Sunday past was mothering Sunday here in the UK, but in Belfast we also had the opportunity of experiencing a few thoughts on creativity and suffering from the mind of Mars Hill’s touring pastor Rob Bell, at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.
For the few fortunate like myself who could get a ticket, Rob is touring the world with his beautifully designed coffee table book – ‘Drops Like Stars’. This imaginative and beautiful book was brought to life, illustrated through Rob’s art of story telling and the excellent creative visualised videos and presentation.
In his presentation he didn’t tackle the theological reasons why people suffer, but having established the fact that suffering is inevitable, Rob posed the question, “What now?” Suffering does and will happen to us all and by asking what now brings a different dimension to the subject.
When we find ourselves in times of suffering, we judge not only the “What” of something, but the “Where,” the content and also the context. Rob gave us an example from his book, a very amusing university application essay (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm), which is funny because of the unusual context. The concept he puts forward describes how we all have “insulators” that frame events for us, that serve as points of reference. In suffering, however, the insulators are removed, causing us to find everything very different, a world basically turned upside down or as it was put on the night – interrupted.
A few thoughts on Creativity and Suffering
Drops Like Stars
What struck me from the evening, a point that Rob uniquely illustrates that suffering can come not only through what we associate as pain and hardship but also living on the other extreme, having “everything” and being bored. In the west we see the results of this boredom tearing at our society apart, people of all walks of life not sure what the point is to their existence. We know what its like, sometime we do everything to pretend our lives have purpose, when often we are simply bored.
He gave an example of a boy driving around his middle class suburbia in his mom’s mini van listening to rap. What makes this story interesting is that the music is all about growing up in a violent and risky neighbourhood only a few miles away from where the boy actually lives. Rob asked, “Why does the boy listen to this song?” The boy is clear pampered in comparison to lyrics in the track, and Rob suggests this boy longs for adventure, wants risk because he’s bored. People can be bored when they have everything, slowly experiencing a physical death and a numb complacency.
According to Rob suffering is an interruption, it enters our life exactly when we least expect it. One minute we are simply making plans, going about our business and out of the blue suffering brings our life to a complete stop. When people politely ask us how we are feeling, our response is “Do you really want to know how I feel?”. Rob’s thoughts resonated with everyone in attendance on the night, as suffering is rarely talked about, but when it’s actually mentioned, then its like a breath of fresh air.
Another story that personally resonated with me was of Charity: Water and the life changing direction it took Scott Harrison its founder. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about Scott’s story is his almost movie-like, life-changing, party-promoting past turned pious. After 10 years of throwing music and fashion parties for the likes of MTV, VH1, ABC TV, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Universal Records, Bacardi and Anheuser-Busch, living the lavish NYC life, Scott made a return to his Christian faith and took a volunteer trip to Liberia, Africa. Here is a link to a You Tube video where he tell it in his own words.
There is so much to talk about in both the ‘Drops Like Stars’ book and tour. If the tour passes your way I would recommend you get a ticket, and see one of the greatest communicators of our time. Otherwise get yourself a copy of this breath-talkingly beautiful book and may your interruptions drop like stars.
