Bigger Lungs Are Called For. (Inspiration.)

I’ve been thinking about my last blog, and I’ve decided that it wasn’t finished. Because it’s not as simple I don’t think of just deciding to be more disciplined, of just taking a deep breath and re-inflating the bouncy castle of life. I don’t think that my lungs are really big enough for that task. So this blog is about inspiration – which literally means ‘in breathing’. I’ve always liked that. I want to be in-spired in the most literal sense by the massive lungs of God.

I’ve recently developed quite an affection for the poetry of Genesis when it says that God “formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a human being.” I love that it specifies the nostrils. It’s weirdly tactile, isn’t it? Strangely intimate. And its this intimate breathing, this inspiration, that sets the human beings apart from all the other animals and plants, that makes them “in his own image” – the likeness of God comes from the breath of God.

And I think a big part of this ‘life’ that comes in the breath, this ‘likeness’ of God that we have, is creativity. God creates, and then the last things he creates are these people who can themselves create. Because all the very best teachers inspire their students to become like them – the master carpenter inspires her apprentice to carve like she does.

But then later on, after these humans have abandoned God, it’s as if that life-breath gets squashed – dullened. It’s like when we fell from grace we hit the ground hard and we got winded. And to be fair, I think that makes for a reasonable description of ordinary human existence: there’s this marvellous flicker of divine creativity, this spark of genius, of compassion, of courage; but it flickers, and stutters, and gets squashed, and it ends up sort of muted in most people most of the time. It’s there, but it’s shrivelled.

There’s a crazy vision in Ezekiel of this field of dry bones, like a sort of beautiful precursor to the horror-movie genre: God picks up these dry bones, wraps them in flesh, and breathes life back into them. And he tells Ezekiel that’s what he’s going to do for us.

And then that gets fulfilled, as does pretty much every other promise, when Jesus turns up. And he dies, and then is raised back to life, and then there’s this weird scene where he breathes on the disciples. He tells them to receive his breath. (It’s the same word for ‘spirit’, same word for ‘wind’.) And that’s quite an odd thing to do obviously, just walk up to your mates and breathe on them. But what he’s saying is,

‘This is just like the first time. Just like when I breathed into your nostrils and gave you life in the first place. Because you keep dying on me – keep getting winded – and I’m not having it. I want you to have life. I want to inspire you to be what you were always made to be: to be like me.”

Now, I’ve always imagined that moment somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious as a bit like Jesus sprinkling fairy dust on them – all very exciting and magical and tingly. But I’m starting to think it’s more like he’s giving them CPR. It’s not that glamorous a thought really – and it involves admitting that we’re dying – but I think that’s more what he’s offering. Mouth to mouth resuscitation from the living God. And he does offer it to all of us – anyone who is willing to admit that they’re dying and to breathe in when he breathes out. Not just a one off either – every day. A couple of my closest friends have had times recently where they genuinely needed CPR from God just to get out of bed every morning. But he does it – just like he did in the beginning – he bends over, he comes close, and he breathes life into us.

Now I almost feel like I need another blog entirely to talk about how it is that God practically inspires us, and makes it more possible for us to live an impossibly creative life – how he breathes freedom into us – but I’ll mention one thing for now. Fear.

I think that one of the biggest things that holds me back – although I don’t often admit it – is fear. Because creativity – adventure – freedom – these things all involve risk, and risk is scary.

I climbed a tree with my mate Joe the other day. It’s lowest branch was just low enough that he could reach it if he jumped – but he’s about a foot taller than me so once he’d got up he sat on the branch and I grabbed his feet and climbed up that way. It was pretty high, and my heart was beating pretty hard (I imagine he was considerably more chilled about the whole thing, he’s cool like that) but I thought that having just written a blog about the discipline of freedom and adventure I really ought to be brave. And I trust Joe a lot. It was a really good adventure – and inevitably that involved risk. An easy tree would have been boring.

