Through a Glass Darkly: Volume I Issue 1 "Excess"

EXCESS

THROUGH A

GLASS DARKLY

VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 1 AUTUMN 2019

FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY; BUT THEN FACE TO FACE. (1 COR 13:12A K JV)

contents 04 06

EDITORS’ NOTE

OF MOLE(HILLS) AND MEN

22 26

THE ECOLOGY OF CREATION

Rachael Chan

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HANDS

SPARKING JOY

THE MEANING OF DECLUTTERING

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VANITY OF VANITIES

SAYING A LOT WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING

EXCESSES OF BELIEF HOW WE HINDER OUR QUEST FOR TRUTH

Alastair Damerell

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Alvin Tan

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JOYFUL NOISE

Shun Hei Sin

Joel Fraser

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POTLUCK PARTY

UNTITLED

Alex Beukers

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HOWLING AND INSUFFERABLE

TIM KELLER ON THE PERILOUS PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Emily Swift

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THE DEPTH OF PETALS AND COFFEE SPOONS LINGUISTIC EXCESS IN POETRY

Megan Chester

Zachary Lee

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THE STARFISH ROOM DEATH AND THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD

Linette Chan 3

editors’ note

O

xford is a crazy place. It is rigorous, multifarious, imposing, and unrelenting. And yet, it is precisely this confluence of intellect, diversity, heritage, and eagerness that makes it a fantastic centre for novel ideas, scholarly thought, and creative expression—that is, the pursuit of truth.

ronmental impacts of consumerism, or the inequality resulting from accumulation of wealth. But there are also more intangible types of excess—excessive investments in relationships, excessive insistence on ideologies, and even the excessive desires that drive many of these other excesses.

This publication was born out of that heartbeat. A group of students got together and wondered: what would it look like for us to pursue truth? What does it look like for us to pursue truth?

The Bible, too, talks about excess. Humanity is called to be good stewards of the earth (Gen 1:28), and Jesus preached against covetousness (Luke 12:15). But there are also some instances of seemingly inexplicable excess in the Bible, such as when a woman pours a jar of expensive perfume on Jesus (Matt 26:6–13). How do we reconcile these notions of excess? How do we decide how much is “enough”? How do we know what the best way to assign value is?

Through a Glass Darkly seeks to be a platform for us to have that conversation. We are united in our belief that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth, and that this belief should permeate into all aspects of our lives. We want to consider how our domains of study and interest integrate into the bigger picture of our worldviews. We care about the big questions and the little ones too, and we would love to engage you, dear reader, to think about these questions with us.

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The essays, poetry, and art in this issue seek to consider these challenging questions from various angles, ranging from ecology to economics and Ecclesiastes—from the everyday of a vanitas to the symbolism of a landfill. We’ve learnt much from assembling these different viewpoints, and perhaps you will too.

This doesn’t mean, however, that this journal is only intended for Christians. Part of the joy of being at university is meeting people with differing worldviews, and we hope to be a launchpad for discourse about these perspectives, regardless of whether you would consider yourself a Christian or not. So, we hope that you don’t merely read through this journal. We hope that you ask questions, raise objections, contemplate issues, and make use of the pink squishy goodness between your ears.

There is always much more to know, and we hope that Through a Glass Darkly can be a place for that exploration. The Bible tells us that we can’t know everything, as we can only understand God through a mirror dimly for now. But we think that God is still worth peering into the mirror for, even if we can only catch an imperfect and blurry glimpse of Him at the present time. And we’d love to invite you to look through this glass together with us.

In this inaugural issue, we’re thinking about excess. Abundance is often perceived as good, but our unlimited wants seem to always bleed into wasteful excess—think about the envi-

Zachary Lee & Alvin Tan Editors-in-Chief

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of mole(hills) and men THE ECOLOGY OF CREATION

Rachael Chan

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I

was taking a walk around the perimeter of Uni Parks the other day when the sight of molehills dotting the mead brought me to a pause. We don’t think about these furry creatures very often, save for those sundry occasions when relatives exclaim, “Those wretched creatures dug up the turnips again!”—an obvious exaggeration—but hidden from view is a whole subterranean system of tunnels, a maze-like underworld that moles share with many other creatures one might call “the weird and the wonderful”.

As moles burrow, they modify soil properties and thus change the productivity, structure and dynamics of plant communities. In Nicole Hagenah and Nigel Bennett’s study of moles in the Fynbos regions of South Africa, they observed that soils disturbed by moles had higher nutrient levels, and the presence of moles enhanced the diversity of plant species1. Thus, it is not a stretch to describe them as architects within their ecological community. Whether they are aware of it or not, moles create more favourable conditions for other species to reproduce and survive.

RICHNESS AND ABUNDANCE To better appreciate the mole in its community, we must look through the lens of ecology, which studies the intricate relationships between organisms and their environment. Within ecology, the diversity of species present in a given area is known as species richness, while the representation of a species is known as its local abundance. When in equilibrium, the population sizes of all species present remain relatively stable within a sustainable range.

Each population also performs a specific role in their community; one of the central concepts in ecology is the notion that each species has evolved to occupy a particular niche.

Charles Elton, a prominent figure in the field, once compared animal species to social actors: 1 N. Hagenah & N. C. Bennett, “Mole rats act as ecosystem engineers within a biodiversity hotspot, the Cape Fynbos.”

Journal of Zoology 289, no. 1 (2012): 19–26.

When an ecologist says ‘there goes a badger’ he should include in his thoughts some definite ideas of the animal’s place in the community to which it belongs, just as if he had said ‘there goes the vicar.’ 2 While this is a simplification, each of the myriad forms of life that populate our earth seemingly has a vocation within the greater ecosystem. God’s intent for Creation to be abounding in diversity is exemplified in the Hebrew notion of “swarming”, as seen in Genesis 1:20 (ESV): And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

In an article titled “The Bible and Ecology”, Holmes Rolston III suggests “‘Swarms’ is, we can say, the pre­scientific word for biodiversity.

Earth speciates.”3 Jesus also acknowledges this diversity, speaking of sparrows, sheep, wolves, goats, oxen, donkeys, foxes, fish, snakes, worms, scorpions, figs, grapes, and the like throughout his teachings. As I stared at the mounds of soil, I was reminded that moles distinctively belong underground, possessing evolutionary characteristics such as red blood cells that bind with oxygen more easily, which allow them to each of the myriad forms survive in low-oxygen of life that populate our conditions. Their saearth seemingly has a voliva also contains toxcation within the greater ins that can immobilize their prey, such ecosystem. as small earthworms and other invertebrates that wriggle beneath the ground. These unique properties not only enable it to carry out its vocation within the community, but also reflect how God directed the earth to “bring forth living creatures ac2 C. S. Elton, Animal Ecology. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1927.

3 H. Rolston, “The Bible and ecology.” Interpretation—A Journal Of Bible And Theology 50, no. 1 (1996): 16–26.

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cording to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:24).

AGAINST ONE’S NATURE Populations that do not perform their intended vocation can disrupt the equilibrium of the ecological system, causing the rest of creation to suffer the consequences. Perhaps the most apt example of one such population would be our own. Earth suffers the repercussions of humanity’s first sin and continues to groan (Romans 8).

In writing of a “Theological Anthropology”.

Jennifer Butler asks, “Could it be that humanity, by contrast, is the only part of Creation that can fail at being what we were created to be?”.4 Before we can answer, we must clarify what humankind’s (ecological) niche is. After Adam was created, “the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep [shamar] it” (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew word shamar means to guard, protect, keep watch, preserve. The same word is found in the Aaronic blessing, “The LORD bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24). Calvin DeWitt, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founder of the Evangelical from land conversion lead- Environmental Neting to loss of biodiversity, work explains, “The to the destruction of an- keeping we expect of God when we invoke cient coral reefs due to the the Aaronic blessing acidification of oceans, is one that nurtures these are all natural con- all of our life-sustainsequences of our failure to ing and life-fulfilling shamar. relationships with our family members, with our neighbours and our friends, with the land, air, and water, and with our God.”5

4 D. L. Brunner, J. L. Butler, & A. J. Swoboda, Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 121.

5 Ibid., 26.

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A quick scan of the headlines tells us how ecosystems have been thrown off balance due to anthropogenic activities, direct or otherwise.

From land conversion leading to loss of biodiversity to the destruction of ancient coral reefs due to the acidification of oceans, these are all natural consequences of our failure to shamar.

Butler argues further, “We stopped living into our calling when we trespassed the original boundary in the garden, consuming what was not ours to consume—valuing the tree for what it could do for us other than for its treeness.”6 The act of eating from the Tree was not only one of disobedience. What Adam and Eve desired was to consume more than what God had given to them—a desire for excess, and thus, a marker of greed. The household (or oikos in Greek, from which the word ecology is derived) of Earth encompasses all scales— planetary, bioregional, ecosystemic, human, and microbial—as necessary and related components of the broad community of life.7 God made clear in His design of the universe that He provided for all abundantly. This is affirmed in His immanence through Jesus, who assured, “Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them” (Luke 12:24). Appearing in the wider context of a parable about accumulation and excess, Jesus also warns that “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).

RESTORATION God sees neither humanity nor Earth in isolation but as created for one another—in a mutually dependent, symbiotic way. While the ecological crises we face are dire, the gospel is a message of hope. The theologian Ernst Conradie expounds, “As co-creators, humanity must work in partnership with God as we address both the consequences of sin and the roots of evil while working toward ultimate 6 Ibid., 121.

7 Ibid., 13.

reconciliation.”8 Through the cross, Jesus has already initiated this process of reconciliation, as articulated in the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1: 19-20)

for His pleasure, and He has also allowed us to join Him in enjoying the fruits of Creation.

What we need is the humility to seek God’s grace in allowing us to partner with Him in restoring His Kingdom through our lives.

Perhaps, as we try to live out our vocation, we can learn one last thing from the mole: to create spaces for others to flourish more richly and abundantly. < >

Back to the mole. If the mole was just being what it was created to be by earnestly digging the ground with its polydactyl forepaws and sniffing out earthworms to eat, how then do humans glorify God as ecological agents?

The Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I provides some insight about ascetic attitudes towards the use of material goods, arguing that asceticism is not “flight from society” but a communal attitude which is repentant of greed that comes from sin: Excessive consumption may be understood to issue from a world-view of estrangement from self, from land, from life, and from God. Consuming the fruits of the earth unrestrained, we become consumed ourselves, by avarice and greed. Excessive consumption leaves us emptied, out-of-touch with our deepest self. Asceticism is a corrective practice, a vision of repentance. Such a vision will lead us from repentance to return, the return to a world in which we give, as well as take from creation.9 That said, it is important not to fall into the trap of self-righteousness reminiscent of the Pharisees. The God of our universe created 8 E. M. Conradie, “The salvation of the earth from anthropogenic destruction: In search of appropriate soteriological concepts in an age of ecological destruction.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 14, no. 2–3 (2010): 111–140.

