Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
I've been reading 'A Tale of Two Cities' this week. Dickens isn't a writer, like Hardy, that I've been especially steeped in before. I read 'Hard Times' a couple of years ago, partly because I was interested in the idea of industrial aggro at the time (what an odd interest to declare for a then 19/20 year old...I probably kept it quiet.)

The novel begins with the famous contrast, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", between London and Paris of the late eighteenth century. The evocation of Paris as a teeming metropolis, on the edge of storm and ruin, and London as a semi-pastoral scene is one that perhaps nods towards the popular historical understanding of the period of the French Revolution. Paris is on the verge of one of the most bloody and chaotic periods of its history, while London has no popular revolution to be apprehended high on the horizon.

It's fascinating reading so far. At the moment, as a now ex-literature student (for the time-being, anyway) I'm trying to plug some of the gaps in my literary knowledge; the Victorian period is one I'm really interested in, but haven't really looked at in detail since my second year of University.

Thomas Hardy
A Tragedy of Two Ambitions
Read this today in a volume of Hardy's short stories. An interesting tale of greed, betrayal, with the chilling line near the close: "To have endured the cross, despising the shame" which the younger of two brothers remembers as they reflect on the events in which they played a part which led to the death of their father.
I'm not sure what I think of Hardy as a writer; I really haven't read much before. I read most of Jude the Obscure about five years ago now, over Christmas, and enjoyed (not the right word I suppose, given how gloomy the novels are supposed to be) it. Often he is a writer seen as being somehow 'churchy', perhaps given his fairly extensive (apparently) concern with architecture.

This was a short story concerning two brothers, Joshua and Cornelius Halborough, whose drunken father squanders their inheritance on, well erm, drink. With it goes their chance of gaining entry to university, a major and almost fatal blow to their social and to a lesser extent, intellectual ambitions which had, we learn, been stirred by their late mother before she died when they were young boys.
As the brothers grow older, they struggle manfully with the task of educating themselves with the aim of rising in the church. Joshua is the main focus of the novel's concern with social prestige and advancement; his understanding of the role of the clegyman can be neatly summed up with his criteria for success in the Church given to his brother: " To succeed in the Church, people must believe in you, first of all as a gentleman, secondly as a man of means, thirdly as a scholar, fourthly as a preacher, fifthly, perhaps, as a Christian - but always first as a gentleman. " (P.60)

I suppose the alignment of religious institutions with social class, power and advancement, shorn largely of anything greatly spiritual, is the territory in which the story dwells. It's interesting for that reason - the idea of the church as being some kind of way into society was a very real concern - as shown in the text. The central dilemma comes as their father falls into a weir, and the initial instinct of the younger, less careworn and anxious brother Cornelius to save his father is challenged by his brother's deliberate hesitation. As the brothers watch their father flounder and then give up the fight against the water as he drifts into a culvert (some kind of tunnel or arch under roads) and dies, they must face the fact that their decision has cost him his life, but indirectly preserved the circumstances of their sister, whose impending marriage to a local squire would be jeopardised by the arrival of her disgraced and drunken father.

All interesting stuff!

"Fire can make a conscience clean - strike a match, we'll see"

Been listening to a lot of new music (Anberlin have introduced me to a couple of simillar bands) in the few days since I finsished my exams, and thus the year and my time at university.
It hasn't sunk in at all yet - the fact that this is it, the end. Of course there's the whole postraduate idea. Maybe that's something I'll look at doing next year, or later. But for now, I don't know what to do with myself.

That's the exciting, nerve-wracking thing.

