August 29, 2008

The Art of the Short, Short, Short Con ::: The Art of Being Taken In

Last night outside the pub after having said goodbye to the rest of our party, I was giving my friend Tanya a ride home. We walked down the street with the wind blowing wildly, the sky about to rain at any moment. Just as we were about to get in the car a lady a half a block down the street, who was closely followed by a man in a motorized wheelchair, yelled and asked me, "Sir, do you have a dollar bill I can have for four quarters?" I just happened to have a bunch of dollars to potentially do laundry some time this month (groan), and so reached for my wallet. She ran on ahead to us and made the transaction. Just as it was ending, and while the 4 quarters were still sitting stacked and heavy in my fingers, providing the satisfaction that a solid stack of coins is wont to provide, the man in the wheelchair rolled up and asked me, "Sir, do you have any spare change?" I was a bit at a loss as to what exactly to say to such blunt work at the con, so I just said, "Um, yeah, sure. Here you go." A moment later and we were in the car laughing at the blantant lack of subtly of it all, with the image of the pair moving down the street, once again together, in the rearview mirror. Who knows, it was late, it was getting ready to rain, they may have thought, "What the heck, let's give it a shot."

The rest of the ride home was a discussion on the con-people we have known in and around St. Louis, and I am sure if you live here you could add many other examples to a discussioin, which while often humorous, of course also has a rather serious side to it. What does one do, after all, when someone asks you for money, particularly if you are a sensitive (neurotic?) sort who gets overly worried about doing the right thing, particularly when the $1 you give to a panhandler is exactly 1/51st of the amount that you and 4 friends just spent at a bar). I imagine, though that a consideration of this question is equally important for our more hardnosed counterparts who perhaps sometimes too easily brush off such requests, based on any number of rationales, and rarely do anything all.

First of all, I am challenged and encouraged by the fact that people who I admire a great deal, who live and work with the poor, are sometimes quite hardnosed themselves with panhandlers. I am not saying that they are necessarily hardnosed all the time or are necessarily right when they are, but it is a healthy antidote to either my literalist Jesus-said-to-give-to-whomever-asks-you mentality or to my bleeding-heart tendencies.

One approach to take, particularly in light of last night's pub and panhandler proximity, might be that of St. C.S. "Jack" Lewis:

"Also memorable was Jack's 'enormous compassion and charity.' Douglas recalls a story where Jack and a friend were walking to a meeting one day when they were approached by a beggar. The beggar asked them for some spare change whereupon Jack gave him everything he had. Once the beggar had gone, his friend said, 'You shouldn't have given that man all that money Jack, he'll only spend it on drink.' Jack's reply - 'Well, if I'd kept it, I would have only spent it on drink.'"

Now as much as I love Jack Lewis, this would hardly be a practical approach much less a very wise and loving one in all circumstances. Still, perhaps it is a helpful story in understanding the relative expenses for the things we hold important vis a vis those who have far less. Going farther down that road, especially considering those in other countries, might even provie a further corrective, one, though, that can sometimes become unhelpful if we allow it to paralyze us or make us dour misers who rigidly ensure that we spend money on nothing that is frivilous, because of course that slippery slope goes down a long way. There will always be someone who has less than you, who lives a simpler lifestyle, and who has relatively far less, no matter how much we might choose to renounce. Of course, this is too often used as an easy out, but nonetheless there is some truth here.

I suppose with panhandlers, the best approach I have found is to try to take them at their word. If they say they are hungry, take them to a restaurant and buy them something to eat and sit with them, if you have the time, and have a chat. If they need clothes, give them some of yours, if you can manage it. If they need a ride, buy them a bus fare or give them a ride if you deem it safe. These are challenging things to do, because we are giving something away which we value a great deal, our time, along with some of our resources, but also because such an approach asks for us to connect and engage, when it is far easier just to see "problem folk" coming ahead and cross the street (guilty as charged) or say "No, I can't help you" and walk on (ditto) when "won't" might be a truer verb.

Engaging people, and doing it sincerely and not simply just to get them off your back, also affords the person the opportunity to act with integrity and dignity. If they are really scamming you and are not interested in anything but cash for whatever they want it for, then it will become apparent very quickly. If they are hungry and are willing to go have a meal with you, well then you sometimes get to have the sort of conversation evangelism seminars strain to provide you techniques to achieve. Of course, I believe, that if you are genuinely offering someone a meal, it should not have to be a quid pro quo for them having to have to listen to you give them a gospel outline. Treat people conversationally like you would want to be treated and see where it goes.

Now, of course, these are just some thoughts which barely scratch the surface. There are other questions to ask. Does one do these things even for the fixture on your block who seems, on some level at least, to be managing quite well? Are we ever responsible to do anything more for people? If so, what? How do we manage it? How much is that to interrupt our lives?

Well, a rather humorous story turned out into a bit of a serious blog post. I wonder what would have asked the woman what she need a whole dollar for instead of change or only given the man $0.50 back ;)

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August 26, 2008

Leakinesses

"Leakinesses," because there are several different types, even if Mr. Gates' Word will not permit my pluralizing of it (and yet it does permit "pluralizing"). Still, there are several different sorts. There is the sort of leakiness which the man in the boat experiences in Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's brilliant movie Good Will Hunting. The man in the boat is actually only in a painting in the movie, a painting painted by Will's psychologist, played by Robin Williams. Will analyses it like this, "Maybe you were in the middle of a storm, a big fuckin' storm-- the waves were crashing over the bow, the Goddamned mast was about to snap, and you were crying for the harbor. So you did what you had to do, to get out. Maybe you became a psychologist." Will is deflecting attention and being flip and very soon our attention is rested away to the amazing way in which the psychologist threatens Will for insulting his beloved, deceased wife, and yet I think Will's assessment of the painting and the use of the painting by the filmmakers itself is quite effective. In such situations, we feel desperate terror from the leakiness of our boats, the sheer inadequacy of our tiny vessels. The water slaps over the gunwales, seeps up darkly through the bottom of the boat, and we can begin to despair.

There is another sort of leakiness, though, too, a sort which may indeed occur concurrently with the first type in a sort of perfect storm, adding water to the pool in the bottom of the boat, but which may also happen in seemingly calm seas. This is the sort where the water leaks out and not in. And sometimes even up until the very moment before it begins to leak we are not aware that it will. Sometimes the leak is like a trickle; sometimes it is like a storm; sometimes it is like a force of nature, like water seeping up through the ground for days and days, and we don't know why. Talking to a friend the other day, I said I think it is kind of like osmosis, though really I think it is more like water finding its proper level, equalizing its pressure with the outside. And it is a powerful force. It will have out, either now or later.

Now, sometimes I think this all happens simply for very prosaic reasons. If you are very, very, very tired, your chances of becoming weepy are much higher, unless perhaps if you are an Army Ranger, and I bet even they get leaky from time to time. For some of us who struggle with depression it can be fairly common. It can serve as a sort of rain gauge, helping us know when things are off kilter. When the water reaches a certain level, say when you have gotten leaky at a random commercial on television, well it may be time to pay more attention and tweak a couple things. And, yes, I did include such weepiness from depression in the "prosaic" category. That is not to say it is always prosaic, but it can be when you have recognized that you are prone to it, when you know it is a factor, when you can say to yourself "Right, right. That's why that is happening." And that realization is one that needs constant re-realizing, but, nonetheless, can really help each time.

There are other times, though, the when the leakiness comes and stays, for a day, a week, a month, or more, and then it is anything but prosaic. In these times, there seems to be some long term equalizing process that is going on, some long term balancing of pressures, concentrations. My point here is not to sink some wells and figure out what causes these occurrences. There can be so, so many things that do, things that are long term or newly felt. I guess what I am really interested in is what do we do collectively when one of us is so afflicted? What responsibility do we have to one another? And, yes, particularly how does this work out for single people, who, by necessity or choice, have become very good at containment, at creating secret drains to hide the run-off?

When the leakiness does make itself evident, when the systems fail and it comes pouring out, it seems that many of us are simply afraid of getting wet, afraid of either squarely facing the potential of the same catastrophe in ourselves or the prospect of facing sadness again and again and again, sometimes day after day after day. I fear sometimes we have taken to heart too well, and wrongly, the adage to not feed codependence. We are, after all, a pop psychologically literate population, and we know how to spin those adages to our advantage, to, frankly, sometimes let ourselves off the hook, to sometimes validate our selfishness and fear. And so we walk away. I don't mean to discount the wisdom of truly not making folk dependent on one another, but I simply think that being on the fostering codependence end of the spectrum is generally not where most people are located.

I write this piece not really certain of the answers. I do believe that ultimately Proverbs 14:10 is true, at least, perhaps, until the coming of the New Earth (and then will we even remember sorrows?), that "Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy." And yet that is not to say that we are not called to be with each other in the experiencing of each of these contrasting emotions. We are exactly called to do just that by Paul in Romans. And, yes, sometimes that mourning may take a long and tedious while.

When the leakiness of external storms occurs for a friend, it is fairly clear what one must do, get in and help bail out the water. It may be harder to see what one can do with the second form of leakiness, but at the very least we might strive to be better observers, askers, and, yes, when necessary, people who stick around. Ultimateyl, it is God who collects our tears, but maybe, just maybe, some times, perhaps in some seasons oftentimes, we might be called to hold the bottle.

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July 23, 2008

The New "Dead Deer"

Even though the "official" title of this piece is "Fallen" or "Fall," the unofficial title is certainly "The Dead Deer," because that is what everybody calls it. This is a pretty polarizing piece actually. Either folk really like it, even if they still find the deer disturbing, or they cannot get past the disturbing aspect in order to see the beauty that still is retained in the deer, its glory as a creature, fallen though it be, and the beauty of its autumnal bower.

Well, I like this piece for all those reasons, and actually have been wanting to work on it a bit so as to make it a bit more stylized, and then hang it up in my house. I greatly regret that this was not taken with my latest camera, and, so, it is rather grainy when blown up. This is, indeed, part of the reason for stylizing it, to hide the graininess. And when I print out this piece (I have a gold frame already selected for it) I plan to add the finishing touch of getting some textured gold paint with flecks in it (kind of like zinc oxide for you nose, but gold) and guild the protruding ribs with it.

Weird? Perhaps, but what I want to convey is the the dying glory of the the beast and how it is a "glorious ruin," which, indeed, will be the name for the new piece and the term which Francis Schaeffer used to describe postFall human beings, because, in the final analysis, it is that event which this scene most evokes for me.

Without further rambling, here is "glorious ruin" (make sure to view it large).

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May 16, 2008

A Great Story

Stephanie Kilstein, who is featured in this article, goes to my church. I must add that I do not know Stephanie that well. So, I am glad to get to know her story a bit more through this article and to share it with you. Wow.

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April 22, 2008

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 7, 2008

Wow

I consistently have the feeling of coming to the great conversations late, whether they be literary or political (though I got a pretty good jump on the theological). Listen to this. Wow. It is so worth the 22 minutes.

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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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March 21, 2008

Unless a Grain of Wheat...

Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!"

Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again." The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

The crowd spoke up, "We have heard from the Law that the Christ will remain forever, so how can you say, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up'? Who is this 'Son of Man'?"

Then Jesus told them, "You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light." When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
_______________

It may be a little early to reflect on the beauty of resurrection, but in the darkness of Good Friday, remember the light is coming. As we reflect on the death of Christ tonight, may we realize that in that death we too die, our sins are put to death, our old human nature is put to death. And, just as surely, we will be raised to life with Christ, because of Resurrection Sunday. If we are Christians, we are new creations, now.

Even so, while we are on this earth looking forward to that final ressurection, in one sense a Christian's life is to be characterized by Good Friday every day of our lives. We are, after all, called to carry our cross daily, are we not, to die to ourselves. I forget that so, so, so easily. May we not on this Good Friday night.

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February 14, 2008

On St. Valentine's Day, A Heart for You, Aflame in Love for the World

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February 3, 2008

Memorial Altar Piece

I love the woodwork on the wall of the altar, particularly at the bottom where the carving begins out of the smooth wood.

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November 22, 2007

He has compassion on all he has made

1 I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.

2 Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.

3 Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.

4 One generation will commend your works to another;
they will tell of your mighty acts.

5 They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

6 They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
and I will proclaim your great deeds.

7 They will celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.

8 The LORD is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.

9 The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.

10 All you have made will praise you, O LORD;
your saints will extol you.

11 They will tell of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might,

12 so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
The LORD is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made.

14 The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.

15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.

16 You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.

18 The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them.

20 The LORD watches over all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.

21 My mouth will speak in praise of the LORD.
Let every creature praise his holy name
for ever and ever.
____________
145, of David

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October 17, 2007

Give Thanks for the Rain...

...for its inconvenience, that reminds us of us our creaturliness, as we scurry for cover

...for its abundance, that tops off our water tables, which are the envy of a thristy world

...for its cleansing, that washes body and soul, if we will but hold our breath and plunge into its coldness

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October 11, 2007

Only 74 Shopping Days Till Christmas

It's never too early to get that shopping started, particularly if the presents are going overseas. Might I commend to you this site (here's the print version of the same) and this one. Happy shopping.

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Living in the Tension

Even though my day has been incredibly busy and I have miles to go before I sleep. How does one conjugate "sleep" in Greek? My day was extraordinary enough, though, that I feel compelled to mark it with a blog post. It was full of many types of richnesses and contrarieties that created a tension which made me stand up and pay attention.

