Melancholy

I am feeling very melancholic at the moment… a phrase that I love due to the rhythmic syllables that make up the word. It can be defined as ‘feeling pensive’ or ‘having a sense of sadness’. Being ‘pensive’ in and of itself, means to be reflective, thoughtful, or even prayerful. From the outside at least, my emotional circumstances could be considered by the casual observer to be ‘self-absorbed’, preoccupied… moody, or even gloomy.

I don’t set out to be this way but for a moment in time, I can struggle with the reality of what is expected of me and that which I can actually achieve. When I am feeling melancholic and try to make sense of my day-to-day experiences, it is often tinged with a sense of sadness; that my exploits have not really resulted in any significant gains in my life... My negativity means that my outlook on life, how I view my social status, my material wealth and my possessions, is tinged with pessimism, rather than viewing my achievements for what they are, but I suppose it all depends on the lens through which I want to view the various aspects of my experiences, which help to shape my sense of perspective.

A good example of this is the frustration I feel at the whimsical nature of the students I teach and the lack of focus they inevitably have, compared to the effort I have to put into the planning, preparation, and delivery of my lessons. It is easy to look at the world through the moving picture box in the corner of the room, see the suffering of many throughout the world, and then look at my students complaining when they cannot be bothered to write neatly, use the correct spelling or follow the rules of English grammar in order to complete their work, despairing at their indifference.

I despair at the student’s limited grasp on the reality of the world we live in and the relative ease by which they receive free education and health care. Their daily lives are so luxurious and safe, compared to the standards experienced by a large part of the world’s children and they don’t give a second thought for what they have. When children in other parts of the world suffer great hardship, are unable to attend school, or cannot afford medical treatment, surely when we see those images staring out at us from the television screen, we would redouble our efforts in the light of what we have seen, honouring those less fortunate than ourselves at least, by trying to be the best that we can be?

It makes me feel despondent when I see my students come into school in the morning via the convenience store, with armfuls of family size snacks and drinks, to be consumed only by themselves, filling their bodies with artificial sugars and chemical stimulants without any regard for those in the world less fortunate than themselves... or even those in the same room who have nothing. As they casually throw sweets and confectionery at each other in wasteful abandon, they have little regard for the orphaned children in Africa that we see on the television screen, possessing distended stomachs due to the malnutrition they experience, not knowing if they will ever eat in the week, let alone today.

“Do you have a pen to write up your class work?” I might ask the students in my classes. No they reply…. “I can’t afford one” mutters one student, “Mine broke yesterday” observes another. In my head I’m thinking: “Didn’t you get a pen from the convenience store or newsagent on your way into school, when you bought your family sized bag of Doritos, 2 litres of coke and can of Red Bull, family pack of skittles and chewing gum?” Some students have the audacity to challenge the teacher by stating, “Look Sir, just give me a pen. You’ve got some spare pens to give out, just give it to me and stop fussing about it!”

You might ask me, as Heath Ledger’s Joker did of Batman, “Why so serious?” The answer is simple really… life is serious. Every decision we make and every action we take, embeds within our collective consciousness, a determinism to repeat behaviours when the reaction we receive to our demands, attains the required outcome. We become self-absorbed, using emotional ploys to get what we want, often at the expense of others. We become self-centred, selfish, narcissistic, preoccupied by a sense of our own importance, antagonising others in the pursuit of our own needs, and lacking the emotional empathy to understand the needs of others.

That is of course, if we leave our human nature un-checked. We seem to be living in an age where there is an expectation in the West at least, that we think we have a right to a comfortable lifestyle; that we deserve it. We need to have that new iPhone 6s, the latest clothing; music, films, games, entertainment, all readily downloaded at the touch of a screen… yet, without having to earn it even. Where does faith fit into 21^st Century living, when values and traditions clash against the shock of the new?

How we deal with the bright new tomorrow is the ever challenging relationship that we have to manage in order for us to make sense of life as we know it. This is one of the reasons why I am feeling a little melancholic.