9 Bartholomew I (Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople), “Address of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Environmental Symposium, Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, Santa Barbara, California.” Home—Apostolic Pilgrimage of Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to Jerusalem, 1997.

Rachael is a second year Geographer at Mansfield. As you are reading this, she is either taking a nap, watching a Korean drama, or fangirling over Mahler’s symphonies.

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hands

Joel Fraser

“We are worlds, we are bodies, empires of dirt and grace…

We are shadows and reflections, empires of light and clay” Little fingers curl Around blistered hands: Two more in the world.

A journey unplanned, Parents unprepared Makeshift swaddling bands And dependence, shared.

For when the two meet— Soft skin, and calloused care— Paradox completes Their clasped embrace.

Weakness, strength greets.

A Creator’s grace In outstretched fingers Of a baby. No trace Of father’s roughness lingers.

Working hands, wood-splintered skin Somehow holding holy ones Glass-gloved: Power, Love within Tight-knit words sealed in flesh and bones. ~ Growing palms will always harden And so do his Self-engraving the dust and shavings of this world In carpenter’s guise. He crafts Beautiful shapes from rough-cut wood In wonderful sacrifice of smoothness They grasp a glimpse of what’s to come Carved images of what will be done For artistry was never clearer than this.

Skin that splinters at its inspiration The creation is painful—this we know— But here we see and feel with each hammer-stroke What the glamour of the pen obscures, That these cherished words chip away At our days and surfaces like carpentry.

Could he see and feel with timeless retrospect That these mundanities cast forth countless shadows?

That the material that he mastered Would fasten him in time In fleeting vengeance.

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As toughened fingers felt the wooded medium Of a polished purity in progress Did they know That their Worded flesh would stretch, crack and bleed On the same canvass In blood-red ink, red rhythms of grace? ~ I know they know that destruction Endless construction does not exclude, But exudes and requires the heat of fire And flames, to break the making in its mould To fracture frost-bitten frames of old And to write into life a modern-wrought gold.

Thus they fought with furious friction Sparks fly as market-stalls stutter and fall.

They flip tables, scattering coins and wild fictions The constricted confines breathe again.

Ready for when The breath will be spoken outside of this place.

And this Christ-created chaos will be replaced Chased down, erased, by a Christ-written grace.

An emptied temple, consumed with zeal Slowly begins to beat once more As their pulsating veins, those hammering hands Relax and rebuild—from my very beginning— To enact, and gild, a newly-painted real. ~ Reach out to them with everything, For we are silhouettes without light, But they restore and grant new sight.

Now strings once broken truly ring.

Our hands are leprous, clear to see But they stitch up a patchwork rhyme Looking back and forward in time To what once was, and what can be.

They touch where blistered bruises lie And skin on skin, it burns with pain.

The criss-cross scars in ink remain But they have written their reply As healing returns us to a past, A place where skin was soft and pure.

These hands, they stretch and bring a cure Far more than bandaged plaster-cast.

Yet not the same. Never again For him who fell to ground facedown.

Broken bones and disease came now Before them. His unclean lips then Spoke spotless words with perfect weight.

The hand took up the pen and drew Beyond and behind a past made new To where the leper himself creates In cradled autonomy, the way on through. ~ Fingers interlock In clasped enclosure Hand to hand the other supports.

Knuckles peak in ten stretched summits And folding fingertips tumble down precipices.

Above all, on mountainsides, a silent stillness As they balance this world in prayerful poise.

Noiseless, they anchor the tuning-in Of spirit and infinite, with the physical harmony Of eyelid on eyelid, hand on hand Shut fast. ~ At peace he sleeps, but ever-watchful still, As boats set out from shore, all unaware.

The sea is calm tonight. That is, until Waves wreak havoc, and wind whips up despair And while fishermen panicked in vain, and fought In fraught futility, he sleeps, without motion.

Movement reserved outside, in contorted Realms of slipping sliding rhythms, oceans Of cries and shouts, now shaking him awake And eyelids locked and fingers that were bound Inside, now look to seize this storm that breaks And order comes once more. For they have found Freedom from chaos with an outstretched palm Nature stands still and hears the sound of hands The felt command, dissolving into calm.

Our boats can steer, intact, and reach the land. ~ They strain to hold the heavy, painful weight And splinters well-known start to break the skin.

The mastered wood-made-cross bites its creator And plodded journey towards the hill begins.

His feet slip down and struggle to remain In time with beating drums and bloody cries He barely stands. His muscles scream in pain And slipped grip changes, readjusts. He tries Maintaining balance, step by step weaker.

Suddenly fingers slide beyond control, Let go. Eyes roll Hands hit the floor, and immense pressure cracks And collapses. Carry him to the skull.

The metronome hand stops when his are nailed.

Iambic feet suspended there— Time deeply exhales— Rhythm red-raw, and bare.

Poetry’s very hands and feet meet and mediate metal and wood No words could catch this cross Where the Word was finally caught, smashed into immobility Its lifeblood slowly lost— Or rather, differed beyond words.

At every breath they cling, Sinews surrounding rusted pain as everything focuses on lifting those lungs And then beginning Again to gasp for air that is surely not there.

The stress those hands must feel Splits its way along their wounds, whilst it knits up my open stitches.

They brought life, gave sight, healed But for this moment they have let go and we have no control and we are lifeless, blind and wounded. ~ I don’t believe, won’t. Unless I see With my own eyes That it isn’t lies.

Unless I see them, cross-checked, holy and wounded Together. Show me That the Word still means In this world.

I don’t believe because I don’t see Because I read no words here.

And so him, clear-cut. He draws near Shrouded in sheer magic, face wet, real tears Drip-drop from faces. So many places To be, people to see, but… here? With me?

And there they are, newly nail-bitten scars, Hands that have won. I know all they have done I read their scripted part. I see their art To be broken by choice And to show it: The only true poet.

They gave us rules to live, in five-beat time And then recklessly ripped up the rhyme This love wins as it loses, creates life as it dies My pen spins as it chooses to trace Printed patterns of uncontrollable grace For as I understand these human hands, That reveal themselves so mine can start to feel, I am given—illiterate, blind child I am— A pen, and a canvas of colour. ~ My cracked, clay-taught hands are broken vessels They and I will go on making and breaking Until his and mine realign. < >

Joel studies English and French at Oriel College, Oxford. He loves reading and football, but can also be found despairing over the amount of unread books on his bookshelves, as well as the fate of Bolton Wanderers. He hopes for lots of Belgian chocolate, waffles and blond beer on his upcoming year abroad in Liege.

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sparking joy

THE MEANING OF DECLUTTERING Alvin Tan

M

arie Kondo is somewhat of a contemporary cult figure. A self-styled tidying guru, Kondo stepped into the public spotlight with the publication of her bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and its sequel, Spark Joy. Since then, she has appeared on many television and radio programmes, been listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, hosted her own show on Netflix, and amassed a large crowd of followers who call themselves “Konverts”. But why does her tidying have that magical effect? And—perhaps more interestingly—why do some people refuse to buy into her magic?

To understand where Kondo fits into modern cultural consciousness, we must first return to the 19th century—the Industrial Revolution

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had resulted in an expanding middle class, who had newfound access to wealth as an indicator of socioeconomic status. This led to the rise of consumerism: the societal attitude of desiring more goods. Crucially, these goods were signals of value not in and of themselves, but because of the semiotic meaning that society assigned to them—in other words, owning stuff became a symbol of worth. This also manifested in the notion of the “commodity self ”, an identity constructed upon the goods that we consume (e.g. identifying oneself as an iPhone or Android user).1 Such a consumerist culture has been the subject of much social commentary. Cultural crit1 S. Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

ics have described this societal attitude using labels such as “commodity fetishism”, “affluenza”, and “addictive consumption”, and have analysed such values as being “both a symptom of an underlying insecurity and a coping strategy taken on in an attempt to alleviate problems and satisfy needs”.2 Psychological studies have also demonstrated that valuing material goods is related to lower well-being3 and greater loneliness.4 In fact, merely being exposed to environmental cues related to consumerism can trigger associated negative personal and social consequences.5 Clearly, consumerism is not an effective means of meaning-making, and has failed to deliver on its promises of satisfaction.

Enter the movements of decluttering, minimalism, and simple living. These were reactions against the excesses of modern Western consumerism, and fought against an accumulation of meaningless stuff in favour of a more conscious lifestyle. Kondo is one of many proponents of such a lifestyle; what distinguishes her, however, is her focus on the quality of the objects that are retained, rather than the quantity—her philosophy involves keeping things that “spark joy”, regardless of the number. She also advocates tidying by category (clothes, books, paper, miscellaneous, and sentimental items, in that order), rather than by location.

These rules, along with others listed in Spark Joy, make decluttering practical and achievable for followers of the “KonMari method”.

2 T. Kasser, The High Price of Materialism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

3 T. Kasser, K. L. Rosenblum, A. J. Sameroff, E. L. Deci, C. P. Niemiec, R. M. Ryan, O. Árnadóttir, R. Bond, H. Dittmar, N. Dungan, & S. Hawks, “Changes in materialism, changes in psychological well-being: Evidence from three longitudinal studies and an intervention experiment.” Motivation and Emotion 38, no. 1 (2014): 1–22.

4 R. Pieters, “Bidirectional dynamics of materialism and loneliness: Not just a vicious cycle.” Journal of Consumer Research 40, no. 4 (2013): 615–631.

5 M. A. Bauer, J. E. B. Wilkie, J. K. Kim, & G. V. Bodenhausen, “Cuing consumerism: Situational materialism undermines personal and social well-being.” Psychological Science 23, no. 5 (2012). 517–523.

Why are so many people enraptured by the tidying phenomenon of Marie Kondo? On one hand, there are the direct benefits of decluttering, such as improved perceived well-being and a greater sense of psychological home (self-identification with a physical environment).6 But this does not explain why Kondo has gained a popularity far surpassing that of earlier decluttering instructors. The key to this seems to be the psychological aspect of the KonMari method. Its simplicity and method makes success seem easier to grasp, which may improve a sense of self-efficacy, and thus well-being.7 Followers have also described the process as “uplifting and refreshing”, and began to perceive tidying up as an “almost enjoyable experience” rather than as a mundane activity8, perhaps in part due to an emphasis on gratitude rather than fear or guilt. Kondo herself also claims that “a dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective”9, which makes the KonMari method seem almost like a self-help therapy rather than merely a home organisation tool.

And yet, despite all its supposed benefits, this decluttering philosophy has attracted a number of detractors. Some have pointed out that stuff seems to creep back in after one round of tidying, and that this may in fact encourage a throwaway culture, since items that no longer spark joy are simply disposed of, without consideration of the associated resource wastage and disposal costs.10 Other commentators have noted that the ideal of a perfectly organised 6 C. A. Roster, J. R. Ferrari, & M. P. Jurkat, “The dark side of home: Assessing possession ‘clutter’ on subjective well-being.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 46 (2016): 32–41.

