Muzak Mystery

My Sabbatical comes to an end this time next week!  Not sure I like the idea of that.

But by way of compensation, I have just solved one of the greatest mysteries in the universe!

In a local garden centre recently, I was sure I heard them playing a piece of music I recognised. In fact the same music I'd also thought I'd heard in B&Q and a number of other places. Unlikely though, I always thought, due to the obscurity of the track. Listening to the album this afternoon I realised it was Matthew - The Man from The Book of Kells by the wonderful Iona. My favourite Celtic-prog-folk-jazz-rock Christian band!  Who have a new album out.  (I even have the same Fernandes Dragonfly sustainer as Dave their guitarist.)

So after a bit of googling, it turns out that Dunelm Mill, B&Q, Wilko, McDonalds, Meadowhall, Kwik Save, Food Giant, Carphone Warehouse, and many more chains often play this Christian music in their stores. Possibly more than many other tracks. As far as I can gather it's because this is a default track on the music software that they use. Possibly one that gets played when there is a system error - like another track that was selected somewhere isn't available locally. Like when the Internet connection is down. So the more copper cable that gets stolen, the more Christian music gets played throughout the land! Rejoice!

Colossians 3:16 (NLT)

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

Shallow

Breaking fast at the cathedral this morning with Canon Jules, we were referred to a book called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. The thesis of the book (which I haven't read) is apparently that the Internet is making people stupid. I'm not convinced it's going to be convincing, but a more subtle point is more important. Which is that the Internet is changing the way we think. More specifically, the way we read.

I had started to think that I don't do much reading, because (apart from sabbaticals and reading weeks) I rarely read books. But then I realised that I probably read more words than ever, it's just that they're on a screen. And for once I'm not talking about the display format; the distinction is between one long text and many shorter texts. A book is the former, the Internet is the latter.

I probably won't get round to reading the whole book, but will read a few summaries on the Internet. Thus possibly proving the thesis of the book which I haven't read - and which jumps around a lot anyway!

The problem with avoiding whole books is that we may never read a long, deep argument through from start to finish. Apparently.
I'm not convinced. I think books are too long, for a start. Ok that's a generalisation; but there are far too many books which should be the length of a Grove Booklet, which have another 200 pages of padding to make them publishable. That's something the Internet and ebooks may improve. Also, books tend to not come with animated diagrams and active hyperlinks, which is always a disadvantage in my mind.

Back to this morning, and Canon Jules made an interesting link between the secular idea of Slow Reading and the lectio divina - a traditional way of reading scripture which allows time for contemplation, meditation and prayer.
We do need to slow down in our reading. The need to spend time with a text is vital to authentic study of the scriptures.
(I think Canon Jules was confusing this with another idea though - the length of a piece of scripture we read in lectio divina is often quite short - similar in length to an Internet news article. )
I always like a video clip to make a point, and this morning we were treated to Fiddler on the Roof. Never seen it myself - due to it being a musical - But was quite surprised at some of the lyrics. Once you get past the rather odd - if not plain lazy - bits like "If I were a biddy biddy rich, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man", it turns out that the goal of the wannabe rich man is apparently to discuss the scriptures for 7 hours a day. That would be the sweetest thing. Most laudable. I've heard that a Jewish boy on his first day of learning about the Torah would be given a taste of honey, and told that God's word should be equally sweet.


Revelation 10:9
So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, "Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey."

Location:Cathedral

Help

Had a short break in Llandudno. For anyone unfamiliar, it is a postcard-picture pretty town on the North Wales coast that has somehow retained it's Victorian character. There is a long seafront, ideal for walking or jogging - both of which I've done there.

I'm not very good at running. I do of course have some helpful technology. I have a wireless transceiver in my shoe that talks to either my watch or my phone. And if I take my phone for a run, it can log exactly where I've been using GPS, and how long it took to get there. It even gives me a cheer every time I pass a 1km mark! (Or it did until I found that a bit annoying.)
This is of course mixed with my 'Running' MP3 playlist. And at the end of the run, an unknown American athlete says 'Good job!' or some other grating transatlantic colloquialism. And then all the data is logged onto a website so I can see how I'm doing relative to previous runs. All very encouraging!


But does any of that technology actually make running any easier?
Not really. It still requires the same amount of effort, the same number of steps, the same will to get up rather than stay in bed.
It does help though to have a bit of digital encouragement, to know there's (a virtual) someone alongside me, that I'm not on my own. And sometimes to look back at my data and see I've achieved a goal. There are health benefits too I presume - not being ill is something that's easily taken for granted.

Now in best vicaring tradition: .. And God is a little bit like that.
God works in our lives in a similar way to how technology helps me to run. Ŵe still have to work hard - even just to be motivated to do God's work at all. Sometimes we don't feel like we've achieved much for God until we take time out to look back. Just knowing that God is alongside us is encouragement to keep going. And sometimes we hear a whisper from someone else, or something we've seen or read, that we know is being passed on from above.

John 14:26
The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you.

