Translation: Whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.
Basically, I think this
means that your perception of something is shaped as much by who you are as it is shaped by the thing itself. The antenna determines the signal received.
So, how did you receive that? And does that tell you anything about yourself?
Or, to take it a step further and be practical: How much of my view of Jesus is basically me looking at an idealised version of myself, or at least of my preferences concerning what I would like the incarnated God to be like? Do I walk through Advent purely looking for a Christmas present that suits me, or am I open to whatever I may receive? Am I Christian, or Davidian?
[Quotations from the great GK, helpfully arranged into categories to make it easier.]
Religion
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
Philosophy
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Being Human
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
Being Silly
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Whilst being pretty ignorant of them all, I am the kind of Christian who has a lot of time for other Christians. Or I try to, anyway. Today I was looking through the Catholic Calendar of Saints (wherein virtually every day of the year is designated as a feast in the honour of a hero of the Faith), and decided to look up my own birthday. It seems that I was born lucky - I pretty much got the best one. This fellow:
This is Athanasius, an Egyptian fellow from the 4th Century. There's a GK Chesterton quote about how 'on five occasions in history the Church has gone to the dogs, but on each occasion, it was the dogs who died.' The first of these near-deaths was when many in the Church decided that they didn't actually believe in Jesus - they thought that he was a creation of God, rather than God himself. This heresy was called Arianism.
Arianism gained a huge influence - successive Emperors and many senior bishops were Arians - and orthodox bishops like Athanasius were banned from doing their jobs. For a period in the mid-300s, it looked like the Church was headed for a future as a kind of Aristotelian Unitarianism. Athanasius was the figurehead of the movement against it, working for half a century to safeguard the doctrine of the Trinity.
Because I don't owe my allegiance to any particular denomination or church body, when Facebook asks for my religion, I put 'Panoramic Trinitarian'. There are a lot of us about, and Athanasius is basically our Godfather. Yay saints' days.
'There are times when Nature seems to be nothing but a revelation of beauty and glory and divinity; when it seems utterly obvious that the Creator is not only a thoroughly good chap but one who takes a special pleasure in beauty.
'I've been watching swallows, you see.
'I was walking a sunken path, to my left an expansive field of green corn, and saw, flying low, apparently for the simple pleasure of getting their tummies tickled by the tips of the corn stems, a small group of swallows lost in the wonder of their own agility.
'What is more perfect than a swallow? The effortless flight, the astounding speed and accuracy, a splendidly natty colour scheme (pale below and navy above, with the elegant touch of a red face mask), the swept-back, fighter-plane wings, the long tail streamers, the way they love curves and despise straight lines, the knowledge that they have travelled in sweeps and swerves all the way from Southern Africa.
'They look as if they have come here specifically to tell us that the run-stealers flicker to and fro, to and fro, that there is honey still for tea, that God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.
'Mind you, it's possible that an insect would see a swallow as something different - a ravening beast from Doctor Who, perhaps, or one of those unexpected monsters from a Ted Hughes poem that attack the sensibilities. But when we see a swallow, we human beings, at least, experience beauty and thoughts of the benignity of Creation lurk in every curving, twittering fly-past.'
From an article by Simon Barnes in The Times. I concur.
There's something beguiling and lovely about the Olden Days.
A slower pace, but harder work; labour requiring muscle. Tree and grass, axe and spade, craggy skin unable to be airbrushed away. A closer kinship to creation, and clothes that remain, oblivious to fashion. And a Prime Minister who would walk the London streets at night, trying to convince prostitutes to change their lives.
There's more colour in this photograph than its pigment might suggest.
I have had to endure 3 years of the most important person in my life enduring the unending frustration of being an international student at Edinburgh University. The other week, she wrote a bit of feedback on the experience and I thought, for the good of the world, that I would make them public. Here are some excerpts:
While some of the teaching staff were very good, others were appalling and left me with the feeling that undergraduates are not really valued by the department. Additionally, my needs as an international student were constantly ignored (eg. making December exam dates so close to Christmas, thus making flights home ludicrously expensive).
I would like to mention the flexibility (or lack thereof) of the department. The staff repeatedly clung to the rules of the system rather than treating me as an individual with genuine needs. I felt like one of a herd of cattle rather than a valued member (especially one who, as fee-paying international student, is necessary for the economic viability of the university). The staff also displayed an appalling deficiency in communicating important information to me.
I would discourage English-speaking international students from applying because they can 'fall through the cracks' as it were from the student support networks.
I would discourage people from applying partly because of the mono-culture of private school-educated students.
But the main reason I would discourage people from applying is that the University gives every impression of being run by accountants and by blank-faced bureaucrats, more concerned with following The System and maintaining Edinburgh's 'prestigious reputation', rather than fostering an environment of personal growth and academic achievement.
I'm glad she had the chance to get that off her chest. And now, she's free!
From the Daily Telegraph's prize asset, the ever-reliable Matt,
with apologies to foreign readers, who won't have a clue what this is about ...
'We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel House, where Johnson expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life:
There is no private house [said he] in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that everybody should be easy; in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety.
The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man (but a very impudent dog indeed) can as freely command what is in another man's house, as if it were his own.
Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are... No sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.'
[Boswell, recording the words of Dr Johnson, in about 1775]
A couple of thoughts I was having this morning:
i. In life generally, and in Churchianity in particular, we humans are very aware of our need to advance, to better ourselves, to move from milk onto solid food etc. It is correspondingly very normal to beat ourselves up when this doesn't happen - when we consistently screw things up or whatever - and consequently we live under a cloud of guilt because we aren't 'maturing'. My thought: from God's perspective, the difference between the most gloriously Godly Christian and the most messy new believer is probably comparable to the difference between a 3 year old and a 1 year old. One looks so assured, having pretty much mastered walking, but in reality, both still wet their beds. Conclusion: maybe I can feel like a toddler without being guilty about it.
ii. Continuing on a 'growing up in God' theme - and with reference to the 'interesting' time that Maria & I have both gone through in the last few years - I started to wonder about comparisons with our normal physical development. No one likes to admit it, but the (usually atrocious) time we have during puberty is a necessity in order that we can transform into humans adults. It seems likely to me that, en route to glory, us believers are subject to spiritual periods of puberty, extended times of our whole system rebelling against us, leaving us slightly battered, very confused, and generally moody about stuff. It's something we go through, and we become different people as a result. Conclusion: the world has much to learn from teenagers.
I've also been thinking about rugby, but such things are best kept to one's self.
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