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The Banishment of Ishmael - Genesis 21:8-21

2011-12-03T11:10:00.001-08:00

Though we often want every biblical story to present a uniform message of God's indiscriminate love and fairness, no careful reader can deny the Bible's complexity. The banishing of Ishmael is one of the Bible's complex stories. On the one hand, it is as clear as day that God's plan to redeem the world involves Isaac rather than Ishmael. Isaac is the miraculous son of promise, and Ishmael is the natural son of pragmatic and strategic human planning. To put it more starkly, Isaac is chosen and predestined, and Ishmael is not. Nevertheless, Ishmael is the treasured firstborn son of God's chosen and blessed patriarch Abraham. Abraham loves Ishmael who is now a teenager, and Ishmael has been marked as a member of God's covenant community through circumcision. Abraham doesn't want to let go of Ishmael, but God assures him that because God loves Abraham, he will take care of Ishmael and make him a great nation too. Even though Ishmael will not inherit the covenants, he will be blessed because of Abraham - connection to God's chosen ones should always result in blessing.

Ishmael is an intrusion into God's redemptive story. He is the result of people attempting to engineer solutions to God's promises, and yet God doesn't discard this intrusion. Once present, God incorporates Ishmael into his story, hears his cry (Ishmael's name means "God hears") and is "with him," which we know is an ultimate statement of God's blessing of a person.

Through Advent We Wait

2011-11-25T10:33:00.001-08:00

We are God's people.
When we were led astray by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, God said that someday a child would be born to us who would crush the head of that deceptive serpent. That means that someday, God will send someone to us who will overcome all the evil in this world. We are waiting.
Refrain: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And ransom captive Israel.

Angels Announcing Christ's Birth to the Shepherds
-Govert Flinck (1639)

We are God's people.
When God led us out of captivity in Egypt he spoke powerfully to us through the prophet Moses. And God promised us that one day, he would send us a prophet like Moses, one of our brothers, who would again speak God's words to us. That means that God will send someone to free us from whatever enslaves us, and show us who He is.We are waiting.
Deuteronomy 18:18 "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him."
Refrain: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And ransom captive Israel.

We are God's people.
When David was our king, he ruled us with justice, and God promised to establish the kingdom of one of David's sons forever. That means that God will send someone with a pure heart, filled with God's Spirit, to do His will on earth as it is in heaven. We are waiting.
1 Chronicles 17:11-13 "When your days are fulfilled to go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son."
Refrain: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And ransom captive Israel.

We are God's people.
When we turned away from the Lord our God, he sent us into exile in a foreign land. But he promised to one day forgive our sins, and bring us back from exile. That means that God will send someone to find everyone who belongs to him, no matter how far away they are, and to bring them to the place where God is. We are waiting.
Jeremiah 33:7-8, 15 "I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and will rebuild them as they were before. I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land."
Refrain: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here. Until the son of God appear.

The Hyperlocal Church Manifesto

2011-11-23T14:37:00.001-08:00

The hyperlocal church is the future of missional praxis. At a time when "local" church means driving 30+ minutes, and when "local" means multi-site or even multi-state video streaming, and church-specific social media (e.g. The City), "local" simply means that a physical church building occupies some physical space somewhere.

In contrast, the hyperlocal church is not a building, it is the community of believers in an urban neighborhood. It probably has a building, but it does not have a parking garage. Its members shop at the same grocery stores, eat at the same restaurants, pick up their kids from the same schools, run into each other on their walks through the neighborhood, borrow each other's lawn mowers, cultivate the same p-patches, and spend more time in impromptu conversation than in church program planning and management.

Hyperlocal is a value, not a program. Hyperlocal values real presence over virtual presence. Hyperlocal churches are missional because they integrate with their communities, rather than creating artificial commuter communities. Because members live, shop, walk, and ideally even work in the same community, they are aware of the deep needs of that community, and are able to offer long-term care to their community.

