Carrying forward culture

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I love to sing.  I love music.  I love the spirit of the music.

Over the years, notation of music has helped us understand an era, and that era’s expressions of emotions, feelings and love. 

I watched my mother sing the songs of her era.  Those that deeply touched her soul were sung with eyes closed.  Her voice reflected the spirit of the song. 

I’m not sure we can always notate what happens in the spirit.  We can find ways to describe the tempo, the mood, the timbre of voice.  Somewhere along the way, we have not yet been able to capture the spirit in print. 

An actor will move into the role of their character, as outlined in the script.  This method allows them to try to touch the spirit.  A truly good actor runs the periphery of the character with ease.  When there is no longer an act, but a sense of the presence of the character, then there is a great actor.

These artistic expressions, in music and acting, cannot be attained by notes or words or even videos.  We know that a culture is truly dead when no one can exact the spirit of that culture from within their own beings.  Yes, they can imitate, they can fashion a look that images the original – but the spirit and the letter are two different things.

Trumping McLuhan

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Today I read a blog about Donald Trump – that it’s words and not ideas that change us.  We don’t look for reasoned facts and big ideas, we look for factoids, catchphrases, and memes to express our heart and our emotions.  And our hearts rule us. 

Trump used small words to skip the hard work of structure and analysis, and in a few scribbles, spoken with passion and visual flair, he expressed big ideas.  Big ideas that are emblazoned on a generation.  We will spend years trying to analyze the structure of those ideas found in his speeches, while followers and foes will say they knew the idea from the start.

Do Donald Trump’s words and catchphrases really just mean what they “say”?  Or do you have to be in the crowd, in the spirit of the moment, to hear what was said beyond the “literal” meaning? 

Words tend to find the heart much more easily when they are attached to an emotion, a visualization, a medium.  In many ways the medium becomes as much a part of transferring the message to the hearer, perhaps more so than the words.

Maybe this election is just pointing out what Marshal McLuhan had prophesied years ago – “The medium is the message.”

Have you ever missed?

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A play on words.  Or at least playing with words:

The term miscommunication tends to mean words flying at each other and missing their mark.  We miscommunicate when we have different vocabularies.  My mother used to dislike the use of lunch and dinner.  In Eastern Canada, from which she hailed, dinner was supper.  For us Westerners supper was supper.  Try inviting friends over for dinner some day and see if they show up at noon or 6:00 pm.

A part of miscommunication is also missed communication.  When we intentionally or unintentionally don’t say something we miscommunicate.  As a pastor I would hear of someone having been in the hospital – via the grapevine – after the fact.  An opportunity for ministry was missed because communication was missed. 

And now, we can add mist communication.  That is the grapevine working at overdrive because privacy laws create a roadblock to understanding.  The mist of random raindrops of information overshadows communicating the truth.

And so, speak the truth in love, speak the truth constantly, speak the truth in season and out of season.  Take a risk.  Speak.

We will all benefit from the effort!

Off to church

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There is a place where I feel at home.  Besides being at home.

That is what I call the church.  The gathering place where others of like mind in regard to God – the future, the past and the present – meet.  There we speak of our entrance into God’s presence through Jesus Christ.

And we differ.  On issues that are not central to that worship.  Things like what tractor one should own (John Deere has a definite edge for some of our congregants), or what store best serves our grocery needs.

Sometimes we have a hard time telling what is central and what is periphery.  We work together to discover our common threads and our common threats.

And somehow, when we commune together with a strong determination to be God’s people, we survive and thrive.

That’s what I like about the people I call church people.

We love each other.