FOR GOOD MEASURE: Volume 13, May, 1991 by Paul F. Bosch Ten Radio Meditations (121-130) originally composed by ELCIC pastor Paul F. Bosch for CFCA-FM, Kitchener, Ontario. These meditation appear in speech-line form. With a little bit of editing, they may be rendered in paragraph form for use in newsletters and guides to worship. Be sure to credit the author for his work. 121) Vindication for the peace movement.. 122) Movie scripts 25 % shorter... 123) Sakharov: "Guilt doesn't improve judgment..." 124) We can never suck all the juice out of art... 125) Erasmus: " God...takes no pleasure in bad grammar..." 126) Technology is a metaphor waiting to unfold... 127) Shaw: "It must be beautiful, if you couldn't read..." 128) "We're all out of ravishing..." 129) Learning is experience plus reflection... 130) Drama: the power of the arts; of the story they tell... 121) I heard an East German speak recently about the sweeping changes that have revolutionized East-West relations in the past 18 months. He said the East-West conflict is over today, -- the so-called Cold War has ended -- not because the West flexed its military muscles, and intimidated the East into collapse, not even because both East and West have been bankrupting themselves in the arms race -- although that might be closer to the truth -- He said the real reason the Cold War is over is because of the Western peace movement. He said the peace movements in Western nations gave Eastern peoples courage to persevere in their determination to better their lives. That's a kind of vindication, isn't it, for all those who work for peace, wherever? 122) I heard an interesting statistic the other day: Today's movie scripts are 25 percent shorter than the movie scripts of a decade ago. Ten years ago, apparently, we were accustomed to more words more speech in our movies. Today, ten years later, we expect fewer words less input through the ear, and, more action, more input through the eye. In just ten years, we've apparently become a much more visually oriented people. Now whether that's good news or bad news, I'm not yet prepared to speculate. I do know I'm glad that the Christian church has a tradition of Word and Sacrament, speech and action. 123) Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident, has said this: "Guilt hardly improves one's judgment." I like that as a reminder of the place of guilt or shame in the Christian life, or even of the place of sin. For example, I'd be pretty slow to depend on shaming people into goodness. I'd be pretty hesitant about laying a heavy guilt trip on people. Guilt and shame and recollection of failure -- they're certainly part of the human picture. But they're lousy motivators. They hardly improve your judgment. A better motivator would be this: the reminder from the prophets of Israel that in spite of everything, God takes delight in you. 124) A great work of art, a friend once said, has inexhaustible riches. You can never say you've sucked all the juice out of a great piece of music, let's say, or a great play or painting, or a great public building. There's always something more there -- a kind of inexhaustible treasure of mysteries and surprises and unexpected depths and heights that you never can completely comprehend. Who can say, for example, that Glenn Gould got everything that's there out of the Goldberg Variations? Who can say that Lawrence Olivier got everything that's there out of Shakespeare's Hamlet? (I thought Mel Gibson was terrific!) The fact is, in any great work of art there are heights and depths there that you'll never exhaust. Maybe that should give you a certain humility about much of the world around you. 125) Erasmus of Rotterdam is supposed to have said this: "God does not much mind bad grammar. But he does not take any particular pleasure in it." I like that as a reminder of the place of excellence in human life. So much in human life is not exactly immoral not actively demonic or evil, as simply tacky. It's not that it's wrong or sinful. It's rather simply that God takes no pleasure in it. There's no excellence there. There's a reminder of that on every bottle of Benedictine brandy, for whatever it's worth to you: the letters "D.O.M." Those letters stand for the Latin for this: "To God the highest and best." I'd be willing to say, "For human beings, the highest and best." 126) I read this recently in book about television as a new technology. The author said this: "Each technology has an agenda of its own. It is a metaphor waiting to unfold..." That is a suggestive way of looking at our work and at our lives. Technology is a metaphor waiting to unfold. A wristwatch, for example, is not simply a portable hourglass. A wristwatch actually changes the way we think of time. An electric light bulb is not simply a kind of more powerful candle. The light bulb actually changes the way we think of day and night. So also with television. It's not simply a neutral technological tool; it ushers in a whole new world of human meanings. We've all got some homework to do, it seems to me, in understanding this new world. And perhaps in giving it some direction and control, before it directs and controls us. 127) You've heard perhaps of George Bernard Shaw's remark earlier in this century on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Times Square? He said: "It must be beautiful, if you cannot read." There's no question in my mind: it is beautiful. All that incredible technology, those flashing lights, those vibrant colours. But when you know how to read, you become aware that all that flashy art and beauty and technology is put in the service of commerce. Those beautiful neon shapes and colours and lights are there to sell you something. Even that's not so bad, so long as you know what's going on; so long as you know you're being seduced, you're being manipulated to shell out some cash. And even that's not so bad, so long as you know. 128) It was my wife's birthday recently, and she got a birthday card from my sister that pictured a fairy godmother, in bouffant hair and platform heels, who's saying: "I'm empowered to grant you one wish on your birthday." Plain Jane says, "Id like to look ravishing." Fairy Godmother says, "We're all out of 'ravishing'; How about 'perky'? Plain Jane says, " Forget it." There's something poignant as well as laughable in that card, isn't that so? Your fantasies, your fondest dreams for yourself and for others: there's often a fracture there, isn't that so? Part of the ache, part of the hurt of being human is there: I'm not always, or even very often, everything I want to be. 129) I heard a good definition of learning the other day: Learning equals experience plus reflecting on the experience. Learning is experience, plus reflecting, thinking about what you've experienced. That makes a great deal of sense to me. And I suppose simply to experience something doesn't mean you've learned it, until you've also spent some time and energy reflecting on it, thinking about it. That reminds me that anyone can learn. It reminds me that you can learn from any experience. For example, book learning is one kind of experience. But you don't even have to read: everything that happens to you is also your experience. And if you think about that, you're learning. A wise man once said, "You can't learn less." It's always more. 130) We presented a play at Easter in one of the downtown churches. It was an old play, from the middle ages, written by an unknown poet in the 16th Century. It's called the HARROWING OF HELL, and it portrays Jesus' victory at Easter over the forces of evil. Two things impressed me about the play. First, the marvellous evocative power of the arts in reaching deep into our humanness. You couldn't help but be moved by the music, the poetry, the costumes, the spectacle. All of those arts worked together to affect you, to inspire you. And the second thing was the power of the story itself. Here in front of your eyes you saw the gates of Hell falling to the ground at Christ's command, the hordes of demons put to rout at St. Michael's spear point. You don't forget that kind of thing.