The Move is dead (almost)

In my last post I pondered what makes a Christian church part of the true Church. And in a previous post I have referred to the Move with which our church has been loosely connected. There are a number of preachers who get invited to visit Move groups and one of these "travelling ministry" has recently spoken in our church here. Chatting with him, it appears that Move groups the world over are in a state of flux: that it is not just in our own group that foundations we thought had been laid good and solid are now being questioned and often torn down. And so I suppose that the end-time Move of God (to give it a fuller title) is near its end.

Am I bothered? In one sense no, and neither am I surprised, because the true Church is built on a better foundation. But I grieve for its effect on folk who have grown up under its teachings and have invested all their life, energies and funds in an edifice which is now crumbling. Personally, I do have unanswered questions but I have few regrets: I think the experience has left me stronger, wiser.

Here's one of the early Move songs. Ironically the founder of the movement was killed in a plane crash.

People of God, it is time to arise

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

Let it ring from the valleys and the mountains so high,

God's people proclaiming we're not going to die;

All heaven's rejoicing, now hear them all sing,

Grave, where's thy victory? O death, where's thy sting?

The saints down the centuries have all come to pass,

Each one fulfilling his God-given task;

To His sons God has spoken, and witness His cry,

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

The prophets of the Lord had a line that they laid,

Though they were steadfast they all died in faith,

But they spoke of a people that would one day arise,

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

So take courage now, brethren, and close in your ranks,

Stand on the promises, giving God thanks;

For Satan will fight us, or surely he'll try,

But he can't beat a people that aren't going to die.

What does it take?

When there is unresolved disagreement with an otherwise respected colleague, when there is estrangement from a loved one, when there is imagined ostracisation, when one person believes that "God has said" and another opposes it - what does it take to reconcile them, to restore trust and relationship? When God seems distant and irrelevant, when strong prayers go unanswered for years, when pleas for God to reveal himself hit brazen heavens, what does it take to convince us
that truly He heals all our diseases? Although I will not give up asking.

In a post of many years previous I described my relationship with my father, he being of few but memorable words. I always respected him and many of my principles by which I live are founded on his input. But then I did this community thing, and he after my mother died did his thing, and we drifted apart. I in Northern Ireland with very little liberty to travel having given all for the common. He, having moved in and become part of another family in an arrangement that I may never comprehend but one in which he also had given all for another common. We met once. Somehow I had managed a trip to the UK. I knocked on this family's front door in Old Alresford. It was clear that I was not welcome but I forced my way in and was able to sit with my father for a little while. His love for me was evident although stifled and he gave me some money, but the whole episode was strangely surreal.  He died not long after and to my shame to this day I do not know the details of how and why. In his will he left me the contents of his workshop and I still treasure the little I was able to redeem from this. He had already given away the rest of his estate. What would it have taken to completely restore our relationship with him to what it was when I was a child?

What does it take, or what will it take, for those powerful words "Well done, good and faithful servant" to apply to me? To stand secure on that Rock? To know no shadow of doubt, to know the warmth of His presence, to know total shalom peace? What does it take for any man to say "my Lord and my God"?

Men love darkness

Breakfast view

Edison did an outstanding job - where would we be today without electric light? But given the choice between natural and artificial light I'd choose the former any day. And so it is that at this time of the year I eat my breakfast by the light of the dawn, until Other People here emerge from their beds and turn lights on All Over The Place claiming they cannot otherwise see. So strange. These are people who would rather run on a rubber belt in an unattractive shed than enjoy the real world, the wind caressing one's body, glorious vistas, maybe a dip in the lake. One of my grandchildren barges in and turns all ten ceiling spots on. Someone else turns the kitchen lights on to make coffee, then exits leaving them on. And we have to have lights continuously burning 24/7 in the corridors because otherwise how would folk get around?  Thankfully at least we now use low energy bulbs.

A small price to pay for living with Others!

Early HH

Some while ago I posted about our Christian community experiences in the North. That lifestyle ended abruptly when a group of us moved down to the South to begin living together in HH. How HH was acquired is another story, little short of a miracle, that I was not involved in. My own story starts once we had moved in.

We had left the community in the North with little more than our bedroom furniture and the clothes on our back. Whilst we had free use of the HH property, we had no income and thus, once our meagre funds had run out, no food. But we did have a car, so a few of us borrowed a neighbour's ladder and drove into the outskirts of Dublin and offered to clean windows.  And it was winter, but rain and snow did not overly damp our spirits.

Early group photo at HH

Back then breakfast was a bowl of porridge and one slice of bread. Period. We had only one table, not large enough for all of us to sit around. The only source of heat was a wood stove in the basement kitchen / dining room, or an open fireplace in the lounge and then only if we could find enough waste timber. Packed lunches were often a mashed potato and pickle sandwich followed by a homemade-sort-of-cheese sandwich which some privately called "sludge". You ate all you were given. On one occasion I had saved half a sandwich for later, and then forgot to eat it. When the girl on kitchen duty found the remains she gave me a very strong dressing down - how dare I waste food! And due to lack of funds and amenities we were restricted to one bath every 5 days (there were no showers back then) unless doing something like sorting out the septic system.

But all this was infinitely preferable to our experience in the North so we were happy enough. We were bound together by a common vision to survive. In due course the window cleaning business morphed into painting and decorating, and then general building work and, finally (for me), a move back into electronics. And the rest is history...

And now a new generation has grown up that knew not Joseph. Food is plentiful and the children often don't eat all they are given and no-one bats an eyelid. Well, no-one except us oldies who remember the lean times.

Am I Hugo?