In the dialogue between Batman and the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation in ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008), there is a sense that the Jokers reasoning, in responding to the challenge of beating the Batman, reflects on society today. That is of course, the art of good film making. The dialogue below is a good example of what I am referring to:

JOKER: I wanted to see what you'd do...and you didn't disappoint. You let 5 people die. Then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold.

JOKER: Those mob fools want you dead so they can get back to the way things were. But I know the truth: there's no going back. You've changed things. Forever.

BATMAN: Then why do you want to kill me?

JOKER: Kill you? I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No. No. No! No you - you complete me.

BATMAN: You're garbage who kills for money.

JOKER: Don't talk like one of them (the police), you're not. Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're a freak. Like me. They just need you right now.

JOKER (cont'd): But as soon as they don't need you, they'll cast you out. Like a leper.

The Joker looks into Batman's eyes.  Searching

JOKER: Their morals, their code; it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.

JOKER: You have these rules, and you think they'll save you.

BATMAN: I have one rule.

JOKER: Then that's the one rule you'll have to break to know the truth.

BATMAN: Which is?

JOKER: The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you're gonna break your one rule.

In this scene you can see in the dialogue how each tries to justify their response to each other and the situation that they face. Every action they make provokes a reaction, escalating the tension, yet possessing an underlying logic that is intellectually sophisticated even though it is based in a subjective truth. No one side is prepared to take responsibility for their initial actions… the perception of truth being a relativistic reaction to circumstance. The Joker attempts to deny the Batman of his moral and ethical position by attempting to undermine the foundation on which he had based his decision making. While the Batman justifies his vigilantism through believing that he is the only answer to the Jokers threat.

A good example of this has been my work over the last few months, supervising a group of students in exam conditions. If I ignore the shocking behaviour and the disrespect of the conditions that the exam has to be administered under for the moment, there seems to be in the student’s attitudes, an underlying predisposition to be anarchic and non-compliant. Talking, shouting out, singing, and getting up out of the seat are common. Even though this behaviour is forbidden under the examination rules and could lead to their exclusion from all the exams they will take in the summer, the students persist in behaviours designed to circumvent the rules.

This behaviour is seen by students and their peers to be a great sport; to frustrate the intentions of the teacher; to undermine the moral authority that the teacher has in order to take control of the situation. Challenging the rules and avoiding responsibility for our actions whilst believing you are ‘fighting for a cause’, is something we have all done. The students are no different, being adolescents, fuelled by hormonal changes and sugary highs.

As a teacher, students are always pushing the boundaries, attempting to devalue my status, in order to elevate their own. It is my job to prove that I am able to manage the situation. For the students however, in order for them to comply with my wishes, it is often at the cost of losing face, which inevitably creates an uneasy tension. If the student believes that they are working on their own terms, then their reluctance to comply is abated. It is something of a ‘fools-errand’ for the teacher to attempt to bring order to some situations, particularly when it is inevitable that there is nothing I can do to make them stop misbehaving.

In reality, on both a conscious and subconscious level, each student is making a choice. “Do I do what I am told?” Will the student make a conscious choice to respect the situation and the protocols required to enable cooperation and mutual respect or will they challenge the social order to get what they want? If we challenge the status quo, for whatever reason, we subconsciously log into the memory and our ethical centre that certain behaviours elicit a response that elevates our sense of self. This gives us the false impression that our behaviour got us what we wanted. For some, we repeat this behaviour to reinforce our status and the aggrandised opinion we have of ourselves, relative to those around us, without recognising whether it was correct to do so.

Such was the student’s disrespect of the conditions of the exam that I was administering, the contempt that was being displayed for my authority as a teacher and dare I say, the student’s own limited self-esteem, that they perhaps felt the need to act in this way. The exam conditions curtailed their individualism and self-expression, giving them a sense that they had to deny their own needs in a culture that has lost formality. “How am I supposed to know what to do?” says one student, drawing attention to himself.

