CROSS-COUNTRY RUN

I’m limping into Christmas. That’s what it feels like anyway - a cross-country run in the cold woods that comes to a kind of bruised end in the December air.

I had a huge computer fail yesterday that’s led to me reinstalling Windows. I have no idea whether I’m doing it all correctly - it has filled me with terror. Diagnosing the problem, the IT guy kept messaging me things like, “Oh that’s not good…” and “Oh really not a good sign,” whenever I relayed the symptoms. I thought those people were trained not to say things like that! I still think it’s going to work out to have been all my fault.

Somehow it’s brought up a load of other stuff too. Last night I was feeling unbearably sad about my life. Where is it going? What have I done with it? What would happen if I were to get fired for letting my hard drive get corrupted? What in the world would I do next?

The long few days of Christmas can’t really come soon enough. Muscles ache, my face is red with tears, and the winter sky is heavy with rain. I need a break, a long, deep sleep in a cosy world of twinkly lights and hot baths.

UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH

“Okay,” says the influencer, “The story I’m about to tell you today is so unbelievable that it just has to be the truth…”

I click off. What? What are you talking about? Is this some weird tactic to drag people into believing you?

There’s odd logic in the post-science era. Sometimes it feels as though we’ve just gone back to a kind of medieval mysticism. How can it be more true if it’s less believable? I mean what does that even mean?

It all reminds me of that time I drove to Japan in an ice cream van. Yeah, and by the time I got to Kazakhstan I’d run out of Mr Whippy so I had to get a herdsman to show me how to milk a yak. Oh and in China, they have no idea what a Flake is so I got chased through the fields by children with a new taste for crumbly chocolate.

No? Too tall a tale? Good. Apparently that actually makes it truer.

No, the problem with this kind of thing is that it’s manipulating us into doubting our own ability to detect and believe the truth.

The need for evidence (which used to be quite the thing) is now replaced by the need to believe in something your ears have been itching for, that backs up what you’ve already half-suspected from your echo chamber.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s just repackaged faith, right? After all, religious belief requires the same evidence-free leap? An actual resurrection? Are you kidding? An invisible God? A man healing the sick, and walking on water? And a suffering world and a silent creator? Shouldn’t I be happy (as a follower of Jesus) that the world is returning to a kind of blind faith in the unbelievable?

Actually, no.

And the reason is that dissociating truth from belief actually removes us from any kind of belief at all.

Blind faith, I think, is probably no faith at all. Following online ‘priests’ who’ve taken it upon themselves to tell us what we can and can’t treat as truth is about as blind as it gets. No, faith requires you to have your eyes open, searching and longing for a glimpse of God.

This might surprise some of you, but I think it actually does require evidence. And part of the reason why I’m a Christian is that that evidence, the data points in my own life, have been my own encounters with Jesus himself. I can’t prove it to you with physical proofs any more than I can prove I dreamt about ice cream in central Asia, but I tell you what - I can prove it to myself. I know him.

Sorry if this is a bit preachy. I just don’t think I want to be in a world where truth is somehow ‘proven’ by our incredulity, where, in the vacuum that believable truth leaves when it’s tossed out of the window, anything goes - from outlandish conspiracy to silly nonsense, from political manipulation to outright deception. Perhaps it’s an old-fashioned view nowadays. Fair enough. All I’d say is, old-fashioned or not, Lord, help me keep my eyes open.

SLEEPWALKING PERHAPS

On the train home, listening to a podcast. Do you ever wonder whether you missed something great by millimetres? I mean somehow you took a street too early and missed the carnival, or you got invited to a gig and turned it down, and then realised it was like, Paul McCartney or someone?

I feel like I’ve been largely sleepwalking. The podcast features a friend of mine, a musician I used to play with, and it seems, might have been a door to opportunities I didn’t realise at all were there.

Sigh.

I was in Oxford for the Christmas do today. For reasons only known to myself I decided to be in full-on provocative social philosophical mode. At one point I asked somebody where they thought human conscience came from and whether fairness was a construct or somehow embedded in nature. The other end of the table were quieter, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at them. Is it really always a choice between this (I screamed internally) and thoughtful silence? Are they really the only options?

My friend on the podcast is talking about a gig I was in with him, now. He remembers it differently to the way I do.

“Would you shoot for it again?” asks the podcast host.

“Yeah, maybe,” he hesitates. Perhaps he’s thinking about the way I messed up a track by playing the wrong rhythm live on stage. Perhaps not. It all seems so far away now. I had no idea how close it was.

The train’s cold. That’s the worst thing about sleepwalking: you always wake up in the cold.

CHRISTMAS PARTY PLAYLIST

Here we go then. Mariah’s just been on; now we’ve got Shakin’ Stevens. I always think about the drummer in that song. I do hope he got a lie down after all that. It’s hard work.

Of course, what I’m supposed to be thinking about during these tracks is partying - that’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it? Having a good time. I guess there’s some joy to pretending you’re stuck inside while the snow falls.

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is up next. I guess from the 50s. This one’s for parties of a different era - when there were paper chains strung up from the ceiling - but nevertheless for those who see the festive season as a big old knees up. I still have no idea what a ‘new, old-fashioned way’ means.

By the way, I don’t really think that’s what it’s all about - partying. I was being facetious. I just don’t think I like these poppy tunes quite as much as I like the classics, but that’s okay - it’s my upbringing and taste, and I always say you’re allowed to like what you like, and you can’t let anyone tell you that what you like you shouldn’t like… unless what you like is illegal. Or nasty. The consequence is the logical conclusion that: if you like what you like and it’s okay - then it’s also okay for someone else not to like it.

Oh here they are. The inevitable Pogues. As far as I can make out, the lyrics of this are the ramblings of the inebriated patrons in a New York bar. I guess you’re supposed to look back with nostalgia at this as though you were there with them, celebrating Christmas in a snowy New York and wishing you were somehow Irish in some way.

I don’t know why we’re listening to these today. I mean it sounds like I mind, but I don’t think I do; not really. Sammy’s chosen this playlist, and I think it makes her happy. I’m all for that. Although, the playlist I made for her was a bit more…. classical. I think making a playlist for someone is at least as difficult as choosing a birthday card; it has to say something about them, and about you, and be careful not to explode the boundaries under which your friendship/relationship function. Sounds like a blog for another day, but it is true.

Kelly Clarkson’s having a good time. Her beau is back and she’s celebrating ‘Underneath the Christmas Tree’. How tall is she? How tall is her tree? I can only imagine she’s suspended the tree somehow at head-height, which means - either she’s got ridiculously high ceilings, a ridiculously little Christmas tree, or Kelly herself (and her man) are unaccountably tiny.

Sammy really goes for the upbeat Christmas tunes it seems. We’ve now got Elton imagining he can watch snow-fall ‘for ever and ever’. Meteorologically impossible Elton, isn’t it.

Sigh. I’m maybe a bit of a curmudgeon, liking the traditional carols and crooners, the classical strings and stylings of tenors and choirs over the new-fangled party playlists. But you like what you like! Perhaps one day, like Brenda Lee I’ll find that new old-fashioned way - whatever that means.