Monday 29 April 2013

Living Life in the Wrong Order


(Apologies to Joyce Meyer for the mis-spelling of her name. Actually, apologies also to John Newton who had already said this years earlier but he said it before the Internet and therefore it didn't really count)

I couldn't remember if HOH and Yours Truly had made a deal about whether I was going to watch Endeavour on my own because he had such a rubbish shift on Sunday and wouldn't be back until after 11. We may have discussed it but I may not have been paying attention. So I decided not to bother. I found an old Danny Baker programme discussing the best ever pop albums. After a long discussion, Baker nominated Michael Jackson's Off the Wall as his best pop album. This vindicated everything I had ever said on the subject. In my humble opinion, Jackson's first solo album had been his best with Thriller and Bad being very nice thank you, but following the law of diminishing returns.
I had seen the same argument about Orson Welles. Welles first film was Citizen Kane. Many people have often nominated this as the best film ever made. There are not a lot of laughs in it to be honest but you can see what all the fuss was about. There then followed The Magnificent Ambersons which was not quite as good. Over the rest of his career, there were many highlights including The Thin Man and (my personal favourite) - The Stranger, but at the end of his life because his last jobs included providing the voice of Findus peas and the Carlsberg voice-over, the theory was put forward that he had lived his life backwards.
The theory is that, in life, we start with little expertise and experience and over the years , we combine both so that our lives are on a steady upward curve where we grow as people and we get gradually better at living, until, when we die, we are actually experts at life.
It isn't really happening like that for me. If my learning curve is going up at all, it is in a very wobbly sort of way. It falls back sometimes and often it sort of doubles back on itself. Sometimes, these things have been my fault. Sometimes they are things that have happened to me that have knocked me back. However, taken as a whole, I would hope that as I get older, I may get wiser, maybe a bit stronger and a bit less lily-livered. I like to hope that my faith will be stronger. I agree with Paul McCartney and it is a Long and Winding Road but I am hoping and praying  that when the video of my life is played back on that great VHS player in the sky, it will look to be moving forwards ultimately and finishing further on than where I started from.



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8 comments

  1. You DO write thought-provoking posts which bounce round in my head all day! I think that the Christian life IS a journey, and we do have high points along the way, moments we can look back on and see God working [and us actually listening, and doing what He wants] and other times when we flounder about it bit [that's a proper theological term, I am sure] After all that heady confrontation with Pharaoh, Moses and co had 40 years of wandering about ...but they got to the Promised Land in the end.
    Working on the principal that "It's grace has got me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home"
    And OF COURSE pre-internet words count!
    blessings xx

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    1. I think you will find "floundering about a bit" in Leviticus somewhere :)

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  2. I just had a meal in Blackpool and was at the same table as your friends Michael and Pam. M and Bob talked nonstop about motorbikes for the whole meal!

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    1. Of course - Baptist Assembly. Hope she told you her "MyCol/Michael"story!

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    2. PS Amazingly small world!!

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    3. She did not mention my col - I presume that was the story from your mothering Sunday post.x

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  3. Apologies before I begin for shallow and trivial mentality engaging with merely sub-points.

    Ever seen Orson Wells's Macbeth? On my list for The Most Hilarious Film Ever.

    We walked in a crocodile down to the cinema in Bishops Stortford (yes, school trips were as good as that in my day) to see it because we were studying Macbeth for O Level.

    The set was markedly odd, the only props as I remember it being a multitude of random cacti. When the moment came for Lady Macbeth's demise, she went fleeing away ("Aaaaaaaaaagh!") wending through the cacti like a dog on a challenging agility course, until she reached ("Aaaaaaaagh!") a cliff top. Whereupon she ("Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!") threw herself off and we watched her transform in an instant to a dummy as she plunged ("AaaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaagh!!!") all the way to her doom. You never heard so many teenagers laugh so much.

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  4. I haven't seen it but the photos are enough to give anyone the general idea :)

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