Much more than that though, fear holds us back from stepping out and trying things that we think we might be made to do because we’re worried about what people think of us. We get paralysed by shame, sometimes before we’ve even tried. But Jesus wants to inspire us. He wants to adopt us, and inspire us, so that we can hear him say, ‘Why would you be afraid of what people think of you?! I’m the king of the flipping universe. And I flipping love you. You’re my kid. You could fall off and hurt yourself and look stupid a thousand, thousand times and I would still be dead proud of you.’ There’s a bit in a psalm where it says, “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” Jesus says, ‘Look at me.’ And his smile is so bright that it actually shines off us. He says, ‘Look at me, and your face will never be covered with shame.’

There’s the more practical kinds of fear as well – I mean the tree was a small example, but I remember when I did the bungee jump off Victoria Falls. Honestly, everyone was so scared doing those jumps – it’s the most I’ve ever been asked to pray with people in my whole life! But stupid as it sounds I genuinely remember standing on the edge of the bridge thinking, ‘I’ve got nothing to fear. “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.” This cord will almost certainly not snap; but if it does, while my mum would be very sad indeed, I would be fine. Jesus, I trust you either way.’ I know that sounds pretentious – but I hope that if I find myself in much more serious situations I will take a deep breath in as God breathes out, and I’ll have the courage that comes from knowing that he’s bigger even than death.

Maybe the biggest one though – in our largely safe, cushty kind of lives – the biggest thing we’re afraid of is love. Because when you really love someone it makes you terribly vulnerable. It takes true courage to invest in another person so much, to care about them so deeply, that you give them the power to devastate you. But there’s really no way around it; there is no way to love without creating the possibility of pain. But the breath of God whispers in our ear and says, ‘Go on, I’ve got you. I can heal broken hearts. Don’t be afraid. I can comfort, and strengthen, and fulfil. Don’t be afraid. If everyone on earth walked out on you, I could still fulfil every one of your needs. Don’t be afraid.’

And maybe there’s one last fear that goes with that one: the fear of ourselves. The fear that realises that when we takes risks of love, of adventure, of freedom with other people, we are asking them to trust us with their hearts and their lives too. So what happens if we don’t trust ourselves? If we don’t think that we’re worthy to love, that we’re not safe hands to place a heart in? We pull back and shrivel up and we are not free. But God breathes deeply, and reminds us that his breath carries his likeness. That we were made to be like him, and when we breathe him in we can actually be made like him. We can breathe out our selfishness, our cruelty, our apathy; and breathe in his patience, his kindness, his goodness, his gentleness, his peace, his joy, his love, his self-control, his faithfulness. We can breathe him in until we’re like him. And with every breath we are less of a liability. Less of a danger to ourselves and the people who love us. He wants to inspire us until we are not afraid of anything, not even ourselves.

Basically, I reckon that my “I’ll do my best and see how it goes” attitude might get me to a few half decent balloons. But if my life is going to be a bouncy castle – or one of those big inflatable assault courses – maybe even a huge 50ft bouncy slide… well, I’m going to need some help from a bigger pair of lungs. I’m going to need some inspiration.

Life is a Bouncy Castle. Inflate it.

A couple of days ago last year I was close to leaving Malawi, and in a blog about adventure I wrote this:

“Adventure: ‘hazardous and exciting activity in unknown territory’ – isn’t that what life is?”

And reading that makes me a bit sad now. Not because I think I was foolish then, but because I think that this year I have slowly, gently, proved myself wrong. Life is not always “hazardous and exciting activity in unknown territory”. Sometimes it is and we have no choice about it. But other times, which is most of the time, it’s up to us. This thought has been creeping up on me for about a week now:

I have not been disciplined enough to remain free.

I wrote something ages ago about watching a drummer drum – and how years and years of practice and discipline had given him this incredible freedom to express himself on the kit. And the other day I saw a quote that says the same thing about dancing on my mate Andy Mort’s blog:

“The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is not. No amount of dreaming will point it for you. This requires discipline, not drill, not something imposed from without, but discipline imposed by you yourself upon yourself. … Your goal is freedom. But freedom may only be achieved through discipline. In the studio you learn to conform, to submit yourself to the demands of your craft, so that you may finally be free.”