I may have said before that Hugo must rank as one of my most enjoyed films. There are so many aspects to the film that are executed so superbly. And yet, and here I quote Wikipedia: Hugo was also nominated for eight BAFTAs, winning two of the eight, and was nominated for three Golden Globe awards, earning Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Despite this, the film was a commercial failure, grossing $185 million against its $150–$170 million budget. I remain sad that I never saw it on the big screen and in 3D.

Anyway, back to subject... When the uncle Claude died (actually in my case he became too involved with his business) I tacitly assumed full responsibility for our wood-burning boiler. At this time of the year we don't need central heating but it supplies all our hot water. Who here thinks, when they turn the hot tap on, that the water didn't just get hot all by itself? And what Gare Montparnasse passers by considered that the station clocks didn't just wind themselves up?

There are so many aspects of community life that one tends to take for granted. Someone has to wash those dishes you leave on the draining board late at night. Someone is keeping the front lawn mowed, and weeding the flower beds, cooking the dinner, etc... the list goes on!  And, no, I do not do all those things! 

A different past

I was living in a large house in spacious grounds. Early one morning I went out for my run, as is my want, and noticed a girl from the community carrying a wide basket and picking up litter, a task I complemented her about. We walked together and soon joined another community member on his morning walk. Initially the path we took was well known to me, one I often ran barefoot. And so on leaving the property we turned left onto the main road and then after a while turned right onto a side road. I found I was seeing stuff around me that, when running, I had not noticed. Soon we turned right onto a stony track that, hitherto, I had avoided as a barefoot runner. The track I supposed ran parallel to the main road but continued for several miles before looping back to where it started.

A few days later the experience was repeated but without turning onto the stony track. I thought I ought to have known the road so was surprised to find a stretch of water on my right terminated by an old mill building where a few men were up to their thighs harvesting some sort of vegetable that grew in the water. They each had a large-brimmed hat and these and what old-looking clothes they wore were the same dull green colour as the building behind them. They told us what it was they were collecting - it sounded something like mangroves or mongoose. I thought I would help them from the side but accidentally slipped into the water where I was greeted as if I were one of them. After some merriment I decided we should return as I was getting cold.

When eventually we got back home, all had changed. The road our home was on was now only a narrow, flower strewn path between cottages and I recognised from my childhood days a chapel on the right. I entered and found it familiar yet somewhat decrepit and predating the improvements and additions I had witnessed as a boy. We met an old church friend who, on hearing my story, suggested I should walk up the road to my house where I would meet my wife. Sure enough, on entering what I supposed had been my home, seated at the meal table were Ali and several others including known to me. One person I did not recognises introduced himself as my uncle.

It transpired that I had re-entered my existence on an alternative time-plane, one in which I existed together with my peers but in which our surroundings were perhaps 100 or more years historic. One in which this relation of mine had not died in childhood.

It was, of course, a dream. But such a prolonged dream. During it I woke twice to empty my bladder, returned to bed, thought I was taking an age to get back to sleep only to find myself immediately re-immersed in the dream. And such a vivid portrayal of landscapes, such detail and depth of colour, my eyes feasting on the scenery and able to almost zoom into areas of interest.

On waking I was made aware in an instant of a kaleidoscope of events in my life, things ranging where I have been so, so blessed to areas of abject failure and utter depression.

Community is...

Arriving at the appointed 18:00 for the evening meal and finding no-one else is there.

Apart from the kitchen staff. When as a boy I attended church with my parents, there was a family who lived in a building adjoining the church so they had only a few steps to go - and yet they consistently arrived late. Maybe a pattern - the shorter the journey the more likely folk are to arrive late.

When working for the BBC an important meeting was called by the department head and I arrived just a few minutes late. I was lambasted with the usual there are 12 people here and we've all had to wait 5 minutes for you - that adds up to an hour of time! I have never forgotten that reprimand.

PseudoSpeak

The prefix pseudo- (from Greek ψευδής, pseudes, "lying, false") is used to mark something that superficially appears to be (or behaves like) one thing, but actually is another. Subject to context, pseudo may connote coincidence, imitation, intentional deception, or a combination thereof. Wikipedia.

Back at the dawn of creation before ever there was digital or MP3 there was "Hi-Fi" and this meant High Fidelity audio reproduction. Before even those days it was valve (vacuum tube) wireless sets with a tone control that offered "bright" or "mellow" sound. And that was the era I was born into. As I have said elsewhere I cherished a valve amplifier for its superior sound and later learnt that its balanced dual pentode output stage cancelled out 3rd harmonic distortion which would be particularly objectionable to the ears. Sad that I no longer have that amp. It would never have made it through community.

My birth echoed the dawn of the transistor and so I came to build a transistor amplifier. My grandfather donated a large speaker for which I built a cabinet and the amplifier sat on top in its solid oak case and brushed chrome front-panel (part of a door kick-plate) and home-made brushed aluminium knobs (aluminium round stock finished off in a drill-press). I christened it "pseudo-speak" which I thought was cute even if not quite the correct etymology. The system was unashamedly mono - I had only one speaker and anyway could not afford stereo.  At other times I played with "pseudo-stereo" in which I took a mono source and send higher frequencies to one speaker and lower to the other. It works surprisingly well, especially if you have not known better.

I remember one older visiting family friend asking if it really was "hi-fi" (which title I claimed), and have wondered ever since whether she knew what she was talking about. She might have done, but she didn't seem to me the sort of person that would.

After all, the majority of folk have no idea what stereophonic (or indeed stereoscopic) means, witness the fact that they place the two speakers that came with their set next to each other, explaining that it looks tidier that way. One wonders why God bothered to give such people two ears or two eyes - such a waste!