The other students in the class are now drawn into this public challenge, so with greater boldness he continues: “You are not a very good teacher… you don’t help us when we ask for help; you just ignore us when we ask for it, you don’t tell us anything, you just walk away.” Lowering my voice to speak directly to him, I politely remind him that all the learning that has gone on in the lessons before this point in time, has led to this moment.

I think some of the students thought that the day-to-day events of the classroom were merely a game, with lessons a form of entertainment whereby my efforts to educate them, just a means to pass the time. To cover up the gap between what was being asked of the student and what they could remember, the most vocal of them used their assumed status to shift the focus away from themselves, through accusing the teacher of poor teaching. Publicly listing the teachers apparent faults including being unhelpful, complaining about the students behaviour when they had done no wrong, picking on them for no reason, and failing to show the students respect, helped to solidify their position as being dealt an unfair hand.

As in any game of poker, a choice is consciously made to deflect the negative emotion of being unable to complete the examined activity by challenging the professional conduct of the teacher. The now public debate amongst peers, helped to build the self-esteem of the individual through the negativity that they all felt about the difficulties they faced. It was too late to do anything about it now; to alter ones approach to derive some notion of success. it always seems easier to apportion blame on the things outside of your control or onto the experiences you were forced to endure, rather than address the issue whereby you have simply misapplied yourself to the task you had been set.

In my melancholy, I feel like the scene from the Disney Pixar movie, ‘The Incredibles’ where Bob Parr, Mr. Incredible, has to hide his identity whilst working for an insurance company. His boss, who has small person syndrome (attempting to make up for a lack of height by controlling others), demands that Bob do as he is told because that is what is expected of him, despite the injustice of the system.

In one scene, Bob is seen wistfully watching a robbery take place out of the window, whilst his boss uses the ‘hairdryer’ treatment (shouting at full volume in someone’s face whilst invading their personal space), to demand compliance to his sense of due process. He could easily have prevented the robbery, he was a super hero but instead, having to deny his true identity, he was sat listening to the chastisement of his employer whilst wishing he was elsewhere, doing what he was destined to do.

I feel like this because I have felt for a while that I have been designed to do something more than I am currently doing. It’s almost as though God has been shaping me for something new. The experiences I have had and the character building conflict and resolution that I have endured, seem to have come together quite literally to form in me, a character that suits God’s purposes at this point in my life. I am way-off being the finished article, but I feel that there is something missing, that I am not yet complete. It’s always niggling in the back of my mind: "Is this all I am? Is this what I was meant to be; what I am meant to become? Is this what I am supposed to be doing? Is there nothing more?"

Later on in the ‘Incredibles’ movie, Bob arrives home and parks. He gets out of the car and slips on a skateboard in the drive. Grabbing his car for support, his incredible strength means his grip on the car leaves a handprint. He is unable to close the car door. His hulking frame tries to delicately close the door, knowing that in reality due to the damage caused, it was never going to close. In frustration, Bob slams the car door, shattering the glass. In a fit of rage he uses his superhuman strength to pick up the car to throw it away after all, his day couldn’t have got any worse. In a moment, Bob sees his neighbour’s son watching him and puts the car down. In a later scene Bob returns home to see the child sat on his drive watching him again: “What are you looking at?” he asks, to which the child replies: "For something amazing to happen."

I really connect with this sentiment. I don’t have the superhuman strength to pick up the car but like the little boy, I seem to be watching the coming and going of life and wistfully comment to my inner dialogue ‘I could do that’ or ‘I would love to do that.’ I suppose I am impatiently waiting for the time when I get to do something amazing with the gifts God has given me. Like the little boy who had glimpsed something spectacular, I too want to ‘do the stuff’ as we say in the Vineyard movement. I am often driven to distraction by the attitude of employers, badly behaving students and life’s idiosyncrasies, which leaves me feeling that I am sat ‘waiting for something amazing to happen.’

