Fear of Difference

Is difference Biblical?

Is difference being able to worship the many aspects of God through the freedom to find our own spiritual rhythm?

Is Holism the answer to being able to express the Christian faith through Nature?

I see difference in Nature all around me - randomness, shapes, movement, instability and diversity. But man introduces sameness - same cars, houses, roads, wheat fields, golf courses etc. All are an attempt to control the many of humanity. With people wanting individualilty we all buy into the desire for the same needs of a car, house, DVD player etc. We become homogenous, yet we yearn from freedom and individuality. The world has too many people all chasing the capiltalist dream, a utopia that consumerism will solve. Where is our "self", our individuality, our relationship with the Divine - with the Other? How can you break out? Not easily if you are trapped in the world of the mortgage and work. Yet even freedom is scorned. Difference creates culture wars and insecurity - we must be brought together. People fight over differences - they want security, or they feel threatened. Where is our freedom to be different?

Age, shopping, culture, TV, work, home: they all compartmentalise us - because that is how we have to shape life. Does Nature do that? Perhaps so, even small ecosystems have control, micro-habitats, niche specific flora and fauna. Everything needs some sort of boundary to survive. Even the air we breath is confined to our atmosphere. But then it goes back to how do you perceive things outside your boundary, habitat, culture, religion. Threat, insecurity or a welcome diversity of knowledge, belief, wisdom and understanding?

Can we pick and choose? A bit of this and a bit of that? Can Holism really be embraced? We have to think of our own survival and security - that overrides everything we do. Survive. So we cannot entirely embrace other things, only what is within acceptable boundaries. The outside becomes our fear. We become fearful of other beliefs.

Rhythm and Belief

Does you body resonate with various 'belief' systems? Do you search for that with which you are in tune? What cultural traditions, practices or ideas imprint ideas on you from an early age? Do some people just "get it" whilst others don't?

Is there a natural rhythm that resonates with us and so leads us along various paths of belief? Is there something that we are all in tune with? How can you find your rhythm? If you have a spiritual belief, is it all about tuning into something and is what you tune into up to you? Can other people expect you to resonate with something (that isn't along your natural frequency)?

I am in the process of reading a book about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and the thought occured to me that the Bible is not written in a language I understand. Er what...? Well, perhaps it is like tuning into art, music or literature. Isn't it all the same? Well yes, but no. We all tune into different rhythms of language, music or art. Some people may love Harry Potter, others just don't get it! The same with Hip-hop music, vegetarianism or Shakespeare. If you want to tune into the Christian belief, but don't feel an affinity for its language or rhythm then what do you do? What hope is there for me I wonder? Will I be confined to the depths of hell just because I don't feel my body is in tune with modern evangelical styles of doing things?

Even Jesus struggled to get people to listen to his message and tune into his rhythm and language.

Upon this Cross

So to the cross to bare my soul
And on that cross I touch the wood
That holds me high above the crowd.
I am held by nails - foreign objects
That pierce my flesh and the wood
We are bound together, inseperably.
I welcome death, as has the wood
We become one, lifeless but strong.
The cross and I, formed from the earth
We each bare scars of humanity
We each grew, but were then felled
by the saw or the spoken word.

Now we stand together,
The cross holding me up: new branches.
Together we were formed for a purpose
Having no control over our destiny
From separation to bonding
From existence to crucifixion
We become, together, a symbol
Of inhumanity and sinfulness.

Before coming to this stony place
We had already died
Our future predestined by an other
Worked by the hand of our makers.
We both end our physical lives
And our bodies fade from existence
But in new forms we continue to live
One as the Earth, one as the Spirit.

Flooding...

On commenting at work to a colleague about the current extensive flooding, and describing it as Mother Nature throwing a tantrum, the reply I received seemed quite apt: "And when us girls get into a strop there's no stopping us!"

Although it is, of course, distressing for all those who are suffering - I particularly feel for small businesses and farmers, from an eco/earth centred point of view we have only ourselves to blame.

I also wonder just how much 'stuff' is going to have to end up in land-fill sites. Suddenly our meagre, yet hard fought efforts of recycling and reusing waste seems inconsequential besides the mountains of furniture, household goods, and other consumables that will have to be destroyed. Why are our lives so built around such things? But it can all be replaced by the insurance, so why bother worrying about it?

Somehow, many things are wrong with the way we live our modern lives.

Nature's Martyr

If a Muslim is willing to die for Jihad
If a Christian is willing to die for Jesus
If a soldier is willing to die for their country
If a Knight is willing to die for the hand of a Princess
If a man is willing to die in saving another...

Surely there can be no just cause
That is ultimately the one to die for
All become a tear in the eye of the God of love
The fallen Earth never learning.

The actions of martyrs and heroes is held high
Each sacrificing self to a just cause
Their passion and commitment overrides life
The final ultimate action anyone can take.

Would my passion for my beliefs
Take me to a point like this
Where desperation, frustration or necessity live
Where my belief is greater than the value of life?

Perhaps my Jihad would be
Against any who reject Nature
Rise up my army let's fight
Those who tear this Earth apart.

In This Chamomile Place

In this chamomile place
I'm in your fragrance.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your breeze.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your light.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your earth.
I am, in this chamomile place.

Making Music

For a long time I have been wanting to do a bit of drumming, but have never searched out a way to realise this desire. I've often looked at small drum thingys in fairtrade/alternative shops or at festivals but have never played any. The lack of a private, soundproofed room has put me off. Anyway the following happened yesterday whilst on a walk to Hitchin...

The hedgerows are full of the scent of elderflowers honeysuckle, bracken and wild roses. After all the rain recently, the present warmth is a welcome relief. I am walkling along a bridleway and snap a couple of overhanging dead twigs from a branch. This to me was just an almost intuitive action to seeing a sharp branch that could hurt a passing horse rider or cyclist if they fail to spot it. I am now holding two sticks, the longest only being about 12 inches. The desire to see what sound they make when I hit them together is too great an opportunity to pass by. Tap, tap. Just the sound of one sick hitting another. Plain and simple. But somehow on this spring day, the sound seems to belong in the landscape. It is a purely natural sound, like the tapping sound a woodpecker on an old tree would make. I tap out some rhythms as I walk along and I listen to the sound of wood on wood. I could make different sounds by hitting or holding the sticks differently. Simple sounds, yet beautiful sounds in the time and place where I walked. They belonged with me on this sunny warm day, amongst the trees, the hedges, the elderflowers and the honeysuckle. Perhaps this was how our ancestors created their first drum beats. I could have been the leader of a procession. I could have been a pilgrim, on a journey of meditation through the landscape. Later, I try different larger sticks and I am drawn into the music held within their being. It was indeed a act of meditation. To play, to create, to listen, to feel a part of something - it was my own small time of discovery, of enjoying the presence of simple music in Nature.