Apple Cricket and Luna Lovegood

I’ve spent the last few days with my girlfriend, Rachael, stationary shopping, and pottery painting, and blackberry picking, and praying, and baking things that were supposed to be jam tarts but were actually a kind of cakey-biscuity-jam-fusion, because I (ignoring Rachael’s gently expressed doubts) used self-raising flour. And before that I went camping with a few mates in the back garden of someone from my mate Harvey’s church – and we walked places, and drank tea, and overcooked bacon, and miserably, hilariously failed to cook sausages on a campfire (“Urm, Naffy, the grill you’ve fashioned out of sticks has now, actually, caught fire…”), and rode on the outside of Harvey’s car, and talked about God and our lives and what we were scared of and prayed for each other, and played cricket with windfall apples and large pieces of plastic tubing (I highly recommend this game, the apples explode in a thoroughly satisfying manner).

And I had an immense amount of fun. But thinking about it, almost none of those activities would have been particularly enjoyable alone. Definitely not the pottery painting. That would just have been weird.

Things are just better done with other people. I saw two kids cycling around their estate aimlessly the other day. And I remember doing that with my mate Ralph – it is, bizarrely, quite fun. Together. It’s why we go on holiday together, work together, play sport together, it’s why I wanted to play the guitar instead of the violin so I could be in a BAND, it’s why Jesus invited a bunch of random people to live and work with him for three years even though they were all, by their own accounts, pretty much useless from start to finish. All the good stories are about people going on quests together. Imagine Harry Potter without Ron and Hermione (or, more importantly, Neville and Luna Lovegood). How rubbish would Lion King be if it was just Simba, and not Timon, and Pumba, and RAFIKI? How much more awesome is the end of Lord of the Rings because Sam is next to Frodo, going “I can’t carry it for you, Mr Frodo, but I can carry you!”?

Anyway, I’m going on this rant because I was praying today for some people I love, who are going back to uni about now. And I was thinking about what I really want to happen in their lives. And for almost every single one of them, it’s the same thing. I know it sounds like a stupid thing for me to want, but hear me out. I want them to be part of a church. Because probably my favourite thing about my life, especially while I was away this year, is that for a lot of my mates, I get to actually be church. I get to be the place where they come to ask questions, to wrestle with stuff, I get to go on adventures with them and climb mountains with them and listen to them, and stare at sunsets and talk about the meaning of our lives with them. I get to be the place where they hear the truth that they are loved like they’d never believe and there’s nothing they can ever do to change that. I get to be the one that gives them a massive hug to prove it. I get to laugh and cry and pray and sing and do stupid dances with them. (Which reminds me, I really need to show you all my new move, ‘The Typewriter’. Curious? You should be.)

But moving on, (although honestly, it’s a beautiful move), what’s really gutting is that for pretty much every one of these awesome friends that I’ve had, there comes a point where it ends. Where one of us goes somewhere. And that’s when I find myself praying. Praying that they will go wherever they’re going and find a bunch of people who love them and want to do all of that stuff with them like I did – ideally better. And usually better, because one of me was never really enough in the first place. Praying that they will find church. 

I keep saying ‘they’ but to be honest I’m hoping that some of the people I’m praying for are reading this blog, that’s the only reason I’m writing it, so I’m going to start just saying ‘you’, just in case.

I am praying for you, that you will find a bunch of people who love you and love Jesus. A bunch of people who will ask questions with you, and wrestle with you (perhaps literally) and play apple-cricket with you, and stare at sunsets and talk about the meaning of our lives with you. A bunch of people who you can do good things in the world with. Who you can laugh with and cry with and climb mountains with. Who can remind you, with a hug, that you are loved like you’d never believe and there’s nothing you can ever do to change that.

So, yeah. This is me pretty much getting down on my knees and begging you to go and look for these people – they are looking for you I promise. And I know there are some dodgy people out there, and some dodgy churches, but there are some awesome ones too. And if you do watch the video – it’s beautiful, and there are thousands of churches all over the world trying to be like that. And if you’re not sure where to look I will honestly ask people and google it and do my best to help if you want me to. Because you have no idea how happy I was on the day I drove past my mate Tom on a big country road near Alcester, and when I facebooked him that night to ask where he was going, he told me that he was walking to his church, and they were awesome.

