It’s been a busy couple of days and I want to brain-dump before I forget it all.

Saturday was spent writing session 3 of the web course, but in the evening our ethnomusicology teacher, who’s been running a “World Worship Music” course this term, and his students led us in a multicultural worship session, with songs in Swahili, Spanish, Farsi, and Tibetan, amongst others.

Two things really touched me about it; first, the beautiful Tibetan worship. You may remember from last year that I got quite attached to my dramyen playing when we did the Tibetan ensemble in ethnomusicology, but Ian also explained that in many cultures, they’re uncomfortable about singing directly to God in the rather romantic style we’re used to in the West, so they sing about Him and what He has done, and that this is just as intimate, if not more so. I related to all the styles of worship we had during the evening, but to that one in particular.

The other was a lesson he shared from his time in a Tibetan church. For many years he really despised the fact that the service would end with the chanting of the Lord’s prayer. I guess we’re conditioned to thinking of chanting as “vain repetition”, something that your heart isn’t really in. But when he asked a Tibetan Christian about this, he found out that chanting, rather than speaking, gives the words respect and authority. In that context, chanting was exactly the thing to do. It’s so easy to judge others’ worship styles by what we “feel”, but it takes effort and understanding to enter into how they themselves see it.

Now today was entirely different. In the morning we went down to All Soul’s, which is the motherlode of conservative evangelicalism. You are welcome to interpolate a blog post here from my previous comments. To be fair, I agreed with pretty much all that was said, but I was stressed out about what was to come that afternoon and not in a mood to deal charitably with anything, really.

What was to come was a briefing session in preparation for our move to Speakers’ Corner. The briefing was more factual than pragmatic - the latest in the Mohammed cartoons story, and Tony Blair’s recent comments on praying to God before invading Iraq. I was a little uncomfortable for some of the briefing, partially because I felt that it portrayed Muslim people as talking heads full of Muslim opinions rather than as, say, people, partially because I saw things differently from others there (hands up who’s surprised) - I wasn’t interested in defending Tony Blair, for instance - and I got the feeling that dissent wasn’t really welcome.

Speakers’ Corner itself, well, it’s an experience. Our man was there debating relatively cordially - but forcefully - with a Muslim gentleman, but from where I was standing they were both drowned out by one of my dear, dear brothers in Christ repeating over and over that everyone who disagreed with him was going to burn in Hell. I thought it would perhaps be bad form to pick up on some of his theological mistakes, and besides other people were doing that and he wasn’t listening to them anyway.

A: Jesus is the only Son of God!
B: So why does the Bible say that he was the first of many sons?
A: Jesus is the only Son of God!
B: (another interesting point)
A: Jesus is the only Son of God!

Ad nauseam indeed. Occasionally I wish I was on the other side.

So I wandered over to join another couple from our team debating with a well-spoken, intelligent and persuasive Muslim man from America. I haven’t had a lot of practice with this sort of thing, so my brain wasn’t moving quick enough, and the whole thing degenerated into a big exercise in esprit d’éscalier - I worked out the right come-backs to his talking points and the flaws and internal inconstencies in his argument, but only on the train on the way back. It was quite a blow to me, because I felt clearly out-argued, and in my mind, better argued is more likely to be right. (Damn this whole Western supremacy of truth over beauty!) But there is, of course, an element of skill and practice in the whole process of debate as well, and there he had the upper hand.

To be honest I could see myself getting into the whole debating thing, if I could sharpen myself up a bit, but it just seems a bit pointless and polemical to me. It was good to be challenged, and good to have to think hard to clarify why I think my position is the right one, (and to get caught out on a couple of Biblical details, oops) and I think I came away with a bit more knowledge about Islam, but I don’t think anything really changed.

So I was a bit depressed after that, but then had a very lovely evening with H which brightened me up no end. Missed the train back and had to wait for an hour at Liverpool St, which made me a bit depressed again. To pass the time, counted CCTV cameras on the station forecourt. I got as far as 65 before giving up, and that was about half of them. Big Brother must have his work cut out.

But it all ended happily, as I picked up someone’s Sunday Times in the train carriage and found myself able to do the chess question almost immediately, which never happens. For heth and others, this is from Savage-Vigus, Varsity match 1999, black to play and decide the game:

 . .RRK.
P . . P 
Q. .P.NP
. .P.P. 
 . . .p.
.ppnqp. 
p. . .kp
r . . .r

Pretty, isn’t it?