slow down and smell the dream

I have a few reflections, but they are all in their intellectual infancy. Thoughts for which I haven't taken the mental time to explore their applications and implications or let the m germinate to follow through to any conclusion. So I'll just see where the clicking typing keys take me.

Both came from things recently heard on CBC. I'm afraid this is gonna turn into a really long post. Oh well!

So there was a study done for the purpose of marketing research that explored how people think differently whether in groups or alone.
(Of course) They found there to be quite a difference. One of the things they did was to ask them to come up with a list of, say for example, cartoons, as many as they could think of in a given period of time. In groups, people came up with WAY fewer than the people who were left on their own to think. Now of course there was more to the study, but some of the conclusions they discussed were how when alone, people think more creatively than they do in groups. Ideas tend to be debated/argued/discussed in groups. Now mind you, this certainly has its place, but that alone time is where people's minds really go somewhere new (in that new-to-them kind of way, since there is nothing truly NEW under the sun... everything is something else rehashed or totally regurgitated somehow.) That the degree of focus was so increased when alone, that the creative areas of the brain were ignited in solitude.

And it reminded me of a story about the Mendelssohn siblings, Felix and Fanny. Around 1827, the plays of Shakespeare were just being translated into German. Well, with similar reception to the release of new Harry Potter books today, the Mendelssohns jumped at the release of each new Shakespeare play. They loved them to pieces, and devoured them voraciously. They were around like 14/15 (Fanny) and 17 (Felix) yrs old at the time, if I am remembering correctly. So one summer afternoon, Felix and Fanny had just finished reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, and they said to each other, Hey! I've got the coolest idea! (Jenni paraphrase) Let's stage this play for our parents in our back yard! Oh ya! That sounds great!
Party on, Fanny!
Party on Felix!!
(and maybe they jumped in the air and butted chests....
or maybe not...)

So they set to work. Fanny started, I dunno, making costumes or something, and Felix went inside to his room, and for the next however long, spent his free time composing "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the symphonic piece as a soundtrack to their performance, which would be executed by neighbourhood kids and/or Felix's buddies. Now, maybe you haven't heard this piece, or it has been a while. I recommend taking a refresher listen to it if you are able to. If you listen to it again with the contextual knowledge, that he was like 17 years old, was doing all this for FUN for a backyard play he was putting on with his little SISTER... I'm sorry, but it blows one's mind. The endless streams of creativity, of TIME and planning, simply giving your mind time to wander and explore polyphony, WORK that went into creating all the intricacies, both melodic and harmonic, the arranging, orchestration... unreal.

Who among us knows a 17 year old on the PLANET right now that would bother his bum to spend that much mental energy and time for something like this? Nobody. Our societies have changed to the point that this just wouldn't happen anymore. If I am not too bold in saying so, I would say that people are so accustomed to overstimulation, that we can no longer sit in solitude and quiet, and be alone with our thoughts and creative potential in the way that other eras and peoples have done. I would also argue that this has had and is currently having TREMENDOUS impact on the quality and nature of the entire society, individually and corporately. And like I've said before, if I am pointing fingers, you needn't worry, there are plenty pointing at me too. I am fully aware of (and annoyed by) my near-constant dependance on stimuli, be it cds or radio playing, internet, phone, you name it. Something is almost always going.


Secondly:
A Grecian writer, who was being interviewed, talked about the nature of vision. He explained that one of the primary ways the eye identifies the identity of something is by travelling to its edges and finding out, where does change occur? Where is the distinction between and how is it distinguished from and by whatever is around it? And this is part of how our brain/eye team discern what it is we are looking at. Find the boundaries, and you will better know the nature of what you are observing.

And my mind immediately applied this to a spiritual identity. There is so much blending in to the ways of the world these days, where is the Church's (and Believer's) line of distinction, and how does that identify us, how does it distinguish us from what surrounds us, and what does it say about us?

It reminds me of a sermon I heard that stuck in my head from my childhood as it was included in one of my favourite songs at the time. I am pretty sure it was Paul Cain speaking. Excerpts from it included: that there be a wall of separation built, a line of demarcation to come into existance... for there to be "some kind of a definition that this is sin, and this is righteousness, or this is precious and this is vile. But the Church has LOST this kind of distinction, She has no wall of protection. "
One of our biggest markers is supposed to be this:
John 13:35
"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
But that's not the whole stew. There are more ingredients, as we don't take one verse and make it the whole picture.
So I'm left to ponder, where are my edges? Where do I shmear seamlessly into the world, and where is the godly demarcation? (I'm hoping there is, SOMEwhere... I don't want to be a compeltely impressionist watercolour person... or pastel drawing that a kid got a hold of... sorry.. arty mind wandering there... show of hands for all who followed my imagery - - - Good job!)

The middle of something is not as definitive as its edges. The middle might be generic. But the edges are so telling. I don't know how to articulate all that is rolling around in my thoughts, so with that, I'll give up and leave it with you. What do you think? Interesting, though, to me.