Skin Deep

Hi, how’re you? Fine right? That’s the usual, everyday response to the question. Even if we’re not, we usually go with “I’m fine, just that I had a fight with a friend, feel a bit lonely now and then, etc..” and then we smile and go with “But how’re you??”

I’ve had a lot of accumulated emotions over the following topic, and I just had to type it out.

I just finished watching this new series “13 reasons why” (Because I watch a lot!), and if you haven’t seen it yet please check it out. It’s about a high school girl who commits suicide and leaves behind a series of tapes for certain people in which she records why they were a part of her decision to give up. It’s quite powerful even though the scenes are filmed from the viewpoint of a teenager living perhaps a typical high school life in America. I was particularly relieved when I confirmed that it wasn’t based on a true story. But it might’ve well been. I understand that media these days are quite extreme and exaggerated, but if we look at them as works of art; we can certainly see them as a hyperbole for what goes on in the world today, and there is a saddening reality to it.

You may say “that’s what’s wrong with the western culture, families are too detached, etc..” Firstly, the western influence is spreading madly across the east. I’ve been to school both in India and Sri Lanka, and looking back I’ve seen that almost everyone in school looked up to the west for a standard of behavior, and catching hold of the latest trend. Secondly, we tell ourselves that we are proud of our heritage, our traditions and customs. How our families are always together. How ‘nuclear families’ are only a recent concept. But none of that makes our culture bulletproof to the problems that youth are facing in any way! A vacant security of family does not translate into trust, or transparency. Further in a country like India, I would say such issues are misdiagnosed, pushed to the side and ignored because you know: “how can that be?” With the education system prepping us to not think for ourselves, parental pressure to enter “the top 4 professions deemed worthy of bringing pride” and peer pressure; along with that the added pressures (deadlines) and expectations for a girl in India.. Our youth are in far more trouble than we think.

In my life so far, I’ve known one person who committed suicide due to the stress of board exams, and 3- 4 people who attempted it due to depression/ relationship issues. Yeah, that’s serious stuff. They’re people I’ve seen around, said Hi to, talked (small talk) now and then.. And each time, I felt I was partly responsible. That we all were, our society. Our mandate as Christians. Even earlier this month a 24 year old male jumped from the Taj hotel Mumbai after streaming himself live on facebook first..

I want to bring up this ideology, or this theory I have. It’s about having genuine conversations. I will not pretend to be an expert on human conversations, mostly because I’ve been an introvert for most of my life. In fact most of what I do know is cause I observe others talking, figuring out what makes people laugh, and wondering what there is to talk about. Think about your day, and what exactly you talk to people about. Is it mostly about events, news, what’s gonna happen next, yourself?

Someone out of the blue once asked me: “when did you feel most loved today?” I couldn’t give an answer, mostly because I’ve never heard of such a question, nor have I had to think of such things. You see what I mean? A bunch of friends, families even could go through years of knowing each other, without being able to share the essence of who they are, their visions, ideas, passions. I’ve seen it happen. It’s cause small talk takes over, the deceitful need to keep rambling to avoid ‘awkward pauses.’ I’m generalizing of course, but it is there.

We’re used to saying so many things which may not make a difference in anyone’s life that when it comes to moments of passion we help ourselves to lines from the movies. Talk people, talk! Talk to your parents, tell them how much you love them. Get to really know your friends and share what you feel about them, don’t just post it in FB. No its not awkward, It’s the highest potential of human interaction, to be genuine. It’s what we were meant to do. It’s how we can surpass the list of things unsaid and hold on to each other; and God knows we need each other!

I’ve heard somewhere that the commonest reason of conflict is misunderstandings; and I agree with that. Have you seen Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd? Quite gruesome to some, and the music is quite fantastic (Stephen Sondheim) but for me it’s a perfectly written tale depicting how misunderstandings can lead to an extreme of conflict! We very often misunderstand how someone is feeling, or their circumstance. We fail to think how it is to be in their shoes. All of this can simply be avoided by telling people what they feel. I’m not saying be blunt, or sugar coat it. Talk about the why, and it will lead to a deeper understanding and a chance to actually know the person for real.

I’m not sure what I mean to say at this point, only that we can’t let anyone in our community be without genuine friends. Friends that know and value your beliefs and visions, of how you look at the world and what you want to change about it. After all isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, in our own small way. It’s the only play we have at bringing out the best in a person, and that is important or people look for alternatives to make them feel better, or worse; an exit.