The first part of my day consisted of lectures on preaching which I was required to attend for my seminary studies. The phrase “required to attend,” though, belies the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the first sermon in worship this morning and the three additional lecture-sermons throughout the day. Immediately afterwards, I called my brother and told him how much that Stafford Carson reminded me of some of the visiting preachers that would come to preach to the missionary community in the mountains of Pakistan during the summers. It was like water to my soul. I am not entirely sure I can articulate it properly, but the combination of a thoroughly grace-centered message with a consideration of how preaching is to transform lives, yes, even to convict people of specific sin, to have the Holy Spirit do surgery in their hearts was invigorating, and to me that, in and of itself, was instructive. Why do I feel such a lack of such preaching and emphases in my sense of the American church?

The rest of the day was a rich meal of learning from I Thessalonians 2 and 3 and Luke 24 how to preach messages that transform through the power of the Holy Spirit, preached by preacher/pastors who have let the Word and Spirit transform their hearts and lives, who work hard at preparing sermons and caring for their congregations and families. It was an amazing combination of wisdom about preaching and pastoring, which, well, obviously left a mark on me.

The most amazing moment of the day for me, though, was when a student asked Rev. Carson what he as an Irish Christian saw as some of the major weaknesses of the American church. After a very gracious caveat about seeing the weaknesses of another culture more readily than one’s owns, Dr. Carson said that in America that evangelical Christians have still not solved the race problem. After a long pause of absolute silence from the audience, he began to say “Well, perhaps I’ve gotten it wrong” and then corrected himself, applying his own injunction given to us earlier to not let a congregation muzzle one from preaching a difficult sermon the congregation does not want to hear. The moment was absolutely stunning. The silence of the audience said it all.

It made me appreciate that while I am not always happy with the state of affairs at my own church, New City Fellowship, in one way or another, and while I may grumble that I don’t get my own wishes down the line in the order of worship, that the enterprise is worth undertaking. This is a conversation for elsewhere, but the New City model of doing church and the concept of racial reconciliation, which once seemed to be held up as an ideal in the PCA, now seems out favor and the new emphasis is largely toward training black pastors to lead black congregations. I cannot resolve all the ins and outs of this here, I am neither qualified nor knowledgeable enough to do so, nor am I blindly defending the New City model, but I think that in some way perhaps some ground has been lost with this shift.

In the first sermon of the day, which was on Psalm 110, Dr. Carson said that Christ is, indeed, currently reigning over the world as King, even though it may not seem so at times, and that this should inform how we approach every sphere of life, including preaching. He referenced Habakkuk 2:14 that “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” And that very nicely introduces the second part of my day.

For house church tonight, it was planned that we were to visit some newly arrived refugee families that were being ministered to by the ministry of Worku Geremew, a dear friend of mine from house church. And I have to tell you that I did not really want to go, not tonight nor when we were discussing the plans earlier. But go I did, even with the need to study the aforementioned Greek pressing upon me. And I was blessed, as I knew in my heart of hearts that I would be, but also challenged to consider the tension presented in this post.

How could I put the two parts of my day together in a meaningful whole? How could I relish a rich theological feast in the daytime that seemed to have little bearing on ministering to the very basic physical and emotional and spiritual needs of two newly arrived families from Africa? One family had not even had the most basic need of salvation met in their own lives as yet.

I do not mean to set these two in false antithesis, because they are not, nor do I mean grade the importance of each emphasis, I cannot, because each is as important as the other. And the ministry to an African family on a fundamental level is no different than ministry to any other family. I suppose I am simply highlighting a fault line that runs down the middle of me, and might I, perhaps not so humbly, suggest should run right down the middle of more of us. Quite honestly I am far more inclined to try to resolve the tension by simply sinking into the emphases from the first part of the day, to cater to the spiritual health of people in the West with a high level of specificity and care and theological reflection, and for what it is worth that is the area to which I feel called, and yet, and yet I am coming to believe that I cannot, must not, ignore the Church of Jesus Christ as it is spread across the world and consider its concerns. I cannot ignore issues of injustice and wealth, if only for the simple reason that my Christian brothers and sisters across the world possess great needs which the American church, and I as a part of it, are uniquely qualified to meet, not because we are better than them or any thing like, but simply because we have an abundance of resources, physical and spiritual, and to whom much is given, much is required. We cannot simply ignore the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ if we are to follow the whole counsel of Scripture.

Perhaps this is not so great a tension for others. It is for me. And in response, I must not, and I believe the church must not, seek an easily resolution. We should neither pit good theological instruction against practical acts of service and seeking justice, nor assume that any part of Chirst's church can do with out embracing both emphases. I do not believe that relief of tension that I experienced today can be had if we are to live biblically, in the now and the not yet of the Kingdom of Christ, which will one day cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

And, now, back to the Greek.

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October 1, 2007

Jesus Shall Reign...

...where'er the sun, does his successive journeys run. I love this hymn, even if verse three and a few others (FYI, the link has sound) do suffer a bit from the taint of colonialism.

I think the version we sang today in church changed the second line of verse 8 to "Grateful honors to their king," but I like the original much better:

Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud amen!

"Peculiar honors." It makes me think of Narnian beasts bringing praise to Aslan or Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty."

Other favorite verses from "Jesus Shall Reign":

People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His Name.

"Early blessings on His Name." Lovely.

Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.

"Death and the curse are known no more." I cannot wait to sing "Joy to the World" (sound), which is also coincidently, or perhaps not so coincidently, by Isaac Watts. There are not many things I hate, but that curse is surely one of them. Why can't we sing Christmas songs at times other than Christmas, at least one here and there? Some of them have got killer theology.

As rain on meadows newly mown,
So shall He send his influence down:
His grace on fainting souls distills,
Like heav’nly dew on thirsty hills.

Now that is truly a dew worth doing.

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July 17, 2007

We Are Not Pregnant...

...and other reflections on gender from a fairly conservative source.

Several months ago after house church, several of us discussed the pros and cons of the phrase "We are pregnant." I am not a fan. Here is an article from the editior of Christianity Today reflecting on gender roles. I have read it and several other articles as I work at my new library job. And, I must confess, it felt a bit like coming home. I am not saying that I will agree with everything that will be articulated in Christianity Today, but I think what was refreshing to me today was once again reading theological thought, clearly expressed without the need for constant qualification and apology.

I think that is the direction in which I want to go, not back to simple closed-mindedness, insensitivity, judgemenatlism, and rigidity mind you, but to take along with me lessons I have learned, and to articulate my understanding of truth confidently. Why should that be such a radical thing to even articulate?

In many ways I think that this recalibration that has occurred in myself over the course of a number of years is merely a microcosm of changes that have been occurring in evangelical Christianity at large. For example, I believe the engagement with culture and current social and global concerns currently engaged in by a magazine such as Christianity Todaywould seldom have appeared on its pages in the 1980's. That is my sense of it at least.

Here is another article on the spreading canker of the prosperity gospel in the church in Africa, and it is a canker. Yet, the picture is never as simple as I would like to make it, as God is working even amidst the mess of such teaching, bringing people to himself, and yes even teaching some folk to better their lives and to share with others. Huh, how about that. And what is another of the draws of this movement for Africans? It scratches a distinctly African itch to be in touch with the supernatural. And, with care and discernment but without our overbearing desire to be in control, I bet we could learn a little something in that department.

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July 13, 2007

Another One Bites the Dust-A Batchelor Party

We played cute little games and made Worku a toilet paper tuxedo. We cried a little; giggled a lot.

Not! But we did have a nice manly time at Tucker's, the place for steaks. And, mmm, they were good. Plus, a little drink. Some good stories. Only a little advice. A prayer from elder Eddie. Brilliant. Alas, there were no cigars.

Yes, and amidst it all we were able to celebrate that institution, which, while suffering much derision in our culture and being as hard as the dickens and so saddeningly so often abandoned, is one God's bests gifts. Or so I hear ;)

Here are the pictures.

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July 6, 2007

Church

in...but not of

but our citizenship is in heaven. and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ

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June 18, 2007

The Discussion Continues...

I decided to go ahead and begin the discussion of Barbara Zielinsk's article featured in the latest issue of Catapult, and there have been several posts in the discussion thread. If you want to follow along or jump in yourself, you can do so here. A link to the pertinent article is posted at the top of my first post.

If you're here from there, welcome.

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June 1, 2007

A Pensive Meander Over the Day

Driving home tonight in a summer thunderstorm, I stopped by the river to take some pictures. I rolled down the window, stayed in my car and shot away. There was no decent shot to speak of really. The last one before the battery died was quite remarkable, but nothing like the vision I was treated to moments later, when my camera was dead and I was forced merely to appreciate the scene for its own sake. That is a good thing for us photography loving sorts to have happen to us from time to time, to be reminded of why we take pictures in the first place, or at least why I largely do, to appreciate the amazing beauty and vitality of life itself.

The massive thunderheads were rumbling away eastward, and on their tail end you could see their white tops, contrasted against the greyness below and a deep, bright blue above. The edges of the white cloud were as sharp and crisp as if they had been cut from paper and pasted against the blue, and then varying shades of grey overlaid the white, tracing out the contours of the cloud. The picture above pales in comparison, though its a good start.

I thought to myself that I totally understand why the Greeks would have placed their gods on cloudy Olympus. Our own popular conceptions of heaven probably owe as much to the Greek vision as any biblical one, but what we have made it now is insipid fluffiness. But the clouds I saw today were nothing like that, they were glorious in the true sense, and I could totally get why someone might want to link them to deity and heaven.

I suppose I have been thinking of heaven a lot today. Earlier in the day, my brother led a service from my Uncle Vigil’s funeral. I have a friend who has laughed each time I have told her a funeral has been “good.” Admittedly, the first time I said it I may have been just mindlessly saying that it was good, because that is what I tend to mindlessly say when someone ask me how something was. No, but I can wholeheartedly say that this funeral was good. It was good to be reminded about the life of my uncle, which though not remarkable by worldly standards, was remarkable because he was a servant of Christ, serving others tirelessly, not seeking glory for himself—roto-tilling gardens, mowing lawns, hauling bread in the back of his pick-up for the food pantry. It was good for me to be reminded that even though God's grace is absolutely free, that God calls us to be sacrificial and to be servants, to be Christ to others. It was good to be reminded of these things by reflecting on the life of a beloved uncle, in a service led by a beloved brother.

It was good to be reminded over these past few days of just how much Uncle Virg meant to me in my life. We lived with him and Aunt Verdna when we came home on furloughs. Aunt Verdna raised my brother Adrian while my mom worked as a nurse. And when Aunt Verdna and Uncle Virg separated for 5+ years in their marriage, Uncle Virg came to live with Grandma and us, home on another furlough. He wasn’t all sunshine. When we boys would be watching our hundred pound black and white television, for which we used pliers to change the channels, and Grandma or Mom would call us to have supper at 4:30pm (4:30pm for heaven’s sake! which is interminably early for half Pakistani boys used to eating at 8:00) we would mumble and pay no mind, but when Uncle Virg would holler, “Now, you boys get on in here!” well, there was no hesitation. We had no doubt that he would not have considered the statute of limitation expired on the whupping privileges he had when we were younger and which he had occasionally exercised. We were at that table like a shot.

I have a father, a wonderful father, who worked hard and loved us sensitively and took us on fishing trips and outings when we grew up in Pakistan, but he himself would have no problem in me acknowledging the fatherly role that Uncle Virg also had in our lives. In fact, his gruffness and occasional crudeness were an excellent complement to my father’s raising of us. Uncle Virg taught me how to fish for Blue Gill—how to look for where they were nesting and cast the line just right. He taught me how to skin a catfish, how to scale a Blue Gill and bake a cookie sheet full of them with butter and oregano and lemon juice. There is nothing quite like freshly baked Blue Gill, even if you have to eat a couple three to get anywhere near full. There is nothing like the salty, lemony, melted butter in the corners of the cookie sheet.

Uncle Virg also found me a rabbit that was sitting still in the brush, and I got my first, and thus far only, kill, and I was finally able to understand a little of what the Native Americans mean by thanking an animal for its life. But the killing of the rabbits, the eating of them, whilst chewing carefully to watch out for lead shot, was not even the most memorable thing. That was walking along a railroad track or hedge row in the snow with Uncle Virg giving directions on safety and hunting smarts, perhaps stopping to throw sticks across a frozen pond when the rabbits were scare and seeing if we could bag a few of those logs skidding across the ice. It was watching the autumn sun set in the drab, scrubby farmland of Illinois whilst being with my brothers and Uncle.

Uncle Virg also came and helped Dad build our house and shape our property in Edwardsville, chainsawing trees and burning them, and then stopping for long lunches of simple food and laughter, where I was the chef and server while Uncle Virg and Dad rested their aging bones. And during this time, Uncle Virg taught me one of his most important lessons, to pee in the woods or your own yard or off your deck, and to do it with impunity. Alas, it is now somewhat harder to put this lesson into practice at Dad’s place, since several houses have sprung up nearby, but, well, when the angles make it cool or the light is right….

Before I bring this long ramble into a close, I must tell you one of the most meaningful things that I saw happen in Uncle Virg’s life. During their separation, which occurred for reasons that I do not know nor would make public, my Aunt Verdna and Uncle Virg still kept house and raised their children together. No, he did not live there, and their relations did not seem warm to the eye of a child, but he would still come and put long hours to plant the garden or can the vegetables or do repairs on the house and he stayed involved in his children’s lives. What happened next is all the more remarkable because more often than not just the opposite happens, and, to be absolutely honest here, I get pretty heartsick about it all and even doubt sometimes why God thought up whole idea of marriage at all as it seems to fail so often. But shortly after my mother died, though I am not claiming that was the cause of it, in 1987, Uncle Virgil and Aunt Verdna talked and he moved back home. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that they reconciled and spent the last 20 years of their life together.

