Dreich. Dull. Damp. Dark. On the exercise bike for a while to energise a day seriously threatening an emotional slump.For those not native to Scotland and some of our Scot's words, "dreich" is a particularly handy adjective.
Think of mist and drizzle combined to form mizzle.
Think low thick clouds with not the slightest hint of the sun, all day.
Think temperatures hovering just above freezing, with a North Sea breeze blowing the mizzle in your muzzle!
Dreich is a word that sums up the kind of weather that might trigger a duvet day with a good book, intravenous tea and buttered toast. Except if it lasts more than a day it's a hioghly effective joy suppressant. You need strategies for dreich days. One of mine is the exercise bike with music that helps transcend the boredom that is concomitant of the benefits of uphill pedalling and not going anywhere!
Today I listened to a Chris De Burgh CD. I know, you like his music or you don't. I do. Not least because he has a social conscience, and much of his music is aimed at those emotional levers that make us care about the world, about other people, about wrongs that need to be made right, and rights that are too often violated, suppressed or ignored. Halfway through my circuit his song No Borderline came blasting through. If I'm in on my own I like my music to be, well, assertive in a loud kind of way. Listen to the track here ....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNr3FxLbLPc
War, borders, national interest, the claims of the nation state on the lives of mostly young men; each of these woven into what can only be called a modern lament of heartbreak, separation, lost innocence and far too often lost opportunities and lost lives. I found myself thinking about a world of walls and borderlines, and what the role of the communities of Jesus Christ in such a world. Each local church an Embassy of King Jesus, with ambassadors of Christ who represent the interests of the Kingdom of God.
Paul was a citizen of Rome, and of the world, and of heaven. And as a citizen of heaven he saw beyond the limited horizons of our own history and hopes. Paul's Gospel challenges the deeply dug foundations of divisions throughout human society and across national and ethnic and religious borders, while also acknowledging that those political realities exist along with 'powers, principalities and authorities' which are actually subservient to Christ as Lord. The Hebrew Prophets also looked for both eschatological fulfilment and historical change. The Chris De Burgh song is about those divisive and dangerous borderlines that are territorial markers, and the cost and consequences of defending them. Thus looking forward to the days when there are no borderlines, it is one of my core convictions that the Body of Christ anticipates and gives credence to such hope by embodying in its members and in local communities of the Gospel, the peacemaking, reconciling Good News of Jesus incarnate, crucified, risen and Lord of creation and of cosmic history. As followers of Jesus live out the truth that in Christ dividing walls of hostility are already broken down, so borderlines begin to dissolve and deep foundations of division come under pressure from the unsettling truths of a reconciling God, a love that challenges hate, a life that defies death, and a hope that serves notice on the status quo of borderlines.
And all this started with a song, which started me wondering about the church, and borders, and walls, and fences, and exclusion zones, and that dehumanising descriptor "no man's land". After my shower, I read some of the more subversive texts of Isaiah and John the Seer and was reminded of what I shouldn;t have forgotten, even for a day however dreich, they day is coming when there will be no borderlines.....
BORDERLINE, Chris De Burgh
I'm standing in the station
I am waiting for a train
To take me to the border
And my loved one far away
I watched a bunch of soldiers heading for the war
I could hardly even bear to see them go
Rolling through the countryside
Tears are in my eyes
We're coming to the borderline
I'm ready with my lies
And in the early morning rain, I see her there
And I know I'll have to say goodbye again
And it's breaking my heart, I know what I must do
I hear my country call me but I want to be with you
I'm taking my side, one of us will lose
Don't let go, I want to know
That you will wait for me until the day
There's no borderline, no borderline
Walking past the border guards
Reaching for her hand
Showing no emotion
I want to break into a run
But these are only boys, and I will never know
How men can see the wisdom in a war
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