7 A. Byars-Winston, J. Diestelmann, J. N. Savoy, & W. T. Hoyt, “Unique effects and moderators of effects of sources on self-efficacy: A model-based meta-analysis.” Journal of Counseling Psychology 64, no. 6 (2017): 645–658.

8 H.-H. M. Lee, “In pursuit of happiness: Phenomenological study of the KonMari decluttering method.” Advances in Consumer Research 45 (2017): 454–457.

9 M. Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2014.

10 A. Spring, “Marie Kondo, you know what would spark joy? Buying less crap.” The Guardian, 10 January 2019.

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house may actually drive anxiety and stress, resulting in burnout.11 Yet others have pointed out how tidying stifles creativity12, or how it is a marker of wealth privilege that is inapplicable to those lacking in possessions.13 Perhaps Kondo has failed to deliver on her promises as well.

The truth underscored by these critiques is simply that the KonMari method, and decluttering in general, is merely another method of meaning-making. While there may be some value in the act of decluttering, a significant portion of its perceived worth is symbolic in nature, attributed by its partakers. Attempts at decluttering simply because of its societally ascribed value would thus lead to inefficacy and fatigue, and dissatisfaction may arise from discord between decluttering and individuals’ own value systems, which may rank creativity and nostalgia above tidiness. This subjective value assignment is also evidenced by the observation that “talking about the material purge is just as important as actually doing it”14, a trope not unlike many other trends and fads in popular culture.

Ultimately, however, such meaning-making lasts only as long as the trend itself does—nobody really considers corsets to be a marker of the social elite nowadays, for instance. And once the dopamine of the process has tapered and settled, one is left with the realisation that the KonMari method far from being the pana- is still about stuff, just cea its proponents tout it that the question now to be, the KonMari meth- is “which stuff” rathod is just a reprise of the er than “how much same core human issues of stuff”. She says in her self-worth and identity. book, “I can think of no greater happiness in life than to be sur11 F. Drury, “Marie Kondo—Does tidiness really equal a clean mind?.” BBC News, 17 January 2019.

12 T. Harford, Messy: How to be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World. London: Abacus, 2016.

13 A. Bernstein, “Marie Kondo and the privilege of clutter.”

The Atlantic, 25 March 2016.

14 K. Chayka, “The oppressive gospel of minimalism.” The New York Times, 31 July 2016.

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rounded only by the things I love.”15 As such, Kondo is unable to escape the pitfalls of deriving value from possessions. Far from being the panacea its proponents tout it to be, the KonMari method is just a reprise of the same core human issues of self-worth and identity. As one journalist put it, “when it comes to stuff, we are all the same… we are a mess, even when we’re done tidying.”16 Knowing how to make meaning well is a really hard problem, and humans have been struggling with it since Aristotle (and probably before that too). This reflects that worth is a really important issue for humanity—which would not be surprising if it were part of the design for humans (Genesis 1:26). True well-being is derived from pursuing meaning, rather than pursuing happiness; the latter only gives rise to “empty positive emotions”, which in fact do not differ much from enduring adversity on a biological level.17 Christian theology speaks precisely about where such meaning and joy may be found: in the presence of our Creator God (Psalm 16:11). Indeed, the Bible says that our purpose is the worship of God (Isaiah 43:7). If we are not fulfilling that purpose, any other attempts at meaning-making will inevitably be futile.

The KonMari method, along with many other lifestyle trends, have attempted to explicate the “true” means to human satisfaction, but this is really akin to swapping out a square peg for a triangular or rectangular one—they are all different, but they will never be able to fit in a round hole.

But herein lies the hope: if we recognise the wonderful truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then we will have access to true, meaningful, 15 Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. 16 T. Brodesser-Akner, “Marie Kondo and the ruthless war on stuff.” The New York Times, 10 July 2016.

17 B. L. Friedrickson, K. M. Grewen, K. A. Coffey, S. B. Algoe, A. M. Firestine, J. M. G. Arevalo, J. Ma, & S. W. Cole, “A functional genomic perspective on human well-being.” PNAS 110, no. 33 (2013): 13684–13689.

and unsurpassable joy (1 Peter 1:8–9). Furthermore, because this joy is predicated on the person of God, it persists even when material things do not, and delivers even when the promises of the world have failed (Habakkuk 3:17–18). This is why the psalmist says that God is his ultimate object of desire, because all other things pale in comparison to the gloriousness of knowing Him (Psalm 27:4; Psalm 73:25). Humanity has always sought to find the source of lasting satisfaction, but that can only come about when we have a clear vision on how we make meaning—and if this meaning actually comes from God, then all we really have to do is to choose to adopt His idea of meaning as our own.

amine the Bible’s description of meaning, we might find out where joy really lies.

The psalmist says in Psalm 63:3 (ESV), “because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you”. The transience and fallibility of popular culture trends might just hint at the fact that nothing in this world delivers true satisfaction, but the psalmist says that God’s love far outdoes anything in this world, even life itself. Perhaps, then, if we were to ex-

Alvin is a third year psychology and linguistics student at Queen’s. He probably has too many interests, including making music, drinking tea, and window shopping wistfully in bookstores. Whether his interests make him interesting is a whole other matter.

So what sparks joy in your life? Marie Kondo says that “the real tragedy is to live your entire life without anything that brings you joy and never even realize it,”18 and on that front, I could not agree more. < >

18 M. Kondo, Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2016.

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vanity of vanities Emily Swift

“Vanity of vanities, says the preacher; all is vanity.”

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his rather bleak indictment of human endeavour begins the book of Ecclesiastes. Translated in the King James version as vanity, the Hebrew word hével is used to describe something transient, meaningless or ‘mere breath’. It is used frequently in Ecclesiastes, a book which focuses on the futility and impermanence of our lives on earth. 17th century Dutch artists tackled this issue in symbolic ‘Vanitas’ still-life paintings. Piles of fruit, flowers, gilded crockery, jewellery and luxurious fabrics are heaped next to skulls, clocks, extinguished candles, and soap bubbles. The depiction of excessive opulence against symbols of transience delivered a subtle but pointed caution to an increasingly trade-driven and materially wealthy society against placing too much emphasis on achievements in this life.

Their message remains pertinent to our contemporary world. In an economic system built to maximising profit, we are expected to accumulate wealth, spend money, and rely on material goods to bring us joy. “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.”

(Ecclesiastes 5:10). Yet, for all its despair of the meaningless labour that is life earth, Ecclesiastes ends with an uplifting message. The book ultimately concludes that God’s gift lies in the satisfaction we can gain from rejoicing in this very futility: “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” (Ecclesiastes 3:12–14 NIV).

The still-life painters certainly reflected this seemingly paradoxical conclusion in the painstaking attention to detail they paid to their artwork. Depicting anything in a painting requires dedicating an unusual amount of time to the objects concerned. I found the objects in my painting strewn around my house and local area, neglected for their ordinariness. However, by taking the time to study them in detail, I have discovered visual features and personal stories attached to them that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and unappreciated.

For me, the act of devoting focus towards everyday objects and transforming them into elements of an artistic composition provides a potent reminder that beauty and satisfaction can be found in the simplest of things. We need not seek out wealth or excess to rejoice in the abundance of God’s creation. < >

Emily is a fourth year medical student who likes to escape her degree by reading fiction, drawing and listening to podcasts. If she’s not in the hospital, you’ll find her rummaging through the charity shops of Oxford or looking at ducks in Christ Church Meadow.

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the depth of petals and coffee spoons LINGUISTIC EXCESS IN POETRY Megan Chester

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oetry personified would be a singleton who frequents coffee shops alone, spending hours mulling over a microscopic milkless cup. It would be that aloof friend or family member whose spontaneous gallivants and confounding conversations no one quite understands, but whom everyone nonetheless respects and loves. It would be the person, whose salmon-pink coat stands out, walking against the city stream of grey and navy commuters at rush hour. Poetry is thought of as an elaborate way of writing. Its rhetoric is excessive, its language abundant, and these things are to be expected. Some of English literature’s most famous poems—Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s sonnets, and even Old English poetry such as Beowulf, for example—are not guilty of holding back. Despite its commonest connotations, however, the word ‘excess’ does not necessarily relate to quantity. Nor is elaborate poetry necessarily pompous. Rather, much of the most moving poetry uses its relationship with language to articulate that which is more easily felt—one’s it leaves the most space inner emotions responding with wonfor each individual word to der to what’s outside.

poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man, who…had also thought long and deeply.”1 In other words, Wordsworth believes that the best poetry is a torrential outpour of emotion, but it must flow on a riverbed of thought.

Examples of this are found throughout Wordsworth’s poetry, but this passage from ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’ is particularly apt:

An abundant or excessive use of language is, therefore, not necessarily about how much one says, but rather how much is meant. It is more to do with the amount of thoughtful, internal rumination which weighs on every word that one writes. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth states: “For all good

In 1912, writers such as Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle inaugurated an artistic movement called Imagism, which challenged linguistic excess and the assumption that such excess

dwell and dance.

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I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Of deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led; more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved.2 They illustrate that a poem, though its design may be intricately whimsical, must itself drill down into a fossilised bedrock of thought and contemplation in order to be capable of managing the intense emotion and subject matter it aims to convey. This becomes most evident when that subject matter is itself ineffable and divine.

1 W. Wordsworth, The Major Works, ed. by Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 598.

2 Ibid., 133.

depended on quantity. Put reductively, Imagist poetry is concerned with “aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.”3 This ideology challenges quantitatively-defined linguistic excess, offering a qualitatively-focussed definition.

The most famous Imagist poem is Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’: The apparitions of these faces in the crowd, Petals on a wet, black bough.4 Published in 1913 in Poetry, a magazine, this poem vividly but unusually paints two images (Pound’s observation of people in a Parisian subway, and petals on a shadowy branch), and brings them together in an equally evocative manner. This makes for a harmonically jarring presentation. Phrases within T. S. Eliot’s later, longer poems also have this effect, and have reached a similar iconic status: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock); “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock); “Garlic and sapphires in the mud” (Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, II); “at sea the dawn wind / Wrinkles and slides” (Four Quartets, East Coker, I). These phrases make little sense, and yet in their ambiguity they possess a quality that helps life to make more sense. As the fog thickens it clears. They expose the initially uncomfortable, eventually liberating truth that things don’t have to feel predictably coherent to have meaning. The intricacy of such artisan wording makes tangible things intangible, throwing simple objects into complicated disarray. It also enables one to comprehend things which usually seem out of humans’, especially language’s, reach. These phrases are minimalist in that they use few words, and yet suggest that Imagist or Imagist-like poetry functions both telescopically and microscopically, working outwardly and inwardly.

3 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “imagism”.

4 E. Pound & H. Zinnes, Ezra Pound and The Visual Arts, ed.

Harriet Zinnes (New York: New Directions, 1980), 205.

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Poetic expression of feeling in the Bible exhibits the same semantic vividness as the twentieth century poetry mentioned above. The Psalms are musings, reflections, and personal prayers of kings of Israel such as David and Solomon, as well as other poets. The shortest of them, Psalm 117, is only two verses long. Even in longer psalms, specific verses and phrases catch one’s emotional imagination and glint as gem-like flecks. Psalm 42 tidily fits into just eleven verses, some of which contain repeated phrases. “‘Where is your God?’” comes both in verse 3 and verse 10, whilst verse 11 is a repetition of verse 5: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.

