Lyriel's Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could

Lyriel's Leverage album is sometimes seen as a transitional work between their earlier 'folk metal' and the heavier more Gothic metal of Skin and Bones. A good track to illustrate this, perhaps, is The Road Not Taken with its journey from acoustic guitar and strings to full-band metal for the final chorus.

Be that as it may, this is an interesting track lyrically, based as it is on the apparently deliberate (and possibly fatal) ambiguity of Robert Frost's 1915 poem.

Both song and poem end on the phrase, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference". 

In our time of celebration of difference and our felt right to make our own choices, this lyric is often seen as telling us to walk our own distinct way and choose our own unique destiny. Yet, according to Frost's biographer, Lawrance Thompson, the poem is based on Frost's indecisive friend Edward Thomas, who "whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other." So the original poem is about the waste of energy in pointless regret, always looking back and worrying about "what if".

Which way does the Lyriel song lean? It is, of course, hard to tell as they retain the ambiguity in their selection of lines from the poem.

But there may be a pointer in the final song on the Leverage album, Repentance. This features the following lyric:

"Repentance is a path that we can not walk for long, my dear. ... Come with me and I will show you how to choose a side."

So maybe their take is that you can only waste energy worrying about the past for so long, before you need to commit to one path or the other.

Of course I may just be projecting my own views onto this - it is easily done.

Because I have undoubtedly wasted time and energy myself second-guessing choices already made. Somewhere there is a balance between flexibility and commitment and I don't always hit it, I know.

From a Christian point of view, our calling is to serve God through Jesus wherever we are, in whatever circumstance. It makes sense to seek God's will for the future perhaps, but not to stress too much about it. He is with us wherever we are and, I think, he most appreciates working with us on the choices that we ourselves make and are fully committed to.

So our calling is to commit to our path with God, here and now. Not to worry overmuch about either past or future, but to be fully present in, well, the present. That's where we can make a difference.

Frost's indecisive friend, Edward Thomas, finally decided to commit to signing up for the First World War shortly after, where he was duly killed on the first day of the Battle of Arras. The story is told in this rather interesting article in the Guardian. After finally enlisting he sat down with a friend and told her that he was glad to have made the decision, he didn't know why but he was glad.

Things will happen which will trample and pierce, but I shall go on, something that is here and there like the wind, something unconquerable, something not to be separated from the dark earth and the light sky, a strong citizen of infinity and eternity.

Post-Easter Blues

"Christ is risen", 

but my back still hurts.

Easter service, hard wooden chairs:

up and down, down and up;

lively sermon, deadly songs.

"Christ is risen", who would know?

"Christ is risen",

yet the madness continues.

Daily news, daily blues: 

violence and hatred, injustice, corruption.

America sways: fascist right,

socialist left, sold-out centre;

eating its own sputtering heart.

Britain just gives it all away,

stealing from the poor to feed

the arrogance of the rich,

whilst blaming the other, the outsider, the lost.

"Christ is risen", but we don't want him here.

"Christ is risen",

in the darkness below the surface.

Despair, depression, addiction, alienation,

huddling behind overpriced houses

which ought to be homes.

Where's good news, what's a solution

as Pandora's heritage ravages lives.

"Christ is risen", does hope survive?

Psyche by SteveDelamare

Mark: Faith Power Action

Healing In His Wings
by Debra K. Gaines

What a dreadful woman! Unclean, forbidden from touching anybody, there she is in the middle of a jostling crowd around the Rabbi, the holy man. And she dares to touch him! Will God strike her down?

Mark sometimes uses a kind of 'sandwich' technique: half way through one story he suddenly interrupts with another before completing the first. The idea, presumably, is that the two stories illuminate one another.

In the second half of chapter 5 of Mark he does this with two healing accounts. Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, an important man, comes to Jesus for help as his daughter is dying. As Jesus is on his way, the story is interrupted by a woman "who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years."

In religious terms she was 'unclean' and excluded from society whilst the haemorrhage went on - twelve years! No wonder she was desperate.

Two intertwined stories: one of a desperate man, who would be considered an acceptably holy man by 'decent society'; one of a desperate woman, who would not. How would Jesus treat the two of them?

In both cases he responds to their need. Jesus was quite capable, when the situation called for it, of being decidedly caustic with religious leaders; in this case Jairus was a father desperate about his daughter before he was a religious leader (I do highly recommend the film The Miracle Maker, which highlights this conflict). The unnamed woman was just desperate.

