Plato's cave

I was reminded today of something I found very powerful when I first heard it: Plato's Cave. You may well have come across it yourself, but if not, here it is in essence. Plato said, suppose there is a cave, and inside the cave there are some men chained up to a wall, so that they can only see the back wall of the cave and nothing else. These men can't see anything outside of the cave, or even see each other clearly, but they can see shadows of what is going on outside the cave. Wouldn't these prisoners come to think that the shadows were real, and that was what things really looked like?

Suppose now that one of the men escaped, and got out of the cave, and saw what real people looked like, and real trees and grass. If he went back to the cave and told the other men what he had seen, would they believe him, or would they think he was crazy? Plato says that we are like those men sitting in the cave: we think we understand the real world, but because we are trapped in ourselves we can see only the shadows on the wall.

If you've seen The Matrix, this idea will be familiar to you.

The power of it is in its application: we're all, to some extent, cave dwellers with only a partial view of reality. And the question is: what do we do when someone comes into the frame saying what we think is reality is actually only a pale reflection or a distortion. Historically the people who've broadcast such messages have found themselves strung from trees or burning at a stake. Hmm....

Good for the soul

My wife just said to me, with one of those sighs of satisfaction: "Sundays are good for the soul". And you know what, she's right. If you've seen earlier blogs, you may know that we are currently 'between churches' (euphemism for 'we've left a church and aren't altogether sure which we'll be hooking up with').

After longer than I care to recall, Sunday mornings are suddenly free of a schedule geared to the start of church, with all the pressure and tension that can bring when you're trying to get a family mobilised and out of the door at the same time as each other. So this morning, having been for a life-giving run through the wind and rain, showered and put on warm, dry clothes, and luxuriated with a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge, I'm now listening to Beethoven's 6th with the watery sun just starting to brighten up this grey wintery day. It is well with my soul!

As I reflect on this I'm coscious of just how simple these soul-enlarging factors are. None of it requires me to stroke myself through shopping, watching TV, going somewhere exotic - although the porridge did require a microwave!

A closing thought from the back of a pack of ASDA 'Chilled Oats': Dr Maximilian Bircher-Benner, who was a pioneer of natural health and invented muesli, recommended a holistic approach to good health involving a balance of natural diet, work and spiritual peace - recommending daily walks and spending time sunbathing. Sounds like Dr Max and I are on a similar wavelength.

How many mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?

I spent an hour this morning sitting in Renault Manchester. Major breakdown, looking at new cars? No, having a headlamp bulb changed! Unbelievable! And it cost me £45 for the privilege.

I know what you're thinking: 'this boy is an imbecile'. Maybe so, but the truth is when I realised my bulb had blown, I opened the bonnet to get at the back of the headlamp assemlby, like I did with my previous car, only to find there is no obvious access to it. Thinking I must be missing something, I reached for the Renault owner's manual.....which advised me to take the car into a Renault dealer! To get an idea of what a complex job it was, it took a fully qualified Renault mechanic one hour to do it.

I write this because I am feeling a bewildered and incredulous. When did life become so complicated?

Now I'm no techno-phobe. I love being able to access 1000 of my favourite songs, or an inspiring preach from the other side of the globe, on a matchbox size device; Watching a quality film on widescreen TV with surround sound is a great experience; and I'd be the first to praise the reliability of my car with the blown headlamp bulb. But all this comes at a price, and there are times, like this morning, when I feel like the price has just reached unacceptable limits.

Oh, for the simple life.

Mapping my world

I've been thinking about maps. I like maps. I like maps even when I have no intention of going to a particular place: tracing the progress of an intrepid explorer across the Gobi Desert, or along the old Silk Route. A map like that has the power to transport me to some dangerous, mysterious land.

I also like maps when I've been somewhere and I want to know how that place fits with others I know. I'll come home, maybe from a run or a bike ride, having been a bit lost but eventually found my way, and I'll wonder 'how did I do that?' - and the map gives me the answer, the 'aha!' moment.

Even more, I like the idea of mental maps - versions of the world that we hold in our heads. Like paper maps, mental maps aren't the reality, they're just representations of reality. Without a mental map, a concept of how the universe fits together, we'd have to relearn everything that confronted us every moment of the day. Our mental map allows us to interpret what happens to us based on our previous experiences. The danger though is that we can come to believe that our mental map IS reality, that how we see and make sense of the world IS how the world is. It's not; it's an approximation.

And in the same way that my understanding of my surroundings changes when I have the 'aha!' experience described above, so it is with my mental imagery. When I have an experience that jars with what I thought to be true, I have a choice. I can ignore the new evidence in order to preserve the integrity of my map. Or, I can take a fresh look at the map and be prepared to challenge its accuracy in the light of new knowledge. Now that can be scary, but to live refusing to review our map is death.

Part of my pilgrimage is about remapping the territory, trying to look at familiar things through a fresh pair of eyes and seeing if there isn't a different interpretation, a more accurate view of the world.

...like jazz

I've been reading 'Blue Like Jazz' by Donald Miller. In a bookshop it would be labelled a 'Christian book', but don't be put off if, like me, you're suspicious of Christian books. Sure, Miller is a Christian, but (and I'm very conscious as I write that word 'but') he's also very honest.

While it reads as a hotch-potch of autobiographical tales, it's really a book about spiritual growth, a deceptively simple, often raw, yet deeply profound book about spiritual growth.

Miller uses stories and reflections of his own life to introduce themes of redemption (the sexy carrots), pride, change, church (how I go without getting angry), romance, isolation and community, money, worship....and does so in a way that is so real, so gutsy, so funny and so uncomfortable.

As he says "before I lived in community, I thought faith, mine being Christian faith, was something a person did alone, like monks in caves...It was all stuff you did in a quiet room." I could have written that. What Miller awakened me to was something that I already knew deep down - that faith and spirituality is NOT an individual thing, or at least it cannot remain that. At least half of it is about real life in and around people.

Whether or not you call yourself a Christian, if you're drawn to ideas of spirituality and spiritual growth and have been put off by the Christianity you've come across before, give this a go - it might just be the making of you. In fact, if you'd like to read it I'd be glad to buy you a copy! Just drop me a line.

Oh, and Happy New Year.