Month: October 2017

Puddleglum’s Wager

by Andrew Micah, posted in fantasy literature, imagination, philosophy, Uncategorized

I made a reference in my last post to someone named Puddleglum. I’m having a hard time falling asleep at the moment and looking for a good use of my time, so I suppose I’ll put to page some thoughts concerning Puddleglum and his statement of faith upon which I have been ruminating for some time.

First of all, who is Puddleglum? For those who don’t know, he is one of the main characters in C. S. Lewis’s fantasy novel The Silver Chair, which was the fourth to be published of the seven Chronicles of Narnia (although, according to the chronology of Lewis’ Narnia fantasy, it is the sixth book to take place). Puddleglum is a Narnian Marsh-wiggle, which is to say that he is a lanky marsh-dwelling humanoid with an overall greenish complexion and webbed feet and hands. Puddleglum, like all Marsh-wiggles, constantly gives voice to a very gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life, as though he were expecting the worst possible outcome in any given situation. In spite of this, in the course of events he paradoxically reveals himself to be the one person most to be relied upon for holding on to hope when hope is hardest to get hold of.

(spoiler alert! the following includes a revelation of some of the most significant plot points and dialogue from The Silver Chair.)

When we come to chapter 12 of The Silver Chair, our friend Puddleglum has, along with two children from our world (named Eustace and Jill), been for some time engaged in a difficult and troubled expedition in search of Rilian, the lost prince of Narnia. At long last, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill have succeeded in discovering the lost prince, who is held captive in the underground kingdom of an evil enchantress styled the Lady of the Green Kirtle, but more properly known as Queen Jadis. No sooner have they set Prince Rilian free from the enchantments which have been used to make him a captive and a slave than they are confronted by Jadis, who attempts by her powerful spell to make them all slaves together. Her spell is so powerful that she is able to lull the Prince and the two children from our world into forgetting that there is any real world other than her bleak underground kingdom of evil. In this moment of crisis, it is Puddleglum who rises to the occasion. He puts out the Witch’s enchanted fire with his bare foot (giving off a very disenchanting smell) and proceeds to give her defiance with this speech:

“‘One word, Ma’am,’ he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. ‘One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you’ve said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies making up a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if here isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court a once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”

I have found in these words something very helpful to stiffen the backbone of my faith in times of trial (which is, no doubt, what their author intended). Puddleglum’s argument is simple. If God and His world isn’t what really is, life without Him is miserable and meaningless by comparison. It’s odd enough that we’d have longings for something that never was or is or will be, but even that aside, if there is no God, no meaning, no reality, then what have we lost by pretending that there is? I’ll wager you, says Puddleglum. If you’re right and I’m wrong, I still haven’t lost anything by pretending; and if indeed you are right, to give up my pretending would be to give up the only thing that makes my life worth living.

This is, I think, a much better wager than Pascal’s. (see Pascal’s Wager at wikipedia.org) Whereas Pascal’s wager is an entirely self-centered bet, Puddleglum comes at us from a very different direction. He says, in effect, “I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. What is it to me if you say that the Lord does not exist? I would rather go on believing Him and living as one of His, because without Him, life is so miserable and empty that there’s no point to it at all. Just look how lame your version of ‘truth’ is,” Puddleglum says. “It’s so useless that I might as well not believe it, because even if it’s true, believing it won’t better my life at all.”

He can say all this, of course, because deep down in his heart, Puddleglum knows not only that Aslan and Narnia are real, but also that Aslan and Narnia are the only thing that matters. He takes the power (and ultimately his friends) out of his enemy’s hands by showing that, even if the Witch isn’t lying, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by giving in; and if she is indeed telling the truth, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying on as though she is lying. At which point the Witch shows her true colors and turns into the serpent she is. There’s not a lot you can do to someone who says, at heart,

“Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)

Those who follow Jesus are constantly being pressured by the world around us to compromise our obedience to Him. Why do we trouble our souls for a fantasy? And while we know that Jesus is so much better than a fantasy, I think sometimes it would do us good to challenge the Enemy’s false version of truth not just on its falsehood, but its uselessness, because Jesus is so much that much better than what they want us to give Him up for that it would hardly matter if He wasn’t real at all. Of course, He is. It just wouldn’t matter if He wasn’t–not enough to make us give Him up. The Lord is our portion. He’s all we have in Heaven and all we have in Earth, and all we really want for all that. As William Cowper wrote:

“But O! Thou bounteous giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”

The substance of Christian devotion is to be able to say that sort of thing with an honest heart. If we can, nothing is going to pull us away from Jesus. If we can’t, something invariably will.