And last week, Aunt Verdna, who raised him as a boy, asked my brother to preach my Uncle’s funeral, and a story came full circle.

P.S. I know we have our potlucks in the city, hey I organize half of the ones I attend, but, my friends, having been to a Southern Illinois funeral potluck today, well, by contrast we’re just playing at it.

P.P.S. Finally, finally, after spending an emotional morning and then a lovely afternoon with Adi and family and Dad and Virgil (yes, he's Uncle Virgil's namesake) and his family who came all the way from Texas and who must return home tomorrow morning :( I must confess I feel a bit like these flowers that were taken from the funeral and are drying in my car, a little dim and droopy. Yet, even so, today has been a remarkable reminder that God has been and is so very good to me. Blessed be His name.

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April 22, 2007

My Favorite Times of the Week

You know I think I have posted about this topic before, but it is certainly worth repeating. Very often, my favorite times of the week are just after both church and house church. The reasons for my joy are similar but not identical, as is the tenor of the joys.

My church is not perfect. In my opinion, it is not even currently fully filling one of its founding mandates of being a truly multi-cultural church. I think we need to have a black pastor and more black leadership for that to really be true. And yet, sitting in church today and looking at the diversity that exists was truly amazing. Sometimes I get rather blase about it and take it all for granted, but it is a truly remarkable thing, as is the fact that we get consistent hardcore messages encouraging us to sacrifical living (which are nested in grace I should add) and the place continues to be full and grow. Go figure. And they are tough messages. I might have an occassional theological fine point to argue sometimes or grumble with the implications of the sermon for my life, which happens more often, but, wow, there are not many other places you are going to get that combination.

I could go on about what I would like in church (a little more of the creeds and confession and...ok I can't think of a third "c") but that is not something I dwell upon, not when there are other things to be about. The combination of all the things my church offers may not be for everyone, but its voice and the emphases it focuses upon are worthy of wider hearing and consideration.

Ah, I digress. My favorite part of chuch is at the end. And not just because, "Whew, we finally get to go home," though that thought does occur from time to time. No, I dig it because after praise and prayers and a challenging sermon, we generally get either a more traditional hymn (today it was "O Sacred Head Now Wounded") or a more reflective contemporary song or spiritual, which matches my worship temperament better, though I can dig the rocking songs sometime too.

And then we get to have communion. If it were a meal, would this be the main course or would it be the sermon? The Protestants will tell you the latter; the Catholics the former. I am very close to going with the Catholics on this one. Both are sacraments, though, even in the Protestant formulation, and so impart grace. And the thought of having grace imparted to me in a tangible way, that really does something to me body, mind, and spirit excites me.

We have communion in a massive circle, so it can potentially be a little distracting, but the beauty is that no one really cares how you do it. And, though I rather like the concept of everyone doing things the same way at the same time and could be perfectly happy in a more liturgical church, I do take the advantage of the freedom to create my own ritual. Now that sounds terribly postmodern in one way, but I do not think my little rituals are counter to scripture or much tradition, so I think I am OK. They are not even that demonstrative. There are times when I really want to cross myself either during or after communion, but I haven't gotten up the courage to do that as yet.

And then after grace has been imparted to us in a touchable, chewable form, we get the benediction. I think it means the "good word." We don't always get a formal one, but I dig it when we do. Did you know that only an ordained elder can actually give a benedition in the PCA? I know to some that might sound horribly Catholic and not very priesthood of believerish, but, yes, I like it very much, to be blest by those who have been placed in spiritual authority over me. Bring it on. We can and should bless one an another as friends and family members, perhaps by placing our hands on someone's head even, but that does not perclude there being a different type of blessing from an elder. Check out the end of the book of James for a model of both of these things in the discussion concerning the person who is sick.

One part of my rituals, such as they are, that I will tell you about is that I like to cup my hands at this point, as if receiving a gift. Cheesy? Perhaps, but it encodes what is happing for me. I would even like being given the communion bread and wine if possible. If I ever have the opportunity to suggest things to a congregation in the future I might suggest some of these at the least, perhaps, as occassional practices. I may even suggest opening our mouths during parts of the service to symbolize tasting the Lord or receiving his word. Yeah, I bet the kids will love that.

No, I also like this time because I am anticipating fellowship with my friends and perhaps with new friends, because very often we will be eating together and enjoying one another's company and silly jokes in a very short while.

As for the second time of the week after house church, well the order of things is reversed a bit, as is their ecclesiastical weight. There are no official sacraments, for example. First, we eat in a weekly potluck that may feature any number of dishes from vegan to totally carnivorous. And the fellowship is even better than the food. Then we sing and study and pray. And I like the studying because, yes, I often lead it, and that is also one of my favorite things to do. And the prayer is great, because we break into gendered groups and can really deeply pray for one another (except when my Elder Eddie and Andy and I and are figuring out which old school choruses we all know and singing snippets of them rather loudly). At the end of house church, sometimes I am as giddy as a schoolgirl. What I really want to know though is, are schoolgirls really giddy, and, if so, why? OK, so perhaps I am not as giddy as all that, but I can get as silly as I do with my family, well, because I suppose that is who I am with.

OK, I did not intend to go that long....back to the Aeneid, which, I might add, is really good, classic even. Maybe there is something to this "classics" business.

Finally, blessings for the week upon you all.

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April 17, 2007

Unman

He began walking in a leisurely fashion beside the sea. His bare feet sank a little into a carpet of saffron-coloured vegetation, which covered them with an aromatic dust. As he was looking down at this he suddenly noticed something else. At first he thoutht it was a creature of more fantastic shape than he had yet seen on Perelandra. Its shape was not only fantastic but hideous. Then he dropped on one knee to examine it. Finally he touched it, with reluctance. A moment later he drew back his hands like a man who had touched a snake.

It was damaged animal. It was, or had been one of the brightly coloured frogs. But some accident had happened to it. The whole back had been ripped open in a sort of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little behind the head. Something had torn a widening wound backward--as we do in opening an envelope--along the trunk and pulled it out so far behind the animal that the hoppers or hind legs had been almost torn off with it. They were so damaged that the frog could not leap. On earth it would have been merely a nasty sight, but up to this moment Ransom had as yet seen nothing dead or spoiled in Perelandra, and it was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lied from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was willing to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. The milk-warm wind blowing over the golden sea, the blues and silvers and greens of the floating garden, the sky itself--all these had become, in one instant, merely the illuminated margin of a book whose text was the struggling little horror at his feet....

At last he got up an resumed his walk. Next moment he started and looked at the ground again. He quickened his pace, and then once more stopped and looked. He stood stock-still and covered his face. He called aloud upon heaven to break the nightmare or to let him understand what was happening. A trail of mutilated frogs lay along the edge of the island. Picking his footsteps with care, he followed it. He counted ten, fifteen, twenty: and the twenty-first brought him to a place where the wood came down to the water's edge. He went into the wood and came out on the other side. There he stopped dead and stared. Weston, still clothed but without his pith helmet, was standing about thirty feet away: and as Ransom watched he was tearing a frog--quietly and almost surgically...Then he finished the operation, threw the bleeding ruin away, and looked up. Their eyes met.

If Ransom said nothing, it was because he could not speak. He saw a man who was certainly not ill, to judge from his easy stance and the powerful use he had just been making of his fingers. He saw a man who was certainly Weston, to judge from his height and build and colouring and features. In that sense he was quite recognisable. But the terror was that he was also unrecognisable. He did not look like a sick man: but he looked very like a dead one....And now, forcing its way up into consciousness, thrusting aside every mental habit and every longing not to believe, came the conviction that this, in fact, was not a man: that Weston's body was kept, walking and undecaying, in Perelandra by some wholly different kind of life, and that Weston himself was gone.

It looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile. We have often spoken--of a devilish smile. Now he realised that he had never taken the words seriously. The smile was not bitter, nor raging, nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with horrible naivete of welcome, into a the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive, nor ashamed, it had nothing of the conspirator in it. It did not defy goodness, it ignored it to the point of annihilation. Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence.

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April 8, 2007

Indeed

Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side,
Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright.

Crown Him the Lord of life, who triumphed over the grave,
And rose victorious in the strife for those He came to save.
His glories now we sing, Who died, and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die.

Crown Him the Lord of peace, Whose power a scepter sways
From pole to pole, that wars may cease, and all be prayer and praise.
His reign shall know no end, and round His piercèd feet
Fair flowers of paradise extend their fragrance ever sweet.
_______________
Other brothers and sisters celebrate.
And more still.

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April 5, 2007

Good Friday

Good Friday. Really? Good? A young man who commanded his disciples to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecuted them, to walk an extra mile with a load that was not one's own, whose only concrete crime was to disturb the peace, to disrupt the merchandise of the spiritual equivalent of today's pay day loan merchants was scourged with a whip that flayed his flesh, mocked, spit upon, and put to death by means of one of the most brutal forms of execution recorded in history. And we call it good?

Good, as in "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good?" Good, as in "Taste and see that the Lord is good?" Good, as in that which we are to cling to, just as fervently as we are to hate that which is evil?

In naming the holiday "good," the church has answered a resounding yes to all these questions. It is as good as the goodness of all creation in its unfallen glory, because it is what allows a return to that glory, and more. It is good, because the Lord, whose goodness of which we are invited to taste, has come more than half way, has tasted to its core the bitter fruit of the Fall, taking death upon himself so that we can once again come to him to taste of his sweetness. It is good, because the evil which we are to hate, which has stained our very souls, can be overcome because of this good day. We need no longer loathe ourselves, because our evil has been forgiven and, because of the resurrection, its power in our lives has been broken.

The opening shots of this post picture death as it affects the creatures of the Earth, the creatures of land and water and air. This is not the place to discuss the differences of theological opinion concerning life and death before the Fall, whether death was an essential part of the ecosystem, whether animals tore one another in predation, whether humans tore animals in predation, whether humans died physically. Those are important questions, to be sure, to which I am still developing answers. However, my very gut reaction to the pictures above confirms what has traditionally been the view of the church, that death is an anamoly, that things should not be so, that, at the very least, God did not intend humans to die through the ravages of disease and war. God certainly did not want humans to die spiritually through disobedience.

I would not post pictures of human suffering here, of someone ravaged by sickness or sorrow, of someone with their body broken by violence, because in so doing I would ratchet up the revulsion we experience from the pictures above to a higher level, to a level we have difficulty bearing. And if I chose to paint word pictures on my blog 24 hours a day, if every blogger in the world could blog 24 hours a day, we could not begin to find the words to describe the suffering of our world. Suffering from which, as my friend Meg reminds us, God does not always protect even his followers in this present age. These pictures, though, serve well to illustrate for us the stench of death, physical and spiritual. We get the point.

Even though I have not sorted out my questions, I essentially agree with C. S. Lewis, against worldviews that merely posit death as natural part of the world, that do not acknowledge, at the very least, that death has taken on added dimensions after the Fall.

"If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is part of God....Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this is also God.' The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.' for Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world--that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on putting them right again."

And on Good Friday, God insists loudly in the paradox of his powerful Son, through whom the universe was made, going silently, as a quietly as a sheep before its shearers, to die. Good Friday is good, precisely because it is the hinge point of history, the day when death dies, when death, in Aslan's famous phrase, begins to work backward.

On the existensial level, though, Good Friday still does not seem very good, it is only the backward glance that makes it so. The value of the church year, which I only experience intermittently, is that it makes us go through the darkness before we see the goodness of the day. In services that focus on the death of Christ, some involving candles which are snuffed out leaving churches in darkness, we feel the despair the disciples must have felt. It is this experience of the feeling the darkness symbolically, which makes the hope of the coming light all the more special, when Christ will rise and death will be defeated. Christ has risen and the light of his kingdom has begun to shine. Yet even today sometimes we must endure darkness until we see the Glory of the Lord fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'

Finally, On Good Friday, Jesus practiced what he preached. He loved his enemies and persecutors, praying for their forgiveness. Indeed, he bore the suffering that made that forgiveness possible. And for us, who were enemies of God as a result of our sin, he carried our burdens without being asked to do so, to lengths we could never manage. And that makes this Friday very Good indeed.

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April 1, 2007

El Domingo de Ramos

Seems the sorrow untold, as you look down the road
At the clamoring crowd drawing near
Feel the heat of the day, as you look down the way
Hear the shouts of Hosanna the King

Chorus
Oh, daughter of Zion your time's drawing near
Don't forsake Him, oh don't pass it by
On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said
Passing by you, He rides on to die

Come now little foal, though your not very old
Come and bear your first burden bravely
Walk so softly upon all the coats and the palms
Bear the One on your back oh so gently

Midst the shouting so loud and the joy of the crowd
There is One who is riding in silence
For He knows the ones here will be fleeing in fear
When their shepherd is taken away

Chorus

Soon the thorn cursed ground will bring forth a crown
And this Jesus will seem to be beaten
But He'll conquer alone both the shroud and the stone
And the prophesies will be completed

Chorus

On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said
Passing by you He rides on to die
_________________________________________________________
Lyrics: "Ride on to Die" by Michael Card
Table Arrangement: Diane Binnington, using cast off palm fronds from our "Sunday of the Branches" at church today.

Other sisters and brothers celebrate!
_________________________________________________________

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March 22, 2007

Let every creature rise and bring, Peculiar honors to our King

Last night, just after we sang this hymn a dog barked outside the window. During either this hymn or another song, the fish in the picture above did a little shimy up one side of the aquarium. In my anthropomorphising of their behavior I ascribed these acts as they bringing their "peculiar honors" to their king.