My Saviour and my God.” The Psalmist’s images are vivid: a simile likens one’s soul thirsting for God to a deer panting for water (1–2), yet though parched, that same soul can be “pour[ed] out” to God. The poet gives the soul the liquid ability to flow, even overflow. Despite this, the psalmist is quantitatively minimalist in his use of words (and subsequent translators have maintained this minimalism); he does not ramble, but rather chooses precisely, repeats sparingly and allows the words to reverberate on the spot with potential and personal meanings.

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Perhaps the most intriguing phrase—the mirror-like speck which catches and throws out the sun—is verse 7, in which the pervading image of water becomes ferocious. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”

(Psalm 42:7 NIV). It oozes proto-Imagism (proto- by a number of centuries, though the exact translation used is comparatively more modern). The enigmatic “deep” calls to itself or another of its kind, whilst the exchange’s stilling profundity is surrounded by physical, audible liquid violence, situated by the preposition “in”. These words’ controlled ability to craft an image and the very image created— one which is slightly out of focus, but in being so brings many other things into focus—are akin to imagist characteristics. Both imagist poems and Psalms consist of a precisely chosen short strings of words which create images of specificity. Ironically, however, such tightly controlled linguistic minimalism results in each word being excessively saturated in emotional agency and meaning.

This essay has thus far freely traversed time periods, sources and schools of poetic thought.

Wordsworth, Pope, Eliot and King David are not a typical dinner-table quartet. Distinct ob-

servations of their poetry or attitudes towards their art, however, support one another in my mind to challenge the idea that linguistic excess is determined by a piece’s word count, even its formality, or the conventional “elaborateness” for which poetry is known. Schools teach “linguistic devices” or “poetic techniques” like an I-spy checklist for a car journey through a poetry book. Triples. Rhetorical questions. Personal pronouns. Apostrophe. Highlighters and coloured pencils illuminate the page like neon lights flashing over the text’s excessive parts.

We see partly what is there, partly what we expect to see, and partly what we want to find in a poem, whether a psalm, a haiku, or an epic.

Poetry’s beautiful excessiveness and authentic abundance, however, are not necessarily found in the psychedelic highlighted similes, but rather the saturation of meaning in which each word soaks on the page and then in our minds.

To have extracted every drop of beauty or emotion from reality and to have rendered it in psychedelic colours is not the only way of using language abundantly. Minimalism can be even more excessive, as it leaves the most space for each individual word to dwell and dance.

In his preface, Wordsworth continues, “For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other we discover what is really important to men.”5 This interdependent relationship in which feelings are influenced by thoughts, whilst thoughts are constructed using the building blocks of one’s previous feelings, appropriately captures the reciprocity of the philosophy of poetry which I am attempting to uncover.

will later emit when encountered by a reader.

Wordsworth’s connectedness with God in Nature, for example, is conveyed in his poetry, as the poet, his words, his surroundings (the medium through which he experiences communion with God) and God himself share a page. he does not ramble, but His “a thousand rather chooses precisely, nooks of earth”— repeats sparingly and almuch like T. S. El- lows the words to reveriot’s “coffee-spoons”, berate on the spot with King David’s “Deep potential and personal call[ing] to deep”, meanings. and Pound’s dampened “petals”—attempt to show the whole earth and the God who created it through frames of intricate, little images.6 This is essentially a linguistic portrayal of what humans do every day—sat in coffee shop corners, in cloudy conversations, wearing salmon-pink coats—as they attempt to draw out that which they cannot see, but whose existence they may feel. Through excessive linguistic minimalism, the poet attempts to articulate what is known without being understood. They express that which one currently sees through a glass darkly, perhaps as just an apparition of a face in the crowd, but that which one feels as something both precise and abundant, that which they will one day know in full. > <

In the Psalms and in poetry from across the ages, poets attempting to convey their experience of God—in nature, in thought, or in extreme emotion—allow themselves and then their words to draw in meaning, which they

Megan is a third year English student at Christ Church.

Usually found on a bike, with a book or in a boat, she enjoys writing, rowing, rambling and using too much alliteration. She also has a history of handbell ringing, swing dancing and ice skating—admittedly an eclectic bunch of pastimes!

5 Wordsworth, The Major Works, 598.

6 Ibid., ‘Home at Grasmere’, 153.

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potluck party

A potluck is a communal meal in which each guest brings a dish to be shared, and is a great symbol of community and fellowship. We’ve invited a few friends to bring their thoughts about food and the various aspects of our gustatory experiences to this metaphorical dinner table—and we’d like to invite you to pull up a chair and grab a plate too.

BEE GRATEFUL Matilda Hadcock One of my mum’s phrases, which never fails to put a smile on my face, is “The bees are flying today”. It is a hopeful, joyous phrase, even out of the context in which I know it. For five years I have been a beekeeper. On my 14th birthday, my mum and I decided we would like to keep and care for honey bees. It was a matter of their survival, as the number of bees in the UK was dropping. I didn’t even like honey at the time, so my fascination and anticipation when buying our first beehive were nothing to do with the sweet goodness which I now love. Even so, there is no simpler or more gluttonous pleasure than peeling a piece of honey-dripping wax from a frame, daring to take off my protective glove, and popping it into my mouth. The bees are not best pleased, but I like to think they forgive me for it.

The phrase “The bees are flying today” brings to mind peering at the ‘door’ of the hive, watching the worker bees embark on their mission to see the wonders of the world. It reminds me of seeing them return to their tiny landing 22

platform, pollen cloaking their legs and backs in small dots of orange and yellow fuzz – it’s a chaos of colour and buzz, and I can almost hear the bees chatting about where they found their most recent bounty. The phrase tells me that at home, in Lancashire, the sun is shining, Mum is happy, and there is a lot to be thankful for.

I am so grateful for everything that beekeeping has given me. The workings of the hive are intriguing, and can teach a lot about community and sacrifice. I look forward to time spent outdoors with Mum whenever I go home from Oxford. I have made a friend in Brian, the 80-something year old man who taught us the tricks of the trade; I visit him in his care home, using the bees as an excuse to chat. Things do go wrong with the bees, and some die in the process. But the sense of reward and gratitude towards the queen bee, her workers and nature is fantastic when it goes right. And, of course, the sore-throat-soothing, yummy-on-yoghurt, deliciously-sweet honey is pretty glorious too.

◀ Matilda is going into her third year of Ancient and Modern History at Christ Church. When at home in Lancashire, she’s either looking into a beehive, on a walk or drinking tea. In Oxford, she can be found in the library, in the swimming pool, or dancing.

LET NOTHING BE WASTED Sam Fletcher Sam is a Yorkshire-born student in between Theology degrees. He has just finished a degree at Worcester College and will soon start training for ordained Anglican ministry. ▶

When they had all had enough to eat, Jesus said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted. (John 6:12) Talk of “food waste” evokes childhood memories of pushing a now-cold piece of broccoli around a plate, implored not to let it go to waste. We were told to “remember all the hungry people who would really appreciate that”, as if the guilt-trip could be nearly as effective as the threat of no pudding.

These trivial associations with food waste were challenged a couple of winters ago. I volunteer with a student homelessness outreach group, and for a few weeks Pret a Manger generously donated the food that they had left over each night. I remember arriving at Pret and being struck by the sheer size of the sacks of

high-quality food we were handed. We took what we could carry and stuffed our fridge full.

Pret were incredibly giving, and we got lots of food out to people who needed it. Yet, I realised that—in most other cafés—this food would just get chucked away, every single night.

In view of people going to sleep hungry each night, this was so shocking. I suddenly realised that food waste is not an issue about being pressured by your mum to eat all the vegetables left on your plate. It’s a huge, systematic injustice baked into our consumer culture. It could make a huge difference if we petitioned our favourite local cafés to do what Pret do and find creative and helpful ways to deal with their food waste. But more than this, if the issue of food waste is ever going to properly addressed, this has to involve asking serious questions of the consumer capitalist system that drives it.

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EXTRA HELPINGS OF KINDNESS Hope Middleton Unlike most freshers arriving at university, my biggest concern wasn’t how big my room would be, whether I’d make loads of friends in college, or whether the club-nights would be fun. Instead I was most worried about where I would eat. I have a severe allergy to peanuts and nuts (and baked beans, bizarre but true), which means I have to avoid the colourful restaurants on George Street and I can’t grab a slice of cake when I’m out at a coffee shop with friends.

This sounds depressing, but it has actually made me immensely grateful for the places I know I can eat in Oxford, particularly the beautiful college hall at Merton. Ever since my first week at university, I have been treated to the catering staff’s genuine care for me as they direct me to everything on the menu I can eat and everything I should avoid. Sometimes I should steer clear of the crumble and I have to make the difficult decision not to stake my life on this truly wonderful dessert. But I’m often quickly distracted by the lovely friends I sit next to as we gorge ourselves on waistband-breaking portions and sneak out with extra helpings of dessert.

It turns out that the one thing I was most worried about as a fresher has been one of the (innumerable) ways that God has blessed me during my time at university. He’s used the generosity of those who have given money to the college to provide food I can eat and to build up friendships that have given me so much joy over my time in Oxford. Even when I can’t have the crumble, I am still overflowing with gratitude to the Lord for giving me far more than my daily bread in Hall.

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◀ Hope has just completed a degree in English Literature at Merton College. She loves tea and biscuits and books with pretty covers. Beware of ever leaving her alone in a second-hand bookshop with a café.

KITCHEN SOCIALISM Julia Dallaway My culinary repertoire consisted solely of variants on pasta with pesto when I first began cooking for myself. Thankfully, two friends agreed to organise a rota with me whereby the three of us cooked alternately. We shared in each other’s disasters, including my undercooked lasagne—graciously reviewed as “a bit crunchy”—and my friend’s now-iconic banana, peach, and broccoli curry.

Aside from these comic failures, our kitchen situation proved very beneficial: we saved money, each buying ingredients for fewer meals per week; we were spared unnecessary stress, often swapping rota-shifts around when someone had an essay deadline to meet; and, perhaps most surprisingly, we saved food that would otherwise have been wasted. For us, sharing a kitchen meant sharing those forgotten peppers at the back of the fridge before they rotted, or sharing leftovers that could do for someone’s lunch the next day.

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE Jonny Walker Jonny has recently graduated from Worcester, having read Theology and Religion. Besides studying the intricacies of church doctrine, he also loves playing the drums, and takes any opportunity he can to challenge anyone to a game of Settlers of Catan. ▶

If you haven’t heard these words before, chances are you haven’t celebrated a Burns Night dinner. But, if you’re anything like me, you will have said ‘grace’ innumerable times and on many different occasions with the family or alone (though for some reason never at breakfast?). You will have engaged with this ritual at all levels—from inspired and heartfelt gratitude, to habitual repetition, perhaps much of the time just mindlessly daydreaming only to be woken up by somebody else’s “Amen!”.

