Plainly worship is more than music (Romans 12:1) but, since you brought it up, I am interested in music as worship.  Communal worship has always been important and music important as a part of it.  But what of the mystical ‘worship experience’?*  I’m theoretically charismatic born and raised and sometimes, during the music,… that feeling of a lifting, a putting into perspective of the trials of life, a connection… to fellow worshippers and, maybe, to the divine… It’s amazing and powerful and addictive and…… I’ve felt the same way at rock gigs…

Does that invalidate the whole experience?

Have I mistaken for divine, the inherent power of music, or of being in a crowd of the likeminded or, worse still, of showmanship?

Or

Is music inherently spiritual?

Or something else?

*2nd disclaimer. No, I’m not advocating spiritual experience as a goal of worship in its own right.

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Some of these things actually stem from my childhood – excuse the Freudian nature – such as the philosophy of doing things correctly. I realised a few years ago that the only form of procrastination I’ll entertain is when I’m unable to do something properly – if something is blocking me somehow or if I don’t have the tools I need to do it right, it won’t happen until I do.

My best guess is that this behaviour comes from how I was raised by my father. He is not a perfectionist, but he is a very hard worker and, in challenging me to do things well, I’ve finally gotten it! (albeit quite awhile after I left home)

Examples like this, I’ve noticed, can be seen in my daily routines and in every aspect of my life. They have formed who I am today and have become a part of me.

Some more examples of some of my own personal philosophies are:

• That doing things like riding the bike home in the rain instead of catching the bus are good for the soul
• That many, many things are better left unsaid – pearls and wisdom and whatnot
• That either nothing is sacred, or everything is (still working on this one, but i’m convinced there’s no in-between)
• That the most precious possession a man can have on Earth is a family
• That life is NOT like a box of chocolates at all, in fact, it is what you make it
• That the world is more flexible and forgiving than The West would want you to believe
• That if anything IS sacred, then friendship should definitely be one of those things

I’d go on, and maybe will in a future post, but the thing I want to point out is that we are shaped by our responses. How we’ve responded to circumstances in our childhoods through to today has inevitably shaped who we are today. It is important to know what you believe about life. In God’s pleasure He made us all so very different, and that makes you and I the Spice of Life.

Your responses are what create your philosophies. These response patterns in your history create a ripple effect in a pool of cement, and they eventually set- so it’s important that they set correctly, because that cement will be the foundation upon which your character is built.

Location:Earl’s Court Rd,Kensington,United Kingdom

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One thing he mentioned was about Walking under an open heaven.

He was talking about the constant glory, the constant presence, the fulness of The Holy Ghost. When Jesus left the Earth, He left Christians with a gift- The Holy Ghost. He is One in The Trinity, and God. And He lives in us, Christians.

Bill was referring to the often misappropriated power in The Spirit which most Christians either never recognize or never seek. The Spirit is the power that raised Jesus from the dead, if you believe in that. I do. The idea is that the same Spirit, the same Power, and that incredible peace & knowledge which comes with it should be living in us… But it doesn’t stop there.

Bill argues that, based on some scriptures such as the tounges of fire in Acts, where there is a distinct difference between being filled with The Spirit and The Spirit Descending or Resting upon you. Myself and at least one other member of LoveBristol are practising being aware of this Open Heaven as we go about our daily lives, and the fruit of it has been varied.

I look forward to reporting more as time goes on.

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I think trying to get people to have an encounter with God is like trying to drink sand from a sieve. It’s just one of those things which seems to be ruled by the law of chaos, or the law of nature – uncontrollable. It something which cannot be engineered, suggested or even nudged. The only exception to that, in my experience, is the times when we sit and talk and hearts connect. You know what I mean – that completely unexpected conversation which happened when you were walking through town and you saw one of your friends and you stopped for coffee and everything just seemed right. You talked about everything and nothing, and before long, you noticed there was something unusual. It was like the planets had aligned and something clicked. Maybe it was the combination of a perfect amount of aural noise in that particular Starbucks at that particular time of day. Or maybe it was the way that new trainee barista accidentally burned the beans or the milk, and the scent made it’s way out the door, mixed with the homeless woman’s designer imposter perfume she found in the dumpster and instigated a deep emotional response when it hit your nostrils at the exact moment.

