So What?

Improvisation and Spirituality 6: Cameron Carpenter

This video features some splendid improvisations as well as Cameron's reflections on improvisation.  It is worth exploring the TED website for a wealth of challenging and thoughtful presentations.

 

 

Love in Bloom

This post celebrates of a song from about 1934.  Love in Bloom  was written by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin.  That's about all I know except for four and a half performances which everyone should hear.

Usually Bing Crosby  is spot on.  This has to be the most sentimental of his performances I've ever heard.  It's so bad it's almost worth listening to.  If you hunt around I've added another video of Crosby solo but it is an uninspired rendition. 

Noel Coward  made a better recording.  I should warn you this tune sticks in the mind.  I don't mind really it's a brilliant tune for stamping around the neighbourhood!

My next presentation is my second favourite.  Spike Jones  for those of you who don't know him is a consummate musician.  You know from the first few seconds this is going to be a memorable recording.  If you can cope with more in the same genre, have a look around, I've added an inspired extra.

Finally, the best of the lot has to be Gracie Fields .  Even if you're desperate to get this tune out of your head by now, you need to hear this version, if only for the vocal fireworks towards the end.

On the Nature of Repentance

The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means we turn around, away from what is not of God, towards what is of God.  The problem is we tend to think of repentance as turning away from sins we conceive of as crimes. 

But we need to understand those things not of God, not as crimes but as principalities and powers .  We are invited to turn away from those things which hold us captive.  Certainly, activities we commonly hold as sinful such as murder or covetousness can hold us captive but so can many other things.  As we buy into the second best worlds of the principalities and powers, we imprison ourselves.

Those who are unemployed for example, are often faced with an overwhelming sense of being sidelined.  They believe their  unemployment is their own fault.  Gradually, healing might come through a realisation that society is to blame.  Later still, they may see how they were at fault for accepting the idea they were personally to blame.

Terrible things happen to all of us and we turn them into prisons for ourselves.  Repentance is breaking out of our own prisons, realising that we are personally responsible for sins not only against others but also against ourselves. 

When someone commits a serious crime, such as the murder of a child, it is almost as if they commit two crimes.  In addition to the crime itself, there is also a spiritual crime, a crime against the surviving victims.  They are held captive by grief and often a desire for vengeance.  Of course, these desires cannot be met for all sorts of reasons and so they can be nursed for many years.

Whose fault is this self-captivity?  Without a doubt it was originally the perpetrator of the crime.  But who is responsible many years later?  The perpetrator might be dead.  Release can come only with the recognition that I am my own gaoler.  Blaming the other reinforces the shackles I have forged for myself.  Ultimately, the call to repentance is a call to take responsibility for my life.

To see someone who has not been able to forgive and let go is never edifying.  Sometimes we see the opposite, someone who is able to forgive a terrible crime, sometimes very soon after it is committed.  This is never unfeeling, it is always a great generosity of spirit which happens despite ongoing and real pain.

Sporting Life is the real villain in Porgy and Bess.  Whilst Porgy and Crown fight over Bess, he insinuates himself into her life using her drug addiction.  Unlike Crown, he lacks self-awareness and so awareness of the humnaity of the other.  In this extract he tempts Bess to come with him to New York.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to find an extract from a performance of the opera.  This is the best I could find out of an indifferent pick of on-line recordings.

What Sin Is

Hopefully you are persuaded that sin has nothing to do with the 10 commandments or sex  .  But you might ask what is it do with?  There is a debate about whether there is such a thing as institutional sin.  How can institutions be sinful, it is people who are sinful?  Well, actually no.  The truth is all sin is institutional.  But of course this needs to be unpacked.

We need to understand human institutions have a temporal and a spiritual dimension.  The temporal are those aspects you bump into, shake hands with or bow down to.  So, an easy illustrative example would be a king.  A king has a kingdom, a throne, castle with banqueting halls and dungeons.  The problem is none of these or anything else the king possesses will earn him the obedience of his subjects.

However, if the subjects believe the king, or better still the kingdom, is good and so ordained by God, they will generally do as they are told.  This is broadly the spiritual aspect of the kingdom.  Notice, it happens because the kingdom takes up residency in the heads of the people who live in it.  This applies to the king, his subjects and in fact their enemies too.  This is what Paul means by powers and principalities.  There is in the view of Christians one ruler who is not divinely ordained but is in essence divine.  Our calling is to know God and this means repeatedly unseating an unending procession of powers that seek our allegiance, often in very subtle ways.

The reason we do this is because we have a natural instinct to put our own survival first.  Whatever is out there that promises to earn our allegiance, will be placed at the centre of our lives.

This is known as idolatry and I intend to write a series on this theme during advent (for reasons which will become apparent).  Even something which seemingly has nothing to do with the powers is filtered through our distorted vision of what is right.  I fall in love, the way I express that love is through my sinful nature.  I learn from the media.  I buy valentine cards.  I buy loads of things.  Today we live in a consumer society, so our lives are expressed in terms of consumerism.

That's enough for now but it gets much more difficult as I will explain next time.  For now, remember it is the sin that is the problem, not the sinner.  God loves sinners because he can see the person captured by all the crap. 

