Still

When I read this, I know I’ve found a book I’m going to love:

I am one of those overeducated library types who might be expected to look down her nose at self-help books – but the whole bookstore is a self-help section to me. When something needs to be fixed, when I need something to change, my first and abiding instinct is to read. I think I can read my way to a solution. Or at least an evasion.

Still, p. 23

This is exactly what I do. This is exactly what I have done in finding Still, although it is a searching for some kind of navigation, or way forward, or even just understanding, on this occasion, rather than an avoidance tactic.

The title’s tag line –  notes on a mid-faith crisis - is what attracts me. I wonder if Ms Winner and I can compare notes. Maybe she has found some wisdom she can pass on to me.

The whole book is like a conversation with a friend really. Someone who isn’t exactly in the same shoes as you, but whose life is similar enough that they get how you feel. I love the honesty and humility and the patchwork of inspiration she draws from other writers. In reading, I am reminded of how powerful it can be to invite someone else into your own story.

Winner does this beautifully on many occasions, and I leave you with the quote which resonated with me the most:

I am sitting on a bench in a museum. The museum is a five-minute walk from my office, and I come here often, to be spelled in the middle of the day by thirty minutes of silence… In my lap, the Bible is open to the fifth chapter of Luke, one of Jesus’ healings… the story ends with Luke’s telling us that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray. A little like  escaping to the quiet of a museum, I think. What can it mean for a place to be lonely?

A place, lonely like Jesus? Lonely like me?

Maybe I can make my loneliness into an invitation – to Jesus – that he might withdraw into me and pray.

Still, p. 141

The Beauty-Salvation Myth

Maybe you’ve seen the Dove Evolutions video before. The first time I watched it with a bunch of teenage girls, there was a split second of shocked silence at the end of the clip. Then outrage as they literally started to yell: ‘We’ve been lied to!’ All talking at once, they figured out that the images they had been comparing themselves to in magazines weren’t even real women.

The second video, 34x25x36, I saw on Jamie Smith’s blog. It’s a short film made in a mannequin factory. At the beginning, the designer says:

‘the ideal body doesn’t exist – WE make the ideal body.’

He later describes that the idea of a mannequin is to stir up adrenaline in the buyer to say, “hmmm… I could look like that.”

The designer goes on to talk about the evolution of mannequin production, and how it is a continuation of Renaissance French religious art, where a particular saint was fashioned out of wood or wax to help people envision what they might be like.

In a similar way, he says, ‘we replicate what the perfect girl is… you could see it as worshipping, giving people something to aim for.’

‘Do we worship perfect women?’ he asks.

He explains that in religion, the ideal to aim for is salvation, and again, asks an astute question:

‘What is our current salvation as a society?’

‘Oh, beauty is only skin deep,’ we say. But we consume these images every single day. ‘It’s playing with people’s minds of what their ideal is,’ says the mannequin designer.

Never have our minds been so screwed up in relation to what we look like.

Subconsciously, we are living the narrative that the ‘good life’ is looking like that girl, or being with that girl; that girl, who has been so enhanced and edited that she is literally unreal.  We are looking for salvation in something that doesn’t even exist.

I wonder what would have happened if the French religious iconographers would have taken seriously the command to ‘beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female’ (Deut. 4:16). I wonder what would happen if we took it seriously?

The depth of the problem was underscored for me by my own reaction to 34x25x36. I am a rational, well-educated, grown woman. I know these images are unreal, and looking like them won’t make me happier or more fulfilled. I have a healthy relationship with my own appearance. And yet, honestly, one of the first things I thought when I saw this the film? ‘I wonder if we have a tape measure in the house? I wonder what my proportions are? How far away am I from the ideal woman? Do I measure up?”

And then I got mad.

WHO DECIDES ALL THIS ANYWAY?! Who decides what this ideal is? Who decides what the perfect proportions are, and what we think of as beautiful?

Our society’s current beauty-salvation myth is destroying us.  It causes women to wage war against their own bodies in order to live up to an impossible, unattainable ideal of perfection. It causes us to produce and consume in ways that are detrimental to the planet and its poorest inhabitants. It teaches us to worship idols and look for salvation somewhere it can never be found.

Perhaps its time we start teaching an alternative story about beauty?

Avoiding Forest Fires

‘I tell you, on that day of judgement people will give an account for every careless word they speak’ (Matthew 12:36).

 ***

A match is struck. A tiny spark is carelessly dropped into the dry, dense undergrowth. In seconds the whole forest is ablaze, its rage consuming everything in its path. Helicopters fly overhead dumping gallon after gallon of water and days later the fire is finally out. The damage, however, is already done.

Continue reading at Completely Devoted…

Procrastination and Violence

So I was in the library avoiding anything remotely productive reading “around” my essay topic, when I came across this incredible sermon called Self-inflicted Violence, by Ellen Davis.

Davis explores the somewhat uncomfortable relationship between violence and praise in Psalm 149:6-9 and in the life of the saint. She argues that “there is a regular pattern of sainthood: first withdraw and do battle in your own heart, then do battle in the world” (2003:295). This is clearly seen in the life of Jesus, as He battles in the wilderness before He goes out to battle in the world.

“Withdraw and do battle against the powers that have made your own heart occupied territory,” she urges (2003:295). “The key to responsibility in ministry is precisely the saint’s practice of self-inflicted violence, rigor in naming and opposing the evil we find in ourselves. It is the toughness gained from fighting the battle within that enables us to be gentle with others” (2003:297)

Davis goes on to describe the difference between godly and godless violence, which I found particularly poignant in light of recent world events:

“every kind of godless violence is directed at getting something or holding onto it – power, oil, satisfaction, vengeance, personal or national security. But the battle of the saint is always fundamentally directed toward giving, giving praise to God, and that cannot be fully, freely given without first giving up what we normally value above all else, namely, a good opinion of ourselves” (2003:296).

I could type out the whole thing really, as it’s so inspiring, but I’ll leave you with the quote I found the most moving, right near the end of the sermon:

“‘Let the high praises of God be in their throat and a two-edged sword in their hand.’ The sword-wielding singers of praise – this is the image that clarifies the conditions of Christian ministry and strengthens us against intimidation. It is an icon of the saints standing firm through the great ordeal, the ordeal that every one of you, and everyone you serve, will pass through in this life; an icon of the imperiled saints, literally singing for their lives, singing God’s praise as they hold fast to the one piece of equipment that will bring them safely through: “the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), the sword of God’s cutting and healing word, the sharp instrument of discernment that we learn to wield accurately only through the discipline of prayer” (2003: 297).

******

(After reading the sermon, it wasn’t a huge surprise to find out that Ellen Davis is an eminent Professor at Duke Divinity School, alongside one Stanley Hauerwas.)

Publication details:

Davis, E. ‘Self-inflicted Violence,’ in The Art of Reading Scripture (Eds. Davis, E. & Hays, R. B.) Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003, pp. 294-299.

You can access most of the sermon on Google books.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Sing Your Freedom.

Why it’s worth it

Teaching can be a stressful profession at times, but when you get asked questions like these it all seems worth it:

Small Child #1: Miss King, I can’t remember why Jesus died for us on the cross, please could you explain it to me again?

Small Child #2: Miss King do you think it’s true, that God is real?

Small Child #3: Miss King, did you know you’re my favourite teacher in the whole world?

What an opportunity to invest good things into precious little lives.