Catacombs and Smuggling
Again, no idea what year it was. 1981?
Let's try that.
It was 1981.
We got a ZX80 for Christmas. I got it jointly with my brother.
(1981 sounds right. Not exactly ahead of the technology curve, but nearer than most Christians in our time. Lol.)
Back in the day, the most fun you could have with any Christmas present was — I promise you! — a text based adventure with a flashing cursor that didn't give you a map.
So let's talk about Catacombs.
_ There is a sword in front of you.
A door way is to your right. The cave is behind you.
PICK UP THE SWORD.
You pick up the sword.
And so on.
(I didn't play this as much as it's going to sound like I did. I didn't need to. The whole idea was evocative enough to keep me going for decades!)
Never mind slick graphics, immersive worlds and animation.
Give me a hyperlink.
Give me a flashing cursor.
Interact with my imagination, without giving me a handbook or a lifebelt.
A bit like reading the Old Testament.
Now let's talk about Chapter Seventeen.
Chapter Seventeen is the world-building that's secretly evolving behind the unassuming STAGE DOOR author link of my life.
Of my site, I meant to say.
There's also a chapter seventeen in my book project Stay With Me. And that chapter mentions pirates, which gets me thinking about smuggling.
(Look at that for a segue!)
Smuggling.
We're all smuggling things in, I think.
I am.
What am I smuggling in?
What am I smuggling in, for example, when I prefer Catacombs to Call of Duty (or whatever the kids are playing…)
I'm probably harking back to simpler times. #nostalgia.
Manageable projects you don't need a team to build. #lossofteam.
Geek identity. #chessclub
You get my drift?
Presumably others are smuggling things in too. Or we're all being misunderstood.
Just like all philosophers have been told by their friends,
"You think too much!"
And all drummers have all been told by their neighbours,
"You should be quieter."
And there are those people who respond very confidently and defiantly to most things: "But what does the Bible actually say?"
"Jesus is the answer. Now. What's the question?!"
What are they smuggling?
Straightforward answers?
Fundamentalism?
Deconstructionism?
Irony?
Surely we all recognise
(people who talk about Jesus, I mean, with more than a passing interest)
that there are days we find ourselves
quietly having remembered something
from an unlikely direction
that actually helped us more
than we'd normally own up to.
Shh. Don't tell anyone.
I got it from a slogan on a lorry on the M4.
To be honest, I read it in the Greek.
No, it was in The Message.
Don't mention I heard this from a podcast by…
Days when Joyce.
No, Billy.
No, Joel.
Or Billy Joel?
Kermit??
Or Rob got it in a nutshell.
Nadia aced it again.
No, actually it was Leo.
If we said so aloud, someone else would chime in with a,
BUT— but— but…!!!
Yes, of course. I'm smuggling in my own life stories here, like when in the same week, about the same thing, I was told by one person:
Yes, KEEP GOING! This is God's work!
And then by another:
STOP! You are ungodly. Uncaring.
ouch. Being misunderstood.
And so, yes, Chapter Seventeen actively and intentionally smuggles in other interdisciplinary dimensions for all of us to conjure with.
Not enough to think only pastorally. Or only aesthetically.
Or academically without the pastoral or the aesthetic, for example.
Additional camera angles that spotlight every team member's brilliance.
Advocacy from unlikely corners. Additional ingredients that demonstrate why it works so well. Sprinkle of salt. Adjust the lighting. Less glaring, more ambient, even.
Causing the unspoken to surface.
Church, isn't that?
I am a strange mix, perhaps.
Innovator. Thinker. Musician.
Gatherer. Creator. Logistics.
Apophatic. Cataphatic. Academic.
Neither. None. And all.
So Chapter Seventeen calls for forms of imaginative investment and engagement from the participant that are not about the most efficient and straightforward outcomes, but instead what we're smuggling in, and what we're hiding, and what we really need.
*** I think that's the bit the Bible is actually about.
Hmm. What am I saying.