Hyperlocality is the Church's answer to social fragmentation, indentured programming, simplistic surface-level missions activities, and a culture that flattens all nuance.

The Best Book on Genesis - Ever

2011-11-22T14:52:00.001-08:00

The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon Kass is the best commentary I have ever encountered on any book of the Bible. Most commentaries I read fall on a spectrum between dislike and hate for the following reasons:
-They are too technical for most people to understand
-They are written by scholars for use by other scholars, rather than pastors
-Most of them are stubbornly evangelical
-The kind of people who write commentaries are the kind of people who miss the forest for the trees

There are more reasons I dislike commentaries but that will suffice for now. The Beginning of Wisdom succeeds because it is different. It doesn't get bogged down in common scholarly arguments, it is eminently readable and understandable by ordinary but smart people, it focuses on the big picture of Genesis while engaging the important details of the text, and it is easily translatable into contemporary applications. Moreover, Kass takes great pains to show readers his methods of interpretation, making this an excellent book for people who want to learn how to read the Bible on their own.

Of course, every interpretation deserves scrutiny, and there are numerous occasions where I disagree with Kass, but even what I consider his errors are eloquent and thought provoking, making me a better observer and interpreter. Enjoy!

He Laughs, Who Laughs? - Genesis 21

2011-11-22T11:40:00.001-08:00

God's memory and God's presence are the two most potent forces ensuring God's plan for this world succeeds. Repeatedly in Genesis and beyond, when God's covenants appear at the brink of failure, God remembers [someone], and God is with [someone]. When we see these loaded phrases, we should be on the edge of our seats.

Our text begins with "the Lord remembered Sarah..."! We are expecting the Lord to remember Abraham, since God made the covenant with him, but he remembers Sarah. What qualifies someone to be a mother of the covenant? The main qualification seems to be an inability to accomplish the only thing that matters to be a mother of the covenant. In this case, that means having children. Sarah is a perfect candidate for this, and indeed, her being barren is the only thing we are told about her when she is introduced in chapter 12 - probably because it is the only thing that matters. Sarah's inability to bring fulfillment to the covenant highlights God's complete responsibility for its fulfillment. Yes, there are other things that threaten the covenant - familial strife, famine and war - but these all pale in comparison to Sarah's barrenness. Without a child from her, God's people don't even have the opportunity to mess things up.

So God remembers Sarah, and Isaac is born. Isaac's name means "he laughs," but who is "he"? No doubt it hearkens back to God's announcement that Sarah would have a son in her old age, and both Abraham and Sarah's laughter. In this sense, Isaac's name is a sobering reminder of their unbelief. Then again, perhaps Isaac (God's fulfillment of the covenant against all odds), is God's laughter - we can imagine God chuckling with mirth as he does humanly impossible and wondrous things to redeem the world, relishing our surprise and delight. Either way, this is a case where our joy is coming not from our own achievements, but from God doing what only God can do. There is a special kind of joy that comes from encountering this God who is both entirely beyond us, but also on our side.

Do Not Be Afraid

2011-11-19T20:36:00.001-08:00

The famine in the land was severe. It had not rained for years and there were no crops. God was holding back the rain to punish Ahab and Jezebel for causing the Israelites to worship Baal, the god of agriculture. God's prophet Elijah was in hiding, but God instructed him to go to the home of Baal, in Sidon, to beg for food. Arriving at the outskirts of the small town of Zarephath, Elijah met a widow and asked her for water and a piece of bread. She replied that she had no bread, but only enough flour and oil to make one last meal for her and her son before dying of starvation. "Do not be afraid" said Elijah, go ahead and make me a little bread too, and see what the Lord will do for you!

Do not be afraid - the most frequent command in the Bible. The command that is always pregnant with expectation - do not be afraid, and see what the Lord will do. Do not be afraid is an invitation to trust that the living God can take care of us. The widow trusts, and her jar of flour never runs out - and when her son dies of illness, Elijah raises him from the dead.