As Christians, isn’t our belief an integral part of who we are and what motivates us to do what we do? (or supposed to). I’ve been ashamed of the gospel a number of times so I understand this quite well. Because if it is, having genuine conversations would mean a lack of hesitation to talk about Jesus…

In a country like India, I am scared about the fate of individuals we’ve chosen not to take the time to know and involve. Because we know that here, we wait for something drastic to happen to initiate any sort of movement. And mental health is buried so far beneath the ground, it will keep being trampled under the feet of people on the top who are more concerned about whether we eat non- veg.

So talk. Really talk. Don’t spend a lifetime of regretting things you didn’t say. Don’t sit back and exclude people, they may need help; perhaps you need theirs. This world is full of varied people with the craziest of passions and dreams. Only if we know and encourage each other can we believe it is possible, no matter what CBSE tells you. Don’t let your interaction only be ‘skin deep’. We’re not needed to be superficial, there are enough sources in the world to give us that.

If we don’t, we loose touch. Jack Johnson describes it quite well: “Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all.” – All at once.

Eric Williams

Leading Worship

Whatever I am to tell you comes from experience and what I’ve learned from others.

Now worship is essentially talking to god. Forget leading for a minute. It simply means talking to him, praising thanking acknowledging the brilliance of god. After all god’s done for us, it is the time for us to offer him our praise, and this we could do through many ways. In some ways I think prayer is very similar to worship through music. Therefore we establish that praise and worship is a form of worship and not the only one. Music is a believe one of the greatest gifts of god to us. And is a personal favorite of god cause his pl worshiped him through music all through the bible. Somehow the act of singing out our heart to god is easier than to talk, or rather makes it more meaningful. And from the word we learn that god sings to us too!! So what better medium to worship him than through this? Being a leader is difficult if we fail to do this by just being by ourselves in our room with a guitar. As in we shouldn’t need a crowd everytime we want to worship.

But you already know all this. Now when it comes to leading worship (or leading PEOPLE into worship), I read from a max luccado book that being a worship leader means to simply reflect god’s glory. Nothing else! That means when pl are lead into worship by us, they should feel the presence of god and nothing else, you’re just an instrument of god standing in front for god to use as a mirror to reflect his gory to those around. Looking at it that way can bring up lots of things.

Firstly to be able to reflect his glory means to be filled with the spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to be able to lead people. Because the ability to lead pl into worship doesn’t mean we’re better than the rest, infact we’re the same or even less. It’s the Holy Spirit that can give us the proper leading ability. I’ll explain later what that practically means. When I first started leading, it was the Holy Spirit that actually pushed me into blurting out that I wanted to try it out, and it went great.

Now, in order to be filled by the spirit, do you think it will come if our minds and bodies aren’t cleansed or focused? This is why we never go into worship with a stressed, impure or distracted mind. Make sure you pray sometime during your preparation to submit yourself to god as you are and for forgiveness. If there’s any dispute with someone, clear it. Unless you are able to worship with a clear heart, people around you won’t either.

Now practically to be filled by the spirit means to be in a total communication with god. Now in front of you are people, yes. But this time is not about you and its definitely not about them. Its all about god. So don’t think about the people, whether they’re enjoying it, or worshiping, or to meet they’re expectations. The only one you need to please out there is god. If you can lead people in this way than they will feel the presence of the holy spirit as IT works through them. We can’t make people worship or talk to god, that’s the job of the spirit. All you have to focus on is reflectionJ

Finally, if we’re truly reflecting his glory, and worship becomes all about praising god, then people who worshiped with you shouldn’t be coming up to you after worship saying “I loved how you played that guitar”. It means that they weren’t focused on god as much as they were on how you played the guitar. Which brings me to talk about a balance between performance and worship. Yes god doesn’t expect the technical aspects to be perfect as long as our hearts and minds as fixed on god. But where near perfection can be attained, wouldn’t it mean that we are putting in our best for him? For example (and I’ve experienced this myself) worship is going splendidly and suddenly a totally wrong chord is played by my rhythm guitarist. It totally ruins my concentration with god which is of utmost importance to maintain both as a leader and as part of the congregation. Now obviously we can’t worship with a clear mind during worship if we keep worrying about the technical aspects. So practice is crucial for that. In practice we can go all out to make the best of the music or performance aspect. But during worship every single member on the team should come out with the single minded aim of humbling and putting aside yourself and allowing god to shine. I’m not saying we can’t worship without instruments. But some of these songs which are written are written in such depth that certain chords in the song put in an extra boost into the emotions of the song such that it may not make as much of an impact if not played right. You’d understand that when you start writing songs. Though the words of a song are obviously the main arrow to strike the heart.

Preparation:

Start with prayer, as god to guide to in your song choice and to cleanse your mind and heart.

