Hobart

Introverts three ways

You know how I raved about that introverted book a while back? Well here I'm going to share the author's description of what makes an introvert. Hopefully this will be helpful in itself, or else it will whet your appetite enough to get your hands on the book.

Introverts are energized by solitude. We are recharged from the inside out, from the forces of our internal world of ideas and feelings. Just as a geyser finds its power from a subterranean water source, introverts derive strength from hidden places. We generally fill our energy tanks in private or in the presence of one or two close friends, or else in a public place without interacting with those around us.

Some people miscontrue the introverted need for solitude as being antisocial. But it's not that we don't like people, it's that time with other people in the external world has a draining effect on us . . . . Long periods without quiet refueling leave introverts feeling physically exhausted and emotionally hollow. [p35-36]

. . .

In our culture we are continuously bombarded by stimuli, in the forms of information, images, conversation, and a multitude of other data and experiences. In order for introverts' lives not to degenerate into disassociated states of confusion, we need to process these stimuli and integrate them into our lives . . . . Introverts process internally, in the workings of our own minds. We integrate and think silently . . . . Our thinking precedes our speaking, which means we will often pause as we reflect and carefully chose our words . . . . When the finer filters of introverts become clogged in the presence of people, we often go silent. Though we may appear composed on the outside, our minds are in a state of constant activity. When important or difficult information comes our way, ideas swirl in our heads in a hurricane of mental activity [p37-39]

. . .

A third distinctive of the introverted temperament is the preference for depth over breadth. This applies to various aspects of our lives. Introverts tend toward high degrees of intimacy in our relationships . . . . We may find small talk disagreeable and tiring . . . . Introverts also prefer to have depth in fewer interests . . . . Our passion for depth also applies to our understanding of ourselves . . . . Introverts are experts in our internal worlds, aware of the strata of motivations, feelings and assumptions that determine our choices and behaviours. [p41]

Very human

A long time ago I was having a rather serious chat with a dear friend of mine. She had some very thoughtful and intelligent things to say, so when I went home I wrote them down. I came across my notes the other day and thought I would share them with you.

My friend was arguing that you must always divide someone’s actions from their person. You shouldn’t say “Good girl” or “Bad boy” because their actions are not them. When people act badly it’s not because they are bad - they were making the best choice they could from the options they were aware of. Even when someone deliberately choses to do something they know they shouldn't and will later regret, the very fact that they persist in making the wrong choice shows there is more going on than they are conscious of. Life brings hurt and disappointment and we all carry with us a degree of anger and fear that make our choices less than wholly rational. Our bad actions may stem from nothing more than the very human desire to protect ourselves or get revenge - motives that my friend argued were understandable and perhaps even excusable.

But I think that just because something is understandable doesn't make it excusable. The fact that we are all victims in some way doesn't give us the right to be perpetrators. So what are we left with? If we are both hurting and without excuse, then is there nothing we can do to protect ourselves or ease the pain? This is where I believe the Christian God comes in. Christians are told to turn to him with our hurt and disappointment. It's from him that we seek comfort, justice and protection. And it is in him that we find joy, meaning and wholeness - rather than in always looking to people who disappoint. Life lived under these truths gives us the freedom to chose the right.

Tell you Mona what I wanna do

I had a great time at MONA, the spectacular Museum of Old and New Art (not this), which is situated on a goodly part of a peninsular jutting into Hobart's Derwent river, in the middle of working class suburbs.

I loved the entrance - a door framed with glitsy aluminium tucked away at one end of an unused tennis court. Cheeky. I loved taking a glass elevator down to the massive underground cavern that houses MONA and stepping out to behold soaring sandstone walls. The museum is three stories high and at different points you can see floors and staircases cutting across the space, creating a kind of angular architectural abstract art of its own.

I enjoyed many of the artworks. They let you take photos too, which freed me from being a passive observer and meant I could wander around with a compositional eye. There were cool experiences - big bean bags to fall into, a quirky steampunk sort of movie, a talking maze, one giant rock with an optical illusion and another with mad moving parts. There were some pleasing individual pieces - a Howard Arkley painting, a dead bird surrounded by sepia strands, brightly coloured geometric paintings, an Arthur Boyd, cheeky satirical referencing of Australian art.

Much of it was macabre, violent or perverse. Far too much genitalia, even before getting to the innumerable elegantly sculpted vaginas (vulvas actually). I don't like looking at this sort of stuff, although sometimes I will if there's a composition to be admired or a serious point to be appreciated. It didn't shock me though - I already knew that life was dark, distorted and perverse. Nor was my faith rattled - Christianity is all about facing up to the brevity of our earthly life and the darkness of our secret deeds.

Though I loved it, I have to be honest and say that when one of my friends asked if I'd seen anything beautiful, I scrambled for an answer.

Discussing sex, politics and religion online: some tips

1. If you think you might not be very good at expressing yourself, stay out of the debate. Pray for and support those who are.
   
2. Be aware of who's listening to what you have to say, what their personal experience is of the issue at hand and if they're intellectual or practical sort of people. Don't be intimidated by them - God is over the discussion.
   
