"In the first half of my life I fought the Devil. In the second half, I fought God."
Nikos Kazantzakis
Angst about sin and purity; worries about traditions and who's in and who's out; individuation, desperation to innovate, neophilia.
And now something... other.
I am exploring.
Technorati: Jung | Kazantzakis | Rohr
The ever-brilliant Believer magazine - the highlight of my reading month - carries a wonderful dual essay by Scott and James Browning about their respective trips to the North and South Poles with their mother.
Scott Browning's piece on the North Pole trip is wonderful. He describes the utter non-place-ness of it. There are in fact many North Poles - astronomical, magnetic, geographic, instantaneous, and, over many years scores of brave explorers lost their lives battling through extreme hardships to try to get there. Scott travels with his mum in a Russian, nuclear-powered icebreaker, replete with strangely warm swimming pool. Because this journey, through a landscape absent of any geographic markers, to a place with none either, is so easy, the group are required to attend twice-daily lectures on the importance of their feat, and are constantly hyped up by notes around the ship reminding how amazing it is all going to be when they get there.
And, of course, when Scott does, he feels utterly lost. "Failing to believe in the North Pole while at the North Pole is to go from being someplace special to pretty much nowhere at all." Between all time-zones and none, time and place collapse. In the eternal sunshine, it is like a sugar-white nirvana...
And it got me thinking back to Alan Jamieson's work in A Churchless Faith. About moving from the 'Cruiseliner' faith to the small yacht. The destination is not the key. It's the journey that counts.
If you sail toward heaven in a MegaChurch, will you really be satisfied when you get there? I don't know.
Technorati: Jamieson | North Pole | Megachurch | The Believer
Tragically, last night a 3rd boy was shot dead in South London, the latest victim of a possibly-connected spate of black on black youth killings. The police have responded by saying they are going to have armed patrols on the streets now. Like that's going to work. Two of the boys were shot in their beds.
This morning I was reading the page proofs for the US release of the book, and came across this end-note to a part of the book discussing Fowler's stages of faith:
I am perhaps stepping beyond my remit, but in my work teaching in an inner city comprehensive I have seen many, many examples of students from families from strongly ‘Stage 3’ Pentecostal churches who, in their latter years at school, develop real problems with discipline. I wonder if this is because they have so few role models at the latter stages of faith, and once they begin to appreciate the complexities of their situation in the city, have few resources for helping them cope with it and so end up kicking hard against the system. It is for others to comment in a more informed way on these casual observations, but perhaps absence of any Stage 4+ expressions of faith in Pentecostalism is doing young people in troubled communities a great disservice.
Perhaps I am speaking out of turn, perhaps there is a 'Stage 4' / doubting path within the black churches?If there is, I've never seen it. All the literature you see - and masses of it - is all about 'Holy Power Apostolic Life Church International Healing Power Ministry Prophecy with Big Pastor Somebody and his Shiny Suits.
And I think this is a very deep problem. In my, admittedly small, experience working with teenagers, there needs to be a path from infancy (dependency on the mother) into adulthood (walking alongside the father). Adolescence is the difficult in-between stage, the stage of doubt. The stage where all that Stage 3 certainty is debunked.
It is here that all systems are challenged and all authorities are questioned. And I think ideally this tricky place is best negotiated with one hand still on mother, and one hand reaching out to father. Not only that, but the other social structures that these becoming-adults are part of also need to walk this stony ground with them.
If I am right about the lack of any clear path beyond Stage 3 in the black churches, then, combined with the horrific statistics about absenteeism among black fathers, these young men are being let down on two out of three counts. Believe me, I've met the mothers, and they are desperate. Their boys - who tend to be angelic up to age 11/12 - suddenly leave them, and they have no way of helping them.
Other cultural factors are at work here too. It seems that music is letting these boys down too. If you are middle-class and white, then you have a whole catalogue of depressing, soul-searching music to act as your soundtrack for this journey. The Smiths, The Cure, Radiohead... all these are bands who are playing music for that journey beyond Stage 3. But, tragically, there is almost no angst-ridden hiphop or garage. And again, in the absence of other support structures, this leaves these boys with almost no resources to negotiate this journey into adulthood.
So what do they do? They do what anyone else would: help each other. That's what a gang is: a self-help group when no one else is around to do it.
