The Impossible Balance of Blogging

The Church Mouse

The Christian Blogosphere will be reeling from the news yesterday that The Church Mouse will be stepping back from the exercise wheel of blogging. Certainly, this news is received with great sadness by this blogger, and I send my warmest wishes to him after a very brave decision to take time out.

Since I started this game about 18 months ago, my behaviours have changed and so have those of others. I know a few people who have just ceased to write, others who have stopped blogging to the same extent in order to devote time to other things (+Alan Wilson being one such geezer), that some bloggers have become feverish in their daily turn-over, and that others have emerged new and fresh. The Blogosphere changes monthly, and even this foolish enterprise is not among those with the label 'established'.

I have noticed my own behaviours change too. At the start, I wrote a post every two or three days. At the end of last year I was a thrice-daily blogger, and the needs of job applications trimmed that to nearly once a week. The balance has landed currently with a post a day, and that feels about right for me. 

Life changes for bloggers as it does for everyone, though the allure of this pastime does not. Those unaccustomed to writing will not know the change of mindset that comes with this. We see something of interest and we seek to write about it. In fact, in those times when we cannot, bloggers get frustrated - trust me (one only need recall those occasions lately when Blogger has 'gone down' - bloggers started up new blogs rather than wait). Our family's needs change too. My children have lived a third of their life with a blogging dad and so that particular landscape has, by necessity, changed as well. Blogging is a constant appetite, but the rest of life ebbs and flows - and so we have a problems for fitting it all together. Sometimes it just doesn't.

And so we have our esteemed Mouse. In his notice, he made a short statement about withdrawing from this lark out of regard for family, and he has my respect and admiration for making what to the rest of the world may seen like the only choice. A great support to me, a balanced view in many debated, often copied always poorly, I wish him the very best, and his family. For the rest of us, the juggle continues - and if we honest, with a big mouse-hole left on Fridays when we all gather to see if we made the cut. 

And So It Begins

I have been reading a considerable amount regarding Christian antisemitism. For those of you who, like me, were appalled at the very suggestion - it is the sad fact that antisemitism has permeated Christian thinking for almost all of its existence. [My reason for this inquiry is a paper that I am writing]. 

For those of you still unconvinced, I would invite you to look at the work of St. John Chrysostom, Martin Luther or Ambrose of Milan - and a pattern develops. Why? In short, the basis of this antisemitism is the Christians' charge that the Jews were (and for some, still are) guilty of deicide. However uncomfortable I may be about that, it is a fact born out by the writings of our most loved Christian thinkers. 

For those of us of a more liturgical bent, we will have marked yesterday as Passion Sunday (as distinct from the Fifth Sunday of Lent, which is also the label for yesterday). Passion Sunday brings with it the behemothic Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus. We hear not just of a death, but of a rotting corpse, putrefaction. We are encouraged, in this account, not simply to engage with our spiritual senses but also our physical senses. Why? The simple message is that God can raise us to new life, that death is nothing - merely sleep; that faith in God is more potent that life itself, more powerful and more life giving than life. But how easy that is for us a couple of millenia later when the raising of Lazarus is no more a miracle to us than me getting up before 6am! We are used to the story, accustomed to it, desensitised. This applies to the account of the Passion too - hey ho, they just hammered a nail into Jesus' hand; what's the next hymn?!

Might we enter the mindset of a first-century Jew and consider these events, without our modern abilities to achieve so many more miracles, without our prior knowledge of the end of the story - and actually empathise with how they may have responded to a rotten corpse emerging from its tomb. Little wonder this is a tipping point. No wonder the crowd were split in two - those who believed and followed and those who believed and hated Jesus (through fear, probably). If some beardy-wierdy magicked my dad back to life, I would surely regard it as some vile hocus-pocus and reject it - because reason demands that. Same for the Jews, I think. If  something is too abnormal that we cannot assimilate it into our schema of thought - then I think the next thing we do is reject it, and the person promulgating it. 

I have long held that the Jews, and indeed Judas Iscariot (who made the ultimate sacrifice for his 'calling'), had to do what they did for our salvation. Take them out of the equation, and the Passion would not have happened and the whole shebang would have been for nothing. As I said to the kids at school - the seed has to die before the first flower and then the fruit can be born. Do we then blame the gardener? Of course not - we celebrate their horticultural prowess. 

The story that will unfold before us in our worshipping life over the next two weeks will invite so much judgement of people. The Jews, Judas, Pilate, Caiphas, Peter, Barabbas the Centurion - and the faceless nameless mocking crowds. In our judging we judge their judging. The Prophecy had to fulfilled and fulfilled it was - with every detail perfectly played out. Judge not ... 

(The essence of my sermon preached yesterday)

Called to Live Forever?

Life in so many ways is marked by progress in this field or that. These days, progress in ecologically advantageous matters are all the vogue. However, the might of science has been hard at work for generations to increase life expectancy. This has been achieved by the eradication of many diseases or by the discovery of their requisite cures. 

Now I should say that I would not deny any single human being the medicines that they need. I would do anything to alleviate suffering and pain, and as a parent myself hope and pray that when or if my children ever need the fruits of scientific breakthrough, they will be available. 

I read an article somewhere a week or so ago about a discovery about the polluting nature of home-based domestic fires in third-world countries. Evidence, apparently, suggested that they belched out more toxic gases than all of global industry put together. Answer, ovens for homes; solution, several million more people living longer. 

Simple mathematics leads me to a concern. If we will all begin to live into our hundreds, and in circumstances when millions more will live longer because of cleaner air, in an age when people have more children - where will we all live and what will we all eat? How will we keep warm, how will be dispose of our waste, and where will our hard fought eco-battles get us when all the green spaces and the fauna and flora are squeezed into extinction?

I wonder if there will be a moment of either critical mass or a tipping point at which point human lives will be too long in relation to the number of people alive on this rock? Will there be a time when suddenly there just is far too little of what we need to survive available to us (accepting of course that most of a continent already knows something of this way of life already). 

In short, we can't all live forever. I am not sure that is what we are called to do either. I am not suggesting that the Lord would have us die of some vile pestilence, but what if we started living to 150, 200, more? I see the lives of some people in their 80s 'buried' out of harm's way in care homes and wonder if the progress for eternity is worth it. One thing that utterly and momentarily grieved me on the day the twins were born was that, in normal circumstances, I wouldn't be there for them when they too were old and needed help. Old-age is a gift and a privilege of course, but I can't help thinking that we could end up with too much of a good thing.