I don’t know.

But there’s something about those times – within the chaos – where things suddenly make sense. Like those digital prints where you’re supposed to stare at it from an angle and squint your eyes and suddenly there’s a picture of a unicorn in a field with stars flying out of its horn – things just suddenly click. And when it happens, it’s such a contrast to the normal noise and chaos that you can’t help but notice. You first realise it mentally, and maybe you’re feeling particularly calm and content (which is also weird), and maybe you say something about and maybe you don’t. But it happens, and you probably haven’t forgotten about it. I’ve had a few of those experiences that I’ve remembered.

But anyway, Ruth and I realised that Love is not something that can be taught or told – it’s something that has to come from Love himself – God. If a person is to love others, they must first gain that thing which they don’t yet have. God is love, therefore, to give love, one must gain God. Who can give God? Who has God?

Who can harness chaos or tame the laws of nature in order to construct that perfect awe moment in which we might have an experience with God and get some love – some of Him?

It’s not always mystical – for me, my most recent awe moment was with a friend out front of a Starbucks. It was the middle of the day, we smoked a few cigarettes and drank a few coffees. There were just as many middle-class people as usual, just as many homeless beggars as usual, just as much noise and just as much light as usual. But for some reason, during that hour, something clicked and we both went very clear-headed – like everything all of a sudden made sense and we could easily wade at will through the world’s information and come up with the exact tidbits we needed. We were like a stolen Google search algorithm operating at 8.47bn search results per nanosecond with 100% accuracy. Like things were no longer down to chance, but if they were, that would have been fine as well.

What is it?

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Here’s what I want to talk about; the problems of

• personal dissatisfaction in being a pawn of Western Democratic Consumerism
• the pressure of fashion, design and ‘stuff’
• and the mantra of modern minimalism

Being a designer, visionary and entrepreneur, I am one who is deeply steeped in consumerism. In fact, I’m a well-oiled cog in the consumer machine. The ‘verse’ that I heard many years ago which will not leave my head goes something like

A key to Happiness is learning to require less.

I’d like to unpack that a bit. Firstly, when raised in The West, we are taught that power, happiness, control, self-worth and the general idea of value is intrinsically linked to money. This fallacy naturally births such social annoyances as:

• the idea that your possessions are what determine your personal worth
• and, the idea that your income / vocation are what determine your social standing.

There are many variations within each of these, and while by no means a comprehensive list, you get the idea.

Secondly, one needn’t be a rocket scientist to realise that these are indeed fallacies and blatant un-truths, and that should one live by these as though they might be true, one would surely be making a mistake resulting in a state of true discontent. I know, because I’ve been there.

Thirdly, the quote loosely assumes that Happiness is the ultimate goal, when in fact, The Glory of God is the true ultimate goal. The best thing a man can do – the most meaningful – is to glorify God.

So we have a problem. If our historic learnt nature is to believe that money brings the true goal of happiness, but we know this doctrine to be false, then how does one overcome this? I have no answer for all, but for me, one thing has seemed to make progress toward the sloughing off of this arcane falsity.

The practice of requiring less

In my pursuit of requiring less, I have noticed a few things. The first is that you have to want it for it to work. One can’t just stop buying things (or whatever the case may be) and expect that to make you happy. There has to be a true desire in-place. In my case, that desire came from a mental picture of the type of man I want to be.