We live in constant fear, with constant anxiety, and the Lord is saying to us "do not be afraid, just wait and see what I will do. I will feed you, I will fight for you, I will calm the storm, I am renewing all things."

Sodom & Gomorrah - Genesis 18-19

2011-11-09T15:59:00.000-08:00

What does hospitality have to do with justice? How many righteous men does it take to save a wicked city? These are the questions raised when God appears to Abraham in disguise to announce the imminent birth of a son by his barren wife Sarah, as well as judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

First, three men appear at Abraham's tent - the reader knows that the Lord is among them, but Abraham does not. Do we ever know when God is among the strangers we meet? This episode sets a new precedent for how God's people treat strangers. While our story deals explicitly with God and two angels appearing in the guise of men (the probable background for Hebrews 13:2 - "do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it"), Jesus takes the concept to a new level when he instructs us that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matt. 25:40). The point being that our treatment of strangers, those who aren't part of our clan, is a mark of our special relationship with God, and is the measure of our justness. Why should Abraham, Israel, or we care about strangers? For one, Abraham is a stranger himself in the land of Canaan, Israel will be a stranger in the land of Egypt, we are strangers in the kingdoms of this earth. We are all sojourning in this world and the golden rule is how God's people store up treasure that will never perish. Abraham's conduct in this case is impeccable. He doesn't just throw money and servants at his guests, he and Sarah prepare and serve the strangers themselves - it is a show of extravagant hospitality. It is a personal act of justice. Contrast this with the welcome that two of these men/angels receive when they go down to Sodom. Every man of the city descends upon Lot's house where they are staying in order to abuse them - if there was any doubt about the wickedness of Sodom it is quickly put to rest.

Between the visit to Abraham and the visit to Sodom is a unique interchange between Abraham and one of the men, who Abraham has discerned to be the Lord. In this conversation, Abraham perceives the impending doom of Sodom and Gomorrah, but makes a plea to save...Sodom only, presumably because his nephew Lot is living there. Abraham cares about justice being done to his own, but he does not yet value righteousness in the world, in these cities. So, how many righteous men does it take to save a city? It appears that one is not enough, or at least Lot is not enough. While Abraham claims concern that the righteous not suffer unjustly, God seems to be answering "if there are enough righteous people to eventually turn the city from its evil ways, I will save the whole city, if not, then not." This brings into bold relief the mission of God through Abraham and his descendants - to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, not least by doing justice, which is so near to righteousness that you should alternate them in your head. Abraham might have asked "if there is one righteous person in the world, will you relent from destroying it?"

God will answer that question - he will become the one righteous man himself, since not even one righteous could be found in this world - and when God does this the equation is changed, and one righteous man is indeed enough to redeem the whole world.

God's First Covenant with Abram - Genesis 15

2011-11-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

It is tempting to give Abram all the attention as we read this story, but God is more important. Observe how solicitous God is - Abram is feeling vulnerable after going to war for the first time (even though he was successful), and after being separated from Lot (his heir apparent), but God comes unbidden to comfort him with the revelation that God is Abram's shield and great reward. Later, God tells Abram that he has been guiding his life since before Abram was aware of God - did you catch that? God says "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans..." Except it was out of Haran that God called Abram - Ur is the place Abram's father brought him from - meaning God was guiding Abram's life before calling him!

Apparently, Abram isn't especially impressed with the notion of God being his reward, because he speaks to God for the first time, revealing his anxiety about not having an heir (which would makes God's promises to him pretty meaningless - that whole "you will be a great nation" thing). God immediately responds with the promise that Abram will have a son of his own, and descendants as numerous as the stars. Abram believes God when he says this, and the apostle Paul interprets the following line "and he credited it to him as righteousness" as an example of God granting righteousness based upon faith rather than upon works (Rom. 4). However, Abram wants some assurances about his additional promise of Abram possessing the land of Canaan. God then commences an awe-inspiring covenant ceremony promising Abram that not he, but his descendants will possess the land - and only after 400 years of oppression in a foreign land.