So hurrah for good old Puddleglum! And may God give us the strength to persevere in love like his, which is better than mere faith (I Corinthians 13:13).

Songs of His Pursuit, introduction

by Andrew Micah, posted in autobiography, music, philosophy

Tonight I was dwelling on a song that was one of my earliest favorites and remains a favorite of mine, “This Man” by Jeremy Camp. As I was thinking about it, and attempting to put into words how it made me feel when I was eleven and twelve years old, and how it makes me feel now, I had the thought of doing a series of posts discussing some of my most favorite songs, why they are my favorite songs, and how God has pursued my heart through them. I’ll be talking about “This Man” in a future post, but for now, I want to say some introductory things to set the stage for what will follow. (Note: these posts will carry on sporadically with no definite end. They will not be an uninterrupted series, but will be interspersed with writings on other subjects.)

When that song was released to radio in 2005, I didn’t have access to an iPod or a high-speed internet connection. Spotify didn’t exist, Youtube was brand new, and our modem connection would, of course, hardly support anything requiring much in the way of data transfer. (I recall how, in the few times a week I was allowed to use our dial-up internet, I would wait patiently for several minutes at a time to load the MLB.com site). Nor did I have much in the way of discretionary income that could be spent on CDs. Add to all of this my parents’ disagreements between themselves about what sort of music they wanted their children to listen to, and my desire to stay out of that conflict, which led me to be secretive about giving too many honest indications to either parent what I really enjoyed or wanted to listen to. The result was that during my pre-teen and early teen years my free experience of the music that resonated with me most was limited mostly to evening hours when one or both parents were out and I could make free use of one of the radios in the house.

At that time I had no personal interest in the popular secular music, and indeed very little experience from which such an interest might arise. What I did enjoy (although at time with some reserve and a nagging sense of guilt, inspired mostly by my mother’s discomfort and general opposition to it) was the mainstream contemporary Christian music which was broadcast on four different FM stations in the suburbs of Chicago where I lived (and still live to the present). Probably in part because it was so much of the all that I had, I connected very deeply with the music. Not that I embraced all of it without any distinction in my preferences. Some songs I liked better than others, and a few songs I found to be annoying. But a few of the Christian songs that were popular on the radio from 2004 or 2005, when I really began paying attention, to 2009 or 2010, when my tastes (due in part to somewhat misguided moral impulses) began to turn in a different direction, provided the real soundtrack of those turbulent, conflicted years of my life (about which more will be written in future).

I had always, to some extent, known that I was a sinner, and also known that the only hope for my redemption was somehow to be found in the cross of Jesus Christ. God, however, seemed for almost all of the time to be very distant to me. This was partly because of brokenness and conflict in my own family that I did not know how to reconcile with the things we all said we believed, which brokenness and conflict led to distance in my relationship with both of my parents (although the distance was more pronounced and more honest in my relationship with my father). I really believe it was these crises, and an attempt to somehow escape the pain of them, which led to battles with ideas like solipsism and atheism in my pre-teen and teen years (about which I may write more later). If my experience is any indicator–and indeed, I think there is more than just my experience or even the experiences of others that speaks to the reality of this–there is no such thing as an honest atheist, or an honest solipsist. Ideas like these, as I understand, are simply ideological compensations for the pain of life in whatever form it comes–guilt, disappointment, grief over our own losses or sympathetic anger about the losses and hardships of others, and so forth. In saying this, I do not in any way mean to ridicule or belittle those who consider themselves atheists or solipsists. If you leave a man on his own (which is where all of us are without Christ), the pain of the world we live in and the life we live in it is a weight that will crush him. There are many, many kinds of suicide, only one of which stops a beating heart. Cutting all sense of connection to God or reality is something that a person might do as deliberately to bring an end to the pain of this life as cutting his own veins. In saying all this, my point is that while there is really no such thing as an honest atheist or an honest solipsist, there are honestly broken people who have chosen to not be honest with themselves and others about what they instinctively know to be true because, for reasons that are not entirely personally their own fault, what they know to be true is more than they can bear. I think those of us who are secure in the knowledge of the love of God should have compassion on them because God has compassion on them. I also think those of us who are not secure in the knowledge of God or His love must look to Jesus, and realize that in Him God has revealed His compassion for us, and having realized this, learn to have for ourselves some of the pity that He has for us.