Martha Graham (on sheepdressedlikewolves.com/dont-want-freedom)

Freedom can only be achieved through discipline – and this is the thing that I’m realising – I have got lazy, and it has cost me a big chunk of my freedom.

If I just do whatever I feel like doing, or whatever I need to do, all the time, my life ends up a little bit flat and grey. Not entirely – because sometimes I get restless and I want to do something interesting, so I do, and sometimes the things I need to do just happen to be exciting and meaningful and marvellous. But still, on the whole, my day-to-day existence tends to get a bit like a bouncy castle when they’ve started letting the air out. And what’s worse, I don’t notice that it’s leaking. I don’t notice that it’s not as bouncy as it once was because the air goes out slowly, and I get used to it bit by bit. As they always say, a frog will happily sit in a pan as you boil it to death as long as you heat the water gradually.

Moving swiftly away from that thought, the thing is that I have been alerted to the slight flatulence of the bouncy castle that is my life since I came home for the summer by the necessity of constantly answering the question, “How’s uni?”, and also thinking about this time last year, and how desperate I was to keep living an adventure when I got home.

It turns out that living freely in this country, in this context, requires discipline. I read a really interesting thing the other day that said that we always think of the Ten Commandments as restricting, because they tell us what we can’t do. But actually, even besides from all the stuff about Jesus and forgiveness, that’s a silly way to think about it because freedom doesn’t come from there being no constraints – that’s like a painter moaning that he only ever gets to use red, yellow and blue, or a songwriter complaining that she’s forced to work with these same twelve notes every day. Instead, freedom comes when we achieve mastery over our constraints. Creativity is discovering the utmost potential in the combination of our limitations and our materials’. And in the same way as creativity in art only comes when the artist has the persistence, the commitment and the self-control to master her materials; creativity in life is only possible when we put the effort in to master our materials, our constraints and limitations, and choose to use them to their fullest potential.

They always say about writer’s block: just put something on the page. Every day. That’s the way to be creative. It’s not some magic spirit that you need to catch, or that is mystically out of your control. As that dancer says: “freedom may only be achieved through discipline. … you learn to conform, to submit yourself to the demands of your craft, so that you may finally be free.” And I’m convinced that that is true of life. It takes discipline and obedience and effort to become finally free. I have to keep putting something on the page even when I can’t be bothered, pushing myself to live more lovingly, more creatively, more intentionally.

So, I suppose, let’s see how this year goes.

Get Out of the Car

I watched a really good film the other day. But here’s the big shocker: IT WASN’T THE LION KING. I know. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Anyway, despite not being the Lion King, I really liked this film. It was called Rush and it was a true story about two Formula One drivers (it was better than it sounds…). It’s about this intense rivalry between a British guy James Hunt, who’s basically just an absolute lad in the worst possible sense – womanizer, alcoholic – but also an incredibly talented/gutsy driver, and this German called Nicci Lauda. Lauda is much quieter, not that good with the ladies or whatever, but he’s incredibly driven (if you’ll excuse the semi-intentional pun). He’s defied his parents and staked everything on becoming the best race-driver in the world, and he works insanely hard, and is ridiculously smart. He makes tiny alterations to the car set-up, getting his mechanics to work all night, just to eke out another couple of tenths of a second.

Anyway, the big shadow that looms over the whole thing is that at this point F1 was insanely dangerous. 20 drivers started the championship each year, and almost every year, somebody died. Hunt vomits before every race with fear, but he lives off the adrenalin – the thrill of dancing with death. Lauda knows the risk, and he’s willing to take it in order to be the best. And then he gets married. And you see his new wife and him running around and laughing on their honeymoon, and it’s really beautiful because you’ve literally never seen this guy happy before. And then later that night you see he’s got out of bed and he’s just staring out of the window, and she comes and asks if he’s OK. He looks at her, and says, “I’m happy. Happiness is the enemy. If you’re happy, you have something to live for.”

