NECO DRACONES

The Ultimate Materialist

2011-08-10T22:07:00.000-04:00

There is a habit that plagues many so-called spiritual minds: they imagine that matter and spirit are somehow at odds with each other and that the right course for human life is to escape from the world of matter into some finer and purer (and undoubtedly duller) realm. To me, that is a crashing mistake -- and it is, above all, a theological mistake. Because, in fact, it was God who invented dirt, onions, and turnip greens; God who invented human beings, and their strange compulsion to cook their food; God who, at the end of each day of creation, pronounced a resounding "Good!" over his own concoctions. And it is God's unrelenting love of all the stuff of this world that keeps it in being at every moment. So, if we are fascinated, even intoxicated, by matter, it is no surprise: we are made in the image of the Ultimate Materialist.

From the "Preface to the Second and Third Edition" of The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon.

Demanding and Rigorous

2011-08-01T09:22:00.000-04:00

From a New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof.

Centuries ago, serious religious study was extraordinarily demanding and rigorous; in contrast, anyone could declare himself a scientist and go in the business of, say, alchemy. These days, it’s the reverse. A Ph.D. in chemistry is a rigorous degree, while a preacher can explain the Bible on television without mastering Hebrew or Greek — or even showing interest in the nuances of the original texts.

Hmmm...

We'll See

2011-07-31T10:51:00.000-04:00

Parents are deep wells of wisdom.

That fact seems to usually go unrecognized until the children themselves are in the parent stage. I have found that even though I certainly gave lip service to my mother's wisdom, as I move down the slippery slope -- getting within spitting distance now of the AARP -- I see it more clearly.

As a child I would ask my Mom if we could do something in the future. "Can we go to Benson's Animal Farm this summer?" "Can we go to the beach next week?"

Her inevitable answer would be "We'll see."

It was a source of great frustration for me. Yes or no. "We'll see" just did not cut it.

Now I watch the check and balance action going back and forth between Congress, Senate and the Executive Branch of the federal government. Competing theories of what needs doing and how to do it -- mow it all down or just a little pruning here and there. Competing theories of what will happen -- total apocalypse or a slight bump in the road.

And no news outlet seems to be able to actually explain the issues. They are great on the play by play, (Boehner jabs, he weaves, Obama with a right cross, and OH! Boehner lands a solid blow to the kidneys. Obama shakes it off...) but no one seem to be able to clarify the issues at hand.

So...I find myself, like my Mom, just watching it all and saying..."Well -- we'll see."

Wisdom. I see it now.

Xristos Anesti

2011-04-24T08:39:00.000-04:00

Jesus lives, and so shall I.
Death! thy sting is gone forever,
He who deigned for me to die,
Lives, the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me with the just:
Jesus is my Hope and Trust.

Jesus lives and reigns supreme;
And, His kingdom still remaining;
I shall also be with Him,
Ever living, ever reigning.
God has promised: be it must;
Jesus is my Hope and Trust.

Jesus lives, I know full well,
Naught from Him my heart can sever,
Life nor death nor powers of hell,
Joy nor grief, henceforth forever.
None of all His saints is lost;
Jesus is my Hope and Trust.

Jesus lives, and death is now
But my entrance into glory.
Courage, then, my soul, for thou
Hast a crown of life before thee;
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just;
Jesus Christ, our hope and trust..

Triduum

2011-04-22T22:12:00.000-04:00

Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Thy body slain, sweet Jesus, Thine—
And bathed in its own blood—
While the firm mark of wrath divine,
His Soul in anguish stood.

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
For man the creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.

-- Isaac Watts

Not Like the Movies...

2011-03-03T22:17:00.002-05:00

My wife knows.

When we are watching a movie, she knows that the minute they show someone paddling a canoe, I will tense up. Clearly I want to say something, but I am holding back. She knows that I want to complain about how Natalie Portman can study ballet for a year to play the lead in Black Swan, but the producer of this film apparently can't spare $30 to hire some summer camp recreation director for 1/2 hour to teach his lead actors how to properly paddle a canoe. She knows that my barely suppressed rage at this travesty is only surpassed by my knowledge that she has forbidden me to speak on the subject ever again. Ever.

That's what happens when you rant one too many times, I guess.

It's just that it jars me out of my willing suspension of disbelief when the supposedly woodscrafty hero, a man wise and skilled in the ways of making his way through the wilderness can't even paddle a gosh darn canoe straight without switching sides every 3 strokes and getting water in the boat to boot. Drives me up a wall.

The movies just can't seem to get the details right.

In the same way, it seems that neither script writers, nor directors nor any actor seems to be able to get the portrayal of religious belief right on the screen. It seems lately that almost every time some religious thread is introduced into a story, something about the way it plays just seems off. It seems off in almost the same way as when you are trying to speak to someone with eyes that point two different directions. All the pieces of the face are there, but it's all just far enough off the mark to make the result disconcerting.

I can understand how this can happen. If you have never had an authentic religious experience, if you have not had extensive firsthand familiar with the religious subculture and the real people that live it, or even more importantly if you do not respect religious folk enough to look past the surface, it is almost a given that the result will tend more to caricature than to characterization. To authentically portray such people, you may not need to be one of them, but you must have a certain sympathy and certainly a real familiarity with them as people. Otherwise your dialogue will never rise above a ragtag collection of religious cliches. I watch these plays and the words jar me in the same way as a poorly paddled canoe.

I recently viewed a video on youtube that comes from a completely opposite pole. In our film, television, books and stories, missionaries are mostly vilified. They are presented variously as cultural imperialists, deluded naifs, or corrupt powermongers, just to name a few options. Quick. Do an inventory of all the films and stories you have viewed which include missionaries. How many actually treat the missionary with any type of real respect or seriousness? Include pastors and priests in that mix.

I know missionaries. I grew up with missionaries. The fact is that they are real people who are seeking to live out their real faith in direct confrontation with a real world. The most important thing, beyond all else, is that they help the people to whom they go. As people, they are just as susceptible to all human stumblings. Nevertheless, in so many cases the work they do is highly valued by the people with whom they choose to live and love and help.

This youtube video struck me because it takes the viewpoint of the people helped by christian missionaries. And not just in terms of medical care, agricultural training or food relief. No, these people are joyful from the deepest place and grateful to the missionaries for the MESSAGE that has been brought to them. There is no acting, no mediating by writers or directors to dilute the genuine joy with which these people greet the coming of God's Word in their language to their people.

It seems to me that the testimony of these people is worth far more than that of most filmmakers and TV producers.

In fairness, I have to point out that the people aren't rejoicing over the missionaries. But they are certainly rejoicing over the gift the missionaries have brought to them. I suspect that this type of occurrence is more common than we know. It should be shown on Nightline, 60 Minutes, and 20/20 more often, but it doesn't really align with the popular understanding of how the work of missionaries are received by the people to whom they minister.

It's just not like in the movies.

The Plowmen by Robert Frost

2011-02-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

A plow, they say, to plow the snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no--
Unless in bitterness to mock
At having cultivated rock.

To All Those Plow Guys...You Know Who You Are...

2011-02-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a hard winter here in NH.

I have fence posts out front that I still can barely see the tops of, even though the snow has settled some. Much more, and the snow on the lawn will be higher than my deck. I have formed a technique of inching the nose of my car just barely out into the road on the theory that the car that I can't see for the 6 foot snowbanks will just glance off my left fender to let me know that the coast is not clear.

Of course, it's a little tricky when the driveway is icy...it requires a bit of a running start to make it up the slight slope. It's gung ho and pray it's a Ford Fiesta and not an F250 with a new butterfly plow blade.

Every snowstorm takes me about 4 hours to clear out. No snow blower here and no cash to hire a plow. Then there's ice dams on the roof. And digging out the mailbox so the mail carrier can make his appointed rounds. While sleet and snow may not prevent him, apparently 4 feet of solidly impacted ice crystals will.

Then there's the weeks of temps around the zero mark, and lower. Makes the woodpile go down fast. Nothing better than hopping into a hot shower after getting all sweaty hauling wood up to the house when it's 10 below. That is, if you have enough heating oil in the tank to run the furnace. Having to run down to the gas station to pick up some off-road diesel every 5 days or so gives one a real appreciation for hot water.

Like I said, it's been a tough winter.

Last year (or was it two years ago) some local folks went all viral with a video spoofing a pop/rap song thing but all about NH. They just came out with a new one, a tribute to those intrepid and unsung (until now) heroes of the NH economy. They are working hard, and many are having a mighty good year.

Let's give it up for the plow guys.

Dangerous Babies

2010-12-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

A cooing newborn baby is much less dangerous looking than a man who bursts from a tomb alive after being dead for three days. We "get" babies. Babies are commonplace, and they speak to us of the best that we can be, full of promise and innocence. Dead men who stand up and walk out of graves alive again most certainly upset the normal order of things. Such men threaten to overturn everything. They are dangerous and we really don't like them. Unlike babies, The Resurrected are scary.

Babies, by contrast, seem tame. The problems is that we want to keep the baby as a baby, ignoring the danger inherent within. The baby in the feeding trough may look like any other baby, but it requires a baby of a different kind to become The Resurrected. If we look deeper, we find that the baby is just the beachhead of the Great Invasion. He is not tame at all. He is a dangerous baby.

This is why Christmas is so much more popular than Easter. It is easier to tame. In trying to tame it, however, we fail to make real sense of the reality of it.

Ricky Bobby in Talledaga Nights merely channeled the zeitgeist when he said:

"Look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I'm sayin' grace. When you say grace, you can say it to Grownup Jesus or Teenage Jesus or Bearded Jesus or whoever you want... I like the baby version the best, you hear me? I win the races and I get the money...Dear Tiny Jesus, in your golden fleece diapers with your tiny, little fat balled up fists..."

As usual, N.T. Wright nails the problem in a recent article from Christianity Today. He explains how the first paragraphs of John's Gospel destroy any chance we might have of removing the sharp edges from the baby Jesus figurine. He urges us to "get real and get johanine" about the Christmas story.

Unless we recognize this strange, dark strand running through the Gospel, we will domesticate John's masterpiece (just as we're always in danger of domesticating Christmas) and think it's only about comfort and joy. In truth, it's also about incomprehension, rejection, darkness, denial, stopped ears, and judgment. Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything's all right. John's Gospel isn't about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying "Of course! Why didn't we realize it before?" It is about God shining his clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations—and the darkness not comprehending it. It's about God, God as a little child, speaking words of truth, and nobody knowing what he's talking about.

It is normal for the Dad to hand out cigars at the birth of his child. The family and friends celebrate, but the birth of a baby is hardly news. This baby, however -- this God in an Infant -- this is no ordinary child. Only because of this is the birth worth noting two millenia after the fact.

In God's war on death, the birth of Jesus is only the first move of the ultimate strategy of redemption. It was Operation Incarnation. The birth only sets up the theater of operations for Operation Resurrection, which deals the death stroke to death itself. Revolutionary stuff. Revolutions inevitably involve the breaking of things and the overturning of apple carts. That's what the cooing baby was born to do.

Like I said, dangerous.

But it's a revolution of restoration. His breaking is fixing. His overturning is uprighting. It's no less disruptive, but when you disrupt chaos, what do you get? Peace. When you reverse suffering and sorrow, what are you left with? Joy.

So whenever you look at that baby in the manger, hang on. It may look quiet, but he's a ticking time bomb that will blow everything to heaven.

Advent Meditation 2 - Prepare

2010-12-12T00:45:00.003-05:00

There’s a party coming and it’s time to get ready.

At its best, getting ready for the party is almost as good as the party itself.

Clean the house. Set the table. Cook the food – fancy food, hearty food, plain or spicy. Just make sure there’s lots of it and it’s good. Oh, and remember to pull the best bottles from your cabinets and cellars, with lots of glasses and plenty of ice.

Take a bath, polish yourself up, and put on your goin’-to-the-party clothes. Smile and be happy and open the door.

The house will fill with chatter and laughter. The convivial spirit will rise as bellies fill and wine glasses empty. For a moment the ugliness of the world is held off outside the walls and inside you taste just a bit of heaven. It was finally worth all the work and worry of getting ready, because once the party is on, nothing else matters.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. But…that’s not always the case, is it?

Have you ever prepared for a party and found that the preparation was not fun at all? Have you ever been overtaken by “guest anxiety?” You work for hours, perhaps days, in a red mist of hospitality rage, trying to whip things into shape, and woe to the poor fool who gets in your way or fails to pitch in to help.It's a soul sucking madness that takes over the whole house and turn the rest of the family into zombie slaves in the thrall of the rabid hostess, made mad by her party planning psychosis.

Sound familiar?

This is what happens when the host begins to think that the point of the party is to prove what a great host she is. Instead of offering the party as an act of joyful love for the sake of your friends, the party becomes (in the mind of the host) the impending day of judgment -- and the judges are your guests.

This is such an easy mistake to make because we love to make everything into a religion where we think that doing things just right will save us. We tell ourselves that its all for the guests, when in fact the guests are just an excuse to congratulate ourselves on what good hosts we are. We turn the party into a religion and in the process miss the whole point of the exercise.

Now in the second week of Advent we prepare for the party we call Christmas. It's a pretty big deal, in case you haven't noticed. In this layer of the advent season we remember when Jesus was coming and look forward to when he will come again. His coming changes everything. So we prepare.

Here is the question: What are we preparing for? The judgment? Or the Party?

Be careful how you answer. It’s a trick question really, because if you are preparing for judgment, if you think you are preparing to be good enough for the party, you can just forget it. It is simply impossible for us to perfectly clean the cobwebs out of every corner of our spiritual house. We can scrub and polish and sweep and wipe, but we can never banish the stains and dust of our fallen lives, but we can never really make it good enough for Jesus.The dirt is just too embedded. The walls too rotten. The carpet too shabby.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s no party, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t invite him in. On the contrary – that's exactly why we MUST invite him in. You see, this is the Good News.

Jesus is the guest who, when he arrives, cleans the house for us – top to bottom. Jesus cleans our kitchen, shines our bathroom, scrubs the toilets, washes the floors and deep cleans the carpets. Jesus arranges the furniture, plumps the pillows, puts away all the scattered clothes, polishes the silver and straightens the pictures on the walls. When Jesus arrives he takes your house, and completely remakes it into the best house it could possibly be and then some – spotless, perfect and completely comfortable. Jesus is the original and better Extreme Makoever Home Edition.

Not only that, Jesus provides all the food. More than you could possibly eat, more kinds than you can possibly imagine and better than you ever thought it could be. Whatever food you might have to offer, even if it’s just meager loaves and dried fishes, he will take what you offer and make it into the most sumptuous meal you never imagined.

With Jesus there is no dieting, no diabetes and certainly no anorexia. With Jesus if its feast time then it is time to feast! And when Jesus is in the house, you can bet no wine bottles will ever go empty.

This is Gospel: Jesus brings his own party wherever he goes and nobody – but NOBODY -- throws a better one.

This too is Gospel: Jesus is both the best guest and the most host, all at the same time.

And this also is Gospel: he has invited you to your own party.

So get ready wontcha?.

Jesus has both come and is yet coming. We are both waiting (preparing) and enjoying his presence now. So prepare out of joyful overflowing love and in prescient thanksgiving. Forget fear and judgment – he has done away with it. Know that when our own preparations fall short (and they always do), Jesus makes up the difference, completely, joyfully, perfectly.

Make sure you understand what I am saying. Get ready. Clean yourself up. Make your place beautiful. Do all the things you would do to prepare for the most wonderful guests - but do it all out of love and thanksgiving for the host, and the party He brings. That is Gospel.

So for Christ’s sake (really, I mean it literally) stop worrying and get ready to party. Jesus is on his way.

Patience with Fools

2010-12-08T10:17:00.001-05:00

When it first came out, a friend of mine commented on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He did not complain that the Jar Jar Binks character made him want to spew. Instead he complained that this movie continued to reinforce a common theme in today's pop culture -- that if your heart is in the right place, you can succeed without any discipline or preparation, regardless of the difficulty of the task.

He may have had something there. I work with a number of young people at a large national retailer. A few are what I would consider typical youth, using their work experience as a way point on a journey upward. Others, however, will make noise about their plans and ambitions but seem to lack any ability to actually act in the direction of their stated goals. Nice kids, but not real clear on how life really works.

Some of the YouTube comments complain that the author of the video is being mean to aspiring writers. I would say it's fine to encourage those [fill in the blank] who are aspiring even as they work, but we need not have patience with fools. Fools should be slapped in the hopes that it will knock some sense into them.

While I haven't had a conversation exactly like the one in the video below, it made me think of some I might have.

Of course, then there are jaded old farts like me who are working at rebuilding their dreams and plans from the wreckage. C'est la guerre.

(hat tip to Jared Wilson )

Die Tochter Fotografien

2010-12-02T11:09:00.000-05:00

My oldest daughter has been bitten by the camera bug. She has quite the eye for composition and loves playing with the camera every chance she gets. One of the beauties of digital photography is almost instant feedback. While she has acquired a very nice film camera with lenses that she is learning to use, it's just such a hassle to send the film out and wait for it to come back. Then there is the expense. It is much cheaper to experiment on a digital camera.