Drumming and Freedom

I was at a big Christian festival-ish thing last week, and firstly I should say it was epic. Secondly, I’d like to share two stories about drumming that I really really love.

Number One.

The banjo player from a band called Rend Collective Experiment - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N3h0BKV6gw - told the story of how he got into performing music. His dad was quite a successful, well-renowned  musician in churches in Ireland and England, and his son was obviously keen to play as well. But then, more surprisingly, when he was seven years old – and not particularly a prodigy – his dad made him the drummer in his band. This well-respected, serious artist started turning up to churches and performances with a seven year old kid carrying some drumsticks. And the son, now a bit more grown up, said this: “I wasn’t very good, and I’m pretty sure the music was nowhere near what it could have been – but I loved that he put the people before the perfection.”

And I loved that story because it is genuinely just what being Christian is like. God is immense. We are – Barack Obama and Bear Grylls included – spectacularly inadequate. We’re like seven year olds enthusiastically failing to keep in time with the intricate rhythms of redemption. But we are his seven year olds. He adopts us as his kids and loves us so much he wants us to come on tour with him – and yeah we mess up the music most of the time, but he just loves that we’re up there with him playing our hearts out.

Number Two.

Early on in the week I was mildly annoyed by the fact that when we were all together singing and worshipping God, the big projectors with the words on also had live video feed of the band playing on stage – I was annoyed because I was trying to concentrate on Jesus but I found myself just watching the guy with the guitar all the time. Anyway, near the end of the week, my attitude changed because of this one, five second shot of the drummer. The camera cut to him just as a quiet bit was ending, and he was just sitting there, kind of relaxing, just doing the bass pedal with his foot. And then suddenly, at just the right moment, he comes alive, takes up his sticks, and smashes out this huge fill and goes into some crazily fast complicated beat for the chorus. And I saw this and I was just blown away by how free it was. He wasn’t sitting there, concentrating hard, thinking about which drums he was supposed to hit in a minute, and in what order – he was totally relaxed, and then he just picked up the sticks and went crazy, and it sounded awesome. And you could see when he was playing that he was just giving it everything he’d got – he was throwing his soul into that kit, he was holding nothing back. I know I’m sounding a bit pretentious but honestly, watch a good drummer really drum, it’s incredible.

Anyway, there’s a point to this story as well. When I was thinking about how awesome this guy’s drumming was, I thought about what I would be able to do at that drum kit. I’ve never learnt the drums, I’ve never practised – I’m quite musical, but I just haven’t put the hours in. And if you told me to “just go for it” with a drum kit, I would smash things for a few seconds, and it would be a bit fun but I’d feel quite stupid because it would sound horrendous and I wouldn’t know how to actually do anything fun or interesting or whatever. I wouldn’t be able to freely throw my soul into that drum kit because I just have not practised. I have not trained. And it struck me (if you’ll excuse the very slight pun) that I make a fairly big mistake quite often.

I know that Jesus came to set us free. To make us free people. And a lot of the time I act like that means he wouldn’t want me to do stuff that’s really hard, or frustrating, or tiring, or boring. Because I’m free – I don’t have to do that stuff, right? But actually, I looked at this guy pick up those sticks and go crazy and I thought, I’m not as free as I could be. If he’d come to drum lessons every week, or practice every day, and declared that he was free so he could just sit there and hit things randomly, however he pleased, then he would not be able to play like he did that night. He had to stick it out through hours and years of drills, and exercises, and practice pieces that made him want to find the composer and smash his head between two cymbals – but that discipline has set him free. And if I want to be able to actually live the epic, wholehearted, powerfully beautiful life Jesus offers me, then I have to train. I have to be disciplined. I have to spend time with him and learn from him even when I find it boring, practice things and un-practice other things even when it’s frustrating, serve him and his loved ones even when it’s exhausting. Because of course I am already free – but I want to be like that drummer. As free as he made me to be.