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...

A New Hope?

I was watching an interview with George Lucas today and he was asked what the 2 sunsets represented in A New Hope. It has always been a powerful scene in my mind, the sweeping and swelling music of John Williams as Luke looks out to the horizon and sees this stunning view. Lucas said that it represented life outside the box, the adventure that one can pursue in the horizon. He says that the characters live in the boring everyday life and look out at the sunset, and when they decide to chase after the adventure, fulfill their destiny they head out towards the sunset in glory and hope or the darkness of space in courage and fear.

I guess this isn’t a revolutionary idea, but today I was trying to figure out which character I was, Luke, or one of his cousins who just sit at home and eventually get turned into burning corpses. In the story it’s only after everything is lost that Luke decides to begin a new life. I wish I had that kind of opportunity at a soul level. I wish that I could head off for the sunset and change completely, but I have a feeling I’d have just called the neighbours and asked if I could live with them.

I’ve also been realizing the immense separation between soul/mind and body, it’s really strange how in our minds we can desire something so much and yet we fail to live out those things. As well, how much social ideas affect our life and actions. For instance if I wanted to head out to New Zealand with Danny and give up on everything here it would be immensely difficult, just because no one does that. I’m expected to fulfill the same roles as all those around me, and to be almost the same with just enough uniqueness to pretend that I am different, pointing at a straw and calling it a hay field. Everyone dreams about it, but no one does it. I guess they dream about the fun parts, not the sleeping in the mud parts.

As well it’s amazing to me how much fear sculpts everything we do. Maybe it’s only at the end of our rope when we realize that we face death and the loss of everything that we can have to courage necessary to act. I am amazed constantly by how much fear shapes everything we do. Fear of failure, fear of everything. I’m afraid.

Fear as you know leads to the dark side, maybe I need to get rid of my fear. I tried doing it near the end of school, and everyone thought I was crazy, I did worse than ever at school, even if I was a lot more at peace.

So ya, if I could actually sell all my stuff and get a plane ticket and go it would be so amazing, I’d be my own hero, but I’m sure after a month I’d be begging to come home and say anything to recant and to try to remake my life from the shambles. But I wish I had the determination to actually set out and live my life, live it the way I want it to look, and be the person I want to be. If instead of just dreaming, I would actually act. That’d be amazing.

I could live my whole life perfectly and struggle to succeed, but I think when I lay on my death bed at 42 from heart disease, I’d have traded all that time from now till then, just for one chance at adventure – as I believe one Scottish Rebel William Wallace said in Braveheart. I think that maybe life would be infinitely more meaningful if I became that person. But I’m pretty sure I won’t. I’ll catch a break, figure out a life, get a job, tell myself it was the right thing. But I think every time I see that sunset I’ll always remember what might have been.