Secondly, it’s a mentality. A mindset. The paradigm has to shift from the idea that money makes you happy, to the idea that [something else] makes you happy. For me, again, my motivation came from my mental picture of the man I want to become – a man who requires little, and whose satisfaction comes from other things such as God, family, community, music etc. There must be a shift in how you pursue your ‘happiness’ – consider what is truly important to you other than money.

The culture of minimalism

I grew up, as I said, in a culture of consumerism. For me, I responded to that in my adulthood by hating it. I hated that money dictated my social status. I hated that social status was important to me. I hated that stuff was important to me. So my natural reaction was to stand up for the things I believed in – that I didn’t believe money and stuff and social status were the keys to happiness, and further, that happiness was not the best true goal.

For me, what mattered in life was different roads toward glorifying God. For me this was time with Him, worshipping etc. Time with community and family, even though I had a history of bad family relations. These things, to me, would bring glory to God through my life. And I believe that if I glorify Him with my life, then there’s nothing more I could really want.

So the culture comes in when there is one person doing something differently – change. That’s the word that gets attention. When people see something different from what they’re used to, they notice it. We are drawn to change, and yet fundamentally fear it. If you’re in a blue room and there’s a white dot on it’s ceiling, we’ll stare at the white dot. It is contrast, difference, and individuality. Change is the same – scary but alluring.

Minimalism

There’s a way to live which draws sustenance from a more sustainable source, where life’s goal has nothing to do with our egos, and in which fulfilment is actually found through a simple process of distillation.

This was all a bit of rant at this point, but I hope to expand upon it in the near future as I explore it a bit more. Until then, read this very interesting statement from the company MUJI explaining their company ethos regarding consumerism and sustainability.

muji.com/message

Please let me know what you think.

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The obvious question is, how the hell did this happen!?

Have we literally dug so deep a hole, travelled so long a departure as to have come to this— this squalid, homogeneous, Barbie-pink version of our former, more international selves? Are we really so narrow-minded and ignorant to have voluntarily relinquished those gems of inter-nationalism, those unique characteristics which once stood boldly on foreign territory, only to have realised now that they would be mangled and wringed of every last drop of glory before being reissued in the guise of new culture? Shame on us.

Call to artists:

You represent the only redeeming quasi-characteristic of Western pop culture. You are the last line of defense, and the last men and women standing. It is only you who can turn this machine around. You won’t be the driver, or the director, but the mass of ants in the road who carry off the entire picnic in an unexpected direction. Indeed— the only way to redeem what this culture could have been is for you to continue following the Passion inside yourselves. We can no longer afford to wait for our leaders to act, or for them to issue policy.

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• Why I don’t go to church much: Part 1

Everything in life, when analysed and organised, makes up a gradient of enlightenment. For example, music is dark while abstaining from the practise of dwelling on the unexplainable is light. Or rather, music is a hi level, low-fidelity item, while the latter is pure wisdom. Each of them have their place, and when in their proper place, make up a seamless transition from dark to light. A gradient of enlightenment. The question, then, is whether or not a life should be comprised of a complete gradient; and what happens if one only has a partial gradient tending to either dark or light.

This is about consciousness, but more particularly, addresses the question of the priority and uniqueness of ‘optimisation’- namely, whether or not it has value in the eyes of God. An argument for is that, for one, I personally see it’s benefits, and am therefor conscious of it as a good thing (being human).

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Jesus Rides Fixie

Jesus Downhills

Psycho Killer

Lorem Ipsum Kills – white

Lorem Ipsum Kills – black

Fun with Electricity – gray

Fun with Electricity – black

Drugs Real Bad – red

Drugs Real Bad – green

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Have fun, have a read!

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UPDATE 24 July, 2009 3:15pm GMT: Just received a confirmation email from teepay.com saying my design has been approved! Yay. Will post a link as soon as it’s available for purchase. Thanks teepay.

UPDATE 24 July, 2009 3:40pm GMT: ‘Psycho Killer’ tee is now available for purchase at teepay.com/frontend/showtee/1711

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