Beauty/Religion/Spirituality

The Sound of Light

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Ken and I were standing in the middle of a tree-lined street in St. Albert looking up at a gibbous moon. (like to use gibbous-a word Mary gave me-when I can) We were talking about northern-lights. Ken said that one time the lights were so bright, so full of movement, that they almost put the scare in him. It was like he had to duck. (He assured me this was not an early herb-enhanced experience.)

This is a great time of year for northern lights. Just the other night, Deb and I were driving home late from the country. The lights were so full of colour and tango that we had to stop and watch from the side of the road.

I remembered a time as a kid with some friends in the small hours just before dawn on a country road in Saskatchewan. Rivers of purple ribbon were veering and carving out pieces of sky. There were confluences of plasma, bright green rapids and the rush of white light. And I heard the lights.

northernlights

When I was older and learned that the northern lights don’t make sounds, that in fact the physics of the aurora phenomenon doesn’t support any possibility of sound, I stopped hearing them. Electromagnetic waves, or natural radio waves, which are vibrations of electric and magnetic energy, the kind northern lights produce, are not audible. The extremely low frequencies of these natural radio waves have similar frequencies as sound waves, but they are two different wave species.

And of course the aurora borealis occurs a hundred or more miles off the ground, where, if there is any air, it’s probably too thin to adequately support the transmission of sound.

All this was valuable information that added something to my stock of natural world knowledge. But it took something away as well. It took away an immediacy of experience from future viewings. It reinforced the schooled notion that in order to truly understand something you need the proper distance; you need a platform outside of the event, subject or experience from where you can objectively observe.

I think this is the way we modern Western Christians view God and the cosmos. Instead of an experienced faithfulness of God leading us to trust, we begin with information as authoritative and try to move to trust and faith. This has been the approach of modernity and it has been a blight on Christian faith. When our allegiance to objectivity and literalism are transcribed on to our existential experiences of God, our light slowly dies. When our inner-self’s understanding of the Spirit and the Word is seduced by a systematic view of God, we miss the nuanced and relational.

continued… Find out why I actually did hear the lights.

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Spirituality

Interview with a Minor Diety

Posted on by stephen t berg / 3 Comments

I harbour a minor deity. I regard him without trying. I have overcome his malevolence many times but on a weak day he makes his home with me. He survives prayer. I’m not sure about fasting–but I think he would feed on it. No, in my experience only humour and humility exorcise him.

If I could trust him to give me true answers I should care to interview him:

  • I would ask him why self-exaggeration is alluring.
  • I would ask him why a flush of indignation rises within him when a dish is added late to a stack of dirty dishes it is his turn to do.
  • I would ask why he feels threatened when a friend or acquaintance succeeds at a task he feels suited to.
  • I would want to know why he suffers at the thought of being overlooked.
  • I would want to know why he takes such care to present himself and is never satisfied at the result.
  • I would want to know why he has agonized even a gathering of friends, and has felt the need to brush up on some popular idea that is currently circulating before he goes.
  • I want to know why he so quickly feels sorry for himself when reflecting on his youth.
  • I would ask him about all his fantasies of fame, and the sometime fantasies of a different sort of life.
  • I would ask him why he clings to all this death. How, when given an everyday epiphany it is accompanied by the thought that he will die.
  • I would ask why he has felt that every happy thought deserves to be punished. Why he has thought the world to be evil and that it conspires, even as God watches on, to thwart any shivers of hope.
  • I would ask why he is enticed to view his world with a mix of superstition and fatalism.

Well, at the expense of all minor malevolent deities, here’s to far more humour and humility in our world. Grow Mercy and start with yourself.

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Beauty/Peace

First Love (Percy, Buffalo Bill and I)

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Remember Reginna? Reggie? Linda? Larry? (Oh, I remember you Reginna!)

Do you remember your first love? Remember how it came down to you light as chiffon and picked you up so that when you walked your legs cycled, like you were running in mid-air?4112

Remember when you found out that that crazy hazy buoyancy of love as big as a cloud wasn’t, wouldn’t be, returned? That all your awkward efforts of transcribing your forever-love upon the flawless object of your love were just, well, goofy? And you were left standing naked (I’m hoping metaphorically) and alone in a rainy playground, a mere silly boy or girl?

Remember the chiffon cloud turning to stone and falling on your head when you found out that the object of your love actually loved your friend?

Do you remember how the whole wringing experience of this gave you a world of wisdom, …or not? And do you recall looking at your parents, your grandparents, aunts and uncles with a new discerning light, and you saw that they too, still might not have deciphered the vagaries of their own love and desire and dreams and disappointments? And that maybe this is what caused all their grumpy weirdness?4113

But then strangely, maybe they intuited your experience and it threw a flicker of light on their own relationship and as Cohen says, the gates of love budged.

If any of this reverberates, resonates, regurgitates, then go and see "Percy, Buffalo Bill and I". It’s not a "great" film. It’s simply and innocently charming. If it’s been awhile since you left a theatre emotionally sated and hopeful about the misunderstood stranger embedded deep within you, well, when the film festival comes to your town, step out to see it.

There is space enough for all in this Swedish (English subtitles) gem. Think opposite of Ingmar Bergman (mercifully) but with the same penchant for intuition over intellect. It’s wonderfully un-Hollywood.

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Christianity/Poverty/Spirituality

What Kind of Poverty?

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

It was a Sunday like today, with a sharp cool fall wind, but sunny, when I walked Heather home from church.

I had called to her from the sidewalk, she was in the ally shuffling her shuffle toward me. She called back, "Heather, my name is Heather not Teresa." She wasn’t disappointed or upset that I confused her name with someone else, she was just matter of fact.

Heather is handicapped and lives in a group home. Her eyes are crossed but clear, and deep brown. She can fix you with either eye allowing the other one to roam. One arm doesn’t work well so she uses her cane with the other. She moves by bending forward and half dragging her left leg then throwing it out in front of her.

The sidewalk dips for a driveway and Heather has to adjust her stride. She leans to the side to compensate for the angle and seems almost to fall. I start to reach out, then, still talking, she catches herself like she’s done countless times before.

There is no hint of awkwardness as we talk and walk. She tells me about her tumour operation. She says she is 34. She talks about her parents and when they lived in Northern Alberta. She lets me know that her mom is recovering from flesh eating disease.

I ask her about Rehoboth, her group home. She says she’s been with them since the mid nineties and that she is very happy here and I believe her. Then we walk in silence and I notice the fall sun and breeze on my face.

We walked together for 2 blocks, I gauged that I could cover twenty blocks in the same time.

I’m told that Heather is impoverished in a thousand ways. But that day she enriched my life.

112th street sandals
sandals

Later, Deb asked me why I was renewed by walking and talking with Heather. I’ve concluded that in some way, as I listened, Heather offered me simply Heather.

She gave me a place, a space to be, she received me without pretense, silently, and she became a host to me.

Her poverty was a short cut to Christ. So what kind of poverty is that?

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