RABBIT HOLE
outward bound
MUSIC BY NICK H.
Audio 2026
[TRANSCRIPT] And so there’s this double reality about certain institutions, and having that moment of revelation of what else happens there in its hidden part, and the description of being in a sort of mansion or country house and noticing the staff or the hosts whispering in a certain way. So becoming aware of secret events/conversations, without being able to overhear them/understand them but not being able to un-see the secret backroom/backstage existence.
So I come back again and again to this picture and drama of the person caught in the place/the system and refusing its coercive control (or just control) and having to decide through trial and error, through painful failed confrontation, through escape attempts and dreams of escape; having to survive without getting out, or getting out and being able to see that through.
There is this puzzle and rabbit hole and you never quite know where it leads, if you can get to the bottom. And it’s better not to go down there I suppose.
And so Joshua calls the people to Shechem. He calls them to this place called Shechem. Now Shechem was a very special place because Shechem was a covenantial place. Shechem was the place where God made his covenant with Abraham. Shechem was the place where Jacob, when he came back and sorted things out between him and his brother, it was where he told his people to bury all their false idols. Shechem was the place where Rachel was buried and where Rebekah was buried. It was the place where the children of Israel buried the bones of Joseph which they carried for forty years in the desert. Shechem was a covenantial place. And so he calls them to this place. But this is what I like about the verse: it says “and Joshua gathered all the tribes together”—the elders, the leaders, the Sabbath school superintendents—he called them all together and he said: “they gathered together” (listen to this) “and presented themselves before … God”. Not Joshua. He called them together and they presented themselves before God. Because when we come together in the house of God, we come to present ourselves before God. Because worship is not about a simple man just preaching a sermon or a praise-singer singing in harmony. It’s about presenting yourself before God! So when we come here to present ourselves we leave our egos at that door. When we come here to present ourselves before God we leave our agendas at the door. Am I speaking to someone here? When we come to present ourselves before God we leave our bad attitudes at the door.
Growth is often taken to be a linear concept but I don’t think that’s how it works in a kind of psychic/human way. Growth isn’t linear and I think gardening very much puts one in touch with the cyclical nature of growth: growth predicated on the idea of decay rather than operating in spite of it. I mean this guy over here is growing all his vegetables out of a great big mound of cocoa dregs, coffee granules that he gets from local shops and all that’s built up on piles of old wood. It’s called “Hugelkultur”, and it’s a very prominent German notion. It’s a variation on permaculture. So quite literally the rotting, the decaying wood and the recycled coffee granules form the basis of fertile ground upon which new things can grow.
Escape is not a complete act even if it’s possible. If you get out then there is this whole other dimension of for example guilt or regret, fear, and the sense that it might make matters worse, it might go wrong, that there was security in the mansion (the mansion with its labyrinth other dimension). Each failed escape and even the successful escape creates some new set of dilemmas. The word “escape” therefore needs to have this implication of … endlessness. It doesn’t necessarily take the escaper into some new labyrinth (though perhaps it might do), but it doesn’t take the escaper into a realm of happiness, relaxation, security. It’s the refusal of security once, for better or worse, security becomes intolerable.
[SINGING]