love

Fix You

Posted on by barrykjackson

Yes, I know this is ‘so last year’ and you are all well and truly over it…but perhaps I am not.

Okay, I am not.

So, indulge me for a minute or two, I’ll try to keep it brief. Judge me all you want, but I’ve never been embarrassed to say I am a fan of Coldplay. I am sure no one loves all their songs, but amongst their extensive catalogue is some real winners – in my humble opinion.

Clocks, Yellow, The Scientist roll of the tongue, then of course there is Fix You.

During that separation/divorce period I’ve written about plenty before, where life was all up the wahzoo, you tend to spend a lot of time alone, well I did, more than I was used to that’s for sure.

The nights were always the worst, the loneliest, the time when sleep was allusive, and the brain activity was at its most heightened. Music became a comforter, a way to fight the deafening silence, to vent, to help find words to attach to the raw emotions, and to help heal. During that time, Coldplay got some significant playtime, and in particular the song Fix You.

When I thought about my kids and the pain they were navigating, the questions they were left to face, the sense of abandonment they felt by people they thought were ‘our friends’. Whenever I thought about how they, who were innocent in all of this, were paying a price, I cried. Oh man, did I cry.

The lyrics of the song go –

“Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face, and I

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face, and I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you”

Tears streamed down my face as I listened to this song sitting in the driveway before putting on a brave face to head inside to my kids. Tears streamed down my face when I sat in my work office, and my home office, and on my daily walks as I listened to this song trying to process my life.

And for a long time, I thought I managed to conceal much of my tears, but I was naive. Kids are watching and interpreting everything, and without really knowing it, my kids started to connect to the song as well. Perhaps for a while whenever they heard it, they thought of me crying, they thought of my pain. But then in their own way they started to connect it to their pain as well.

The song connected us. An unsaid understanding that we were all experiencing elements of the pain that broken families bring, regardless of whose ‘fault’ it was. That despite the brave faces we tried to show the world around us, we were all crying & healing simultaneously.

Over time the song and the emotions attached to it subsided, and it became like a postcard on the fridge of a place we once lived in for a while.

Side note: I am reminded more and more that you can’t fix others if you don’t fix yourself. Who is responsible for dealing with our hurts and trauma, so we don’t inevitably project that onto the ones we love? We are.

Sooooo, Coldplay announce they are heading to NZ – Grace, Max and I venture to Auckland for a few days of good old fashioned quality time, and we did indeed have a great time together. Long story short we make our way to the gig, and from the start to the end it was so so so awesome. But the moment I will never forget was that moment when near the end of the concert, Coldplay began to play THE song.

As I stood in the crowd with my kids, the moment they start to play Fix You, tears once again streamed down my face, down Grace’s face, and while they didn’t quite fully escape Max’s eyes, the emotion was certainly there. However, now the tears fell for a different reason; now it wasn’t pain, sorrow, loss, shame, or grief that triggered the tears. While I think the emotion that I had connected to this song for so long just emerged, almost on cue without warning, this time the overriding feeling for me was joy.

Joy for how far I had come, joy for experiencing this moment live, joy for standing there with my kids. Joy for life, for healing, for change, for new beginnings, for loyal friends, for family, for love.

So cheers to Coldplay, to the power of music, and to love.

B.

Leaning Forward

Posted on by barrykjackson

We humans live ‘leaning forward’, bent towards arriving at the place that we truly long for.

We tend to understand humans/ourselves as thinking beings.

“I think, therefore I am.”

Descartes (1637)

And in part that is true, but we correlate thinking with knowledge and less with desire; we associate thinking primarily with intellect and less with love. James K.A Smith argues that instead of starting from the assumption that humans are thinking beings, we should start from the conviction that we are first and foremost lovers.

To be human is to be for something, directed toward something, oriented toward something. To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, after something. We are like existential sharks: we have to move to live. We are not just static containers for ideas; we are dynamic creatures directed toward some end. In philosophy we have a shorthand term for this: something that is oriented toward an end or telos (a “goal”) is described as “teleological.”

James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love

Jordan Peterson puts it like this –

“You are a creature that has an aim, you have to have an aim in order to do something. You are an aiming creature, you look at a point and you move towards it, it’s built right into you.

Jordan B. Peterson

We are all aiming creatures, always moving towards an ‘end’, leaning forward towards arriving at what we focus our hearts and desires on. Peterson goes on to note that the world shifts itself around us, in that we begin to see what we want to see, our aim organises our perceptions, our emotions, and our motivations in the day-to-day aspects of our lives. So what determines the end that we envision, what determines the goal our hearts long for?

The short answer is LOVE.

If we conclude that we are first and foremost lovers, then you can’t NOT love. So the question isn’t whether you WILL love something; the question is WHAT will you love. And our ultimate love will always take priority over any other thing we profess to ‘love’ along the way.  Our ultimate love is determined by our inner world, it is what is at the heart of a person.