Now for song choice, remember worship is a part of the meeting. And imagine the meeting is on the ‘majesty of god.’ Imagine how much more meaningful the whole meeting would be if we strongly proclaimed and emphasized the majesty of god. So just check with the speaker for starters to see what the topic is and you align your worship towards that. Now that’s not always possible, the theme may be vague or there is no theme. Maybe there’s no speaker. Now I know worship leaders who use a particular theme to the worship and choose songs and talk about that throughout and others that don’t and choose songs based on how the spirit leads them. There’s no right way to do this. I sometimes have a theme, sometimes don’t. so talk to god about itJ because god knows all the pl that are gonna worship with you and he just might give you a thought or idea that specifically touches  or relates to them. For example once when I lead worship in new life, god put in my head to talk about the love of god and I did. And I had a bunch of pl tellin me after worship that it was what they had been discussing the night before and they were blessed. At other times I don’t pick a theme. Infact sometimes I just put in songs we haven’t done for a long time. But even through that I have to receive god’s approval.

I had one leader who told me that he never prepared, just used to select songs, Go through the words of each song and find out what the god wanted to tell pl through these songs, and then speak whatever comes into mind during worship. Which he said was the only way he knew how to worship cause if he’d prepare he might forget something and not say stuff properly or at all. And he’s a really good leader! Whatever is most comfortable with you and god.

Its called ‘praise and worship’. And rightly so because we start with praise and end with worship. A simple difference can be fast and slow, but you know the difference when you hear the song. Uncle rajkumar, a man of god who was vital to me getting to know god and lead a session on worship which taught me most of what I know examined a psalm and realized the Israelite way of worship was to start of with a song of:

·         Praise (simply joyJ )

·         Exaltation (invite god in)

·         Thanksgiving (for everything)

·         Acknowledgment of god almighty (as king and creator, and our salvation)

·         worship (surrender)

now we don’t need to stick to this but it’s a good guide of what to achieve.

A simple example of something like this is oh happy day, open the eyes, mighty to save, who am I, my jesus my saviour. But ya this is my way of doing stuff and doesn’t need to be your way at allJ

Another aspect of song selection is the scales for each song. Some leaders pick songs of a similar scale so as to maintain the flow of the worship so instrumentalists don’t need to produce a drastic change (which won’t be so drastic if there is talking in between but I’ll come to that later), which is a good thing but isn’t always possible, and actually is usually not. So its not essential, but do understand that the instrumentalist (which might be yourself) would need a proper moment to revert to another scale in a smooth manner. And make sure your instrumentalists know the scales before worship. Very crucial!! Some songs have horrible scales which might favour only boys or the other way around. I’d say to try and avoid those and introduce them as a special song…

And never ever do a song based on popular vote or cause someone asked you to do it. Because if you aren’t comfortable and if you don’t have a personal connection with the song then it will not go well. I did something like that in camp and it did not go well. Don’t do it! Also do maximum one new song per session. I know that’s a big restraint but you yourself will know the difference when you face a congregation who knows the songs and ones who don’t. You shouldn’t leave people out just because you want to sing newer songs, rather do them as special songs so they can worship with it the next time. And do new songs either at the beginning or at the end, never last.

After selection I pray again to see if god’s happy with it and have a quick runthrough with myself to see if it flows.

Now the thought will come, what am I supposed to say up there? J

My simple rule is don’t say anything unless its from god. People didn’t come there to listen to what you have to say about god (contrary to what some people actually come for), they wanna listen TO god. So let god do the talking. Why would you wanna break up a conversation between god and some person in the congregation? Unless the lord gives you something to say, don’t say it, or it just becomes mindless chatter, noise unto god. In the beginning yes you’ll need to say something just to make them prepared to talk to god. For the rest I prefer to let the songs and god do the talking. Especially towards the end when people are directly talking to god. The songs could say a thousand more than we could, I mean they’re built with such meaning its brought tears to people. Again, unless you get a thought in between or something that you know you have to say. Especially when your open to say stuff to god. Never say anything cause you think people want or expect you to say something, that will only please men, your aim is towards god. Worship is different in different churches and I read that if god wanted the same sort of worship he wouldn’t have created so many diff types of people!! In my church back in delhi for example, we have a short 20 minute worship with 5 songs and hardly any speech in between. That’s what allows them to talk to god better. Who’s to say it’s wrong? When it comes to diff forms of worship I just do what’s comfortable with me. Nothing is higher than what you and god decide for worship.

I often felt this battle, having fear of what pl might think, and that I might go blank and not say anything in worship ending in disaster. In those times I remind myself that I’m not doing this for people, I’m doin this for god. And all things work for the good of Christ who loves you. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. So don’t think you can’t do it aloneJ

Now an important thing to understand (and sorry I’ve written so much!) is worship is sacred. It’s a communication with god. Not a performance and definitely not a time filler. Which is why I’m totally against doing songs just cause there’s ‘extra time’. We shouldn’t bring down the sacred feature of worship. It can’t be used to just have fun. 