This covenant clarifies for Abram that he is not going to become a great nation and possess the land in his own lifetime through conquest (a possibility given his success in battle in the previous chapter). Abram's attention is now turned towards the next generation - he is in the process of learning that being a nation-founder means being a good father, whose children will stay the course with his God. Abram still has a lot to learn in this regard, as subsequent stories will show.

A final note on this covenant - it has no conditions. It is one-sided. God is going to accomplish it. As we read Genesis, what we find is not the cleverness and righteousness of people ensuring that God's plans succeed, but rather God's ability to succeed with his plans despite every imaginable impediment put in his way by people and by nature.

The Cultural Pulse

2011-10-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

I often read the comments on news articles I read online. Most articles don't even deserve comments and it is a waste of time to read them. However, my favorite columnist - David Brooks of the NY Times - recently wrote a post asking readers over 70 to submit Life Reports about what they learned and how they thought they lived etc...What is especially fascinating are the responses his request elicited. Many people expressed a deep ambivalence to the idea, saying that lessons learned 50 years ago would be of no value to young people today. I was shocked that anybody would think wisdom expires so quickly! A related sentiment that comes up frequently is an assessment of the 20th century as one of increasing opportunity while the 21st is one of decreasing opportunity - and hence the reflections of people who lived in the earlier period are bound to be far too optimistic (and irrelevant). To this I ask: Really? One comment I found quite profound, especially since it mirrors the attitude of much of the Old Testament is the following: "My life has been a waste of breath, but I did produce two daughters, maybe there's hope yet." You can read the comments for yourself here.

Sensual Food and Wallets

2011-10-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

My friend Nick Kramer is a restless world traveler of many talents. He has appeared on my blog in the past when we were in England and Germany together, such as here. For the last eight months he has been traveling the world again with his compatriot and brilliant chef Brenna, and they have been maintaining a beautiful food blog called Salt Cellar and Rye, full of pictures and recipes. You should check it out.

Carrot Soup

The Damson Plum

Nick also makes and sells hand cut and riveted leather wallets which you can purchase here. They have a great back story too!

How To Lead Small Groups

2011-10-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

I have been leading small groups/bible studies since high school. My initial attempts were mostly failures whose small success was due more to my determination than any skill I possessed as a leader. I regularly hear about small group leaders struggling to create discussion in their groups, and I have had the same problem in the past, but seem to have struck gold in the technique department. What I'm suggesting below has worked for me with middle school kids all the way up through eighty year old grandmas.

First, read a Bible passage - do not read a mere three verses or even six verses. Read an entire section, and possibly even more. However, don't read too much - one chapter is quite enough. If you are a novice leader, or if you are leading a group of novice bible readers, you will fare best if you read a narrative passage (a story). Trust me on this one, narratives create the best discussions.

After you have read the passage out loud, ask a question like "did anything jump out to you in that passage," or "what was interesting to you in that passage," or "did you think anything was interesting, or weird, or confusing in that passage?" Once you have asked that question, your job as the leader is to shut up and let the Spirit move. You may have to endure some awkward silence, but you need to fortify yourself and remain silent for as long as it takes for someone to say something. This is absolutely key. Many leaders fail to create discussion because they can't endure the awkward silence. Inevitably someone will come up with something - but even then, refrain from talking. In fact, restrain yourself from talking as much as possible. When you do talk, your best bet is to make open ended observations about the text - never give final interpretations or pronouncements on what something means - stick with "I think it is interesting that the text says..." and expect a little magic. The reason this works is because anyone, whether biblically literate or not, can make observations about a story. Obviously the more biblically literate you are as a leader, the more you will be able to connect the story you are reading to other parts of the Bible - and this is extremely helpful for people and tends to generate lots of fresh ideas and questions - but don't worry if you can't.

