Tag: Random thoughts

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Cynicism and trust

While cynicism is no less reasonable than trust, the latter is much more enjoyable and life affirming.

Thus Jo Carruthers in a review of Javier Marías’s novel The Infatuations. While it seems obvious to me that trust is always the better option and is indeed more life-affirming than fear or cynicism, I love the idea that it is also more enjoyable. I had never looked at it from that angle, I suppose, but it’s true.

The review, which appeared in Third Way, June 2013, has also whetted my appetite for the novel, which is said to explore existential questions of life, death, love and morality. It looks a fascinating read.

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Nature deficit disorder

‘Nature deficit disorder’ – I rather liked that phrase, which I came across in an interesting article on Forest Church by Bruce Stanley in Third Way, June 2013 (see also http://www.mysticchrist.co.uk/forest_church). I was also struck by these words:

We’d rather be on the mountains thinking about God, than in Church thinking about the mountains.

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The story held you together

Some random thoughts from Mark Haddon’s The Red House. They spoke to me for a variety of reasons, I suppose.

The beauty kept slipping through her fingers. The world was so far away and the mind kept saying, Me, me, me. … But the valley … wasn’t this amazing? Look, you had to say to yourself, Look.

A failure to engage properly with the world. … Nothing mattered enough.

He occupies, still, a little circle of attention, no more than eight metres in diameter at most. If stuff happens beyond this perimeter he simply doesn’t notice unless it involves explosions or his name being yelled angrily. At home, in school, on the streets between and around the two, the world is constantly catching him by surprise, teachers, older boys, drunk people on the street all suddenly appearing in front of him so that his most-used facial expression is one of puzzled shock.

He had always seen his self-sufficiency as an admirable quality, a way of not imposing upon other people, but he could see now that it was an insult to those close to you.

It was the story that mattered, the story that held you together …. Saying, This happened … Then that happened … Saying This is me. But what is her story? Losing the plot. The deep truths hidden in the throw-away phrase.

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Gary and Mrs. Camp

Here’s another gem from Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier’s book Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness. In his article, ‘Finding God in Strange Places: Why L’Arche Needs the Church’, Hauerwas tells the following delightful story about his time at a United Methodist church, a story that involves ‘Mrs. Camp, a very elderly lady, and her son, Gary, [who] was mentally disabled’:

Gary was hard of hearing, so he and Mrs. Camp sat in the front pew during services. When it came time for Eucharistic celebration, Gary would slowly help Mrs. Camp up and move to the rail. The ten-foot trip took two or three minutes, and the whole church waited with bated breath for Gary and Mrs. Camp to make it. Once they did, we all would follow. But we were led by Gary and Mrs. Camp. If they weren’t present, you could feel the congregation worry whether we ought to have Eucharist that day. It wasn’t clear to us that we were all gathered.

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When we killed God

When we killed – or exiled – God, we also killed ourselves. Did we notice that sufficiently at the time? No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren’t going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off he branch we were sitting on.

Julian Barnes, Levels of Life