Regardless of the sincerity with which we approach this prayer, however, something very special is happening at multiple points throughout the day, each day, all across the world. That is, an intentional decision to stop, and in an act of rebellion against our consumer culture, to be grateful.

Seeing how easily and well this system of sharing worked within the microcosm of our student kitchen, I wondered if a wider network could be established. I therefore set up Kitchen Socialism: a group chat for college members who were interested in sharing their belongings and reducing waste. A couple of years on, the bizarre medley of items that have been offered, requested, or shared includes limes, a tagine dish, a bow tie, an airbed, half a jar of salsa, alcohol left over from a party, Easter eggs, and a bike pump.

The Bible describes how the earliest Christians were so committed to the ethic of sharing that they “had everything in common” (Acts 2:44); everything owned by any member of the community belonged to everyone. Within that community, no one went hungry. Kitchen Socialism was a small, even trivial, experiment.

Nonetheless, it touches on our need to retrace the sense of community that leads us to give and receive enthusiastically.

Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit!

Christians believe that “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17) is from God the Father, and following the example of Jesus, we give thanks before eating. But it is also important to recognise those who, as the poet puts it, “wad eat that want it”.

◀ Julia has just finished an English degree at Worcester. She is interested in poetry, lakes, medieval mysticism, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

I often feel that in faith there is a beautiful tension between receiving blessing and blessing others. Jesus died so that we could have life, and we share that life with those around us; God has blessed us with food, and we give to those who need it. The best place to start for both of these, then, is in gratitude and recognition of what we have to give. > <

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joyful noise

SAYING A LOT WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING

Shun Hei Sin

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or many, the name Eduard Anatolyevich Khil would bear no significance.

But for long-time users of the internet and meme connoisseurs, Khil is a household name. Also known as ‘Mr. Trololo’, the Russian baritone released a song in 1976 in which he vocalises the melody with nonsense syllables, using variations of the sound ‘tro-lo-lo’.

Since the syllables resemble the word ‘troll’, the music video of the song quickly became a meme, in line with a trend that revamps vintage songs in the name of humour (see Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley). As of now, the original upload has close to thirty million views on YouTube.

Technically known as ‘non-lexical vocables’, nonsense syllables have been used in singing throughout history. Familiar examples include ‘fa la la’ in Deck the Halls and vigorous reiterations of ‘na na na’ in the football chant, Will Grigg’s on Fire. They can be improvised, as with scatting in jazz, or written down in score. For most people, nonsense syllables do not mean anything in particular. They are either heard as a cathartic expression of the words that have already been sung or gibberish used to ‘fill-in’ melody. In jazz legend, Louis Armstrong was said to have invented scatting when his sheet music fell from its stand during a recording session, forcing him to improvise. However, it would be wrong to assume that non-lexical vocables mean nothing at all. Throughout the history of music, they have served as a tool for singers to communicate what normal words cannot—the abstract, the visceral, the ineffable—especially in acts of religious worship.

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There is meaning in ‘gibberish’ if you listen and think about it carefully enough.

It has long been agreed by philosophers of language that the sounds we make with our mouths vary in meaning depending on the context in which you say them. Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the idea of Sprachspiel (‘language-game’) to describe how seemingly simple words can actually offer great clarity in meaning. Anyone who has ever tried to ask for directions abroad in a foreign language they have not spoken since leaving school would know that a few mispronounced sounds here and there can sometimes go a long way. Young children, too, often use few words to describe surprisingly complex concepts. Sometimes, words are not even necessary. In the popular children’s programme Pingu, a family of claymation penguins communicate entirely through gibberish.

Unlike other kids’ TV programmes with nonsense-speaking characters, such as Teletubbies or In the Night Garden, there is no narrator present in Pingu to verbally describe the plot. Yet the narrative of every episode is clearly conveyed through action and, more importantly, the sentiments expressed by the penguins’ nonsense syllables. The best example of this is the sound ‘noot noot’. Urban Dictionary defines ‘noot noot’ as the phrase which the protagonist Pingu ‘normally uses ... to get people’s attention or to communicate’ or, more generally, ‘a way to get attention without saying hello’. The fact that the show ran for six series between 1990 and 2006 demonstrates just how much gibberish can express. Nonsense is not truly nonsense if meaning becomes attached to it.

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Another example of nonsense making sense can be found in one infamous syllable: ‘yeet’.

The sound, most likely a mutation of ‘yeah’, originally referred to a dance move. Over time, the meaning of the syllable developed to mean various sentiments: excitement, celebration, affirmation, and the like. However, unlike other exclamations popularised by the internet such as ‘yeah boi’ or ‘dope’, ‘yeet’ is often held as the prime example of how internet culture has ‘gone too far’ in affecting our everyday speech and behaviour. It has it would be wrong to become represenassume that non-lexical tative of an entire vocables mean nothing mode of thought. at all. Saying ‘yeet’ regularly demonstrates that one is aware of internet culture trends, as used ironically by self-professing meme addicts to show that they are unashamed of their creation and consumption of memes. ‘Yeet’ can be defined as a word, but it is also state of mind, encapsulating a pattern of behaviour developed from exposure to online culture.

As well as broad concepts, nonsense syllables can also be used to convey what is considered to be ineffable. There are certain concepts, particularly in religious worship, which are too profound to be communicated through mere words. In Christian tradition, the Alleluia of the sung Mass includes a long, decorated syllable called the jubilus. It serves to non-verbally express praise to God (as ‘Alleluia’ means ‘praise Yahweh’). The music becomes an abstract encapsulation of all that has already been said and sung to God thus far in the liturgy, but also acknowledges that human words are insufficient to praise an infinitely great God. Words can fail us when we come face-toface with something greater than ourselves— for example, the sight of the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest can make us speechless, and a ‘wow’ may be all we can muster in our moment of awe. The same kind of expression is employed in Christian worship for an unimaginably holy Being.

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The use of non-lexical sounds in song also sets the tone of the music. It assumes that the context in which they are sung is informal or intimate enough for them to be used appropriately. In contemporary Christian music (CCM)—music designed for worship in a pop or rock style—intermittent non-lexical vocal improvisations often appear. This can take the form of a short outburst (e.g. ‘yeah’, ‘um-hm’, ‘ah’) or longer strings of improvised syllables, often with some musical ornamentation and vocal straining. Regardless of whether the musicians themselves acknowledge the significance of what they are doing, the underlying assumption in using this style of singing is that the parties involved do not mind informality.

Namely, God does not mind, and neither does the congregation encouraging each other in praise. Since Christ has atoned for mankind through his sacrifice on the cross, removing the barrier of sin between a holy God and his unholy people, Christians can approach God with confidence, boldness, and even informal intimacy. In the Bible, Christ is described not only as Lord, but also a ‘friend’ and ‘brother’.

The redemptive work of Jesus thus serves as the prerequisite for informality in CCM. This does not mean more traditional or ‘liturgical’ forms of Christian music lack intimacy in their expressions of worship; it is simply expressed through different musical means. In fact, nonsense syllables also appear in music written for rites and ceremonies. In Byzantine chant, music used for worship in pre-Ottoman Constantinople, the practice of kalophony involves using repetitive nonsense syllables in between intelligible sections. (For examples, listen to recordings of John Koukouzelis’ work

by Cappella Romana.) With our modern understanding of aesthetics, the juxtaposition between solemn hymnody and nonsense may seem bizarre. Yet, from a medieval perspective, a combination of the intelligible with the unintelligible actually accentuates what can be verbally understood—varietas is desired because diversity makes comparison possible. This

does not mean non-verbal sections in chant are ‘ugly’. Rather, the relationship between nonsense and words is symbiotic—they exist together to make each other more beautiful.

This practice acknowledges the limitations of verbal communication and seeks to overcome it by supplementing the verbal with the non-verbal. Again, the use of nonsense syllables indicates an attitude of intimacy. God hears both the verbal and the non-verbal together as one prayer, and both modes of communication are sung with equal reverence and gusto.

A question remains as to whether words hold more rhetorical power than nonsense syllables in songs used for worship. After all, the vast majority of hymnody exclusively uses words.

For Christians, the idea of Scripture-based worship is integral to religious practice. If God has spoken, and his words have been written down, there is great impetus for his worshippers to use the given words to communicate with the Divine. It is therefore unsurprising that words outrank non-lexical sounds in sung acts of worship. Many churches function without it in their gatherings despite its potential to express relational intimacy with God. Other

means, such as the act of spoken prayer, often suffice. As a form of communication, prayer demonstrates that God is immediately accessible and interested in hearing the praise and petitions of his people – the very first line of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Our Father in heaven’, de- rather than saying ‘God is notes familial close- great’, non-lexical sounds ness. However, as the abstractly express the senhistory of Christian timent musically. worship practice has shown, the use of non-verbal praise has nonetheless emerged as a means to pray the ineffable in a more visceral expression of intimacy.

Rather than saying ‘God is great’, non-lexical sounds abstractly express the sentiment musically. Action, in making non-lexical ‘noise’, may truly speak louder than words. > <

Shun Hei was a third year music student at Worcester.

He doesn’t like writing about himself in the third person. He likes sushi, cats, and collecting Tesco’s Clubcard points.

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excesses of belief

HOW WE HINDER OUR QUEST FOR TRUTH Alastair Damerell

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Jesus saith unto him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the father, but by me.” (John 14:6 AKJV)

T

he radio crackles on. It takes a second to tune. Willie Nelson’s effusive voice rushes from the speakers in a whirlpool of country music: “The things that you’re liable, to read in the Bible, ain’t necessarily so!” The question inferred here by ‘Ain’t Necessarily So’—a Porgy and Bess classic—of whether everything that one reads in the Bible should be treated as an absolute truth, is one that I have heard many times in discussions about Christianity arguments with my more vociferously questioning peers. Unwrapping the debate reveals further questions of logical inconsistency, moral certitude and empirical verification—not just of epistemic historicity.

One tends to find that these arguments are often conflated into one conglomerate, vaguely academic mess which often proves itself to be quite baffling.

It would be intellectual suicide to elide the answers of each of these into one response – certainly the topic is too large. Not to mention that the sort of argument I have highlighted above is a gross simplification of the nuanced academic thinking that surrounds this topic.

Thus, I will attempt only to discuss the dangers of excess belief, focusing particularly on the last of those ‘types’ of questions: issues of empirical verification.