Location:Llandudno - Leeds-Liverpool canal

OHP

The Overhead Projector (OHP) has it's fans. Well usually just one actually, to keep the bulb cool. But really, readers - you know who you are!

There is a kind of technological inertia whereby people adopt a certain level of gadgetry with which they are comfortable, and which seems to do the job, and stick with it. Nothing wrong with that of course. Though tech does tend to improve all the time, and once you've seen that there is something so much better than you have now, you might have a rethink.

I've been away interloping at a conference of the Northumbria Community and the Anabaptist Network, held at the home of the Order of the Holy Paraclete. Met some great people, heard some new ideas and appreciated the theological input.
There is, however, a bit of a conflict between monasticism and technology. The 'simple' lifestyle may not have room for a computer.
The problem is, if there is a technological line to be drawn, where do you draw it?
What level of technology is permissible?

A projector and laptop were used some of the time. Other people seemed uncomfortable even with their unpowered presence.

I wonder what requires more technology - reading liturgy from a piece of paper, or from a projection on a wall?
The latter usually requires a laptop and a projector - hitech items both.
Giving everyone a bit of paper is clearly the way of simplicity.
Except that it's not. I did promise not to talk paper any more, but...

Firstly you need a couple of hundred sheets of blank paper. That has been produced from trees grown thousands of miles away - pulped, bleached, pressed, dried, cut, packaged - using vast amounts of computer controlled machinery. It has to be delivered, again using transport machines. Someone then has to use a computer to combine text and graphics, and put an image on one piece of paper using an inkjet or laser printer. This is then usually duplicated using a combined digital scanner/laser printer called a photocopier. Finally, everyone can be given a copy. Though by this time we'll have to switch our electric lights on so everyone can read it.

Somehow people see this as a simpler process than using the computer as above, and connecting it to a projector pointed at a wall.

Human self-deception knows no bounds. We aren't usually interested in where our stuff comes from. I'm sure a visit to an abattoir would turn most people vegetarian.

I should perhaps have included a third option above - the way of the OHP. Quite a simple device with a bulb, fan, and lens. You scrawl on a transparent film which the light shines through, onto a wall. That is the simplest of all 3 options, and arguably the most ecologically sound.


It was with some barely concealed amusement then that I arrived at the community of the Order of the Holy Paraclete. The Paraclete is of course the Holy Spirit, from the word used in John's gospel. John gives us a unique understanding of who the Holy Spirit is. The word means someone who stands by us, sticks up for us, defends us against accusation.

The OHP sisters were of course quite delightful ladies, very lively and full of the joy of the Holy Spirit. Not at all like the image of the Mother Superior beloved of inferior dramas. These are people who know what it's like to walk with the Paraclete.

John 14:16 New International Version (NIV)
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—

Location:Whitby

Soul

When was the last time you backed up the data on your computer?
If you think the data is valuable to you, you should have a very recent backup in a very safe place. I'm not intending to induce cyberguilt today though, but something much more important.

What is the human soul? Is it an immaterial something that inhabits our bodies, floating away when we die, hopefully to be with God? That's one use of the word. Or is it used in the Bible in the 'Old King Cole' sense of a human personality?

Perhaps the soul could be described in the language of today's technology as the information that makes us us. The data that defines who we are. The software that runs on the computers we know as human brains. Technology provides us with a hitherto unavailable analogy for what the soul is.


Software, or at least data, can be transferred from one computer to another, as older ones break down and wear out. In fact I will take a very lazy option now and paste a chunk of my website that I first published in 1997 (with some updated numbers). Because the data is persistent and is still there. Good thing it was not on paper! (I promise I won't mention that again)



A person consists not in the physical structure which facilitates our thoughts, the human brain, but in the information which describes the interconnexions that are there. It's not the hardware that's important, it's the software.

I used to write games for computers with about 48 000 bytes of working memory. I can still run those games now, on my computer with 4 000 000 000 bytes - but they go a lot faster. If I'd programmed one of those "learning" algorithms, and let it use any available memory, it'd now have a stupendously greater capacity for "learning" than I imagined when I wrote it 25 years ago.

So what? Well, I believe God is at least as careful when he makes backups as I was back when I wrote programs. If he's at all bothered about us, he'll keep a copy of the software even if he allows the hardware to break. We are the software - we get to run again on the spiritual equivalent of some future supercomputer, long after our brains and this universe have gone away. This heightened state of being, together with its correspondingly magnified relationship with God, is what is commonly called "heaven".


John 11:38-44 NIV
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

Location:Shed

Virtuality

According to Oxford philosopher and general clever chap Nick Bostrom, the chances are that we don't exist. At least not in the way we think. It's more likely that we live inside a computer simulation, and suffer from an illusion that we are real.
There is some substance to his argument. Even Richard Dawkins thinks it's hard to refute. Because you can't use evidence. If you were in the Matrix, or were Captain Pike in the Menagerie, or just a brain in a jar, being fed a virtual reality that someone had chosen for you, you wouldn't know.* And you would have no way of finding out. Unless there was a fault with the virtuality - like a computer glitch - the available evidence would tell you that your virtual reality was actual reality.