Needless to say, my method here precludes all small groups based upon books people have written, as well as most topical studies. I say good riddance to them - God speaks to people through Scripture and people aren't hearing his voice enough. Anyone else have thoughts on small group leadership?

The Perfect Bike

2011-10-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

I have been on a quest for the perfect bike for several years now, and have reached a significant level of contentment with my current ride. However, perfection is elusive, and I continue to hold out hope that some future bike will carry me to even more heavenly heights of cycling bliss. Can a life be redeemed by the perfect bicycle? My logic says no, but my emotions are...optimistic. So, I present to you the bicycle builder in which my illogical self currently places its hope: Mitch Pryor, of MAP Bicycles in Portland. I met him at the Seattle Bicycle Expo a couple years ago and have been clandestinely obsessed with his bikes ever since. If I ever have $5,000 to plunk down on a custom ride, there is a good chance it would be with him.

A City Bike:

And a 650b Rando Bike:

And simply because it is awesome and beautiful and inspiring, a Danny Mackaskill video...it gets really epic at 3:56!

God Calls Abram - Genesis 12

2011-10-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

God's promise to Noah to never again attempt to fix the world by destroying it, leads to the calling of one man (Abram) to become one blessed nation (Israel) through which the entire world will eventually be redeemed. That is the promise of God in Genesis 12, to be expanded in Genesis 15, 17, and 22.

What we know about Abram: he is the last generation to be born while Noah is still alive (the genealogies are useful for this kind of information). Whereas Noah was the first generation born after Adam died, and represented a clean break with the beginning, Abram is connected to, and will build upon the foundation laid by Noah (thank you for your insight Leon Kass). We also know that Abram's father left the Babylonian city of Ur in order to move to Canaan, but only made it as far as Haran. God calls Abram to leave his country, people, and his father's household - which he does, except he takes his nephew Lot with him (will cause trouble later, think Sodom and Gomorrah).

Consider carefully all the promises God makes to Abram:
*I will make you into a great nation
*I will bless you
*I will make your name great
*You will be a blessing
*I will bless those who bless you
*I will curse those who curse you
*All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you

So Abram is a nobody who is being called to give up everything in order to gain everything. He won't have to make his own name great by building a tower to heaven - God will make it great for him. Abram will be blessed, but not at the expense of others. Rather, the blessing will flow through him and he will be a blessing - in fact, the entire earth will be blessed through him. Everyone else will be judged (blessed or cursed) according to their relation to Abram and his descendants. Now blessing is not simply material blessing - it is a description of healing and redemption, of God returning things to the way he created them to be. Whenever we read about God's interactions with people in the Old Testament, we should recognize that from Abram onward, there is a single (though developing) plan of salvation being worked out, and its culmination is in Jesus Christ. It is not just about the forgiveness of sins, it is about the complete restoration of the physical world, our physical bodies, all of our relationships, and most especially our relation to our creator.

We are not told why Abram listens to God - it is certainly not because he has perfect faith and trust in God - and we don't either. What matters is he responds. The next ten chapters of Genesis will include ten more tests of faith, the last being a kind of final exam where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. It is a serious endeavor to follow the Lord, but God ensures that Abram gets a full education in the faith.

One side note: We are told in 12:6 that "the Canaanites were in the land [of Canaan]." Wow, that is some profound insight from the author of Genesis...not. It is like saying "the Seattlites were living in Seattle." However, consider these words from Yuval Levin: "To be a Canaanite in Canaan requires no effort, no action, no thought. To be a Hebrew in Canaan will require attention and exertion." All the rest of Abram's life will be about maintaining the unique identity he has from God, while living in a foreign land. He must be in Canaan but not of it, and so must we.

Genesis 11 - The Tower of Babel

2011-10-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

While Group Publishing's Faithweaver curriculum hits every major story in Genesis, I wonder if our 2-11 year-olds will miss the forest for the trees. Anyway, this week's passage is the Tower of Babel.

