Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Paul Graham: How to do what you love
JH Kunstler speech to a Peace Project in Rhode Island
Robert Pirsig interview [via Ian G]

Tim asked “Matt, could you explain what you mean by the term ‘shaped’? How exactly could our lives be ‘shaped’ by the story of Israel?”

Good questions. I felt a bit of dissonance writing that sentence – too easy, too sweeping. That Ken Bailey article about oral traditions in a village context makes me think recent talk about ‘living/indwelling/inhabiting/being shaped by the story’ is pretty skin deep stuff. But still, there’s something in it. So I’ll have a go at answering:
   By ‘shape’ I mean the structure, patterns, regularities of our life alone and together. Things we do every day or every week or every year. Decisions, life direction. Whether or not to get a mortgage and a house in the suburbs, whether or not to get married and have kids, how to raise them, what to do with the 100ish waking hours every week, who to spend time with, how to get food & clothing, what to do when ill, what to spend spare money on, how to invest, how to vote, etc., etc. So I want to know how we decide all those questions? Do our decisions come from nowhere, are they random acts of a mysterious will, or is there some outside force that influences them? I think there is. I think ‘story’ might be a good way of talking about what it is. It might be a loose way of using the word. I don’t know if I could tell you the story that shapes the lives of say middle-class New Zealanders. Story is related to values, but it’s not enough to just say values, they’re too flat, they’re not going anywhere.

I’ll aim to get to the specifics of being shaped by Israel’s story (and hopefully Jesus’ too if you’re lucky) soon.

And maybe I should be more specific about that levels of being shaped thing: I mean at the RC of B we’re middle class first, Dutch immigrant second, Reformed third and Christian last. (Is that too harsh? I’m not being arrogant or offensive on purpose.)