I like to think that the Bible challenges cliche - in the sense that The New Testament Gospels show Jesus challenging a woman's understanding of who he is, and that a woman who was not an Israelite and who therefore had no reason to count herself among the people of God according to the Jewish faith, culture or tradition.
In a sense I read the passage recounted in Mark 7:24-30 as Jesus challenging the woman to think beyond the accepted morality and, by implication by faith, overcome the fact that she was not culturally positioned to inherit the kingdom of God, the same situation of many of the people Jesus met and healed (the Centurion, the widow and her son) and yet who were welcomed into it because inheritance there was not conferred by tradition or history. Similarly, as the apostle Paul went to 'gentile' or 'Greek' non-Jewish peoples and told them the gospel, many who were not the heirs according to history, became 'co-heirs in a glorious promise'.
He challenges her to think for herself, rather than allow others to impose their own morality on her - indeed first she "begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter" (v26), before he posed the saying "First let the children eat all they want...for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs"(v27). She was desperate, one imagines, and must have been convinced that this stranger, maybe, had the power to save her daughter.
How she knew this isn't made clear; we simply aren't told in the passage any of the surrounding details, only the exchange. But she believed that he held this power, and that her daughter, in a desperate condition, could be healed if he were willing. This is a big thing to believe, but the saying Jesus may be invoking here (the IVP commentary suggests that it was a popular saying of the time) must have challenged her belief; Jesus seems to be saying that his healing ministry was for the Jewish people, which of course is true, but potentially was not for other ethnic groups.
This isn't strictly so - and you could maybe argue that the saying was indicating the future spreading of the gospel to other non-Jewish groups after Jesus' death.
Now, the woman could have slunk off at this point, despondent and hurt by Jesus' answer. But you get the impression that she may have heard the saying before, because her answer counters it: "Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs"(v28).
It might have been easier for her to go on her way and return to the horrific situation that plagued her and her daughter, accepting what Jesus said both as a man with more power than herself and therefore authority over he intellectually in that culture, and accepting that he just didn't understand.

But she didn't. Instead she challenged what he said with her own understanding, which didn't come from arrogance or the conviction that she was right, but from faith. In fact, she had so much faith in Jesus that she was willing to offer a counter argument to the argument he produced himself! What she wanted was her daughter to be healed; she identified that Jesus could do this, and wouldn't take no for an answer, however pithy the saying used to justify it was.

I suppose the point is, I wonder how many times this is still an issue for Christians, how much we have to use our critical faculties and search for the real Jesus Christ amid the particular traditions and sayings of our own churches, organisations and even friends and family. How whenever someone tells us something is 'impossible' or 'not the done thing here' we have to make the choice between accepting this against our convictions, or looking deeper into the revealed saviour's life and words to find answers there.

There is a danger, of course, that we will assert our own views to the point of arrogance, and of course this is all a delicate balance. But that isn't what's happening in this passage, and that's important to remember - the woman's convictions came from her faith in Christ, ultimately, and therefore when approaching things in this way, so should ours.

The future: so what of it?
I'm struck by the verse in the book of James (4:13-17) that I looked at as part of a Bible study that I occasionally lead within the CU.

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."

The future, sorry the Future, is on my mind really quite a lot at the moment. I just can't puzzle it out; where will I be next year, what will I be doing, who with, how? I know I have a house I'm staying in for another year at least, but beyond that I have no real clear-sighted, firm or definite plan.
Of course as a Christian it's easy to pick up clues from other people about how you're supposed to approach future plans; look solemn or pious and state that you're 'trusting God', 'and it's all in his hands'. But often I think I just say this because I think it's the 'right answer' - it's something I've heard other people say.

But how much do I actually do it? How much do I believe it?

It's easy to mutter some vague comments about maybe travelling or spending more time writing or just getting a job to pay the rent and seeing what happens - so easy in fact that it's what I fall into doing at least four times a day, whenever someone asks me what I'm going to do after I graduate.

But this passage tells me that's not enough. It's not enough just to duck out and hide for a few years because you want a rest, some time off, because you just want an escape from stress and bother and people asking you what you're going to do, and then from people telling you what to do...it's not enough to want to just fade away and disappear.
You've got to do something with your life. That's what they say. And of course, they're right And as the passage says, what right do you have to just up and decide what you're going to do, without reference, save in lip service perhaps, to God? "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."
Does that mean my life is irrelevant to God? No. It means that He is God, and I am me, and that this is the relationship now of Father and one of his sons. So how could I not consult God? How could I not bring eveything, every idea, every notion to Him and say 'Lord, this is where I am in my thinking, but how can I see things your way? How can I serve You?'

That's the challenge, but it's the challenge I believe God is constantly willing me to take.

Today was tiring, and in a way writing this was the last thing I wanted to do, if only because it's highlighted how far from God my thinking has become. But I don't think love is just about feeling, but a kind of certainty that provokes action. In a way, a lot of what the book of James talks about illustrates this, the problematic relationship of faith and deeds. Perhaps it should be redefined as 'love and deeds'. Look how much God loved, in Christ, so that you could be forgiven. Now may your love, which you may reflect back from His surpassing love (Paul prayed that the Ephesus church would "grasp how wide and long and deep is the love of Christ" and that they would know that it surpassed "all knowledge" Ephesians 3:18-19 and of course, that we may know this too) may cause you to act in a way that shows this.

