Blog and out!

Dear Sweet-Lighters,

Thank you very much for all your supportive comments and encouraging emails in response to my last post - especially to mention Benson, Jan, Matt, Poetpete, Hils and Rick Creech. Thank you also to those who have got in touch with me offline or dropped an email or given me an encouragement face to face, especially: Dan (who gave me his address), (Dr) Hils (who came for a chat in the kitchen when I was cooking the mushrooms from our recent foraging expedition), Clare (a serious source of inspiration in recent weeks), and Chris, (with whom I spent a couple of very connected hours face to face talking about all this stuff). I will also miss Julana, who has been a faithful reader and commenter.

It is worth saying that the new sense of freedom I have experienced since my decision has been phenomenal. I have written a few long overdue letters, a couple of poems and plenty of diary. I have finished two halfread books, had a few good walks and as many excellent conversations.

Some of you have requested that I leave the blog up because of the content or because of the testimony so here's what I am planning to do: I will leave the blog as it stands. I am not completely eschewing email but will keep it for communication that cannot happen any other way and am unlikely to be checking it more than weekly. If you would like to contact me then seymour@post.com will work. Do drop me a line.

It is also my intention to gather all the quotes that have been posted here and compile them into a printed booklet. It will be quite lo-tech but will also include some biographical and reference information about the books and writers from which the quotes have been culled as well as, perhaps, some of your comments. If you would like a copy of the booklet when I have completed it, then I will be glad to send it to you for free. Please let me know at the email above.

It remains for me to thank you all once again and hope that we may meet or at least correspond in the future - in heaven if not before :-)

With every blessing,
Blog and out,

Seyms <>< ........

Seyms: Repenting and Protesting

Dear Citizens of The Wired World,

Last Sunday evening I preached on the value of prophetic acts of protest that witness to the reality of the Kingdom of God. Allowing myself to be searched on the issue over the last few days has lead me to make a decision that I am now in haste to carry out.

I pointed out then, and I stress again, that prophetic acts do not have to be moral statements. In other words when I chose to abstain from something it is not because that something is wrong in itself but because by such an abstinence I am convinced that I may make my protest against the way the world is and somehow point to the greater reality of an unseen Kingdom. So, my decision to abandon my tiny web empire, an online identity and a cluster of blogs, along with my regular email access is not an indictment of these things in themselves but a protest against what they have become in my life.

It may be that I lack the maturity to use these things purely as servants to greater ends. It may be that I am too cowardly to fight the battle that must be fought with the addictive aspects of information and knowledge in a technological age. If this is true then I pray my weakness may be an opportunity for God's strength while, nevertheless, protesting that it has taken courage to make this move.

Some will scratch their heads in bewilderment at the decision I have made and others will understand and recognise that the same suspicion has been haunting them. I offer this explanation for those who can accept it.

As I look back over the last five to seven years I have struggled with the horror of trying to remember them clearly, or to name a time when I last felt truly alive. There have been moments but nothing as lasting as what I know I have experienced before. I have been asking why; why did everything about my life seem sleepy and dream-like.

I tried to remember the moments when I felt like I had surfaced and I thought back to times when the sky had been incredibly blue for me. At the same time I noticed that some of the things that had brought me the greatest pleasure had been relegated to bit parts or even struck off the script - music, dancing, writing letters, reading, walking, talking, and working in precious metals. The best moments in my life had everything to do with the smell of paper and the scratch of a pen, the plucked string, a worn old Bible, and the bite of fresh air and sunshine; and nothing to do with a square glowing screen that offered the world in a box.

What had happened? I noticed I was increasingly less sociable and that relationships seemed to much effort to be worth the trouble. I developed a hatred of the telephone because of it's spontaneous and unpredictable ability to intrude into my life demanding that I communicate with others. I would never phone when an email or text could be sent instead - these methods of communication seemed more safe to me.

Then there was the internet. I would go online, any time of the day or night, usually to find the answer to a question that had popped into my head; tap into the information superhighway, confident that I could find the answer to anything. I would break off in the middle of cooking to find a recipe, I would break off Bible reading to consult an online commentary or throw a book aside to check a reference - only to emerge two hours later with more irrelevant and pointless rubbish in my head. Sometimes I would just surf, looking for something. Just a couple of months ago I recognised that what I was looking for online was something, just something, anything that would make me feel alive again. Surely there was a website out there that would kickstart my mental metabolism or hand me a life-changing insight. Without realising it my life was increasingly being lived out and through this umbilical medium of technology. Information is addictive. I began to worry about my concentration span because it seemed to have slumped and my capacity to get absorbed in anything for any length of time had left me.

This morning I logged on to my email, as I do every morning while the kettle boils me my first coffee of the day. What did I expect to see in my inbox? Messages from long lost friends, there have been three in the last three years ... the rest of it was pretty mundane and 70% of it is from mailing lists I have not bothered to unsubscribe from. With my hopes of something life changing being in the email dashed, I went online to keep up with a string of ongoing comments on the blogs of friends and associates around the world. I looked at the clock and it was nearly lunch time already.