3. Work out one big thing you're trying to get across. Feel free to get help with this. It's usually good to express this in positive terms, because Christianity doesn't stop with exposure of sin.
4. Remember that apologetics has a limited role to play. Yet if God's ways really are the most healthy and life-affirming, then some of your readers may come to recognise this. You may also be able to remove barriers that get in the way of someone ever listening to the Gospel message.
5. As you craft each of your contributions, think about what the other correspondents have just said, what you should say and how you should say it. Pay careful attention to what they actually said and keep your emotions in check. Decide which battles to fight and try not to take attention away from your main point. Sometimes you may need to establish the legitimacy of the Christian viewpoint to be heard before you can proceed to the issue at hand. And don't fear anyone's intelligence - we have been given the very truths of God. Write using normal social skills and courtesy. It can be okay to be blunt, but it's never fine to be aggressive. Don't be defensive either - be unashamed, calm, confident and compassionate. Use commonplace words and explain yourself so that a teenager could understand. Read over what you have written, preferably out loud. Read it a few times, each time imagining that a different person is listening. Better still, leave it until morning to post. And best of all, get someone you respect to read over it for you.
   
6. Pray really, really hard.
   

I cannot proclaim it well

Only on Sunday did I see the loveliness of these lyrics. If you want to hear the music, Sufjan Stevens sings it on YouTube to black and white stills of African animals. No-one knows why.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

The library in my room

I own just over 30kg of big, fat theological books and I love em. My collection is light on commentaries mainly because I'm going overseas but also because I get overwhelmed by choice - a problem non-English speaking pastors would kill for. I know how much they weigh because earlier this year I stuffed them all into two $4 stripey bags and lugged them back to Hobart. I've only read bits of most of them but they all come highly recommended and I'm looking forward to their assistance in the years to come.

possibly helpful tips

Ages ago I wrote a post about how to help suffering people. It wasn't based on anything other than a bit of the Bible and my own experience, but maybe it will be a help to some of my readers. There's also a chance that this sort of analysis can stop your gut instinct doing a perfectly good job of letting you know what to do - so please only read it if you feel the need for assistance. Looking back, I think the most helpful points are:

• pray for them;
• treat them the same as normal, only more more gently;
• remind them of God's truths;
• cut them slack (in responsibilities and in social interaction);
• remember their pain, ask them how they are and comfort them for a long, long, long time after the awful thing has happened (months and years later).
  

Charity

Orwell also describes instances of charity. One church gave a free tea to tramps once a week – a “one-pound jam-jar of tea each, with six slices of bread and margarine”. Straightaway a church service began, during which the tramps behaved atrociously. Wondering why, Orwell concluded that “The explanation, of course, was that we out-numbered the congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor” [p186]. But he then describes one situation where that was very different – that of a clergyman who:

was shy and embarrassed, and did not speak except for a brief good evening; he simply hurried down the line of men, thrusting a ticket upon each, and not waiting to be thanked. The consequence was that, for once, there was genuine gratitude, and everyone said that the clergyman was a – good feller. [p187]

PS I have been reading authors other than Orwell - just had some catch-up blogging to do. You'll be hearing from a more varied pool soon ;).

Homeless people

George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London1 is a wild read for anyone who hasn't been homeless. Conditions are astonishingly, almost creatively, bad, and even when there is work it is so profoundly awful and so minimally paid that it provides for nothing more than a hellish cycle of existence. Yet somehow – perhaps because he was out of it when writing – Orwell writes with calm, wry good humour and sensible insight. Here he talks about the disrespect that society has for beggars:

A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course – but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout – in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite . . . . Why are beggars despised? – for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable.

Later he mentions “three especial evils” that mark the homeless person's existence – hunger (“nearly every tramp is rotted by malnutrition”), enforced idleness (“a dismal, demoralising way of life”) and being cut off from women...

It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralising as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-respect.

Now – other than giving some money to Anglicare one time – I never did anything for the beggars in Sydney. I'm shy around strangers and not a particularly generous person either. But I did try to think of them with respect as I passed by and sometimes I would look seriously at them or smile. So at the very least, let's be sure to regard these people with respect and not to measure them by their lack of money.

1 G Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (London: Penguin Books, 1933), 175, 206-07.

Shameful

Some days I feel like the ministry work I do isn't very valuable. I don't know why I feel this way now – I was convinced of its worth back when I did my MTS apprenticeship. I suspect the Devil's trying to get my 'off my game'. This feeling can be so strong that all I can tell myself is that it's “probably” not true. It has made me pray timidly, fundraise woodenly and squirm uncomfortably when people express their support.

What seems to be going on in my messed-up mind is that I'm thinking people in 'secular' jobs are doing the real, noble and wholesome work; whereas I'm being indulgent, dabbling in some luxury pursuit while living off other people's charity. Some of my thinking comes from what has been said to me in the past and some of it from a genuine respect for secular workers. But when I see clearly, I know it's false.

I know that doing ministry work does not make me more faithful, and that working in a secular job is righteous and that God can achieve great things through it. And yet I also know that teaching people the Word of God, helping them grow more like Christ, enabling them to pass on the Word to others and focussing on people's eternal state are matters of first importance. I know that while I do love my work, I'm not doing it for self-satisfaction, seeking to please myself at other people's expense. I'm doing it because I believe it's an important and legitimate job. And I know that I'm asking for people's money not because I don't want to take responsibility for myself (which would indeed be shameful), but because I'm working for these people and deserve a wage for my work.

I would really appreciate it if you, my dear readers, could pray that I'll remember these things, and perhaps even remind me of them yourselves :).