The Dassler Effect's April 2008 Archives

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April 30, 2008

A Little Like Lars; Only a Little

I was talking with a freind tonight how blogs can be funny things, and how sometimes people can oscillate between unhelpful openess and unhelpful holding back from the sharing of thoughts that really may help or encourage someone else if only they were shared. This seems to be a perpetual conversation I have with both fans and foes of blogging. In fact, I think these oscillations in openess often come to find their place in the blog life cycle (yes, I believe there is such a thing, but that will have to wait for another post), until the blogger finds his or her voice and settles down to do what they find is most helpful for them and their readers. Do people really think in these terms about their blogs? Probably not, but I sometimes do, and from what I have seen these dynamics do play out in a sort of trial and error process for many bloggers.

With regard to this blog, I have been told in the somewhat distance past that one friend stopped reading it, because she thought it too personal and revealing. That may be one of the reasons that it now features pictures more often than not, but not the only one. I really like to take pictures!

Perhaps blog entries should have ratings, like the rating system for video games. For example the rating for the following entry might look something like this:

In all seriousness, though, I really appreciated the movie Lars and the Real Girllargely because I could resonate with it on several levels. I could resonate with a movie about a dysfunctional man who buys a sex doll, you ask? Well, first of all, you should know that the role the sex part of the sex doll plays in the movie is very minimal and inconsequential. It is, indeed, a sex doll, but the setup is not generally exploited for cheap laughs, which would have only served to undermine the point and power of the parable of the movie. And, it is indeed a parable, an implausible, exaggerated story told to make a point, a sweet and moving point.

I did a recent Facebook status update saying that I have a cardigan very similar to Lars', which I do, but which I also meant metaphorically. In some ways, though thank the Lord not in such extreme ways, I can relate to the concept that deep wounding and pain can have long lasting effects that stretch into the future or ambush us when least expected. In fact, I believe we all can relate to this, on one level or another. For some the wounds seem deeper, though, and their (our) ability to bounce back seems to be not as robust as that of others, for whatever reasons, which may or may not be ever understood.

In the beautiful little movie The Spitfire Grill, Percy Talbot says, "�You suppose if a wound goes real deep, the healing of it can hurt almost as bad as what caused it?� When I first heard that quote, I thought "Wow." And, again, I think we can all relate, whether it be the healing of our emotional hurts or even the healing of our souls in discipleship as we recover from the self-inflicted wounds of sin. The cure may, indeed, need to be as painful as the wound caused by the sin, even if we do not bear the penalty for that sin ourselves if we are believers, as Eustace could well attest to as a result of his dedragoning.

Without giving out too many details, which would make the hypothetical rating I gave this blog post an accurate description, I also resonated with Lars and the Real Girl because Lars' past did involve the death of a parent, the extreme sorrow of the remaining parent, and subsequent stunting of his ability to deal with life and relationships well, a stunting characterized sometimes by paralyzing fear.

Another thing that I really appreciated about the movie was that though the reactions and altruism of the townspeople toward Lars are implausible, the love of Lars' sister-in-law for Lars and Lars deep concern for her, which he is unable to express, are not implausible. People can and do love one another like this. I loved how his sister-in-law deeply cared for him and loved him. I have received great care, too, from lovely sisters acquired through the marriage of my brothers :)

Nor is his relationship with his brother unrealistic. Perhaps the resolution that occurs, a confession of abandonment which is followed in very short order by forgiveness, is rather foreshortened compared to how the process generally works in real life, but brothers do talk with one another, come to understand one another, forgive one another, and learn to love one another better. And it is amazing to watch Lars' brother grow as a man before our very eyes. That is another characteristic of many movies that I am drawn toward; they make me want to be a better man.

Needless to say, I highly recommend the movie. I apologize for the slight spoilers. I do not think they spoiled too, too much, however. Finally, finally a brief note on one of the endorsement on the cover of the DVD. Maxim magazine writes "A whimsical, funny, moving film!" First, though the latter two adjectives do apply and especially the last one, I do not think I would call the movie "whimsical" exactly. OK, maybe a scene or two, but that is it. On a broader level, I do not think that Maxim magazine should be allowed to use the word "whimsical," in any case. It does not seem to be a word that fits well with the purposes and mindset of the magazine at large, a mindset which, sadly, I too fall into from time to time, a mindset which has nothing at all to do with the delightful, almost holy, quality of whimsy.