I've always been fascinated by the character Crown in Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.  He is one of the villains (I'll tell you about the other next time).  Crown is a brutal man and a bully.  This song A Red Headed Woman makes the Choo Choo Jump its Tracks is an example of his style.  He sings this in the middle of a prayer meeting during a storm.  He boasts that he and God like to fight.  But he is the one who is prepared to go out in the storm to rescue the men in the boats.  He is lost but on his return he is murdered by Porgy because of the power he has over Bess.  He is a man who is impossible to love and yet you can see he might be loved by God.  Not so the other villain.  (Click on the picture to hear the song.)

What Sin is Not

OK, so I'm saying religion does not make you happy  and engages you with the world .  It is spiritual but spirituality engaged.  So, what does this mean, what does religion do for you?  I have to say I don't know because the word religion is too general. 

I suppose it's possible that all religions do the same for you.  I think this is unlikely but I'm not going to explore that road.  I can tell you about the religion I do know.  If we are to understand what Christianity does for us we need to understand sin.  This post is about what sin is not.

You may find some of this surprising.

First, sin has got nothing to do with the ten commandments.  Lots of reasons.  Most people tend to focus on the later ones and ignore the ones about loving God and graven images.  This makes it easy.  I haven't murdered anyone or coveted my neighbour's wife and so I am not a sinner.  Actually I'm not into graven images and I go to church most weeks and so I must love God.  That just about wraps sin up for me.

I'm afraid not.  So, am I saying the ten commandments are necessary but not sufficient?  No, I am not.  I am saying obeying these commandments or any others is not the point.  For a start, biblical Hebrew has no word for obey (unlike Biblical Greek or Aramaic).  They are actually signs of friendship between God and humanity.  God is saying to Israel, behave like this and consequently things will go well for you.  But even this is not good enough.

Sin is not simple disobedience, it is a perception of the world that is unrealistic.  It is a disengaged perception which places me at the centre and expects everything else to revolve around me.  Consequently my behaviour will always be to some degree inappropriate.

Second, sin has nothing to do with sex.  Let me be clear here.  Sex tends to get tied up with the false perceptions we all have about our place in the world.  But it is these false perceptions which are the problem. 

This problem goes back to Augustine of Hippo (illustrated).  Prior to him, there were suspicions about sex but they were largely socio-economic, the wealthy and powerful use wealth and power to sexually exploit the weak.  This was frowned upon because in Christ the early church was understood to be a church of equals. 

Augustine introduced the idea of original sin.  Let's be clear this is the idea that the next generation is infected by sin (as it were) through the sex act.  Jesus was without sin because there was no sex involved in his birth.  Neat!

It is hard to imagine any doctrine which has and continues to cause more problems.  I don't particularly want to let Augustine off the hook but the reason his views made sense for hundreds of years was the doctrine of the fall.  There was an original state of grace (presumably based upon Platonic ideals) from which humanity fell.

This is why evolution is such a problem for some Christians.  Evolution means there was no original state of grace and so no fall.  I've never understood why this is a problem.  The vision of perfection could as easily be a future state.  It is not a goal of evolution but a gift from God.  We know we can be better.  

The problem for theologians is we know we can be better than we are but don't know how to get there.  Evolution cannot get us there any more than laws or commandments, so what do we do?

On Being Comforted by Religion

So what do I mean by religion helps us with things that make us alive rather than happy ? 

Sometimes preachers tell us that Christianity / the Holy Spirit / Jesus comforts the uncomfortable and discomforts the comfortable.  It may be trite but there is a lot of truth in this so long as we are clear about what is meant by comfort.

The word in old English is subtly different from the way it is used in modern English.  For example, it used to be possible to comfort a statue.  This meant to position it on its plinth so that it has a snug fit.  Today we would think the statue was upset!

The other story is that King Harold is shown on the Bayeux Tapestry's depiction of the Battle of Hastings, comforting his troops at the point of his spear.  I've no idea whether this is true or not but I've illustrated this article with a possible scene from the tapestry.

However, the point is to be comforted is to be engaged.  This is what religion does for us, it doesn't make us happy but it does invite us to be engaged with the world with all its pains as well as it pleasures. 

Does Religion Make You Happy?

A conversation about happiness on BBC Radio 4 yesterday.  Apparently happiness depends upon a range of things, eg money, family, friends, work ... and of course religion.

At the mention of religion, the programme became interesting.  The woman who was speaking seemed to be rather embarrassed at the word.  Of course, she said it's not so much religion as spirituality.  She stumbled around this several times before settling on spirituality rather than religion.  So, spirituality makes you happy and religion does not and that's official!

Of course we can all see what she's driving at ... dreadful church or temple or mosque services ... men who lead and don't allow women or gays to lead.  We've all been there ...  But it does seem likely religion does make some people happy, if only the men who control it ... and in reality many more than them.

Some time ago, Jonathan Sacks , the Chief Rabbi, said something which rang true to me.  Religion is, he said, applied spirituality.  It is (this is me) spirituality applied in a particular time and place.  It is spirituality grounded, not just in the head.  It is spirituality made public. 

So, religion is spiritual but spirituality is not necessarily religion in this specific sense.  Is the reluctance to see religion as a source of happiness an admission that spirituality as a source of happiness is an escape from reality?

But who said religion aims to make us happy?  Religion is only in the hands of tiresome old men (or indeed other tiresome people) if we let it be so.  It is ours to apply together in any time and place we choose.  As such it helps us make sense of our lives but it is not painless.  When we deal with religion, we are dealing with things that make us alive, not necessarily happy.