Even as I wrote that previous sentence, I realized that my labelling of their actions as anthropomorphic, though essentially true, betrays my mindset to give rather to much due to science, or more precisely, to naturalism. This same bent leads me to perhaps overly question the miraculous. This problem which I find in myself, I find to be even more of a problem in some Christian circles, even conservative ones. Sometimes we truly think and act as if we were materialists, and in so doing sell our birthright as Christians.

So, while the animals were not likely joining in with our chorus, they will and all creation will be completely realigned with God one day, and honor him in whatever peculiar way they are made to. Without knowing how it works, we need to be a little less metaphorical about all creation praising God.

Lewis has some lovely passages trying to depict this truth in both the Chronicles of Narnia and in his Space Trilogy.

At any rate, last night the first few songs of house church were old school hymns, which warmed my heart. Whatever one might think/feel regarding the hymns/choruses discussion, it cannot be denied that some of the old hymns have some lovely poetry in them.

This blog post's title is from Jesus Shall Reign, which has some lyricsthat have a decidedly colonial bent to them. However, allowing for that, the sentiment of the hymn is brilliant, that all peoples and creatures will one day praise God and the Curse will be undone.

Blessings abound wherever He reigns;
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains;
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blessed.

Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.

Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud amen!

Oh, and we sang this hymn with a nice refrain created by our church's music director which drives home this message.

"Heaven and earth resound! Jesus shall reign.
Far as the curse is found. Jesus shall reign!"

Amen and amen.

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March 14, 2007

To Counteract the Silliness...

...a good blog post about urban ministry, suburban ministry, and points in between.

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March 1, 2007

An Informative Blog Post on Wilberforce

This is a Britannica Blog (i.e. sponsored by the Encyclopedia Britannica company) about the recent movie Amazing Grace and about the life of William Wilberfoce which has many infomative links in it, even if many point to a Britannica article. In the first paragraph, there are some links to organizations which are attempting to stop modern slavery which may be useful, including The Amazing Change and Free the Slaves.

One of the links in the article which I wanted to specifically highlight, is an audio link to a BBC program on Wilberforce. I am listening to it just now and it is good.

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February 21, 2007

An Intriguing Post

In this blogosphere suffused with personal opinion and emotion, it is rare to find posts that find the right balance in personal disclosure and combine it with perceptive insight or questioning, particularly in the area of relationships. My friend Laura's post of last summer (which was her second blog post period) accomplished this.

The picture above is Marc Chagall's interpretation of the verse that my friend Michaela uses to introduce her blog post which I find also meets the criteria I described in the first paragraph, and which I have asked her permission to link to from here.

Any thoughts on Michaela's take? You can post comments either here or there. And let me just recommend that you take deep breaths and read entire paragraphs before you come to conclusions.

Continue reading "An Intriguing Post"

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February 19, 2007

Lent Comes a Little Early

The picture above is the last artsy photo I took with my camera. In fact, I took only two more pictures, period, after this one (of a colleague getting some Valentine's Day flowers). Alas, the camera I often described as promiscuous has gone like Gomer. Hosea-like I have made some efforts for her recovery, but it is not looking promising.

At the beginning of a road trip on Thursday, whilst picking up a friend, I hopped out of the passenger seat of a two door car and placed my camera bag and a bag of muffins on top of the car. Rather too eagerly and quickly I hopped in the back seat, yes, forgetting to take what I had recently deposited on the roof. At our next stop to meet more friends, I asked "Hey, where are the muffins?" followed in short order by "Hey, where's my camera bag?" After several fruitless trips of retracing our route, we finally saw some birds rather eagerly pecking at a plastic bag, flattened on the road. Mmm, muffins. Sadly, the black camera bag was nowhere to be found. A passerby had said that they had seen it, however, so we scribbled some notes (offering a reward even) and headed off for our trip about an hour and a half late.

I am praying still for a miracle (and you can rejoice with me when it happens), but if it does not and even if it does, I think I will go ahead and consider this as a part of Lent. I still have not figured out if I am going to do anything else in that regard or even what I think of Lent itself, but we shall see.

Do you all have any thoughts on Lent? Are there any things you are considering giving up (like the cigarettes above pressed into the cold, purifying snow), things which you are willing to share?

Oh, yeah, and the road trip? More on that later. Our time at our destination was great, but on a road trip with friends with silly and challenging things to talk about, road trip food, fun with snow and cell phones, and music for the interludes, well, the journey is of a piece with the destination.

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February 14, 2007

For Valentine's Day: Two From Brother Pastor

Two sermons on marriage providing context for the divorce passages of the Semon on the Mount:

02.04.07

02.10.07

_____________________
flock : congregation : priests : body

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January 24, 2007

Erasing Hate Seminar and the L'Abri Conference

The Matthews House Project, the same people who produced Narnia on Tour, in 2005 and evidently again in 2008, are doing a series this year which looks worthwhile. Moreover, the St. Louis session is by Jerram Barrs, so it promises to be engaging, thoughtful, and challenging. Not in St. Louis? Here are some other cities the tour is visiting.

---

I attended this conference last year and it was very good. The aforementioned Jerram Barrs will be speaking on "Because He is There and Not Silent," "Speaking Prophetically Into the Political Arena," and "Creation and Fall in Perelandra." This lecture alone is why I am going to this conference. Richard Winter from Covenant Seminary is also speaking on "Sex, Body and Bible: A Conversation About Sexuality." I have always found his talks to be excellent. Luke Bobo, also from the seminary, will be talking on "Race: Why Are We Still Talking About It." There are many other excellent talks. Check it out.

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January 15, 2007

Free Range

Inititally, this post was intended to consist simply of a cool picture with a catchy title. However, it got me thinking...

I have some fairly well defined thoughts concerning the issues of free range meat and dairy, vegetarian, and veganism. This is not the post delineating those thoughts either...

Over the past week, I have overhead two friends talking about decisions/resolutions that they have come to. One said that she is going to try to eat only organic meat. The other said she wanted to eat less meat. Amirable and healthy and decisions.

I have often made and want to make similar decisions in the future in this area and other areas related to simple living and lifestyle. What keeps me from doing this? A tremendous intertia in my own soul, a fear of being radical, of going places where others may not follow, of needing to explain unpopular choices, of doing the hard work to alter one's lifestyle. Moreover, the Church, as it reflects society, is not a tremendously accomodating place when it comes to these issues, indeed, any decision that leads to what seems to be a radical life.

Last night, talking to some friends, we talked about how the best sort of changes, the most lasting at least, generally come of small steps rather than large ones. It has taken me a while to learn and to continue to apply that lesson.

Well, I need to bring this ramble in for a landing. More later...at some point.

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December 24, 2006

A Very Happy Christmas to You

I was reflecting with my house church the other day about why there seems to be a collective longing at Christmas for peace and love and joy. What is it that songs like Silent Night, with its tune and words, are drawing out in us, in Christians and many non-Christians? And aren't scenes such as those painted in Silent Night unrealistic? Wasn't it, indeed, noisy and messy and harried. Aren't our manger scenes with the shepherds and wise men all arriving at once un realistic? Aren't they unrealistic with their sheer whiteness, as in my blog Christmas card above, with the pagan Yule tree in the background?

Yesterday, I made my traditional pilgrimage to the Mexican market in San Antonio and saw a dozen or more varieties of manger scenes, many in gaudy and riotious colors, with Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the shepherds and wise men taking on the flavor of the culture the manger scene came from. The Peruvian nativity is my favorite.

It was encouraging to be a little more patient with the Europeanized version of the manger scene and Christmas celebrations. Sure, sure because of horrible things like colonialism and cultural imperialism sometimes this version gets first billing, but this does not mean that those of us who have grown up with it have to forever beat ourselves up about its particular inaccuracies.

The historial record is not unimportant. It is not unimportant that we pay attention to our own culture's syncretisms vis a vis Christmas and hold to our traditions somewhat loosely, perhaps even challenge our cultural emphases occassionally, as we need to throughout the year. Take for example our culture's rampant materialism which kicks into overdrive this time a year.

Yet, in it all, in our gift giving, in our unrealistic creches and carols, in our imperfect attempts at goodwill, a longing is expressed, a longing for the peace of Eden, for its harmony to return. And we Christians know that, indeed what Christmas symbolizes is the beginning of the return of that peace, that Christ's birth and life and death and resurrection is all about bringing that peace to individuals and communities who believe in him, even amidst a world which is still woefully unpeaceful. It is about more than that, though. Christmas is about Christ breaking dramatically into history to eventually bring peace and healing to all of creation.

Finally, a picture of a Christmas card from Pakistan arranged with a cross to illustrate the last verse of Silent Night:

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth.

In these thoughts, I pray that you may have a very happy Christmas.

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December 20, 2006

The Blessed Virgin Mary::Theotokos "God-bearer"

Here is an article about Mary by the poet Luci Shaw entiled Yes to Shame and Glory, which is quite good. Here are some excerpts:

Mary will need the exhilaration of these days to balance the pain of the next 33 years and beyond. For God's trust of her is deep enough not only to fill her with his heavy glory but also to draw her into the agony of Incarnation, to share with her the inevitable clash of spirit with flesh, of infinite with finite. There was as much pain as there was promise in that moment when Mary became a mother-to-be.

Mary's calling was to carry the body of God, and to bear not only her own pain but her son's, feeling his anguish as intensely as all mothers before or since have felt with their children.

I have been looking into Catholic beliefs about Mary recently. I learned that the Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Mary. According to the doctrine, Mary is conceived in the normal way, but Original Sin is removed from her from at conception, so that she can be a pure and sinless vessel for Christ. A second doctrine concerns Mary's perpetual virginity, meaning that she did not have any children after Christ. Catholics say that the references to Jesus' brothers either refer to Joseph's children from a previous marriage and that he was a widower when he married Mary or that these are his cousins. Finally, the Assumption of Mary, which I have not looked into as much, says that Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven a bit like Elijah or Christ for that matter.

I do not know what Calvin and Luther believed about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary, but they both believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. That was very interesting to me. The Orthodox Church does not officially believe in the Immaculate Conception but does believe in Mary's perpetual virginity. Not sure what they think about her Assumption.

At any rate, I have no conclusions at this point other than a desire to look into these questions further at some point, particularly the one about Mary's perpetual virginity. I do think that we protestants, generally, do not honor Mary as we should.

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November 25, 2006

Vandalize a Church; Get an Xbox

The charity on display in this article seems wrongheaded on several levels. Or perhaps its not, or well-intentioned but poorly executed. Thoughts?

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November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving

I am thankful for a good day. It began with my roommate Jesse helping me roll about 10 lbs of meat for Pakistani meatballs, which cut the time it took to do it in half. Plus, it was nice to chat and have tea together.

I am thankful for getting to have Thanksgiving dinner with my Mom's family and that my Uncle Virgil was there for another year. Those spicy Pakistani meatballs are somewhat of a tradition and nestle right in with the turkey and dressing and sweet potato casseroles and venison, only my cousin Mark had not got a deer this year, so no venison pieces wrapped in little pieces of bacon. Getting back to the meatballs, though, the husband of one of my cousins, Arthur, loves them. His record, along with eating standard helpings of everything else, is 14. Today, at last check, he was on 8, but he said that he was not done. My cousin Barry was responsible for some wonderful pies (some of which may be in the photo for this post). And thanks to him and Trudy and girls for hosting the entire shindig. This year my cousin Pam's husband died and she was reflecting rather sadly on how this had been his favorite holiday. His two wonderful boys, one the spitting image of his father, were both there, moving on with life, coping with things like playing and watching football and going to college without their father there to cheer them on. I am thankful that one day death will die.

Then the day was capped off with some nice relaxing and chatting at my brother Adrian's house, where I determined that the fruitcake that had been in Dad's fridge for about a year was, indeed, still well worth the eating. Brilliant.

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October 4, 2006

elder : diner : breakfast

     

steak : eggs : wisdom : nourishment

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September 15, 2006

The Sadness Post

Today, twice I watched my sensitive nephew’s lower lip stick out ever so slightly and quiver as he valiantly tried to fathom and control disappointment. First, as we sat down to dinner, his Veggie Tales plate was being given to a visiting cousin as there were only three of them and there were four children. I saw the lip and the frightened sadness in the big brown eyes. This time it lasted only a moment as the older of the cousins sweetly offered him her Veggie Tales plate, taking the ceramic “adult” plate for herself.

Later, the sadness was not so easily quelled. The visiting cousins were being given a sizeable chunk of his and his sister’s video collection to help them pass the time at Grandpa’s house. He went to his room and quietly began playing with his toys, but that lip and those eyes illuminated his soul, and when his Daddy came in and picked him up, the flood that the lip was trying to keep at bay overflowed in heaping sobs. His Daddy said that it was OK. OK to be disappointed and OK because the tapes would be back. Andrew clung to his Daddy in the full contact way that children do when the hurt is strong, burying his teary face into his Daddy’s shoulder. He stayed that way until we left, his Daddy softly assuring him.

This must be a journal entry from 3 years ago or so. Sorrow at its core emanates from a realization that things are not the way they should be, that loss has occurred. And children understand this implicitly, much as they seem to have an implicit understanding of fairness, even if they do not always put it into practice. And they are, if they are allowed, unafraid to express sorrow out loud. My nephew, five at the time, knew that the plate was his, that the videos were his, and he could not understand why they were being taken from him. There would, of course, be time to explain the virtue of sharing, some of which was done even as he was being comforted, but what my brother did at the time was to address his sorrow. To assure him that, indeed, in that instance at least, everything would be alright.