I believe that God works through each of us in order for his purposes to be fulfilled. His plan is being worked out through each faltering step that we take, as though we are apprenticed to him, much like the disciples. A few years ago at my 40^th birthday, a friend suggested that my wife and I cash in our endowment policy to pay off the remaining mortgage we had and make a new start. At the time, we shrugged off the suggestion, believing that we were to hold onto the endowment until its maturity where I would be over 50. Then we could do what we wanted with our lives. However, a number of God coincidences have transpired, for my wife and I to revisit this idea. At the end of October 2015 we did exactly what our friends suggested; we cashed in the endowment and are now mortgage free…

The casual interaction of two friends talking over dinner four years earlier, did not seem spiritual at the time but I believe it was divinely appointed. You might ask, “Do you really believe God was in that process?” Of course He was. The freedom my wife and I felt at paying off our debts, has released a fresh optimism in my heart but tellingly, the enemy will always attempt to unsettle our plans. When looking to cash-in our endowment, the stock market had previously taken dramatic falls as China had begun to cut production and the world’s commodities it bought, were now seemingly less desirable. 

This caused values to tumble and the resulting dividends on our endowment reduce. In three months, we had seen the value of our endowment drop, giving us a nervousness that we may not have the funds after all, tainting the economics of our decisions and challenging our obedience to God’s will for us. 



However, once we had made the decision that this was God’s plan for us and committed to the process, the value of our endowment returned to the level we were previously anticipating; odd that.

Alongside the financial decision, I also made the decision to step out in faith and resign from my teaching role. For years, as expressed through the blogs I have published on my page, I have felt the call to do something new for God. Recent events in school finally soured my vocation to teach children and cemented my resolve to follow where God was leading me. I went to school at the end or the summer vacation, firmly believing I would submit my resignation. However, I procrastinated, saying one thing to my close friends whilst being apprehensive in making the decision to resign publicly on the inside. In my delay, I could sense God’s hand had withdrawn from me whilst I dithered and went around the desert one more time. 



Every kind of professional trial was placed before me each day. I would say in my head, ‘I will put in my resignation letter today,’ but find some excuse not to. I would inwardly rue to myself that I had been so careless in delaying my decision. One time, I said to myself that I was definitely handing in my resignation this weekend because I could see that the Head Teacher (Principal) was absent and I could discretely place the note in his in-tray without being seen… but I put it off.

I finally made my play to resign in the Performance Management meeting I was set to have, where we would project targets for the coming year while reviewing the previous year’s performance. I re-drafted my resignation letter multiple times before the ‘crunch’ meeting with my line manager. 



It took a further three days before I received a confirmation letter from the Head teacher and found myself disappointed. Its short paragraph confirming acceptance of my resignation, summed up what I had come to believe was the schools regard for my services. Not one senior manager came to see me to ask why I wanted to leave, nor have they even spoken to me in the corridor to ask about my decision.

This morning, my wife and I visited the bank to pay off our remaining debts with the money we had borrowed to pay for the purchase of cars and home improvements. The sense of relief at being debt free, coupled with no longer needing to strive for acceptance in my career, has slowly filled my spirit with joy, giving us both a sense of peace and relief. I had worked in education for 22 years for this moment to be free financially to do what God has called me into. He has led us this far and taken care of us all of this time so we look forward to what He has in-store for us in the future... whatever that may be.

For the first time in my professional career and our personal lives, we no longer need to work to pay off debt. Sure, the day to day bills still have to be paid, from which I will go and join the thousands of others seeking work. But the terms and conditions for the work I do will be on my terms, rather than the unending workload of the classroom teacher. Even as I sit here on a Saturday afternoon, my mind flips to the box of marking sat in the hallway as I served the remainder of my notice and a pang of anxiety fleets through my being. Boy, will I be glad to rid myself of that psychological guilt trip each weekend and the emotional trauma that went with it.

What joy is to be found in freedom? When I watch the hysterical pleas of refugees trying to board transportation into Europe through the television news, you can sense the desperation to escape. The emotions overtake every aspect of their being, impressed in the anguish seen on their faces. The atrocities in Paris share these same scenes of bewilderment, the same sense of loss, and panic. 