Recently she was able to go on a walk in the woods with some friends, exploring the "caves" around Mt. Major. In this part of the country, caves are usually just spaces between large rocks that have fallen from a cliff face. Although they are not true caves, they can be quite large and are still pretty cool to explore
.
At any rate, it was a nice off piste walk, and she got ahold of the camera that belongs to my friend Rick. Here are a few of the best shots.

Advent Meditation 1

2010-12-01T00:48:00.001-05:00

Lately, I find that seasons pass by almost without my knowing.

I am living mostly day to day, week to week, head down, leaning into the wind, making slow headway against the prevailing forces. Now and again I duck behind a tree or a rock and when I look up, time has passed and things look different. I'm always a little surprised. I can't stay in one place, however, so I put my head back down and continue plowing forward. I don't know how long it will take to reach a land that isn't so windy, but I know it's there.

It's not that I rail against wind anymore. I am learning to accept the wind. Wind is. Perhaps I can even harness the wind. Wind is what I have. I can possibly even learn to love the wind. Wind has it's own fierce beauty. In spite of all that, I will still long for the stillness of a sheltered place.

So I looked up the other day to realize that it's the first week of Advent. Once again I am taken by surprise. When I let myself move beyond the surprise, I find myself taken up in the layered beauty of Advent. Advent is like looking through the glass from both sides at the same time. It is a sort of cubist season where I find myself both seeing and being in the sheltered place even though it has not yet arrived.

I can do this because in Advent we remember what it was like for the Jewish nation to look forward with longing and anticipation and hope for the Chosen One who would lift the boot heel of Rome from their national neck. Of course, the Chosen One did come, but he looked nothing like they expected. Surprise!

In this way Advent becomes a time when we mirror that waiting in our own expectant waiting for the coming of The Chosen One. We expect and hope and long for him to return and deliver us from....what?

Pick your poison I guess. We know the world is one messed up hole. Anybody who pays any attention at all knows that for all it's beauty and wonder and power, there is also something quite wrong with the whole operation. Something isn't working the way it's supposed to. Deep down inside we long to see it fixed. It's a human thing, this longing. We naturally seek the sheltered place.

The followers of the buddha might say that if you can eliminate the longing then you eliminate the problem. It certainly doesn't hurt to cultivate a sense of equanimity about what is. I can say from personal experience that it is generally a good thing to do. But I don't think the longing is the cause of the problem. I would rather say that the problem is the cause of the longing. Anesthesia doesn't repair the broken bone. It merely numbs the pain. The bone remains broken.

In Advent, we are reminded that there is someone who came once to deal with that damage in the most unexpected way possible. He set the broken bones of the world with a profound finality that is really breathtaking to contemplate -- beyond politics or power or money or family or education or anything else that we look for to save us. His method is scandalous, crazy, ridiculous and ultimately the only thing that could possibly work. It makes no sense, but it's the only sensible thing.

Then he moved off (inexplicably) telling us to keep an eye out because he's coming back to finish the job. Apparently, the job is done, but not done. The world is fixed but the fix isn't finished. He'll be back to mop up. When? Who knows?

And so we wait, like the Children of Israel. They returned from exile sure that YHWH's favor rested upon them once more, only to experience repeated domination and disappointment over 400 years. Like them we walk against the wind and seek the sheltered place. And Our Shelter is coming. This is more certain than the rising of the morning sun in the eastern sky. He comes.

This then is one layered layer of Advent -- longing and waiting. We know our Shelter is there. And we know that we can stop seeking Our Shelter. We can sit quietly waiting, for Our Shelter has already found us. Our Hope has already arrived and is yet coming. And his coming is always a surprise.

First Sunday of Advent 2010 - Expectation

2010-11-29T00:10:00.000-05:00

Veni, veni Emmanuel!
Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio,
Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni o oriens!
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras.
Gaude, gaude Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai
Legem dedisti vertice,
In Maiestate gloriae.
Gaude, gaude Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te Israel.

Wood Pile Nov 25

2010-11-25T12:06:00.000-05:00

Got a very late start building the woodpile this year. Very late.

I am thankful to have close to 5 cord of wood stacked up, all acquired within the last 4 weeks. The generosity of friends, a willingness to ask around, a fair amount of industrious activity and...voila!

Let's keep an eye on it as the season winds around, shall we? We can watch it slowly disappear as it transforms into cozy nights in the midst of a bitter season.

vote. don't vote. whatever.

2010-11-02T19:49:00.000-04:00

I posted my facebook status today thusly:

vote. don't vote. whatever.

A scandalous sentiment. I was indeed scolded by one of my FB friends, an acquaintance from elementary school who reminded me that our mothers pounded it into us to VOTE. My mother didn't pound much of anything, but I would say that she would certainly look a bit more than askance at anyone suggesting that it is OK not to vote.

I believe in engagement. I am not by any means a separatist (and the LORD said 'come on out from among them and be ye separate...) of any kind. Voting is certainly one way to engage in the life of the world we live in. It is a unique form of engagement, and a custom highly developed here in the United States.

I balk, however, when voting is considered a "sacred" duty. Although that term may not be actually used, it is the default setting for most who prize the blessing of democracy. The term may not always be used per se, but it is thought of in just this manner -- a duty that is sacred. To refuse a sacred duty is blasphemous, an outrage against God. I reckon it all depends who your god is.

This is ironic, especially when coming from some who, believing in no god, or claiming to be unsure about the nature of a god that may or may not be, yet still think that the very idea of anything being 'sacred' could have any meaning for them. Even more ironic, however, that those who, clinging firmly to a faith in a Very Particular God, would not stop to think HOW exactly would voting be sacred. If it is, it is likely not for the reasons they are thinking.

For instance, I don't believe you will find anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus encourages us to go to the polls. Nor to stay away. Democracy was simply not a category in which Jews in 1st century Palestine dealt, and Jesus was no different.

Perhaps the closest he comes is when he says to give Caesar that which belongs to Caesar -- but that's taxes. What happens when we ARE Caesar -- or our job is to vote on Caesar?

So how should we think of voting? I refer you to Jared Wilson's blog post on Voting like you are not voting.

All I do

2010-10-28T23:56:00.002-04:00

The Beverage of Gourmets

2010-10-26T20:36:00.000-04:00

I have nothing against soda (or pop, as my Michigander friends prefer to call it), I just don't drink that much of it. Like many good things, a little goes a long way.

As a young man, I attempted to drink that quintessential New England beverage, Moxie. Alas, I was too young, my palate undeveloped and immature as it was, could not tease out the lovely and complex interplay of flavors, nor fully appreciated the strength, boldness and audacity inherent in the extract of gentian root. I spurned Moxie for the sweeter and less demanding taste profiles of the more popular carbonated drinks.

Now in my middle age I have come around. Given the choice, I now willingly choose to be moxicated.

I will allow as it may take a bit of getting used to, but so does anything worthwhile. Here is a primer on how to drink Moxie.

Here's a nice spot on other local beverages, finishing with the best.

Watch this at My Fox Boston

A Day in the Life

2010-10-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk recently wrote an astounding piece called Tell Me about Your Day.

It's astounding for two reasons. First because the suffering of the people about which he writes is deeply deeply moving, troubling and real. Second, because we so seldom stop to think that this sort of thing is going on around us all day long, every day, in the lives of the people we meet at work, on the street and in church. Every day. Everywhere.

This is not the exception, I think. It is more like the common human experience. We just hide it better than most cultures.

This is real life. I am struck hard when I ponder it, aware of how close it is to being my life, and afraid that I lack the compassion to face it in the lives of others.

I'd say that just about sums it up...

2010-10-20T23:42:00.000-04:00

My good Texas friend Craig often attempts to needle me when we are having a light dusting of snow up here in NH. He likes to tell me how he is enjoying mowing the lawn with his shirt off, or some such blather as that. I don't get that at all, as I think mowing the lawn is punishment enough -- I don't see why you would want to throw skin cancer in on top of it.

There is a certain smugness that leaks up from those who prefer to live in (what they consider) more clement regions. I'll have none of that. They call them "tropical" diseases for a reason, after all.

My friend Assistant Village Idiot recently pointed me to a very nice list of reason why it makes all the sense in the world to live in New England -- from Sponge Headed Scienceman. I recommend reading it.

If you don't get it, well...you just stay right where you are. That's more maple syrup for me.

It's Not About You

2010-10-06T18:49:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had another opportunity to speak at a retreat, this time to the student body of Jesse Remington High School. We had a group of about 40 students who gathered at the Horton Center on Pine Mountain, overlooking Gorham, for a few days focused on building their life as a learning community. Yeah. I know. But that's just the kind of school Jesse Remington is.

As with my previous retreat experience, I tried simply to open up the Gospel to these kids, trying to help them see it through fresh eyes. Rather than expound the text, I tried to read the text. Rather than preach the 3 point sermon I worked at telling the 3 chapter story. Rather than set forth the three propositions, I tried to frame 3 pictures of the Gospel from what I hoped was a fresh new perspective.

I say this because when I approach speaking or preaching on the Gospel, I stay away from a scholarly approach because I am not a scholar, a philosopher or a particularly deep thinker. I just don't have the training for it. My approach is more pastoral -- what in this text will feed His sheep?

And even taking a pastoral approach, I still tend to avoid the heavy lifting of exegeting the original languages to make a fine theological point. Again, partly because I lack the training. But even moreso, the most useful thing to feed the flock isn't a new insight into the aorist tense in the original Greek. Nor is it another insight into the Pauline logic of the doctrine of justification.

The most useful thing for feeding the flock is pictures. Clear, powerful, visceral, emotionally charged pictures that teach us about who God is and what he has done.

That's at least part of the reason why Jesus left us with two basic practices around which he builds his church -- baptism and eucharist. These are first and foremost living pictures of him and his grace. Even better, they are not pictures that we merely gaze upon. They are pictures in which we partake -- we are included in the picture.

Chew on that.

I kind of wish I had this video a few weeks ago. I would have shamelessly stolen from it, because it makes the point I worked so hard to make to those students in the mountains.

Affectionate Insults

2010-09-05T22:53:00.002-04:00

I just returned from a weekend in the mountains of mountains of NH where I was engaged as the speaker at a Christian men's retreat. Good men. Good times.

I was amazed and delighted to experience that wonderful atmosphere of affectionate insult that pervades the banter of men who have known each other for a long time, and love and respect each other. It might appear, if one were to read a transcript of the event, that these men loved to spite one another. But when you hear the tone of voice and see the expressions on faces, you realize that the deepest insults are also the most loving compliments. I think the term is "good natured ribbing." You only hurt the ones you love.

It's a guy thing.

Our teaching focus was an attempt to uncover fresh perspectives on the Gospel. Much of the material are ideas that I have only recently learned myself, but which has deeply shaped my heart. It reminded me of this post from 2007.

That's How Winning is Done

2010-08-11T00:19:00.003-04:00

I just like this. Fires me up.

Sport or Sporty

2010-08-05T18:49:00.000-04:00

Atlantic Monthly online has a great article by Hampton Stevens on Why Cheerleading isn't a Sport, but Croquet is. Brilliant.

There are, as Mr. Stevens sees it, three iron clad requirements for an activity to be considered a sport.

people compete at it
computers can't do it
aesthetics don't count.

I have long complained about the dominance of activities like figure skating, ice dancing, synchonized swimming, and even gymnastics in broadcast coverage of the olympics. I even have trouble with certain skiing and snowboarding events that figure style in the "judging." But I have never been able to express my dislike of such events as succinctly and clearly as Mr. Stevens.

My hat is off to you sir. Well done.

Tribal Weather, Man

2010-07-20T10:35:00.003-04:00

Politics and government are expressions of culture. This is as true of politics as of any other sphere of human life including, but not limited to religious practice, war-making, law, science and it’s close cousin philosophy, economics and business, architecture, and all forms of art and craft.

As such, I am not especially interested in commenting on a given days political events. I usually merely observe and note my own thoughts to myself. I am much more interested, however, in noting prevailing currents, winds of change, forecasts of upcoming societal weather which can be discerned in the higher clouds of the cultural skies.

My friend Assistant Village Idiot has long been using the concept of Tribes as a model for understanding the cultural weather. He recently posted a link to a very insightful essay in the American Spectator on the nature of today’s “ruling class” along with some excellent commentary – with more of his own commentary to come.

The language in the American Spectator article is the language of "class," as opposed to AVI's use of the term "Tribe." They are both talking about the same idea. I think "Tribe" is the better term here, but the way Dr. Codevilla describes it in his essay is thorough and revealing and well worth the read.

Go to AVI's blog and also look at his writing in his Tribes Collection.

If Bob Dylan was right that “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” I would say you might need a bigger weather map to see what’s coming down the jet stream.

My Gym

2010-07-12T23:50:00.000-04:00

This is my weight room.

This is my cardio machine.

Any questions?

Going Off the Air

2010-06-27T01:41:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in a previous post, our church home for the past seven years since moving back to NH is going off the air. That may strike you as a mixed metaphor (a home and a TV broadcast), but confusing images seems suitable. The event is so jangling, so dissonant, that the only way to describe it may well be to compare apples to elephants.

I found myself driving home from work tonite realizing that soon, for the first time in a long time, I'm going to have to think about where, and with whom, I will be worshiping on a Sunday morning. For many people I suppose that an odd choice (I suspect most people don't worry much about what to do on a Sunday morning), but it makes sense when you realize that throughout my adult life my most meaningful relationships have always been found through the churches we attend. Work relationships were good, because I get along with most everyone. But the friendships I formed at church have always been the most important and significant. It has been at church that I formed the most foundational aspects of my identity, and at church that I perform what I believe to be my most important labor outside the work I do with and for my family.

Tomorrow is the day we throw the going away party.

We will gather for a final worship service, to hear the Word, to share the Meal, to make our offerings together. Then we will gather on a high grassy ridge overlooking the Merrimack Valley and have a picnic. We'll eat, and there will be talking and laughing, likely some crying, and more eating and talking. We are good at talking (and eating), so that also fits.

We have plans to meet again periodically through the summer on Wednesday afternoons, as has been our custom over the past years, but these will not be worship services. That part of our fellowship officially ends tomorrow.

I'm still unsure this is right. I think it is, but feel it isn't, and I don't know quite what to make of that. I have no fear or worry about the future. I am confident that it will turn out all right. I just don't like the way the notes are sounding right now. The chord seems all wrong and I can't sense how the composer will resolve the piece.

I have given some thought to why this is all happening. Stay tuned. Analysis later.

Black Kettles and Ebony Pots

2010-06-18T23:46:00.000-04:00

There is no doubt the situation in the Gulf of Mexico is deplorable. Awful. Terrible. Disastrous.

And BP screwed up. Monumentally.

But....

These congressional dog and pony shows make me want to throw up. Documentaries often seem to like talking about how back in the day, hundreds of people would show up for a public hanging. It was great entertainment. Of course, today we don't do that because we are so much more sensitive and civilized than our primitive ancestors of 120 years ago.

Instead we pay actors to pretend to be violent.

And we watch our elected officials publicly and loudly flog the nearest dog they can put their hands on. Millions gather via the glowing screen to see the officials strut and pontificate -- as if they had nothing to do with it.

Here's the problem. BP screwed up, but the oil is on our hands. They were just the delivery boys.

We need to stop being so self-righteous about where our petroleum comes from.

Backwards soduM idnarepO

2010-06-10T00:42:00.000-04:00

I suppose I have missed most of a classic blogging opportunity.

Later this month, our church is intentionally closing its doors. The action is not a sudden spur-of-the-moment thing, but the result of much prayer, study and discussion. It has been discussed openly and directly for about 2 years now, and would have made great blog fodder. Such a blog might not have the wide appeal as, say, cooking your way through Julia Child's cookbook, but it still would have been a unique chronicle of an unusual event. Now that we are a few weeks away from our last official worship service, it seems a little late to start. I guess I won't get rich from writing a book about it.

I spent the evening with some good friends planning the last three worship services. As usual the discussion ranged widely, coming back to the task at hand often enough to get the planning done. The problem we faced was very much about how to plan these with the proper focus ( on Jesus, not on our church) and with the proper tone (not telling people what to feel, but going about the business of worshiping God and letting the chips fall where they may).

Although we believe, for a variety of reasons, that this is the right thing to do, it still strikes a false note. It seems things should work out differently, that the Holy Spirit should be pulling some kind of spiritual rabbit out of the ecclesiastical hat right now. It's such an odd thing. Who ever hears about churches closing? It all seems so backwards.

But then...I guess a lot of things God does seem pretty backwards when you think about it. Seems like its just part of the old Modus Operandi. Who am I to argue.

An Incomplete Manuscript

2010-06-08T10:29:00.005-04:00

"What we must notice at this stage is that, both in the Old Testament and in the New, the present suffering of the world – about which the biblical writers knew every bit as much as we do – never makes them falter in their claim that the created world really is the good creation of a good God. They live with the tension. And they don’t do it by imagining that the present created order is a shabby, second-rate kind of thing, perhaps (as in some kinds of Platonism) made by a shabby, second-rate sort of god. They do it by telling a story of what the one creator God has been doing to rescue his beautiful world and to put it to rights. And the story they tell…indicates that the present world really is a signpost to a larger beauty, a deeper truth. It really is the authentic manuscript of one part of a masterpiece. The question is, What is the whole masterpiece like, and how can we begin to hear the music in the way it was intended?