Of course everything is not alright. And as we grow, in situation after situation, we come to understand that the world is broken, beautiful, full of joys, yes, but broken nonetheless. Life, from one perspective, might be viewed as a succession of realizations of loss, each with its own attendant sorrow: the death of a pet, the death of a loved one, the death of kindness, the death of a friendship, the death of a marriage, the death and carnage in the world every day. Depending on the culture and family in which we grow up we are taught differing things about what to do with our sorrow, some positive, some soul numbing. Sorrow will not go away, though, until the world is healed, so it is important to get it right.

Continue reading "The Sadness Post"

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August 7, 2006

A Piece from Brother Lloyd

Just a last week I said, "My boys don't blog no mo!" Not so. Lloyd has written a thoughtul reflection on Community, Death, and Caring. I commend it to you highly.

Drawing taken from here.

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July 25, 2006

More Poems from Lewis

It is 3 in the morning and I cannot sleep. Having been kept home yesterday with a cough, it is doing its best to make my night miserable as well. Still, I have a big mug of herbal tea with honey and lime, and that is not all bad. I just got done watching the end of the movie Shadowlands. I remember going to see it in the theater with our family and our father being incredibly moved by it, having lost his wife, my mother, only a few years earlier. Sadly, he did not then, nor has he since, really accepted the message of the movie that we must let our loved ones go, that "The pain now is part of the joy then. That's the deal."

In the special features on the DVD, Douglas Gresham, Joy's son and Lewis' stepson, says that choosing to love someone will always involve pain in one way or another. I suppose that is true, and why heaven is such an appealing prospect. In a song in the late 80's or early 90's, CCM artist Billy Sprague sang that "heaven is a long hello." I like that. And I imagine that heaven will also involve really good, dare I say perfect, communication. With all sorts of time and without our sinful natures to contend with, perhaps we will be able to perfectly communicate how an experience made us feel, some thing that is impossible now even with our closest loved ones.

Here are three of five sonnets Lewis wrote, I believe, after his wife died. They are in the vein of his excellent book A Grief Observed.

3
Of this we're certain; no one who dared knock
At heaven's door for earthly comfort found
Even a door--only smooth, endless rock,
And save the echo of his cry no sound.
It's dangerous to listen; you'll begin
To fancy that those echoes (hope can play
Pitiful tricks) are answers from within;
Far better to turn, grimly sane, away.
Heaven cannot thus, Earth cannot ever, give
The thing we want. We ask what isn't there
And by our asking water and make live
That very part of love which must despair
And die and go down cold into the earth
Before there's talk of springtime and re-birth.

4
Pitch your demands heaven-high and they'll be met.
Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)
Your earthly love. Why, yes; but how to set
One's foot on the first rung, how to begin?
The silence of one voice upon our ears
Beats like the waves; the coloured morning seems
A lying brag; the face we loved appears
Fainter each night, or ghastlier, in our dreams.
'That long way round which Dante trod was meant
For mighty saints and mystics not for me,'
So Nature cries. Yet if we once assent
To Nature's voice, we shall be like the bee
That booms against the window-pane for hours
Thinking that way to reach the laden flowers.

5
'If we could speak to her,' my doctor said
'And told her, "Not that way! All, all in vain
You weary our your wings and bruise your head,"
Might she not answer, buzzing at the pane,
"Let queens and mystics and religious bees
Talk of such inconceivables as glass;
The blunt lay worker flies at what she sees,
Look there--ahead, ahead--the flowers, the grass!"
We catch her in a handkerchief (who knows
What rage she feels, what terror, what despair?)
And shake her out--and gaily out she goes
Where quivering flowers stand thick in summer air,
To drink their hearts. But left to her own will
She would have died upon the window-sill.

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July 19, 2006

500,000 Embryos and the Potential Tyrant of the Family

While looking for a picture to supplement my previous post, I found this amazing article. It is incredibly even handed in describing the crisis of the high number of frozen embryos and is clear about its implications. And Mother Jones is the opposite of conservative. One of its most amazing features, though, is its hightlighting of how parents feel about frozen embryos:

A new demographic is wrestling with questions initially posed by contraception and abortion. A world away from the exigencies, mitigating circumstances, and carefully honed ideologies that have grown up in and around U.S. abortion clinics, it is people like Janis Elspas who are being called upon to think, hard, about when life begins, and when it is—or is not—right to terminate it. They are in this position, ironically enough, not because they don’t want a family, but precisely because they do. Among the nation’s growing ranks of ivf patients, deciding the fate of frozen embryos is known as the “disposition decision,” and it is one of the hardest decisions patients face, so unexpectedly problematic that many decide, in the end, to punt, a choice that is only going to make the glut bigger, the moral problem more looming and unresolved.

Strikingly, Nachtigall found that even in one of the bluest regions of the country, which is to say, among people living in and around San Francisco, few were able to view a three-day-old laboratory embryo with anything like detachment. “Parents variously conceptualized frozen embryos as biological tissue, living entities, ‘virtual’ children having interests that must be considered and protected, siblings of their living children, genetic or psychological ‘insurance policies,’ and symbolic reminders of their past infertility,” his report noted. Many seemed afflicted by a kind of Chinatown syndrome, thinking of them simultaneously as: Children! Tissue! Children! Tissue!

Nachtigall also found that patients sometimes disposed of embryos in novel ways that fell short of actual plug-pulling. In a version of the rhythm method of contraception, he learned, some patients (though none of the ones in his study) solved their dilemma through the laborious—and expensive—process of having leftover embryos transferred into the woman’s uterus at a time in her monthly cycle when implantation would be unlikely. Others buried embryos. Still others could not bring themselves to dispose of them at all. “We’ll have a couple more pregnancies and we’ll just grow the whole lot,” one father told Nachtigall and his team.

The author clearly understands the implications for the abortion debate:

Arguing that pro-life advocates can taste “total victory” after “an ongoing nibble-at-the-edges battle” involving statehouse measures like informed consent and mandatory waiting periods, Charo predicted that somewhere, soon, “some obscure legislature” will propose to seize control of frozen embryos, the measure will be challenged, and the ensuing lawsuit will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Traditionally, she pointed out, abortion rights involves weighing the interests of the woman against those of the fetus, and up to now the woman’s interests have been considered paramount. But now the interests of the embryo, or fetus, or potential child, can be separated out. This, she said, is a watershed development.

For those who want to test the core of Roe v. Wade, Charo told the fertility specialists, “you guys are the perfect opportunity to separate the question of embryos and best interests, and the woman’s right to direct her body. You take a law like Louisiana’s, saying that personhood begins at conception, and that you cannot discard embryos. Now the Supreme Court has the ability to look at the status of the embryo, not as compared with the woman’s right to control what she wants to do with her body. There is no bodily interest. It’s entirely possible that the first real challenge to Roe will be looking at the embryo in isolation. The question about discard is very, very important. This will be where they start their litigation strategy, to chip away at Roe.”

Even though overturning Roe v. Wade is so controversial and would be a mammoth undertaking, for which our country lacks the emotional energy, we need to ask God to give us the energy to do it and the love to do it well. In the meantime the church should fight on in love with adoption and crisis pregnancy centers and counseling and looking to change laws and not be inconsistent like this dude:

It should be pointed out, however, that even anti-abortion conservatives are not united in their ideas about the embryo and whether it has rights, or best interests, or even the potential for life. Once a person contemplates an embryo—really looks at it, under a microscope or in a photograph—his or her opinion is often changed, and not in any consistent or predictable direction. This is true for pro-choice and pro-life alike. While researching a book on assisted reproduction and its impact, I interviewed California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a reliably anti-abortion Republican member of the House. Rohrabacher was one of some 50 Republicans who defied the president by voting in favor of federal funding for stem cell research using surplus ivf embryos. For Rohrabacher it was not abstract: He and his wife, Rhonda, went through ivf treatment and have triplets as a result.

Going through that process, Rohrabacher told me, fundamentally changed his thinking about life and its origins. “For a long time I’ve been pro-life, and I still consider myself to be pro-life,” he reflected, sitting on the front porch of his Huntington Beach bungalow, which, inside, had been taken over by the demands of triplet care. “I have done a lot of soul-searching but also a lot of rethinking about reality, and what’s going on here, and I have come to the conclusion that I’m…first, I’m still pro-life. But I always said that life begins at conception. But…I was always predicating that on the idea that life begins at conception when conception begins in a woman’s body.”

And, regarding IVF treatments Senator Brownback and, of all countries, Italy and Germany, have got it right:

As Slate’s Will Saletan has pointed out, pro-life lawmakers periodically threaten all-out war on the reproductive liberty enjoyed by ivf patients; Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey hinted at this when he said, “The public policy we craft should ensure that the best interests of newly created human life is protected.” Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has suggested that the government should limit the number of embryos created to one or two per ivf cycle.

Other countries, such as Germany and Italy, forbid the freezing of embryos. In those countries, every embryo made must be implanted. Both of these ideas are of course anathema to American fertility advocacy groups and to the medical field, because it would open the door to that dreaded phenomenon, governmental control over human life and its disposition.

Finally, Catholics have a position called the "Seamless Garment" approach to being pro-life, which opposes the destruction of human life in abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, war. While I wrestle with the Biblical foundation for the death penalty (and I think there is one) I would give it up if it this were linked with doing away with abortion. War is tricky for me to completely rule out, but it sure should happen a lot less often and a lot less quickly. Also, I would like myself and the church to consider humane farming and animal welfare as a part of a consistent pro-life ethic to continue to fight against the Culture of Death.

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July 15, 2006

A Reflection/Review of Cornerstone 2006 and a Journey Poem-Two in Catapult

Well, I have been quiet for a while re: writing in Catapult, but here are a couple pieces.

One is a series of poems I wrote in a poetery class, in, oh, something like 1995 inspired by a trip I took to Pakistan in 1992.

The other is a piece I wrote on Thursday about going to the Cornerstone Festival this year. More than simply a review, though (which would be a poor one because I only experienced a small part of the festival), it is a reflection of my relationship with Cornerstone and some of its delightful characteristics. More pictures from Cornerstone appearing hear soon.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Catapult issue.

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July 14, 2006

House Church Makes Me Happy, Yes, Silly Even

Of course, this statement is not uniformly so, as sometimes my glumness can overcome the best efforts of fellowship and food, both actual and spiritual. But more often than not, even if I come with a heavy heart, I leave with a lighter one. I find this especially to be true of actual church on Sunday. That happiness, though, is often of a deeper, I-have-just-had-my-soul-cleansed-and-the-sunshine-is-pouring-in order, which sometimes also occurs in house church too. But what often occurs in house church that doesn't, and really shouldn't either, occur in church proper is happy silliness.

Such was the case this Wednesday. I don't know, it seemed like we hadn't seen one another for a while and there was delightful banter. Poor Eddie as he led the Bible study. But I see it as part of my job description, if I am not leading the Bible study myself, to make his job harder with quips and questions. I'm kidding...OK I am only kind of kidding ;)

But I am serious about enjoying the silliness. It reminds me of how I am when I am with my family, and that ain't a bad way for the church to be.

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June 7, 2006

Raising a Blue Moon to the Women Bloggers of New City

Over the past few months a number of people whom I know personally have begun blogs, and, more importantly, have been posting steadily. And vibrant conversations, both silly and serious, have begun as we comment on one another's blogs.

This post, though, is to specifically highlight the blogs of some of the women at my church, New City Fellowship, which I am aware of and which are part of my blog browsing and which are presented in order of their appearing on my radar screen.

NewlyWards
This is actually a blog of Sarah and Kirk Ward, our church's musical director. And though their lovely wee daughter, Joanna, is the real star of this blog, here is a recent post that is a wonderful picture of their marriage and family life as a whole.

Yeah, Like the Fish
Amanda Salmond (yeah, that's how it's like the fish) is in my house church, only sadly she is away for the summer wrangling kids at a summer camp. A poem on trusting.

Last Answers?
Another house church friend. Our house church rocks! Yeah, Angela is the one who has had a blog for nigh on five years and is more or less silent about it. Well, the secret is out, and more folks get to appreciate her insight, writing, and aesthetics. Here is a recent post on the real challenges of reconcilliation, even in the context of a church that has that as one of its central goals.

Safe, But Not Sound
My friend Heidi by training and temperament has keen insight into how people tick, herself and others, and often reflects on this in relation our position as children of God. A post from today on the depravity of the human heart and the ravages of sin.

Miss Mark in the Class Room
I do not call her "Miss Mark," but frequently I like to use her whole name, "Tanya Mark," and she replies with a "Neil Das" in return. Tanya's blog not only chronicles the first year of a teacher who wants to good for her students not just by way of teaching science but also in regards to shepherding their spirits, but which also often poignantly reflects on issues in the church. Then, of course, there Larry and Myers-Briggs posts and some thoughtful poetry.

Street Acrobatics
Well, the title says it all. Or does it? You will have to have Heather demonstrate or Claire, who has dipped her toe into the blogging world but is not ready to jump in...yet. Here is an early reflection on the nature of blogging for Heather.

The Moon is the Spoon of the Sea!
I am just getting to know Heidi and her husband Jake, but I am enjoying them as friends already. The meaning of the title of this blog? All I know is that it has something to do with the tides. You will have to ask Heidi. If you surmise that this new blog will have more than its fair share of whimsy, as do I, I do not think we will be far off of the mark. The first "official" post.