We in the West have had peace in Europe for over 50 years. It is difficult to vocalise how we think or feel or how we ought to react. Blaming France’s bombing of Syria as justification for military action against terrorist activities could put countries who stand against IS on a war footing. Major European cities are on high alert based on the intelligence used to determine the level of the threat posed to their way of life by IS.

Just the other morning, my wife awoke with a pang of hysteria from nightmare images of IS terrorists searching our home to behead our children because of our Christian faith. Now that is a real fear fuelled by propaganda and a skewed reality from our subconscious dreaming, but Paris may have changed that. My anxiety over the omen of marking a set of school book’s has nothing compared to the terror my wife felt as she slept and the emotional echo that stayed with her throughout the morning.

I always wince inwardly when I hear of Christians praising God for answering their prayers for a parking space, when the atrocities of the world continue. I happen to believe that God inspires us to action in this world; to serve him by laying down our lives for the sake of those he came to save. We reveal God in what we do and say, inspired by what we think and feel, responding to the still small voice that calls out to us on the maelstrom of what we call life.

We each lead very different lives. The child born into poverty, sleeping on cardboard mats on the pavement, has a reality that they know to be true for them. It is all they have, chasing scraps of food, being left vulnerable and open to abuse by street wise adults who take advantage of their plight. I get frustrated by the consumption of products we have in the West. For everything we buy, we receive a polythene plastic bag that we cannot be bothered to recycle. The consumption of the West entraps those less fortunate than we are, living in countries we have never visited, in lives which seem difficult to escape from.

The irony here is that in the UK, we line our waste bins with polythene carrier bags that we used to get for free when shopping. We had so many of them that Ikea, the Swedish furniture retailer, designed a polypropylene basket with holes in the side, into which you would stuff the carrier bags, while being able to pull the bags from the sides for re-use. It is an urban myth that we all had so many polythene carrier bags that we would take one and fill it full with the spares. 





And yet today, as I buy goods in the high street, I have to carry my newly bought belongings in my arms. You now have to purchase those bags we used to get for free, due to environmental policies imposed by government. We want to save money so we are reluctant to purchase a bag for £0.05p on principle. The politics of why this is being done is lost in the hustle and bustle of the high street because as we all know, we are fickle, unable to see past our immediate needs.

The reality of life in the West is that we think too small; our reality is our home, our street, our businesses, our employment and our community. We connect with different cultures and nationalities from around the world by the food they sell us or the holiday we have been on. The ease of travel that we can all now afford, or the information we gain from the television news, feeds us with an edited view of the world that the broadcaster feels we might be able to digest. 

But even as you sit reading this, a child is searching through hazardous materials, living on the edge of a rubbish tip, to provide an income for his family.

I have been preoccupied by a situation within the worship team at church. It seems that I may have been the cause of an uneasy tension with a sharp remark I made in the business of setting up the sound system. My efforts to understand the problem went to no avail, resulting in feelings of melancholy at my apparent ineptitude. As much as I have tried to resolve whatever the problem was, the lack of communication has left me emotionally unsettled. 



In my limited way, I have tried to develop a sense of team, fellowship, and mutual support but it seems that my idealism does not match my actions. I am perplexed by how the situation has developed so quickly, fracturing what I believed to be the birth of something great in our church. I seek reconciliation to preserve the harmony of the team and to put-to-bed, any lingering sense of wrong. It is interesting that as we ponder our own problems, our attention is drawn away from those in need around us, making us less effective on our journey.

All of these experiences are real; they matter to us; they matter to God. Whatever our journey, the Holy Spirit whom dwells within us, testifies to us of God’s love, encouraging us to choose him over our natural instinct. A guy who I have met a few times Stuart, who works at our Storehouse facility, went to the French refugee colony lovingly named ‘the jungle’, near to the Calais Euro Tunnel entrance. In the days leading up to Christmas, in what he describes as being squalid conditions, he helped build nine shelters from timber frames and tarpaulin sheets and a shop for provisions. 

Another friend of mine Rob, who has a background in social work, has got involved in welcoming the refugees emerging from Syria, who are destined for the UK, and for whom Southend may be their new home.