The point of the story is that the masterpiece already exists – in the mind of the composer. At the moment, neither the instruments nor the players are ready to perform it. But when they are, the manuscript we already have – the present world with all its beauty and puzzlement – will turn out to be truly part of it. The deficiencies in the one part we possess will be made good. The things that don’t make sense at the moment will display a harmony and perfection we hadn’t dreamed of. The points at which today the music seems almost perfect, lacking just one small thing, will be completed. That is the promise held out in the story. Just as, in one of the New Testament’s greatest claims, the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of God, so the beauty of this world will be enfolded in the beauty of God – and not just the beauty of God himself, but the beauty which, because God is the creator par excellence, he will create when the present world is rescued, healed, restored and completed."

N.T. Wright in Simply Christian:Why Christianity Makes Sense. Harper Collins hardcover p 47.

Churching

2010-05-28T00:42:00.000-04:00

Hat Tip to Chaplain Mike over at www.Internetmonk.com

The Giacometti Code

2010-05-25T10:24:00.003-04:00

Tip of the Hat to my friend Eric Plantenberg for passing on the link via facebook.

Goodnight Internet Monk

2010-05-20T14:17:00.001-04:00

My life is full these days. I move from one job to another, working to bring in enough money to keep the family boat afloat. I take very little time off, and what I do take off is usually dedicated to hanging with my wife and/or the chilluns. Most of the writing I do these days is not for fun, but for profit, and that leaves little time to post to these pages. I don't suppose it matters much in the greater scheme. I don't suppose I have so many regular readers that it's much noticed.

Nevertheless, and event recently passed that I would rather have taken time to mark on this blog. Michael Spencer, aka The Internet Monk, died from cancer a few weeks ago.

Michael's work on his blog at www.internet monk.com has been especially helpful to me over the past few years in my continuing journey to slay the dragons that continue to invade my little kingdom. The center of his writing was a call to Jesus-shaped living, as opposed to church-shaped living. That was his way of talking about the gospel of grace that Jesus embodied and lived. By drawing a clear bright line between Jesus and the church, Michael invited criticism, but I think more often that not he was spot on. And he relentlessly applied his Jesus-shaped lens to a wide range of life including some very difficult and thorny real life questions. It wasn't about abstract philosophy, but about flesh and blood discipleship.

I join many other people in my thanks to Michael for his work, and for those who seek to carry on his legacy through the website.

For those of you who have not yet been introduced to Michael Spencer, I suggest you read the excerpt from Michael's book Mere Churchianity. It is being published soon, posthumously.

Here, Michael discusses who he is writing the book for. It seems to me that he has discovered an unreached tribe, hidden from or ignored by vast numbers of church people, and has aimed his message deep into that unsurveyed segment of the evangelical map.

But I’m not writing to church members who are happy where they’re at or to Christians who are heavily invested in the success and propagation of the church as an organization.

I’m writing instead to those who may still be associated with the church but no longer buy into much of what the church says. Not because they doubt the reality of God, but because they doubt that the church is really representing Jesus. I’m writing to people on the inside who are about to leave or have already left. I’m writing to those who are standing in the foyer of the church, ready to walk out, yet taking one last look around. They haven’t seen the reality of Jesus in a long time, but they can’t stop believing he is here. Somewhere. And they’re unsure what it will mean to strike out on their own.

Mere Churchianity is written for people who have come to the end of the road with the church but who can’t entirely walk away from Jesus. In the wreckage of a church-shaped religious faith, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth persists and calls out to them. I’m talking to those who have left, those who will leave, those who might as well leave, and those who don’t know why they are still hanging around.

And I’m writing to the outsiders who might be drawn to God if it weren’t for Christians.

This is very typical of Michael's writing. Unsparing, willing to drag into the light the skeletons most people would rather not talk about. He calls it likes he sees it. There are lots of people that fit this bill, but much of evangelical pop-culture has no idea how to engage with them.

I never knew Michael, but I will always appreciate him and his work. I look forward to sharing a beer with him when the world is remade.

Periodically Speaking

2010-04-28T10:18:00.001-04:00

In my younger days at the University (lol) I would often spend time browsing the periodicals at the library. I would often come across The New Yorker Magazine, take it down and riffle through the pages. Somehow, I always got stuck on the "Talk of the Town" section and never seemed to get past it. In those days, before I had ever spent much time actually living in a city, I was generally anti city life, as a matter of principle. Coming from a rural background, and a family where my mother was afraid to drive into town on Friday nights because of the traffic -- town being Concord NH, a city of perhaps 30,000 in that time -- I had been raised with a broad distaste for the urban. A visit to Boston was a major undertaking, carrying a frisson of danger and peril from crazy Boston drivers, inscrutable maps and the unwashed mass of humanity driven to life in concrete warrens and asphalt deserts. Now after having lived for several years in Detroit, if I don't prefer urban life, at least I can speak from personal knowledge that it's not as bad as I had been raised to think.

New York is of course the City of all Cities. While for some, like Garrison Keillor, this seemed to make it an object of great fascination, I approached anything to do with that sprawling human hive as vaguely suspect from the start. Yet I had heard someplace the The New Yorker was a great literary magazine, worthy of attention. So I would open it and begin to read The Talk of the Town column which resides toward the front pages.

Reading it now, with the wider perspective that comes with age and experience, I find some of the items in TOTT to be interesting and engaging. At the time, however, it seemed more of a parochial account of a certain narrow segment (perhaps the stem?) of New York to which I did not relate well. I would read of art openings, charity events, business and social gossip of the highly placed and highly falutin', all taking place on streets and neighborhoods that were names on the page, but not places in my mind. Now I have learned just skim the section, lighting on articles of interest, and letting the rest go. But in my early earnestness I tried to read it all through until I got bogged down and just gave up. Because I stopped there and went no further I really didn't find the excellent articles that lay further in.

Not too long ago I recently rediscovered the New Yorker in a waiting room. I was floored by the writing, and dismayed to think of what all I missed out on. The article that grabbed me was about uncontrollable itching. Yes. You read that right. I have since discovered many other that contain fascinating stories on people and events in a broad cross section of human culture from all over the world. Fascinating and compelling. I have since read many other articles from various issues. I am now a convert to the New Yorker.

I guess that the days when The Grand Periodicals like the New Yorker defined the literary style and direction of our culture are gone. New fiction is comparatively rare in the magazine landscape, limited to those like TNY that have a strong tradition of fiction that they feel they must uphold. Nevertheless, I get the sense that their heart really isn't in it. Most are almost exclusively bent toward writing that is flavored heavily with journalism. It would seem that the news story, in various forms, is the defining literary style of our time. That's not necessarily bad, but I suspect that it ain't what it used to be. Even so, it's still pretty good.

Perhaps I was just too young to appreciate TNY back in the day. I wonder if I just persevered beyond the Talk of the Town to mine the rich lode of full length articles further in if I might have fostered a greater appreciation. After all, I am predisposed.

You see, I love magazines, all kinds, but especially the ones with fewer pictures and lots of text. I like in-depth explorations, broad and beautiful descriptions of people, places, times and events. I like that even the longest articles can be completed in a half hour but the good ones will leave my brain buzzing for days. I like good strong evocative language, and analysis that nudges my noodle toward new perspectives. And I like that sort of thing in large doses. That's the kind of magazine I really like.

But I'm really not that picky. If I had the time and the money, I would subscribe to dozens. New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Harper's, Weekly Standard, Mother Earth News, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Time, Newsweek, Wired, Inc, Fast Company, National Review, Outdoors, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Christianity Today, First Things, New Oxford Review, just to name a few in no particular order.

And that doesn't even begin to touch the special interest rags on topics like history, martial arts, guns, physical culture and physical training, science, technology, hiking and outdoors, hunting, farming, forestry, and so on.

But for now, I will have to content myself with various free back issues of whatever I can find in waiting rooms and libraries -- occasionally even picking the odd issue out of the mixed paper recycling pile at the local dump. Hey...I'm recycling. You got a problem with that?

Despising the Body and Longing for Resurrection

2010-04-25T23:29:00.000-04:00

At some point we began to assume that the life of the body would be the business of grocers and medical doctors, who need take no interest in the spirit, whereas the life of the spirit would be the business of the churches, which would have at best only a negative interest in the body. In the same way we began to see nothing wrong with putting the body - most often somebody else's body, but frequently our own - to a task that insulted the mind and demeaned the spirit...

Divided against each other, body and soul drive each other to extremes of misapprehension and folly. Nothing could be more absurd than to despise the body and yet yearn for its resurrection. In reaction to this supposedly religious attitude, we get, not reverence or respect for the body, but another kind of contempt: the desire to comfort and indulge the body with equal disregard for its health. The "dialogue of body and soul" in our time is being carried on between those who despise the body for the sake of its resurrection and those, diseased by bodily extravagance and lack of exercise, who nevertheless desire longevity above all things. These think that they oppose each other, and yet they could not exist apart. They are locked in a conflict that is really their collaboration in the destruction of soul and body both.

Attributed to Wendell Berry but the source is unknown

Now that's a pushup

2010-04-18T23:15:00.000-04:00

I just love watching this.

I would love to be able to do the planche pushup, and the planche to handstand. I'm toying with the idea that if I gave myself 2 years to train for this, I could do it. Why 2 years? To make allowances for the fact that I have a very full life with not a lot of extra time to dedicate to training. I've done some reading but need to do more research about the way to approach it.

It would be wicked cool.

The Peace Train

2010-04-12T13:35:00.000-04:00

I'm going to totally co-opt this song by Yusuf Islam (nee Cat Stevens). This certainly wasn't what the author intended, but this is what I hear when I listen to this song.

Listen to it. This is a great performance. But, this time, every time he sings the word "peace train," replace your mental image of a train with an image of the resurrected Jesus.

All the hope, all the longing, all the joy that this song encapsulates is not just a misty dream. It is concrete and real and embodied (not personified -- embodied) in the resurrected God-Man called Jesus Christ. His resurrection is just the mighty Locomotive of Life leaving the station, bringing the whole creation along with it, us included, on the way to the World Remade.

Jesus is the Peace Train.

Don't Be Afraid

2010-04-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

And the resurrection of Jesus issues the surprising command: don’t be afraid; because the God who made the world is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and calls you now to follow him. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a matter of believing that certain things are true about the physical body of Jesus that had been crucified. These truths are vital and nonnegotiable, but they point beyond themselves, to the God who was responsible for them. Believing in this God means believing that it is going to be all right; and this belief is, ultimately, incompatible with fear. As John says in his letter, perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4.18). And the resurrection is the revelation of perfect love, God’s perfect love for us, his human creatures. That’s why, though we may at any stage in our lives grasp the truth that God raised Jesus from the dead, it takes us all our life long to let that belief soak through and permeate the rest of our thinking, feeling, and worrying lives.”

Sometimes this process isn’t just a gradual thing; it may involve sudden crises. There’s a hidden chapter in the life of St Paul, which is usually ignored by those who see him either as the heroic missionary or the profound theologian, or possibly the misguided misogynist. Acts doesn’t mention this hidden chapter, but in our second lesson we heard Paul himself speak of it. At one stage of his work in what he called Asia, and we call Turkey, he says that he went through a horrendous and traumatic experience which seem to destroy him totally. ‘I was so utterly, unbearably crush’, he writes, ‘that I despaired of life itself; indeed, I felt as though I had received the sentence of death’ (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). And a good part of the second letter to Corinth actually grows out of this experience; the brash, proud Corinthian church had wanted Paul to be a success story, and he had to explain to them that being an apostle, and ultimately being a Christian, was not a matter of being a success story, but of living with human failure–and with the God who raises the dead. That’s what following Jesus is likely to involve.”

(NT Wright, Following Jesus, 68-69)

Some other Explanation

2010-04-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

Invited to Participate

2010-04-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

[T]he Gospels never say anything like, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death” (not that many first-century Jews doubted that there was); or, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die” (most people believed something like that anyway); or better, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised at the last.”

No: insofar as the [resurrection] is interpreted in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it has a very “this-worldly” meaning, relating to what is happening here and now. “Jesus is raised,” they say, “therefore he is the Messiah; he is the true Lord of the whole world; therefore we, his followers, have a job to do: we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world.”

It is not, “Jesus is raised, therefore look up into the sky and keep looking because one day you will be going there with him.” Many hymns, prayers, and Christian sermons have tried to pull the Easter story in that direction, but the line of thought within the Gospels themselves is, “Jesus is raised, therefore God’s new world has begun, and therefore we, you, and everybody else are invited to be not only beneficiaries of that new world but participants in making it happen.”

From Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened by Craig A. Evans and N. T. Wright, originally posted in Christianity Today’s article Easter, Unedited

Unveiled

2010-04-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

"The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven."

"The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it."

— N. T. Wright

Resurrection of the Body

2010-04-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

Colonize Earth with the Life of Heaven

2010-04-06T09:00:00.003-04:00

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”

— N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)

Why would they persist?

2010-04-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

The historian is bound to face the question: once Jesus had been crucified, why would anyone say that He was Israel's Messiah?

Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6. Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death at the end of Titus's triumph in AD 70. Nobody said it about bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135. On the contrary, where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be messiah, their most important task was to find another messiah. The fact that the early Christians did not do that but continued against all precedent to regard Jesus Himself as Messiah, despite outstanding alternative candidates such as the righteous, devout, and well-respected James, Jesus' own brother, is evidence that demands an explanation. As with their beliefs about resurrection, they redefined messiahship itself and with it their whole view of the problem that Israel and the world faced and the solution they believed God had provided. They remained at one level a classic jewish messianic movement, owing fierce allegiance to their Messiah and claiming Israel and the whole world in His name. But the mode of that claim and the underlying allegiance itself were drastically redefined.

The rise of early Christianity, and the shape it took in two central and vital respects, thus presses upon the historian the question for an explanation. The early Christian retained the Jewish belief in resurrection, but both modified it and made it more sharp and precise. They retained the Jewish belief in a coming Messiah but redrew it drastically around Jesus Himself. Why?

The answer early Christians themselves give for these changes, of course, is that Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion.

N.T. Wright "Jesus Resurrection and Christian Origins"

The Turning Point

2010-04-04T01:13:00.003-04:00

“Without the resurrection there is one way of telling the story; with the resurrection there is a whole other way. Without the resurrection , the story is an unfinished and potentially tragic drama in which Israel can hold on to hope but with an increasing sense that the narrative is spinning out of control.

Without the resurrection, even the story of Jesus is a tragedy, certainly in first-century Jewish terms, as the two on the road to Emmaus knew very well. But with the resurrection there is a new way of telling the entire story. The resurrection isn’t just a surprise happy ending for one person; it is instead the turning point for everything else.

It is the point at which all the old promises can come true at last: the promises of David’s unshakable kingdom; the promises of Israel’s return from the greatest exile of them all; and behind that again, quite explicit in Matthew, Luke, and John, the promise that all the nations will now be blessed through the seed of Abraham.”

–N.T. Wright, "Surprised by Hope" (New York: Harper One, 2008), 236.

The Point of the Resurrection

2010-04-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

"The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom."

— N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)

Signs of Spring

2010-03-16T00:12:00.001-04:00

The frost heaves were bad this past month. After a couple weeks of abnormally warm temps, the roads are starting to calm down a bit. Both my truck's suspension, and my spine are grateful. Besides which, it is not easy to dodge the bumps, work the clutch, shift AND not spill the coffee on your lap.

Whatever you do, don't put the cup between your legs. Just sayin'

Also, town meeting was last Saturday. I was unable to actually attend. Instead, I stood in as temporary Girl Scout Leader overseeing the sale of Girl Scout Cookies outside the meeting. Filling in for my sick bride. As town meetings go, it apparently lacked the entertainment value of some past years. 31 warrant articles dispatched in a mere 3.5 hours.

Now the floods are here. 3 days of torrential rains. Rivers cresting over flood stage. Roads washing out. Neighborhoods evacuated. No need to declare a state of emergency, says the Governor. The SOE from the windstorm 2 weeks ago is still in force. Now that's a relief.

The blue lines are running to and fro in the woods, carrying that precious sugar sap down to the old fashioned plastic barrels so the farmers can lift them onto the flatbed with a propane powered forklift and bring them to the sugar house where the water will be boiled off by a heat from a mini nuclear reactor core. Don't worry, it doesn't give off any greenhouse gases, so it won't contribute to global warming.

And finally - mud.

Just another typical New Hampshire spring.

Canned Goods

2010-03-06T07:06:00.001-05:00

My friend Wendy has begun a lovely little blog called "Little Farm in the City" about her experience as...well....as so many things. I encourage you to visit.

Her recent post is on ratatouille, and how it seems to her like eating summer. Her writing reminded me of a song by Greg Brown called Canned Goods. It really is a beautiful and evocative song.

Peaches on the shelf
Potatoes in the bin
Supper's ready, everybody come on in
Taste a little of the summer,
Taste a little of the summer,
You can taste a little of the summer
my grandma's put it all in jars.

Here is a very passable rendition I found on You Tube. You can also listen to Greg himself doing it on Last FM or Lala.com

The Unexpected Stain of Grace

2010-02-28T07:41:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for Arthur Foye, the father of an old friend.

Well, more than an old friend really. An old girlfriend. My first kiss, in fact.

If my calculations are correct, her father was a minister of the gospel for something like 52 years. I came to know him when I was a 17 year old half man / half punk. I remember being embraced by the family, and I remember their house as a place of love and joy and acceptance. This is, of course, in complete accord with everything that was said about Art during the service yesterday.

I would estimate that there were at least 300 people in attendance, in spite of bad weather that has plagued the state over the past week. The spirit of the gathering was not downcast or melancholy. We certainly mourned his passing, and many will miss him greatly, and yet the pervasive mood was one of joy and hope, with a generous portion of humor.

I have been thinking throughout the past week of his personal impact on me. It is a curious thing to think about now, some 30 years later, because I am certain that I was not much more than a blip in his life, some skinny kid who hung around his daughter for a year or so. We did not have many actual one to one conversations between us. I was much more likely to sit down and chat with Joan, his lovely bride. We certainly had no deep conversations about Jesus, or theology, or scripture, or anything like that (that I can recall), which even then was bread and butter to me, as it was to him.

Yet I remember meeting them for the first time as I arrived to pick up his daughter to go to a movie. I was anxious to make a good impression and communicate that I intended to take very good care of their girl. I recall an amused look on his face. Possibly even approving, but as a young man in that situation, I may simply have been hoping for the best.

As time went on, I have memories of celebrating New Year’s eve with the Foye’s, and of their inviting my Mom to join us. This began a friendship between them, which lasted until my Mom died last year. I am so grateful to Art and Joan for their kindness and support to my Mom as she went through much trouble over the last few decades of her life.

I remember eating with them, as he would preside at table – that long, long table in their New England country kitchen. Food was plentiful (important to a teenage boy) and good, conversation bright and studded liberally with laughter. They welcomed me into their family with ease and grace and I always felt welcomed there, even after I was no longer dating their daughter.

I remember visiting the summer Church camp where Art was Director for many years, soaking in the sense of fun and joy that he brought to what I know now is often a pretty tough job.

I remember watching as they cared for, suffered with, and struggle over their children. I remember being struck forcefully by their example of open and total love in all circumstances.

And then through the years following, as I had occasion to visit, we would chat amiably and he would be off to some meeting or another while I would stay for another piece of coffee cake, just thankful for the chance to hang out in their kitchen. If spirit can affect things, then that table must be saturated with love and hospitality.

Looking at all this on the whole, I find myself a little bit surprised how much influence Art and Joan and their home and their family have had on my life. My association has been long but really on the fringes of their lives. Nevertheless, the experience of having been with them, the memory of that time, the knowledge of who they are and that they are there has never left my mind or my heart. Truthfully, I really cannot say that I knew him well. Yet by building a house inhabited by gospel values, and by letting me into that house, even for a brief time, Art and Joan have had a profound impact on my thoughts, my choices and my life. Although it is difficult for me to account for the powerful effect of such brief acquaintance, I am joyfully grateful for it. I am a better man because of it.

It is rather as if grace had such a profound hold on their lives that it simply couldn't help but leak out all over those who came near them. Even now, I still bear the beautiful stains of that grace, and those lovely colors have not washed out. I can only imagine what brilliant colors his life must have lent to those he knew well, and who worked with him regularly.

May the love of God the Father, the peace of Christ, and the joy of the Holy Spirit continue to dwell richly within the memory of Art here on earth, as we await with joyful anticipation the reunion to come when the world is made anew.

And Now Vampires...

2010-02-25T22:20:00.002-05:00

My friend Ron pointed out that not only are Dragons being misappropriated by the popular culture, so is the vampire. To this I must shout an Amen.

The vampire myth goes way back, but as far as I can tell became prominent and common in modern western circles with the publication of Bram Stoker's novel. Having read that book and performed in a chamber theater production of a theatrical adaptation of the book (as Jonathan Harker, the hapless solicitor) I have a powerful appreciation for the story and it's layered exploration of the human condition.

Also among my top list of favorite books are the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. Her vampires are certainly of a different order than Count Vlad Dracul, but also layered, complex, dangerous and yes, evil. Yet their evil is not as simple as Dracula's. It is not the monochromatic malevolence of the monster, but more of a reflection of the evil that lives in the hearts of all humans. These vampires struggle with all the questions that we humans struggle with, but along a parallel track -- and that makes their struggle in some ways easier to empathize with. It helps us see their nature -- both good and bad -- more clearly. These vampires are undoubtedly plagued with a curse, and that curse, although it has completely changed their destinies and natures, it also grants them certain kinds of blessings.

Lewis dealt with this sort of "problem" briefly in his introduction to the Screwtape Letters. There is a problem in writing of the Adversary. The temptation is to make him flat, one dimensional, pure evil. But really, you can't. It is not possible. He is dangerous because he is (for instance) intelligent, witty, attractive, etc. Intelligence and all those other qualities are good things in and of themselves. You can't say that bad creatures cannot have good qualities, for then they would largely cease to be.

Of course that tells us something about the nature of evil and our condition. Evil cannot create of itself, it can only pervert and ruin that which is good by twisting it and bending toward evil purpose.

In Anne Rice's books, you see this complexity exquisitely played out in her vampire characters. Yet while you sympathize with her characters, you don't find yourself desiring them. They are attractive at a certain level, but certainly repulsive. They seek redemption from their condition, but must also accept that they are killers. Their survival requires the shedding of blood -- and it never stops. Ultimately they are doomed by their appetites and tied to the earth. She uses them as more than just symbols. As I said, they are a mirror which Ms. Rice holds up to our faces so that we can see ourselves -- and the view is not pretty.

Now comes Twilight and it's ilk.

Again, I am writing having neither read the books nor seen the movies. I probably will do one or the other or both eventually. I'm not on a crusade, nor will I cordon myself off from their "impure" influences. I know that my ignorance and inexperience opens me up to criticism. Very well. Have it it. Instruct me. But first I will have my say.

These dimly lit vampires seem to be of a different ilk altogether from either Stoker's or Rice's. They strike me as childrens' vampires. Granted, they are for older children, who will be attracted to their barely suppressed sexual longing, and will identify with their anxiety for love and belonging. I say they are childrens' vampires because it seems they are treated as if they were simply people of a different color or culture. When faced with such differences, popular culture tells us we should behave toward them like children. It's as if we were all young girls, staring longingly at her toothy paramour, thinking:

"If we only understood them, if we only took the time to listen to them and get to know them we could see that really, they are just like us. Can't we all just get along. Really? Because he is soooooo cute, and I think I would really like to have his little vampire babies."

So they seem to be childrens' vampires, and girls' vampires as well. They seem all to be of the type that will have the adolescent femme swooning. The POV of the stories is that of this girl, who operates as the universal archetype of verging womanhood in all of us. Perhaps that is meant to be a corrective for ages of paternalistic masculine symbolic domination. OK. Whatever. I'm still not sure it's really a good idea.

As much as I love teenage girls, both (once upon a time) from the perspective of a teenage boy, and (more recently) of the father of a soon to be teenage girl, I think we must admit that teenage girls, as a group, tend to have a rather peculiarly astigmatic view of reality.

Is it possible that by positioning us all as teenage girls, we are pulling the fangs from vampires too? As literature, what do these stories show us about our own natures, our own condition? I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Wilson (who occasionally has been known to overstate his case) but he does offer one possible view I cite as an example.

I am not alarmed. This sort of thing is to be expected, and as I get older I will find more and more opportunities to decry how the world is just going to heck in some kind of basket or other. I don't like to read too much into such things.

But I do feel like something is being lost here. I don't guess it is the end of the world, but I find myself asking when the symbols of evil are all tamed and domesticated, how will we find new ways to look into the dark jungles of the heart that are full of all manner of wild and authentically terrifying beasts? What pictures will be use to see ourselves and know that we need a way out? What mirrors will aid us to see our need for that redemptive heart surgery?

I guess we will see.

The Fungibility of Symbols

2010-02-23T01:58:00.000-05:00

There is a movie coming out soon called How to Train your Dragon.

Just in the interest of full disclosure, I haven't seen it. I probably will eventually (can't remember the last time I saw a movie in the theater although I LOVE going to movies). I am reasonably sure that it is cute, somewhat clever, and at least mildly entertaining in that Hollywood *nod nod, *wink wink kind of way.

Having said that, it also troubles me and makes me just a little miffy.

For centuries, possibly millenia, in most civilizations that I know of, dragons are beasts to be taken very seriously. In western civilization, the dragon has been a symbol of wickedness, of sin, of the presence and power and danger of evil. The dragon is a foe and one that must be slain lest it lay waste the kingdom. It is a wily and cunning enemy, skilled in wordplay and deceit. It is powerful and difficult to destroy. It despoils green and fertile and ruins the beautiful and innocent.

Even in Asian culture, where the dragon is not necessarily evil, it is still an exceptionally powerful force, one that must be reckoned with carefully, and not taken lightly.

But...it seems we have become too sophisticated for such symbols. Or rather, too sophisticated for the meaning of the old symbols. So we keep the old symbol and we castrate it. Keep the fangs, the scales, the wings, even the fiery breath. That's all solid comic potential. But let's take away all that danger and all that stuff about evil. Dragons are just reptiles after all, and probably misunderstood.

That's it. They are "misunderstood."

Well, our Christian Fathers did it. They took yule trees and made them into Christmas trees. They completely ripped off the Roman cross, the ultimate symbol of imperialistic power, and co-opted to use as the symbol of the New Kingdom of God. Jesus himself turned the Passover meal on its head, establishing himself as the New Pesach. OK, so such shifts in meaning aren't new.

But each of those cases remade the symbol into something More Powerful, more mystical and more dangerous than before. You might still think the symbol is wrong (as the Jews certainly do regarding Jesus appropriation of Passover), but you can't deny the power of the new thing. But this training your dragon business is just taking a good strong symbol, tearing out all the bones and guts, draining all the blood, stuffing the carcass full of lime jello and making it dance.

What worries me is that we think everything is life is "trainable." When something seems wrong we think the problem is that we aren't educated enough. The bad thing is just some kind of misunderstanding. And we go on thinking that until., just a little too late, we realize that the cute little dickens we laughed at and thought was so cute is about to burn our house, kill our family and grind us to a paste between it's jaws.

There is evil in the world, and to convert every symbol of evil into a cartoon won't make it go away, or make it less dangerous in reality. It just makes us easier to eat.

Well...I'm sure it's a fun movie. I'll try not to grind my teeth too much as I watch it.

Run Baby Run

2010-02-23T01:19:00.001-05:00

I played around a bit this past summer with barefoot running. As I was not able to achieve anything approaching the toughness required, and whereas I can't really afford the expense of Vibram Five Fingers, I have pretty much given it up for the winter. I expect to return to flying unshod across the countryside with the return of warmer weather.

Nevertheless, the whole idea of barefoot running really appeals to me. As with so many of these kinds of things, there are zealous converts, prophets of the new way, and pharisaical naysayers firmly planted in the conventional wisdom. I don't really care a whole lot about all that. I just want to walk like a man, and for untold centuries, men walked in direct contact with the ground. And ran.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that this was one of the great advantages of being human. Over the long distance, the biped has it all over the quadruped. Especially if the biped is water-cooled. Many prey animals are air cooled (panting) which over the long haul is much less efficient.

So what? I'll tell you what.

It seems that our ancient forbears simply ran their dinner to death.

Seems crazy, but if you have no claws, and your teeth aren't all that impressive, what options do you have? Observe the following video and be grateful for your farmer and your butcher.

I wonder if this would be possible during deer season in NH?

A Man in Full

2010-02-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

I recently had an opportunity to do business with a 94 year old gentleman who once served in an artillery unit in the Battle of the Bulge. He subsequently spent 30 years as a firefighter in a local fire department. He has been married for 64 years -- "to the same woman."

I should be half the man that he is.

Day Zha Voo (doo?)

2010-02-19T00:55:00.000-05:00

The first vehicle I ever owned was a blue Datsun pickup with a white cap on the back.

I got my brother to drive me down to Manchester to pick it up. On the way I asked him if he could kind of give me a quick lesson on how to drive a stick shift. He looked at me and asked if that meant that I actually planned to buy a car I did not know how to drive. Well...yeah.

After administering the obligatory brotherly dope slap, he spent about 4 minutes explaining the interplay of clutch, brake and accelerator. Once he made sure I had paid and received my title and paperwork, he drove off and left me. Some people look at me a little goggle eyed when I tell them this, but I always just shrug and remind them that he is my brother, not my sister.

For those of you that know Manchester, picture turning left on Elm street out of Doble's Chevrolet during rush hour -- the first time you ever drove a manual transmission. It was exciting, I tell you.

Now it's 28 years later. A long string of cars has come and gone, mostly Ford Escorts and Subarus of various types. Now I find myself, rather accidentally, driving a blue pickup with a white cap.

Deja vu baby.

It's still a manual tranny, but this time it's a Chevy. At least my brother won't dope slap me for that.

My Olympics

2010-02-17T00:07:00.000-05:00

Three winter games I want to see added to the winter Olympics:

Snowball Conquest (Capture the Flag with Snowballs)
Snow Shoveling
Ice Fishing

Just sayin'

Both Wright And Not Wright

2010-02-16T23:56:00.000-05:00

Okay, the early results of my N.T. Wright campaign are just starting to trickle in.

I got about half way through Justification, and jumped over to The Challenge of Jesus. I got the gist of where he was headed with the first book, but also realized that that book really is a response to other theologians (primarily John Piper) response to much of Wright's earlier work. Particularly they are responding to Wright's attempt to re-frame our understanding of Paul's writing.

In a nutshell (it's a pretty big nut) Wright is claiming that much of the accepted common understanding of Paul's writing results from medieval, enlightenment and reformation overlays, rather than from what Paul was actually saying. To get to Paul's actual intent, you have to look at the culture and circumstances in which Paul was actually steeped in his day. If you do, you can see that the concept of Justification is not so much about personal salvation (Jesus died to save ME from MY sins) as it is about God saving the whole world, through Jesus who is the completion and climax of God's eternal-all-the-world-saving-plan through his chosen people.

There's a lot more to it than that, as you might imagine. Here's how Mr. Wright himself explains it.

As I see it, bottom line, is that it's another case of people setting up the either/or proposition and getting hung up on it. It seems to me like this is more of a both/and sort of deal. Jesus, Paul, and others used many kinds of pictures to explain what God is doing.

Adoption into God's family
Redemption from Slavery
Declared in the right in a court of law
Grafting onto the tree of Israel
Spiritual circumcision
Made into the people of God - a new chosen nation

And so on. It seems foolish to pick one over the other. They each highlight a different aspect of God's thought and intent as he completes his purpose for the world. So I'm not sure I see why Wright's ideas are threatening or dangerous. He goes through the scripture, and treats them with all the care, humility and depth that anyone would want and he ultimately arrives at the one place that is most important of all -- God saves us through Jesus. The argument is over how.

So, I decided to leave that argument for a while, and get a fuller picture of what's been going on to lead up to it. That's where I am so far. I read in snatches, mostly in time stolen here and there. I'm waiting to get to Jesus and the Victory of God, and Surprised by Hope. I have a ways to go yet.

Hard Times

2010-02-11T12:00:00.002-05:00

Marking the Plot

2010-02-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'd like to welcome my good friend Ron Jung into that strange jungle we know as the blogosphere. He has been circling around, sniffing the air, for some time now. He's finally gotten around to scratching out a spot on the ground, lifting his leg and leaving his wet yellow scent marker on the digital tree that is the worldwideweb.

He hasn't said much yet, except to say that he hasn't said much. Nevertheless, I encourage you to stop by occasionally. If I know Ron at all (and I assure you -- I do) he will come up with something provocative, profound, and possibly paradigm shifting. He might even say something funny, although that may or may not be intentional. I'm confident that all things considered, it will be worthwhile.

You can find him at This Little Plot.

Foggy Day and Unmapped Ways

2010-02-10T22:32:00.000-05:00

This last Sunday, my little church voted to move toward dis-incorporation.

It's not that we don't like each other, or can't get along. It's not a church split or a blow up over theological differences. It feels more like a lack of traction.

The church is 15 years old (or so) and we've been a part for 6 years. It was started as a plant but never really seemed to build any momentum. A year ago, we spent a fair amount of time trying to increase our focus, gin up some enthusiasm, attack the mission with fresh vigor...but looking back on how we did...not so much I guess.

We're a small band, and we want desperately to serve God and advance his kingdom, but it seems to us that our current form is just not making it happen. It's partly financial (we project a $17K budget deficit for next year) but mostly it's just a sort of shoulder shrugging sense of giving it our best shot and falling short.

Rather than just fall apart and leave a mess behind, however, we are trying to find a way to go out gracefully, creatively, even usefully. We accepted a 6 month budget, and directed the council (on which I sit) to take action to begin laying groundwork for the dissolving of the legal entity. The final vote will probably happen in late March.

Apparently dissolution of a church is a more complex process than one might have thought. We have responsibilities to the denomination, to the State of NH and to the Federal Government (IRS). Due diligence is required, proper forms must be observed, and the books must close properly. Any remaining assets will go to the denomination specifically for the purpose of planting new churches.

Any remaining people? Well, that's a matter of some conversation. In the middle of it there are sparks of hope. We like each other, and think that God has something for us, perhaps separately, but perhaps as a group taking another form. There is talk. Just a little now, but I think it is growing as we think, and pray and consider what mission Jesus is sending us on now.

Much concern about our Pastor, who we called and who moved out here to New England from Minnesota to serve us. Now we are leaving him in the lurch -- not completely I guess, but there isn't much about it that's pretty. The whole process has been very open, and to some extent, he has guided us through it. We are seeking to do as God will, not grasping at straws to force our plan. Having seen churches implode in the past, I must say this is something quite different and unusual.

While I can only imagine that the ultimate conclusion will be a net good, the future is a foggy white blank, and it is impossible to discern what shapes are going to loom out of the mist as we lurch down a road unmarked and unmapped.

Meeting Mr. Wright

2010-02-08T22:10:00.000-05:00

I have been provided with a deep pile of books by N.T. Wright. I am starting to work my way down the pile.

I picked "Justification" as my starting point -- whew! Nothing like walking in on the middle of someone else's conversation and trying to pick up the threads on the fly, especially when the conversation is pretty technical and rests on years of previous experiences shared by the other parties, but not by you.

I have heard so much about Wright's writing for some time. I have friends who think that he opens the door on dusty musty religion and let's in a whole lot of good clean fresh air. I know of others who think he doodles around on the edges of the heretical. From what I've read so far, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about, but I always have a tendency to agree with the book I'm reading now. Especially in a book that is very technical in an area where my knowledge is limited -- compared to the author -- I have a hard time being critical.

There are exceptions to this rule, usually in books be people that I don't think have a lot going on over and ahead of where I am.

At any rate, I'm glad that I'm finally going to get to meet Mr. Wright on the page. I'll report in on my impressions as I journey through his land.

Crumbs

2010-02-01T10:48:00.001-05:00

Cold weather

It’s been a little brisk in these parts, with night temps falling around or below zero Fahrenheit, and windchills measured in the negative teens or lower. I love this kind of weather. Not forever, mind you, but for a season it is a wonderful thing. The air is marvelously clear so the light of the full moon is possibly the brightest I have ever seen. I actually took a book outside a few nights ago to see if I could read it by moonlight. The answer was yes.

When I mentioned to a friend recently about what great hiking weather this is, he looked at me sideways like I was out of my mind. Of course, he hasn’t really spent much time outside, certainly not in this weather, so he doesn’t understand that you simply adapt. You dress for it, you adjust your movements accordingly, you take your time and remain mindful of what’s happening to your face, your fingers, your toes. You plan for contingency and you proceed with caution but not fear. The reward is great as you can hike a trail you have walked many times in warmer weather, but find it an entirely new experience – almost a new world.

Plus, I just really like it when I get icicles hanging off my beard.

Books

Went off on a short Louis L’amour jag recently sucking up three of this tales in short order, the best being Matagorda. He is a fine storyteller, though I am slightly puzzled by the use of the term “sky-pilot” to refer to a Christian Minister. Not puzzled as if I don’t know what it means. Puzzled rather by his consistent use of it in all three books, as if it were a common term in use our west during the latter half of the 19^th century. I don’t recall ever hearing it before.

I am also re-reading The Silmarillion. Assistant Village Idiot recently posted on how the language in TS differs from the language of either the Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. This has made in less accessible to some, who are put off by the formality and complexity of tone. It seems archaic and musty to some. I find that I love it. It has a sense of majesty, an epic quality. It reads more like ancient history, skirting over novelistic detail but if you accept it for what it is, and stop expecting a novel, it seems to me that that ceases to be a problem. Silmarillion captures that sense of “Northernness” that C.S. Lewis wrote of.

Leno vs. Conan.

Whatever. Ditch them both. They are stiffs. Bring in Craig Ferguson instead. Now that boy is funny. Moreover, sensible people are all in bed anyways.

Monsters vs Aliens

Watched Monsters vs. Aliens with my kids this weekend. Funny stuff. Gotta love B.O.B. My youngest and I had a conversation about which character we resemble the most. Apparently, I am most like Missing Link. Go figure.

B.O.B. is the funniest one though.

Toyota

I think I may end up owning a used Toyota sometime in the next few years. I’m guessing that there will be a lot of them available cheap. If it starts to run away with me, I figure I can just shift the thing into neutral, stop it, get out, and watch the engine rev up until it explodes. Should be entertaining.

Alternatively, while exiting the vehicle, I can ‘accidentally’ re-engage the transmission and watch the empty car plunge over a precipice to its complete destruction. That will not only be entertaining, but might be covered by insurance.

Fire in the Hole!

2010-01-26T08:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently Facebook is building a new data center in Oregon to house their operations. Some of the engineers involved in the design and building of the facility posted a short video of the dynamiting of the foundation hole. It's pretty cool, but the BEST part is hearing all the people standing around "ooohing" and "ahhhing"

"Whoa! That's pretty cool!"

The childlike enthusiasm with which those words are expressed says a ton. Say what you want about geeks, nerds, and the like, but they certainly know how to appreciate a good explosion. Let me just say...me too.

If You Knew Uke Like I Knew Uke

2010-01-22T23:39:00.001-05:00

Apparently the ukelele is a real musical instrument, not a toy.

The first video is from the Blue Stone Folk School. Hat Tip to my old friend Joni Back-Bubenzer, who is a regular participant and ardent supporter of this terrific musical experience in central Indiana.

I love the fact that the other takes here include a concert uke and a resonator uke. Wicked cool.

A Lust for News

2010-01-17T23:46:00.002-05:00

Has it occurred to anyone else that the news coverage surrounding the Haitian earthquake has devolved to the level of disaster porn?

Push Up and Pull Ups

2010-01-11T17:51:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite blogs to hang out with is at RossTraining.com. Ross is a former boxer, now a physical trainer and his blog is always full of great inspirational ideas about physical fitness and health, as well as constant improvement, challenging myself and boundary bashing. I learn a lot from him about what you can do on the cheap, without a gym, just having a ball moving your body.

He recently put up several videos that just floored me. I don't imagine many people will want to watch these all the way through, but you can get the general idea in the first few minutes of each. What is particularly noteworthy in either case is that you are seeing people do things that are usually not thought possible for people "of their type." In particular this means large men (over 300 lbs), and women over 40.

Large men are not supposed to be able to do high numbers of push ups, and certainly not pull ups. They are just too heavy. Women, particularly those over 40, are not supposed to be able to do lots of pull ups. They are just too small with insufficient muscle mass. Apparently the common wisdom did not stop these folks from just going out and getting it done. Beautiful.

I doubt these people accomplished these things purely through some kind of weird genetic gift. They clearly earned the capacity to do what they do with time, and sweat and more than a dollop of pain. I find it inspiring.

I encourage you to watch at least a little of each of these videos, not as some kind of freak show, but to consider what you can accomplish with simple determination and hard work.

The next two videos feature a feminine powerhouse named Crystal West. Wow....just wow.

This last is Tara Scott, demonstrating not only exceptional strength, but also real creativity in how she challenges herself with a variety of movements. Gives me lots of great ideas. She has lots of other great demos and playful fun workout ideas on her YouTube Channel

H/T to RossTraining.com

No Joy in Mudville

2010-01-11T16:50:00.001-05:00

The Patriots go down in flames.
The Packers...well...what can you say about the Packers.

It's a good thing I'm not much of a sports fan.

300

2009-12-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

I remember as a teenager becoming disgusted at realizing how enthusisastically self referential (reverential?) people in show business were. It happened while watching Micky Rooney and Judy Garland act out a script about two kids putting on a show where they would act out a script -- as if it was the bestest thing EVER! I remember thinking of a whole list of other movies about making movies (Singing in the Rain) and plays about plays (I think Hamlet gets a pass here just for longevity) and just wondering why drama drones couldn't come up with plot devices that weren't actually about themselves.

Here is me trying to understand the self-referential impulse by direct experience.

I just noticed that this is the 307th post to this blog. That means that just a few weeks ago I published my 300th posting. That seems like kind of a lot, I guess. Especially considering that I actually wrote some of them, instead of merely posting links to other sites or embedding video clips. At any rate, is is a round number ending with 2 zeroes.

I'm not really impressed with myself. Perhaps when I get to 1000.

Debt and Equity

2009-12-29T10:44:00.000-05:00

From P.J. O'rourke's book Eat the Rich:

"There are two main kinds of investments: debt and equity. Debt is just lending money. A General Motors corporate bond is a "debt instrument." You lend GM money, and GM promises to pay you back, plus interest. Your savings account is also a debt instrument. You lend the bank money, and the bank promises to let you withdraw it, never mind that the interest is less than you'd get from keeping a sock full of buffalo nickels under your bed. And your checking account is a debt instrument, too. You lend the bank money and they...charge you for it? Plus ATM fees? This is probably why so many pistol-waving people rob banks and why so few pistol-waving people rob General Motors."

Might I also add to this list ridiculous overdraft fees on debit cards, fees on getting your past statements, fees on fee administration, and a fee creation fee (they have to pay someone to come up with all those fees).

God in three persons. Blessed Trinity

2009-12-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

Music by Sufjan Stevens. H/T to Jered Wilson @ GospelDrivenChurch

Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree

2009-12-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Music by Elizabeth Poston
Words by Joshua Smith of New Hampshire 1784.

The Most Aggressively Inarticulate Generation

2009-11-23T23:44:00.000-05:00

I am a huge fan of the declarative sentence. I advocate for the active voice. This poem pounds the nail through the parchment, fixing the bill firmly to the door. It makes the statement about making the statement you want to make.

So watch it already. Yes. You. Now.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

H/T to Damien over at Adventure in Progress

Mindful Warmth 5 - Burning

2009-11-19T23:36:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series of articles on my recent experiences burning wood to heat my home. You can read the earlier articles by clicking on the links below:

________________________________________________________

To light a fire seems like such a simple thing, and it really is if you have good tinder, sufficient dry kindling, a good supply of fuel logs, and (this is critical) a lighter or a few matches. Simple.

Try doing it without a match.

I have. It ain’t that easy.

Even with a lighter, it takes a modicum of skill to get a good fire going quickly and with a minimum of smoke and fuss. This is important because the fire in question is inside my house. Therefore, any smoke won’t harmlessly drift off in the breeze. It will suffuse itself throughout the rooms of my house and settle on everything. Not a big deal perhaps until you consider what an entire winter of smoke will do to your wardrobe, your furniture, your carpets. Everything takes on a kind of sour unpleasant smell – not at all the delightful flavor you get from things which are properly smoked like, oh bacon for instance.

I soon learned that the idea is to get a good hot blaze going very quickly to heat the stove up as fast as possible. The heat creates a strong draft that will pull all the smoke up the chimney and outside where it belongs. The quicker things heat up, the stronger the draft. I learned to facilitate this by leaving the stove door open about a half an inch to allow lots of oxygen to feed the flames. Once things are going cheerily, I can close the door, and the stove will draw air in through the controlled damper system in the back. According to the owner’s manual, this system draws air in underneath the fire so that it burns from the bottom, allowing a more complete and controlled burn. It seems to work, as we always end up with a very find ash indicating that all the wood has burn quite thoroughly, yielding up every last BTU latent in the fibers.

Before lighting, I like to build the fire structure. The tinder goes first. I find that newspaper works well if twisted tightly into mini logs so that it burns longer. Paper egg cartons do well for tinder, as does cardboard especially if rolled up into tight spiral tubes. I recently tried paper milk cartons and found that these work wonderfully. They are waxed cardboard, and the combination of wax and paper burns evenly and long so that the flames have plenty of time to catch the tinder.

For kindling I have been using the small chips that inevitably collect around the stump during the splitting process. I periodically gather them up so that they don’t get underfoot and make my stumble, and place them in a large covered plastic bin. They dry quickly and when dry catch fire very easily. While this works well, I can see that I won’t have nearly enough of this to last the winter. So I’m going to have to make my own kindling. Easy with a small hatchet and a few dry logs. It’s a matter of a few minutes to split them down into sticks, enough kindling for a few days. You do have to mind your fingers.

I have also been the recipient of a gift of two barrels full of wood scraps from some finish carpentry project or other. This is kiln dried pine. It catches on fire very easily and make good kindling.

One the kindling is cracking and roaring a bit, I will place a few good sized logs on. My woodpile has been drying for about 18 months now, and the wood is well seasoned and burns easily and well. I don’t hear much sizzling, which is the sound you get when moisture is coming out of the wood as it is getting ready to burn. Just good clean low roar of flames and oxygen coming together and casting a nice warm glow that spreads through my entire house.

Once the stove is warmed up, the radiant heat warms the floor and walls of the house. The warmed air moves upstairs into the bedrooms to warm those spaces. Once it is warmed up I find tossing on a log about every 45 minutes or so will keep things going nicely. It really doesn't take that much. Once I piled it up pretty high, and I could tell things were getting a little too hot. I closed the damper in back a little to slow down the airflow and things settled down to a slower more even burn. I'm sure that as the winter moves on, I will learn more about how to keep the stove going efficiently.

Being warm in winter makes my bride happy. I look forward to a happy winter.

Ambushed, Firebombed and Fragged for Jesus

2009-11-16T21:43:00.006-05:00

I was first introduced to Matt Chandler (pastor of The Village Church in TX) listening to recordings of one of his talks at the Acts 29 Network conference earlier this year. I found his style engaging, his thoughts penetrating, and his focus challenging.

Internet Monk recently pointed to this talk he gave in front of a seminary class at Southern Baptist Seminary. I can't embed it, but take time to go to the link and listen to it. It's about 40 minutes long, but well worth it.

This is a combat veteran speaking to the troops still in training about what they should REALLY expect when they hit the beach. He pulls no punches here, and calls those fresh faced kids out in a pretty spectacular way. I have known some seminarians that I wish had heard this. I think I may have heard it sometime before I almost went to seminary.

He also calls out the whole pastoral industrial complex of american evangelicalism. It's amazing what Jesus can do in spite of us.

At moments over the last several years, I have thought that I might be hearing noises. Those noises sound an awful lot like what I remember when I thought I was hearing God's call years ago. My perspective on those noises now is quite different than it was 25 years ago. I haven't been fighting on the same front, but the battle scars I am carrying definitely change the way I see things. I am perhaps beginning realize the depths of my ignorance at 20. I had no way of knowing how different things really are when you get older. How different I am, now that I am older.

The shepherd game sure looks different from this angle.

It's a hell of a business, taking on hell and telling it where to go in Jesus' name. I have seen pastors ambushed, firebombed and fragged. I think anyone who sits in a pew can benefit from hearing this just as much as a prospective pastor.

Paglia on Pelosi. Holy Hygeia!!

2009-11-12T08:08:00.005-05:00

Taking a brief break from burning logs to mention this column on Salon.com regarding the pending bill on national health care (among other topics). The column is written by Camille Paglia. Yes, that Camille Paglia, the she wolf herself.

She is well known for her lefty liberal stances on...well...just about everything, but at least she serves them up with real style and thoughtfulness. Surprisingly, in this column entry, she offers a harsh, if not overly detailed, criticism of the bill that many of her liberalistic colleagues are having orgasms over. It sounds like Camille has a headache and would just rather do something else.

Read it here.

Mindful Warmth 4 - Moving

2009-11-11T22:46:00.005-05:00

This is one of a series of articles on my recent experiences burning wood to heat my home. You can read the earlier articles by clicking on the links below:

________________________________________

From WOODPILE

I have learned that wood must be moved several times during processing operations, and much of the effort of wood heating simply involves the act of moving it around. It seems that each chunk of wood must be moved a minimum of three times, although 4-5 times seems to be more common as I am still figuring out the best way to manage the whole process.

Actually, I am not so much managing the process just yet. I am inventing it. My mind is often taken up with figuring the most efficient layout for the various piles, scheming to find the materials to build the sheds and platforms, planning the placement and construction of each, and flowcharting it all in my head. None of it happens spontaneously. Unless I pick it up and make it happen, the wood just sits there until is sprouts mushrooms and returns back to the soil, it’s BTU’s unused. The brainpower required really is enormous. It's a good thing I have plenty to spare.

At this point, the process looks kind of like this:

Once dumped out of the truck or trailer, the large chunks must be moved to the splitting area. I usually will do this a few at a time as I need them. Once split, the logs must be moved to a drying area. For this I am using my main woodshed (actually, a platform). Since the main woodshed is still full of this year's fuel, I am preparing a secondary drying area on a group of wood pallets nearby. Once the wood in the woodshed is depleted, the pile of recently split logs on the pallets will replace it and will remain there to dry until next winter.

The main woodshed is a walk of perhaps 100 feet from the back door. Not bad in the summer, but verging on the inconvenient in 10 below January weather, with the snow hip deep. To make that trip daily to haul up the day's heat may get tedious. Therefore I have plans to stage the dried wood to a smaller intermediate woodshed near our back door. Then a load or two at a time, it will be brought inside to warm up – apparently placing cold wood in the stove is a waste of energy. Then it will finally be placed in the stove to burn.

So, my latest project is building that small woodshed on the back porch. The plan is for this woodshed to hold several weeks of split, dried wood, carried up from the main woodshed. It is about 5 steps from the back sliding door, and when finished will be covered with a modest overhanging roof and some kind of tarpaulin door to keep out blowing snow. It will be a new chore for my girls to bring up wood once or twice a week to keep this woodshed well stocked. From here it will be easy to bring it inside.

Once inside, I plan to build a small wood box that will hold one or two days worth of wood. Once placed in the box, any ice or snow can melt off, and the firewood can achieve room temperature before being placed into the firebox. I expect this box will be 3-4 feet long, perhaps 2 and a half feet front to back and about 2 and a half feet deep, with a hinged lid. It will also be the girls’ job to keep this full.

It is something to think of all those trees, growing here and there, all coming down and being cut into pieces. Then they come to my house and are broken into still smaller pieces. Then little by little they flow into my home and into my wood stove to keep my family warm. Every single piece moved by me, with the help of some good friends on occasion.

It is an amazing and gratifying thought.

Mindful Warmth 3 - Splitting

2009-11-10T21:41:00.008-05:00

This is one of a series of articles on my recent experiences burning wood to heat my home. You can read the earlier articles by clicking on the links below:

1 Introduction
2 Harvesting

____________________________________

The wood arrives in my yard in large chunks that may be several feet in diameter. These won’t fit in the stove and even if they did would require a pretty hot fire to burn. So the wood must be split into smaller chunks, anywhere from 8 inches across down to 2 inches depending on:

How much work you want to do: Bigger chunks require less work to split.
How will be carrying it: I tend to split small so the girls can easily carry it.
How fast you want it to burn: larger chunks will burn more slowly releasing the heat evenly over time.

Some wood splits easily along straight even grain lines. Birch is a pleasure for this reason, as are most oak and maple logs. Sometimes you will get a particular log that had a limb coming out of it, or is the crotch of two trunks. In these cases the grain goes all wavy and weird and splitting it becomes a matter of a good eye, true aim, a bit of luck and a whole lot of grunting and whacking.

There are machines to assist in splitting wood. Gas powered small engines drive a piston with a wedge on the end that can make quick work of

the nastiest piece of curly grain crotch oak you and imagine. These machines are most efficient with two people operating, one controlling the piston, the other loading and unloading the logs. For many people, owning such a machine is not a good use of capital, but renting one or borrowing one is a great way to get your wood split in a hurry.

I split my wood by hand using a crude but effective tool called the monster maul. It is a steel handle about 2.5 feet long, with a large solid steel triangle welded to the end. It weighs close to 16 pounds. With it I find that I can split pretty much anything, even though it may take multiple whacks. It take a great deal more energy and strength than many people have, but I enjoy it and find that it works just fine for my purposes.

Eventually, I will add another lighter ax to my tool chest so that I can use it to split the smaller logs without having to lift the monster maul. When it comes to a log that is 26 inches across though, the M2 dependably gets the job done.

The process involves lifting the log up onto my splitting stump. The stump is a large section of tree trunk selected for its size, weight and relatively level top. Once placed on the stump, I’ll stand a pace or two back, raise the maul over my head and swing it down. If it is the first split on a large trunk, I will swing down purposefully and with all the strength and intent to go straight through down to the stump. If it is a particularly thick log, or has uneven grain, I will often penetrate but not split it on my first swing. Some logs are so tightly grained that the first few strikes will actually bounce off. But with repeated hammering, it will eventually give way, and with a satisfying crack and thud, I will have two pieces of wood on the ground where there was once a hefty log.

Subsequent splits are easy. Rather than splitting each log down the middle, I tend to strike off slabs from the outside and work my way in. It’s less work and as I have practiced my aim has improved where I am getting pretty good at striking the wood on the right spot.

This, however, is another place where one must be always mindful. If the attention wanders at the critical moment, of even if I don’t put enough strength into the blow, the maul can deflect, and small chunks of wood and my maul go flying in unexpected directions. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I imagine that at some point it is possible that my shin or ankle might catch a fast moving 16 pound chunk of steel. I would like to avoid this occurrence and so tend to focus on what I am doing whenever splitting my logs.

I enjoy the rhythm of this work. I enjoy the sounds and smells of the cracking wood. I like feeling the axe moving downward and burying itself in the log with a thunk. I like that feel of the perfrect hit that just separates the log cleanly and evenly, ready to stack. I enjoy the slight membrane of heat coming off my skin that staves off the crisp cold air I’m working in. Again, the novelty has not worn off. It’s work, but it is play too. Perhaps this is the best quality of all real work, and to find the play hiding in the work is an art in itself.

Mindful Warmth 2 - Harvesting

2009-11-09T23:44:00.004-05:00

This is one of a series of articles on my recent experiences burning wood to heat my home. You can read the other articles by clicking on the links below:

1 Introduction

__________________________________________

Wood can be delivered, cut, split and dried, but of course this increases the cost significantly. Even if it is delivered all ready to burn, it still must be stacked in a convenient sheltered location. When needed, it must be carried into the house and placed in the stove chunk by chunk. There is no automatic feed, and no thermostat that turns on the fire when the temperature dips below 68 degrees. My own nervous system (or mostly my wife’s) is the thermostat. We can’t set it and forget it; not at any point in the process. This isn’t a bad thing, but it certainly is different.

In my case, I have laid up approximately 4 cord of wood (a cord being roughly 128 cubic feet). Almost all of it I have cut, hauled, split and stacked myself, with some help from neighbors and friends. My woodpile is almost all “tornado wood, remnants of trees felled in the tornado of 2008 that passed a scant 2 miles from my house on it’s way to cutting a 40 mile swath across the eastern part of the state.

I spent that week at some of my neighbors’ houses with a chain saw cutting up downed maples, oaks, birches, poplars and pines. I sawed the trunks and limbs into sections about 2 feet long, and loaded them into pickups, trailers and the back of my Subaru. I drove them to my home and dumped them into my backyard, into an area that has since been designated as the Cellulosic Heat Processing Zone (CHPZ). It consists of several platforms composed of wood pallets laid on the marshy ground to keep the firewood from rotting, and a large raised platform I constructed out of leftover construction lumber. This will eventually be my main woodshed, but as I ran out of lumber to build the sides and roof, it is still just a platform with a tarp over the woodpile.

Cutting and splitting is just hard work, but it is not mindless work. Anyone who has ever used a chainsaw, and felt it buck, or seize when your attention wandered knows this only too clearly. This is a tool that would just as easily remove a human limb as a tree limb and which one it goes to work on has everything to do with how much attention the operator is paying each second.

All in all, however, I find it pleasurable work. This could be because the experience is still novel to me. Someone who has had to do this their entire life may feel differently perhaps. It is dirty, smelly work, with it’s share of sweating, hard breathing and sore muscles involved. Yet the body adapts and I find that each chunk stored up produces a sense of emotional warmth I don’t get from fuel oil. Just knowing that I am heating my own house by my own work, not dependent upon petroleum imported from foreign nations (except for the gas to run the chain saw and drive the truck that hauls the wood) feels pretty darn good. Odd how physical ease and freedom from labor makes me ultimately FEEL more enslaved, but toil and sweat give me an ineffable sense of freedom. This is just the first part of this whole wood burning thing that seems delightfully paradoxical to me.

I have been working with borrowed chain saws, trucks and trailers. Eventually, I am going to need to buy my own tools for harvesting wood. I’m looking forward to it.

Mindful Warmth 1 - Introduction

2009-11-09T23:26:00.005-05:00

Some parts of this country have more heat than they know what to do with. In these northern climes, heat becomes a precious thing between October and April. It doesn’t come naturally. It must be made. And the making of it doesn’t come cheap. During the winter heating is a major part of the family budget, whether that heat comes from oil, gas, electric, wood pellets, or good old fashioned burning logs.

Most of those heat sources don’t require much thought beyond the writing of the check. You pay your money, and the guy comes with the big truck and fills that 250 gallon tank in the basement full of heating oil (basically diesel fuel). Or the gas guy comes and fills that big gas bottle outside with propane. Natural gas isn’t as common in this part f the country, but for those places that do have it, it works pretty much like electricity, piped directly into the house. Both sources come over the wire (or through the pipe) and you just pay the bill. You can arrange to have your wood pellets delivered, and you must then fill the hopper, but once the hopper is full, you’re good for a while.

Burning wood, though, that takes thought. I have been burning wood now for almost a week. I have been preparing to burn wood for about a year and a half. I must say that heating your house by burning wood is a qualitatively different experience from any other type of heating method I have experienced. It is a mindful, and intentional in a way that separates it from other common forms of household heating. This makes it perhaps the most eccentric and philosophical method of home heating. Perhaps you would see that as an undesirable quality – why would you want to have to think about your heat?

My answer to this is “because heat is costly,” and the cost is not measurable in mere dollars and cents. The extraction, processing, transport and distribution of energy makes up an enormous sector of our economy. It employs highly paid professionals like engineers and scientists as well as skilled and hard working technicians who run the machines, often in extreme and dangerous climates. Let’s not forget the risk-taking entrepreneurs who stake enormous wealth to find and develop this energy. If they win the bet, the payoff is big. Really big.

Governments negotiate for the rights to acquire energy. Elections can swing on it. Regimes rise and fall with it. Wars are fought over it.

So I view heating my home with wood as doing energy for amateurs. I am neither engineer nor scientist, nor wildcat roughneck. I’m just some guy who wants to keep his family warm through the snowy frigid winter months. I want to do it myself, instead of paying someone to do it.

Heating with wood may be cheaper in cash, but it is certainly more expensive in terms of attention, much like playing the piano yourself requires much greater attention than listening to a concert on a CD in the car. Wood heat is mindful heat. It is warmth that requires attention.

Operator, Get me Jesus

2009-11-06T09:18:00.003-05:00

Our church is doing something new next week. We are a pretty small group, somewhat scattered geographically. We want to have an impact for Jesus, and are realizing that it might be a very good thing if we went to him in prayer more. So we are going to attempt to eliminate excuses about travel time, gas money and so on by holding a prayer meeting by conference call.

Reminds me of this song...

Fox Hunts

2009-11-03T22:49:00.003-05:00

I first saw a fox do this on a PBS Nature program on Yellowstone. I couldn't get that video pasted in here, but this is a reasonable substitute for if you can't use the link above. No explanation needed as to why I love this piece of video.

Moosilauke at Low Res

2009-10-31T01:02:00.004-04:00

I realized recently that a few of the videos I have up on Youtube have not been actually posted here.

This was taken a few years ago during a hike I took up Mt. Moosilauke in NH. I had been up north on business, and I needed a break. So I brought my gear with me and made plans to play hooky for the rest of the day. It had been raining, but that is no impediment to the truly psycho...er...I mean dedicated hiker. I changed out of my suit and into my walking clothes and headed up. I only had a few hours before dark to make 8 miles up and back, so I did not dawdle. It began to clear a bit after I reached the summit. It was a great walk. Being in mid November, I pretty much had the mountain to myself.

The poor video quality can be blamed on the fact that I shot this in 15 second clips with my 2 megapixel digital camera.

The Tyrant's Forge

2009-10-30T09:56:00.002-04:00

Much to think about in this short quote. Read it three times. I found that in a single reading I tended to catch only the buzzwords, but not some of the more fundamental ideas.

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."

-Patrick Henry

Hallo-weenie

2009-10-30T08:45:00.004-04:00

I'm not a big Halloween guy. It's OK, but I don't get particularly exercised about it either way. I think part of that comes from the fact that growing up, the trick or treat thing was not very practical. I lived in a rural area where the density of housing was pretty thin compared to city or suburban neighborhoods. To really canvas a reasonable number of houses would literally require a few miles of walking on streets without street lights. Now the challenge wasn't that my Mom objected to all this on safety grounds. That wasn't her issue at all. While I do remember one time when I was very little when my Mom drove us around to some houses around town, as I grew older we were pretty much on our own. If we wanted to engage in the Halloween ritual, it was our responsibility to come up with a costume. If we wanted to trick or treat, that was fine, but we were walking. When asking for candy (which I'm not all that crazy about anyways...I've always been much fonder of baked goods) involves that much work, it just becomes less important.

And while the whole satanic scariness sturm und drang that infected the evangelical subculture of the 70's and 80's gave me some thought, I never really got that upset about that angle either. We are pretty far removed from the ancient druids. Whatever spiritual teeth may have existed in the rituals of defunct cults of bygone eras have long ago been pulled, leaving Halloween an ineffectual doddering invalid that can't even manage to gum the demonic candy it is blamed for chewing up and spitting all over our children.

I have a hard time thinking that kids begging for candy while wearing Scooby Doo outfits and princess dresses are really channeling demons. Unless you consider incipient diabetes and insulin hangovers as demonic.

Having said that, I don't care for some of the costumes I'm seeing over the past few years, although mostly on aesthetic grounds. I think dressing up as a movie monster a la Chucky the killer Cabbage Patch Kid, or Jason the Hockey Mask Slicer is kind of lame. I understand that these are the monsters of our time -- I just don't like them. When Dracula and Frankenstein were the dominant monster stories, those were the costumes. Today our monsters are, I think, more monstrous and more monstrously bland for it. To read Dracula, and to read Frankenstein (and to a lesser extent to see the movies) one catches glimpses of deeper aspects of the human condition. These stories show us something about ourselves. Even ghost characters have some kind of mirroring charm. But these latest movie monsters, if they are mirroring our selves or our human plight, it seems to me mostly a dismal and wretched view. These guys aren't really even fun. They are one sided and ultimately banal, in spite of the temporary terror they inspire.

Moreover, they are humorless. Vampire jokes abound, and Frankenstein humor is plentiful. The jokes that arise out of these slasher stories are grim and gritty; to hear them makes me feel like I've just eaten sand.

And as monsters they are purely materialistic, without spiritual dimension. There is no spiritual fear involved. Our older monsters seemed dangerous because in large part the danger they presented went far beyond physical danger. There was something of them that always endangered our souls (even Frankenstein...where the real monster was not the creature, but the Doctor who toyed with God's work by reanimating the dead). Today's slasher monsters are merely gaping pits full of blood and screams and darkness; the terror they induce arises from a soulless view of humanity. All of the terror is fear of physical death - albeit by a variety of creative and dramatic means.

So as you see, all my objections seem pathetic and anemic, a matter of taste rather than of principle.

I guess I'm probably both over simplifying and over-analyzing, but that's what blogs are for. I was inspired to this rant by an article in the NY Times on how schools are systematically de-fanging the celebration of Halloween by attempting to remove any remaining vestiges of fright from the children's costumes. Reading the article, I found myself rooting for both sides of the argument, but also not really caring. I don't see this as a critical front of any kind of culture war and it seems odd the people get so exercised about it either way. Mostly, I think the whole thing is kind of funny, but I can't quite explain why.

BTW - my kids are dressing up as a Peacock, and as Nancy Drew. Those are their own choices, and they are putting together their own costumes. They will be doing the candy begging circuit with some friends as a gang in a van.

Hungry? or just Snacky?

2009-10-19T21:50:00.002-04:00

Listening to the radio on one of my looonnnggg drives today. On Point, a pretty good issues and interviews radio show produced by WBUR of Boston had an hour on "Jobs and the Class of 2009." It featured a panel of three recent grads discussing their not too terribly successful attempts at finding work so far. I got the distinct feeling that they weren't so much searching for gainful employment as they were rooting through the refrigerator trying to find something to eat. I noted that none of them seemed truly hungry. They were still at that sort of snacky stage where they knew they wanted something to eat, but weren't quite sure what and they seemed more than willing to stand there with the door propped open until inspiration struck. I wondered how long it would take before pretty much anything mom plopped down in front of them would be the most delicious thing ever.

Of course, this is because the question you face at 24 is very different than the question you face at 46. Early on it's about passion, joy, meaning. How can I find a job that I love? What do I really enjoy doing?

At least, that's the question if you are a middle-class recent college grad who has supportive parents with a basement room with free internet access. On the other hand, when middle aged become a more important descriptor than middle-class; when dependents become a bigger fact than dependence; when you have no financial margin and not even any margarine...the choice becomes simple, although not necessarily easier.

I found the discussion fascinating, but I kept thinking about what these kids will do in 20 years if they find themselves in a similar spot. Probably, like me, they will take a job selling appliances, while launching out on an entrepreneurial adventure just to try to forestall the foreclosure monsters and keep everyone in shoes and oatmeal a little longer. And...be grateful for the opportunity. At a certain point, fulfillment becomes more about a full belly then a full heart.

And that's OK.

11:11

2009-10-18T23:50:00.002-04:00

Rodrigo y Gabriela have come out with a new album titled 11:11. Holy Smokes. All new original material, no covers. What I have heard is just outstanding and every bit as energetic and passionate as their original album. This is music that make my hair stand on end and puts fire in my belly.

This is a live performance of one of the numbers from the new album. I love how Gabriela is so sweet, with her halting french at the beginning, but give her box with some strings on it and she is all business.

Nutty (and bolty) Anglicans

2009-10-17T12:03:00.003-04:00

Thanks to InternetMonk, I'm pulling this pretty terrific video over that has an outstanding (and very thorough) explanation of what exactly is going on in those wooly Anglican worship services. You know, wazzup with all those robes and candles and smoke and chanting and kneeling and all that crazy stuff. It turns out that there's a reason for all that, and the reason is that it all points to Jesus -- just not with words. Could it be that we can actually worship God with water, bread, wine, cloth and all those mundane material things? Could we even use our bodies? (gasp!) As if Jesus actually is the Lord of all of it, and not just the ethereal and intellectual. A pox on gnosticism.

I particularly loved his take on the the Anglican Altar Call, the reaffirmation of baptism through the use of the aspergillium, the historical development and essential meaning of vestments, his simple explanation of real presence, and the description of Anglicanism as holding that delicate spot astride both the Protestant and Roman traditions. This resonates powerfully with me.

The Nuts and Bolts of Anglican Liturgy from St. Peter's Anglican Church on Vimeo.

It's Just Snacktime Before we have Coffee Downstairs

2009-09-23T21:23:00.003-04:00

My church is in the middle of a four week series on Communion. The readings and sermons and prayers all will focus around communion, with the purpose of exploring it's meaning and how Christ meets us in the bread and the cup. Best of all, we are celebrating the feast every Sunday for four Sundays in a row. I never really understood the once a month thing. If it were up to me it would be every Sunday 52 weeks a year. Talk about being fundamentalist -- that just seems fundamental to me.

I came across this interesting post at the blog "2 Ages Verging" on why Evangelicals don't get the sacraments. Ryan Cordle posits that it has much to do with the fact that evangelicals don't seem to want to face up to death. He might have something there except that most evangelicals don't make any connection with death and the eucharist. It may be true the Ev's are dense about death, but if there is no connection between death and the sacraments, then it seems unlikely that this is what causes evangelicals to miss the point.

Worth reading anyways.

Short Takes September 09

2009-09-15T17:35:00.003-04:00

A few random quick observations:

Walking through Boston Commons yesterday and received an insight into why Hollywood movie productions cost in the millions. Several large party tents were set up for cast and crew to prep for scenes, and presumably for extras to hang out, etc. Each of these enormous white tents (the kind used for outdoor wedding receptions) was service by an enourmous portable air conditioning unit. Air conditioned tents. In Boston in September on a day that maybe topped out at 70 degrees. Not saying that's a bad thing, but..it may explain some things.

Reading a collection of Jack London's short stories. We've all read To Build a Fire -- it's in every high school American Lit anthology. I am struck by the muscularity of his prose. It is not spare and telegraphic like Hemingway's. It is extraordinarily rich, with almost painful attention to moment by moment detail. Highly descriptive, using the whole range of all the parts of speech. But it is not flowery or fluffy. It fairly pounds you over the head, but in the most fascinating and engaging way. Very american. He should get more attention than Hemingway. It's much better stuff. (with the possible exception of H's The Big Two Hearted River -- his only short that I really liked).

Took the kids up Mt. Major on Sunday. It's a nice 4 hour hike up and back if you take your time. About 1.5 miles up. About 3 miles going down the back way. Went up it barefoot. I tell you what, that gets people's attention. Some are impressed. Others decidedly not so much -- they seem to think it's a little loopy. It certainly changes one's gait and the way one walk. I spent much more attention and energy on where to place my feet. It was a good experiment which I will probably repeat. I need to toughen up my feet more, or get some moccasin-like shoes. I have my eyes on something call Vibram FiveFingers. Gotta save up my dough first.

My wife is involved in a "bible study" at the home school co-op with which we are involved. Something for the parents to do while the kids are in their classes. It's put out by Focus on the Family with backing of such luminaries as Os Guinness and RC Sproul. It is about TRUTH! I looked through the first chapter notes. I have no quarrel with it, but I mentioned that it really holds no interest for me for the simple reason that I have very little interest anymore in arguing with anyone. The conversation turned to time she recently spent with a neighbor who has led a tough life -- let's just say one that is fairly overflowing with humanity. As a result, her speech and conduct is broad and coarse. Even so we both know her and like her. As the Bride described their weekend to me and we talked we agreed that telling this woman where she was wrong would be useless at best, and more likely completely counterproductive. What she needs is not truth, but love. It is conceivable that love and grace would open the door to truth, but that love and grace would have to come first. Yeah. I'm pretty much done arguing with people.

Some other books I'm reading or have read recently:

Evangelical is not Enough by Thomas Howard

Tehanu by Ursula LeGuin

Small Strong Congregations by Kennon Callahan

The Shack by William Young

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose

Rice and Vampyres

2009-09-12T21:19:00.007-04:00

Vampires are trendy.

150 years ago, I imagine very few people had any concept of "vampire." The concept existed in folklore of many cultures, but doesn't seem to have been a strong motif. In the beginning of the 19th century, some writers began using the folkloric material continuing in fits and starts until Bram Stoker writes the quintessential vampire novel, Dracula at the end of the century. It is quite a powerful and beautiful work by the way, and one I recommend. From that point vampire is ushered into the popular imagination. From there, it was mostly the work of movies, radio and television -- mass media -- to take the vampire and defang it. In spite of Nosferatu, the Hollywood vampire soon became a symbol of camp and mockery. As the world left behind it's belief in good and evil, especially of any kind of supernatural good or evil, the mills of Hollywood mashed and rehashed the legend of the Dracul until it was more of a joke than anything else. Certainly by the time I was growing up, no one really shivered in horror at the thought of the blood drinking undead. There have been many appearances of vampires in popular entertainment, mostly using it as a convenient plot device, like time travel, to bring conflict and suspense to a story. Dark Shadows, Night Stalker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Need I say more?

But even as the vampire seemed stalled in either black capes or mindless minions of darkness, Anne Rice reinvented the vampire completely with her group of novels that became knows as The Vampire Chronicles. First released in the early 1970's, the core of these stories dwelt in three volumes. Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire LeStat, and Queen of the Damned. I did not discover these until the late 1990's, when I was approaching 40 years of age, and they completely entranced me on several levels. I will come back to this in a bit.

Now as if out of the blue we have Twilight and True Blood, and suddenly vampires are sexier and more hip than ever. I'm not necessarily saying this is bad...I haven't really paid much attention to either one. I just find it fascinating that vampires have suddenly taken on a certain fashionability.

Now Doug Wilson weighs in on why all this hubbub about vampires is bad because it makes light of evil. If a vampire is a symbol of evil then of course we should “honor the symbol” and stop making it all sexy and stuff. Well far be it from me to dare to disagree with Mr. Wilson, who could effortlessly dismember me with his tongue alone, never mind his pen. Far be it from me indeed, but I think he is really missing some pretty big chunks of what we might call “the point.”

Symbols can certainly be enduring, but are seldom static and are constantly subject to re-imagining or even re-purposing. Witness the Christmas Tree, the Easter Egg, and even the cross itself. What is the literary purpose of the vampire as symbol? It is, I think, more complex than an initial cursory look might suggest.

I’ll be coming back to this, in particular to discuss the work of Anne Rice along these lines, and in particular to look at how her work has now transformed into a truly fascinating re-imagining of the gospel stories. She no longer writes vampire books because the process of writing them, and exploring the deeper themes suggested actually led her out of her self proclaimed atheism and back to Jesus and to His church. That’s a fascinating story.

So why am I getting all worked up about this? Mostly because I have found the work of Anne Rice, so easily dismissed because it is about vampires, to have been profoundly influential. Early on I detected in her writing a seeking and searching for truth, and discerned her direction and pointing toward Jesus. I am most gratified that I was right, and I am enjoying watching her publishing her journey, both in essay format and in her fiction.

Look here to read about it and we’ll talk more later.

There's Reform, and Then There's REFORM!

2009-09-11T17:04:00.004-04:00

I've tried to write about this several times, but the whole expanse of it just seems to get away from me. Rather than write a full and reasoned treatise, here are just a few observations.

I think that the whole idea of Health Insurance may be completely wrong. Insurance is for disasters, not for bills. With life insurance, the payout is at least predictable based on the policy your purchase, so the actuaries can figure out the pricing accordingly. Medical bills are notoriously unpredictable, so huge margins must be built in.

Imagine sending the bill for your brake work or your oil changes to your auto insurance company. That's not what insurance is for. Insurance is for crashes. Repair insurance is available, but we call it an extended warranty. Most financial advisors will tell you it's a bad deal. Insurance is for crashes. For repairs, you plan, save or use your credit card.
Health insurance makes the insurance company the customer, not the patient. The money comes from the insurance company, so the medical provider is much more interested in doing things that make the insurance companies happy. This has to skew things.
Making the government the insurer really won't help this. It doesn't matter if the government does a good job of it or not. The concept is skewed from the get go.

So it seems to me that Health Care reform -- real reform -- is not about deciding who insures who. It should be about getting rid of insurance altogether and finding other ways to finance medical expenses.

This isn't all my idea. I was kind of thinking about this, but in a very fuzzy and undefined way, and then I read David Goldhill's article in The Atlantic Monthly called How American Health Care Killed My Father. Not sure I see all his solutions, but I think they are much closer to real reform than what is going on now.

One Possible Response to 9/11

2009-09-11T16:40:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about carrying a gun.

This would involve some expense, a lot of training and practice, a definite adjustment in lifestyle and habits, and a some amount of legal work to secure the appropriate permits and government permissions.

I would also involve a certain amount of explaining. Not all the time, since the idea of concealed carry is that it is concealed. Most people should have no idea that you are carrying a weapon. Nevertheless, I would expect that many of my friends and acquaintances would be somewhat put off if they did know. And some of them might react very strongly against it.

And that's fine. I have my reasons. I am purposely not going to make a defense of carrying a gun here in this post, although I might later. If you are interested in learning any variety of reasons why an American citizen might want to go about armed, you can simply google about and you will find many many essays on why it ought to be considered not only a right, but a responsibility. Some of it is pretty gassy stuff, full of dramatic hamfisted emotional appeals and proclamation, but a lot of it is worth considering.

I'm mostly throwing this up to see what anyone else thinks about it. Especially as a christian, to many it will just rub the wrong way. Here are a couple of things to consider:

Are we citizens, or are we subjects? Should this make a difference in our conduct?
Self defense is a legal construct. Does it have any biblical basis? In what circumstances?
On what basis could a Christian ever consider doing violence to another human? Especially since our Great Example seems to have raised victimhood to a moral imperative. Or is this a misunderstanding?

Any comments?

Knocked on My Can by a Ton of Bricks

2009-09-04T22:25:00.003-04:00

I am seldom sick. When I am, it’s more of a nuisance than anything else. Toward the end of August I got a bit of a taste of what it’s like to be really sick. I was completely knocked on my can for at least 10 days, and I’m still not quite 100%.

It all started in the beginning of the month when my youngest mysteriously came down with some cold-like thing including general misery and a barking cough. Instead of coming out of it in a few days, as is usual, it hung around for her for almost 2 weeks. So after 2 weeks of barking and spewing, it was no wonder when the oldest also was stricken. Not quite as much misery, but lots of coughing. I bugged out for 4 days, heading to Denver on a business trip. I returned home on a Thursday and kept working through Friday afternoon, although in retrospect, I could feel something coming on.

Friday afternoon it dropped on me like a ton of bricks. My fever spiked up to almost 104. I was racked with pain in every muscle in my body, and a remarkable number of places that aren’t muscles. This kept up all through the weekend, with a brief respite Sunday morning, and then slammed me to the mat again late Sunday afternoon. I was taking all the usual over the counter medicines but nothing made a dent. Then in desperation – exhausted from lack of sleep and in amazing pain, I took some hydrocodone (Tylenol with codeine) that I had left over from a minor surgical procedure some time ago. For the surgery, I didn’t really need it. Now, ironically, I most certainly did. I gotta tell you, I LOVE that stuff. When you really need it, the right medicine is the best thing in the world.

I could literally feel the pain ebbing away, and my body relaxing. Suddenly the fever broke and I started sweating profusely. I mean profusely – like running off my body in trickles. It was wonderful. I slept like a baby, only waking at midnight to pop two more pills.

I kept up this regimen for a few days. Did I mention that all through this time I was also coughing? Racking spasming coughs that at times were so bad I almost couldn’t breathe. I had to go to my knees so that I wouldn’t throw my back out from my coughing fit. Even now, my neck is stiff because I think I kinked something in there during one of my monumental hacks. Even as the fever abated, the coughing continued. I tried to work the following Tuesday, and stumbled my way through a training program, but on the way home my fever spiked again and I clearly needed some medical intervention. I was at the doctor’s office the next day and was diagnosed with pneumonia. This is the third time I have had to deal with pneumonia. I should have recognized it without the doctor’s help. Azithromycin did the trick and put me back on track, but it took a few days still before the coughing really began to fade. I’m still coughing up the occasional slug, but they aren’t the dark foreboding green the originally were, nor are they so abundant. God bless antibiotics. They get a bad rap, but as I said, when you need it the right medicine is glorious.

My wife was a beautiful angelic nurse to me through this. And then as I was coming out of it, her coughing got worse and she also was found to have pneumonia. We are such a sharing family! She skipped the flu part, thank goodness, but it even now struggling with the tiredness that comes from not being able to take full breaths. It’s a sluggish feeling from not having enough oxygen. I’m still struggling with that a little, although I can breathe deeply now without tossing up a lung.

As a result of this I lost 10 days and a solid week of income when I can least afford it. I am self-employed and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Any opportunity to finish the summer with a nice hike in perfect weather was lost. Time I would have rather spent with my girls went down the drain. Our 23^rd wedding anniversary was an afterthought, as we both just felt glad to be alive. I shed about 12 pounds in a week as I had no appetite for the first 6 days and ate very little – but I wouldn’t recommend the plan. It’s a little harsh. The feeling of helplessness and even occasionally some fear that this was more than just a passing treatable sickness is memorable. I don’t care to repeat this again anytime soon. Sickness just hollows out your life. I am more than ever grateful for good health. It’s a tough way to be reminded.

Here's what else I was reminded of...the care and concern of neighbors and friends. Our church family kept track of us, provided meals and other kinds of support. Neighbors checked in and helped how they could. We had to go through it ourselves, but it was good to know that we were not completely alone. Someone outside our house actually cared, even helping take care of our poor orphan children who pretty much had to fend for themselves for 3 or 4 days when both of us were pretty much out of commission. Community ain't now joke. It's a cliche term, but it exists and it's as real as breathing. If you ain't got it, get some.

Ramayana Lite

2009-08-15T01:28:00.003-04:00

I recently stumbled across one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. I am fascinated by it and keep going back to watch sections of it on YouTube.

Sita Sings the Blues is a personalized retelling of the Ramayana, one of the great sanskrit epics, the twin tale of the Mahabarata. The movie is subtitled The Greatest Breakup Story Every Told. Nina Paley took inspiration from this ancient tale, the breakup of her own marriage and the songs of Annette Hanshaw. She created this stunning interweaving of animation styles, ad lib interview, storytelling and music. The animation alone is inventive and beautiful work, fascinating to watch and sheer delight. The integration of Annette Hanshaw's music is exceptionally clever, but manages never to feel strained. And for westerner's like me, this Ramayana lite is an easy way to be introduced to this ancient and profound tale.

You can see the movie streamed in it's entirety here.

It's about 1:20 long, but worth every bit of it. If you want to take it in chunks, it is also available on YouTube broken into 10 sections. I warn you...they are like potato chips. You may not be able to stop once you start.

As you might imagine, there are many detractors of this film. Because of it was made by a white american woman who is not Hindu, and because it takes a light tone regarding some things that many Hindus feel are very sacred, it treads some difficult ground. As a westerner, I can see where Ms. Paley actually was working out of a real reverence for the material, but her way of honoring it is to personalize it. She makes it very clear also that she is really focusing on the role of Sita, and developing her concept of Sita's side of the tale. In the actual sanskrit story, Sita's role is very small -- almost a side note -- compared to that of Raman.

The idea of honoring a story by personalizing it is a very western concept. I get it, but I can see why some of her critics might not. Regardless, I would encourage everyone to see this.

Oh Martha, The Cows

2009-08-11T21:29:00.003-04:00

If you aren't churchy, then this story probably will leave you scratching your head. But...if you are churchy, or have been churchy in the past, you might think this is kind of funny. Hat tip to Jacob over at The Mockingbird Blog

____________________________________

An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well,” said the farmer, “it was good. They did something different, however. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns.”

“Praise choruses?” said his wife. “What are those?”

“Oh, they’re OK. They are sort of like hymns, only different,” said the farmer.

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked his wife.

The farmer said, “Well, it’s like this – If I were to say to you “Martha, the cows are in the corn”’ – well, that would be a hymn. If on the other hand, I were to say to you:

Martha, Martha, Martha, Oh Martha, MARTHA, MARTHA, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the white cows, the black and white cows, the COWS, COWS, COWS are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, the CORN, CORN, CORN.
Then, if I were to repeat the whole thing two or three times, well, that would be a praise chorus.”

The next weekend, his nephew, a young, new Christian from the city came to visit and attended the local church of the small town. He went home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well,” said the young man, “it was good. They did something different however. They sang hymns instead of regular songs.”

“Hymns?” asked his wife. “What are those?”

“Oh, they’re OK. They are sort of like regular songs, only different,” said the young man.

“Well, what’s the difference?”

The young man said, “Well, it’s like this – If I were to say to you ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn’ – well, that would be a regular song. If on the other hand, I were to say to you:

‘Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by
To the righteous, inimitable, glorious truth.
‘For the way of the animals who can explain
There in their heads is no shadow of sense
Hearkenest they in God’s sun or
His rain Unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.

‘Yea those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night
They all my mild Chilliwack sweet corn have chewed.
‘So look to the bright shining day by and by
Where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn
Where no vicious animals make my soul cry
And I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.’

Then if I were to do only verses one, three and four and do a key change on the last verse, well that would be a hymn.

Sense and Nonsense in Policy Making

2009-08-11T17:03:00.004-04:00

The right rages and rants on the healthcare hobbiehorse, but it's not helping me much. They are busy blowing buzzwords out their betooshkas. I haven't dug in deep to the data. I am working too hard just to keep my head above water. But here is what I hear, out of the corner of my ear, and I don't like it much.

Socialized medicine

This is apparently the horror of all horrors. Unfortunately it is rather bloblike, with a clearly undefined shape. No one seems to want to explain what they mean by it, or why it is bad. It is socialist, though. That seems to be enough. But...are the proposals on the table REALLY socialized medicine? No one seems to be able to tell me.

Health Care will be Rationed

OK, it is rationed now. My insurance company has some strong opinions about what they will use my premiums for and what they won't. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. That is how insurance works. But why shout as if everyone has indiscriminate access to medicine now? It ain't so. Should it be so? Maybe. Maybe not. That's a different question.

Bureaucrats will make your healthcare choices for you

Again, they already do. It's just that they are paid by the insurance companies, not by the government. And again, I'm not saying that's bad, but you can't talk like there aren't hundreds of thousands of pasty faced cubicle dwellers checking off forms to determine what procedure they will or won't pay for right now.

Government ruins everything it touches

Could the gummint be more efficient? Sure. Could the gummint be more effective? Sure. Is there a tremendous amount of waste, boondoggle, porkbarrel and earmarking? Absolutely. But seriously, if we had anarchy -- no government at all -- do you really think that life would be better? Like the Israelites shouting for a king, all human societies must organize somehow. Tribes or Kingdoms or Nations -- every society forms some kind of government. Ours is actually pretty sophisticated and just compared to what history has served up. Without the government we have - flawed as it is - we would not be enjoying the freedom and prosperity we enjoy today. Sure, keep governmnet in check. That's wise. But don't go around blathering about how government is by nature the greatest evil, and must never be trusted with the public welfare in any form. That's just ignorant manure coming right out of your mouth.

Healthcare Reform will Balloon the Budget

I think it already is. So we can't just sit still. This is not to say that would should adopt something that would be financially disastrous in the long run just because it is politically expedient now. Nevertheless wouldn't it be better to do SOMETHING about it, even if it is less than perfect? Obstructionism is not going to get the budget under control.

So I don't want to know what horrible apocalyptic fate will befall us if we actually do the tiniest smidgen of what Mr. Obama has in mind. Don't rail prophetically about the awful desolation that will be post-healthcare reform America. Tell me how YOU would fix it. Present private sector solutions that will work. Give us counter proposals. The antithesis to the thesis of a proposed bill is not to scream hysterically at the congressman. The antithesis is to present your own bill, with different solutions. Then lets pick something that looks like it might actually solve some of the problems, get it passed, and move on.

Stop bloviating. Start renovating. Give me fewer bumperstickers and better ideas. Stop throwing those sticks and stone. Let's use them to build us something useful.

Advice for Hikers

2009-08-10T09:34:00.005-04:00

I'm a big fan of ultralight hiking. UH used to be kind of fringe, but apparently it is going more mainstream. I know this because now columnists for the NY Times are writing about it. Not just writing about it, but giving advice because they practice it themselves. Nicholas Kristof has a nice little editorial piece on how to get up and get out into the woods. He gives some good advice, but I would temper it some by simply adding one suggestion. If it's your first time, plan a short trip (perhaps 1 overnight) with a route that has options to bail out. You don't want to use the option, but just knowing you have planned it in gives you confidence.

My favorite piece of advice:

10. In grizzly or polar bear territory, carry bear spray (which is a bit like mace). Frankly, the spray is unlikely to stop a 1,000-pound bear hurtling toward you, so experienced hikers respond to a menacing bear by using the spray in one of two ways. The first option is to spray yourself in the face, so you no longer care what the bear does to you. The second option is to spray your best friend beside you, and then run.

New application of an old joke.

The Saga of Bavychlorskjevya boskjorB - Canto the Second

2009-08-02T14:13:00.004-04:00

For those of you that have been waiting anxiously for the next installment in the Icelandic Saga of Bachelor boB (that's Bavychlorskjevya in Icelandic) here is the most recent post. Apparently he lives, but only by the skin of his teeth, and perhaps a few knuckles.

I should be dead.

Note that there is no humor in that statement.

I endured cold, rain, sleet, heat, non-existent trails, deep sand, sharp lava, impossible footing, quicksand (for real), bog, drought, sand storms, fog, impossible wind (tent was literally flattened, then dragged across the sands with me+gear inside = 250 lbs. *several* times in a night+day), etc. But all of that really means nothing.

My 20-day hike ended yesterday (Thursday), for on Wednesday afternoon (day 10 or 11; not sure) I was swept away during a river ford. Two rivers off of a glaciar have re-routed themselves into one. After hours of trying to travel upstream, through crumbling moraine, ice, and hidden mud pits, to get across or above the source, I went back downstream to the original jeep ford and headed across.

The current swept the very loose bottom from below my feet, a Leki hiking pole snapped, and I went under. Mind you, this river is ragging and barely above freezing, with a large floating ice content. I was tumbled, above and below the surface, for several minutes. A shoe was pulled off by the force of the current, but the gaitor kept it to me. Knowing that I would never make it out without both shoes, I gave up on stopping myself or standing up in order to secure the shoe and lost the broken Leki in the process. Somehow I managed to get my right wrist through the shoe´s laces.

At that point I was in fast and deep enough water to follow the advice I´ve read of getting yourself feet-first+head up going downstream. From that position, I dragged my hands to try to stop myself. They and my feet found bottom very abruptly soon after, but dragged for some time. Though stopped, I could not stand for the soaked pack, so I rolled over to face upstream. Trying to stand, I suddenly realized that my legs were so numb that they were failing, so I forced myself onto my knees using the Leki and both arms. Once up, I headed for the far shore only to be swept away again.

From there, I dog-paddled for the shore like my life was ending. (It was..) Thankfully, the current threw me to the bank and I dragged myself up it.. I could no longer feel legs or hands, which was good, as I dragged myself up the bank to behind a large boulder. (The wind was still gusting 40-60 kph.)

I have never even heard of someone shaking the way I did as I put on my rain jacket and pants. I was screaming to keep going and the blood was pouring from my hands and knees. The rain gear did what nothing else would of as I lay trembling behind the rock. Once I could stand, I headed for better cover, and noted that I had been swept downstream at least a mile.

My right hand was unusable, the shoe laces having constricted it in the current. I somehow managed to get my tent up with my left hand and right armpit. For the time, I thought my right wrist was broken. Though the howling wind quickly dried the pack, it had about 10 new lbs. of volcanic sand in it. My clothes were worthless (soaked + sand), but the waterproof sack and synthetic sleeping bag did their roll. That night was sleepless as the wind turned into a sandstorm. I sat up to support the tent "roof" for the worst part.

When morning came, I was coherent enough to know that no one was coming for me, no one would be coming by, and I was far enough away from the route to likely never be found. I did what it took to get walking again, having lost nothing except the one Leki.

My best way out was back across the same river. I cried at its edge.

Then I used my brain a little better than in the preceeding 24 hours. I followed the river for several kilometers downstream to the lake it entered. The area is currently in its seasonal drought and the lake is very low. Before reaching the lake, the river split into dozens of channels. I zigzagged my way across them, feet renumbed with ice water, until I was fully on the opposite shore.

This was still a very risky route, as the river *out* of the lake is impassable, which is why the trail takes the route it does. When I saw jeep tracks around the shore, I knew that it had recently been crossed and the tears now flowed from relief.

Around the very large lake´s shore, insane wind and deep sand still battered me, my hands and knees missing lots of skin and covered in cuts and blood blisters. My right hand was still about 50% too large and the fingers barely worked.

That´s when I saw 2 hikers, standing on the south shore, watching me approach. When I got to them, all I could say was, "I hope you guys are doing better than I am."

They had driven to the new dam (which removed the impassable drainage river) and hiked out to see if the river I was swept away in was fordable. They needed to know in preparation for doing a hike that covered some of my same route. I briefly told them my story, how to successfully cross it, and we 3 returned to their car. They were openly surprised by my route, being solo, and having survived. Icelanders don´t mince words.

An unimaginably different 24 hours later, I am back in Rekjavik (capital), showered, in twice laundered clothes, have about half my gear cleaned and dried, have the tent functioning again (it´s now died 3 times; I showered with it last night), have eaten a great pizza, cheese, fresh bread, and skyr (yogurt), it´s calm, bright sun, and quite warm, and I´m planning to fly to the north in order to do the end of my original hike. (That will skip the center section that virtually no one goes to/through, for very good reason.) I am covered in large, deep bruises, I´m almost certain that I have a damaged (not broken) right-front rib, my back hurts very badly in one spot, and I look like I fell off a mountain bike at full speed. But I´m not going to waste the next 12 days.

My fingers are very painful, so this has not been easy to write physically or emotionally. I´m not going back to check or correct. I just want everyone to know a few things:

I did something stupid. I should have known better. It almost cost me my life. Hikers die in that same river every 2-3 years and I knew that. I really should be dead. I´m not going to play the "What if...?" game and/or the "If only I had..." game. I´m just going to accept that what happened is what happened and continue to live accordingly, appreciating that I´m (mostly) okay and knowing that things can go from fine, to nightmarish, back to almost normal at dizzying speed. Life is perilous, tenuous, and precious.

Think about that and be happy.

Don't Laugh...It Could Happen

2009-07-28T23:29:00.002-04:00

Stumpy Worship

2009-07-28T22:41:00.003-04:00

I recently attended a half day conference on worship and leading worship. It was conducted by a well known worship leader and musician (or perhaps he was a musician and worship leader). I say "well known" but that really is a relative sort of thing. That is to say he is well known in certain praise-and-worship-leading worship leading circles. Yes...I meant that sentence to read that way.

I suspected that I was in for something less than stellar, but I went into it saying that I was not closed to his message. I really was "openish" to what he had to say. I must say that I was not disappointed.

His initial message, about an hour and fifteen minutes of expounding on 2 Chronicles 29 was actually pretty good. Not earth-shaking, but a reasonably solid sermon on how YHWH calls us to worship Him and how he uses worship to shape us. Then we went to the Q&A and this is where we began to part ways. Every question and every answer was about music. The underlying assumption was a basic equation: music=worship. The reflexive property applies and it is an exclusive relationship. Worship is music and only music. There was no discussion of the reading of scripture, sermons and homilies, coporate prayer and confession, or even of sacraments. In his explanation of the text, he focused on sections like this:

As the offering began, singing to the LORD began also, accompanied by trumpets and the instruments of David king of Israel. The whole assembly bowed in worship, while the singers sang and the trumpeters played.

Yet he completely ignored these sections, and their implications for Christian worship:

They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven male lambs and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary and for Judah. The king commanded the priests, the descendants of Aaron, to offer these on the altar of the LORD. ²² So they slaughtered the bulls, and the priests took the blood and sprinkled it on the altar; next they slaughtered the rams and sprinkled their blood on the altar; then they slaughtered the lambs and sprinkled their blood on the altar. ²³ The goats for the sin offering were brought before the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. ²⁴ The priests then slaughtered the goats and presented their blood on the altar for a sin offering to atone for all Israel, because the king had ordered the burnt offering and the sin offering for all Israel.

It was as if all that other stuff, the altars and the utensils and the blood and the animals and the sacrfice...that's not worship. It's something else.

Of course, Jesus is our sacrifice. We make different kinds of offerings than Hezekiah's priests, but our offerings ought not be limited to the musical kind. At one point, he even said something like, "I led them in worship for about 30 minutes, and then Paul preached..." I managed to not scream -- but just barely.

It's all just too truncated. Not wrong really, because music is and can be worshipful. But it is like playing basketball without any arms, just legs. You can do the running around part, but there are huge sections of the game that are simply missing. It would be easy, if you didn't know better, to think you were actually playing the game, because you could certainly still get all sweaty and out of breath from running around on the court, but it ain't the real deal. It's just part of it.

When worship is singularly about fuzzy feelings and the buzz you get from loud instruments played too high for too long, then it is so limiting. The scripture makes it clear that the apostles dedicated themselves to prayer, reading the scripture and the breaking of bread (communion). There is no mention of music. How did we get to the point where we have gone to the polar opposite of the Church of Christ and those old school orthodox Presbyterians that actually banned instruments? Now we don't ban music, it's ALL about the music.

The seminar section was followed by a 2 hour "worship concert" where his band performed lots of the music they had written for worship. I kept a rough count and I would estimate that about half the songs were actually about Jesus, using biblical images and wording to sing about God's character and work. The rest tended to be songs that expressed the singer's love, passion, commitment, dedication, etc. Nice songs, but dangerous because they sound like gospel, but they are not. These "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs did not dominate, but they were certainly a significant part of the repertoire. I can't condemn them entirely, because there is certainly an element of this responsive lyricism even in the Psalms. Yet it seem perilous to repeat them so often because the lead us to think that we can impress God if we are passionate enough, committed enough, or love him enough. Safer, I think, to repeat songs and stories about what God has done and is doing. Dead men can't sing, but Jesus can raise the dead and give them new voices.

One of my colleagues spoke in his defense to say that in the area from which he comes (Belfast Ireland) and in which he ministers, he almost certainly is reaching people who have been too long chased from the gospel by the church. I allow that this is almost certainly true, and is a perfect example of how God's grace can and does reach across our shortsightedness and incompetence to draw his people to himself. He meets us even in the stumpy awkward sessions we call worship services and his gospel prevails -- in spite of what form or shape our meetings take.

Zahl and the Promethean Overturning of History

2009-07-24T23:53:00.003-04:00

This is one of the best explanations of the biblical (from an evangelical point of view) response to the current conflict rising around the question of the church's acceptance or rejection of homosexuality. The post is from InternetMonk, one of my go to blogs, and he quotes at length from a talk by Rev. Paul Zahl, and Episcopal minister. Here is a taste:

I shall begin this brief keynote address summing up the actual reasons why traditional Episcopalians are opposed to the consecration of Gene Robinson and are also opposed to the blessing in the church of same-sex unions. I won’t harp on this, but feel the reasons need to be acknowledged, publicly, and theologically. It is not fair to call people on the traditional side “homophobic”. Of course homophobia is possible, but it is also a terrible slur in the contemporary context. It is like the word “anti-semitic”. It halts all discourse. Full stop. And it destroys people and careers. Homophobia and anti-semitism are real things. But as words, they are used overmuch today to tar and dismiss voices that may in fact be sincere and liberal.

This is such an important point. It seems that on this topic, there is no room for reasonable disagreement. To do less than totally and unreservedly accept the position that homosexuality is normal and acceptable and healthy is "homophobic." The H word is the new N word.

The second “theological” argument traditionalists want to use is the hermeneutical one. I myself think this is second in importance to the theological “domino effect” I have just tried to spell out. The hermeneutical objection to the Robinson consecration is very important, but it is not decisive in quite the same way the argument from anthropology is. Nevertheless, we believe the plain and unexceptioned meaning of the Bible is against the practice of homosexuality in all cases. We cannot get around this. And I am grateful when folk on the other side acknowledge and do not try to weasel out of the “fact on the ground” of the Biblical voice against their idea. Yes, I realize there are wholly inclusive implications to Jesus’ and Paul’ s Gospel, but they stop at the Rubicon of homosexual practice.

I'll stop quoting here, but go and read it. It amazes me how the leadership of The Episcopal Church has set themselves so boldly in the role of teacher and scold, set to bring the rest of Christendom kicking and screaming along with it, for it's own good. The arrogance is breathtaking, all the while accusing the traditionalists (for lack of a better term) of being the arrogant ones. It all feels a little like That Hideous Strength.

While I have not really ever been in agreement with the basic arguments of the promoters of the homosexual agenda, I have often found myself sympathetic with their desire for inclusion, love, and acceptance. Every person wants these things. I can certainly appreciate what it feels like to feel locked out, excluded and disregarded and why it is important to help people so afflicted to find relief. For this reason I have had a hard time articulating how to reconcile the two sides in my own mind. These paragraphs have gone a long way toward at least helping me articulate my disagreement without resorting to ad hominem. I am not yet clear on how to solve the problem of exclusion in any complete and zpractical way, but I'm pretty sure that inclusion ought not be based on overturning what the church has always believed. As Zahl says, it feels promethean.