The Bible is suspicious of cities. Cities are about permanence, self-sufficiency, the mastery of nature, and in this case, fame. You'll remember that Cain founded the first city in the Bible after he killed his brother Abel (see Gen. 4:17). As we read Genesis 11, we immediately encounter two questionable motivations for building this city: 1) people want to make a name for themselves, 2) people don't want to be scattered over the face of the earth. God sees what they are doing and says "if as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them," and we are thinking "yes, isn't that fantastic!?" Today, we constantly receive the message that human cooperation is the key to the redemption of the world - whether in the form of the end of war, poverty, oppression, or whatever. Cooperation itself isn't bad, but the Bible is saying that human nature is such that when humans do cooperate, they generally do so for glory and security, independent of God. God's mercy on these people cuts both ways. In the same way that God cuts people off from eating from the tree of life so that their corruption is limited by their mortality, so here God limits people's ability to achieve independence from him and be deluded by their own achievements.

But God has a plan for a city of his own. Building it will involve everyone who is scattered over the earth coming to a single place and speaking a single language... and the Bible tells us about this city as well.
You'll remember the story of Pentecost in Acts 2, and how people from every nation gathered in Jerusalem, and how the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus' disciples and they spoke in a language that everyone could understand. It is the reversal of Babel. God's plan is to build one city, a redeemed Jerusalem, where God's name will be great, and where God will dwell with his people forever. It is far better than the attempt of the Babelites to build a city for their own glory. Christians are God's single-language-speaking people for whom nothing is impossible, and whose aim is that everyone would speak God's language, in God's city, making God's name great.

As a postscript, the entire book of Ecclesiastes illustrates the folly of the people of Babel. It is all about the impermanence of humanity, and the meaninglessness of achieving glory or "a name for yourself." Interestingly, Abram is about to be called to leave a city, and to wander to an undisclosed place in order to receive an eventual blessing from God - but God is with the wanderers.

Genesis 6-9 - The Flood

2011-10-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

The Flood is a classic Sunday school story which nobody understands. A close reading of the text gives us a few clues about its purpose within the larger framework of Genesis. First, we read in Gen. 5:29 that when Noah was born, his father said "he will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed." This is, of course, referring to God's cursing of the ground as a punishment of Adam after he "ate the fruit" (quotations intentional, not to be mistaken for this) of the knowledge of good and evil. After the flood, the narrator of the story tells us God's internal resolution to never again "curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood" (8:21). These two statements form brackets around the story. The end of God's curse of the ground is really important, though the postscript to the story is even more important as we will see.

So Noah was a righteous (but not perfect) man, and when God gives him detailed instructions on how to build the ark, he fulfills them to a T. When the rain arrives, God shuts Noah in the ark and he is left to ride out the flood in a boat God designed with no means of navigation. Hm, think about the symbolism there. Now the rain comes for forty days and nights - the first time this significant number occurs in the bible (think 400 years in egypt, 40 years in the wilderness, Jesus tempted for forty days etc). What might it mean? Consider that one of the common threads in all these periods of 40/400 is that they are times when nothing seems to be happening...but without them nothing would happen. Think of it like a pregnancy - 9 months (about 40 weeks) of waiting, which is necessary for new life to come forth. The apostle Paul tells us that "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:22-23). Salvation is like a pregnancy, not a conception. It is not instantaneous, but a gradual and often painful process of development.