Imagination

Imagine one day you reached into your bag, and happened to pulled out a tiny green, scaly creature you believe and know to be a dinosaur. What next? You’d have to actually ‘imagine’ wouldn’t you? So what exactly is this ability of imagination.. Some of you may have started thinking: “well that’s for kids”. But changing that manner of thinking is my goal here, so I hope you’ll bear with me.

If I may be so bold, I define imagination as the ability to travel to another world, complete with its own set of principles and possibilities, so uniquely ours to borrow ideas of creativity that adds not only a whole new dimension to the world we live in but also dares us to venture past any sense of hopelessness.

Relive with me our childhood; the days we spent occupying ourselves with only our hands for guns, or sticks for swords, and a mind full of infinite leisure. When anyone our age no matter the socio-economic status, religion or language became our best friend, or partner in crime. And then we grew up to a world of books (unless you had cable) where we cherished the scent of the pages of a new book, when we eagerly and secretly read through the night under a blanket with a torchlight, and wished (oh how much we wished!) we were one of the characters in the story. Just to get a glimpse of this world that the author had painted so wonderfully in our mind, where dreams do come true and rabbits wear waistcoats.

How we so deeply immersed ourselves with wanting to be one of the famous five, or have a magical finger, or couldn’t sleep for a whole night because R.L Stine petrified us with ‘the headless ghost’, how we longed to find a magical rabbit hole in the forest, to chill out with archie and the gang, or to fly on buckbeak’s back above Hogwarts…

Unfortunately, such thinking is not encouraged in most schools in India. But I will not dwell further on that as it would be article of its own.

I must say I find it very annoying when I walk into a bookstore and all the authors I admire for their ability to stretch their imagination as vast as an ocean are neatly fitted into the kids section.

But tell me what would science be without imagination? Most of physics only makes sense if we imagine. If you look back at most of the greatest scientific discoveries, they came either out of a ridiculous, spontaneous thought or because people dared to ask ‘what if?’

Take a look at medical- related discoveries. Tetralogy of fallot was a hopeless condition before 1944 until two surgeons dared to try out an anastomosis between the subclavian and pulmonary artery.

This is the core of my debate: to suppress the will to imagine is suicide to any hope of creative progress; and without that we could never hope of making a difference in this world.

So take a leap back in time, and go back to the days when our only responsibility was saying bye to our parents before leaving the house to play.. Encourage your mind to see what fascinated you as a child, and it would enable you to not only look past problems you thought were big but realize that you can do so much more to sever the problems of people around you.

Perhaps that why progress in all streams of life have come to a stagnant phase for a while.. at least, that’s what I’ve inferred from the songs and movies that come out these days. Except technology of course. My theory is that this one field which strives to make our lives more comfortable and longer only to replace the necessity and passion for hard work thereby ironically actually shortening life (based on the fact that non communicable diseases are almost the leading causes of morbidity these days).

What did you want to become growing up? I assume most of those answers would not have included an engineer or a charted accountant... I personally wanted to be a barber, or an author. One of my childhood friends wanted to be an ice cream man. And why not? Cause we’ve been too lazy to follow through with it and have allowed ourselves to be pressurized into falling for what the world thinks is success. I know some people who wanted to be an engineer but didn’t like physics... Does that make any sense to you?

So I hope you take this journey with me, and venture into an unknown world full of excitement and wonder. Let your mind break free from all the restraints you thought you had and experience something strange, daring and most of all: satisfying. Let your inner child run around tweaking your thoughts, a little here and a little there, just enough to make you smileJ

Eric Williams

Freedom

It starts small, but start it did;

Sometimes with no reason or rhyme.

The clock’s ticking, though it always had

Perhaps now it’s just running out of time.

It does nothing at first, neither move nor mind

The wait it’s expected to keep.

“I’m happy!” it said “for one day I’ll be free

to take that giant leap.”

The time has come, and it spreads its wings

Taking flight into the unknown.

Merrily it flitters here and there;

Soon it’ll reach the bone.

It took a momentary glance at what he left behind

To strike an air of doubt.

The slight breeze became a storm of guilt

“Is this all my life is about?”

He tugged and tugged but the sails would not listen

“This is who you are.” They replied.

Is this freedom at all- to be yourself

For the end had come, and he cried.

If this is freedom lord, you make me a slave.

I know not what I do.

Instead give me the freedom to not be myself,

And be like Jesus.. yes, just like you.