Both men seek to apply in their lives through their actions, the will of God as it applies in their walk with him. There is always opportunity; there is always a decision we can make to act in faith. As Christians, both men believe that God is using their compassion for the refugees, to offer hope to those less fortunate than themselves. They are not doing anything dramatically different to what they do every day in Southend. The difference is that in following the Lord, their imaginations are illuminated by the potential to share the love of God beyond their circumstances. These men are not doing this to receive some form of acclaim or recognition, or even to feel good about themselves. It is more that they felt compelled to do what God was impressing on them to do, in order to please their Father God.

"When we get caught up in ourselves, we can be easily distracted from what God is drawing us into. If we hold onto grudges or dwell on the wrong that we feel has been done to us, we are made weaker by the emotional energy we consume trying to maintain the grudge. Understanding the true meaning of love and forgiveness, helps us to let go of the negative emotions, seeking to build up one another through compassion and companionship, on a journey into freedom."

It is up to us to take the first steps towards reconciliation, as we are the ones being led by the spirit into confession and repentance. We look for the opportunity to reach out to those who feel aggrieved and make peace because there may not be a better time to do so and we don't know whern the opportunity may come again. We need to be thankful for what we have, asking God for his mercy, by staying close to his heart in all that we do.

What vision do you have for your life and is it the same vision that God has for you? 

How you get on in life, is not the same as getting from A to B. Google maps may put the journey as a short and fast route but as we know from the Israelites traveling in the desert for forty years, we are not always reliable in keeping to the route we are given. We all serve an apprenticeship in learning to lay down career, the plans we may have, and the securities we hold on to, for the sake of serving God.

Joseph journeyed from knowing prophetically as a young boy, what his purpose in life was to become; to enslavement and a period of humbling in captivity; to purposely serving God in a way that his experiences allowed, revealing the sovereignty of God. Joseph’s dependence on God for escaping jail, being elevated in status into the service of Pharaoh, to relying on the gifts that God had given him, provided a way for the people of God, the Hebrew people, to find safety from famine. Demonstrating faith is about being obedient to following the will of God.

When you think about starting a car or boiling water in a kettle, in order to begin the process of moving or heating an object, energy is put into the inanimate object, to begin to stir the water or rotate the wheel. We might call this energy the Holy Spirit, sparking us into life through what He has taught us through reading the Bible and applying it in our lives through our action. God is really interested in how we react to this new energy. Do we go with what God is stirring in our hearts and minds to do or do we react as though we are hostile to it? 



The Bible is a great place to start fuelling our desire to press into what God is calling us into. We build momentum by reading around the topic and through study. The amount of energy we invest into our vision for what might be, the things that piqué our interest, or those challenges which fuel our hunger for more, is an indication of how our faithful obedience responds to the will of God.

Challenge arises when we step into the will of God. We can be overwhelmed by what we need to do in the natural, struggling to match the day-to-day events, with our desire to serve God, free from these distractions. But what stands before us is what is necessary, to help us determine what we need to do; to become what God has planned. So we start the ascent of our journey, with our limited grasp of what can be achieved, free in the knowledge that ‘God has got our backs’.

When we think this is too difficult, we can withdraw, free falling in our emotions, ruefully cursing that we ever started out on this path in the first place. When we feel out of control, even those things we thought we were good at, are now harder for us to do. But in the descent, as we accelerate towards the point at which we need to make those important decisions we keep putting off, we need to put on faith so that what we believed were unrealistic choices now, might come to fruition in the future.

The tension exists between the now and the not yet. Maintaining the status quo does not guarantee any more success than that which we fear. So we make a decision to begin the ascent into the vision God has allowed us to have a glimpse of. So what areas of our lives do we need to surrender to God? What is holding us back? What is stopping us from taking that step of faith?

Being attentive to the road ahead can help us to plan a way forward. We seek the Father’s heart in all that we are doing. We draw around us, those we can be accountable to, those who share our vision and those who are willing to go with us on the journey.