Oh, dang it! That last line might just have earned the rating.

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April 29, 2008

I Went Outside Today and Saw This Strange Substance...

...It was all liquidy and shiny and beautiful, spilling and dripping all over the flowers and trees and leaves.

Oh, yeah, right. Sunshine!

As a self-confessed photographic apostle of finding beauty in gloominess, somethimes it is good just to remember the cleaness, the joy, and the lightness of sunshine.

So, here are a few shots. Ok, so about half of them still have a fair bit of chiarascuro about them. Still, no apologies, dappled sunlight is lovely for all of that contrast.

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April 28, 2008

The Cathedrals, the Complete Set is....

...here.

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April 27, 2008

Three of The Cathedrals

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April 26, 2008

Reepicheep is on His Way

It might not really be Prince Caspian ;) but it looks pretty cool. Reeicheep here. The Prince is here (a rather silly accent, I'm afraid). Creatures, sets, more Reepicheep, more Caspian, and a Narnian raid on Miraz His Castle? Sigh. And in all this footage, at first hearing, I have not heard one piece of dialog which I recognized from the book :(

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Even the Softening Tool Can't Soften This

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Springtime Snow

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Sources and Source

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A Favorite Flower

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April 25, 2008

Slightly Stylized

So, all of the colors in this set are real, but like with my current blog banner of a dandelion flower in white flower petals, I have chosen to amp the colors and sharpen the contrast of these shots today.

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April 24, 2008

What a Difference a Day Makes

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Interview Time

If you are the praying sort, you might pray that I will know clearly the Lord's will in this process. 2pm CDT.

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Power Corrupts

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April 23, 2008

And a River Runs Through It

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But At Least One More of the Tulips

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And Here Come the Irises

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April 22, 2008

Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night...But Maybe Tulips

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Does Christian Rock Suck?

Here are several links that I was made aware of courtesy of Jeffrey Overstreet's blog. On this page, Daniel Radosh, a self-described secular Jew and humanist, has posted a debate that he had at a bar or something like with Mr. McCard who is described as someone who believes in God. The debate is fascinating.

Mr. McCard, in essence, defines both Christianity and rock music fairly rigidly and proceeds to make the case that Christian rock by definition must suck because it is incompatible with the ends of rock and roll. He defines Christianity as being basically ascetic and/or fundamentalistic and rock and roll as basically, pardon the crude quote, "coming from the crotch" and in essence designed to stimulate the passions nested therein. This is a good place to note that this debate has some sexually charged language that may be offensive to some of you. Mr. Radosh rightly argues that these are rather too narrow definitions of each, and that they were, in essence, the same arguments proposed by the fundamentalistic opponents of rock and roll in the 1950s and onward. He also comes up with some helpful categories for types of Christian music. One he labels "Separational," the other "Transformational," and I do not remember the third category but basically it is between the other two and might be considered "cross-over" territory, to borrow a buzz word from a Christian music debate of the 1980's.

I must say, Radosh is very surprising in many ways, in that he has fairly good bead on the pulse of some aspects of evangelical culture, though this perhaps makes his analysis of Christianity necessarily narrow. Though, to be fair, I do not believe that he is claiming to describe more than the Evangelical subculture. Mr. Radosh gets it right that Christianity need not be limited to an ascetic world view, but I believe gets it wrong by viewing this as simply an accomodationist posture to the world. From the Reformed world view everything in this world is a good, though human sin has warped it on some systemic levels and the world groans under this. And sin also conditions human culture, though not all aspects of human culture, as many of these glorify God and his good world.

Also, Mr. Radosh several times notes that he is describing Christianity phenonmenologically, i.e. that Christianity is what Christians practice, that Christian music is what Christian people listen to and like. I think that such a view, particularly regarding Christianity itself, is inadequate. I think this, well, because I am believer, and that belief is nested in the trust that Christianity is a revealed religion and we cannot simply make of it what we will. Nonetheless, I think Mr. Radosh is very perceptive. However, I wonder why he is so interested in evangelical Christianity, whether it is simply research interest, whether he wants to see how it does and does not accord with humanism, or whether he is simply "playing" in the postmodern sense? I do not know how he would answer these questions, but I suspect it might be a little of each.