So is real real or not? The honest answer is that we don't know, but it's probably better to act as if it is. Which, thankfully, is the default philosophical position of everyone who's never worried about it.
That would be to my mind a Christian approach to it. There may not be objective evidence we can point to that proves there is anything beyond this life. But there is plenty of subjective evidence. People talk about having an experience of God. And we can see their lives transformed in many cases. I believe that anyone can find that opening your mind to the possibility of God being real is an important first step. An honest seeking, followed by wilfully putting ourselves into God's hands is all that God is after. Then comes a knowing - a deep sense that God is at least as real as anything else.

I can't help feeling that Bostrom's scenario is a little too tied into current ways of understanding technology. Strip that away and there is something paralleling common theistic belief about the world.
I believe that we do live in a specially created reality. That we were put into a situation where it all seems quite real, but that there is actually more to it than meets the eye. There is a programmer, whom we call God. God created everything, including our consciousness and the environment that supports it; and takes an interest in what we do: how we respond to each other and to God.
A further parallel is what we believe about the afterlife. If you enter a virtual reality, such as an immersive video game, you will probably at some point get yourself killed. Except that's not the end. You just start again. Or maybe if you're tired of that game, you find a better one. Because it's not "you" that's died, it's just a character you were controlling for a time. Game Over is not.
And so when we shuffle off this mortal coil, we discover that reality is not what we thought it was. It's absurd to think we had it all worked out. Perhaps that's why there isn't too much in the Bible about it.
Oh dear too much text here already. I'll have to finish this off tomorrow.
Meanwhile, some intensely beautiful words from C.S. Lewis and then some Bible.

“And suddenly all was changed. I saw a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless, all in deepest silence, standing forever about a little silver table and looking upon it. And on the table there were little figures like chessmen who went to and fro doing this and that. And I knew that each chessman was the idolum or puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by. And the acts and motions of each chessman were a moving portrait, a mimicry or pantomine, which delineated the inmost nature of his giant master. And these chessmen are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, chapter 14

Revelation 21
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished. 2 And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband. 3 I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: "Now God's home is with mankind! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. 4 He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared." 5 Then the one who sits on the throne said, "And now I make all things new!"


* Captain Pike was in the best ever episode of Star Trek, which was cobbled together using clips from before it got dumbed down. If you knew that, you are a geek.
Brains in jars don't really work - almost the whole human body is required to provide the working environment for one.

Location:Shed

Limitless

Visited Christ Church Southport this morning. Great music group, and very friendly. They didn't seem to bother with liturgy though. Maybe that was at the earlier service. Maybe it was because they used SongPro or something instead of PowerPoint (just re-read a grove booklet - PowerPoint is intrinsically Anglican!)
Ormskirk MotorFest this afternoon.
Then home for F1, an omelette, and a film. "Limitless". Which was about taking drugs, or possibly drinking coffee. The premise is that there's a drug that enables you to use the 80% of your brain that you don't normally use, and so it makes you very smart. An interesting idea, although of course functional MRI scanning has shown that we do use pretty much all our brains anyway. The fictional drug in the film is far more powerful than any real neuroenhancer. I was hoping there would be a moral point about how the effects of drugs never lasts, but that seemed missing by the end.

There's still an embedded question of some interest though: what would it be like to be smarter? Cleverer? In a nod to Groundhog Day, the "hero" learns to play the piano, in just a few days. And is able to learn other languages, and analyse the stock Market. That kind of thing.

I always wanted to be clever. Really clever, not just quite clever or slightly above average at some things, or vaguely interested in the things that clever people are interested in. My memory has never been very good, though. I avoided memory-intensive subjects at school, like Latin. I liked chess until I found out that to be really good you had to memorise other people's games. The guy in Unlimited has perfect recall. My memory has never been very good.
Did I mention that?

We sang a nice song this morning - There Is a Day. Though I had to check for eschatological exaggeration. "We will meet Him in the Air" gets me a bit nervous It's the most obvious translation, though if the "Air" means the sky means the place of clouds means the place of God's presence then there's less levitation involved which I'd really prefer.
Once we get rid of the idea of an entirely spiritual life in heaven, and get down to the more biblical resurrection of the body (because that's what happened to Jesus) then we can start to ask, what kind of body? People in St Paul's churches had already got that far in their thinking; we are far behind them theologically in many ways.

I'd like to think the resurrection body has greater capacity in every way. I might finally be able to remember things. I wouldn't expect that we'd suddenly be able to play the piano. But the capability would be there. And with (enjoyable) study, the end result would I expect be better than anything we know in this world. Unless it's all harps, of course. Maybe we only get one string each? Then we'd only get harmony by learning to play together. The music group or orchestra models community. Or should do.

It's getting late now, so I'll get on to the technological metaphor for the resurrection tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's St Paul - possibly failing to know that seeds aren't dead, but merely dormant:

1Corinthians 15
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

Location:Shed