Jesus met both needs. But with the woman he went deeper. After twelve years of frustration and exclusion her need went deeper. He speaks to her, he gets her to acknowledge her need in words, and he tells her "your faith has healed you." After twelve years seemingly cursed by God, she is told she has faith which can bring healing: she is an important person before God. Now she can go in peace, freed from her suffering.

There is an oddity here: the woman is told her faith has healed her, yet the account also says that Jesus felt the healing power going out from him. There seems to be a link between faith and power.

'Faith' in the New Testament, it should be remembered, always means something more along the lines of 'active trust' than 'propositional belief'. If we have faith in Jesus it means that we trust our lives to him, not so much that we believe intellectually that there was a guy called Jesus in the Middle East two thousand years ago (although in this case that might be considered something of a prerequisite). Similarly, the word usually translated 'belief' is a related word which most often refers to believing in a person, not to believing some sort of abstract truth statement.

Jesus power is set free in our lives when we live out our trust in him.

So Jesus sends out his disciples, in pairs, to tell people about God's Kingdom and to heal them, It strikes me that this is very early in their discipleship. It seems going out together to tell people about Jesus and his message is a basic part of following Jesus, not just something for his most advanced students. It also strikes me that they were sent out in pairs: sharing freedom and healing in Jesus isn't just an individual ministry, it is something we are called to do together; proclaiming God's Kingdom is a joint task ... so I wonder why church preachers stand alone?

In Mark the pace is brisk: while the disciples are doing their stuff, John the Baptist is beheaded - there can be a heavy cost to doing God's will and speaking God's truth. They are no sooner back and looking forward to a quiet debrief than crowds gather, five thousand are fed, and they are missing the point again.

The calling of all who would follow Jesus is to step out in faith and power and to take action. If we get it wrong, that is part of the walk, part of the growing. If we don't do anything, don't trust him enough to step out at all, that is a problem.

To finish, a verse from a poem I came across this morning on Paquita7's poetry blog, which struck a chord:-

Pause before you act but act
Fast flows the life that's purpose packed
Turn wistful dreams to concrete fact
Think before you act but act.

Alzheimer's At Easter

The morning mist hangs

shapeless, without detail,

but clearly there,

 like the memories

which peel away to swirl

about me like a shroud.

But I don't mind

my life has been good,

by and large,

my memories are warm

and colourful, misty,

comforting around me.

I hear a voice,

in the distance,

very like mine,

swear words and crudity,

unwanted anger.

So I stay in here

where the small light shines

warm and comforting

like a candle

pushing back the dark.

Who was it who said

"I'll be back"?

I don't remember

Love Jesus, Hate Religion, Tickled By People

There's a poem by Jefferson Bethke, Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus, gone viral on the internet in the past month. Especially amongst church teenage groups. Most of whom were brought up in church. What I would call 'religious kids'. You have to smile.



Also fun are some of the responses to the video. Religious people giving religious responses which mostly show that they just don't get it. You can see a good selection in a post on the Sojourners' God's Politics blog, Follow The Meme: lots of sincere people making lots of good points in defense of their religions.

I think one job of a poet is to make people think: Bethke has clearly succeeded in that. Another job is to move readers into seeing a different perspective, a bigger picture. The responses linked to above don't really seem to do that: they just stay defensively hunkered down in their old perspective. That's a shame. It's not Bethke's fault, it's just how these responders choose to react.

What Bethke's poem fails to do, in my view, is to help the opposite pole see a bigger picture. It challenges those inside the religious establishment to look beyond their walls, but I see no challenge to those outside the church to look inside: to see past the stereotypes, the media headlines, the loudmouth spokespeople, and to see the mostly-ordinary men and women trying to live out their faith together in the day-to-day realities of life.

Nick Mason, on his blog New Ways Forward, recently wrote an article about the need for us to define ourselves more by what we affirm and less by what we oppose:

Eventually we must break away from the pull of finding our identity in conflict and opposition, and be for something.

There will be things that need to be spoken out against from time to time, but perhaps it is more important, and more effective, if we spend our energy creating something beautiful, powerful, and transformative.

Eric Metaxas, at last week's US National Prayer Breakfast, gave a long (although entertaining) illustration of the positive side of the difference between religiosity and active faith that comes from the heart, using the examples of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer.

There are around about a dozen churches here in Caversham, filled every Sunday with lovely people singing and praying to God. Meanwhile there are around about another thirty thousand people who are not doing this, and who don't see any meaning or relevance for such activities in their lives. The church-goers are focussed on their church, as an organisation, as a building, as a set of practices and behaviours which they find helpful, even life-giving; the church-abstainers wonder what they are on about.

What would Church look like if it was for the thirty thousand? How could Jesus be embodied in the lives and fellowship of those who need something more, or at least something different?