I was really getting to like him and then he called John Piper an asshole. Once again pardon my French, as my mother would say.. I have not read any Piper and know I have some theological differences with him, but I wonder whether this assessment was because Piper did or said something personally to him or whether it is because Piper draws lines about truth and salvation which are not acceptable to him as a secular humanist or whether Piper simply did not cooperate in his program of studying Christianity. I don't know. Nonetheless, even though I think Mr. Radosh is very intelligent and intriguing, this remark was off-putting.

Finally, these questions have long and continue to be an interest of mine. Below are two links to previous articles in Catapult on the issue, though the first is more specifically about the topic. In brief though, I would like to divide Christians making music into two simple categories, and at a fundamental level one would not even have to be a Christian to contribute to each, though it would be sadly hypocritical if one contributed to the first category and did not believe.

The first category I would call Sacred music, and in this category I would place music, of whatever genre, whose express purpose and lyrical content is intended to bring people to participate in the worship of God. We might have debates about whether a particular song achieves these ends and what freedom we have to express praise with certain genres, but I think that is a pretty good working definition.

That is not to say that one cannot be moved in a spiritual sense by music that does not lyrically fit this category or even which is simply instrumental. One may indeed be moved worship God through listening to the lush, ethereal sound scapes of Sigur Ros. Or one may turn to God in either repentance or plea upon hearing brokenness expressed in a folk tune (though this song expressly mentions God).

Yet, I would still put music made by Chrisians that is not expressly sacred in the same category as Sigur Ros and Norah Jones, i.e. people making music either reflecting their world views or which they appreciate artistically. Thus, such a category would really not be a Christian music category at all. Instead, Christians would simply be excellent participants (or not, if they just suck musically) in whatever genre in which they are skilled. This would parallel Mr. Radosh's transformational category, but I would prefer not to call it a category at all. Though, fair enough, such Christians are being transformational, just as a Christian who is a painter, a plumbler, a neuro-surgeoun, a writer as a Christian can be excellent and, consequently, transformational, offering the world to God and God to the world.

I would encourage you to listen to the debate linked above and listen two the songs Mr. Radosh has chosen as the 10 best Christian rock songs. Here is description of why he chose these songs, with comments by readers following.

Here are my articles from catapult:
*Returning to the Why of Music
*Concerning the Sighting of Aliens in the Cornfields Near Bushnell, Illinois
Or The Way in Which Neil E. Das has an Ecclesiastical Epiphany in the Great Cornerstone Labyrinth

Finally, finally here is the classic from the father and iconoclast of Christian Rock himself, Mr. Larry Norman. In this version, Larry gets a little crazy in the middle, but it is worth listening to to hear his change of the chorus at the end. Here is a more polished version from Cornerstone 2001.

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April 21, 2008

Some Verticals From Saturday...

...with one converted horizontal shot on its edge (can you tell which one?) and one square one. Also, there is another one with the waterdrop as fisheye effect, which I was not specifically looking for on Saturday, but sure will be from now on. And might I suggest this as a soundtrack for this entry.

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Two of the Living for the One of the Dead

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April 20, 2008

The Price of Windows

This photo is in a new category for the blog, which are ideas toward the next photo show perhaps.

This blog features a fair number of pictures of the beauty of nature. This is one of its more difficult side. In God and Humanity the other day, Dr. Williams commented that we must never make peace with human death, as that was not how it was meant to be. A discussion ensued about whether animals died before the Fall or were predators and prey. Even if they were, however, Dr. Williams said that humans were not meant to die, and for me even pictures of animal death depict the tragedy of death. As an aside, regardless of whether animals died before the Fall or were eaten by one another, I believe the first few chapters of Genesis tell us that humans were not meant to eat animals before the Fall. I also think this is so because otherwise the sacrificial system would not make much sense, but perhaps more on that another time.

I do not intend to post pictures of dead animals on my blog for gratuitous reasons, but hopefully they depict the glory and the dignity of the animals even as they lament their death.

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April 19, 2008

From the Balcony

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And the Odometer Rolls Over

It is a somewhat of an arbitrarily chosen marker, as I have surely deleted many pictures that never made it off the camera and on to the hard drive, but some time in the very wee hours of this morning, my camera took its' 10,000th picture and began counting again. I spent the entire night at a lock-in for my church and took about 375 pictures, but despite being tired and needing to get home to sleep, I could not resist the day which was so perfect for photography (well at least of the sort I like to shoot), with its backgrounds of dark grey skies or dark wet earth or tree trunks, which nicely set off the beautiful colors of spring, which were made even more vivid today by the beads of moisture from the softly falling rain. Below are a couple of examples. I was going to only post horizontal shots today just for variety (even though they are smaller), but I cheated a bit on a couple of them. I might bring out some of the veritcals in the next day or two, as there are some pretty cool ones.

