Sadness, The Chartists, and Isaiah

Since last night, things have been going terrible. I feel like my breath was. Last night I ate cheddar flavoured chips and orange juice, and a hot dog, when I woke up, my breath was so terrible I could taste it. That’s how life feels right now. So what could I do? I tried reading some Christian books but it felt hypocritical because I was in sin. I had very little sleep (I was up till 4am) and so I decided to lay down and watch Simon Schama.

Simon Schama is like a father figure to me. He’s a famous historian, very well read in the bible (he alludes to it every few minutes), and his modern liberalism makes me envious of his beliefs which I cannot share but in some ways admire, as a Conservative Pre-Modernist living in the modern liberal world.

Anyway, he was talking about Victorian England and the Chartists, they were middle-class and poor people who sought to make England a Democracy, and to go back to the rural world of medieval england. MP Fergus O’Conner was a leader of them, who after being turned down by the British Government decided that they would compile their money to buy plots of farmland and to move out of the cities into the countryside.
So they moved to Great Dodford, and farmed even though they had no experience. Their motto was “do or die” and some of them managed it. Schama says summing up this movement:

“what seemed to count for most was making a home not a revolution”



It was about taking back a proper life, not necessarily changing the world. There’s a verse in Revelation that tells us to “come out” of Babylon (the world). The Chartists remind me of that. Their dream to quit being ‘machines’ in industrial Manchester is something I understand after seeing Manchester. My Cottrill ancestors moved from Manchester in the mid 19th century as well to Hamilton (which I think is about the same if not worse). But it’s funny to think as I wait to go to work, that this same dream seems to reappear over and over again in us Anglo-Saxons. The desire to farm the land, to get away from the cities and machines. It’s a dream I see in every page of Tolkien. And come to think about it, it’s the image of the perfect New Earth in Isaiah, and it’s something that maybe one day I’ll get to partake in, if God has mercy on my soul...



“For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I am creating;
...
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
...
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labour in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.” – Isaiah 65: 17-25

I'd really like to have my own vineyard where I enjoy the work, and where God answers before we ask questions.

I still feel sad today, and I'm sure tonight will be terrible at work, but maybe I'm a bit more hopeful now. Maybe one day that vain hope will materialize into a New Zealand adventure, I was looking at schools and jobs and religious vocations there last week...



This is a New Zealand Vineyard, perhaps I may have one on the New Earth...

All Too inHuman & The Story of a Girl

If you don't feel like reading all this post just skip to the "BUT"

We have our extended family visiting our house this week (all the Mennonite Brethren folks). I used to be able to talk with my uncles and aunts about theology and my future as a preacher. But now that I'm of the 'peculiar Roman Catholick religion' (as Rabbie Burns would've said - ), no one asks me about anything or talks hopefully about my future.

In that same Roman faith there is a philosophy that is popular among the Pontiffs. It's the idea of "the full human person" or "the intrinsic dignity of the human person". It's the idea(l) that everyone who is born has intrinsic worth and value just because they are in existence. It's what Seneca and St. Thomas Aquinas said when they gave us the choice between "Being a beast, or being a human". The modern neo-Darwinian socialist materialist positivist atheism of today seems to treat us like we're beasts rated on our ability to contribute to the world (by us I mean morbidly obese grocery store workers and other valueless people).

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BUT

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Tonight after a long shift at work I was about to walk out as usual without much hope to my house to sit alone in the slanted room (I'm making the story a little melodramatic). But then a girl I work with asked me to help with a recipe and supplies for a meal she was making for her boyfriend, and so we went around getting the groceries and talking and then we drove home (she followed me 'cause we live on the same street, and i drove crazily). I then realized, as I listened to Radiohead and waved goodbye, that I felt like a human being.

Obviously I'm not telling the story to predict a 'deeper' relationship (she's like 5 years younger than me and in a relationship, and I'm just a creepy deli guy). But the reason I wrote it was because it was an example of someone just treating me like a human being, like my opinion was at all important, and that I could contribute something.

Anyway, that's my pathetically boring post you've wasted your time reading. But sometimes I wonder what life would be like to always feel like a human. Gah, all this introspection - blame St. Augustine and his Confessions, he started this Western philosophical phenomenon. Blogs are totally a result of him.

Music is a window

I've been inexplicably listening to the song called "Mondo 77" by Looper or "looper 77" by mondo or something here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc57lu5GC90

It's kind of haunting to me. I listen to it and it remins me of the inverse of an experience I had in life.

so 2 years ago almost to the day my friend Jenn and I were dropping a friend off at Heathrow airport in London. We left our hotel in "little Mecca" and got on some subways and eventually a bus headed for heathrow airport. It seemed to take forever and I thought it might be the last time I saw one of my best friends. I remember the sickness to my stomach that I felt, I remember the ungodly hour (it was about 1am) and she had to sit alone all night in the airport waiting for her early morning flight. I remember Jenn and I taking buses and subways because we were too cheap for a cap, they ran about 50 quid and we were a bit poor. So eventually we got completely lost on the London bus and ended up in a bad neighbourhood at 3am and Jenn wasn't wanting to talk to me out of anger for something. Finally after sitting next to a guy with a prostitute and seeing a bunch of police who told us to get out of the area if we didn't want trouble, we sprang for a cab. I remember driving back to our hotel in the 3am streetlight and the total fear and lonliness I felt.

When I listen to this song I imagine the evening but if I had rather seen it as an adventure, if I had felt invincible and courageous as we explored parts of London most tourists never saw. I imagine Jenn and I looking out the cab windows singing songs and laughing and pointing at landmarks and the cab driver shaking his head in confusion.

Sometimes life looks better in retrospect.. I had everything to lose back then, and I've lost almost all of it, and I happily remember that scary night, and wonder at times what life would be like if I were an adenturer, fearless, if my life had a techno soundtrack and occured against the London Skyline in the dead of night..