Culture Club

Hey Douglas Coupland!
This is a challenging and thought-provoking interview with Douglas Coupland, he of Generation X, which first appeared in the Church Times about this time last year. One of my regrets is that I don't either find or make time to read intelligent fiction, or indeed as much non-fiction, as I would wish. His latest novel is called Eleanor Rigby- link on the right of this article- and certainly looks worth reading.

There's a distinct conflict between nihilist cynicism and redemptional optimism in this interview. Parts of it make me feel decidedly uncomfortable at 45, a half-decade beyond Coupland's assertions about reaching 40. Can I really have done all there is to do in this life or, as the song puts it "Is that all there is?".
In some ways, I do know what he means. Often I feel like a pair of scales these days, talking of which I did feel moved to take up the "Big Challenge" offered by the BBC to a Fat Nation (www.bbc.co.uk/fatnation) last night after being horrified when I stepped on my own bathroom scales. I must have looked quite a sight afterwards, doing the recommended buttock-clenching exercises while watching the lovely series Doc Martin with the excellent Martin Clunes!

Since then I've had at least two of my five portions of fruit and veg, and have drunk more water. But how long can I rise to the challenge. I hope and pray I can- I know how much I need to lose weight really, but it's so hard with the enjoyable tastes of savouries, cheeses etc. etc. Unlike one of last night's volunteers, I can take or leave cake but show me a bag of crisps and it's a hard contest.

The scales I'm really talking about here, however are the determiners of spiritual equilibrium, and no judge apart from the Almighty- who I firmly believe does exist, does love us and does have a purpose for all lives- can ever balance those. In fact he has done, once and for all, set them back to "zero" if you like, through the death and resurrection of his only Son, Jesus Christ. Whatever has passed, however much excess baggage or sin we have taken on board, there is always the chance to shed those excess Kill-ograms, no matter how often we fall back into our old ways. Life does not begin at forty, but whenever you accept the living Lord into your life, however hard it may be to recognise Him in an often senseless worldl. In my case, live began at 25.

Even writing this is some form of re-assurance to my own soul, I think, sitting in a quiet flat in Eastbourne where I probably won't see a soul all day unless it's in a shop or out on the street. Actually, I'm not alone- God is Now Here- and times like this and my self-imposed "summer" break are an opportunity and a time to be savoured- to get to know him better, to share the never ending needs of the world and not least for offering the opportunity to write so regularly in this blog!
Lennon and McCartney were very perceptive with one of their saddest songs, though. How many others are there out there like Eleanor Rigby? This week I have heard of at least two others who I can only do my best to help. But my name's not Eleanor Rigby and I hope it's not conceited to say that I've believed for some years now that I have the seeds of greatness within me, but I'm still trying to work out exactly where I'm meant to plant them! Only when I have found that spot in the global garden ( Coupland alludes to the Garden of Eden in a rather strange way about animals- not sure I agree with him there) will I think I find that true happiness, or rather holiness, blossoming.

Last Sunday, at the baptism service at Christ Church I mentioned in my previous posting, I had one of those experiences I find increasingly common, of looking round at unknown faces in the congregation, complete strangers, and somehow seeing something of the image of God in them, which after all they are. God made man in his own image, and the very diversity of those images shows the incomprehensible beauty, wonder, creativity and possibilities of the God who is love, and hence of every precious life he has made. How many of those faces I looked at though really hide loneliness, anxiety, doubt, fear? How many of them have real friendships where they can completely open up? How many of them feel lost without a "road map", to use one of the buzz phrases of the moment?

Of course, in the joy of raising children, which so far life has not presented to me, many I think "find their reason, find their rhyme". There was a wonderful one-hit wonder in the seventies, or was it the eighties, which I think my own dear Dad, God rest his soul, brought back from Heathrow. I think he had the privilege of meeting the song writer boarding a flight. I'm sure we've still got it on a single somewhere. I'll check it out and maybe put a link or the words on here sometime.

Somehow, it's the simple things that often prove the most joyous, that give life its true meaning. For me, increasingly, I find it is in getting back to nature, from watching the flowers in the garden grow, to standing on hill or vale looking out over landscapes glued by the creator with the bond of eternity, to hearing the sweet soaring song of a lark or watching a butterfly or bee flit from stemen to stemen carrying their precious cargo of pollen. It's these sort of things which come naturally to a child, because they are meant to. The excitement of a new discovery seen through clear young eyes unblinded by jaded familiarity, the power of an imagination in which anything is possible and indeed, as many a parent used to say to their precious offspring "There's no such word as can't". These are the precious gifts which so many of us lose as we grow older, sadly.

Except novelists, of course.Imagination, the power to see and represent things differently and to have a vision of a different world (past, present or future) is the very life blood of that sort of creative writer. I'd love to be a novelist or a poet, and indeed when I was in the Lake District exploring Wordsworth's home territory last October a poet in my own soul maybe stirred. On the other hand, maybe there are different creative blood groups- mine feels like a journaller's blood rather than a novelist's. We'll see. Dare I hope to be the next Douglas Coupland?

In the meantime, I go on worrying about the everyday things in a way which seems much more urgent and painful than it ever was in my pre-forty existence- here again, in the interview Coupland, although 4 years younger than me, seems to have discovered something of perhaps every forty-something's angst. These have been a very difficult five years, ever since Dad died just short of seeing in the new century. There are responsibilities and concerns I never really had to think about before too much. I worry about my Mum and the limitations of age on her activity levels and interest in the world. I worry about finding the right job, living in the right area, sharing all these things with the best of friends and daring to hope I may yet find my Miss Right. Reconciling all these seemingly conflicting interests certainly seems to demand the wisdom of Solomon. Yet the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Maybe it is also the beginning of life, forty or twenty.