"You think you're radical. But you're not so radical. In fact, you're fanatical, fanatical"
As you might have gathered from my lack of creative output, the last few months have taken their toll on me. Al my energy seems to be sucked into planning a wedding, sorting out council tax bills, finding a house to rent, buying flat pack furniture, making a new house for my wife and I to settle down into, along with working as much as possible in order to keep up with my own spending.
Rarely is there time to stop and contemplate anything significant, let alone have time to write about it. But today as I take a much needed day of doing nothing I am struck by how strong my desire is to this 'stuff' I am accumulating. I love to make a home, to have a well stacked spice drawer, to have a nice looking living room, to get that superficial fuzzy feeling you get when you look at how nice all your books look on that bookshelf. I have recently discovered the euphoria of the John Lewis Wedding List. What happens is that you upload stuff that you really want but could never afford to buy, and people buy it for you. People are so generous and it feels so good. As I build up metaphorical and literal walls around my life I am aware at how consuming it is.
However, my greatest fear is to get to thirty and be normal. I am terrified of having a nice house with nice stuff, fairly pleasant children, and an ageing but still beautiful wife, to make little impact, to justify my lack of radicalism on everything else, to be living in the comfortable prison I have built around myself, filled with responsibility and no way out. Maybe it's just a part of growing up. Maybe I need to become a man and face up to my choices. But it scares me.
I am perpetually plagued by my own desire to be more radical than I am. I know that Ellie would sell everything and move to the other side of the world in an instant if I asked her so I can't even blame her. She is far less attached than I am to this world we are building. She often mocks me for being like this, but the truth that we both know is that I crave the comfort and stability that normality brings, I lack the courage to cut loose and run to the other side of the world. I am haunted by the words of Jesus every time I open my Bible and my own failure to match up:
"When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head. I have Hungarian goose feather pillows from John Lewis. Foxes have dens, birds have nests. I have a leather chair and a bookcase full of books about following Jesus. I sometimes wonder how comfortable 'normality' really is. Maybe one day in a few years I will make the leap into living like this. Western Christians are convinced they can live with all of the nice stuff, nice houses, comfortable living and still be radical in faith. Perhaps others can manage it, I certainly cannot, or at least I haven't worked out how it is done. It is much easier to play down the radicalism of faith, to water it down into palatable chunks.
Often I wonder how much of a slave to my own life I am. Sartre was convinced that organised religion was a quashing of man's freedom, a restriction and denial of his true self. Perhaps so. However, Jesus only ever seems to whisper to me- "You are freer than this Josh, there is more for you than this Josh. Let go, and trust me instead". The truth is that following Jesus costs everything: my goose feather pillows, my £200 coffee machine, my beautiful Korg, my ambition, my comfort, my stability, my engraved hip flasks and my ego. However, it offers in return a truly free way of living. It is only in abandoning myself totally to something else that I truly know freedom.
The longer I leave it, the harder it seems to be truly radical.