Guinea-Pig Voices in the Night
Another house churcher. It is a toss-up whether I visited Laura's blog before or after The Moon is the Spoon of the Sea! by her sis-in-law, Heidi. At any rate, GPVITN has come out of the blocks strong with two lengthy, but not overly lengthy, posts: the first a touching remembrance of the genesis of the blog's title; the second a bit of a lament and a bit of a throwing down of a gauntlet concerning the scarcity of men at New City in relationship to women, or at least Worku throws down the gauntlet to men in a comment on the post. An honest and bold posting for Laura's second time out.

_______________________

So, to all you "amazing, talented, beautiful, Lord-loving ladies" of New City that Laura mentions in her blog, single or not, blogging or no, I raise a glass of a new favorite, which the boys and I have been enjoying for the past two Tuesdays after and during prayer time, Blue Moon with a slice of orange. It is not sweet, but mellow and fruity, and the color is lovely. And when the orange is squeezed into it to add a little sweetness, it is even better. It is especially brilliant on tap at Blueberry Hill. Cheers!

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June 6, 2006

Mi Buen Jesus

I do not know if this song lyric is good Spanish grammar or not but it was good for the heart to hear on Sunday as we sang Te Alabare in church on Sunday. It may have taken hearing it in another language for me to remember this sweet truth, or perhaps it is because we do not often use this syntax. "Mi buen Jesus." "My Good Jesus."

_______________________________

"Is---is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a Lion--the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he---quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe. 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

________________________

A psalm of praise. Of David

1 I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.

2 Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.

3 Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.

4 One generation will commend your works to another;
they will tell of your mighty acts.

5 They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

6 They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
and I will proclaim your great deeds.

7 They will celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.

8 The LORD is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.

9 The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.

10 All you have made will praise you, O LORD;
your saints will extol you.

11 They will tell of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might,

12 so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
The LORD is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made.

14 The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.

15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.

16 You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.

18 The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them.

20 The LORD watches over all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.

21 My mouth will speak in praise of the LORD.
Let every creature praise his holy name
for ever and ever.

-Psalm 145

Posted by jackdas at 12:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 30, 2006

Indonesian Earthquake-Please Give

I got the following information in an email from Mercy Corps, a relief and development agency I trust, founded by a Christian Dan O'Neill and supported by singer John Michael Talbot. Please give.

Help Speed Relief to Earthquake Survivors

Thousands of survivors from Saturday's earthquake in Indonesia are injured, homeless and grieving for lives lost. Mercy Corps is in the most affected villages on the island of Java, rushing rapid relief to those in need.

We need your help to deliver ongoing, critical aid to families who have lost everything.

Our emergency response team is providing families whose homes were destroyed with "survival kits" that contain tarpaulins, blankets and hygiene products. Temporary shelter is one of the most important issues in the aftermath of the earthquake, which killed almost 5,700 people and left 200,000 without homes.

Mercy Corps in working in four villages around the devastated city of Bantul. The agency expects to serve more than 25,000 survivors in the near-term, then continue to assist families as they rebuild their homes and lives.

Mercy Corps has a long history of helping Indonesian families recover from conflict and disasters. We responded with lifesaving aid within hours of the 2004
Indian Ocean Tsunami, and are still helping over 423,000 tsunami survivors as they continue to restore their communities.

Earthquake survivors need your help today. Please speed immediate relief to them by making a generous donation today.

This morning listening to the radio on the way on in, they were noticing that many in the West are experiencing compassion fatigue from too many disasters around the world in recent years. I confess I have felt this a little at times, but more so in more personalized presentations of need. But compassion fatigue? Really? And even if it is there, what about hunger fatigue, sickness fatigue, heartsick fatigue? What about fatigue from hopelessness?

I remember reading a war comic many years ago and in one scene the soldiers are having break in the action and the commander says "Smoke, if you got 'em," meaning cigarettes. Well, might I similarly suggest, "Give if you got it."

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May 19, 2006

"Your Mother is a Whore!"

Here is a prescient and humorous point from a review of Da Da Vinci Code by Steven D. Greydanus, who is a Christian (and I believe Catholic) film reviewer. The entire review is worth reading.

Is it possible to put all this aside and just enjoy the story as a thriller, an enjoyable yarn? I honestly have no idea how people can take that approach.

Catholic writer Mark Shea tells an anecdote about a college bull session among students at Central Washington University over The Da Vinci Code. “Even if it’s just fiction,” a student opined, “it’s still interesting to think about.”

To which another student replied: “Your mother’s a whore.” And then, to the first student’s stunned incredulity, he added, “And even if that’s just fiction, it’s still interesting to think about.”

____________________________________

This quote reminds me of a phrase which I like a lot which one of my former pastors would remind me of when we were discussing troubles in the church, local and universal. Acknowledging its faults and flaws, we both have respect for aspects of the Catholic church. This phrase, though, really applies to the Church universal coming down through the ages, which will one day be Christ's glorious, spotless bride.

"She's a bitch and whore, but she still is my mother."

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May 18, 2006

Sitting on the Sidelines, but Definitely on a Specific Team

I am sorry to be sitting on the sidelines on this one, not having read the book, nor planning on seeing the movie (at least not on opening weekend).

Thankfully there are some faithful, thoughtful Christians not sitting on the sidelines.

Jeffrey Overstreet has been blogging with passion and comprehensiveness on this issue for some months, and a lot recently.

Catholic movie critic and scriptwriter, Barbara Nicolosi, has been blogging passionately for a long time

You might also consider joining the Othercott, an effort spearheaded by some Catholic groups. 10 things to do.

Finally, its just not getting that good reviews:
*Metacritic reviews
*Rotten Tomatoes reviews

I am not a huge fan of boycotts, but Indian Christians and Muslims get the potential harm the film might cause.

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May 3, 2006

Outsourcing Prayer Lines to India

Lark News has a pretty funny piece based on the conceit mentioned in the title of this post. After you read their piece, continue reading this post for a paragraph I would have like to have added.

Continue reading "Outsourcing Prayer Lines to India"

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April 28, 2006

Brothers' Blogs

Well, the blogosphere has officially captured three out of four of us flatmates, and hopefully the blogstravaganza to be known as Sweet Chicken will soon make its appearance and make it four for four.

Today, though, I am featuring the blogs of Lloyd and Jesse as they have recently written some good pieces, well worth sharing.

_______________________________________________________________

Following Breadcrumbs: Community, Grace, Feasting, & Whisky

Lloyd has written a moving, highly personal piece about suffering and hope.

________________________________________________________________

Bacon's Great...

And Jesse has come out of the blocks stong, with an evocative and thoughtful reflection on suffering around the world in places that are close to his heart.

________________________________________________________________

Finally, perk up your eyes and keep your ears peeled for the forthcoming house blog from the residents of 715 A. Our agents are still in negotiations over its name.

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April 17, 2006

Albert and Adi: Going Yard on Easter

Well, if you are citizen of Cardinal Nation (or just watch ESPN for that matter), you are likely aware that Senor Pujols went deep three times on Easter sunday, with the last time being in the bottom of the 9th inning to end the game. Brilliant.

His only home run that was more momentus? That would be the one in last year's National League Championship Series against Houston, which brought the series back to old Busch Stadium, where unfortunately the Cardinals promptly lost.

Albert and Adi, who is my brother, actually met once, in a Dobbs somewhere in West County. They talked about what is most important to both of them: their faith. Pujols talked about ways in which he and other players deal with temptation on the road. Adi still kicks himself for not going and buying a baseball for him to sign; the receipt he did have Albert sign has long since been lost.

Yesterday, I had the privelege of listening to my brother preach for Easter. I am not the most impartial judge in this case, of course, and I don't know the rightness of bragging on a sermon, but I like to think that Adi went yard too, in a sermon linking Isaiah 53, Gethsemane, and other events of Holy Week. And if you pay attention to the structure of the sermon, he went deep three times also. With three shots beginning in the Old Testament, flying through the New, and landing over the fence, smack down in our lives today.

Make sure you listen to Adi's conclusion after the lovely hymn in the middle, which is part of the sermon. Oh yeah, and get your glove out.

Adi's Easter sermon.

Adi's other sermons.

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March 18, 2006

Even when my heart is breaking...

The tune can be heard here.

Jesus! what a Friend for sinners!
Jesus! Lover of my soul;
Friends may fail me, foes assail me,
He, my Savior, makes me whole.

Refrain

Hallelujah! what a Savior!
Hallelujah! what a Friend!
Saving, helping, keeping, loving,
He is with me to the end.

Jesus! what a Strength in weakness!
Let me hide myself in Him.
Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing,
He, my Strength, my victory wins.

Refrain

Jesus! what a Help in sorrow!
While the billows over me roll,
Even when my heart is breaking,
He, my Comfort, helps my soul.

Refrain

Jesus! what a Guide and Keeper!
While the tempest still is high,
Storms about me, night overtakes me,
He, my Pilot, hears my cry.

Refrain

Jesus! I do now receive Him,
[or Jesus! I do now adore Him,]
More than all in Him I find.
He hath granted me forgiveness,
I am His, and He is mine.

Refrain

Amen. Amen. Amen.

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March 17, 2006

On the Future of the Flying P.L.A.T.E.S(S)

Dear regular blog readers, please pardon the interruption as I use this entry to have a bit of a discussion with some church folk. You are welcome to listen and chime in, of course, as it is sort of an open meeting. Consider this post a bit of practical theology.

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Well, the Flying P.L.A.T.E.S(S) has been on a hiatus, principally because I have not done the work necessary to set things up for us to meet. However, I would like to use this break to have a discussion about the future of Plates. First a bit of history. If you know this already, feel free to skip to the proposals, etc.

History
As the second part of the its name (People Living Apart Together Eating Something Sundays) implies, this group more or less formed to allow people from New City (and most of them are single) a venue to eat together in an economic and relaxed manner. We have been meeting in people's homes with a host bringing a main dish and other people bringing side items or desserts. I have been coordinating meeting location and host responsibilities and sending out Evites with scary-long guest lists. We meet, eat, and talk, talk, talk, then break to answer a ice-break question together, and then talk some more.

Proposals
Well, we are somewhat a victim of our own success. Plates has become too large to host in one venue. From what I have heard from folk it is meeting a need, though. So, I think it would be great if it would continue. The question is how. Here are some proposals.

1) We should have at least two meeting sites for folk who are attending from 82nd street. If there is interest, South City folk, we could also have a meeting site for you which would exist within the Plates evite/organizational framework. Alternately, we could always have a third group that just meets a bit later.

2) The host should not provide a main dish. Let's make this a true potluck (in as much as a Presbyterian can use that word) and have everyone just bring something and just deal with whatever comes, both in the amounts and types of food. Alternately we could coordinate a theme and people could still indicate what they are bringing.

3) Our monthly, joint 82nd St. and South City meetings should continue. We may need to meet at one or other of the worship sites (though I don't know if there are such facilities in the Chapel of the Oh So Exceptional).

Suggestions
1) I would like to strongly encourage the bringing of guests and new folk i.e. honing in on them and inviting them. At some point, this might require a mention in the bulletin or an announcement, which might mean we get even larger.

2) This is something that is more a personal conviction, but it would be great if we could have all our dishes, etc. ready the day before, so that we don't have to run to stores etc., but like I said that is up to each of you individually.

What We Need Next
1)Discussion. Do these proposals sound good? Please comment on this post or email me, if you are blog shy, and I will post your comment(s).

2) For 82nd street, I need at least 8 people to sign up as potential hosts. I need 12 people if we have three meeting sites. If we get these numbers, a host would only have to host once a month. And remember this would no longer require cooking vast quantities of food.

3) It would be nice to have two or three additional people to help with sending out the Evites and coordinating things. That will share the load a bit.

4) Please email me directly if you want to be on the host rotation or want to help with Evites. We particularly need the former.

The More Distant Future
I know I have mentioned some of the following ideas before. Perhaps it is the large number of people gathered together that makes the visionary/leader/dictator (take your pick) in me rub my hands together and cackle with delight. But seriously, I would like to think that a couple times a year we might do something charitable i.e. a fundraiser for one of the ministries of the church.

Also, we have had a skating night and a dismal winter picnic (thank you brave, kind souls for coming and not complaining), but the possibilites for other more or less organized outing are endless. Including one or more glorious, summer picnics in Forest and Tower Grove Parks.

Finally, thank you for reading. I hope you respond in some fashion. If this all works, the Flying P.L.A.T.E.S(S) will fly again on March 26. And, if you don't like the name (you know who you are), yeah, bring that up too.

God bless.

Posted by jackdas at 4:27 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 16, 2006

Black.White

The past two weeks after house church I have been coming home to watch Black.White, a new reality show on FX. On this show, through the wonders of modern makeup, a white family and a black family exchange races. They also live in the same mansion together as the experience unfolds. The participants in various pairings or alone experience various everyday situations, either in their own or borrowed melanin. And often the audience is provided voiceovers of personal reflections on the scenes or group reflection later. There is the setup.

So, is the show worth watching? First let me say, it would be infinitely better (and, yes, perhaps infinitely harder) to simply hang out with people from another race and experience life together and talk and learn from one another. It would be better still not to do this as an experiment but simply as a part of one's life. But, I suppose presuming the ability to that is somewhat putting the cart before the horse.

This show is worth watching, though I will get to some caveats later on. It does bring stereotypes into the spotlight to provide points for discussion and conflict. And there is plenty of conflict. That is perhaps because the couples that have been selected for this project are a bit extreme in some key ways. The black couple, the Sparks, both seem especially sensitive to perceived racial slights and predjudice.