Relying on God?
I've been thinking about the future, probably while I should have been doing something else, today. I probably have a tendency to excessively worry about the future and what it might hold, and I'm challenged by the fact that Jesus teaches his followers to do exactly the opposite (Matthew 6:25-34). I suppose I'm equally challenged by the assertion that Paul makes in Philippians 4:13 that he can "do anything through him who gives me strength", meaning not Paul himself, nor his friends or personal trainer, but Jesus. Also, as Jesus says in the gospel of John (John 15:5) "apart from me you can do nothing." There are of course many more instances of this principle of trusting fully in God in both the New and Old Testaments.
So how far does this principle rule in my life? More importantly, how much does Christ rule in my life? When I worry about the next few years, months, hours or minutes, how much is my thinking infused by my faith in the risen Christ? It's a question I have to ask myself, and I think it would be deeply hypocritical not to. If it is He upon whom my life is now based, rooted, then I am convicted that there shouldn't be massive glaring areas of my life that essentially have nothing to do with Him.

The Bible passage I quoted on Sunday is one that I think speaks on so many things; grace, mercy, the necessity of thinking for oneself rather than following any kind of 'tradition', whatever form that might take.

Last night while reading more of Mark 7 I was struck even more by how radical what Jesus says to the Greek speaking woman is.
Perhaps the first thing that struck me was based on something I had started to feel walking through Manchester city centre on a Sunday morning..essentiallly how Jesus drew people to him, people went to him who were sick, both physically and spiritually, the scripture from Matthew 8 springing to mind (Matthew 8:16-17)

Spent some time chatting to a man who sells the Big Issue in Manchester city centre today - he was a really gracious and bright guy and I enjoyed chatting to him about a few things. We talked about the magazine, the problems that he's seen with aggressive sellers and people using it essentially to beg, and we spoke of faith in God. He remembered a time he'd been praying in a church in Manchester, thinking to himself that he really needed some new clothes, and a complete stranger had approached him shortly after with a bag of designer stuff that he said he didn't need and more, and promply gave to him.
It was a cool story, and another example of grace perhaps?

MARK 7:24-30
"Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about him a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the children under the table eat the children's crumbs."
Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."
She went home and found he child lying on the bed, and the demon gone."

Tired, tired, tired.

So many ideas, but they're all slipping away from me. I can't seem to get anything down on paper. Everything is a stream of tiredness, there's no energy it's...

I'm still at work on my dissertation. I'm still puzziling out the relationship betwee the modernist movement in the arts, in this case specifically in literature, and the form of the modern city. The idea I took from Raymond Williams that originally set me off on this topic is still the most cogent I can find...that the city 'created' modernism, that all the communications technology, the institutions of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century city were the conditions that 'created' the artisitc forms of the (then) avant-garde.

But it's putting it all together that's a grind. Where at every turn you feel a desire to be rhapsodic, to 'write' the city, you have to box it in with footnotes and bibliography and jargon and deadlines and all the rest of it. The idea in my head and reality on the page are frustratingly different things.

Found myself in the pub this lunchtime, and on the jukebox too. Nursing a 'quiet pint' which turned out to be very quiet indeed, I was thinking about music. What I like, what I don't like. What I'm indifferent about.

My tastes aren't too unusual really. Reasonably conventional with a bit of the vaguely estoteric thrown in. And promply thrown out.

Boys, men, lads love lists, don't they? Supposedly so. I do too, I guess. But not that much. A musical list?

Up real early to pray this morning with a mate. It was a brilliant time, not holding back and being honest about stuff etc.

Then back to work on my dissertation. I feel like I've neglected it these past few weeks, but coming back to it was encouraging in that I already have more material than I thought. I've started writing up a very, very, very rough draft.

Jogging again at one. Went better. I didn't collapse or black-out.
Yeah, okay, I didn't quite last time either. But I couldn't complete the run we went on last week, so this week was better.

Reading after all that. Martin Amis: 'Money'. Hard going.

Also finished 'New Grub Street'. Partly for my dissertation. Can't really say what I thought of that one. In places it's incredibly moving, pathos etc. It's incredible, at times. A lot of unexpected insights and painful stuff generally.