At any rate, if I can point to any one factor in my life that, more than any other, kept me from letting myself go headlong into the spiritual hypothermia of those doubts about God and reality, it was music made by God’s people. There was something in the songs that tethered me to Hope. There was a love that echoed in the music and the words which, although no lengths of reassurance seemed to be able to convince me that it was really mine for the taking, I still could not let go of (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it would not let go of me). I didn’t know at all how to draw near, or even that I could; but at the same time I dared not forget it and pass it by, or let it pass me by. The moment I began to forget, I felt myself slipping into a nameless lostness in which there was no meaning, no point of reference, and no hope; and with all that I could muster of Puddleglum‘s defiant good sense and resolution, I raged against it, day after day, year after year. It wasn’t until my 16th year that I really for the first time came to understand myself as fully accepted with God through what Jesus did in His death and resurrection. For some people, that understanding (and of course the conviction of sin that must precede it) crashes in while they are going their way without much conscious pursuit of knowing God. For others like me, it comes after a lot of grappling and seeking and getting lost in one’s head and ultimately finding one’s way out into the wide reality of the love of God outside of us in which He beckons us to lose ourselves. Either way, whether we realize it or not, it is God pursuing us.

In the same way that human affection is inclined to attach itself to any place or object or thing which is associated in memory with the fondest experiences of every kind of love (whether it be familial or romantic love, or the love of friendship), my love of music is due in large part to the way that God pursued me through music. To talk about the songs I love is to talk about how God has loved me, and how I have become who I am through that love. There will as a result be some fragments of autobiography in the posts that follow in this series, and I hope those who read them will find in them something of interest that they can connect with and that may help them reflect on their own experiences.

~Andrew

A ship’s anchor from the deep

by Andrew Micah, posted in imagination, Uncategorized

“Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been read at his father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death, and for to-morrow’s victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow’s and to-morrow’s, the chain of association that brought the words home, like a rusty old ship’s anchor from the deep, might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and went on.”

The two pages that begin thus from book three, chapter nine of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities are among my favorite pages ever written.

New Release Roundup, 10/6/17

by Andrew Micah, posted in music

Last night was a Thursday night, which is, of course, that wonderful night of the week when, at 10:00 central time, all of the new major single and album releases of the week are released to streaming and download platforms like iTunes and Spotify. This is one of my favorite moments of the week. In this and successive weekly posts I’m going to highlight my favorite new music releases.

I’m going to start by saying that I think Maren Morris & Vince Gill’s single “Dear Hate” is a great thing. The song was written some years ago and recorded last year but was not released until this past Tuesday a response to the terrible acts of violence that took place at a country music festival in Las Vegas last Sunday evening. I don’t often find much in popular songs that comment on current events, but there is something different about this one. It’s got a good melody (for which I would bet that co-writer David Hodges, one of my favorite musicians and songwriters ever, is partly responsible), and while the lyrics are nothing so profound or poetic as to blow you away they are honest and reflective, admitting the reality that the tendency to evil which gives rise to horrible events like those of last Sunday can be found in all of us, but expressing also the hope that love will win out in the end. Nor is that hope left completely to a vague ideal; references to the Garden of Eden point us to a Person in whom the hope of overcoming love is found, who reaches out to us in spite of our instincts of running from Him. (“Dear Love / …You were there in the garden when I ran from your voice.”) I hope to write a little more about the Vegas shooting incident sometime in the next couple of days, but for now, I’ll just say that I think this song by Maren Morris and Vince Gill gets us started on the right track as far as how we can grieve and grow through tragedies like last Sunday’s.