My anger has arisen against myself in allowing myself to become addicted to computers. It has also arisen against the extent to which technology demands me to continue my relationship with it. I have thought about chucking it in before but then thought, "What about my blogs and my faithful readers?" And "I could never do without email, I'd lose touch." Neither of these stands up to a little analysis. My "faithful readers" got on for years before I came on the scene and my friends know my number and where I live if they want to contact me. Away with this plaguing superficiality!

I recently got in touch or was contacted by some old friends from before my "addiction". We were communicating through email and suddenly I felt intensely dissatisfied with it. Here were people with whom I had had a living and loving connection and here I was dashing off hasty emails in the name of staying in touch wishing I had the time to take paper and ink and write them a letter from my heart.

I am convinced that the only way I can account for the apparent loss of the last few years is that it has been sucked away and down the information plug-hole. I have thrown myself wholly into the pursuit of many aspects of my life augmented as much as possible by technology and the web in particular and found that it has utterly failed to deliver on my hope for a better life. It has not all been bad, but the benefits have not outweighed the down-sides. I know an elderly man who has none of these things but the Joy of the Lord shines out of him permanently.

The lightest moments of the last few weeks have been spent listening to old LPs on my record player, bashing away on my electric typewriter, and pondering the content of a few choice books, and enjoying the companionship of my wife and friends. I need to get back to that.

So this is my protest by which I declare that my life is not better off with the computer; that access to unlimited knowledge is a false messiah. Hope and salvation is found in Christ alone; without knowledge of God all knowledge is futile and that knowledge comes only by union with Him in spirit. "More" and "Faster" is not better. My attention cannot be bought with macromedia flash. A handwritten letter to one soul is worth more than a hastily typed blog entry to the whole world. Addiction to the latest and up-to-datest is real and destructive. In my life, everything that exalts against the knowledge of God stands condemned. I am repenting.

May God bless you all,

Seymour.

P.S. Old pals, my email will work. I shall check it at the public library every now and then; But why not give me a call or come and visit instead?
P.P.S. It will take me a while to disentangle myself. I will probably delete this blog after letting it stand for a week or so more. I will get comments when I next check email.

C.F. Blumhardt on THE HOLY SPIRIT OR MAN

We go along on our own; what we do, what we decide, is all "from the Lord," and there is no need to think about it. And I am expected to subject my mind to a lot of human precepts. But that I will not do! When I see ungenuineness among Christians, when I see things being done in a self willed way, I say that this is not the Holy Spirit, it is man's spirit. It is not God's face, but man's face. This is obvious in those people who are constantly antagonizing others who think differently, and shaking their fists at them. Something else is at work, not God, whenever this hard and quarrelling spirit appears. We should be aware of this and be able to say, "Something is wrong; let us all humble ourselves!" To keep on saying, "There is nothing wrong, nothing at all; all is at peace, all is well," is absolutely no help. It is a fact that something is wrong! But if we continue in faith in spite of knowing all is not right, that is worth much more than pretending that everything is all right.

In the daily lot and life of individuals it is also of great value to let ourselves be told that something is wrong, or has been wrong in certain things that happen. We should be able to accept this without getting depressed, as though God were not supposed to take the rod to us anymore because we are so good God has to be ever so careful about what He says to us! Let me say again it is a blessing when the moment comes in someone's life when he sees something has gone wrong, and because of this God has turned away for a time and hidden His face. But the greatest blessing is to remain faithful nevertheless, to live in hope until God turns His face to us again. We could say that it is times of judgment alternating with times of grace that help us forward toward salvation.

D.L.Moody on PRAYERS AND TESTIMONIES

Most prayers and religious testimonies I hear could benefit from being cut short at both ends and set on fire in the middle.

George Herbert - LOVE

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Johann Christoph Arnold on OUR SENSE OF URGENCY

None of us knows when God will call us from this world. But we ought to seriously consider that it could happen at any time. This should increase our sense of urgency, so that we make use of every hour.

Vance Hanver on LOSING JESUS AT CHURCH

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often the hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose him there.

CF Blumhardt on TESTING, JUDGEMENT AND GRACE

Times may come when God hides His face and our hearts are burdened and heavy sometimes without our guilt, but more often because of our guilt.

From our point of view such times are usually times of testing. I would also call them times of judgment. But here again even to mention judgment is a blunder, because it makes people think of eternal damnation. A tremendous error has crept in here: people believe they will no longer be judged when they are under grace.

This comes from an unspiritual approach to the Bible. Because of the verse, "He who believes in Him is not condemned," people think that God has bound His own hands and can no longer reproach His children when they go wrong. But God is free, and our conscience also tells us that we must still go through much judgment even if we are completely under grace. God does not want anything wrong to remain in us. I do not see how anyone who cannot accept this can claim to be a child of God. So we should not be afraid of being judged. In fact we can be glad, especially because it becomes clear what is wrong in us. After all, the main object of God's judgment is to show what is wrong, and when this comes out and we humble ourselves and repent, much can be put right.