SCIENTISM: AN UNEXPECTED EXTREME I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. (3 John 1:4) How many of you have heard something along the lines of the following? “In the twenty-first century, we know that ‘The Big Bang’ took place 13.7 billion years ago. Therefore, God cannot possibly exist.” There is a basic assumption here, is there not? Logic follows that Science alone is responsible for verifying what

is true and what is not, and as such, by proving that The Big Bang happened through natural processes, it shows that God did not create the universe. Other examples of this may be, “we know that humans have evolved from apes,” or, “we know that God cannot exist if we can’t see him—what does he look like?” What these statements share is a conception of truth that relies on a particular definition of knowledge: for us to know something it must be empirically verifiable. In epistemology, which is concerned with the theory of knowledge and understanding and how opinion can be separated from justified ideas, such a perspective would very likely be categorised as Positivism. One could give a full definition, but if the jargon is to be cut out, one is better off stating simply that the people who make claims of this nature about the existence of God, or the integrity of Christian thought, found their beliefs on the assumption that something is only verifiable if it is observable in empirical form. Some are adamant that this is just ‘the way it is’; they suggest that the natural sciences are the ultimate source of knowledge; this world-view is known as ‘scientism’.

‘Scientism’ in the sense refers to “extreme or excessive faith in science or scientists.”1 This reflects the mode of thought that is often construed in statements of science’s unique epistemic significance, such as the ones above.

When looking at “excess of belief ” I mean to try and identify where the person making these arguments forms said arguments on foundational assumptions, missed only because they do rely on excess—synonymous with unquestioned here—belief. This is not a polemic about the inexactitude of scientific reasoning; as Austin Hughes so succinctly puts it: “The typical scientist seemed to be a person who knew one small corner of the natural world and knew it ... better even than most who had ever lived.”2 Nonetheless, these ideas of the 1 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “scientism”.

2 A. L. Hughes, “The folly of scientism.” The New Atlantis 37 (2012): 32–50.

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‘positivist’ have formed some of the most popular lines of reasoning opposed to faith in the modern West, and they do it in a way which shows excess belief—Hughes agrees that Science has the “potential for excess”—in their own infallibility.3 One of the most vocal advocates for scientism is Richard Dawkins. In a chapter of one of his most popular works, The God Delusion, he provides a useful outline of the construction of his arguments. It starts with a heading (“Why there almost certainly is no God”), quickly followed by a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.”4 Having chosen his battlefield (a muddy rut on the road of logical positivism) and his opponents (the quote shows a natural tendency towards a dispute between science and religion), Dawkins initiates a fight to the death, bludgeoning the believers with the Ultimate Boeing 747. This idea revolves around the idea that a plane is synonymous with a human, when thinking about God as a designer; Dawkins uses the flaws in this analogy to show what he considers to be the conceit in ‘Intelligent this form of excessive be- Design’. However, lief, found in the meta- an astute eye will phorical penetralium of identify that the bold the contemporary positiv- claims and the stark ist ... forms the hamartia imagery are merely of their otherwise noble a sacrificial coryphée, quest for truth. distracting the reader with terpsichorean resplendence while Dawkins ushers the supporting dancers from the stage and away from the doting gaze of the audience. This coryphée is merely an assumption that is veiled by a strongly worded supposition. What I mean to say is that Dawkins is sometimes reductive to the point of intellectual penury. I do doubt only the assumptive foundations that his argu3 Ibid.

4 R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2016), 109.

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ments are built upon—of which two are easily identifiable: a reductive, and highly confined, view of deity accompanied by an implacable belief in the inviolability of positivism; in this instance Dawkins creates direct opposition to distinguish between the more virtuous (or so the ‘objective’ seems) scientific truth and the more subjective religious truth. That one assumption informs the other is almost certain, or at least it seems that the assumption that God exists as a physical entity that can be measured scientifically; how can God exist when one cannot start to conceptualise the reality in which he exists?

C. S. Lewis, in his apologetic work Mere Christianity, pre-dates Dawkins in his criticism of exactly what Dawkins attempts to do. He warns the reader: “this procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity.

Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack. ... You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your time.”5 This links to Dawkins’ ideas in ‘The Ultimate Boeing’ argument about God existing only because it is impossible for creation to be as perfectly complex as it is without a creator; this is a highly reductive version of God and is exactly the kind of strawman argument that Lewis warns us against. In this way, Lewis is not exhorting his reader to dismiss a claim out of hand on the grounds of strawmanning, but to exercise caution over what foundational assumptions one works with when searching for the truth. It would be sensible to iterate the danger of excessive belief; Dawkins’ excessive belief has led him to assert his claims—whether consciously or unconsciously, is immaterial—on rather shaky foundations indeed; Dawkins’ belief that everything can be reduced to the empirical denotes an excessive belief in the 5 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; reprint, London: HarperCollins, 2015), 41.

rigour of science to be able to answer questions that are outside the scope of the empirical or the natural. The truth is that this form of excessive belief, which is found in the metaphorical penetralium of the contemporary positivist, does not in fact lead them closer to an undeniable absolute, but forms the hamartia of their otherwise noble quest for truth; they are whisked into the very subjective mindset that they claim forms the Achilles’ heel of the believer’s worldview. By creating this simple ‘God’ and criticising him for his lack of empirical verifiability, Dawkins commits two mistakes: he mistakenly rolls a plethora of distinct ideas about the nature of deity into one, and he shows an excessive belief in the epistemological supremacy of the scientific method.

In his book Science and Religion in Quest of Truth, John Polkinghorne asserts “both [science and religion] are seeking truth through the attainment of well motivated beliefs.”6 Further6 J. Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (London: SPCK, 2011), 2.

more, in later chapters Polkinghorne stresses the “complementary relationship” of theology and science—they are both attempting to find fundamental truths about our lives, but the nature of the questions are different.7 In terms of one of my favourite Polkinghorne analogies: science tells us how the water boils, while theology tells us why we want a cup of tea. His arguments for a natural metaphysical rationality of the universe, which underlies the laws of science, are deeply compelling. However, I do not want to adumbrate his arguments for the existence of God, only to draw attention to the basic foundations which underlie his work: an epistemology that builds bridges of truth, rather than intellectually adversarial borders of comprehension. This line of reasoning is certainly in direct conflict with the ideas of Dawkins, but that inclusion of a basic epistemological inquiry is what proves the strength of Polkinghorne’s arguments—that he holds back tempting epistemological assumptions is clear without a direct comparison of their 7 Ibid, 70.

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beliefs about the nature of God and contrasts deeply with Dawkins’ basic assumption that science has no limits.

this one step further; in the strangest jump of reason they claim: “God is America’s terrorist.”

Dawkins is only one commentator among many who reject the beliefs of religious people and do their best to seek truth as they see it. Those who panegyrise his work do so rightly, for it contains a lot of fact and useful criticism. I draw on him only as an example of well known scientific commentators who highlight a problematic approach to truth. Worth considering are lesser known groups that do not form part of academic circles ...

These witty one-liners admonishing the world do nothing to prove the love that Jesus teaches them, and only serve to repudiate their claims to be Christian and besmirch the wider faith community; we should look to the Bible for guidance and it says: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”

(Ephesians 4:29) Although they play with small extracts and traditional tropes, they are guilty of exactly the same as the New Atheists: they cherry-pick conclusions that suit their worldview, without questioning the fundamentals of belief that come before. Their faith is merely a superficial hatred which attempts to justify their works. What I hope to have shown is that their views are founded on the same fundamental processes about how God operates and what his divine command means that were seen in the Dawkins example—that excessive belief clouds epistemological veracity. In the face of excess in belief, a perhaps more interesting ‘second-order’ question is this: how does one go about seeking the truth in a world that is so polarised as to where the truth lies?

excessive belief clouds epistemological veracity.

DEMONS WITHIN: THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1) Anyone who is familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) will not need much encouragement to believe that their view represents an extreme. Neither do I believe that a particularly punctilious response is needed to vouch for the fallaciousness of their reading of Scripture. In his BBC documentary, The Most Hated Family in America8, Louis Theroux explores the quite bizarre lives that the members of WBC lead. They are infamous for picketing the funerals of American war veterans, among other events, and piquing the grief of those families with inflammatory and homophobic banners.

What I find most intriguing about this group is the implacable force of their worldview and their unrelenting belief that they are the true apostles of God, trying to rid the world of its perversions. One line that took me particularly by surprise was: “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” Not only this, but they take 8 The Most Hated Family in America. Directed by G. O’Connor. London: BBC, 2007.

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OUR RESPONSE Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. (Phil 4:5) Still, in 2019, the debate rages on: “does God exist?”; “what is religion’s place in the world?”; “what does it mean to be a Christian?”; these are hard questions to answer. When approaching debates of truth, it is best to ask oneself what it means to be true. It seems fair to assert that truth is not unidimensional, and the evolution of epistemological thought is not restricted to one particular field. The arrogation of truth by a lone group is absurd—every person involved in finding the truth should constantly be doubtful about what it means to be

true. When fording perilous rivers, one should always have a firm abutment to stop them being lost to the rapids. It is in these rapids that the vestigial doxa of past institutions remain.

A new reading of Matthew 22:39 may be offered here, as a solution to drowning in such an intellectual river; when Jesus says “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ” he is not just raising a gnomic call to good action, but is also proposing a righteous approach to everything, including epistemology—that of approaching your neighbour’s philosophies as you would your own and rejecting your own excesses of belief. I believe firmly that three qualities may be drawn on in order to find this path: love, empathy and dialogue. However, it is this reasonable contact of love, empathy and dialogue that reaps the most fertile crops. Thus, it is sensible to suggest that the same path of moderation is taken in academic discourse, that is if people are really interested in the quickest path to truth.

One wonders how much closer to the truth we could be if the Zeitgeist of contemporary academia were to approach another’s theory as you would your own. I do not suggest a blind acceptance of ideas, but rather that an approach of moderation is taken when considering alternative theories to your own. Dear readers, draw on the love of man in order to advance the flag of truth; it does indeed behove all men to approach perspectives with a spirit of moderation and neighbourly love.

In addition to this, Scripture encourages us to keep with Polkinghorne’s ideas of the pursuit of truth being as important to religious communities as any other. John 4:24 reads, “God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” I don’t think this implies that the spirit and truth are somehow mutually exclusive, but only that the moderated pursuit of truth must be as central to the essence of Christianity as the spirit for it to be able to stand up to rigorous debate in

an intellectually diverse twenty-first century.

This is reflected in the Bible: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15) It is down to the individual to implement one wonders how much these teachings in closer to the truth we their everyday life, could be if the zeitgeist of to reach out to other contemporary academia communities who are were to approach anothfellow truth-seekers er’s theory as you would with moderation and your own. never to fall into the dark banality of misconceived epistemology.

Excesses of belief can manifest themselves in various ways which lead us further away from the truth, if we are merely whisked out to sea by the strong spring tides of their forceful simplicity. I shall leave you with this exhortation: And the Lord said unto the servant, “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23) < >

Alastair is a second year English student at St Hugh’s.

He loves reading off-piste biographies at the sacrifice of sleep, and would probably give his right arm to have lived in the time of the Roman Empire. He cannot wait to get stuck into medieval devotional literature this year.

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Alex Beukers

On a wide unnatural hill we piled the parts of ourselves we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want. Blind yellow excavators ruled that place: they kneaded our landscape with somnambulant hands.

Seeing that, I committed to comb through the refuse in my mind.

To take back what was salvageable as I walked through a second time what I shed there first, unthinking, unashamed.

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pretend that I pulled out from that heap some long-lost ingot of purity.

