Bono and Eugene Peterson

Bono joined Pastor Eugene Peterson to chat about the Psalms for a short film for Fuller Studio, a new e-resource by Fuller Theological Seminary. Filmed April 2015, the almost 22-minute documentary debuted on Youtube today. The conversation took place at Peterson's home in Montana ahead of U2's launch of the Innocence + Experience tour.

Bono references his earliest memories of the Psalms, the violence in Dublin in 1974 captured in "Raised By Wolves," and his affinity toward the psalmist. Bono said, "The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he is feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion, and it's that that sets the Psalms apart for me."

Fitting that this appears here today on Reg's birthday, Happy Birthday Reg.

Keeping in touch

A revolution in human society has taken place with barely a word of comment. Older people might complain about young people inseparable from their smartphones, but the complaints are unheard, ineffectual. In ten years time, it will be hard to imagine what life was like before the smartphone revolution. Even now, there are moments when it is an effort for me to remember what life was like before the world became accessible from a device in my pocket.

It would demand a shift back fifty years for me to be sixteen or seventeen again, how did we stay in touch? It was difficult. Regular contact was with those from your own village or those you met at school; it was face to face conversation. Telephone calls were made from boxes and demanded penny and shilling coins. Many people did not have telephones, so they could only be called if they went to a public phonebox themselves, which meant the call had to be pre-arranged, and if pre-arrangement was necessary, it was much easier to say whatever needed to be said when you met someone, rather than trying to arrange a call, which, anyway, was expensive when you had only a few coins in your pocket. The other way of communicating was writing letters, but a letter posted on a Friday would probably receive no answer until Tuesday, it did not make for lively conversation.

To be honest, I would have loved to have grown up in the age of smartphones, in an age when the world’s information is only a google search away, in an age when conversations with friends need never end, in an age when no-one is cut off, when no-one has to be isolated.

In forty years time, Joyce will probably laugh remembering the primitive devices we had in 2016. We can no more imagine the world in 2056 than teenage boys with long hair and flared trousers could have imagined the smartphones we have now.

A mark of genius

I just remembered a story about Sir Thomas Beecham. The world renowned composer was rushing across a hotel foyer when he met a distinguished woman he felt he should have recognized. He bade the lady a good day and went to get into the lift. As he was stepping through the lift door, he remembered the woman had a brother, so he leaned out of the lift and said, “By the way, what is your brother doing these days?”

“Oh, he’s still the king” replied Princess Victoria.

True genius comes with a true humility, people so caught up with their field of expertise that they do not worry about trivial priorities of the materialistic world – the photographs of Albert Einstein also illustrating how a true genius displays an indifference to the sort of values many now regarded as important.

Focus is a choice

The runner who is concentrating on how much his left toe hurts will be left in the dust by the runner who is focusing on winning. Even if the winner's toe hurts just as much.

Pain, even when real, is also a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is.

We have a choice about where to aim the lens of our attention. We can relive past injustices, settle old grudges and nurse festering sores. We can imagine failure, build up it's potential for destruction, calculate its odds. Or, we can imagine the generous outcomes we're working on, feel gratitude for those that got us here and revel in the possibilities of what's next.

The focus that comes automatically isn't the only one that's available. Of course it's difficult to change it, which is why so few people manage to do so. But there's no work that pays off better in the long run.

Your story is your story. But you don't have to keep reminding yourself of your story, not if it doesn't help you change it or the work you're doing.

The runway gets shorter..

Life is like a plane taking off down a runway. As you get older, there's more runway behind you than in front of you. It's inescapable. You see it when celebrities you admire, who are your own age, die. Like David Bowie or Johan Cruyff.

When you see a picture of Harald Schmidt and he looks old, but happy -- and when you're writing about it you pause because you can't remember the name of his funny partner.

There's not so much time left. That's so true. 

What's also true is the great song that The Supremes sang in the sixties. You can't hurry love. It's a game of give and take, somehow between the two forces, life happens. And then you take off for the skies.

Germany and Greece now

Greece is becoming a “human skip” into which the EU is happy to dump countless refugees. It is like a giant Gaza Strip, teeming with people who want to move, but are not allowed to. And what is the cause of Greece’s problems? German policy over which the Greeks and the rest of the EU have no influence.

Germany wants the rest of the EU to take it's “fair share” of what many EU countries see as Germany’s migrants. Germany invited them in, so many European countries are saying: “You deal with them, they’re your problem.” This division is particularly stark between the central European, former communist countries and Germany.

Immigrants, by definition, compete with the poorest local people in the job market, in the housing market and for access to health and schools. This is a fact. Economists tend to miss the central point. While the economy might get workers, society gets people.

But for the relatively wealthy, immigration is a boon. There are more taxi drivers, more cleaners, more shop assistants, more nannies; in short, the service economy, the one that services the relative wealthy, booms. The relatively wealthy don’t have to worry about immigrants pushing up rents because the immigrants can’t afford to live in posh areas, so they compete for housing not with the relatively wealthy, but with the relatively poor.

Immigration is a class issue, and the richer you are, the greater the luxury you have to pontificate about immigration because either you are not affected; or if you are, you are affected positively. It is completely unclear how the experiment will end that the German chancellor has forced upon the European Continent.

Retired?

I thought I was retired. I thought retired people were bored. I recall being bored for half an hour once, in (I think) 1967. Whatever the opposite of bored is, I am. Bootstrap isn't going to help with that.

Roll with the changes!