marginalised. He challenged those who tried to enshrine God into a set of laws. Jesus never formed a party, instead, he called them to account. Herein lies what Christians can offer in the political arena: a voice among the voices, influence, encouragement, a reminder of what is important, and a challenge when necessary.
I have a few friends in Parliament and a colleague standing for Council who are all Christians. They are good people who I trust to bring an important and necessary gospel-informed perspective to the debates of the day. But they are not there suggesting that the gospel can automatically be turned into policy nor are they saying that their perspective represents what it means to be Christian.

Elections coming

I'm about to go and take a picture of my colleague Glenn Livingstone's billboard... he is standing for the local community board and the City Council... what is annoying is that he already has a moustache thus it is hard to deface the billboard - not that I have ever done that kind of things before but never before has it been a friend who I can make fun of in this way!

Before I go and get it here's a Leunig cartoon that kind of illustrates the path that politicians take... be careful Glenn! [source: The Age webpage]

90 years on since WWI's Passchendaele battle

WWI's Passchendaele battle is being noted this week and over the next few months. I am reluctant to use words like commemorated or celebrated... the only triumph was folly. Something like 500,000 allied soldiers died at Passchendaele - the sheer stupidity of the manner of many of those deaths is the lasting legacy. New Zealand has its own 'noting' over there in late October marking a day when 2,500 NZers died on one horrible day.

I guess my somewhat cynical view of what took place was reinforced reading Ben Elton's The First Casualty, watching the 4th series of Blackadder and the excellent French movie A Very Long Engagement. Of course I recognise that the soldiers themselves were courageous in dire circumstances - they had little choice - they deserved better from their leaders and from the people who got themselves into the mess that was early 20th century Europe.

The lives of others

Anne and I saw The Lives of Others a few days ago at the delightful Cloister's Theatre in the Christchurch Arts Centre... it was profound. We were reminded once again of the dark shadows of 20th century Europe that continued on into our at-the-end-of-the-baby-boom era.

It seems that most of our favourite movies are depictions of the way art/beauty/music can transform people and open a window of hope (As it is in heaven, Life is beautiful, Les Choristes, Amelie etc) and they are all European... interesting. The cinematography was brilliant - I loved the way the main character (pictured) showed joy at the end but with only the faintest change in his quite serious face... the power of film at its best.

Reading 'The First Casualty'

I'm immersed in Ben Elton's novel The First Casualty at the moment - what a great read!

Here's a summary I found... [The First Casualty] "...is a gut-wrenching historical drama which explores some fundamental questions. What is murder? What is justice in the face of unimaginable daily slaughter? And where is the honour in saving a man from the gallows if he is only to be returned to die in a suicidal battle? As the gap between legally-sanctioned and illegal murder becomes evermore blurred, Kingsley quickly learns that the first casualty when war comes is truth. "

And, as I have now finished it, some thoughts of my own.

1. This is the second of Elton's books I have read (I'm a slow starter!) the other was High Society. I found both books got me hooked very quickly, kept me enthralled and both seemed well-researched.

2. the themes in The First Casualty are clever. The morality theme especially... as thing become blurred the conscientious objector becomes involved as a participant in the very thing he objected against. Don't we all? Elton leaves his reader with this unwelcome realisation. Some justification is offered that this is what happens in war, thus the title of the book - but Kingsley recognises that in his work as a policeman he has been part of another kind of war that he cannot any longer agree with in relation to the way that suffragettes and communists had been treated by the law and its agents.

3. some may not like the revisionist nature of his work - it is easier to see the folly of the Great War from this side of it and this distance (and I'm currently enjoying Elton's contribution as a co-writer of the Blackadder 4 series). But I believe that there is no possibility of looking at history through any other means than the eyes we have now... we will always revise history, and we should... if we can get as big a picture on what has happened before us then we might be more attentive to the things that might lead us into another folly - might.

I am looking forward to delving into Elton's nine other novels!

Clare Short quote from Sojourners

I subscribe to the free weekly email from the Sojourners Community in Washington DC - this week's quote is from Clare Short, a British MP who resigned as Secretary of State for International Development over the U.K.'s involvement in the Iraq War... here it is:

"You can’t take the evil of slavery out of the world and abolish it without making the world more just. You will never prevent people living in bonded labor or from getting caught up in sex trafficking while they are so desperate that they have no other choice but to sell themselves. As long as we in the West crave ever more excess, we conspire in their desperation, exploiting it and make ourselves sick in the process."

A past interview with Clare Short can be found at http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&mode=printer_friendly&issue=soj0401&article=040121

Becoming a monster

Showing a few people the Banksy art on the West Bank wall provoked a few comments... one of them, the strange irony that people who were once isolated and walled in (Warsaw Ghetto etc) were now walling others in...

I tracked this comment down somewhere...

"One year ago on 9 July 2004, at the request of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Court made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal. The Advisory Opinion of the Court represents the most authoritative statement to date of the content and applicability of international law concerning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. On July 10, 2005, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of the Wall in Jerusalem and vowed the completion of the Wall by September 2005."

It reminds me of the despairing U2 line from Peace on Earth - "And you become a monster so the monster will not break you."

Crossing the lines

I'm working up for Sunday and looking at Peter's crossing the lines in Acts 9-11...

In particular the brief mention of him staying with Simon the Tanner and the colossal change that comes through the incident with Cornelius.

It has got me thinking about the borders we construct - for all borders are human constructs and while they might serve for a time, we generally end up serving them and sometimes dying for them!

Here's a quote I found:

Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera

And here is some art from an interesting person/s who has some done some quite wonderfully subversive, border-crossing streetart... more on Banksy can be found at http://www.banksy.co.uk/

The art on the West Bank wall is rather powerful!