The solution? Obviously this is a massive problem that is very deep-seated. This Sunday is 'Amazing Grace' day, and thousands of churches will sing out heartily to raise awareness of modern-day slavery. Quite rightly, but old-world slavery still has it's fingers of shame and worthlessness round so many necks. What will not work - and what is just political posturing to pander to us middle-class whites - is arming police. The solution must lie within. The black churches must find some way of holding on to young men beyond 12 years old and resource them with wise guides-men to listen to their doubts, affirm their challenges to authority, and lead them out of the maternal into adulthood.
At least, that's what one white, middle-class, Anglican teacher thinks.
Rest in Peace, Billy Cox.
[PS - great representation from the 'From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation' on Channel 4 news tonight. They need our support.
Technorati: Amazing Grace | Billy Cox | London | Pentecostalism | Shooting
Off tomorrow to Ventura, CA, for the Solition Sessions. Big thanks to the generous guys there for offering to fly me over. What with being off there and other recent trips, it's felt like a bit of a busy, travelling summer. But it was great to catch up properly with Nic the other night.
One of the things we got talking about was Ben Edson's post about rites of passage and the 'Vaux Suicide'. He had rightly picked up on research linking high levels of adolescent male suicide with the lack of rites of passage. Denied any well-trodden paths into adulthood, they struggled to find their own way. Ben had then suggested that this might have some bearing on the lack of longevity in alt.worship groups, and that the Vaux suicide was a good case in point.
It's a great thought, and may well hold some truth, but Nic and I both agreed that a better understanding would actually be to see our ending of Vaux as precisely such a rite of passage: to hold on to that manifestation would be to remain adolescent. This reminded me of the video I'd created for the very end of the last service before our ending meal - a piece that I suppose stands as a suicide note. Part of the text:
Technorati Tags: Art, Bede, Cartography, Merton, Mofokeng, Race, Soliton, suicide
Continue reading "Off to Soliton | Nomadic Faith | Spiritual Cartography | Vx 'Suicide'" »
I volunteered to be part of the 'grid blog' flagging up Mark Yaconelli's book 'Contemplative Youth Ministry', and duly received a copy to read from the publisher.
It's very good. We were traveling up to Iona with some friends, one of whom was also reading it, and she was also very positive.
A quote I'd like to pull out is on page 101, where Mark is reflecting on the practice of contemplative prayer with young adults, as opposed to a 'doing' style:
"Sadly for many of us there are few precious moments among our many human interactions when we feel someone is fully present to us... If you look back over your life, you may find that the moments that had the greatest impact on you were moments when you were in the presence of someone who was fully present to you."
This is the true essence of contemplation - not that we find ourselves, but that we engage with 'the other'; not that we become centred, but that we find space for 'the other' within our centre, and thus become fully present to them.
And if we can help people to begin this journey when they're young - then all the better.
//
Previous post on the grid-blog [ here ]
Next post due tomorrow [ here ]
Technorati Tags: Contemplative Youth Ministry Grid Blog, Youth Ministry
Just been to see Grizzly Man. It's fantastic.
For those who haven't heard about it, it's a documentary cut by Werner Herzog, using footage shot by Timothy Treadwell on his summers living among Grizzly Bears in Alaska. It wouldn't spoil the film for you to know that in his 13th summer there, he and his girlfriend were mauled to death by a one of them.
Treadwell shot over 100 hours of footage, much of it with him narrating in shot, so there was a wealth of material for Herzog to use, which he intercuts with interviews with friends and others.
What makes the film utterly intriguing is the character of Treadwell himself, who is convinced that he alone is working to protect and save these creatures. It becomes clear that with healthy populations and a functioning nature reserve this is patently not the case. His work is simply not needed, but after a difficult life of failed attempts at other projects, and severe alcoholism, he is desperate to be a saviour to something. He cuts a tragic figure, but is not to be pitied, being totally in love with what he is doing, and totally convinced that he is the only one who can do it.
The film thus becomes a meditation on the human need for salvation. Not so much that we need saving, but that we are desperate to save something, to be something meaningful, to lay our lives down for something.
The question we must therefore ask is, is our life's work worth it? Are we out to save something that doesn't need us?
Only on limited release, so try to catch it soon.
Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Film, Grizzly Man, Salvation
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