| | The stars in their courses are fighting against my chances of productivity this evening! but I won't be dissuaded. I'm only waiting a few moments for my hair to dry before I go back to the Fine Arts building and start work on my electronic music project.
In between things I've continued to read bits and pieces by and about Lesslie Newbigin. I'm dumbfounded by the simplicity and profundity the man could enclose in a mere three pages. Yesterday, while I was cooking pasta on the stovetop downstairs, I read a little address called "Youth in the Church" based on the first five verses of John 3, where Jesus has his conversation with Nicodemus about being born again. In eight paragraphs Newbigin managed to turn half my notions about growing up inside out, stand them on their head, and present them back to me with a firm and gentle admonishment to humility from 1 Peter 5:1-7.
"What really is at issue in this tension between age and youth? Is it not this, that the experience of us who are old., the experience which we think is our greatest asset in comparison with the young, is a sinful experience, an experience full of compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil? The demand that we must be born asgain, that we must become as little children, is a demand that we break with our experience. It is a demand that we shall not be conformed to this world (in which we have perhaps been rather successful), but be transformed by the renewing of our minds - by becoming young again."
"I have often heard people say that youth work is very important because the young peoplee of today are the leaders of tomorrow. But this is surely the wrong way to look at the matter. We have to be concerned about young people not because they will be old later on, but because they are young now. The point is that we must have young people in the Church because we must listen to them, because they have somthing to say to us, because they put radical questions to us about the way we have become conformed to this world."
"The sins which the Bible condemns most severely are not the sins that the Church has loved to condemn - the so-called sin of youth. They are rather the sins of middle-age - unbelief, scepticism about the possibility of radical change, compromise with the world."
It's true. The older I get, the more I learn about fear and hurt, and the more I want comfortableness, and the less I like hard questions - either asking or answering them. And instead of being braced and encouraged by the enthusiasm and idealism of younger people, I laugh, and assure them it won't last long: they'll learn better. The ideas they're so passionate about - well, they'll learn one simply can't live that way. It's tiring, and it makes other people other uncomfortable.
If I'm ever provoked to wonder if the fault lies with me, and not with them - if it is not that they are too young, but that I am too old - I come to my own instant defense with the lofty claim of "experience."
Since when was experience a virtue? I think of this exchange between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester -
"Do you agree with me that I have a right
to be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on
the grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your
father, and that I have battled through a varied experience with
many men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you
have lived quietly with one set of people in one house?"
"Do as you please, sir."
"That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a
very evasive one. Reply clearly."
"I don't think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because
you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world
than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have
made of your time and experience."
There's a great deal of truth in that response.
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| | Posted 11/27/2006 10:48 PM - 1 view - 10 comments
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It fits so nicely with my own. It may be that I picked mine up from him, but it's been so long that nobody knows NOW, do they! Zomg.
And I'm sure if you ask Jeanna, she'll show you the manners book . . . . You gotta check out the names. They're works of art.