Misery on the stage

The esteemed bishop of Hippo reflects on the irony of enjoying the theater.

“Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? For a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections. Now, if he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call this misery. But when he suffers with another, then it is called compassion. But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. If the misfortunes of the characters—whether historical or entirely imaginary—are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and complaining. But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.”

St Augustine in Confessions [3.2.2]

The Avett Brothers live

I haven’t been to the Minnesota Zoo for years, but booked tickets when I saw the Avett Brothers were appearing in concert at the amphitheater. It was a beautiful night for an outdoor concert, warm with a light breeze, the moon a bright crescent in a night sky filled with rapidly passing clouds. Margie and I went with two very dear friends, Wes Hill, soon to leave for England to study for a doctorate in theology at Durham University, and Anita Gorder, an artist living in the Mole End apartment at Toad Hall who has joyously filled our lives with beauty, laughter, and a lovely sense of community.

I have often been told the Avett Brothers give one of the best live concerts available. I haven’t been to enough concerts to render a judgment except to say this one was close to perfect. Their vibrant energy, their transparent delight in playing for us, and the beauty of the music simply swept us into delight.

For just one chance to find

Love was someone that you loved to find

For just the sense to try

To walk ahead and leave the pain behind

If the days aren’t easy and the nights are rough

When they ask you what you’re thinking of

Say love, say for me love

Say love, say for me love

Your heart says not again

What kind of mess have you got me in

But when the feelings there

It can lift you up and take you anywhere

But the gravel beneath you and the limbs above

If anybody asks you where your coming from

Say love, say for me love

Say love, say for me love

Say yes we live uncertainty

And disappointments have to be

And everyday we might be facing more

And yes we live in desperate times

But fading words and shaking rhymes

There’s only one thing here worth hoping for

With Lucifer beneath you and God above

If either one of them asks you what your living of

Say love, say for me love

Say love, say for me love

Say love, say for me love

[“Living of Love”]

I know this photo is blurred, and my camera asked if it should delete it because of that when I snapped it. I said No, save it. People who want to see a photo of the Avett Brothers can find one on their web site. This photo captures the energy of the concert perfectly.

None of us had heard of the opening act, Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers, but they were good. Anita and Wes bought t-shirts. On the drive home we listened to Emotionalism.

We came for salvation

We came for family

We came for all that’s good that’s how we’ll walk away

We came to break the bad

We came to cheer the sad

We came to leave behind the world a better way

[“Salvation Song”]

The Avett Brothers fulfilled that promise for us last Saturday. Their concert filled my heart to overflowing with happiness, and I am grateful.

In memory

In memory of Neda Agha Soltan, and the other incredibly brave Iranians, who like those in Tiananmen Square in 1989 have said, and against great odds, are saying No to political oppression.

Our Father

May your kingdom come,

may your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

In Christ’s name and for his sake,

Amen

This I didn't know...

Ballpoint Pen Day (June 10). “On this day in 1943, brothers Laszlo and Georg Bíró filed a patent for what’s now one of the world’s most common writing instruments. Others had tried to design a self-inking mechanical pen that rolled on a ball, with little success. The Bíró’s perfected the design, named it the Birome, and opened a pen shop in Argentina. In 1945, the pens went on sale in the U.S., at Gimbel’s in New York, for $12.50 each ($145, inflation adjusted). The store sold $125,000 worth on day one, and Bic, which bought the patent, has sold 100 billion-plus since 1950.”

[Fast Company (June 2009) p. 22.]

Taxi Taxi: Fifty Three

Here is a music video for the New York based band Taxi Taxi. From the upcoming record Splitting Signals. Director/Animator: Ian Hutchinson.

Taxi Taxi : Fifty Three from Ian Hutchinson on Vimeo.

The lyrics:

When darkness falls

and winter blankets me,

under the snow lit sky,

i wait till you appear,

Imagine that theres no mistaking you

gently let down your veil and bring the heaven near.

a dance above a dance so silently

ancient secrets there whisper down to me.

i'll share with you what i've got to give

let this moment last before you'll have to leave.

The global trends in religious belief

When I was in college, way back in the fabled Sixties, the demise of religion was not argued but assumed. The progress of science, technology, and education, we were told repeatedly, made secularism inevitable. Increasingly superstition would be replaced by reason, and religious belief would fade away before the onslaught of to an enlightened modernism.

Needless to say, it hasn’t turned out that way. Not even close, in fact.

Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions & World Christianity at Yale, draws together some of the latest statistics in an essay, “The Return of Religion” (which you can read here):

The total world population in 1900 was 1.6 billion; Muslims numbered just below 200 million, and Christians 558 million. In 1970, the total world population was 3.7 billion with a Muslim population of 549 million and Christians at 1.2 billion. In 2006, Muslims numbered 1.3 billion and Christians 2.15 billion, including 1.3 billion Catholics. In less than forty years, the number of Christians in the world had nearly doubled, and Muslims had more than doubled…

Religious expansion in Africa entered its most vigorous phase following the end of colonial and missionary hegemony. In 1900, the Muslim population of Africa was 34.5 million, compared to roughly 8.7 million Christians, a ratio of 4:1. By 1985, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Africa. Of the continent’s total population of 520 million, Christians numbered 270.5 million, compared to about 216 million Muslims. By 2000, Christians in Africa had grown to 346 million, and Africa’s 315 million Muslims were concentrated mostly in the Arabic speaking regions of Egypt and in north and west Africa. Projections for 2025 are for 600 million Christians and 519 million Muslims in Africa. The Christian figures represent a continental shift of historic proportions.

Europe (including Russia) and North America in 1900 had a combined Christian population of 423 million—82 percent of the world’s Christians—compared to 94 million for the rest of the world. By 2005, Europe and North America accounted for only 35 percent of the world’s Christians; their 758 million Christians were far fewer than the 1.4 billion in the rest of the world. Thus, 65 percent of the world’s Christians now live in the southern hemisphere and in East Asia, areas that have become Christianity’s new stronghold. Increasingly, Europe is a new Christian margin.

Charismatic Christianity has been the driving engine of this expansion and is largely responsible for the dramatic shift in the religion’s center of gravity. In 1900 there were 981,000 Pentecostals; in 1970, over seventy two million; and in 2005, nearly 590 million. The projections are that by 2025, Pentecostals/Charismatics will number nearly eight hundred million. Now exploding in Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and China, Pentecostal Christianity may become the most widespread form of Christianity, with as yet unquantifiable effects on mainline churches and on global politics.

Obviously statistics tell only a small part of the story, but the part they tell is important. Religious belief, not secularism is the primary story of the 21^st century. The center of world Christianity is no longer in America and Europe, but in the majority world.

Christians in America have never been hesitant to tell Third World Christians what to believe, why, and how to order their churches and lives. I wonder how eager we will be to listen to the majority world church, which is grateful for the western missionary movement but isn’t always impressed with how we live out our faith.

[Lamin Sanneh’s essay appeared in The Cresset: A review of literature, the arts, and public affairs, a publication of Valparaiso University (June 2009) p 15-23].

A death haunted life and land

Alexandra Fuller grew up in Africa, in Rhodesia until that nation’s savage civil war forced most white families to flee the land that was renamed Zimbabwe. Years later she returns to travel from Zambia, where her hardscrabble parents still live, across Zimbabwe into Mozambique with K, a soldier who had fought in the bush in Rhodesia’s army. He is half-mad from his memories, by the atrocities perpetrated by both sides, and by the unspeakable loss inflicted not only on his soul but on the blood-soaked land and its displaced, poverty-stricken tribal peoples.

 

Fuller’s book, Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin, 2004) is a memoir of a shared humanity and great poignancy, of tragedy and loyalty, of God’s presence in lives haunted by demons.

 

“And this,” said K as he stepped into the roofless house, “is where we’ll live one day. I’ll finish building it soon. I have to get the farm going a bit more first, though. But what do you think?”

 

I wondered who “we” was, but I didn’t ask. Instead I said, “It’s lovely.”

 

“Look,” said K, “it’s all set up for books. Shelves here, and here. Maybe you could put ornaments on this shelf. This is the kitchen. See? A view of the mountain out the window.” He turned to me and I can describe the look on his face only as transported. “I don’t think,” he said, “that God is going to have me make this journey alone. He will send me a woman when the time is right.”

 

A blue-headed lizard scampered up the wall where the larder shelves would be one day and one of the dogs darted after it, barely catching the end of its tail, which sloughed off and wiggled hysterically on the cement-dusted floor.

 

“She’ll have to be a very special woman,” said K, softly and looking at me.

 

“Yes,” I said.

 

And then, maybe it was a trick of the rain-softened light, but I saw K’s face fold with such exquisite torment that my heart turned over for him.

 

He said, “There’s been so much destruction. But I’ve learned so much now. I’ve really learned about love.” K’s lips grew fleshy. “I would nurture a woman. She would be the head of the family now. I wouldn’t have to dominate her. I would put everyone else first. I would come last in the family. This is the order: first God, then my wife, then my children, the dogs, the servants… I would be last. I just want to share this”—he gestured to the house, the garden, the slow-churning river—“with someone.”

 

I looked away from the house and saw that three fishermen had paddled their canoes around the bend in the river. The evening had brought a kind of careless, extravagant beauty to the world. The sky was rinsed various shades of blue and pink and was scattered with ripped, high clouds. The sun, catching, itself in the trees on the far bank, bled red and gold across the water. Peace Mountain and the distant escarpment were softened in a dying light. From the village opposite K’s farm, blue clouds of smoke from cooking fires tugged into the evening sky. It was the time of day when the confusion of color, the churn of cooler air supplanting the heat of the day, the miracle of the journeying river—everything about being alive—seemed more improbable and fleeting and precious than usual. [pp. 62-63]