And the white couple, the Wurgels? Well, they are another thing altogether. They are both classically, sensitive liberals, it seems, who have absorbed some things they think they know about blacks and try to apply these nuggets of knowledge in trying to engage the Sparks and as they masquerade as black folk. And often they, and especially the mother, fail spectacularly in their eagerness. Their smart and with-it daughter can see the trainwrecks before they arrive, and one certainly feels her pain.

So far, the show has illustrated some things that in my experience are true. Members of the black family in the show are far better at learning/mimicking white behavior, because this is what blacks and other minorities have to do far more often to be fully accepted in the majority culture, which has historically been patterned closer to white or european cultures. Of course, this self-adjustment/self-censoring might also be a necessity if you are white and belong to specific sub-cultures.

Also, an encouraging thing the show illustrates is that the young people, and we have seen more of the white daughter up until this point, are far less bothered and more clued in to racial dynamics. They are far more open to the blending of cultures that we are seeing in the nation today, as musical genres and people mash-up and hook up with one another.

I may write more on this show as it progesses. And I am sure you can find more on blogs and Internet news sites. A final thought for today. The black linguist, John McWhorter, who is a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to discussion of racial matters, felt that while the white father, Bruno, is not the most subtle thinker on racial matters, that his perceptions about perceived racial slights by Brian was correct. Mcwhorter "thinks the new FX TV show "Black/White" is full of stereotypes and cliches about what life is like for black America." Listen to his commentary on NPR here.

For more op-ed pieces by McWhorter click here.

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March 10, 2006

Wasting time isn't always a sin; but sinning is always a waste of time

Whatever else sin "is" and whatever other effects it has on a Christian's relationship with God, I have begun to think that one useful way to look at it is as simply a waste of time, a colossal waste of time.

At times when I am contemplating sin, I know that I will be asking forgiveness for it later. I know that I will go through an all to familiar cycle of sin, sorrow, perhaps numbness (if the sinning is persistent), perhaps depression, then a quickening, repentance, tears, restortion.

As I write this, I realize how brazen it is to go into sin knowing you will receive forgiveness. In some articulations of theology, during the period between sin and repentance, I would be out from under the protection of grace, effectively, I would not be a Christian. In the reformed tradition, of which I am more rather than less, a participant, if I am a believer and fall into sin I continue as a believer in my standing before God, but like the prodigal son (and this is a parable about two sorts of believers) I have willingly removed myself from the rich blessings of my Father.

However, make no mistake, sin is serious, serious business for the believer, not only, and most pointedly, because of the tremendous cost paid to remedy its effects, but because even while one remains a believer and forgiveness is always an option, sin will cause pain and perhaps even death. Indeed, scripture affirms the following: sin might cause me to get sick; sin might cause me to fall asleep (read "die" here); repentance might require the intercession of a friend; it might require elders and oil.

And, to come back full circle to the title of this post, sin is such a waste of time, not only of time that we might be using to witness or worship or some other Christian "activity," but of time that we get to simply "be," to be creatures, to be sons and daughters, in right relation to God, being made ever more fit to return to the blessings and bliss of Eden.

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. I Peter 4:1-3

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March 2, 2006

So, how do you like your Christian satire?

Blandly evangelical...

__________________________________________________

With a bit of an edge...and yet a much more sarcastic and ecumenical edge now then it once had, and, hence, a bit duller and less surgically useful, I think...

__________________________________________________

With a British accent...Be sure to check out Signs and Blunders...And, on the more serious side, some ideas for lent...

__________________________________________________

And, a Freudian slip?

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February 14, 2006

Makeout Worship-Floating a Metaphor

Perhaps this is a function of getting old, but if worship consists almost exclusively of songs that have simple, soaring, emotionally-get-you-going choruses which are repeated rather a lot, with these even being added to the hymns, does the metaphor in the title of this post work.

Disclosure:
I really love many songs that fit this description that come from my era.

Caveat:
Worship in the City, I almost invariably love the stuff at the City, and really appreciate your adaptation of Jesus Our Great High Priest (I think?). I just got back from an InterVarsity conference ;)

Caveat II:
I am having fun here, but I am interested in the question.

So?

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February 3, 2006

Are Barry Henning and Bono Actually the Same Person?

At the risk of simply becoming a mirror site for Looking Closer Journal, here is yet another piece that I was made aware of through its auspices.

"Barry who?" you ask. Barry Henning is the senior pastor of my church, New City Fellowship, and Bono's talk with a few, albeit significant, modifications might be something Barry would preach. So Barry's kind of like Bono. You know, except for the bit about being a global rock star and all, and the long flowing hair and Fly glasses. Well, at the risk of inciting some bears to come out of the woods and gobble me up, let me simply say that Pastor Barry could wear the glasses.

All kidding aside, Pastor Barry's sermons are better, but Bono did have some good and surprising things to say. The bits about poverty and AIDS are most important, but his story of his relationship with the church is very interesting to me. I strongly recommend the video to you as his delivery is at once self-deprecating, self-aware, amusing, and moving. However, for the time-strapped some excerpts are provided below and the transcript of the talk in its entirety appears in the extended version of this post.

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On the poor...

I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill… I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff… maybe, maybe not… But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yolk from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places”

To President Bush and Congres...

Here’s some good news for the President. After 9-11 we were told America would have no time for the World’s poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it’s true these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.

In fact, you have double aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support for the Global Fund—you and Congress—have put 700,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria.

Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.

But here’s the bad news...

On wisdom from a saint...

A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it… I have a family, please look after them… I have this crazy idea…

And this wise man said: stop.

He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing.

Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.

Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing.

And that is what He’s calling us to do.

Continue reading "Are Barry Henning and Bono Actually the Same Person?"

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November 20, 2005

"He Puts the Lonely in Families..." Part II

I was thinking about my latest post as I was driving around today and feel that it needs some further development. I wondered if it left the impression that I believe that only families can be purveyors of true hospitality. I do not, even though I do value family life very highly....

Continue reading ""He Puts the Lonely in Families..." Part II"

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November 18, 2005

"He Puts the Lonely in Families..."

Last night I slept over at the house of the sibs who teach me about tension management. The little ones were nestled all snug and we sat on the floor and looked at a children's atlas, complete with the little drawings of corn or sardines or hockey players which tell one what is produced or played where. We munched popcorn and talked about where we each would like to go if we had the opportunity just now. We conversed some more and they went to bed.

I stayed up and watched Anne of Avonlea...

Continue reading ""He Puts the Lonely in Families...""

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November 1, 2005

Three Hymns for All Saints Day

 ***

The titles of each of these are links to MIDI versions of the tunes which I first used to sing them. Often time this turns out to be my favorite tune, perhaps just because of associations with the place, literal and spiritual, in which I was when I learned them.

I find modern tune updates for hymns to be a rather hit or miss affair. They generally miss if they try to pep a tune up which really requires more solemnity or reflection. It is a fine art, which I might add Worship in the City does rather well.

The first hymn is for my mother, Norma Lee, and sweet Auntie Venus who also went to be with Jesus this past Friday. Rest, dear ones, rest. I will see you "soon," in the Light of the Eternal Day.

For All the Saints

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

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***This image is a diptych from a triptych at Cornerstone. I have forgotten why I did not get the entire triptych, perhaps I primarily wanted the lovely image of the woman. I have framed it in red and it seems a fitting image for the day.

Continue reading "Three Hymns for All Saints Day"

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October 26, 2005

Help Still Desperately Needed for the Pakistan Earthquake Survivors

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:16-18

Here is another article from the BBC that illustrates the desperate need and totally inadequate response to this disaster. In comparison to responses to disasters in our own country, our contribution is but a very small drop in the bucket, further illustrating just how highly elevated our standard of living is and just how much it costs to maintain it when others in other countries struggle on with just the bare minimum and very often not even that. I do not mean to ignore the suffering of people in America, but simply ask for help for those in even greater need also. In addition, aid distributed though a Christian organization is a great witness to the Muslim world, which rightly or wrongly feels so often on the wrong end of the stick.

There are links to donate in the article and at the top right of this site.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

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October 20, 2005

Your Help is Needed-Kashmir Quake More Devastating than Initially Thought

This story from the BBC details how the logistics getting aid to the quake zone is worse than last year's Tsunami. 50,000+ people have died and that total is expected to rise. Moreover, the harsh himalayan winter is on the way.

Please help. Far fewer countries are sending aid to this disaster. In addition to my links at the top of my blog, there are some additional ones in BBC article.

Posted by jackdas at 1:54 PM | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

Helicopter Heroes

This story illustrates not only the dedication of Pakistani and other miltaries' helicopter pilots, but also the continual challenges presented by the Pakistan Earthquake. Browse the links on the side of this article too, and, if you are compelled, please consider using the links at the top of this blog to donate.

Posted by jackdas at 12:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

Pakistan Earthquake-Please Help

This earthquake occurred in the land of my birth and half my blood, less than a hundred miles from cousins in Rawalpindi and my school in Murree. I am thankful that neither any of my relatives nor anyone at the school was injured. However, many, many have died and are homeless.

An earthquake anywhere is hard to imagine; the earth, our frame of reference and security being shaken like a sheet. It is hard to imagine that mountains of this size could be so shaken, and then to imagine the results. The villages in the northern areas are generally very poor. They cling to the edges of spectacular hillsides or nestle in deep valleys with the mountains looming over them. Moreover, the houses are just built with mountain rocks with little or no concrete and not even the simplest reinforcement.

Below is a link for you to become acquainted with the scope of the disaster and then some links for donations. Please help yet once again.

If you are a Christian, pray for the suffering of the people and for their quick relief on a physical level. Pray that this may be an opportunity for people to come to know Christ; for their to be greater peace between India and Pakistan. Pray for President Musharraf. It is nice to see India offering Pakistan aid, and Pakistan, after initially balking, accepting. It is nice to see US helicopters and soldiers helping. It is good we are giving aid and I hope more is forthcoming from all quarters.

*In depth coverage from BBC News.
*Donation link from Mercy Corps a Christian relief agency supported by Christian singer John Michael Talbot whose heart and integrity I trust.
*Donation link for the International Federation for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

I really don't know who is on the ground doing what. I may add more agencies, including mission agencies, as become aware of them. And perhaps there may be individualized needs that may come to my attention too.

Once again prayers and support are needed.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Selah

Pray for comfort, peace and rest from fear.

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October 7, 2005

I've Been to See the Wizard

I would have said "I'm off to see the wizard," as it flows better, but I've just been. The Wizard? That would be one Jerram Barrs of Covenant Theological Seminary. The topic of our conversation? Whether I should come to seminary or not. Now, it was less of an intense, let's-probe-your-heart-and-motivations-and-fears experience than I had expected (I guess I still must finish that work on my own), but nonetheless was practically helpful, not the least because he made it seem so "OK" that if after seminary no clear ministry direction presented itself that I simply return to the library world and just be a highly trained Sunday school teacher/Bible study leader for the rest of my life.

[Insert the sound of a deep breath exhaling here.]

He did give me a simple sheet on determining calling, though, and that is the point of this post. Item number 5 states:

"There needs to be some recognition of one's gifts and helpfuness by other people. No one is ever called in isolation from one's neighbors; rather we are called to serve one another in love. Is the service I render appreciated by others: Do they find my teaching helpful, or my music enjoyable and enriching, or my food pleasant to eat?"

And, so, if you consider yourself "my neighbor" in anyway, from a time past or presently, in person or virtually, and if you feel inclined/impelled to weigh in on this question, please do so in the manner detailed below. I am not simply looking for back patting praise and encouragement, though I am not going to lie to you and say that I do not relish that, but rather it's honest assessments that I want.

So, why do I want to go to seminary? To be a more effective teacher of God's word and to help myself and others better form, articulate, defend a Biblical worldview. And, perhaps, to become a (better) minister to people in pain.

If you want to participate, please do not respond on my blog, but do drop me an Email by CLICKING HERE.

I very much appreciate your responses.

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September 19, 2005

Messy Lines, Fine Line

I am teaching a non-Western literature class in which we are currently discussing Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, which, if you have not read it, is a classic of post-colonial African literature. Achebe paints a vivid picture of pre-colonial society in the Igbo region of Nigeria, detailing its religious and social structures. In the midst of this he places his central character, Okonkwo, who in many ways functions much in the same way as a tragic hero in Shakespeare. He is a noble leader of his people, his fall is momentous, and he has a fatal flaw which leads to his downfall. With Okonkwo it is his skewed view of masculinity and work, which is an attempt to compensate for having a lazy, infeffectual father, which is his fatal flaw. He is also proud and has no means to access any emotion except anger, which he cannot control. The story also details the arrival of the missio-colonial complex in the area and how it alters loyalties through enticement and outright coercion, completely ignoring settled religious and cultural traditions.

As a Christian, this is a difficult story to process.

Continue reading "Messy Lines, Fine Line"

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September 7, 2005

OF MAN’S first disobedience-Survey

"OF MAN’S first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe..."

So begins one of the most famous poems in the English language, John Milton's Paradise Lost. It serves a suitable introduction to questions I like to ask believers and non-believers in Christianity alike. In short, "Is Milton right?'

More specifically, in Eden, before the Fall of Humanind...

...did beasties die?
...did beasties eat other beasties?
...did humans eat beasties, or just veggies and seeds and such?
...did humans die?

Your answers can be simple "Yeses" or "Nos," as I am really interested in gut reaction thoughts foremost (i.e. the position you learned as you grew up), but if your thinking has undergone a shift over the years you can detail that.