No treasure lasted that was mine.

But grace was the tiller as I worked at the remnants of a tired soul, the wasted silver wearing down, down to sediment.

No memories gone, just cleared awayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; so after, I could sit and watch it turn, like autumn leaves, in the turning to red clay. > <

Alex is a second year reading English at Merton. When she is not ranting about Modernist art, she can be found in The Missing Bean overloading herself with caffeine, or trying to write some poetry for once. She is greatly looking forward to studying Chaucer this year.

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howling and insufferable

TIM KELLER ON THE PERILOUS PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Zachary Lee

I

n February 2019, Dr Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York and a New York Times Bestselling author, gave a series of talks to Oxford’s Intercollegiate Christian Union. One evening, Dr Keller shared how throughout history and without fail, human beings constantly look to outside sources, whether they be successful careers or significant others, to find lasting and inward happiness. Throughout the talk, he explored whether there is a way to channel humanity’s proclivity for finding meaning and purpose in ways that are constructive rather than destructive. Through a Glass Darkly had the privilege to interview Dr Keller and dive deeper into his views.

I originally got the idea for the two approaches from The Happiness Hypothesis1 written by Jonathan Haidt. In the book he lays out that ancient wisdom was to not give into pleasure and not to pursue your passion. Leading a virtuous life was rooted in self-denial, which was seen not only as the epitome of wisdom and virtue but also happiness.

The following is a transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity.

In the The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt highlighted how the reason why the change occurred from suppress to indulge—and I’m echoing Philip Rieff’s book Triumph of the Therapeutic2 as well—was that before, every culture saw the autonomous individual as selfish and bad. It was always secondary to the desires and interests of the community, nation, or God. Yet now that we live in a very secular society, that idea of sacred order is lost. We feel that the solution is not the autonomous individual becomes unselfish, but rather the autonomous individual should become more selfish. As long as you are not harming anyone else, you should go out there and do everything you possibly can to

~ Zach: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Dr Keller. In one of your talks, you broke down the two differing worldviews in regards to how human beings have found happiness. Could you summarise them?

Tim: In essence, the two worldviews can be distilled into “suppress” versus “indulge.” To be slightly more verbose, the ancient approach was to “not get attached to anything in this world” while the modern approach is “follow your passion.”

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Our modern approach is very different.

Self-denial is unhealthy and unjust. If you are denying yourself in any way today, people assume that’s because someone else is telling you to deny yourself so they can get some sort of advantage over you. Self-indulgence is the best thing now because that will then lead to self-fulfillment.

1 J. Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006).

2 P. Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).

fulfill your dreams. Today, there is no one more important than the individual self.

Zach: Ironically, while people think indulgence has solved the issue with suppression, it creates a whole host of new problems. Society faces dilemmas not with paucity but abundance. Take a look the proliferation of streaming services for example. Netflix has a bottomless supply of content to view but now there are all these new streaming services with even more movies and shows to invest your time in, from DC Universe to Disney+. There are just so many options.

On the one hand, this looks like a good thing for society because people get to pick and choose what they want to find their meaning in. More often than not though, this abundance has the opposite effect. It becomes enslaving and ultimately unsatisfying. Why do you think that is?

Shouldn’t “more options” and more things to give yourself over to ultimately satisfy in the long run?

Tim: (Laughing) See, now as soon as I answer that question, I show my hand. Everyone who answers that question will show what they think about reality.

Zach: (Laughing) Spoiler out there for everyone reading this: Tim Keller is in fact, a Christian.

Tim: The one thing most people agree on is that having all the options is paralysing. I read this article and the writer said that she was using a hook-up app and shared how it was very obvious that a lot of the guys she went on dates with were still sweeping through the app even while on the date, wondering if someone better would come along. She wrote about how disheartening it is to know that she can be dropped the minute the guy saw someone “better.”

In the past you didn’t really have a lot of people saying how they “couldn’t settle for anyone or anything.” Objectively, it was very difficult to fulfill your desires in 1917 or 1930 or even as far back as the 1800s. Very few people, if they had a dream, could realise it. Now people are more likely to realise their dreams because, at least in the United States, we are more prosperous. What people are realising is that even when they fulfill their dreams, they aren’t as happy as they thought and that makes them feel hopeless.

David Brooks just wrote a book called The Second Mountain3 in which he describes how the first mountain is personal success, love, romance, money, etc. Most people think that if they get to this mountain, they’ll be happy. In the past very few people made it to the mountain and the ones that did realise they aren’t fully satisfied. The second mountain is where you live for something or someone higher—i.e.

God, people etc. The ancient way was right in the sense that true happiness is not living for yourself. Every religion has said that, yet the modern world doesn’t believe it. People have to experience this for themselves and thus take the journey up to that first mountain.

Zach: It truly is crushing when the thing or person you relied on to give you significance can’t ultimately deliver. In your talk you had this quote from an author who wrote about how even famous movie stars, after reaching the high point of fame, are still left “howling and insufferable” due to disappointment. The author also said how “I think if God really wanted to play a rotten practical joke on you, he grants you your deepest wish and then giggles merrily as you suddenly realise you want to kill yourself.”4 Tim: Isn’t that a great quote?

3 D. Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY: Random House, 2019).

4 C. Heimel, Tongue in Chic, The Village Voice, 2 January 1990.

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Zach: Indeed! Who said it again?

Tim: Cynthia Heimel, who wrote for The Village Voice. She knew Barbra Streisand and Julia Roberts all before they got famous when they were all working jobs at the Macy’s Cosmetics Counter. When Barbra and Julia became celebrities, their fame actually make them less happy.

Zach: When it comes to things like fame, money, love ... those things are not inherently bad though, right? The disappointment that Barbra and Julia felt was because their expectations were too high.

Tim: Yeah that’s fair. As human beings we need affirmation and approval. I think the issue is that people split the ways of getting approval into dysfunctional versus functional ways. Whereas in reality, all ways of getting approval can become dysfunctional in the end, despite the verisimilitude of being able to avoid idolatry. For example, if you’re a musician and you connect meaning to the applause or standing ovations that you get every time you perform, I think people can realise how applause itself is not a bad thing. The only issue is how much stock you put into it. Money is the same way. Others may think that rather than money or applause, you should attach meaning to relationships with your family or with your friends. But you still have the same problem. You can be a slave to what your family thinks about you.

See, we need all kinds of relationships. Adam had a perfect relain reality, all ways of tionship with God, getting approval can there was also a need become dysfunctional in for a companion. But the end, despite the his firstly his needs verisimilitude of being were met through able to avoid idolatry. God. You need to get that primary approval from God because otherwise, you’ll crush other people with your needs. So, the answer 40

is yes, these desires are decent. They are a part of what it means to be human. But if the ultimate fulfillment in those things is in anything other than God, you turn those things into an idol, and they enslave you. Your desires need to be reordered.

Zach: We’ve been talking more philosophically about the perils of humanity’s “pursuit of more” journey, so maybe we can come up with more tangible applications. I love this quote

by New York Times film critic A. O. Scott where he says (in regard to the 2014 film Whiplash) that “the world worships success and runs on mediocrity.”5 For Oxford students, there’s this genuinely good desire to get firsts on exams, and/or impress their tutors—i.e. achieve success and not be mediocre. At the same time, this drive can be destructive and all consuming. For Oxford students, how can we enjoy abundance in learning (and other facets of being a student) without it becoming an idol?

Even looking at the Bible, Jesus came and said that we may “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10b, ESV).

Tim: If the main approval you get comes from a human source, there are two problems.

The first problem is that you’re subject to the ups and downs of your performance. If you haven’t performed well, then you’ll hate yourself. It’ll drive you to the ground. If you look to your career, your career cannot die for your sins. If you fail in your career in one way, it will punish you the rest of your life. Or to put it another way, if my main source of love in my life is my wife and she dies, how is she going to comfort me when she is laying in the coffin? My heart is breaking and now what? The problem is that if you get your deepest desires met in anything but God, they will betray you.

The things you fix your hearts on you’ll either crush them with your expectations or needs or they’ll disappoint you. Jesus is the one who 5 A. O. Scott, “Drill sergeant in the music room.” The New York Times, October 10 2014.

died for your sins. He’s the only one who can forgive you.

Secondly, life will always be a matter of performance. You’ll always try to overcome problems or issues by grinding it out. See, there are other religions where if you’re a good person, God takes you to Heaven. The thing about the Christian God is that God gives you a new identity and His love is the one you can’t lose.

The weight of your soul is too great to rest on any created thing.

What I’m doing right now is the critique of idolatry which the Bible is full of. Looking at the books Isaiah and Jeremiah, they’re saying how the things you look to if they are not the true God, they will enslave you and let you down or they will blind you.

Zach: Let’s press into that a little more. Say a student comes up to you and he/she is about to graduate. I’m a rising finalist so maybe this is a little bit of a selfish question (laughing). I’m reading Job and the fact that he can say “blessed be the name of the Lord” even after all that has happened to him ... that’s a kind of faith that is not shallow. It digs down deep. There’s that fundamental trust. What advice can you give or habit can you suggest to not fall into this trap?

need is not being met. You are going to have those emotions. Because you say “I gotta have that or have nothing.”

If you’re a Christian and you don’t get the gold medal, you know you’ll live in the presence of God. If the only significance you have is to win the gold medal and you don’t win, then you have no self left. You’ll be furious and angry because you’ll keep telling yourself “un- if the ultimate fulfillment less I have this thing in those things is in anythen I will have no thing other than God, you purpose and have no turn those things into an meaning.” These are idol, and they enslave you. the God substitutes you have to identify. Once you identify what those things are, the way you replace them with God is through faith, Bible reading, and prayer. You have to believe the Gospel and it’s not just to believe it in the head, but you have to believe it in your heart through those spiritual disciplines of Bible reading and prayer.

Zach: What a powerful word to end on.

Thank you so much for your time!

Tim: Yes, hope to run into each other at some point. God bless you on your summer and blessings on this project. > <

Tim: You talking about Christian or a non-believer?

Zach: Let’s say there are two students who occupy one role ach.

Tim: For the non-Christian, I would always start to ask them what their most uncontrollable and dark emotions are. In other words, is it anger? Despair? Anxiety? Take those three.

You have to ask, “Where does that come from?

You can make the case that there’s a part of your heart that says, “We need to have this thing to be happy.” And the reason why you’re anxious, angry or depressed is because that

Zachary Lee was a visiting student at St Catherine’s last year reading English and Spanish; he studies those same subjects at his home university in Cornell University. He is a member of Cornell’s journal of Christian thought, Claritas, and when is not writing poetry or performing it at open mics, you can find him critically analysing summer blockbusters, listening to Christian hip-hop, and hopelessly attempting to catch up on his continuously expanding reading list (on book 3 of 54+!)

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the starfish room

DEATH AND THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD Linette Chan A man is walking on a beach one morning. The tide came in last night, and the sand is covered end to end by hundreds, thousands of stranded starfish, left behind when the waves receded. He sees a small boy standing by the sea, bending to carefully pick a starfish up, and throw it back into the water where it might live on. He shakes his head. “Why are you doing that?” he asks.

