Movement 124

ties and
binds
principalities, powers and PGs
jim cotter on
language, stories,
relationships, belief
and spirituality
A bewildered man in a cartoon (by Michael Leunig in Australia) is surrounded by what
at first look like robotically modified snakes. The caption reads, 'There comes a moment
when all the cables, leads, battery chargers, and power adapters we have ever
owned gather together and assemble themselves around us and ask us the terrible
question, //What has happened to your life?"'
It may be that you are as technologically smart as I sometimes assume when l'm overawed
by a child's facility with DVD-recorder installing and speed texting. Perhaps that's
naive. Anyway, l've been trapped in a labyrinth for the last month following the terminal
decline of a computer and printer. l've returned to infancy, crawling under desk and tables
to unravel a tangle of cables. Why is it that sockets are never in a convenient place
in the wall? As for updating equipment, why should I blithely assume that it will speak
to anything more than a year younger than itself? Talk about the older brother at school
ignoring his younger sibling in the playground.
It's another example of the way we get weighed down by something that feels more
powerful than we do, that constricts our freedom. St Paul wrote of this as 'the principalities
and powers', the structures, the realities that are impersonal - though we experience
them as malevolent and personal, as rebellious against the power of freedom and love.
As a result human beings feel under siege.
That's a metaphor that underlies the word 'obsession'. We become obsessed, sometimes
to the extent that an 'it' begins to take over our lives.
What is to be done? Well, we can try 'techniques', any one of which may, at one time
or another, be of help. One is to divide the big problem into smaller ones: each of these
becomes more manageable. And if temperamentally we find it easier to look for woods
rather than trees, we may have to swallow our pride and ask a friend who is superb at
identifying the various species of tree. And usually there is something, however minute,
that can be done.
Then it's worth reminding ourselves that people are more important than machines. My
recent technological woes were put in their place when the brother of a friend of mine
phoned to say that he had had four emergency operations in hospital and had only just
survived. That put the computer into perspective.
Something else: I asked, Why am I finding this lT trouble so oppressive? Holding the
question in mind one day, without trying to answer it, I realised - somewhat ruefully
- that it was a challenge to let go of control. That helped - even if the answer wasn't one
that I relished.
And that led to something even more helpful. I started to laugh at myself - which in turn
led me to gratitude, thankfulness that so many processes in my life do turn out well.
And so I once more learned the difference between what seems urgent and pressing on
the one hand and what is,important and significant on the other.
Afew days later lbacked my car into a pillar atthe localgarage. lwasfurious with myself
and felt such an idiot. l'd bought it second-hand from the same garage only a few
weeks previously, and everybody heard the bang. lt took me a day or two, but with all
the training in coping with the previous couple of months, I recovered most of my balance,
and said, with StTeresa of Avila, 'This too will pass'.
Divide the big problem into smaller ones... people are more important than machines...
there's a message for me in here somewhere... laughter... gratitude: little by little I regained
the area of freedom that I had lost. I breathed freely again. l'd come through a
narrow gate, stretched into a wider place. lt had something to do with prayer, and it was
a parable, a sample of that reality described as 'liberation' or 'healing' or 'salvation', the
old Hebrew word being translated by any of those three: with one of them we may be
able to identify. O
movement
I once more learned
the difference
between what
seenrs ulElent and
pressing, and what
l's important and
sidnificant
Want to ask Jim a
question, or comment
on the column? Go to
www.movement.
org.uUforum
lim Cotter runs Cairns Publications,
an independent Christian imprint
publishing collections of poems,
Wayers and reflections. He has also
set up Small Pilgrim Places, a small
but growing network across the
lJK.They seek to turn small chapels
and churches, as well as crypts and
chapels in larger churches, into
'small pilgrim places' - spaces for
retreat, reflection and pilgrimage,
held together by common values.
They will be places for prayer,
quiet and conversation, providing
a welcome for searchers, seekers
and those rejected or marginalised
by the churches. You can join the
network and receive updates on
their activities at the website:
www. cotte rc ai r n s. co. u k
2L