Moving on to songs released last night:

I have been anticipating for some time the release of Gabrielle Aplin‘s new EP called Avalon, after the promise of pre-release single “Waking Up Slow,” which is the first track of four. Of the other three (which all dropped last night), only one of them, “Stay” has really hooked me so far. It’s got that expansive sound twinged with melancholy of the sort that Coldplay specializes in, and the chorus, bridge, and verses meld perfectly. If it gets picked up by radio, I think it could be a pop breakout single for her.

Next we have what’s probably gonna be a big conversation piece in the evangelical world over the next few weeks. Lauren Daigle has written and released a song (“Almost Human“) for the soundtrack of the upcoming film Blade Runner 2049, which opens this weekend. I haven’t seen it but may very well at some point during its theatre run. Lauren has talked about wanting to branch out beyond Christian music and now she has done it, and she has done it very well. Once the conversation gets going I will probably get in on it. Lots of fun questions to be discussed. (Should Christian artists do songs for secular movies? Should Christians do songs for secular movies with this kind of content? Is this going to bring people to Jesus? Is that even a necessary reason for doing something like this? and so on, and so on.) I will wait to open that can of worms–or can of goodies, as I see it–until the discussion progresses a bit.

Jeremy Camp has released a new LP called The Answer. None of the singles that were released leading up to the full album release really got my attention, but there are two tracks from last night’s release that I like very much. The first is “My Father’s Arms” and the second is the closing track, “Awake O Sleeper.” Aside from being (in my opinion) the melodic standouts of the record, both deal in important themes that are under-represented in Christian songwriting today. I don’t know that these couple of songs moved me like any of my favorites among his earlier hits (“Let it Fade,” “This Man,” &c) but it’s great that Jeremy Camp is still making good music after all these years.

Rachel Platten is back with a new single called “Perfect for You.” I’ve never been a huge fan of her breakout single “Fight Song,” but I’ve liked all of her single releases since then, including this new one. She’s got some versatility in terms of style, and somehow manages to tackle themes of personal independence and self-worth without losing her vulnerability. She’s also announced the title of her upcoming record, which is called “Waves,” and is expected to drop in three weeks.

Charlie Puth is also back with “How Long“. He does so well on this groovy stuff, and his voice, as always, is a natural high. “Attention” is a big song on the radio right now, and this one might follow it up the charts pretty soon. A full length album called Voicenotes is coming out in mid January. Gonna be huge, no doubt.

“Pray” is the new single from Sam Smith. It’s a very confessional, honest song about dissatisfaction with what the world has to offer (“I’ve made it this far on my own / But lately, that s*** ain’t been gettin’ me higher), concern about what’s going on around him (“”I lift up my head and the world is on fire / There’s dread in my heart and fear in my bones / And I just don’t know what to say”), and how the chaos he sees around him is driving him to seek some kind of a higher footing in God (“I have never believed in you, no / But I’m gonna pray”). He seems to be saying that he knows he needs God deeply even though he can’t really identify as a firm believer. The song has some great lyric lines (“I don’t wanna lose, but I fear for the winners”) and his vocals really shine. I think his songs just keep getting better and better and I’m excited for the Nov. 3rd release of “The Thrill of It All,” his next full-length album.

Pink has a new single, “Whatever You Want” (note: fair bit of language here, so if that bothers you, move on from this one). Sweet chorus melody. Probably her best single from this album cycle so far. Beautiful Trauma is going to be out next week.