When the honeymoon is over, he gets back to racing, and there comes a race in Germany, and it’s tipping it down with rain. The visibility is awful, the grip is non-existant, and Lauda calls a meeting to try and call the race off – he says it’s too dangerous. Hunt says he wants to race; and the others agree with him. Lauda knows he can’t let his lead slip, so he races. Half way through, Lauda makes contact with another car, crashes, and ends up knocked out as his car burns around him – it takes them a whole minute to get him out. He’s flown to hospital and eventually wakes up, with horrific burns on his head and face, and in his lungs. He lies in bed, watching Hunt win race after race, eating up his championship lead, as the doctors vacuum his lungs to clear burnt tissue. After a few weeks you see Lauda getting out of bed, and trying to force his race-helmet on over the bandages. His wife comes in, and sees him in absolute agony, but he looks at her and says – “If you love me, you won’t say anything.” He has to get back in the car, he has to win.

And he does: against all advice, he gets back in the car with a few races to go, and he’s doing well. Then it’s the final race in Japan, and he’s got a 3 point lead over Hunt. It’s 10 points for 1^st place and 6 points for 2^nd, so if Hunt wins the race, he’ll take the championship. The day comes; and it’s raining again. Hard. But this is the biggest television event F1 has ever seen, there’s no way they will cancel the race. So Hunt and Lauda suit up, put their helmets on, and line up on the grid: Hunt in first position, Lauda in second.

Lauda gets a quick start, and pushes through on the inside past Hunt into the first corner – taking the lead – all the way round the first lap Hunt pushes to try and regain the position but Lauda is quick enough to stay ahead, and it’s almost impossible for Hunt to see anything in the thick spray flying up from Lauda’s tyres. And then suddenly Lauda pulls off the track and into the pits. His mechanics rush over to his car as it comes to a stop and shout to him, asking what’s wrong with the car, what they need to fix. But Lauda just undoes his seat belt, and steps out the car. He takes his helmet off, walks back to the garage, and goes straight to his wife. “It was too dangerous,” he says.

They sit in their trailer and watch on the TV as Hunt wins the championship. And I – soppy as always – am weeping with joy. Because of this simple act of him just saying, ‘My life is more than my achievement.’ Saying, ‘I want to be a champion, but that’s not all that I am; I am loved. And my life is worth far more than this race because I am loved, and I love.’

As I was chatting with Rachael about how much I loved this film I started thinking, why did that get to me so much? And I realised something that to be honest is pretty obvious: at some level, my heart lives for achievements. Without really being aware of it, I make that the thing that I live for, that gets me up in the morning and keeps me up at night, that makes me feel valuable, and the thing I most value: achievement. There’s a certain buzz to having done something good. Thing is it’s pretty obvious when it’s something like getting good marks or parts in plays or whatever – what’s subtler and more dangerous is that I can get that buzz from lots of people coming to an event that I organize, or someone telling me that they like this blog, or even just having a ‘good conversation’ with someone. Obviously these things are all good things, it’s not wrong to be happy about them at all, the thing is that I casually let them slip into prime position, at the very centre of my heart, as the thing that I live for. I end up, subconsciously, living out of the assumption that I am worth something because I achieve things.

But that’s not true. My joy shouldn’t come from the fact of my achievements. It should come from the fact that I am God’s achievement. I am his masterpiece. I realised the other day: that joy I get – that buzz when I do something and I think, ‘That is good, I am pleased with that’ – well, God gets that feeling when he looks at me. He thinks, ‘Now that is very good. I am pleased with that.’ And that’s the place I should be waking up into every morning. The joy of knowing that my life is worth more than my success because I am loved, and I love. The joy that a dog gets from the praise and affection of it’s owner. The delight of a child in that moment where his parents say, “Son, we are very proud of you.” That’s what I want to keep my heart beating: the fact that I am God’s masterpiece.