“What difference could you make? There are so many.”

The boy looks at him. He bends down and picks up another starfish, and flings it into the bright waters. “It made a difference to that one.”

T

he ‘starfish story’, a well-known folk tale derived from a portion of Loren Eiseley’s essay The Star Thrower1, has

1 L. C. Eiseley, The Star Thrower. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1979.

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gained a new layer of meaning for me in the past few years. This simple tale lent its name to a little room in a corner of Douglas House, a local Oxfordshire hospice—a room specially designed around death. The Starfish Room was the place where a body was laid immediately after a death occurred, giving loved ones the chance to linger, weep, and say goodbye.

Medically equipped to safely keep a body at an appropriate temperature, and carefully prepared to provide a gentle space for the fresh grief of a family, it became a symbol of the unstinting effort poured into the care of the terminally ill young adults served by the hospice.

But the room has not been in use for the better part of a year. Douglas House closed in June 2018 due to a shortfall in funding, the organisation behind it choosing to focus their resources on their children’s branch, Helen

with a young man who delighted in forming the names of his family members. One summer afternoon, we dragged pillows and blankets and gauzy cloths out to the garden to construct a fairy princess retreat for two little girls who had no words, but lots of giggles. One day at lunch, I met a young woman with clear eyes and a lovely long plait, whose favourite pastime was to snatch my lanyard off my neck and then politely offer it back. And so we re-enacted this tableau about 30 times, and each time she gave it back to me I reacted as if to some miraculous and wonderful discovery: you have my card! After 30 times, it might have gotten a bit old. We don’t normally like to repeat ourselves. But as her hand reached out again, as she laughed and laughed, I realised suddenly that this was no act, that there was no falseness in the awe that I felt when she opened her palm and offered the lanyard back to me. Because the miraculous and wonderful discovery was her smile.

Life here is sometimes bitter, but always beautiful; often painful, but always precious. One of the first things I learned of this house was that—contrary to the achievement-driven, endlessly efficient world of student life—the best way to do things isn’t always the fastest.

Here, an entire morning could be whiled away arranging and rearranging Scrabble pieces

The ethos and rhythm of the hospice is starkly different from that of the world outside its walls. In this house, everyone is so willing to stop, to turn aside, to take time, just to win a little happiness. Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, envisioned a medical team working together with the patient, seeking to alleviate suffering one of the first things rather than to pro- I learned of this house long life indefinite- was that—contrary to the ly, and profoundly achievement-driven, endrejecting the notion lessly efficient world of that dying patients student life—the best way should not have the to do things isn’t always opportunity to enjoy the fastest. life. The emphasis was, from the beginning, on “living until you die”.3 St Christopher’s Hospice, the world’s first purpose-built hospice, pioneered pain management and symptom control tech-

2 Helen & Douglas House, “Our history.” https://www. helenanddouglas.org.uk/about-us/our-history/ (accessed 28 July 2019).

3 C. Saunders, “The evolution of palliative care.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94, no. 9 (2001): 430–432.

House.2 Being in the emptied room is a strange experience. It holds the loving memory of years past, but there is also the undeniable finality of a closing chapter; it is a place that will never again be used for the purpose for which it was intended. Joy on the heels of sorrow, beginnings taking root in endings—the past few years of serving in both houses have been marked by many such incongruities.

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niques—but it also offered gardening, art, and hairdressing.4 Although it wasn’t easy—senior physicians were slow to support her, and caring for the dying was not a priority for the National Health Service5—Dame Saunders believed in serving the person at the heart of the medical mission: that doctors should “relieve where they cannot heal, to keep the patient’s own struggle within his compass and to bring him hope and consolation to the end”.6 But the true north of the hospice movement often seems to point in a direction completely different from that of the rest of the world.

Douglas House did not remain untouched by the pressures of a competitive business climate; despite the beauty of what it had created, the unfortunate truth was that money ran out. Hospices are expensive. Specialist medical care is incredibly costly, and families are often not in a position where they can pay for treatment. In the UK, hospices receive between 28–38% of funding from state sources, and rely on community donations for the rest. In total, hospices across the UK need to raise over £1 billion a year to survive.7 Across the Atlantic, eligibility for Medicare funding requires patients’ symptoms to be divided into ‘terminal’ and ‘non-terminal’ components, regulations which are both psychologically harmful and administratively confusing.8 The tenets of the hospice seem to collide with the logic of the wider world, not just on funding issues, but on a deeper and more fundamental level. In many ways, the movement is a white flag on the part of modern medicine—the honest ac4 St Christopher’s Hospice, “An introduction to what’s on offer at St Christopher’s.” https://www.stchristophers. org.uk/advice-resources/advice-resources-patients/resources-videos/ (accessed 28 July 2019).

5 D. C. M. Saunders & D. Clark, Cicely Saunders: Selected Writings 1958–2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

6 C. Saunders, “Dying of cancer.” St Thomas’s Hospital Gazette 56, no. 2 (1958): 37–47.

7 Hospice UK, “Facts and figures.” https://www.hospiceuk.org/about-hospice-care/media-centre/facts-and-figures (accessed 28 July 2019).

8 J. Buck, “Netting the hospice butterfly: Politics, policy, and translation of an ideal.” Home Healthcare Nurse: The Journal for the Home Care and Hospice Professional 25, no. 9 (2007): 566–571.

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knowledgment that there are some things we cannot cure. Yet it is also a bold tribute to the inherent value of human life. Under a purely medical model of practice, a terminal patient is a failure.9 Under the roof of a hospice, they are the centre of a concerted commitment to nurture peace and hope and dignity, to help each patient experience the fullness of their lives through the final days.10 In Helen House, in Douglas House, I have witnessed the cost of that commitment. The nurses here pour their hearts into caring for children and young adults who they grow to love, and then lose. The families see their children wasting away by degrees, and still choose to adore them. The children themselves must learn to let go of their dreams for the future— what does one say when a little girl with less than three months to live tells you how much she wants to be a pilot when she grows up?— and face death and pain with grace and good humour. But the ugliness of death, the reality of life, is not held back by the sheer love these incredible people give. At the end, many patients lose the ability to speak, to eat, to laugh.

Many can no longer move, or smile, or return a hug. Pain carves lines into faces much too young for any of this. The scarcity of financial resources sometimes seems a small concern compared to the terrifying toll of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual strength spent in loving someone who is dying. When I heard that Douglas House was closing, I could hear the man in the starfish story saying, what difference does it make? There are so many, death is everywhere, what difference could it possibly make?

To me, the answer is found in the apostle Paul’s great treatise on the mystery of salvation. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27a, ESV), 9 C. Adams, “Dying with dignity in America: The transformational leadership of Florence Wald.” Journal of Professional Nursing 26, no. 2 (2010): 125–132.

10 J. Craven & F. S. Wald, “Hospice care for dying patients.”

The American Journal of Nursing 75, no. 10 (1975): 1816–1822.

he says, and I see the doctor Cicely arguing with officers and experts and senior medical professionals to bring her vision of a house for the dying to pass. “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27b), and I see a little girl lying in a cocoon of fairy veils, unable to do a single thing for herself, and laughing with a joy that most of us can only aspire to. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25), and I think of the mothers and fathers who have knelt at the bedside in the Starfish Room across the years, who carry a grief that never ends. In their weakness, they are the bravest people I have ever known. And through it all I am coming to know, with alarm and amazement, a compassion that overturns, upends, confounds. A God who humbles the proud and regards the lowly, who rebukes respected leaders and speaks gently to shamed women, at whose coming every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain made low. Alarm, because such a God does not leave my own ideals unshaken. Amazement, because this is the God who chose to rest his glory on a shattered figure on a cross, Jesus the man who claimed to be the Son of God, and then gave himself over to be lashed and mocked and hung on a hill. Nothing must have seemed more tragically absurd on that day than the broken, tortured man dying before the eyes of those he said he would save. Yet this was God’s chosen. In him, God’s salvation was accomplished. In the light of the cross, I begin to understand that what the world ignores, what the world has no time for, is often of endless worth in God’s eyes.

on running vigils for victims of gun violence in Durham, North Carolina, write: “The only response to immeasurable loss is God’s immeasurable love.”11 Here is a love that sees further than I do, a love that does not flinch from the savagery of grief, a love that accords infinite value to each life… and each death. And so I willingly trade my way of reckoning for his, surrendering my questions into the hands of one whose measure of love far outstrips mine.

Jesus, who even death could not defeat, who says of those he loves, “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). If I trust in this promise, and let my heart follow after him, I am drawn to the inescapable truth that somehow, a blessed foolishness makes all the difference in the world.

The answer is, for now, never complete. The conundrum can’t be solved with words. My rational economic mind still winces at the financial fragility of a hospice. At Helen House, I find myself delighted one moment and despairing the next. But when I turn to the cross of Christ, I behold a weakness that conquers, a weakness that heralds unimaginable love.

Samuel Wells and Marcia Owen, reflecting

Linette recently completed a degree in Experimental Psychology at Wadham. She dreams of libraries, theatres, rooms with skylights and stained glass windows, and wide open spaces to run around in. Ideally all of these at the same time, but that’s probably logically inconsistent.

For every youth and young adult who has passed through the doors of Douglas House over the years, and the immensity of life in each of you. May you find the eternity beyond, and the joy that outlasts all. < >

11 S. Wells & M. A. Owen, Living Without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011.

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team EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

EDITORS

Zachary Lee Alvin Tan

Sabrina Choi Joshua Gei

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

DESIGNERS

Megan Chester

Elizabeth Clayton Cherie Lok

EXECUTIVE DESIGNER Kayla Bartsch

PRODUCTION MANAGER Anna Spence

IMAGE CREDITS

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

All images used are public domain or under licences that permit non-commercial use except as noted: pp. 2, 5, 19–20, 30, 36, 38–41, 42–45, 47, Alvin Tan; pp. 16–17, Emily Swift.

Rachael Chan

about Through a Glass Darkly is a student-led journal of Christian thought and art committed to expressing that the gospel of Jesus Christ is living and active in our fields of study and creative expressions as much as it is present in our books and college names. We seek to provide a space for students to test the veracity and credibility of the Christian faith, and to find that it holds true and enriches life. We desire to honour our God-given calling as students to critically explore and see our platform as a way to engage with faith intellectually and critically. We hope that this journal is not the end of the conversation, but the start of one. We know that all that we know, we know in part, and that the Lord will illuminate and reveal more to us the more we seek after Him. Through a Glass Darkly is part of the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals in university campuses throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, see augustinecollective.org.

Through a Glass Darkly is not affiliated with any church or religious organisation, and the opinions expressed in the publication do not necessarily reflect those of the editors.

All content copyright © 2019 Through a Glass Darkly and its contributors. All rights reserved.

Contact us at throughaglassdarklyoxford@gmail.com, or connect with us on Facebook or Instagram at @throughaglass.ox.

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DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA