Thanks for the comments about prayer by silencing the mind. I wanted to know whether anyone was drawing their primary sustenance from such silence before I started writing about it.
I lived in a group that practiced silence increasingly for 10 years. In year 2 I wrote a strongly questioning letter on the subject to our fearless leader. By year 8 I was completely done with it, and wrote an even stronger letter. Silly boy that I was, I thought the group was running afield of his wishes. It turned out I was the black sheep of the family, as his reaction to my letter proved beyond question.
We live and learn.
Over the years I heard many members of our group call out Thomas Merton as the deepest writer they'd ever read (even more so than our leader they'd say - if the doors were shut. :-) So, I cracked his, "Seeds of Contemplation." I almost always finish a book when I start it, but this book was too wrong to spend that much time. I made it two thirds of the way through. So, I will be commenting on a book which I did not finish, and which begins with the admonition not to judge it before reading the whole thing.
Since giving up on the book, I have read a good bit of the negative press about contemplative prayer and agree with a large swath of it, but I reserve the right to question pieces of the argument too. 20+ years ago Madame Jean-Marie Bouvier De La Mothe Guyon (from memory) meant an awful lot to me, and I bet if I picked her up again her work would still appeal. There is and always will be a huge place in my life for silence in the presence of God. The question is one of goal, and Merton's and mine seem to be completely different.
I hope I can say with accuracy that this blog has never been about pointing out error, but sometimes a thing advances to the point of genuine error and makes me nervous. Having done my time in prayer by silence, I think it's worth the risk of criticizing brothers in Christ to save others from traveling down that fruitless road. Merton, and those who teach his vision, does not edify the church.
Allow me to snip from the last chapter of the book.
Then there is a quietud sabrosa, a tranquility full of savor and rest and unction in which, although there is nothing to feed and satisfy either the senses or the imagination or the intellect, the will rests in a deep, luminous and absorbing experience of love.
... you are in the presence of a more definite and more personal Love, Who invades your mind and will in a way you cannot grasp, eluding every attempt on your part to contain and hold Him by any movement of your own soul. You know that this "Presence" is God. But for the rest He is hidden in a cloud, although He is so near as to be inside you and outside you and all around you.
The most important thing that remains to be said about this perfect contemplation in which soul vanishes out of itself by the perfect renunciation of all desires and all things, is that it can have nothing to do with our ideas of greatness and exaltation, and is not therefore something which is subject to the sin of pride.
Some of you will, in those quotes, quickly see why Merton is so popular. They are high-flying promises and they ring well in the ears. The problem is that they are utterly empty. They are clouds that bring no rain.
I'm sorry that my argument will seem so obtuse. It's a function of ten years under such teaching, and ten years of seeing its fruitlesslness in perfect practice. I watched 30 people sit under a man who taught these things as understandably and effectively as Merton writes about them, and I watched five to ten people succeed at everything that was asked of them, and I watched it all amount to nothing.
And I asked why.
Merton's promises are half-truths. If you do everything he says, you will have the experiences he advertises. You will feel you have been cast loose upon the great and beautiful sea of God's love. You will sense light and energy flowing through your being, and feel at one with the Creator of everything. You will feel completely empty of any will that could possibly oppose God's. I never went there, but I trust the people I knew and loved who described their journeys. Merton's method is effective.
There are two problems.
The first is a little dramatic, and I'm sorry. The method is simply and exactly the same as any Zen meditation or Sufi prayer. I learned after reading the book that Merton was striving to be as good a Buddhist as he already was a Christian. The techniques of transcendentalism work as effectively for Christians as for anyone else, much the same as prayers to Ba'al worked as effectively for Jews as for worshippers of Ba'al. God rejected His people when they turned to idols and demons, and He rejects His people when they turn to Buddha, Allah and Gaia today.
The second problem is that none of the things promised by Merton are promised anywhere in scripture. They are not even encouraged. Merton promises that if you empty your soul of all desires, will, and thoughts you will be invaded by a presence whom you know to be God. He promises this is a good and wonderful thing, and that this is the deeper level of spiritual life for which you have been seeking. He even makes this experience the temporal salvation of the whole world,
But in the moment of time, the minute, the little minute in which he was delivered into God (if he truly was so delivered) there is no question that then his life was pure; that then he gave glory to God; that then he did not sin, that in that moment of pure love he could not sin.
...
They are the strength of the world, because they are the tabernacles of God in the world. They are the ones who keep the universe from being destroyed. They are the little ones. They do not know themselves. They whole earth depends on them. Nobody seems to realize it. These are the ones for whom it was all created in the first place. They shall inherit the land.
It is a plain and sad error to be able to say such things when there is not one word of Christ to support them. They are delightful promises, but they are not the promises of God. If you have been exposed to New Age mysticism, you will recognize them word for word. I listened to Elizabeth Claire Prophet speak almost exactly this same constellation of promises, in almost exactly the same words, but I never heard Christ say anything like them.
There is a glory in silence before God, and I praise the Lord for the opportunity to be silent before Him. There is no place for self-destruction of the will in order to reach silence. There is a place for deep consideration of the holy law of God. There is no place for repetition of a holy word of one syllable to silence the mind. There is a place for embracing the deep, satisfying love of God. There is no place for starving the imagination, senses and intellect in order to declare the profound emptiness that remains, "God."
If this were an isolated experiment by some Christians with vivid imaginations, I might encourage it; there is a lot to be learned by experimenting. That is not what contemplative prayer is, though. Contemplative prayer is the Christian adoption of New Age Transcendental Meditation techniques.
I don't know how much interest this post will generate, and I'm open either way. I would love to talk about how to correctly engage God through silence, why I think the contemplative prayer movement's way is wrong, or to move on to another subject.
What do you think?
20 November, 2007
15 November, 2007
The Silencing of the Lambs
I hate clouded issues.
If you were to walk up to me and ask me what I thought about wine, I'd say something along the lines of, "Great stuff, but I never touch it." If you asked me that same question among a group of unacknowledging alcoholics though, that answer would not work any more.
If you ask me about the silencing of the mind in prayer in 1990, I'd say it was great stuff in moderation. In 2007, though, the scenery has changed. Suddenly, the whole church seems to be jumping on the contemplative prayer wagon and taking the ride to wherever it stops. Suddenly, this once fringe practice is being mainstreamed and presented as a panacea.
So, have you heard about it? Is it being introduced in your church? Are you being taught how to silence your mind and listen for the guidance of the Spirit? Breath prayers? Repeating the Name of the Lord to still your soul and make room for your spirit to touch God?
If you were to walk up to me and ask me what I thought about wine, I'd say something along the lines of, "Great stuff, but I never touch it." If you asked me that same question among a group of unacknowledging alcoholics though, that answer would not work any more.
If you ask me about the silencing of the mind in prayer in 1990, I'd say it was great stuff in moderation. In 2007, though, the scenery has changed. Suddenly, the whole church seems to be jumping on the contemplative prayer wagon and taking the ride to wherever it stops. Suddenly, this once fringe practice is being mainstreamed and presented as a panacea.
So, have you heard about it? Is it being introduced in your church? Are you being taught how to silence your mind and listen for the guidance of the Spirit? Breath prayers? Repeating the Name of the Lord to still your soul and make room for your spirit to touch God?
14 November, 2007
Shown the Door
Imagine this.
You are walking down a sidewalk on your way to a mildly important date, when a nice-looking man stops you to tell you about a door. He tells you about the perfection of the door, it's perfect functionality, and best of all - going through it is only $15!
Your first casual attempt to get on with your date spurs the nice man to greater sales efforts. He begins extolling the fact that the door is really real, and that everyone who goes through it has a better tomorrow. He's so obviously sincere that you are quite moved. If only you didn't already have a previous engagement, you'd go trip the light fantastic with him and his door, but as it is you must be going.
The amazing thing is that anyone goes through the door at all, but millions do.
Imagine again the man stopping you, but this time he explains the virtues of high art and that the whole treasure of Renoir's life work is right through that art museum door for only $15.
Do you think the second approach might be more effective?
I get so discouraged when I listen to evangelism. Our gifted men keep talking about salvation - the door - instead of talking about Christ - the Treasure.
The love of God came to earth in human form, and we don't tell about Him. We try to prove He was Who He said He was, leaving unsaid the truth of Who He was. We try to prove Jesus was God, without telling Who God is.
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. This story provides a possible entry into salvation for anyone, but how to use it? What is the carrot that will draw the soul to God? The door through which the sinner must pass is believing that Jesus is God, but it is what is beyond that door that will draw him.
Often, we tell how amazing was what Jesus did in raising Lazarus, but how often do we tell how amazing Jesus was?
Jesus was God in skin. When we see Jesus, we are not looking at a wonderful man, but at God's very heart pounding like a drum. We watch in Jesus the Father and the Spirit trudging through the sand of Palestine and paying the price of love for the fallen. When we watch Jesus, we learn Who our God is.
God wept over Lazarus. God knew Lazarus and wept to know Lazarus had suffered and had died. God cared about Lazarus by name and heart and familiar quirks. God and Lazarus were friends. God also was the fountain of life that had created Lazarus and that would raise him and that was overjoyed to do so. And God was a hard enough worker to do everything necessary to make that happen. God would go to the cross, and one day God will raise Lazarus again forever.
God gets personal with His children.
But God also was willing for Lazarus to die. His ways are not ours and as surely as Jesus suffered, He was willing to allow Lazarus to suffer. John reports that Jesus, God, intentionally delayed His coming for two days so that He did not arrive until four days after his death. We can also be sure that God knew soon enough Lazarus was dying to have prevented the whole issue, but God was willing to see everything happen as it did. God loved Lazarus, and yet God was willing to allow Lazarus to suffer and die.
God gets personal with His children while allowing them to suffer.
Do you want to understand the mystery of life? Of why you are here? Of why all this is happening? Do you want to know the God Who loves you as much and as intimately as He knew Lazarus? the God Who cares that you are going bald? the God Who wants to raise you from the dead?
You'll have to pay the price and enter through this certain door. If you're curious, I can tell you about it.
You are walking down a sidewalk on your way to a mildly important date, when a nice-looking man stops you to tell you about a door. He tells you about the perfection of the door, it's perfect functionality, and best of all - going through it is only $15!
Your first casual attempt to get on with your date spurs the nice man to greater sales efforts. He begins extolling the fact that the door is really real, and that everyone who goes through it has a better tomorrow. He's so obviously sincere that you are quite moved. If only you didn't already have a previous engagement, you'd go trip the light fantastic with him and his door, but as it is you must be going.
The amazing thing is that anyone goes through the door at all, but millions do.
Imagine again the man stopping you, but this time he explains the virtues of high art and that the whole treasure of Renoir's life work is right through that art museum door for only $15.
Do you think the second approach might be more effective?
I get so discouraged when I listen to evangelism. Our gifted men keep talking about salvation - the door - instead of talking about Christ - the Treasure.
The love of God came to earth in human form, and we don't tell about Him. We try to prove He was Who He said He was, leaving unsaid the truth of Who He was. We try to prove Jesus was God, without telling Who God is.
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. This story provides a possible entry into salvation for anyone, but how to use it? What is the carrot that will draw the soul to God? The door through which the sinner must pass is believing that Jesus is God, but it is what is beyond that door that will draw him.
Often, we tell how amazing was what Jesus did in raising Lazarus, but how often do we tell how amazing Jesus was?
Jesus was God in skin. When we see Jesus, we are not looking at a wonderful man, but at God's very heart pounding like a drum. We watch in Jesus the Father and the Spirit trudging through the sand of Palestine and paying the price of love for the fallen. When we watch Jesus, we learn Who our God is.
God wept over Lazarus. God knew Lazarus and wept to know Lazarus had suffered and had died. God cared about Lazarus by name and heart and familiar quirks. God and Lazarus were friends. God also was the fountain of life that had created Lazarus and that would raise him and that was overjoyed to do so. And God was a hard enough worker to do everything necessary to make that happen. God would go to the cross, and one day God will raise Lazarus again forever.
God gets personal with His children.
But God also was willing for Lazarus to die. His ways are not ours and as surely as Jesus suffered, He was willing to allow Lazarus to suffer. John reports that Jesus, God, intentionally delayed His coming for two days so that He did not arrive until four days after his death. We can also be sure that God knew soon enough Lazarus was dying to have prevented the whole issue, but God was willing to see everything happen as it did. God loved Lazarus, and yet God was willing to allow Lazarus to suffer and die.
God gets personal with His children while allowing them to suffer.
Do you want to understand the mystery of life? Of why you are here? Of why all this is happening? Do you want to know the God Who loves you as much and as intimately as He knew Lazarus? the God Who cares that you are going bald? the God Who wants to raise you from the dead?
You'll have to pay the price and enter through this certain door. If you're curious, I can tell you about it.
13 November, 2007
Investing Precious Time
A short time back, I posted about the sad servant who buried his talent, then blamed his decision on his lord. I'd link it, but I'm on dialup, and every little click is a test of my already pathetic patience. Add to that the agony of having to type without my Greeg
Shorthand crutch, and I'm in deep blogger misery. (Deep BM for short.)
Today Fay, my mother in the Lord, read me a passage from a book written in the sixties that made an excellent point.
---
When we give each other our time, we are giving the most precious gift there is; we are giving our life to each other. Someone dropped me a quick note the other day asking about an issue from a month ago. To do so, she gave me a couple slices of her life. She gave me something of real and deep value when she thought about me, and then did it again when she turned that thought into an email. And the time she spent in prayer on my behalf was of equal value because each prayer cost precious minutes of her life, given for me.
Yes, the allusion to Christ's saying, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friend," is intentional.
There is a negative side to this insight.
In light of the golden gift time can be, the investment-grade deposit most Christians are making into their televisions is terrifying.
Time is the golden commodity. We are told to deposit our treasures in heaven for our own selfish good. We are advised to do those things that will make us rich. We know we should invest a solid portion of our earthly money into things that will bring us a good return, but we should learn this about our time too. Our financial debts usually cause us to invest too little, but in time we are all similarly wealthy. We all have 24 hours every day, and a day's worth of duties.
The average American invests (approximately, from memory) 4-5 hours of those 24 into their televisions. I have no equivalent statistic for Christians, and I'm not sure I want to know. What I do know is the average television experiences no depression while being ignored, but the average Christian does. The average television will not testify anything good about its benefactors on the judgement day, while the average Christian will. I'm worried even that the average television might not even look back fondly on those who remembered and loved it.
A cup of coffee between saints will be remembered.
How valuable is a cup of coffee?
A cup of coffee is more valuable than anything heaven has to offer. You see, a cup of coffee takes time, and we've only 70 years down here to do everything in our hearts. Every second I share with a saint is a second that he is the most valuable thing in my life, and that investment returns forever. If we wait until heaven to sit down with the saints, we lose all that interest. Heaven has unlimited time, so there's no sacrifice in sitting down with a brother in heaven. Time on Earth is brutally precious, so every minute shared is precious. Such is the reality of supply and demand. And the law of compound interest says the more time we spend and the longer the period of investment, the more our investment grows.
Investing an hour in a cup of coffee may once have been a small thing in American culture; I wouldn't know. Today, though, that hour is seldom found. Maybe if we look hard enough, we can reallocate a few more of them to richer ends.
I suspect the Lord will entrust the rule of cities to those who find that hour most often.
Shorthand crutch, and I'm in deep blogger misery. (Deep BM for short.)
Today Fay, my mother in the Lord, read me a passage from a book written in the sixties that made an excellent point.
---
When we give each other our time, we are giving the most precious gift there is; we are giving our life to each other. Someone dropped me a quick note the other day asking about an issue from a month ago. To do so, she gave me a couple slices of her life. She gave me something of real and deep value when she thought about me, and then did it again when she turned that thought into an email. And the time she spent in prayer on my behalf was of equal value because each prayer cost precious minutes of her life, given for me.
Yes, the allusion to Christ's saying, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friend," is intentional.
There is a negative side to this insight.
In light of the golden gift time can be, the investment-grade deposit most Christians are making into their televisions is terrifying.
Time is the golden commodity. We are told to deposit our treasures in heaven for our own selfish good. We are advised to do those things that will make us rich. We know we should invest a solid portion of our earthly money into things that will bring us a good return, but we should learn this about our time too. Our financial debts usually cause us to invest too little, but in time we are all similarly wealthy. We all have 24 hours every day, and a day's worth of duties.
The average American invests (approximately, from memory) 4-5 hours of those 24 into their televisions. I have no equivalent statistic for Christians, and I'm not sure I want to know. What I do know is the average television experiences no depression while being ignored, but the average Christian does. The average television will not testify anything good about its benefactors on the judgement day, while the average Christian will. I'm worried even that the average television might not even look back fondly on those who remembered and loved it.
A cup of coffee between saints will be remembered.
How valuable is a cup of coffee?
A cup of coffee is more valuable than anything heaven has to offer. You see, a cup of coffee takes time, and we've only 70 years down here to do everything in our hearts. Every second I share with a saint is a second that he is the most valuable thing in my life, and that investment returns forever. If we wait until heaven to sit down with the saints, we lose all that interest. Heaven has unlimited time, so there's no sacrifice in sitting down with a brother in heaven. Time on Earth is brutally precious, so every minute shared is precious. Such is the reality of supply and demand. And the law of compound interest says the more time we spend and the longer the period of investment, the more our investment grows.
Investing an hour in a cup of coffee may once have been a small thing in American culture; I wouldn't know. Today, though, that hour is seldom found. Maybe if we look hard enough, we can reallocate a few more of them to richer ends.
I suspect the Lord will entrust the rule of cities to those who find that hour most often.
12 November, 2007
Ideal Tennis
I played some 4.0 doubles last night. 4.0 is high level amateur, and I fit right in. 5.0 is much higher level, and while it's my goal, I'm still a good ways away. I don't think anyone had a career night, and my partner carried me from time to time, but I got to return the favor once in a while too. As usual, they were some really great guys, and fun was had by all.
For those keeping score (and I always do), my partner and I went 7-5, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 against 4 different teams. We should have won that second set, but it was closer than the score. My partner served up 10 double faults out of nowhere in that set. The only difference is that I served most of my double faults in the first set, and they were weaker opponents so I got away with it.
Three volleys from the last set stick in my mind. I was thinking about them during the little drive between homes today.
On the first, I volleyed exactly where I wanted to, but I had chosen a poor target. I aimed too high, and the other joker could have toasted me down the line. He went for the right shot, but it hit 6 inches too low.
On the second, I went down after the ball with perfect form for a short volley, and put the ball exactly where I wanted it. Both opponents took one step for it and quit. They had no chance. Given the speed of the incoming ball, it was highlight reel stuff.
On the third, the ball was coming fast and I lined it up and picked a good spot, but hit it with my racket frame such that it dropped into the net. Sometimes you get lucky off those frame shots, but not this time. I certainly did not deserve to get lucky off that error.
On the first shot luck was with me. On the second, there was no luck and it made for something beautiful. On the third, luck was against me.
The most frustrating thing about tennis for me is that it would still be a perfect game if the luck were removed from it. It would be a very different game, but it would be a heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful one.
Tennis is not tic-tac-toe. If I always hit the ball exactly where I mean to, and if my opponent does too, points will still be won and lost. In tic-tac-toe or checkers, a perfectly played game results in a draw. In tennis, a perfectly played point results in a win. It's a head-to-head game, and one player always has a better idea than the other.
On the court, I always want to measure my ideas against my opponent's. That only happens on about 1 in 10 points, and it's depressing. At the professional level, about 1 in 3 points ends with a blunder, 1 in 2 with a forced mistake, and 1 in 6 with a clear winning shot. At my level the numbers don't look anywhere near that good.
So tennis at my level is best played realistically. Wise players don't try to outplay their opponents, but to sell them enough rope to outplay themselves. I'm learning to play that game, but I really wish I didn't have to.
I wish we all could play ideal tennis.
And that's always been one of my biggest problems in tennis. I give both myself and my opponent too much credit, and play too many unrealistic points.
I won last night, as much as for any reason, because my opponents made more errors than I did. Now I just need to learn to take pride in that.
(Christian applications of this abound, but I won't belabor them.)
For those keeping score (and I always do), my partner and I went 7-5, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 against 4 different teams. We should have won that second set, but it was closer than the score. My partner served up 10 double faults out of nowhere in that set. The only difference is that I served most of my double faults in the first set, and they were weaker opponents so I got away with it.
Three volleys from the last set stick in my mind. I was thinking about them during the little drive between homes today.
On the first, I volleyed exactly where I wanted to, but I had chosen a poor target. I aimed too high, and the other joker could have toasted me down the line. He went for the right shot, but it hit 6 inches too low.
On the second, I went down after the ball with perfect form for a short volley, and put the ball exactly where I wanted it. Both opponents took one step for it and quit. They had no chance. Given the speed of the incoming ball, it was highlight reel stuff.
On the third, the ball was coming fast and I lined it up and picked a good spot, but hit it with my racket frame such that it dropped into the net. Sometimes you get lucky off those frame shots, but not this time. I certainly did not deserve to get lucky off that error.
On the first shot luck was with me. On the second, there was no luck and it made for something beautiful. On the third, luck was against me.
The most frustrating thing about tennis for me is that it would still be a perfect game if the luck were removed from it. It would be a very different game, but it would be a heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful one.
Tennis is not tic-tac-toe. If I always hit the ball exactly where I mean to, and if my opponent does too, points will still be won and lost. In tic-tac-toe or checkers, a perfectly played game results in a draw. In tennis, a perfectly played point results in a win. It's a head-to-head game, and one player always has a better idea than the other.
On the court, I always want to measure my ideas against my opponent's. That only happens on about 1 in 10 points, and it's depressing. At the professional level, about 1 in 3 points ends with a blunder, 1 in 2 with a forced mistake, and 1 in 6 with a clear winning shot. At my level the numbers don't look anywhere near that good.
So tennis at my level is best played realistically. Wise players don't try to outplay their opponents, but to sell them enough rope to outplay themselves. I'm learning to play that game, but I really wish I didn't have to.
I wish we all could play ideal tennis.
And that's always been one of my biggest problems in tennis. I give both myself and my opponent too much credit, and play too many unrealistic points.
I won last night, as much as for any reason, because my opponents made more errors than I did. Now I just need to learn to take pride in that.
(Christian applications of this abound, but I won't belabor them.)
09 November, 2007
Stomping
I'm back for a week and a half where I grew up. It was a little town of 3000 in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. I was able to shoot in 3 directions without risk of hitting anything, and regularly did. Don't quiz me on gun control, unless you want to hear about the dangers of leaving your guns unloaded.
From 1970 to 1977 we lived beside a huge wood. As we drove in from the airport, we drove by the old place, and I was taken with the urge to see my old haunts in that wood. I drove myself back after settling and chatting a little bit, and found a hole in a fence to let myself back into my first home away from home.
I remember how huge and forbidding those woods were at 6 years old, and how large they still were when we moved 4 miles away at 13. By the time I was 13 they were too small to impress, but still too large to really know every inch. It was about 1 mile wide by 3 miles deep. Awfully huge to a 1st grader.
I immediately settled to look for the big bike jump. Back in the day you could see over it, but only barely, and the hill leading to it could push you to terminal velocity (the fastest speed you could possibly make your bike go.) I took my biggest spill off that jump before Mr. Hamilton gouged it forever with his dozer.
My search was in vain. The dirt trail had been 5 feet wide, and as near as I could tell it was just gone, lost in a sea of fresh growth. I found a little mound of dirt, and wondered if I was just remembering the jump wrong, but it was completely in the wrong place. Nope, the whole road was gone.
So I wandered up a new trail that would parallel where the old trail had been. In minutes, I was at the top, and turned left. Every trail in that wood was enclosed within a triangle, and if all was right, I was turning that triangle.
As I went down the second leg of the triangle, I saw a trail just off to my right. I had gotten lost on that beckoning trail when I was 6. I still remember seeing it tempting me just 10 yards away or so, and jumping from the one trail to the other. I was still a greenhorn trying to get home from Eric's house through the woods, and had set off on the wrong trail to begin with. That was why I had never seen the mysterious new trail before. And all the decisions I made on that new trail (calculated to set me back on the first leg of the magic triangle again) tended to guide me down a narrow corridor of the wood that actually stretched the full 3 miles without a break. In the end, I followed a set of hydraulic mining water pipes to pavement. I was literally walking the only path that could have kept me lost for so long.
When I finally came out on pavement, I had been crying for at least a half hour. A nice old man gave me a ride to the first thing I recognized, the city pool. I walked the last mile home because I was not supposed to accept rides from strangers, so once I saw something I recognized, it was time to get out and get back home under my own power. When I got home I was in huge trouble. I was almost 2 hours late. I guess Dad got in pretty bad trouble too, for believing I could find my way home alone in the woods, but we all survived.
Tonight, I did not jump to that trail to the right, though I'm sure I'd not cry if I got lost.
At the end of the second (downhill) leg I decide to turn right instead of left on the third leg. I wanted to get to one particular trail - Killer Hill - but it could wait. I want to verify that Eric's house was where it should be. If it was, then I've read the trails right. If not, then I need to go back to the drawing board.
It's not.
In fact, it's almost a third of a mile away. But when I get there, all the trails are exactly where they should be. Hmmm.
I go ahead and walk up to the outlet on Gold Drive. Yep. It's all there. That can only mean one thing, so I backtrack to the end of that second leg. Yep. My second leg was not the second leg at all, but the very Killer Hill for which I was looking. I walked down the whole thing, and didn't recognize it.
I walk back up it.
I'm looking for a very specific 3 tree roots. 2 of them are on the right side of the trail as you head down, and 1 is on the left. As I walk back up, I begin to notice how the curves of the trail are all in the right places, and the stands of manzanita are where they belong. I make it the whole way to the top, and my 3 tree roots are not there. I turn around and walk back down.
I reach two conclusions. This is definitely the right trail, and young boys have tunnel vision. I'm amazed at all the hundreds of things just off the trail that I never, ever saw. There are some amazing trees, obviously much older than I am, that I just don't remember. They were never worth cataloging in my memories, and I will probably remember them better 30 years from now than I remembered them today.
The two roots are still not there, though. That's critical, because they were the scene of my coolest bike wreck. I decided to take the double root jump to the right, rather than the single root jump to my left on that fateful day. I got loose off the first root, and hit the second off-balance. The second threw me to the limits of control, but I stayed cool and kept the wheels under me - until my handlebar caught a manzanita bush. I was probably doing 25 mph or so, and when my front wheel went instantly perpendicular to progress, I went into a double nose roll. I hit knuckles/back/back tire/front tire/knuckles/back/back tire/both tires, and stopped on my wheels - then fell over. It was a bizarre feeling, and I've treasured it for years.
I could see where it happened, but not the roots nor the bush.
A lot has changed. The spooky place with cedars so thick the sun could not get through has chilled out a lot. That's probably the 40 year old dude walking through it, though. The mud puddle that was always just after the spooky place is still there, but the trail is now 3 times wider so people can always go around it.
The biggest change, though, is the adults. I see 2 men, 1 boy, 2 women, another woman, a kid on a bike going up Killer Hill, and then 2 more men. In 7 years, I never saw an adult in my woods, but that was before they invented Jogging (jogging had been around forever, but Jogging was born of the '80's). And gears. Our bikes never had gears. The kid riding his bike up Killer Hill tripped me out. We never rode our bikes up Killer Hill, because we couldn't. He was wearing a helmet and pads and had a bike with 20-some-odd gears. He would have been as foreign as an Arab to us.
Oh, and there's one other little change.
Killer Hill is now called Pipeline Trail. The parks department has marked all of our trails, and named them.
Pipeline Trail.
Yeah, the trail actually has pipeline beside it and even showing through in some places where the road runs right over them. From 3 miles away, the day I got lost, if I had followed the pipes that eventually led me out to pavement in exactly the opposite direction of the one I'd chosen, I'd have been right here. Those were the very pipes that peeped through our very own Killer Hill. But even after we learned of the magic of following the pipes, we'd never have stooped to call anything "Pipeline Trail."
It's an odd thing to go home, and find out my woods have grown up, and I haven't.
From 1970 to 1977 we lived beside a huge wood. As we drove in from the airport, we drove by the old place, and I was taken with the urge to see my old haunts in that wood. I drove myself back after settling and chatting a little bit, and found a hole in a fence to let myself back into my first home away from home.
I remember how huge and forbidding those woods were at 6 years old, and how large they still were when we moved 4 miles away at 13. By the time I was 13 they were too small to impress, but still too large to really know every inch. It was about 1 mile wide by 3 miles deep. Awfully huge to a 1st grader.
I immediately settled to look for the big bike jump. Back in the day you could see over it, but only barely, and the hill leading to it could push you to terminal velocity (the fastest speed you could possibly make your bike go.) I took my biggest spill off that jump before Mr. Hamilton gouged it forever with his dozer.
My search was in vain. The dirt trail had been 5 feet wide, and as near as I could tell it was just gone, lost in a sea of fresh growth. I found a little mound of dirt, and wondered if I was just remembering the jump wrong, but it was completely in the wrong place. Nope, the whole road was gone.
So I wandered up a new trail that would parallel where the old trail had been. In minutes, I was at the top, and turned left. Every trail in that wood was enclosed within a triangle, and if all was right, I was turning that triangle.
As I went down the second leg of the triangle, I saw a trail just off to my right. I had gotten lost on that beckoning trail when I was 6. I still remember seeing it tempting me just 10 yards away or so, and jumping from the one trail to the other. I was still a greenhorn trying to get home from Eric's house through the woods, and had set off on the wrong trail to begin with. That was why I had never seen the mysterious new trail before. And all the decisions I made on that new trail (calculated to set me back on the first leg of the magic triangle again) tended to guide me down a narrow corridor of the wood that actually stretched the full 3 miles without a break. In the end, I followed a set of hydraulic mining water pipes to pavement. I was literally walking the only path that could have kept me lost for so long.
When I finally came out on pavement, I had been crying for at least a half hour. A nice old man gave me a ride to the first thing I recognized, the city pool. I walked the last mile home because I was not supposed to accept rides from strangers, so once I saw something I recognized, it was time to get out and get back home under my own power. When I got home I was in huge trouble. I was almost 2 hours late. I guess Dad got in pretty bad trouble too, for believing I could find my way home alone in the woods, but we all survived.
Tonight, I did not jump to that trail to the right, though I'm sure I'd not cry if I got lost.
At the end of the second (downhill) leg I decide to turn right instead of left on the third leg. I wanted to get to one particular trail - Killer Hill - but it could wait. I want to verify that Eric's house was where it should be. If it was, then I've read the trails right. If not, then I need to go back to the drawing board.
It's not.
In fact, it's almost a third of a mile away. But when I get there, all the trails are exactly where they should be. Hmmm.
I go ahead and walk up to the outlet on Gold Drive. Yep. It's all there. That can only mean one thing, so I backtrack to the end of that second leg. Yep. My second leg was not the second leg at all, but the very Killer Hill for which I was looking. I walked down the whole thing, and didn't recognize it.
I walk back up it.
I'm looking for a very specific 3 tree roots. 2 of them are on the right side of the trail as you head down, and 1 is on the left. As I walk back up, I begin to notice how the curves of the trail are all in the right places, and the stands of manzanita are where they belong. I make it the whole way to the top, and my 3 tree roots are not there. I turn around and walk back down.
I reach two conclusions. This is definitely the right trail, and young boys have tunnel vision. I'm amazed at all the hundreds of things just off the trail that I never, ever saw. There are some amazing trees, obviously much older than I am, that I just don't remember. They were never worth cataloging in my memories, and I will probably remember them better 30 years from now than I remembered them today.
The two roots are still not there, though. That's critical, because they were the scene of my coolest bike wreck. I decided to take the double root jump to the right, rather than the single root jump to my left on that fateful day. I got loose off the first root, and hit the second off-balance. The second threw me to the limits of control, but I stayed cool and kept the wheels under me - until my handlebar caught a manzanita bush. I was probably doing 25 mph or so, and when my front wheel went instantly perpendicular to progress, I went into a double nose roll. I hit knuckles/back/back tire/front tire/knuckles/back/back tire/both tires, and stopped on my wheels - then fell over. It was a bizarre feeling, and I've treasured it for years.
I could see where it happened, but not the roots nor the bush.
A lot has changed. The spooky place with cedars so thick the sun could not get through has chilled out a lot. That's probably the 40 year old dude walking through it, though. The mud puddle that was always just after the spooky place is still there, but the trail is now 3 times wider so people can always go around it.
The biggest change, though, is the adults. I see 2 men, 1 boy, 2 women, another woman, a kid on a bike going up Killer Hill, and then 2 more men. In 7 years, I never saw an adult in my woods, but that was before they invented Jogging (jogging had been around forever, but Jogging was born of the '80's). And gears. Our bikes never had gears. The kid riding his bike up Killer Hill tripped me out. We never rode our bikes up Killer Hill, because we couldn't. He was wearing a helmet and pads and had a bike with 20-some-odd gears. He would have been as foreign as an Arab to us.
Oh, and there's one other little change.
Killer Hill is now called Pipeline Trail. The parks department has marked all of our trails, and named them.
Pipeline Trail.
Yeah, the trail actually has pipeline beside it and even showing through in some places where the road runs right over them. From 3 miles away, the day I got lost, if I had followed the pipes that eventually led me out to pavement in exactly the opposite direction of the one I'd chosen, I'd have been right here. Those were the very pipes that peeped through our very own Killer Hill. But even after we learned of the magic of following the pipes, we'd never have stooped to call anything "Pipeline Trail."
It's an odd thing to go home, and find out my woods have grown up, and I haven't.
05 November, 2007
That Pesky Hidden Talent
Mat 25:24 & 25
Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, [there] thou hast [that is] thine.
I have many times over the years wondered how to hide a talent versus how to invest it wisely. Jesus does not bother to tell us what the foolish servant's talent was, much less how he could bury it. And one might think that was significant information!
Well, I had a thought last night.
A hidden talent is one invested wholly in one's self.
When God makes you a smart person and you gather doctrines without enriching those around you, when God makes you tender and you find a good wife and family and luxuriate in their glow behind locked doors, when God makes you spiritual, and you while away the hours with Him and bring nothing back for those in need of a sight of the Throne; you have buried your talent. Your talent becomes hidden indeed, because none sees, much less shares and multiplies, the wealth of it.
I'm pretty sure I've had the flip-side of this thought before, but I don't care. It was new all over again last night. If finding old joys new again is a crime, then I'm headed up the river. :-)
Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, [there] thou hast [that is] thine.
I have many times over the years wondered how to hide a talent versus how to invest it wisely. Jesus does not bother to tell us what the foolish servant's talent was, much less how he could bury it. And one might think that was significant information!
Well, I had a thought last night.
A hidden talent is one invested wholly in one's self.
When God makes you a smart person and you gather doctrines without enriching those around you, when God makes you tender and you find a good wife and family and luxuriate in their glow behind locked doors, when God makes you spiritual, and you while away the hours with Him and bring nothing back for those in need of a sight of the Throne; you have buried your talent. Your talent becomes hidden indeed, because none sees, much less shares and multiplies, the wealth of it.
I'm pretty sure I've had the flip-side of this thought before, but I don't care. It was new all over again last night. If finding old joys new again is a crime, then I'm headed up the river. :-)
29 October, 2007
A Better Christian Symbol
There were a number of Christian symbols in the first and second centuries. None of them was a cross. We had a fish (not the Ichthys fish, but just a fish) and a boat. They both symbolized life surviving in the ocean of death. There was the anchor, and the Shepherd, and I believe there was a meal. Fortunately, I've mislaid my copy of "Ante Pacem", so I don't have to engage in any real research or anything for this little post. :-)
Either way, the cross didn't hit its stride as the exclusive Christian symbol until Constantine shamed us by joining our club under his banner. Once the emperor said it was under that sign he conquered, we fell hook, line and sinker for it. I rather doubt he was motivated by Paul's exhortation to glory in naught save the cross - maybe the crass, but not the cross.
For years and years I've thought our ultimate symbol should be of the resurrection.
And so I present the newest Christian symbol:
Either way, the cross didn't hit its stride as the exclusive Christian symbol until Constantine shamed us by joining our club under his banner. Once the emperor said it was under that sign he conquered, we fell hook, line and sinker for it. I rather doubt he was motivated by Paul's exhortation to glory in naught save the cross - maybe the crass, but not the cross.
For years and years I've thought our ultimate symbol should be of the resurrection.
And so I present the newest Christian symbol:
It's the tomb with the stone rolled away, and the empty table upon which Christ's shroud lay. Sure, it needs a little explanation, but so did those two sticks nailed to each other before Constantine made it "a star."
I like the way it looks a little like the infinity symbol.
21 October, 2007
Trapped - A Book Review
I saw a mosquito tonight. It will be a little hard to describe where I saw him, but let's give it a shot.
Above my sink is a bright light. And to the left of that light, I hang a hand mixer for protien drinks. On the mixer, my son hangs a cup. The cup is clear plastic. So, picture a little to the left and below my sink light, an inverted, clear cup.
The mosquito was hopelessly trapped inside this cup.
He was pulling a "moth" and flying toward the bright light, when he stumbled into a clear plastic prison. He immediately set to work trying to get on with his life, I imagine, though I was not there to see his first actions. When I arrived, he seemed to vary his path a little bit flying first to the left, then up, then down, then right and mixing the pattern up creatively, in hopes of finding a hole through which he might escape from the prison he could not even see.
The 4 inch hole at the bottom of the cup never figured into his escape plans.
I watched him for a minute before I walked away and finished cooking dinner. (For those of you keeping score, yeah he's still alive somewhere in my house.)
He was trapped by nothing but his own wiring. In order to free himself, he would need to travel 120 degrees away from the bright light and in the right direction - down. I never saw his path drift more than 60 degrees from the light, and I never saw him go down much at all.
--
In related news, I finished reading "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" today. It's the true autobiography of a 16 year old girl in the 50's who was committed to an insane asylum for schizophrenia. The book had the same effect upon me as did watching "A Beautiful Mind." It left me a jibbering idiot for a little over an hour. Every time I read about schizophrenia, I lose a touch with reality for a little while. It's quite unsettling.
I was still suffering from that straightjacketed thinking when I saw the mosquito.
The parallels are far too obvious to draw, but I'll do it anyway. Insanity arrives when our hard wiring comes in conflict with an invisible trap. People who think they're pithy say foolish things like, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result each time." These pithy, cruel people cannot see the trap. They sit outside the cup telling the victim to "Just fly straight up. Watch, I'll show you how it's done."
They say brilliant things like, "With the right drugs, you can live a normal life." Maybe with the right drugs the tormented quit bouncing their heads off the top of the cup, instead of sitting there half-asleep on the side of their invisible trap, but it's no normal life. Either way, the cruel don't know that and shoot their mouths off none the wiser for their pith, and none the kinder for their helpfulness.
---
So with this post, let my recommendations be 2:
1) If you find yourself beating your head against an invisible trap, seek competent help and ignore foolish helpers. They're everywhere.
2) If you want to know what it's like to be helplessly tormented by your own mind, and if you would like to cry repeatedly for pure tragedy, pick up a copy of the book, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." It is a brilliant self-portrait of one girl's journey through the darkest hell earth offers, and of the people she learned to appreciate along the way. The book will freeze your heart with its portrayal of insanity, and melt it with the story of those who endure it - themselves, their parents, and their doctors.
Above my sink is a bright light. And to the left of that light, I hang a hand mixer for protien drinks. On the mixer, my son hangs a cup. The cup is clear plastic. So, picture a little to the left and below my sink light, an inverted, clear cup.
The mosquito was hopelessly trapped inside this cup.
He was pulling a "moth" and flying toward the bright light, when he stumbled into a clear plastic prison. He immediately set to work trying to get on with his life, I imagine, though I was not there to see his first actions. When I arrived, he seemed to vary his path a little bit flying first to the left, then up, then down, then right and mixing the pattern up creatively, in hopes of finding a hole through which he might escape from the prison he could not even see.
The 4 inch hole at the bottom of the cup never figured into his escape plans.
I watched him for a minute before I walked away and finished cooking dinner. (For those of you keeping score, yeah he's still alive somewhere in my house.)
He was trapped by nothing but his own wiring. In order to free himself, he would need to travel 120 degrees away from the bright light and in the right direction - down. I never saw his path drift more than 60 degrees from the light, and I never saw him go down much at all.
--
In related news, I finished reading "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" today. It's the true autobiography of a 16 year old girl in the 50's who was committed to an insane asylum for schizophrenia. The book had the same effect upon me as did watching "A Beautiful Mind." It left me a jibbering idiot for a little over an hour. Every time I read about schizophrenia, I lose a touch with reality for a little while. It's quite unsettling.
I was still suffering from that straightjacketed thinking when I saw the mosquito.
The parallels are far too obvious to draw, but I'll do it anyway. Insanity arrives when our hard wiring comes in conflict with an invisible trap. People who think they're pithy say foolish things like, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result each time." These pithy, cruel people cannot see the trap. They sit outside the cup telling the victim to "Just fly straight up. Watch, I'll show you how it's done."
They say brilliant things like, "With the right drugs, you can live a normal life." Maybe with the right drugs the tormented quit bouncing their heads off the top of the cup, instead of sitting there half-asleep on the side of their invisible trap, but it's no normal life. Either way, the cruel don't know that and shoot their mouths off none the wiser for their pith, and none the kinder for their helpfulness.
---
So with this post, let my recommendations be 2:
1) If you find yourself beating your head against an invisible trap, seek competent help and ignore foolish helpers. They're everywhere.
2) If you want to know what it's like to be helplessly tormented by your own mind, and if you would like to cry repeatedly for pure tragedy, pick up a copy of the book, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." It is a brilliant self-portrait of one girl's journey through the darkest hell earth offers, and of the people she learned to appreciate along the way. The book will freeze your heart with its portrayal of insanity, and melt it with the story of those who endure it - themselves, their parents, and their doctors.
20 October, 2007
Of Gardening and God
Scene 1:
Codepoke out in his flower garden. It's the first time he's ever gardened flowers, and doesn't really know why he's doing it. There are not yet any flowers in his garden. There are only sprouts.
And some of the sprouts are weeds.
Codepoke is kind of conflicted on the subject of killing. Once he killed an animal, and even though it was the right thing to do, he still feels remorse. But he would do it again. He was once kind to cockroaches, and still has to consciously overcome guilt before killing a spider in the house. Sometimes he pretends he doesn't see them so he doesn't have to end their lives.
The weeds in the garden seem somehow noble. Unbidden, they find a way to carry on. Despite all the machinations of man, they thrive. And with that tender green that only a new-sprouted herb has, they are breaking out all around the bare earth where Codepoke's planted flowers.
Scene 2:
Adam is no longer hungry, and neither are Eve, Cain, or Abel. It's been twenty or more years they've been out in the wild world, the world beyond the garden. For the first couple years, they gathered fruit and nuts that fell out of trees. Gradually, they learned about grains, then they figured out about storage, and finally about planting enough for a year. God helped them figure this all out. They would not have made it alone. But now, their tummies are full every night and were even through the winter. It's all because of farming.
The spring is well upon them now, and Adam wants his family to be full through the next winter as well. He and Cain are standing in the field they planted last week and surveying their coming bounty. Adam takes Cain through the field, careful to step in the unplanted places, teaching Cain how the weeds must be kept under control. They are alive and sometimes beautiful, but each weed reduces the grain they have for the winter. He teaches Cain to leave the weeds closest to the seedlings, for fear of pulling the wrong sprout. And he teaches Cain to pull the big weeds right away, and all the sprouts in the wrong places, and all the weeds at the borders.
God promised him, those twenty years ago, that he would be able to feed his family. It was later he learned what those thorns and thistles and the sweat of his brow really meant.
Scene 3:
Luke 13:6-9
He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
Conclusion:
This really is not about a conclusion for me. It was just three mental pictures I connected with back in July when I was planting my flowers. (BTW, I planted way too late, and planted 5 areas/things. 4 of them were successes. The Xinia's were the most ridiculous. They did not show flower pods until mid-Sept, and didn't bloom until the very end of Sept - and that was just 4 flowers. Indian summer has been so merciful around here, though, that I have like 30 Xinias going strong and it's almost halloween. There should be some kind of law against that, but it's really cool.)
The main "moral" that came to mind for me was that ever since God allowed mankind their rein, He now eats by the sweat of His brow, too, just like us.
Codepoke out in his flower garden. It's the first time he's ever gardened flowers, and doesn't really know why he's doing it. There are not yet any flowers in his garden. There are only sprouts.
And some of the sprouts are weeds.
Codepoke is kind of conflicted on the subject of killing. Once he killed an animal, and even though it was the right thing to do, he still feels remorse. But he would do it again. He was once kind to cockroaches, and still has to consciously overcome guilt before killing a spider in the house. Sometimes he pretends he doesn't see them so he doesn't have to end their lives.
The weeds in the garden seem somehow noble. Unbidden, they find a way to carry on. Despite all the machinations of man, they thrive. And with that tender green that only a new-sprouted herb has, they are breaking out all around the bare earth where Codepoke's planted flowers.
Scene 2:
Adam is no longer hungry, and neither are Eve, Cain, or Abel. It's been twenty or more years they've been out in the wild world, the world beyond the garden. For the first couple years, they gathered fruit and nuts that fell out of trees. Gradually, they learned about grains, then they figured out about storage, and finally about planting enough for a year. God helped them figure this all out. They would not have made it alone. But now, their tummies are full every night and were even through the winter. It's all because of farming.
The spring is well upon them now, and Adam wants his family to be full through the next winter as well. He and Cain are standing in the field they planted last week and surveying their coming bounty. Adam takes Cain through the field, careful to step in the unplanted places, teaching Cain how the weeds must be kept under control. They are alive and sometimes beautiful, but each weed reduces the grain they have for the winter. He teaches Cain to leave the weeds closest to the seedlings, for fear of pulling the wrong sprout. And he teaches Cain to pull the big weeds right away, and all the sprouts in the wrong places, and all the weeds at the borders.
God promised him, those twenty years ago, that he would be able to feed his family. It was later he learned what those thorns and thistles and the sweat of his brow really meant.
Scene 3:
Luke 13:6-9
He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
Conclusion:
This really is not about a conclusion for me. It was just three mental pictures I connected with back in July when I was planting my flowers. (BTW, I planted way too late, and planted 5 areas/things. 4 of them were successes. The Xinia's were the most ridiculous. They did not show flower pods until mid-Sept, and didn't bloom until the very end of Sept - and that was just 4 flowers. Indian summer has been so merciful around here, though, that I have like 30 Xinias going strong and it's almost halloween. There should be some kind of law against that, but it's really cool.)
The main "moral" that came to mind for me was that ever since God allowed mankind their rein, He now eats by the sweat of His brow, too, just like us.
Truthiness
Wikipedia features a different article every day. This makes perfect BlackBerry bathroom reading at work. Isn't technology great?
Anyway, back to the point. On Wednesday or so, the featured article was "Truthiness." The first sentence from the article is:
Truthiness is a satirical term created by U.S. television comedian and Presidential candidate Stephen Colbert to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.
(I'm pretty sure the part about Steve being a presidential candidate was added recently, since he just announced. And checking that out, I just learned that he is only 3 days older than I am. My inner astrologist is suddenly wondering what might have been.)
Steve's point, of course, is that Bush's decisions should be trusted, because they always have a high degree of truthiness. The article makes hay of the truthiness that informed his Iraq decisions and the nomination of Harriet Miers, saying:
Consider Harriet Miers. If you 'think' about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he 'thought' about his selection. He said this:
(video clip of President Bush:) 'I know her heart.'
Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.
Funny, pointed, and routinely brilliant stuff. Truthiness is a rich and insidious insult, and I love it. (One of my favorite lines, though, shows Colbert photoshopped into a picture of a bunch of militant mullahs with the caption, "One place Steven Colbert won't be speaking truthiness to power.")
But like so many insults, once you get past the humor, it is only helpful internally.
My thoughts of truthiness wandered naturally to doctrinal discussion. Colbert is hopelessly right. When we approach a doctrinal discussion, we come with a gut-full of truth. Our truths are established by the strongest possible of proofs - we have survived because of them. They have taken us through fire and flood, and promise to take us to a sunlit future. Even when they don't really work.
I have personally been carried through trials of self-condemnation by legalism. And afterward I held more tightly to my legalism, even though I would never have gone through the trial in the first place had I completely released my need to please God. I faced a crisis of faith, and was forced to lay back upon my doctrine to move forward, and I made it through. And I erroneously believed legalism carried me. Really, I made it through because a deep acceptance of God's mercy worked under that false surface of rigid attempts to please His justice.
In my gut, I knew God was judging me, and that motivated me (falsely) to make it through my crisis. Forevermore after that, I was less likely to release my legalism. And with each trial I survived, my false doctrine was more deeply established. Apart from any scriptural or practical evidence, I knew in my gut what I should do. I should fear God, fear His standards, and push for perfection.
And here's the kicker. When anyone accused me of truthiness (in essence, even though they sadly lacked the pithy palaver), I had pseudo-facts with which to fire back. I could quote verses, string logic, and present the best side of my reasoning. It doesn't help to accuse me of truthiness, unless I do it myself.
May I, and may we, learn to see truthiness in the only place that matters.
Anyway, back to the point. On Wednesday or so, the featured article was "Truthiness." The first sentence from the article is:
Truthiness is a satirical term created by U.S. television comedian and Presidential candidate Stephen Colbert to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.
(I'm pretty sure the part about Steve being a presidential candidate was added recently, since he just announced. And checking that out, I just learned that he is only 3 days older than I am. My inner astrologist is suddenly wondering what might have been.)
Steve's point, of course, is that Bush's decisions should be trusted, because they always have a high degree of truthiness. The article makes hay of the truthiness that informed his Iraq decisions and the nomination of Harriet Miers, saying:
Consider Harriet Miers. If you 'think' about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he 'thought' about his selection. He said this:
(video clip of President Bush:) 'I know her heart.'
Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.
Funny, pointed, and routinely brilliant stuff. Truthiness is a rich and insidious insult, and I love it. (One of my favorite lines, though, shows Colbert photoshopped into a picture of a bunch of militant mullahs with the caption, "One place Steven Colbert won't be speaking truthiness to power.")
But like so many insults, once you get past the humor, it is only helpful internally.
My thoughts of truthiness wandered naturally to doctrinal discussion. Colbert is hopelessly right. When we approach a doctrinal discussion, we come with a gut-full of truth. Our truths are established by the strongest possible of proofs - we have survived because of them. They have taken us through fire and flood, and promise to take us to a sunlit future. Even when they don't really work.
I have personally been carried through trials of self-condemnation by legalism. And afterward I held more tightly to my legalism, even though I would never have gone through the trial in the first place had I completely released my need to please God. I faced a crisis of faith, and was forced to lay back upon my doctrine to move forward, and I made it through. And I erroneously believed legalism carried me. Really, I made it through because a deep acceptance of God's mercy worked under that false surface of rigid attempts to please His justice.
In my gut, I knew God was judging me, and that motivated me (falsely) to make it through my crisis. Forevermore after that, I was less likely to release my legalism. And with each trial I survived, my false doctrine was more deeply established. Apart from any scriptural or practical evidence, I knew in my gut what I should do. I should fear God, fear His standards, and push for perfection.
And here's the kicker. When anyone accused me of truthiness (in essence, even though they sadly lacked the pithy palaver), I had pseudo-facts with which to fire back. I could quote verses, string logic, and present the best side of my reasoning. It doesn't help to accuse me of truthiness, unless I do it myself.
May I, and may we, learn to see truthiness in the only place that matters.
18 October, 2007
The Cure for Everything
I saw this quote today:
"The cure for anything is salt water --
sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen
You have to think about it a second, and it's brilliant. That's the best kind of quote. I was quite immediately impressed with it.
But, as is my wont, I thought about it some more.
Sweat was a part of the curse of sin on the land.
Tears are a result of sin, and will be erased in the coming age.
Sea is the symbol of death, the final foe vanquished by Christ.
So, really Isak is saying the cure for sin is in its curse. Sweat opposes everything sin takes from us in labors. Tears oppose everything taken from us loss. And the sea takes from us all the poisonous that can be soaked out by rest.
So maybe she's actually right, outside of Christ. It's certainly a powerful insight.
Just thinkin'
"The cure for anything is salt water --
sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen
You have to think about it a second, and it's brilliant. That's the best kind of quote. I was quite immediately impressed with it.
But, as is my wont, I thought about it some more.
Sweat was a part of the curse of sin on the land.
Tears are a result of sin, and will be erased in the coming age.
Sea is the symbol of death, the final foe vanquished by Christ.
So, really Isak is saying the cure for sin is in its curse. Sweat opposes everything sin takes from us in labors. Tears oppose everything taken from us loss. And the sea takes from us all the poisonous that can be soaked out by rest.
So maybe she's actually right, outside of Christ. It's certainly a powerful insight.
Just thinkin'
14 October, 2007
The Vision Given to Jesus
We call the last book of the bible, "Revelations," but it is named the revelation given to Jesus to show to His servants. I read a little of it last night and was crushed by the first three chapters.
John was alone in the Spirit when he heard a loud, commanding voice declaring that He was the Alpha and the Omega, and that He had words for John to carry to seven churches. When John turned around, he did not see a vision. John saw a Man, maybe 5' 11", standing in the middle of some very real candlesticks.
This Man was like no other, but John knew Him because He was the same Jesus he'd known those fifty or sixty years ago. Now, though, this Jesus looked the part of a King. His robe was bound by a golden girdle, His hair was pure, and His eyes gave a flaming light rather than waiting to receive it. His exposed feet were tanned such that they glowed the light back that had bronzed them. His voice overrode every other sound, like a waterfall covers every noise in the forest.
Jesus meant business. He came to talk to John about seven churches. He carried a light from each church in His right hand, stood in the middle of them as they lit the Holy Place, and spoke with the menace and directness of a sword.
This was Jesus, the One Who had proven Himself ever-loving and Who had purchased a kingdom for His Father. This was the Desire of the Ages in the flesh, and the One Whose love is most to be treasured.
And He reveals Himself to John because He is not happy with the churches.
Reading the next two chapters is not easy.
This high and beautiful One looks at us, the churches, and says, "I have this against you," and our hearts melt away. If we read about Jesus' complaints and praises of the churches, we learn some things. But if we see the One Whose face is like the sun shining in his strength turn those eyes of fire on us and say, "I have something against you," we collapse in terror and shame. We know that whatever He has against us is true, and that we are guilty before Him and His Father, guilty of every word.
He comes to Ephesus and finds they've let their love cool. He walks in Pergamos and finds them greedy, immoral and enslaved to religion. Thyatira is immoral. Sardis is barely alive. These are churches directly taught by the very apostles, and maintained by men the apostles hand-picked as the best and most spiritual of all in a dark, dark time. Ephesus was set to rights by Timothy, but they yet receive a letter from Jesus Himself telling how He is displeased by them.
They will hear these words, and the room will grow cold. The blood will rush out of the faces of hundreds of people at once as they see Him and hear Him. Their spirits will see the Man with the golden girdle and the face like fire, and their hearts will hear His threat, "Remember from where you have fallen and repent. Do the first works over again, or I will come quickly and discard you," and they will faint.
But Ephesus heard praise. Every church heard praise to bouy their spirits and to give them hope, except only one. Laodicea heard only rebuke. They heard only that they would be spit out of their Lord's mouth. They heard only that they bragged to be rich when they were poor, that they stood as pure when they were filthy, that they claimed to see everything when they were blind.
The Laodiceans heard their report last, and I can imagine the room. They heard each pronouncement against their brothers and sisters elsewhere and each person's heart went through melodrama after terror after hope. They knew they were not small like Philadelphia, and hoped to avoid the warnings given to faithful Smyrna. When His anger was breathed out against those who eat food sacrificed to idols, they thought back over the last months, whether any of their number had taken to buying cheap meat. Were any fornicating? Were they dead while they lived?
And with the fear was mingled hope. Might the Lord be proud of the songs they'd written? Might He praise the way they'd kept themselves from the world? Would He commend the visions they'd shared with the other churches?
When the man chosen to read this letter in Laodicea got to this paragraph, the tears he could not restrain would give away the contents before he read the words, before he said their name, "Laodiceans." When he finished telling them that they were truly wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, every fear was multiplied and every hope put to shame.
But Jesus next words had to have done something in the room.
He told them how to become rich, how to become pure, and how to see truly.
Nothing more than that. The anger was over, and the judgement. Immediately there came the answer, the encouragement, the true hope. And the hope was this, "As many as I love..."
"As many as I love..."
Jesus loved Laodicea.
As many as He loves, He rebukes and chastens, so He encourages them forward to repentance. It is to these whom He loved that he stood outside the door and knocked. It was with these He wished to share dinner. It was with these He wished to overcome and sit beside His Father. There was no hesitation on His part, no waiting to see whether His people would repent. Jesus wants to be with His children.
I'm sure Jesus has something against the church of the Americans. When I read these first three chapters of the revelation, it's with just fear. 5 of the churches are commanded to repent, and those were the best founded churches of all time. What hope have we who are awash in money, declare ourselves the moral majority, and publish our wisdom for the ages faster than we can count?
We need the Spirit to come and reveal to us where we can buy gold and garments and eyesalve.
Jesus would come and dine with us.
John was alone in the Spirit when he heard a loud, commanding voice declaring that He was the Alpha and the Omega, and that He had words for John to carry to seven churches. When John turned around, he did not see a vision. John saw a Man, maybe 5' 11", standing in the middle of some very real candlesticks.
This Man was like no other, but John knew Him because He was the same Jesus he'd known those fifty or sixty years ago. Now, though, this Jesus looked the part of a King. His robe was bound by a golden girdle, His hair was pure, and His eyes gave a flaming light rather than waiting to receive it. His exposed feet were tanned such that they glowed the light back that had bronzed them. His voice overrode every other sound, like a waterfall covers every noise in the forest.
Jesus meant business. He came to talk to John about seven churches. He carried a light from each church in His right hand, stood in the middle of them as they lit the Holy Place, and spoke with the menace and directness of a sword.
This was Jesus, the One Who had proven Himself ever-loving and Who had purchased a kingdom for His Father. This was the Desire of the Ages in the flesh, and the One Whose love is most to be treasured.
And He reveals Himself to John because He is not happy with the churches.
Reading the next two chapters is not easy.
This high and beautiful One looks at us, the churches, and says, "I have this against you," and our hearts melt away. If we read about Jesus' complaints and praises of the churches, we learn some things. But if we see the One Whose face is like the sun shining in his strength turn those eyes of fire on us and say, "I have something against you," we collapse in terror and shame. We know that whatever He has against us is true, and that we are guilty before Him and His Father, guilty of every word.
He comes to Ephesus and finds they've let their love cool. He walks in Pergamos and finds them greedy, immoral and enslaved to religion. Thyatira is immoral. Sardis is barely alive. These are churches directly taught by the very apostles, and maintained by men the apostles hand-picked as the best and most spiritual of all in a dark, dark time. Ephesus was set to rights by Timothy, but they yet receive a letter from Jesus Himself telling how He is displeased by them.
They will hear these words, and the room will grow cold. The blood will rush out of the faces of hundreds of people at once as they see Him and hear Him. Their spirits will see the Man with the golden girdle and the face like fire, and their hearts will hear His threat, "Remember from where you have fallen and repent. Do the first works over again, or I will come quickly and discard you," and they will faint.
But Ephesus heard praise. Every church heard praise to bouy their spirits and to give them hope, except only one. Laodicea heard only rebuke. They heard only that they would be spit out of their Lord's mouth. They heard only that they bragged to be rich when they were poor, that they stood as pure when they were filthy, that they claimed to see everything when they were blind.
The Laodiceans heard their report last, and I can imagine the room. They heard each pronouncement against their brothers and sisters elsewhere and each person's heart went through melodrama after terror after hope. They knew they were not small like Philadelphia, and hoped to avoid the warnings given to faithful Smyrna. When His anger was breathed out against those who eat food sacrificed to idols, they thought back over the last months, whether any of their number had taken to buying cheap meat. Were any fornicating? Were they dead while they lived?
And with the fear was mingled hope. Might the Lord be proud of the songs they'd written? Might He praise the way they'd kept themselves from the world? Would He commend the visions they'd shared with the other churches?
When the man chosen to read this letter in Laodicea got to this paragraph, the tears he could not restrain would give away the contents before he read the words, before he said their name, "Laodiceans." When he finished telling them that they were truly wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, every fear was multiplied and every hope put to shame.
But Jesus next words had to have done something in the room.
He told them how to become rich, how to become pure, and how to see truly.
Nothing more than that. The anger was over, and the judgement. Immediately there came the answer, the encouragement, the true hope. And the hope was this, "As many as I love..."
"As many as I love..."
Jesus loved Laodicea.
As many as He loves, He rebukes and chastens, so He encourages them forward to repentance. It is to these whom He loved that he stood outside the door and knocked. It was with these He wished to share dinner. It was with these He wished to overcome and sit beside His Father. There was no hesitation on His part, no waiting to see whether His people would repent. Jesus wants to be with His children.
I'm sure Jesus has something against the church of the Americans. When I read these first three chapters of the revelation, it's with just fear. 5 of the churches are commanded to repent, and those were the best founded churches of all time. What hope have we who are awash in money, declare ourselves the moral majority, and publish our wisdom for the ages faster than we can count?
We need the Spirit to come and reveal to us where we can buy gold and garments and eyesalve.
Jesus would come and dine with us.
13 October, 2007
Survey Help Needed
I meet all the criteria for Barb Orlowski's doctoral thesis, so I am going to participate in her survey. I heard about it through Christians for Biblical Equality, and will make sure any of you who have had similar experiences get the chance to give her some feedback.
Maybe some day I will tell my experience in an authoritarian church.
Codepoke
------------------------------------------------
Hi Everyone, Oct. 2007
My name is Barb Orlowski. I am on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. In order to conduct the research necessary to complete my dissertation, I could use your help. I am conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience.
Here are the criteria that I am looking for in participants:
1. Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and who have ceased to be associated with those congregations;
2. Christians who subsequently have recognized and processed their spiritual grief and pain and have experienced spiritual recovery;
3. Christians who are willing to share how they have processed their negative experience and have recovered spiritual harmony; those who can share what has happened since this painful episode. Christians who can answer this question: What factors have helped you to restore your confidence in God and His people?
If people feel that they fit the criteria for this study, please contact me.
I will give you further details about this study, and then I will send you the questionnaire along with the consent information. The responses given by those participating will be kept confidential. Your responses will be put in anonymous form and may be kept for further use after the completion of this study.
Thank you for your interest and participation in this study. I appreciate the time and effort that it takes to complete a questionnaire.
In Him, Barb
Barb’s contact email: churchexitersq@telus.net
* Comments and questions are welcome.
· When you respond to this request by emailing me--
· please let me know which site you saw this information. Thanks.
Maybe some day I will tell my experience in an authoritarian church.
Codepoke
------------------------------------------------
Hi Everyone, Oct. 2007
My name is Barb Orlowski. I am on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. In order to conduct the research necessary to complete my dissertation, I could use your help. I am conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience.
Here are the criteria that I am looking for in participants:
1. Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and who have ceased to be associated with those congregations;
2. Christians who subsequently have recognized and processed their spiritual grief and pain and have experienced spiritual recovery;
3. Christians who are willing to share how they have processed their negative experience and have recovered spiritual harmony; those who can share what has happened since this painful episode. Christians who can answer this question: What factors have helped you to restore your confidence in God and His people?
If people feel that they fit the criteria for this study, please contact me.
I will give you further details about this study, and then I will send you the questionnaire along with the consent information. The responses given by those participating will be kept confidential. Your responses will be put in anonymous form and may be kept for further use after the completion of this study.
Thank you for your interest and participation in this study. I appreciate the time and effort that it takes to complete a questionnaire.
In Him, Barb
Barb’s contact email: churchexitersq@telus.net
* Comments and questions are welcome.
· When you respond to this request by emailing me--
· please let me know which site you saw this information. Thanks.
10 October, 2007
Opinions sought on a fresh analysis of Christ's words about Divorce
I read this post on Divorce and Remarriage this morning, and it has been rattling in my head all day. I am not ready to express any opinion on it, but if anyone is I'd love to hear it.
HT: Suzanne McCarthy in Complegalitarian, a new blog dedicated to civil discussion of the complementarian/egalitarian issue.
HT: Suzanne McCarthy in Complegalitarian, a new blog dedicated to civil discussion of the complementarian/egalitarian issue.
08 October, 2007
Celebration - An Example
I was answering KB, and got carried away. Here's what I'd recommend.
----
If I had my way, the 12 closest churches would all get together, rent the local football field, and have a potluck. This potluck happen at 7:00 AM some Sunday morning in July, and it would be a black tie affair. Everyone would bring cold delicacies worthy of a King. There would be bread and wine in the style and manner of each church on every table in wrappers saying, "Please open when asked." The placemats would have printed on them the doxology and Thou Art Worthy
Each church would bring a flag on a 10 foot pole, a unique flag that would represent their church. Each church's tables would have miniature versions of this same flag on them. Each placemat would also have a sticker on it showing another church's flag. (They would be in triplets. The placemats at Church A's table would have three stickers for church B in a row, then three stickers for church C, then 3 for D etc.)
The food would be placed on the tables, and everyone would follow their flag to a place just behind the their end zone. 6 churches would be circled around 6 flags in the south end, and 6 in the north end. Each church would be advised to place seats behind the end zone for those who were not able to stand for 90 minutes.
An MC with tophat and tails would run to the center of the field precisely at 7:00 announcing that we were here to worship our King. He would then pull a name out of the hat, and call that church to the tables in the center. They would let out a practiced cheer then walk to the center of the field while singing a chorus - into which everyone could join. A representative of that church would then stand to the mic, and deliver a 2 minute prayer of praise and allegiance to the King. Then the MC would call the next church forward.
That process would take an hour and a half.
After the last church had entered, someone with a strong and steady voice of pleasant range would lead everyone in "Thou Art Worthy." followed by a praise of God for the riches on the table, and free everyone to begin eating.
A minister (chosen by lots well prior to the meeting day) would deliver a message on the meaning of the bread, and the unity of the body of Christ. 5 minutes tops. :-) At that point, he would free the assembled body partake of the bread together. Each church would observe their customary respects toward the elements in administering to their own people. Then a second minister would follow the same protocol with the drink.
At this point, the ministers would all sit down quietly, and enjoy the meal with everyone else.
When everyone had eaten, the flag bearer of each church would be asked to return to his place in the end zone, and everyone would be asked to rally around, not their own flag, but the flag that matched their placemat sticker.
With the people all nicely mixed together, a caller would lead everyone in a responsive recitation of Psalm 122 (probably in the Message translation). After the caller spoke each line, the assembled body would shout it back to him. When the Psalm was done, and when any spontaneous shouting died down, our singer would lead everyone in the doxology.
At that point, the flags would do one more turn around the field, and as your church's flag passed you, you would fall in line behind it and head for the parking lot.
It should be right around 10:00 AM by this point, and the sun should just be starting to get too warm for black tie outdoors. I would recommend there be a couple RV's in the parking lot for people to change out of dress clothes into work clothes, and it would be time to break down the tables and chairs.
----
If I had my way, the 12 closest churches would all get together, rent the local football field, and have a potluck. This potluck happen at 7:00 AM some Sunday morning in July, and it would be a black tie affair. Everyone would bring cold delicacies worthy of a King. There would be bread and wine in the style and manner of each church on every table in wrappers saying, "Please open when asked." The placemats would have printed on them the doxology and Thou Art Worthy
Each church would bring a flag on a 10 foot pole, a unique flag that would represent their church. Each church's tables would have miniature versions of this same flag on them. Each placemat would also have a sticker on it showing another church's flag. (They would be in triplets. The placemats at Church A's table would have three stickers for church B in a row, then three stickers for church C, then 3 for D etc.)
The food would be placed on the tables, and everyone would follow their flag to a place just behind the their end zone. 6 churches would be circled around 6 flags in the south end, and 6 in the north end. Each church would be advised to place seats behind the end zone for those who were not able to stand for 90 minutes.
An MC with tophat and tails would run to the center of the field precisely at 7:00 announcing that we were here to worship our King. He would then pull a name out of the hat, and call that church to the tables in the center. They would let out a practiced cheer then walk to the center of the field while singing a chorus - into which everyone could join. A representative of that church would then stand to the mic, and deliver a 2 minute prayer of praise and allegiance to the King. Then the MC would call the next church forward.
That process would take an hour and a half.
After the last church had entered, someone with a strong and steady voice of pleasant range would lead everyone in "Thou Art Worthy." followed by a praise of God for the riches on the table, and free everyone to begin eating.
A minister (chosen by lots well prior to the meeting day) would deliver a message on the meaning of the bread, and the unity of the body of Christ. 5 minutes tops. :-) At that point, he would free the assembled body partake of the bread together. Each church would observe their customary respects toward the elements in administering to their own people. Then a second minister would follow the same protocol with the drink.
At this point, the ministers would all sit down quietly, and enjoy the meal with everyone else.
When everyone had eaten, the flag bearer of each church would be asked to return to his place in the end zone, and everyone would be asked to rally around, not their own flag, but the flag that matched their placemat sticker.
With the people all nicely mixed together, a caller would lead everyone in a responsive recitation of Psalm 122 (probably in the Message translation). After the caller spoke each line, the assembled body would shout it back to him. When the Psalm was done, and when any spontaneous shouting died down, our singer would lead everyone in the doxology.
At that point, the flags would do one more turn around the field, and as your church's flag passed you, you would fall in line behind it and head for the parking lot.
It should be right around 10:00 AM by this point, and the sun should just be starting to get too warm for black tie outdoors. I would recommend there be a couple RV's in the parking lot for people to change out of dress clothes into work clothes, and it would be time to break down the tables and chairs.
07 October, 2007
Celebrate
OK. I absolutely have to turn off KB's Impossible Dream recording. I cannot type while enthralled. [And while I'm mentioning things KB, his session with Jon Stewart is incredible, too. I know I'm supposed to be all conservative and all, and not like ol' Jon, but the man is brilliant, funny and honest. If you didn't see him gut, fillet and grill two conservative talk show hosts some time last year (I remember neither the show, nor the hosts, but I remember he single-handedly took them off the air with his one interview) then you've never seen the power of wit. Not quite Man of LaMancha stuff, but worthy of respect.]
I cannot hear The Impossible Dream without wanting to change the world all over again. And what's more, I cannot want to change the world again without imagining a way to try. I will fail, but I wouldn't bet a stale donut against me presenting this post to my pastor before too very long. Or writing a book with Celebration as its theme.
Let me start with the back story.
I went to the opera with two young couples from the church Friday night. Puccini is a little light for me, I think, but that's not much of a surprise. Granted, most people probably think having the heroine die of TB at the end of La Boheme is anything but light, but I want tragic tragedy! If I wanted conversational opera, I'd stay home and chat with my buds. I want climactic agony, and notes that reach the depths. I grant that Puccini shifted gears quickly, within the space of even a single line going from conversational to epic in tone, but when I find a composer that stays in high gear the whole way, I'll have found true love. The fever-pitch of Impossible Dream sings right to my heart.
The interesting thing about the evening, though, was the people with whom I attended. I was dressed in my best business casual, since I own nothing else. I wish I could have been more dapper because the sisters were dolled to the nines, and pumped. Both of their guys were dressed smartly, but trepidacious. They didn't get it. Opera was to them both boring and intimidating, and they made it clear that they would rather be watching football while we the torture was still hours away.
OK, so young men are boors and act boorishly to their significant others. This is not news. I think I was able to keep their macho negativity in check and everyone enjoyed the evening, even the poor disappointed ladies. (It's really cool being the old guy.) What's more, I think lessons were learned by all.
But there's something bigger in this than just boorish guys and disappointed ladies. Those ladies were living out an important part of being human that those young men failed to perceive. When we say, "Moses," we tend to think of a certain 10 (or maybe 630-ish) commands, and that is appropriate. Still, there are two other things I wish we'd think of when we remember him, Worship and Celebration.
Worship because of the tabernacle. Every provision of God for all of history is portrayed in that tabernacle and its duties. Huge pages of Leviticus are taken up in the description of that badger-hide tent, because it was a mobile memorial of the exact ministry of heaven. Hidden within the lists of things the tabernacle did for Israel, things the priests did for the tabernacle, and things the people did with the tabernacle was everything the Father, Son, Spirit and bride are doing today and will do forever. Displayed before Israel was everything the Son would do on earth, and everything He continues to do in heaven.
The law tells us about God, but the tabernacle tells us about relating to God. The one teaches us His holiness, and the other teaches us His care. When we balance the teaching of the law and the tabernacle, we need not argue that our God was nice even in the old testament. His care cannot be missed.
Celebration because the largest portion of Israel's interaction with God was celebratory. Almost 2/7's of every obedient Israelite's life was spent celebrating. Every 7th day and every 7th year and every 7th - 7th year + 1 (every 50th year) was spent celebrating the end of God's labors and end of their own. And 7 times every single year, Israel celebrated some victory of God's, both visible and invisible. Celebrating the Passover, for example, was celebrating the moment of deliverance from Egypt. At the same time, though, it was celebrating the yet-to-come deliverance of all God's people from sin forever in the Lamb.
Dressing up for a night of high entertainment is a deep part of being humans. Celebrating each other, high art, and the Most High God all spring from the same fount of God's image within us - or could if only we had the imagination. If the Israelites could build booths to God and in their millions shout at once with upraised palm-branches to God, could we not do something high and glorious to celebrate our Ascended Lord of Life? Could we not conceive of a celebration to transcend weekly liturgies, and declare with exuberance and passion the glory of the Reachable Star?
Our churches languish because we fail to reach for God, to declare Him in all the richness we can risk. Until we relate to Him in holiness, worship and celebration together, we'll remain boorish young brothers, afraid to leave behind our veneer of machismo. We'll pass the years of our Christian walk stuck in our blue-jeans and t-shirt relationship to the Most Elegant God, hoping He'll just accept what we find courage enough to give Him.
But one liturgy's not good enough for the God of all variety, is it?
Let's find a way to reach for true celebration of Him.
I cannot hear The Impossible Dream without wanting to change the world all over again. And what's more, I cannot want to change the world again without imagining a way to try. I will fail, but I wouldn't bet a stale donut against me presenting this post to my pastor before too very long. Or writing a book with Celebration as its theme.
Let me start with the back story.
I went to the opera with two young couples from the church Friday night. Puccini is a little light for me, I think, but that's not much of a surprise. Granted, most people probably think having the heroine die of TB at the end of La Boheme is anything but light, but I want tragic tragedy! If I wanted conversational opera, I'd stay home and chat with my buds. I want climactic agony, and notes that reach the depths. I grant that Puccini shifted gears quickly, within the space of even a single line going from conversational to epic in tone, but when I find a composer that stays in high gear the whole way, I'll have found true love. The fever-pitch of Impossible Dream sings right to my heart.
The interesting thing about the evening, though, was the people with whom I attended. I was dressed in my best business casual, since I own nothing else. I wish I could have been more dapper because the sisters were dolled to the nines, and pumped. Both of their guys were dressed smartly, but trepidacious. They didn't get it. Opera was to them both boring and intimidating, and they made it clear that they would rather be watching football while we the torture was still hours away.
OK, so young men are boors and act boorishly to their significant others. This is not news. I think I was able to keep their macho negativity in check and everyone enjoyed the evening, even the poor disappointed ladies. (It's really cool being the old guy.) What's more, I think lessons were learned by all.
But there's something bigger in this than just boorish guys and disappointed ladies. Those ladies were living out an important part of being human that those young men failed to perceive. When we say, "Moses," we tend to think of a certain 10 (or maybe 630-ish) commands, and that is appropriate. Still, there are two other things I wish we'd think of when we remember him, Worship and Celebration.
Worship because of the tabernacle. Every provision of God for all of history is portrayed in that tabernacle and its duties. Huge pages of Leviticus are taken up in the description of that badger-hide tent, because it was a mobile memorial of the exact ministry of heaven. Hidden within the lists of things the tabernacle did for Israel, things the priests did for the tabernacle, and things the people did with the tabernacle was everything the Father, Son, Spirit and bride are doing today and will do forever. Displayed before Israel was everything the Son would do on earth, and everything He continues to do in heaven.
The law tells us about God, but the tabernacle tells us about relating to God. The one teaches us His holiness, and the other teaches us His care. When we balance the teaching of the law and the tabernacle, we need not argue that our God was nice even in the old testament. His care cannot be missed.
Celebration because the largest portion of Israel's interaction with God was celebratory. Almost 2/7's of every obedient Israelite's life was spent celebrating. Every 7th day and every 7th year and every 7th - 7th year + 1 (every 50th year) was spent celebrating the end of God's labors and end of their own. And 7 times every single year, Israel celebrated some victory of God's, both visible and invisible. Celebrating the Passover, for example, was celebrating the moment of deliverance from Egypt. At the same time, though, it was celebrating the yet-to-come deliverance of all God's people from sin forever in the Lamb.
Dressing up for a night of high entertainment is a deep part of being humans. Celebrating each other, high art, and the Most High God all spring from the same fount of God's image within us - or could if only we had the imagination. If the Israelites could build booths to God and in their millions shout at once with upraised palm-branches to God, could we not do something high and glorious to celebrate our Ascended Lord of Life? Could we not conceive of a celebration to transcend weekly liturgies, and declare with exuberance and passion the glory of the Reachable Star?
Our churches languish because we fail to reach for God, to declare Him in all the richness we can risk. Until we relate to Him in holiness, worship and celebration together, we'll remain boorish young brothers, afraid to leave behind our veneer of machismo. We'll pass the years of our Christian walk stuck in our blue-jeans and t-shirt relationship to the Most Elegant God, hoping He'll just accept what we find courage enough to give Him.
But one liturgy's not good enough for the God of all variety, is it?
Let's find a way to reach for true celebration of Him.
06 October, 2007
Meeting Meet Mates
I don't know. I've heard that even slight brain damage can alter a person's accent. What could have happened to me to elicit alliterative addiction eludes me, but I guess I'd best run with it.
I said yesterday that there was something positive in this month's Touchstone Magazine for us to talk about. I don't know of anyone reading this blog who is actively "looking." And you know what I mean, don't you? :-/
Touchstone ran a symposium on dating, courtship & marriage this month with 4 of their familar authors. They called it:
Helpers Meet?
If you have the time and inclination, do please read these 4 brief, brief articles and come back. I'll still be here.
Thanks.
If you subscribed to the paper mag, you saw one more little paragraph in blue halfway through the article. It said,
I may not be in a position to "look" right now. Life is complex like that. But look I do, and think on the subject I do. Here is what I will email to yon editor (if I have not worn out my welcome) after a little editing with you'uns help.
(And [Insert Exclamation of Amazement HERE] how do they expect me to say ANYTHING in 400 words. :-)
(And yes, it's exactly 400 words. I don't know how I cut it down so much!)
I said yesterday that there was something positive in this month's Touchstone Magazine for us to talk about. I don't know of anyone reading this blog who is actively "looking." And you know what I mean, don't you? :-/
Touchstone ran a symposium on dating, courtship & marriage this month with 4 of their familar authors. They called it:
Helpers Meet?
If you have the time and inclination, do please read these 4 brief, brief articles and come back. I'll still be here.
Thanks.
If you subscribed to the paper mag, you saw one more little paragraph in blue halfway through the article. It said,
Your Turn
Dating and marriage being such crucial matters to our readers, single and parents alike, and of such importance to the health of the church and society, we invite readers to send responses to this forum, for possible publication in a future issue.
The responses should be written directly and concretely, no more than 400 words long, and received by October 26th. Please send them to me at editor [you know the symbol] touchstonemag [and this one too] c0m.
I may not be in a position to "look" right now. Life is complex like that. But look I do, and think on the subject I do. Here is what I will email to yon editor (if I have not worn out my welcome) after a little editing with you'uns help.
(And [Insert Exclamation of Amazement HERE] how do they expect me to say ANYTHING in 400 words. :-)
The history of God’s people is replete with "she was pleasing, so he married her." Every bit as surely, it is peppered with regrets in some of those marriages, though not all. This method, while exciting, seems a bit spotty in its execution. And while the full-blown arranged marriage is problematic, I need help. I know men and I can tell whether a man is faking pretty quickly, but put me across the coffee table from an eligible sweetheart with big hair, and I’m just another sucker.
I favor, and am actively advocating in my church, romantic introductions being initiated by selected elders (and this is key) across church and denominational boundaries. First, I need to talk to a wise, elder woman who has known my big-haired prospect much of her life, and who can make a wise recommendation to me. Second, I’m in a bit of a rub. My church has 80 people, none of them single ladies, and I am not leaving. I refuse to join a mega-church to meet chicks.
But what if my deaconness "Kathy" knew deaconness "Jane" at the nearby Presbyterian church, and regularly inquired whether there were any single women of X number of years in the faith, solid reputation, and willing to attend a church potluck to meet Codepoke? Both churches should profit.
Of importance to this idea are several details:
1) Jane and Kathy (or Dick or whomever) must be deacons of known reputation, filled with the Spirit and common sense.
2) Jane and Kathy must know about each other, and should really know each other personally if possible. I recommend coffee from time to time.
3) The churches must be nearby. Why not start to build relationships between churches via wise marriage? Can anyone think of a single negative to this happy possibility?
4) When the young lady (for example) begins to have doubts about the young man, she should be able to approach that man’s presenting deacon and express doubts about his reputation and possible intentions.
Even in my youth, I think I could have accepted the help of a caring deaconness gracefully. I ended up marrying a young lady of some reputation and character, but who apostasized. I’d bet Kathy would have steered me clear from day one. Hindsight reveals things to me she’d probably have seen from the start. Today I’d do better, but I covet wise counsel.
(And yes, it's exactly 400 words. I don't know how I cut it down so much!)
04 October, 2007
Manly Man Meme
Alright, I'll play a meme. It's from Popular Mechanics and is making the rounds. I think it's called the "he-man" meme or some such.
Before I start my bragging, I have to tell you that no one has ever accused me of being a man's man. In fact, I have spent most of my life thinking of myself as something of a pantywaist. 75 million peers can't all be wrong, right? I have to admit that taking this little meme was something of a pleasant surprise to me (or I wouldn't have shared it - I'm as vain as the next guy.)
1. Patch a radiator hose
I can tear the whole engine down to bones and rebuild it to spec within probably double the time requirements guideline without purchasing any new tools (though I'd have to borrow back my torque wrenches from Dave.) Or I can get you home with some 100-mile-an-hour tape.
2. Protect your computer
Without wrapping it in thin rubber, I assume? While doing it using your choice of my recommended tool cost/performance solutions, I can why explain worms and trojans are more dangerous than viruses, why Microsoft should be known as the Buffer Overrun birthing grounds, and how WinAntiVirusPro self-replicates to defeat Norton and McAfee, but falls to Kaspersky in one patch.
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized
If they mean how to right a capsized canoe or sailboat, I can do that. If they mean uprighting some boater's feet that happen to be sticking out of the water, I'm not sure righting him is needed so much as sobering him up.
4. Frame a wall
Does digging the footings, laying the foundation, plumbing, wiring, framing, roofing, and finishing our house with my father count? I was just weekend help, but I still know how to inset the windbrace in every wall, which a lot of people that know what "24 inch center" means have never heard of doing.
5. Retouch digital photos
I only know how to do this with the old manual blur/sharpen/etc stuff in Paint Shop Pro. I don't know how to use the "one-button fix" tools that are so popular these days.
6. Back up a trailer
I used to blind-side 50 foot trailers into 10 foot wide slots with a 55 foot approach area (yeah, that means I had to come in sideways, and whip the front end out 40 feet while sticking the backend in the slot blindly). I still have my CDL with A classification. So, I can legally drive anything with rubber as long as there are no hazmat certs or bus certs required.
7. Build a campfire
One match in a steady drizzle without fluids. Proved it repeatedly last summer during a week long trip with no amenities but water.
8. Fix a dead outlet
I've already covered this, but I have pulled wire through existing walls without gutting them and added circuits to my box without killing anyone. I did ask for help to wire up 220v. In my experience, asking for help when you need it should be counted as a manly point, too, but I don't think that will ever fly. Maybe I should also mention that I've worked 440v 3-phase electricity hot 1 inch away while a diesel generator mechanic. A year of that was enough, and went back to working on trucks.
9. Navigate with a map and compass
Through two trips at the National Training Center desert at night and in daylight. I can still get you where you're going with the stars alone, given sufficient motivation. I got pretty badly lost my first night, but I got us all into our beds after a couple extra hours and never turned too soon again.
10. Use a torque wrench
Well, they're on loan.
11. Sharpen a knife
You'll think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I was too embarassed to ask for a razor, and my parents were too ... something ... to admit that I needed one, and I was being laughed at for the fuzz. There was only one answer. So, for the first two years of my shaving career I shaved with my pocketknife. Give me any stone, and I'll give you a blade with which you can strip your face - even if it's not the closest, most comfortable shave you'll ever have.
12. Perform CPR
I did not have to actually perform the 15/2 exercise, but while out in the desert I did correctly diagnose my motor sergeant's congestive heart failure and get him to medical attention without him ever knowing anything was wrong. I figured if I told him he was having a heart attack, he'd have a heart attack, so I quietly came up with one excuse after another to get him back to the unit medics and called the shot correctly. I've had all the classes, including knowing that they no longer recommend the rescue breathing.
13. Fillet a fish
Why would anyone do this to a perfectly good knife? Still, I have dressed just enough fish with someone else's knives to prove I can. Namely, I dressed out several hundred grunnion(?) running out at the beach one night for smoking. Fillet, though? Nope. They've got me there. Ain't gonna fillet no water-breathers.
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
I've maneuvered a street motorcycle on pavement out of a two-wheel skid (among other, less-interesting types). I also laid the bike down three times, but only once showing off for a chick. Car's are child's play. I've driven for blocks without ever letting car come back out of a skid. My son has gotten to the point of saying, "You know, this NEVER happens when I ride with my sister or mother." Last time, it was because I was in a little bit of a hurry in the rain and dished the rear end out coming off the freeway. That could happen to anyone, of course. The thing that rattled him was that I was paying no attention when it happened, and my immediate, instinctive reaction on feeling the fishtail was to floor the gas. It was, of course, the right reaction but not a lot of people do it. FTR, it works in bobtail tractors, too. I got stuck 4 times the first weekend I drove in snow, and never have been stuck again.
15. Get a car unstuck
Well, here we are revisiting previous points again. I've "unstuck" Hummers (military version, not the civilian toys), Deuce and halfs, and a 10 ton+ Goer using nothing but a rope. Yeah, I can get my rig out of anything it can be gotten out of.
16. Back up data
Some people think this is too easy, but do you want it backed up to tape, disk, USB, SAN, NAS, or optical WORM? Do you want it backed on or off schedule? Full backups or deltas only? Error reporting? Or do you really want RAID striping and redundancy or maybe high availability clustering? Are you talking about disaster recovery or business continuity with failover? People who think this is easy just aren't thinking hard enough.
17. Paint a room
Presumably they want the drywall mudwork finished and the sheetrock taped, the surface primed, and the fixtures removed as opposed to just slapping on some paint. I can go either way.
18. Mix concrete
I didn't really mix the concrete for our house, I just helped pour it. But, I mixed the concrete to rebuild my front steps when they crumbled under the Columbus freeze/thaw cycle. I learned a couple things in the process, but don't remember what they were now. I guess I'll have to learn those lessons all over again when the next opportunity comes around.
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
Hmmmm. I can armorer strip an m-16 and field-strip an m-60 machine gun, and clean both to IG standards. I wonder if that counts? Because all I own is a muzzle-loading rifle, a lever-action rifle, two revolvers, one semi-auto pistol and one cap and ball pistol. All but the semi-auto pistol were inherited (no fetish here) but I grew up shooting and probably always will enjoy it, even if I don't live in a place where it is cheap any more. I qualified expert marksman with an uncorrected astigmatism in my shooting eye. I will always wonder whether I would have qualified for the base shooting team had I known there were not really *supposed* to be 2 front sights to aim with.
20. Change oil and filter
If I'm nervous, I'll cut open the filter and read it like a CSI to tell whether my engine really has anything serious going wrong inside it.
21. Hook up an HDTV
Wouldn't know where to start, except by reading the manual. I'm probably going to use the mandated conversion to HD as my excuse to fall off the television landscape entirely.
22. Bleed brakes
Lot's of car stuff in this list. Anyone can bleed brakes with a partner. I can bleed them alone with a stick or with a pressure or vacuum bleeder. I'd have to read the procedure on any antilock brakes, but most people don't even know the procedures can be very different.
23. Paddle a canoe
Hehehe. For amusement, I have been known to drift down a lake in a 25+ mile-per-hour blow, and spend the next half-hour paddling back. If your nose drifts more than 5 degrees to the left or right, the wind will catch it and throw you around facing the wrong direction again. By the time you muscle your way back around, and get a good head of steam built up again you've lost 50 yards. River canoeing is a lot more exciting, of course, and I've done both. The J stroke is the only one I can call by name.
24. Fix a bike flat
Yeah. And car flats and truck flats, too. Though getting the split-rim apart on a truck tire has to be one of the most physical jobs around. Inflating a split rim after fixing it can actually be death-defying, too. But in a pinch, I know how to re-inflate a truck tire using ether and a match. I've never done it, and I'd hide behind a concrete wall if I did, but I know how.
25. Extend your wireless network
I assume they mean buying a repeater. This makes you a man? If they mean anything more interesting than that, then I fail in this criterion. More interesting would be to ask how many men know which wireless security protocol to use, and where to set up the password so your neighbors can't sniff out everything you're browsing or use your connection for free.
---
So, as long as being a man does not involve fish or TV, I can keep up with most of them according to Popular Mechanics. But I'd like to fire back.
For starters, Robert Heinlein had a MUCH better list of things a man should be able to do. I'd like to see how many of their macho men can keep up with this list.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Heinlein was a sinner's sinner, but he was a man's man, too. He'd make my shameless bragging above look like amateur hour, and I'm cool with that. He impressed me because he knew everything that mattered was warm and tender. If a man doesn't know that core fact, he's just a paper man - even if he can bench press his car.
Looking beyond even Heinlein's man, the warmest, tenderest, most precious thing on earth is the bride of our Lord. A brother in the Lord should also be able to:
Comfort the broken hearted
Resist sin
Mortify his own evil desires
Strengthen those who are tempted
Bless those who mistreat him
Submit himself quietly to the discipline of the Lord
Mourn with those who mourn
Laugh with those who laugh
Speak always with grace
May the Lord bless His sons and daughters
Before I start my bragging, I have to tell you that no one has ever accused me of being a man's man. In fact, I have spent most of my life thinking of myself as something of a pantywaist. 75 million peers can't all be wrong, right? I have to admit that taking this little meme was something of a pleasant surprise to me (or I wouldn't have shared it - I'm as vain as the next guy.)
1. Patch a radiator hose
I can tear the whole engine down to bones and rebuild it to spec within probably double the time requirements guideline without purchasing any new tools (though I'd have to borrow back my torque wrenches from Dave.) Or I can get you home with some 100-mile-an-hour tape.
2. Protect your computer
Without wrapping it in thin rubber, I assume? While doing it using your choice of my recommended tool cost/performance solutions, I can why explain worms and trojans are more dangerous than viruses, why Microsoft should be known as the Buffer Overrun birthing grounds, and how WinAntiVirusPro self-replicates to defeat Norton and McAfee, but falls to Kaspersky in one patch.
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized
If they mean how to right a capsized canoe or sailboat, I can do that. If they mean uprighting some boater's feet that happen to be sticking out of the water, I'm not sure righting him is needed so much as sobering him up.
4. Frame a wall
Does digging the footings, laying the foundation, plumbing, wiring, framing, roofing, and finishing our house with my father count? I was just weekend help, but I still know how to inset the windbrace in every wall, which a lot of people that know what "24 inch center" means have never heard of doing.
5. Retouch digital photos
I only know how to do this with the old manual blur/sharpen/etc stuff in Paint Shop Pro. I don't know how to use the "one-button fix" tools that are so popular these days.
6. Back up a trailer
I used to blind-side 50 foot trailers into 10 foot wide slots with a 55 foot approach area (yeah, that means I had to come in sideways, and whip the front end out 40 feet while sticking the backend in the slot blindly). I still have my CDL with A classification. So, I can legally drive anything with rubber as long as there are no hazmat certs or bus certs required.
7. Build a campfire
One match in a steady drizzle without fluids. Proved it repeatedly last summer during a week long trip with no amenities but water.
8. Fix a dead outlet
I've already covered this, but I have pulled wire through existing walls without gutting them and added circuits to my box without killing anyone. I did ask for help to wire up 220v. In my experience, asking for help when you need it should be counted as a manly point, too, but I don't think that will ever fly. Maybe I should also mention that I've worked 440v 3-phase electricity hot 1 inch away while a diesel generator mechanic. A year of that was enough, and went back to working on trucks.
9. Navigate with a map and compass
Through two trips at the National Training Center desert at night and in daylight. I can still get you where you're going with the stars alone, given sufficient motivation. I got pretty badly lost my first night, but I got us all into our beds after a couple extra hours and never turned too soon again.
10. Use a torque wrench
Well, they're on loan.
11. Sharpen a knife
You'll think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I was too embarassed to ask for a razor, and my parents were too ... something ... to admit that I needed one, and I was being laughed at for the fuzz. There was only one answer. So, for the first two years of my shaving career I shaved with my pocketknife. Give me any stone, and I'll give you a blade with which you can strip your face - even if it's not the closest, most comfortable shave you'll ever have.
12. Perform CPR
I did not have to actually perform the 15/2 exercise, but while out in the desert I did correctly diagnose my motor sergeant's congestive heart failure and get him to medical attention without him ever knowing anything was wrong. I figured if I told him he was having a heart attack, he'd have a heart attack, so I quietly came up with one excuse after another to get him back to the unit medics and called the shot correctly. I've had all the classes, including knowing that they no longer recommend the rescue breathing.
13. Fillet a fish
Why would anyone do this to a perfectly good knife? Still, I have dressed just enough fish with someone else's knives to prove I can. Namely, I dressed out several hundred grunnion(?) running out at the beach one night for smoking. Fillet, though? Nope. They've got me there. Ain't gonna fillet no water-breathers.
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
I've maneuvered a street motorcycle on pavement out of a two-wheel skid (among other, less-interesting types). I also laid the bike down three times, but only once showing off for a chick. Car's are child's play. I've driven for blocks without ever letting car come back out of a skid. My son has gotten to the point of saying, "You know, this NEVER happens when I ride with my sister or mother." Last time, it was because I was in a little bit of a hurry in the rain and dished the rear end out coming off the freeway. That could happen to anyone, of course. The thing that rattled him was that I was paying no attention when it happened, and my immediate, instinctive reaction on feeling the fishtail was to floor the gas. It was, of course, the right reaction but not a lot of people do it. FTR, it works in bobtail tractors, too. I got stuck 4 times the first weekend I drove in snow, and never have been stuck again.
15. Get a car unstuck
Well, here we are revisiting previous points again. I've "unstuck" Hummers (military version, not the civilian toys), Deuce and halfs, and a 10 ton+ Goer using nothing but a rope. Yeah, I can get my rig out of anything it can be gotten out of.
16. Back up data
Some people think this is too easy, but do you want it backed up to tape, disk, USB, SAN, NAS, or optical WORM? Do you want it backed on or off schedule? Full backups or deltas only? Error reporting? Or do you really want RAID striping and redundancy or maybe high availability clustering? Are you talking about disaster recovery or business continuity with failover? People who think this is easy just aren't thinking hard enough.
17. Paint a room
Presumably they want the drywall mudwork finished and the sheetrock taped, the surface primed, and the fixtures removed as opposed to just slapping on some paint. I can go either way.
18. Mix concrete
I didn't really mix the concrete for our house, I just helped pour it. But, I mixed the concrete to rebuild my front steps when they crumbled under the Columbus freeze/thaw cycle. I learned a couple things in the process, but don't remember what they were now. I guess I'll have to learn those lessons all over again when the next opportunity comes around.
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
Hmmmm. I can armorer strip an m-16 and field-strip an m-60 machine gun, and clean both to IG standards. I wonder if that counts? Because all I own is a muzzle-loading rifle, a lever-action rifle, two revolvers, one semi-auto pistol and one cap and ball pistol. All but the semi-auto pistol were inherited (no fetish here) but I grew up shooting and probably always will enjoy it, even if I don't live in a place where it is cheap any more. I qualified expert marksman with an uncorrected astigmatism in my shooting eye. I will always wonder whether I would have qualified for the base shooting team had I known there were not really *supposed* to be 2 front sights to aim with.
20. Change oil and filter
If I'm nervous, I'll cut open the filter and read it like a CSI to tell whether my engine really has anything serious going wrong inside it.
21. Hook up an HDTV
Wouldn't know where to start, except by reading the manual. I'm probably going to use the mandated conversion to HD as my excuse to fall off the television landscape entirely.
22. Bleed brakes
Lot's of car stuff in this list. Anyone can bleed brakes with a partner. I can bleed them alone with a stick or with a pressure or vacuum bleeder. I'd have to read the procedure on any antilock brakes, but most people don't even know the procedures can be very different.
23. Paddle a canoe
Hehehe. For amusement, I have been known to drift down a lake in a 25+ mile-per-hour blow, and spend the next half-hour paddling back. If your nose drifts more than 5 degrees to the left or right, the wind will catch it and throw you around facing the wrong direction again. By the time you muscle your way back around, and get a good head of steam built up again you've lost 50 yards. River canoeing is a lot more exciting, of course, and I've done both. The J stroke is the only one I can call by name.
24. Fix a bike flat
Yeah. And car flats and truck flats, too. Though getting the split-rim apart on a truck tire has to be one of the most physical jobs around. Inflating a split rim after fixing it can actually be death-defying, too. But in a pinch, I know how to re-inflate a truck tire using ether and a match. I've never done it, and I'd hide behind a concrete wall if I did, but I know how.
25. Extend your wireless network
I assume they mean buying a repeater. This makes you a man? If they mean anything more interesting than that, then I fail in this criterion. More interesting would be to ask how many men know which wireless security protocol to use, and where to set up the password so your neighbors can't sniff out everything you're browsing or use your connection for free.
---
So, as long as being a man does not involve fish or TV, I can keep up with most of them according to Popular Mechanics. But I'd like to fire back.
For starters, Robert Heinlein had a MUCH better list of things a man should be able to do. I'd like to see how many of their macho men can keep up with this list.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Heinlein was a sinner's sinner, but he was a man's man, too. He'd make my shameless bragging above look like amateur hour, and I'm cool with that. He impressed me because he knew everything that mattered was warm and tender. If a man doesn't know that core fact, he's just a paper man - even if he can bench press his car.
Looking beyond even Heinlein's man, the warmest, tenderest, most precious thing on earth is the bride of our Lord. A brother in the Lord should also be able to:
Comfort the broken hearted
Resist sin
Mortify his own evil desires
Strengthen those who are tempted
Bless those who mistreat him
Submit himself quietly to the discipline of the Lord
Mourn with those who mourn
Laugh with those who laugh
Speak always with grace
May the Lord bless His sons and daughters
03 October, 2007
Courtesy
Talking to my boy again. I love it when they head out into the world to teach it how it should really work.
Today's lesson was courtesy.
He said, "You know, Dad, how you always say courtesy is critical? Yeah, well, you're right."
That was music to my aging ears, of course, but beyond that he made some very solid observations. The chief was that no man under 40 will make eye contact with him or otherwise acknowledge him beyond whatever is necessary to complete the purchase. For those of you who missed my last wondering post, he is running a register at Target. The upshot is that he spends several hours of each day being bored for money.
(Things can be a lot worse than IT work. :-)
I have always said courtesy is the lubricant of civilization, keeping us from rubbing each other to nubs. Now, he loves 60 year old men coming up to his register, because they will engage him a little bit. They will talk to him and break the monotony of an 8 hour register day out of simple courtesy, and he suddenly appreciates it.
He was kind enough to tell me that I'm just twenty years more courteous than my age and that was pretty cool.
Then I gave him a new thought.
Those same young men who will not engage him in any way engage EVERY young female register worker.
Yeah.
Wow.
So, no man under the age of 40 who speaks to a young lady is doing it for courtesy's sake. This was a new way of looking at the world for him, and a very sobering one.
Our lack of courtesy is one of my mainest gripes. (Air travel seems to stir up my crotchety side. Sorry.) I get irked at our mailman, because he speaks to me with iPod earbuds going. He's just mouthing words to me that even he cannot hear. I'm tempted to blather inanity back to him, but I would be too embarassed to be caught being so discourteous.
So going back to the way younger men seem to treat women.
I offered to carry a lady's bag up the stairs from the plane today. She looked at me, grabbed her bag, and started up the stairs. Then she felt so bad that she flattered me the whole way up. These little scenes are all so complex! And they shouldn't be. :-(
All healthy social interaction requires a safe foundation of courtesy, or the simplest interaction threatens to be de facto sexual approach. It was hard enough to strike up a conversation with a woman twenty years ago, but now that nobody expects simple courtesy every conversation might likely be deeper exploration. So I guess it's simple caution, as a lady, to assume every younger man making conversation with you is on the hunt.
A culture without courtesy worries me.
Today's lesson was courtesy.
He said, "You know, Dad, how you always say courtesy is critical? Yeah, well, you're right."
That was music to my aging ears, of course, but beyond that he made some very solid observations. The chief was that no man under 40 will make eye contact with him or otherwise acknowledge him beyond whatever is necessary to complete the purchase. For those of you who missed my last wondering post, he is running a register at Target. The upshot is that he spends several hours of each day being bored for money.
(Things can be a lot worse than IT work. :-)
I have always said courtesy is the lubricant of civilization, keeping us from rubbing each other to nubs. Now, he loves 60 year old men coming up to his register, because they will engage him a little bit. They will talk to him and break the monotony of an 8 hour register day out of simple courtesy, and he suddenly appreciates it.
He was kind enough to tell me that I'm just twenty years more courteous than my age and that was pretty cool.
Then I gave him a new thought.
Those same young men who will not engage him in any way engage EVERY young female register worker.
Yeah.
Wow.
So, no man under the age of 40 who speaks to a young lady is doing it for courtesy's sake. This was a new way of looking at the world for him, and a very sobering one.
Our lack of courtesy is one of my mainest gripes. (Air travel seems to stir up my crotchety side. Sorry.) I get irked at our mailman, because he speaks to me with iPod earbuds going. He's just mouthing words to me that even he cannot hear. I'm tempted to blather inanity back to him, but I would be too embarassed to be caught being so discourteous.
So going back to the way younger men seem to treat women.
I offered to carry a lady's bag up the stairs from the plane today. She looked at me, grabbed her bag, and started up the stairs. Then she felt so bad that she flattered me the whole way up. These little scenes are all so complex! And they shouldn't be. :-(
All healthy social interaction requires a safe foundation of courtesy, or the simplest interaction threatens to be de facto sexual approach. It was hard enough to strike up a conversation with a woman twenty years ago, but now that nobody expects simple courtesy every conversation might likely be deeper exploration. So I guess it's simple caution, as a lady, to assume every younger man making conversation with you is on the hunt.
A culture without courtesy worries me.
Ecumenical Egalitarian Exclusionary Ethics
Yeah, my favorite part is picking the title. I figure I'm the only one who gets my joke sometimes, but when I don't see your distressed faces I can blithely assume everyone enjoys 18 syllable alliterations.
But this particular title is not a joke.
I am a subscriber to Touchstone Magazine. It's an ecumenical publication (meaning they want to bring all Christians together under one big tent) that seems to be primarily Roman Catholic in tone, financing and authorship. I read a lot in it by the different protestant denominations, and a good bit by orthodox clergy, but it still jolts my ear to hear the occasional Catholicism spoken like that good-ol' religion.
As I have read the mag, I have found about 30% of the articles are challenging and profitable (and yes, the Catholics are doing a good job, too), 10% of the articles are misguided, and the remaining 60% are the usual fluff. I mostly keep the subscription to keep my finger on several pulses at once, and it works well for me that way.
(Some day remind me to comment on a pair of articles they wrote concurrently on Anorexia Nervosa if you're interested - WOW stuff.)
There is one subject on which they regularly offend me, and I mean regularly and I mean offend. The world's ecuminicists all agree together that the only group they can bash as one are egalitarians (those who hold that women are often called by God to minister the gospel, and should be allowed to do so). People who agree to respect each other's opinions about 1) the elevation of the virgin Mary to veneration, 2) whether the Lord's Supper is the real body and blood of Christ (about which subject hundreds chose to die at the stake scant centuries ago), and 3) whether salvation can be found within each others' respective churches AT ALL have - [get this] - united in disdain for anyone who shows the slightest sympathy to the possibility that a woman might not pollute a pulpit if she spoke truth from behind it.
(I'm sorry if you had to read that sentence more than once to follow it. It takes a sentence like that for me to even begin to nibble at the edge of how truly irked I am.)
But I have said nothing until now, because I might be a little thin skinned on the subject. I happen to suspect an anti-egalitarian under every frock, so I gave them the benefit of my silence, if not my doubt.
Allow me to quote a paragraph from an actually quite nice lead editorial of the October 2007 issue (I looked for a link, but they only displayed one article. I will comment on that soon, and much more favorably.):
We draw a firm line between us and the skeptics, modernists, liberals, relativists, and others whose adherence to their own traditions is partial or corrupt, and a thin and flexible line between us and those conservative believers who accept some apparently worldly ideology opposed to the shared Christian heritage, egalitarianism being the most obvious example. Hence our ability to draw together people who disagree about whether infants can be baptized but our mutual decision to leave outside the circle (if often just outside the circle) those who declare that women can be ordained.
This paragraph is more irenic than most, but peace-loving though it may be it simply makes explicit the mutual decision of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox editors of this ecumenical effort to exclude those who hold with firm conviction that the bible requires women to preach the good news when so called.
And that brings me to my fourth E, Ethics. (My sole, lonely two syllable E.) I should not be surprised to find ecumenicists pandering like this - they need to beat up on someone after all, or they might not feel like a religious organization at all. And beating up on girls has been a politically safe move for millenia, so why not continue it in this fine example of their "ability to draw together people who disagree about" all manner of less important matters - like how people are brought to know God.
I cast shame on Touchstone Mag for taking pride in the ethics of heaping abuse on the abused in order to fudge - I mean forge - unity.
But this particular title is not a joke.
I am a subscriber to Touchstone Magazine. It's an ecumenical publication (meaning they want to bring all Christians together under one big tent) that seems to be primarily Roman Catholic in tone, financing and authorship. I read a lot in it by the different protestant denominations, and a good bit by orthodox clergy, but it still jolts my ear to hear the occasional Catholicism spoken like that good-ol' religion.
As I have read the mag, I have found about 30% of the articles are challenging and profitable (and yes, the Catholics are doing a good job, too), 10% of the articles are misguided, and the remaining 60% are the usual fluff. I mostly keep the subscription to keep my finger on several pulses at once, and it works well for me that way.
(Some day remind me to comment on a pair of articles they wrote concurrently on Anorexia Nervosa if you're interested - WOW stuff.)
There is one subject on which they regularly offend me, and I mean regularly and I mean offend. The world's ecuminicists all agree together that the only group they can bash as one are egalitarians (those who hold that women are often called by God to minister the gospel, and should be allowed to do so). People who agree to respect each other's opinions about 1) the elevation of the virgin Mary to veneration, 2) whether the Lord's Supper is the real body and blood of Christ (about which subject hundreds chose to die at the stake scant centuries ago), and 3) whether salvation can be found within each others' respective churches AT ALL have - [get this] - united in disdain for anyone who shows the slightest sympathy to the possibility that a woman might not pollute a pulpit if she spoke truth from behind it.
(I'm sorry if you had to read that sentence more than once to follow it. It takes a sentence like that for me to even begin to nibble at the edge of how truly irked I am.)
But I have said nothing until now, because I might be a little thin skinned on the subject. I happen to suspect an anti-egalitarian under every frock, so I gave them the benefit of my silence, if not my doubt.
Allow me to quote a paragraph from an actually quite nice lead editorial of the October 2007 issue (I looked for a link, but they only displayed one article. I will comment on that soon, and much more favorably.):
We draw a firm line between us and the skeptics, modernists, liberals, relativists, and others whose adherence to their own traditions is partial or corrupt, and a thin and flexible line between us and those conservative believers who accept some apparently worldly ideology opposed to the shared Christian heritage, egalitarianism being the most obvious example. Hence our ability to draw together people who disagree about whether infants can be baptized but our mutual decision to leave outside the circle (if often just outside the circle) those who declare that women can be ordained.
This paragraph is more irenic than most, but peace-loving though it may be it simply makes explicit the mutual decision of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox editors of this ecumenical effort to exclude those who hold with firm conviction that the bible requires women to preach the good news when so called.
And that brings me to my fourth E, Ethics. (My sole, lonely two syllable E.) I should not be surprised to find ecumenicists pandering like this - they need to beat up on someone after all, or they might not feel like a religious organization at all. And beating up on girls has been a politically safe move for millenia, so why not continue it in this fine example of their "ability to draw together people who disagree about" all manner of less important matters - like how people are brought to know God.
I cast shame on Touchstone Mag for taking pride in the ethics of heaping abuse on the abused in order to fudge - I mean forge - unity.
Chil'uns
I was in Boston for the last couple days learning all about passwords and how to keep them happily humming along quietly in the background. One does not want to think about passwords, and one definitely does not want the CIO to be thinking about them. It was a very good couple days that way, and I even met a couple fun people. All was good.
It was not until riding the last shuttle to my car that I wanted to strangle my first people. The parents of some poor, cute little munchkin were training him on how to sit on a bus. They figured he should sit with them, straight, and facing the center. All in all it was not a bad plan, but the child wanted to sit away from them, one his knees, facing the window. This was also not a bad plan. The problem, of course, was the little disagreement between the parents and the central authority of the family.
Eventually, the parents came to see the light, and the kid watched the scenery go by very happily.
Here's the deal. I think your kid is cute. Your kid is not bothering me. I could listen to children giggle, bicker, explore, query, and cry all day. It's all cute to me and I love being around children of all ages. The little newborn I sat beside on the way to Boston was darling (It never hurts to be reminded how endlessly fascinating pint-sized people find their mother's eyes). The grade school dynamo who whiled away two hours playing some probably very boring game on his mother's phone was a tarzanian wonder and a real charmer. This little blond winner was pretty fun to watch, too. Everything was wonderfully interesting to him.
It was his parents who were complete boors. Once you have clearly communicated your instructions to us (their son was not listening at all) a single time, we are done. We KNOW what you wish your son would do. Please quit telling us. Please.
Please.
It was not until riding the last shuttle to my car that I wanted to strangle my first people. The parents of some poor, cute little munchkin were training him on how to sit on a bus. They figured he should sit with them, straight, and facing the center. All in all it was not a bad plan, but the child wanted to sit away from them, one his knees, facing the window. This was also not a bad plan. The problem, of course, was the little disagreement between the parents and the central authority of the family.
Eventually, the parents came to see the light, and the kid watched the scenery go by very happily.
Here's the deal. I think your kid is cute. Your kid is not bothering me. I could listen to children giggle, bicker, explore, query, and cry all day. It's all cute to me and I love being around children of all ages. The little newborn I sat beside on the way to Boston was darling (It never hurts to be reminded how endlessly fascinating pint-sized people find their mother's eyes). The grade school dynamo who whiled away two hours playing some probably very boring game on his mother's phone was a tarzanian wonder and a real charmer. This little blond winner was pretty fun to watch, too. Everything was wonderfully interesting to him.
It was his parents who were complete boors. Once you have clearly communicated your instructions to us (their son was not listening at all) a single time, we are done. We KNOW what you wish your son would do. Please quit telling us. Please.
Please.
30 September, 2007
In Which I Wander Aimlessly and Really Say Very Little
My boy and I were talking. It was a nice night.
I got to talking about an older couple I saw pull into a video store, and how when they were born they might not even have had a television. Now they can waste their lives watching any movie they want at any time. (The thing that blew him away was that there was a time when to see a movie you HAD to catch it in the theater. If you missed its two week run, you might NEVER see it. He could hardly imagine what that was like.) So, we got to talking about the ancient of days, or maybe just the senior of days, I guess.
He is working at a major department store as a cashier, and he has been getting a chuckle out of learning that I'm almost the last person on earth who writes checks. Fewer than 2% of his customers write checks.
He says, "Do you know what a check means to me? It means an 'R.'"
He scores a G when he beats the time limit for the transaction, and an R when he fails. It is impossible to "make" the time limit when the customer chooses to write a check.
I laughed out loud to find out the main thing I mean to the average youth of today is guaranteed ... failure.
Not that I'm anachronistic or anything.
And I wear a fedora no less.
And take it off upon entering a building.
There's no hope for me.
The other chuckle came when he pointed out that native languages are dying at the rate of 2 per week, and the rate is accelerating. Now to me, that means that the end is near as we close back in upon the state of man that led to Babel. And I'm already leary of how the Internet is drawing us all so much closer together. Even as I sit here typing, I can't help but think, "No good will come of this."
If only I believed in the basic goodness of man, but I don't. I believe that if you let 6 billion people all communicate freely, they will just come up with some new way to exploit each other and a significant minority of them will find a way to justify their remorseless greed. I'm reading a little about the Irish troubles lately, and the degree of cruelty inflicted by man on man and woman is just crushing.
The expectation is that the last three languages left standing will be English, Mandarin and Spanish.
I chuckled when it occured to me that our very last language should be Manglish (the last -ish is the Spanish.)
This is not nearly Milliworthy, but I had to tell someone about the checks and the Manglish.
I got to talking about an older couple I saw pull into a video store, and how when they were born they might not even have had a television. Now they can waste their lives watching any movie they want at any time. (The thing that blew him away was that there was a time when to see a movie you HAD to catch it in the theater. If you missed its two week run, you might NEVER see it. He could hardly imagine what that was like.) So, we got to talking about the ancient of days, or maybe just the senior of days, I guess.
He is working at a major department store as a cashier, and he has been getting a chuckle out of learning that I'm almost the last person on earth who writes checks. Fewer than 2% of his customers write checks.
He says, "Do you know what a check means to me? It means an 'R.'"
He scores a G when he beats the time limit for the transaction, and an R when he fails. It is impossible to "make" the time limit when the customer chooses to write a check.
I laughed out loud to find out the main thing I mean to the average youth of today is guaranteed ... failure.
Not that I'm anachronistic or anything.
And I wear a fedora no less.
And take it off upon entering a building.
There's no hope for me.
The other chuckle came when he pointed out that native languages are dying at the rate of 2 per week, and the rate is accelerating. Now to me, that means that the end is near as we close back in upon the state of man that led to Babel. And I'm already leary of how the Internet is drawing us all so much closer together. Even as I sit here typing, I can't help but think, "No good will come of this."
If only I believed in the basic goodness of man, but I don't. I believe that if you let 6 billion people all communicate freely, they will just come up with some new way to exploit each other and a significant minority of them will find a way to justify their remorseless greed. I'm reading a little about the Irish troubles lately, and the degree of cruelty inflicted by man on man and woman is just crushing.
The expectation is that the last three languages left standing will be English, Mandarin and Spanish.
I chuckled when it occured to me that our very last language should be Manglish (the last -ish is the Spanish.)
This is not nearly Milliworthy, but I had to tell someone about the checks and the Manglish.
28 September, 2007
A Challenge to the Usual Evangelistic Message
What does this passage mean to the usual evangelistic message?
Ezekiel 18:20-22
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.
Specifically, in light of this common evangelistic threat?
If you’ve sinned, even once, because of whom you’ve sinned against you deserve hell.
Ezekiel 18:20-22
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.
Specifically, in light of this common evangelistic threat?
If you’ve sinned, even once, because of whom you’ve sinned against you deserve hell.
22 September, 2007
Is Laughter a Blessing?
None of you knows me. Not really.
You've not seen me laugh my way through a 2 hour bible study - whether I'm teaching, the pastor's teaching, or no one's teaching. You don't know my reputation as a class clown. I didn't either until a couple nights ago, when the group had a good laugh at me and my bible study stand up routine. So it will seem normal to you that I'm against most laughter, while it might seem odd if you knew me.
The only humor I can ever remember blogging is my Green Pants story, and I'm not sure that caused anyone any side-pain. I tried humor in email years ago, and it never, ever worked predictably. My humor is dry enough without taking away all non-verbal clues. So, to the best of my ability, I'm just not funny out here at all. (Tari knows of once when I flat-out mocked a troll, but I don't know of any other time I risked hurting someone's feelings for a joke.)
I'm hyper-sensitive on the subject anyway. I doubt it will surprise anyone that I was the least popular kid in my class from 2nd to 12th grade. I pretty much deserved it. I was a thin-skinned, self-righteous prick, and I doubt I would have liked myself, but everyone else was quite sure. So, laughter was always what other people had at my expense.
So, when Lingamish posted, Whoa to You Who Laugh, he had my attention. I linked over from Better Bibles Blog, and was pretty much taken in. He is spoofing things I hold dear. Never a lot of fun. I didn't figure out he was poking fun until the last few lines of the post, which is of course how a good spoof should be. Fortunately, he told us to read the obits instead of the comics, and even I could tell he was parodying people like me. Upon finally "getting it" and seeing him confirm his humorous intent in his comments, it left me with that familar old "outside looking in" feeling that the years and my friends have taught me to hate.
Lingamish is a great guy, and his post is excellent and in great taste. I have no complaints for him, the way he's written, the method he employed, or even the indignity of having been "gotten" by his clever work. I didn't enjoy thinking I'd found someone who half agreed with me, only to discover I was pranked, but the victim isn't really supposed to enjoy the prank. They just laugh to show they're good sports. I guess I'm not one.
You can read my comment at his site, and tell me whether you think there's any truth in what I said.
Here's my opinion. I don't think it's funny unless everyone can laugh from the heart. There are mountains of wordplays and insights and victories in which everyone can rejoice and laugh. But those don't get the glory here in America. In America, someone has to be pranked. And all those allegedly funny movies are based upon someone being the fool. If there's a fool, it isn't funny. If there's a fool, you are laughing because you're glad it's happening to him and not you. Of course, it's pretty easy to hold that line when I've spent a lifetime as the fool.
In my family, I'm held in pretty low esteem because I don't think "Something About Mary" was funny. There are parts of the show where I laugh, but it's laughing against my heart not with it. All the laughter of that movie is of the type described by Heinlein in this not-famous-enough quote, "I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."
So, if you feel like a challenge today, take a little read of Lingamish's post and see whether you think it should be taken more seriously than he meant it. (And it's OK if you think it's just funny. :-)
You've not seen me laugh my way through a 2 hour bible study - whether I'm teaching, the pastor's teaching, or no one's teaching. You don't know my reputation as a class clown. I didn't either until a couple nights ago, when the group had a good laugh at me and my bible study stand up routine. So it will seem normal to you that I'm against most laughter, while it might seem odd if you knew me.
The only humor I can ever remember blogging is my Green Pants story, and I'm not sure that caused anyone any side-pain. I tried humor in email years ago, and it never, ever worked predictably. My humor is dry enough without taking away all non-verbal clues. So, to the best of my ability, I'm just not funny out here at all. (Tari knows of once when I flat-out mocked a troll, but I don't know of any other time I risked hurting someone's feelings for a joke.)
I'm hyper-sensitive on the subject anyway. I doubt it will surprise anyone that I was the least popular kid in my class from 2nd to 12th grade. I pretty much deserved it. I was a thin-skinned, self-righteous prick, and I doubt I would have liked myself, but everyone else was quite sure. So, laughter was always what other people had at my expense.
So, when Lingamish posted, Whoa to You Who Laugh, he had my attention. I linked over from Better Bibles Blog, and was pretty much taken in. He is spoofing things I hold dear. Never a lot of fun. I didn't figure out he was poking fun until the last few lines of the post, which is of course how a good spoof should be. Fortunately, he told us to read the obits instead of the comics, and even I could tell he was parodying people like me. Upon finally "getting it" and seeing him confirm his humorous intent in his comments, it left me with that familar old "outside looking in" feeling that the years and my friends have taught me to hate.
Lingamish is a great guy, and his post is excellent and in great taste. I have no complaints for him, the way he's written, the method he employed, or even the indignity of having been "gotten" by his clever work. I didn't enjoy thinking I'd found someone who half agreed with me, only to discover I was pranked, but the victim isn't really supposed to enjoy the prank. They just laugh to show they're good sports. I guess I'm not one.
You can read my comment at his site, and tell me whether you think there's any truth in what I said.
Here's my opinion. I don't think it's funny unless everyone can laugh from the heart. There are mountains of wordplays and insights and victories in which everyone can rejoice and laugh. But those don't get the glory here in America. In America, someone has to be pranked. And all those allegedly funny movies are based upon someone being the fool. If there's a fool, it isn't funny. If there's a fool, you are laughing because you're glad it's happening to him and not you. Of course, it's pretty easy to hold that line when I've spent a lifetime as the fool.
In my family, I'm held in pretty low esteem because I don't think "Something About Mary" was funny. There are parts of the show where I laugh, but it's laughing against my heart not with it. All the laughter of that movie is of the type described by Heinlein in this not-famous-enough quote, "I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."
So, if you feel like a challenge today, take a little read of Lingamish's post and see whether you think it should be taken more seriously than he meant it. (And it's OK if you think it's just funny. :-)
19 September, 2007
Quick Book Review: Why the Jews Rejected Jesus
I don't know exactly what I expected when I bought this book, but I bought it twice. I saw it, and thought it looked fascinating so I picked it up. When I got home, I found that I had already reached that same conclusion some time in the past, because I had another copy already waiting on me.
Any book I buy twice, I figure I'd better read.
It was a Jewish perspective on why the Jews universally reject Jesus, and I found it fascinating.
The author would kick my butt in a debate, and he would make me feel pretty good about myself while he was doing it. He is well read in Christianity and Judaism both. Most Jews frankly don't know any more about their faith than most Christians do about theirs. Not so with David Klinghoffer. He knows his subject deeply enough to impress me to no end. That doesn't prove much, but I learned a LOT reading his perspective on Judaism throughout all history.
Talmud, Midrash, Minim, and a few more terms really mean something to me now, and I appreciate that fact immensely. I now know why Rabbi's have a couple of completely unrelated names, too. Their names are 4 words long so often that the turn them into acronyms, and just say the acronym instead. Who knew. :-)
The first half of the book reads like a synagogue must have sounded a couple months after running Paul out of town when the nicest guy gets up to speak. Paul doesn't get a real chance to answer for himself in this book, and Klinghoffer compiles every single argument against him and presents it with kindness and certainty. I really have a completely different feel for what Paul's arguments with the Jews must have sounded like.
And his arguments are compelling.
I make no bones about it. If he could also convince me that Jesus did not rise from the dead I would convert.
He really pulls together the whole atheistic melange of arguments against Christ being God and combines them with a common sensical, context driven commentary on the old testament prophecies the new testament puts forward to prove Jesus is the Messiah. He paints a vivid picture of Jesus as a normal rabbi with super-normal insights, but who failed in His final deluded attempt to prove He was a Messiah. He shoots down every commonly used prophecy, including all those quoted in the new testament (since he considers it twisted history).
When he gets to Paul, he irenically eviscerates his cunning plan to gut Judaism while verbally protesting his good intentions.
The second half of the book is medeival history, and pretty interesting.
The last bit of the book is where he uncorks his secret. He believes that God is actually using Christianity to pave the way for the Jewish Messiah to return, and credits Judaism's rejection of Christ with the success of Christianity. He is, of course, correct about that last bit. So, Klinghoffer wants to see an ever warming union between Christianity and Judaism as we move closer to seeing the truth of what Messiah ought to be.
I recommend this book to people who want to really feel the passion and see the reason of the Jewish rejection of Christ. It was an easy read except for the objectively, even kindly, rendered insults to our Lord. Be warned, though, this book could convert you.
Any book I buy twice, I figure I'd better read.
It was a Jewish perspective on why the Jews universally reject Jesus, and I found it fascinating.
The author would kick my butt in a debate, and he would make me feel pretty good about myself while he was doing it. He is well read in Christianity and Judaism both. Most Jews frankly don't know any more about their faith than most Christians do about theirs. Not so with David Klinghoffer. He knows his subject deeply enough to impress me to no end. That doesn't prove much, but I learned a LOT reading his perspective on Judaism throughout all history.
Talmud, Midrash, Minim, and a few more terms really mean something to me now, and I appreciate that fact immensely. I now know why Rabbi's have a couple of completely unrelated names, too. Their names are 4 words long so often that the turn them into acronyms, and just say the acronym instead. Who knew. :-)
The first half of the book reads like a synagogue must have sounded a couple months after running Paul out of town when the nicest guy gets up to speak. Paul doesn't get a real chance to answer for himself in this book, and Klinghoffer compiles every single argument against him and presents it with kindness and certainty. I really have a completely different feel for what Paul's arguments with the Jews must have sounded like.
And his arguments are compelling.
I make no bones about it. If he could also convince me that Jesus did not rise from the dead I would convert.
He really pulls together the whole atheistic melange of arguments against Christ being God and combines them with a common sensical, context driven commentary on the old testament prophecies the new testament puts forward to prove Jesus is the Messiah. He paints a vivid picture of Jesus as a normal rabbi with super-normal insights, but who failed in His final deluded attempt to prove He was a Messiah. He shoots down every commonly used prophecy, including all those quoted in the new testament (since he considers it twisted history).
When he gets to Paul, he irenically eviscerates his cunning plan to gut Judaism while verbally protesting his good intentions.
The second half of the book is medeival history, and pretty interesting.
The last bit of the book is where he uncorks his secret. He believes that God is actually using Christianity to pave the way for the Jewish Messiah to return, and credits Judaism's rejection of Christ with the success of Christianity. He is, of course, correct about that last bit. So, Klinghoffer wants to see an ever warming union between Christianity and Judaism as we move closer to seeing the truth of what Messiah ought to be.
I recommend this book to people who want to really feel the passion and see the reason of the Jewish rejection of Christ. It was an easy read except for the objectively, even kindly, rendered insults to our Lord. Be warned, though, this book could convert you.
Are You As Smart As A Harvard Student?
Maybe you wouldn't have to be too impressed if you were.
The average college freshman fails this test of civic literacy. Unfortunately, so does the average college senior. The most telling fact of this whole experiment is how little better students did with 3 years of learning under their belts. Harvard seniors did best, scoring an average of D+ on the test.
There are 60 questions, and I found them quite challenging. I scored an 85%, missing 9 questions in all (detail supplied because it's not a test of math.) You can miss 25 questions and still be doing better than most college seniors.
Enjoy (if this is your kind of thing.)
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./resources/quiz.aspx
HT: The Kruse Kronicle
To see all the results and guess at your own interpretations of what they mean, visit here:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./report/tables.html
The average college freshman fails this test of civic literacy. Unfortunately, so does the average college senior. The most telling fact of this whole experiment is how little better students did with 3 years of learning under their belts. Harvard seniors did best, scoring an average of D+ on the test.
There are 60 questions, and I found them quite challenging. I scored an 85%, missing 9 questions in all (detail supplied because it's not a test of math.) You can miss 25 questions and still be doing better than most college seniors.
Enjoy (if this is your kind of thing.)
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./resources/quiz.aspx
HT: The Kruse Kronicle
To see all the results and guess at your own interpretations of what they mean, visit here:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org./report/tables.html
18 September, 2007
Biblical Monarchy - Protestants Unite
Suzanne hits ANOTHER one out of the park regarding the foolishness of the modern Christian interpretation of male headship.
Council for Biblical Hierarchy
Enjoy.
Council for Biblical Hierarchy
Enjoy.
14 September, 2007
What's "Alive"
I pass an abortion clinic on the way home every day. They have a bunch of carefully worded no trespassing signs around, including ones that make it very clear standing in their parking lot is a no-no unless you're a patient. And every couple months there is a bevy of activists hanging around with unpleasant handbill and signs.
It's kind of hard to miss.
I don't think a lot about it. I stand convinced that abortion is a violation of God's gift to man, but abortion's been around for a long, long time and I don't see Paul or Christ spending a lot of time on it. Your mileage may vary, and I stand with brothers and sisters who stand against abortion, just not for very long. The church is in much worse shape than reproductive sins in my mind.
But as I drove by there was a young unisex person leaving the building and locking up. Surrounding (let's say) her were 4 or 5 children of various ages, and it was hard not to notice the incongruity. These children were skipping and laughing out of a place they might not have survived had they been there barely a handful of years earlier.
It was shocking.
The question that came to mind for a young lady considering "the procedure" was, "What if it's alive?" I mean my arm is living, but it's not alive. If you cut my arm off, you hurt me but you don't hurt it. It cannot hurt. Only I can hurt, because I am alive. My arm won't fight to stay alive after it's been disconnected from me.
What if the viable tissue mass ejected in the procedure is alive? Like those babies laughing and skipping are alive?
Could you sign the papers then?
It's kind of hard to miss.
I don't think a lot about it. I stand convinced that abortion is a violation of God's gift to man, but abortion's been around for a long, long time and I don't see Paul or Christ spending a lot of time on it. Your mileage may vary, and I stand with brothers and sisters who stand against abortion, just not for very long. The church is in much worse shape than reproductive sins in my mind.
But as I drove by there was a young unisex person leaving the building and locking up. Surrounding (let's say) her were 4 or 5 children of various ages, and it was hard not to notice the incongruity. These children were skipping and laughing out of a place they might not have survived had they been there barely a handful of years earlier.
It was shocking.
The question that came to mind for a young lady considering "the procedure" was, "What if it's alive?" I mean my arm is living, but it's not alive. If you cut my arm off, you hurt me but you don't hurt it. It cannot hurt. Only I can hurt, because I am alive. My arm won't fight to stay alive after it's been disconnected from me.
What if the viable tissue mass ejected in the procedure is alive? Like those babies laughing and skipping are alive?
Could you sign the papers then?
10 September, 2007
What Is Love?
I finished watching Federer dodge bullets and come out a straight set winner, and left for a walk last night. It had been raining all day, and the air could not have been much heavier.
As always, I walked down to the tennis courts first. It's where I always go when I'm thinky, and I was that and a little bit last night. It was kind of silly to walk down there, since my knee is still suffering some tendonitis and I had on bad shoes, no knee brace and no rackets, but that's never stopped me before.
Yep, there was a threesome of cunning codgers there, all of whom I know pretty well.
So in bad shoes, with a bad knee, a borrowed aluminum racket, and strokes that I KNEW were going to give me trouble, I got out on the court.
How do people say "no" to anything, anyway?
I was right. My strokes were appalling. I just finished a tennis camp where every one of them was reworked completely, and I'm still trying to settle them in. With match pressure on me, and no warmup, I was hitting awfully.
We won 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
I can't help it. Love makes a man do silly things.
As always, I walked down to the tennis courts first. It's where I always go when I'm thinky, and I was that and a little bit last night. It was kind of silly to walk down there, since my knee is still suffering some tendonitis and I had on bad shoes, no knee brace and no rackets, but that's never stopped me before.
Yep, there was a threesome of cunning codgers there, all of whom I know pretty well.
So in bad shoes, with a bad knee, a borrowed aluminum racket, and strokes that I KNEW were going to give me trouble, I got out on the court.
How do people say "no" to anything, anyway?
I was right. My strokes were appalling. I just finished a tennis camp where every one of them was reworked completely, and I'm still trying to settle them in. With match pressure on me, and no warmup, I was hitting awfully.
We won 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
I can't help it. Love makes a man do silly things.
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