Oh, and another very exciting thing happened in my photographic life yesterday as my first external flash arrived in the mail. And, my goodness, it does make for ever so much nicer flash photographs, and I have not even really even begun to learn to use it well, though the evidence from last night makes me very excited to do so. And, then on the way home, another blessing. Driving by the Missouri Council of the Blind thrift store, I saw a tripod in the window. I circled back and found a tripod for $30 which was $15 today on 50% off day. And it is a really nice one, and will nicely replace my current one which is less than functional in some pretty significant ways. Needless to say I am ver blessed and excited.

Oh, and the lock-in was very cool and involved a trip to Coachlite Roller Rink, but that deserves a post of its own. In the meantime, I might have to check out Roll Bounce.

Finally, be sure to look closely at the water droplet in the picture below as it pretty much acting like a fish eye lens and creates a cool effect.

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April 18, 2008

Faith the Biped Dog

I have not heard what they are saying on this video as yet, but this dog is amazing. I am not nearly ready to get another one just yet, but I sure have been noticing dogs recently. They are great.

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April 16, 2008

From the Street

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April 14, 2008

Dog Dying, A Hopeful Sonnet

Looking at this picture with friends this weekend, reminded me just how much of a funny looking dog Bruno was. He was a lovely dog too, even if rather stubborn. I owe him a debt for love shown to me, for love shown to my father. "Love shown" makes it sound like a choice; dogs, likely, are hardwired to love, even if a bit needily. Still, nonetheless, the love is real, which is easily demonstrated by when it is spurned, and a dog sadly goes and lays down in a corner, ears down, with sad, sad eyes.

I have written about Bruno before on the blog here. The poem below continues some of the themes expressed in the first one. This is not the poem of Bruno's dying that I wanted to write, which involved echoes of Aslan on the Stone Table, but perhaps that will come later. This one is far from perfect, emphasized by a rather abrupt end. Perhaps, I will work out the kinks of this one some time and also do an Aslan one, in the mean time...

Dog Dying, a Hopeful Sonnet

Dear Bruno, I do not know the answers
Of how it might have been if that First Fruit
Remained unplucked. Would life have surged? The curse
Unheard, would, then, your namesake teeth be moot?
Indeed, would we have come to this sad place
At all? Me muzzling your weakened growl,
Lifting you to this table. Its small space
Bearing the weight of years, of love. A howl,
Like the long, plaintive howls you barked all night
To the pristine, cold moon, barks from from my soul,
Tinged with regret, which only comes with might,
To choose to love, then not. A dog gives all.
But when the New Sun rises in the East.
I'll be a true Master and you my Beast.

P.S. This sonnet was spurred along by reading the last chapter of The Last Battle by Lewis. It is evident that the man knew and loved dogs. And, oh the entire chapter just makes me ache with longing for heaven and the New Earth.

P.S.S. I cannot definitivelhy say at all that our pooches and other pets will, indeed, be there, though Lewis had a theory that they might be raised by virtue of our shared love and life with them, but it sure would be nice. There are going to be beasties there, right? Might as well start the population with our beasts.

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April 13, 2008

Early Sabbath Morning Beauty for Brother Adrian

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April 11, 2008

And Wears Man�s Smudge

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April 10, 2008

Flag on a Windy Night

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On the Balcony

Nathan planted some lovely flowers.

The quality of the rains reminds me a bit of the Monsoons, except they were eagerly anticipated, coming at end of hot, dusty summers. Nothing quite like the gentle thunder of a monsoon in the mountains. A bank of clouds pouring down a green, wet hillside. The raging torrent of muddy waters pouring down rocky, mossy gorges. Sweet tea made with powdered milk at home.

Hello, flower.

Hello, squirrel.

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April 4, 2008

Remember Martin...

...and the struggle for which he laid down his life.
*an amazing speech on the night before he died.
*an amazing tribute video. Song by Paul, David, Adam, and Larry.

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On Older Photo for a Languishing Blog

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