Now I’m not saying that God is proud of me because I’m such a good person. Definitely not. All I have to do to remind myself of that is to read Jesus describing how he wants us to live in the Sermon the Mount. Or reflect for a few minutes on the perfect, spotless love at the heart of God – that holiness that hurts the eyes – and then think about my own heart when someone ever-so-slightly wounds my pride, or speaks in an annoying whiny voice. No. If I’m honest, based on who I am in myself, I can’t look a love like that in the eyes and not be utterly ashamed. God’s not proud of me because of my success at life or my success in being a good person. He’s proud of me because I’m his son. He’s proud of me because Jesus came and found me when I didn’t even realise I was lost, held my hand, and led me to his Father, and when he saw me, and saw Jesus beside me, he loved me for his sake, and he adopted me to be his little brother. He’s proud of me because he has adopted me and I’m his kid now. I’m his kid.

And the moment he adopted me, he started working on something beautiful within me. Started a masterpiece in my heart and head and body and soul. And he’s not finished with me yet. And now everything that I do that is good, or loving, or beautiful, is his achievement. More than that, everything I am is his delight.

So this blog is just me trying to remind myself of that. And remembering that yeah, I want to be world champion; but I am free to get out of the car. Because I am loved, and I love.

Memorable Scenes (Climb More Trees)

I’m going to miss my bike shed. There was a bike shed at the back of Cripps, the accommodation building I was living in this year at uni, and strange as it sounds, I’m really going to miss it. Of course it wasn’t technically ‘mine’ other than in the communal sense that I was allowed to use it, but it felt like mine, because I climbed on it a lot.

Slight tangent at this point: of all the ways to claim ownership of something, climbing on it is my favourite. It is much more socially acceptable than the most popular options in the animal kingdom (weeing on it, trying to mate with it) and also highly enjoyable; it comes with a sense of achievement, pleasurable physical exertion, and a slight frisson of danger.

Anyway, I liked climbing on the roof of the bike shed, and I especially liked it when someone climbed onto the roof with me. There is nothing like a top quality DMC, with your flip-flops dangling over the edge, watching the world go by without anyone realising you’re there.

You’ll be glad to hear that I am actually going somewhere with this, so here goes: I read in a book which I think I’ve mentioned here before, A Million Miles In a Thousand Years by Don Miller, about memorable scenes. Think about films. Lots of the best scenes in the films you most remember happen in memorable settings. Maybe sometimes the characters just sit and chat in a coffee shop, but the best moments, the ones that feel most meaningful, are when they’re on the roof at night, or they’ve climbed a mountain and they’re standing at the peak, or when they row out into the middle of the lake and have a picnic. Does anyone remember the amazing bit in 500 Days of Summer when they fall in love in IKEA?

Now, some may despise that particular scene, and more might think this all just sounds a bit indie and pointless – but I’m quite serious about it. Stories respond to their settings. Imagine that Sarah is swimming out into the lake at dawn, to sit on the little rocky outcrop that is her favourite place, and watch the sun rise. When she gets there, she looks up and sees Rosie sitting there too! They start chatting. What would that conversation be like? Now imagine that Sarah is going to Oxford Street to do some shopping, she sits down on the tube and as she looks up, realises Rosie is sitting next to her. They start chatting. Would that one be the same?

I know this from experience – Rachael was at my house the other day, and some of the time we just were sitting chatting in the living room like so many times before. Then for a bit, we climbed out of Mum and Dad’s window and sat on the roof instead, looking out over the garden (and into the neighbours’, but not in a weird way). As you can imagine – we were different on the roof. It felt like we were sharing something that was worth sitting up and enjoying – we were more alive and attentive to each other in that moment. Looking back though, I’m thinking, what if we’d taken cupcakes out there, and those drinks with little umbrellas in them? How much better would that have been?

And I can confirm as a genuine 100% fact, that there are some people who I’ve had several meaningful conversations with, but all of them have taken place on the branches of trees. Because when we feel like we’re in a memorable scene, it calls something out of us. Of course we are capable of being fun, or creative, or silly, or deep, or honest regardless of where we are. But the mountains call it out of us. The lake, the trees, the rooftops. Honestly, I believe that if we put the effort in to create scenes in our lives that are unique, and exciting, and beautiful; our souls will rise to the challenge. They will leap at the chance of a moment that is meaningful. And surely the more of those moments, the better.