Maroon 5 did a collab with Julia Michaels called “Help Me Out,” but I think it’s kind of meh. Oh well. “What Lovers Do” is still stuck in my head, and because of how good that single is I have some hope for the release of the full-length Red Pill Blues next month (which, by the way, great album title).

One more to close things out for today. This is not really a release from last night, but I’m happy about it and I have to share it. Karli Webster has finally given me someone to really root for on this season of The Voice. She was one of the last to audition, and she’s now on Team Miley, in spite of some really intense competition from Adam Levine. (Which, well, okay. Miley is definitely doing better at life now.) Her song was a cover of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and she killed it, y’all. My favorite contestants on The Voice never seem to get that far on the show (for examples, see James Dupre, Sydney Rhame, and Owen Danoff) but maybe Karli will. Either way–until last night I hadn’t bought an iTunes download of a song from The Voice since Owen Danoff’s audition song from three seasons ago. So that is saying something.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and we’ll pick things up next Friday with another episode of New Music Roundup!

Peace out, grace out.

~Andrew

Bono

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

Speaking of Bono, here’s a couple of quotes I’ve enjoyed so far:

“the world demands to be described, and so, painters, poets, journalists, pornographers, and sitcom writers, by accident or by design, are just following orders, whether from high or low [i.e. angelic or demonic], to describe the world they’re in.” p. 32

“the other thing I don’t trust is a performer who’s content on the stage, content with the distance between him or her and the audience. Whether it’s an actor or whether it’s a singer, I want to feel like the person in stage can stop playing a role, jump down, sit on my knee, follow me home, hug me, mug me, borrow money from me, make me breakfast in the morning. I’ve always had that as a performer. I don’t want people to feel comfortable in the relationship. I want to feel like it could snap.” p. 234

“I’m never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be mervous, because they are the ones who’ll be held accountable for the lives that their decisions will impact the most.” p. 257

Roll with it

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

Something I am constantly learning and re-learning is the ability to look on disruptions of my plan for the day (and, as requires greater effort, my life at large) with the expectation of something serendipitous in those disruptions. A great deal of the cranky attitudes, short tempers, and frayed nerves in the world come from an inability to trust that God has unexpected good for us in the countless little and large redirections that take place in our lives. Sometimes this crankiness goes so far as to make us pridefully loath to even listen/look out for, accept, and give thanks for the good that comes our way when we are out of our way, but I am hopeful that I am seeing this fault in myself less and less. I believe, and am learning to believe, that God is always bringing disruptions of various shapes and sizes into our lives so as to teach us to trust His control rather than ours.

The specific events that provoked today’s ponderings were these: I made a trip today during my lunch hour to check out some books from the library, but when I got back, noticed that I couldn’t find the reading list that I brought with me to the library. I had spent probably a couple of hours compiling that reading list last week, and to lose it would be the loss of those couple hours which are right now very precious to me. So when it seemed that the list was lost I was very frustrated with myself. (Is it just me or do all creative people habitually lose things? Bono confesses this as a problem of his in the book I am reading this afternoon…) I cursed in euphemisms as I made my way back to the car to see if I could find the list at the library. 

As I got into the car, I settled myself down for the little drive to the library and made myself determined to keep an eye open for whatever serendipity might come my way. It came in the form of a song on the radio called “Castle On the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. This is a song I have on iTunes and have heard many times, but I was struck in a new way by the joy that comes through it, and how fortunate I am to live in a time when an artist can shamelessly let himself go like Ed does in that song and it’s okay. I think if I didn’t live in such times I would feel terribly smothered. I even found myself offering a prayer of thanks to God for this goodness as I got out of the car at the library.

As it turns out, the notepad on which my reading list was written was not in the library; it was obscured in one of the stacks of forty-five library books which are lying in my room at present. But even my haste in not looking thoroughly through my room turned out for a good purpose, or at least did not keep that good from getting through to me.

As Paul Brandt says, “Talk about time / and it’s flown away before you’re done.” So it’s back to reading for me. Gonna try to finish the Bono book today, start in and something new, and perhaps read a few more chapters of my first real Dickens (a Tale of Two Cities) this evening.