This all does relate to some thinking I have been doing for a while and your replies would be appreciated. I am not looking for an argument here. Not yet, at least ; )

Finally, an old previously posted poem of mine on the theme.

bruno

i have a little dog
unaffected by the Fall
or so it seems

he's all loving licks
and waggling
and playful romps
and glee

and then I watch him
growling
eating meat

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September 1, 2005

Quick Hits (without the drags)

OK, that was a shameless marijuana reference (but more on that later). These thoughts could encompass a thesis long reply, but as many of you know I am not very good at getting those done ;) So, this is a bullet list style response to some of the comments made in the posts A Discussion Worth Having and A Story About a Story: An Open Letter. I am posting it as an entry so that it will have more visibility.

*Agreed. Our motivation for pursuing holiness should be internal as a result of love for God and not merely to live up to some Christian image.

Continue reading "Quick Hits (without the drags)"

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Donate Now

During 911, I was so absorbed in personal pain that it kept me from thinking and acting about the tragedy until much later. In other instances, sheer selfishness or apathy have kept me from responding. Not this time. I have made a donation and encourage you to do the same. The link below will take you to the American Red Cross donation page. Or pick a charity of your choosing.

And pray for those effected, for their physical and emotional suffering and for their souls.

Posted by jackdas at 1:20 PM | TrackBack

August 31, 2005

A Story About a Story: An Open Letter

Dear Aurelia,

I have not had a fantastic 24 hours. Your comments, which I thank you for sharing with me before you posted them and asking me if I minded if you did, created within in me the type of panicky fear I have experienced only at the end of a close relationship or with loss in general. Partly they arise out of feelings of rejection, even if that is not logically based. Partly they arise out of fear of having to have extremely emotional discussions and not feeling at all up to the task. But you have been feeling similarly strong feelings of anger as a result of my story, and so it is entirely appropriate that I hear you and take my licks. I say that knowing that you are not intending to give me any licks at all, but just expressing the feelings of hurt and anger you have felt as a result of my story. So let me tell you of how I wrote that story and what I intended it to accomplish.

Continue reading "A Story About a Story: An Open Letter"

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August 30, 2005

A Discussion Worth Having

What follows is entry that was posted on my old blog that is receiving some discussion. As this old post cannot be commented upon in my new blog format, I am reproducing the entire entry and the comments received so far so that we can continue the discussion here. I hope this proves a fruitful discussion. I will enter it again soon. Just now I need a little time. Neil

Continue reading "A Discussion Worth Having"

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August 23, 2005

Three Songs on Servanthood

I have been having an email discussion of sorts with a friend concerning the Body of Christ, which started me thinking about songs about servanthood and caring for one another. Like the best spiritual songs, these combine moving music with meaningful words.

The Servant Song

Brother, let me be your servant,
let me be as Christ to you,
Pray that I might have the grace to
let you be my servant too.

We are pilgrims on a journey,
we are bothers on the road,
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load.

I will weep when you are weeping,
when you laugh I'll laugh with you,
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we've seen this journey through.

I will hold the Christ-light for you,
in the night-time of your fear,
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear.

When we sing to God in heaven,
we shall find such harmony,
born of all we've known together
of Christ's love and agony.

Continue reading "Three Songs on Servanthood"

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April 16, 2005

Girl Meets God Girl Met

Well, not really, but the Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Real Sex was at the Covenant Seminary campus last night giving a talk about chastity and premarital sex. I missed the first little bit, but from what I gathered and from an article in the Spring 2005 issue of Leadership, her three central points are that there are 3 lies the church believes about sex:

1) Premarital sex makes you feel lousy: "Insisting that premarital sex will make you feel bad missates the nature of sin. When we consider decption, or sloth, or gluttony, or any other sin, we know darn well that these don't always makes us feel bad....This is the way sin works--it tells that something not good is very good indeed. Our feelings are not always reliable--before or after sinning. This is precisely why we need the witness of Scripture and the Church to help us know what to do."

2)Women don't really want to have sex: "Okay, I admit it: this is a fib that really ticks me off." She said that this was not always the case historically, but that in earlier times it was women who were perceived to be temptresses luring men. She noted that in about 25% of marriages it is men who want more sex, in 25% women, and in the other 50% it is about even. Her central point, though, was that to believe and act on this assertion does nothing for women to prepare them for sexual desire and temptation if or when it does arrive.

3)Premarital sex leaves permanent scars: This perhaps was her most interesting point. She said that evangelical Christian literature centers on two metaphors regarding premarital sexual sin: ghost and scars i.e. the ghost of previous lovers will never leave ones mind and the scars of premarital sex will permanently affect a marriage. She was not diminishing the far reaching consequences of premarital sex (and she made clear that this encompasses not just the actual sex act but also activities that fall short of that but are equally intimate). In fact, she provided the helpful analogy of credit card debt (and another I don't remember just now), in which it is true that towering credit card debt casts a long shadow, that it takes a long time to pay it off and to learn good spending habits, but she insisted that this can be done. She said it is the same with sexual sin. Moreover, she noted that to claim that sexual sin was in some way outside of the redeeming and healing power of the Gospel is also simply a gross falsehood.

Overall, her talk was very good and I am looking forward to reading her other books, perhaps most specifically Mudhouse Sabbath.

This morning Ms. Winner gave a seminar on spiritual writing which I attended. It was also very good, particularly her thoughts on the writing of memoirs and creative nonfiction. What follows is a writing exercise in which we were to write, in the space of about 15 minutes, a piece defining an abstract concept without using the word itself. Here, with only one word changed, is my piece on "xxxxxxx." OK, I had told you the word, but I think I won't, and hence I went back and x-ed it out. If you are inclined, guess it in a comment, and lets see if I did my job. Oh, and this was off the top of my head and from my impressions i.e. I did not really check out my assertions.

The Monty Python skits mock it because that's never how it is. At least not how it is in my experience. There is never the clarity of the ray of light beaming down from above, with me gazing up, finally seeing it. The light that is, that old proverbial light. Nor is there a sound of angelic voices in growing crescendo as the light of comprehension reaches its almost orgasmic peak.

No, my reality is not like that. There are places, friends, music, words, desires, and pain. David, longing, "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service, Scotland all ensconced in grey matter and synapses, the synapses themselves arranged, no one knows, how in amazing sequences.

No, what it is is when structure emerges from the chaos. Not the structure of everthing, of course. The Theory of Everything I have not nailed down. The string theorists can rest easy. No, but a piece at least becomes aligned, connected, and I can see the connection all the way up to God.

Perhaps that how it was then. The confusion of Kings with their entourage descending on a dusty Judean village. They, perhaps, puzzled themselves at their end point. The neighbors confused. There was no flock of angels as before, however many years before, just a young mother, a baby in peasant rags, kneeling, gifting, and a direct connection to God.

Posted by jackdas at 8:45 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 13, 2005

It's Possible I Attend the Greatest Church in the World

OK, not really...but it is pretty darn good. I just returned from a house church for the aforementioned GCITW in which our house church was joined by a French speaking house church with members primarilly from Congo but also Togo and Alabama (that's like another country too right?) The gentleman from Alabama is actually our church's very able French translator. My house church includes me (a Pakistani American), several Ethiopians, some Black Americans and a bunch of, as they refer to them from the pulpit, Anglos. Oh yeah, and our leader? Alabama also. No banjo on his knee, but he does completely fine by a guitar and belts out those African call and response songs with vigor and gusto, yeah and even some rhythm. The kids sit on the floor with assorted shakers or drumsticks and help out in that department.

Tonight is extraordinary because the songs in French and African languages, which we often sing on our own as a house church, tonight are ensouled by African voices, by the spirits of African brothers and sisters in Christ. Occassionally, a woman will let out a shrill cry, which sounds like a Native American war chant, which seems to be like a completely unmuted cry of joy and freedom, like a verbal dance. At one point during the evening, I notice at least three different rhythms of clapping in one song. I stick with the standard clap and pause and clap. Maybe one day I'll try a more complex one.

As exciting as this all may seem, I am sure it is muted by African standards, by some African American standards, and by even plain vanilla American pentecostal/charismatic standards. We are a Presbyterian church, after all, and, all kidding aside, orderly worship is a good guiding value of our denomination (which still allows for a great deal of freedom). What is more impressive than the freedom (in which I want and need to participate more) is simply who is here and how we interact.

Our church is not perfect. There is inevitably a certain amount of clunkiness and stepping on feet when one attempts to live as one across cultures, any two cultures not to mention a plurality of them. It is inevitable when you have the decendants of colonists and those colonized that there will be work to do to. There will be unintended patronizing. There will be unwarranted prejudging in every direction. There will be an inclination to highlight the sinful proclivities of another culture, while making excuses for the sinful proclivities of one's own.

I am a relative newbie at this church. I am learning about these issues as well as issues about poverty and wealth, social justice and evangelism. I, who sometimes describe myself as a bleeding heart conservative, need to learn how to give and serve properly in ways that build up others and not make them dependent, in ways that don't merely serve my own need to be needed. And there are things which at times I miss at this church. I miss a liturgy, a formalized confession of sins. I miss some of the old tunes of hymns. That is not to say that these never occur in my current church, or at least some equivalent of them. When you strive toward working across cultures, though, there are compromises that have to be made. In a smorgasbord, in order to try everything, you can only take a little from each dish. And our church, still has a great deal of Western ones. We are like an Old Country Buffet with an ever growing exotic food section and a little bit of fusion cooking. OK, that analogy isn't going anywhere useful.

Well, that is all for now. Perhaps more in a later posting... If you are curious the church's web site is www.newcity.org.

In a side note, in this post I used "Black American" and "African American" interchangeably. That is not done out of ignorance. I am inclined to follow the lead of the linguist John McWhorter in his preference for "Black American," but realize the word that I will use in any given context will likely be the one that I feel will be the most acceptable in a given situation. If you are interested in McWhorter's article on this topic here is the link http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_latimes-why_im_black.htm. Here is the link to other articles by him http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mcwhorter.htm.

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March 31, 2005

"We die alone, for on its own, each ember loses fire"

I don't know if you are a hymn lover or a chorus lover. I am hoping both. Without getting into that debate, there are excellent reasons for employing both in the worship of God. This post is not about that debate, however, it is instead a consideration of one particular hymn that has been meaningful to me and which I recalled during house church last night. Here are the words to "We are God's People" by Bryan Jeffrey Leech:

We are God's people, the chosen of the Lord,
Born of His Spirit, established by His Word,
Our cornerstone is Christ alone, and strong in Him we stand,
O let us live transparently, and walk heart to heart and hand in hand.

We are God's loved ones, the Bride of Christ our Lord,
For we have known it, the love of God outpoured,
Now let us learn how to return the gift of love once given
O let us share each joy and care And live with a zeal that pleases heaven.

We are the Body of which the Lord is Head,
Called to obey Him, now risen from the dead.
He wills us be a family Diverse, yet truly one;
O let us give our gifts to God And so shall His work on earth be done.

We are a temple, the Spirit's dwelling place,
Formed in great weakness, a cup to hold God's grace,
We die alone, for on its own, each ember loses fire,
Yet joined as one the flame burns on To give warmth and light and to inspire.

Where to begin? This hymn has so many wonderful lines:

O let us live transparently, and walk heart to heart and hand in hand...

O let us share each joy and care And live with a zeal that pleases
heaven...

He wills us be a family Diverse, yet truly one;

The final verse, though, is what really spoke to me last night in its emphasis on corporateness.

We are a temple, the Spirit's dwelling place, Formed in great weakness, a cup to hold God's grace, We die alone, for on its own, each ember loses fire, Yet joined as one the flame burns on To give warmth and light and to inspire.

For many generations in the West, and most acutely in America, we have been incredibly individualistic. This plays itself out in our cultural values and icons and, sadly, even in the church. The ways in which many come to faith, choose their churches, choose their careers, their spouses even is highly individualistic. Not all of that, of course, is inherently bad.

When it comes to the faith, though, we really lose something when we are highly individualistic. In fact, this hymn seems to indicate that our relationship with God is dependant on corporateness. Not convinced? Here is the Apostle Peter on the subject:

As you come to him, the living StoneÐrejected by men but chosen by God and precious to himÐ you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4-5)

A professor in a seminary class I once took argued that perhaps the central characteristic of the image of God which was created into human beings is not the intellect or even the spirit that worships, but the relational aspects of the Trinity. We are created to be relational with God and with our fellow humans.

If we needed others before the Fall, we surely need them now in our fallness. I need no other proof for this than the witness of my own life. It is when I choose to remove myself from church, from the influence of family, from the influence of godly friends that I am most prone to sin, when I am most prone to pity myself, to excuse myself, and ultimately to loathe myself. It is no coincidence that my hiding in such times reflects Adam and Eve's hiding from God in the garden.

This past weekend, my roommates and I barbecued a lot of meat. And it was key while getting the coals going and to keep them going that they be close together. When I isolate myself for extended periods of times, either because of committed or impending sin or for other reasons, then I am prone to become an ember that loses its power to burn effectively, to give heat and light.

You may argue that we are saved as individuals and that this coal analogy if carried too far might become heretical. And that may be true. But if God does work in our spirits individually (and clearly there is generally much coporateness involved in the means of most people's salvation), we are not meant to live our Christian lives alone. Passage after passage of scripture affirms this.

Last night in house church, singing songs together, studying God's word together, sharing our fears and praying together, I was reminded about this important truth.

Posted by jackdas at 7:19 PM | Comments (1)