“For “heart” signifies the total inner self, a person’s hidden core of being, with which one communes, which one “pours out” in prayer, words, and deeds. It is the genuine self, distinguished from appearance, public position, and physical presence.”

Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Heart” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988)

Tim Keller describes that heart as;

“In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the entire acting self, and the heart controls not just the emotions, but also the thoughts and the actions. Why? Because, in the Bible, the heart is the seat of your most fundamental commitments … the things you most hope in, you most believe in, you most look to, and you most live for; the things that you look at and say, “If I had that, then I would be happy, then I would have meaning, then I would have value.”

Timothy J. Keller, (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

Behind our titles and our public persona is where we find our true self. If you take stock of what occupies your thoughts, and the feelings and motivations behind those thoughts, you will start to get an idea of what is in your heart. For example, what or where does your internal dialogue default to when you are alone or doing menial tasks?

“Our lives more in the direction of our strongest thoughts.”

– Craig Groeschel

Richard Black from Mind Health says that when we imagine or fantasise about a thing repeatedly our brains begin to find it hard to decipher the imaginary from reality. It is where our worlds – motivations, feelings, and perceptions – begin to shift and form around those desires. Those desires maybe influenced by a number of things in our lives, including context, culture, or trauma, which help fasten them to our sense of reality. But it is the nature of those thoughts that determine if the realities we envision and lean towards are positive or not, helpful or harmful.

Robert H. Mounce commenting on Romans 12:2 – do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind – notes;

“Real and lasting change comes from within. We must “let ourselves be transformed.” The transformation of which Paul spoke in Rom 12:2 is not a change effected from without but a radical reorientation that begins deep within the human heart.”

– Robert H. Mounce

Psychology and science agree that about 5% of what we do on any given day is the outcome of conscious deliberate choices. It is the tip of the iceberg so to speak, with the majority of our choices/reactions/responses coming from the learned and habitual patterns of the unconscious mind.

The unconscious mind is not formed simply by acquiring information alone but by meditating on truth, reinforced by liturgical action. Just as reading a self-help book does not help you if you do not apply any of the ‘help’ suggested, you can’t just ‘know’ your way to change. First we have to identify and own the longings deep within our hearts in order to correct our aim. 

Jesus doesn’t encounter Matthew and John—or you and me—and ask, “What do you know?” He doesn’t even ask, “What do you believe?” He asks, “What do you want?”

James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love

You can learn new skills, you can learn persuading and inspiring rhetoric, you can dress to impress, but what do you actually want?

To repeat myself again – We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we truly long for. Our loves become our unconscious desires, our desires influence our daily thoughts and habits, and our daily habits determine our tomorrows.

Are the algorithms of your life simply reinforcing the narrative of your mind?

Walter A. Elwell states that one fundamental assumption found in the pages of Scripture is that the human heart is constantly open to influences from ‘above and from below’.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:2 (NIV) 

Everything we do flows from the genuine self, the one behind the public appearance, the ultimate driver of our lives. It is why we should begin our transformation there, in identity defining truths and not in performance based knowledge.

We reorientate the heart not by simply acquiring external information, but by practicing habits that recalibrate our loves internally, that shift our thoughts both conscious and unconscious to a higher aim. Habits like prayer, meditation, silence, solitude, and worship, but also habits like gratitude, acts of generosity and service, feasting and celebrating with others, and the often neglected act of ‘confession’ – the discipline of regular moments of honesty, accountability, and vulnerability with trusted and safe people who can identify our blind spots.

Earlier this year I started on a discipleship journey with a small group of guys from various cultures and walks of life and one thing that consistently comes up as we share our journeys with each other is that if we stop at the thinking alone and simply try to correct that by acquiring new information, if we don’t dive deeper to find and own the desire behind those thoughts, then true lasting transformation will be harder to implement.

“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.” – Phil 4:8 

Pausing for a moment to ask myself the question that Jesus asked Matthew and John – what do I want? What is my ultimate love? What am I leaning towards and what is the narrative my current habits are reinforcing? It is easy to default to the ugly, the worst, the lack, it’s easy to point out the specks in my brothers eye. It requires discipline – liturgical habits even – to consistently fix our thoughts on the best, the beautiful, things worthy of praise and celebration.

If the world shifts around our aim and we only see what we ‘want’, then we would do well to reflect on if the world we currently see is the one we actually desire. 

“Aim at the highest possible good that you can conceive of. Having aligned yourself with that good, speak the truth and see what happens.”

Jordan Peterson

We are teleological beings moving towards an ‘end’ determined by what we truely love in our hearts. It begs the question deserving of honest reflection – what do we love?