Work all day today; university, drama, George Bernard Shaw until one, then a five minute lunchbreak and a bus up to Deansgate to sell tea, coffee and dishwasher safe ceramics all afternoon.

It's been hectic.

The last few days have, actually. Up essaying for the past few nights, I finally got both of them in on Tuesday and Thursday. Did it feel good? Yes and no. The second one particualarly not.

I've not really felt I've had a lot of time recently to attend to loads of important stuff. I will finish being on the leadership committee at the Christian Union within a couple of weeks. Not sure how I feel about that; I'm ready to pass on my role to someone else, and I need more time to work on my dissertation etc. I just haven't really thought about it yet. And it's gonna happen soon.

Am reading Martin Amis' 'Money' at the moment. Not sure what I think about that, either, but it's for a course on the history of contemporary cultural studies, Literary Theory/cultural political/social etc.

Tonight, as Tesco's microwave taglietele settles in my stomach and the effect of succesive cups of tea (tea, tea, tea, do you want some tea with your tea? monologue all day) wears off, I write an essay.

It is on Homi Bhabha and the concept of colonial revisionism and cultural critique and postcoloniality and modernity and difference and alterity within the self and Freud and Lacan and Derrida and Foucault, though not really Foucault, no, he doesn't really rate Foucault, I've noticed. Doesn't rate him at all, the big number 10, with his power and his genealogies. Doesn't rate him at all.

I'm tired.

Too tired, some would say.

It continues apace. Why are words suddenly so hard to come by? I reach for them, but they're not there. Not the ones I want anyway.

What's wrong with Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Why, why WHY Homi K. Bhabha?

Why?

I ask. No-one answers.

(silence) END
Curtain closes.

Writing eh? It's a funny business. Well not always.

At the moment I'm still stuck with the mental-block imposed on me by two essays which are to be submitted next Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. Both are interesting topics, both are quite abstract and challenging, and both require a lot more work before they're going to be properly finished.

I have a somewhat eccentric method of writing essays; I tend to favour leaving it to the last possible minute (well almost, I guess in this case that would be at 3:29 on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon), making it as difficult for myself as I can by not doing adequete research until the said last minute, and then fretting and worrying over the whole thing until my hands are too tired to write. I then tend to write the first nonsense that comes into my head and hope for the 'best'.

When will I learn? Both in relation to essay writing, and more generally!

I'm under pressure this week from a relatively heavy (course)work-load, which isn't helped by the ongoing situation at my part time job; one of the shop assistants has left leaving me in a difficult position, being asked to do overtime etc. I find it very difficult to say 'no' if I feel I'll be letting someone down, even when I know it's in my best interests to spend as much time as I possibly can on my University work this year, so I can see that might present me with some problems over the next few weeks until someone else is hired.
Today I was at work from 12-4, which meant leaving the house at 11:30. I had planned to at least spend some time in the library before I started work, but I slept in and woke up feeling quite unwell, headachey etc. I managed to get myself out of bed and out on time for, but only just, and without taking any lunch with me which meant I didn't get to eat until 4pm. I didn't make it to the library until after work, and as I found when I checked over my library account, I've already taken out the maximum number of books (10) and have to take some back before I can take any more out. This is quite inconvenient for essays and such, as a number of the books that I've taken out are long term loans for my dissertation which I don't want to return only to find that they're not there anymore when I've finished my essays.

That isn't the worst of it. At the moment I'm becoming increasingly worried that I'm underperforming in my degree's final year, and that my lack of focus in the last term or so is beginning to cost me as I try to write these essays. The response to my last piece of work, done in November was quite mixed, and although I don't know the mark yet, I don't think it's likely to be as high as I'd hoped for. The two essays I'm working on at the moment have been quite a struggle so far. Part of the problem is that I haven't had access to the library over Christmas, and I was tardy in getting my research done before the end of term. Not putting the time in then is costing me now, but there's nothing I can do about that now.
I suppose it's more a general sense that I'm not performing as well as I think I can, and that I need to work harder over this term and into the summer to ensure I do as well as possible. If last term wasn't my best, I have to try to get past that this year, and not take a defeatist attitude. That's something I've always done, really; if I feel I can't do something perfectly, or as near to it as possible, I have a tendency not to even bother to make the most rudimentary effort. I really can't afford to do that now, and I have to put those kind of thoughts aside.