As mentioned in my previous post, the flood is a return to the watery chaos of the uncreated world. Essentially, God decides to un-create the world in order to fix it. This method of fixing things is one we often consider - just scrapping a project and starting over. However, after the flood we hear God promising to never again destroy the earth with a flood. People often hear this promise and think "that's nice as far as it goes, but what about destruction by burning, squashing, implosions, explosions, and general annihilation?" I at least haven't found this to be a very far reaching promise (covenant in fact), until I realized this isn't just about literal flood waters, this is about un-creating the world - about God completely starting over in order to fix the world. God's covenant with Noah to never again flood the earth is actually a remarkable promise to fix the world some other way! God knows the world will get screwed up again, but he is going to find a new way to redeem it - in just a few short chapters we will be introduced to that new way with Abraham - this way will be very long and gradual, and it continues even now, but it will eventually culminate in the renewal of both humanity and the entire creation. The more I read this story, the more excited I get about the depth of hope it offers to us. Hopefully this little exposition gives you a taste of it!

PS: The Bible is full of irony, and this story is a perfect example. Remember how God lifted the curse on the ground? Well Noah took full advantage of it, and in the span of six Hebrew words, he managed to plant a vineyard, get drunk, and pass out. That is some seriously fertile ground if you ask me! Don't get drunk on blessings people - you may end up cursing your children because of it (see Gen. 9:25).

Review: Genesis 1-6

2011-10-12T15:37:00.001-07:00

Since I am beginning these expositions several weeks in, I figure it'll be helpful to do a little review. I always encourage reviewing the big picture with kids as well. So it all began with God creating the world. God is not part of the creation, he is above it, a "wholly other" being. While God makes a good creation, there are some things that are not good: people being alone, and eating the forbidden fruit. When Eve and Adam eat that fruit, they do so to gain wisdom/knowledge, but it is the kind of "wisdom" that has been destroying humanity ever since. If you have ever observed a destructive person (yourself is a good place to start), then you know that their judgment is corrupted. The (down)fall of humanity begins with its quest for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding that only searches within the bounds of creation and its own mind. That is a long way of saying that we seek independence from God, and since relationship with God fulfills the purpose for which we were created, it is destructive to us. One more word on the eating of the fruit: it is an act of disobedience, but God's commands always have a reason, including this one.

God's grace begins with the first sin. While God said the man and woman would die the day the ate the fruit, they did not. Their punishment involves the cursing of the ground, making it difficult, but not impossible to grow crops, as well as their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Being barred from eating of the tree of life in this case is both a blessing and a curse - people will now die (curse), but they will not be able to live forever in their corrupted state (blessing).

Adam and Eve have kids - Cain and Abel. Cain gets his living from the cursed ground, and gives an offering from the cursed ground to God, which God rejects. Abel of course gives an offering which God accepts. Cain is ashamed, perhaps jealous - he kills Cain in cold blood. The story teaches us the answer to the question "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer is always yes, you are your brother's keeper. Later on it will be phrased "love your neighbor as yourself."

Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, to replace Abel. Here begins two lines of descendants, both of which lead to different men named Lamech. The line of Cain is characterized by increasing violence, while the line of Seth culminates in Noah, who is a righteous man who "brings relief of the curse of the ground." By Noah's time, the violence on the earth has gotten so bad that God is actually grieved he made everything. His solution at this point is to start over with Noah. If you remember the beginning of Genesis 1, creation begins with a watery chaos - it isn't quite as clear in English, but watery chaos is the meaning of "the deep" which the spirit of God hovers over. The flood is a return to this watery chaos, it is God wiping the slate, or in the image of Jeremiah 18, it is the potter recognizing that the pot he is making is flawed, smashing the clay back into a lump, and beginning to form it again. The righteous Noah is the new starting point - by the way, if you do the math in the first 5 chapters to figure out how many years have passed since Adam was created, the main takeaway is that Noah, and his generation, are the first to be born after Adam has died. Noah is presumably the first man to grow up having not heard about the Garden of Eden first hand from Adam.

One comment on Genesis 1-11. Scholars call this section pre-history. It is not meant to be read as a history book - rather it gives us a framework for understanding the human condition, tells us about the way things always are, not simply how they happened once, and gives us insight into God's character as a sovereign, interested, involved in creation, gracious God, who is also determined that his creation not be completely spoiled by humans who have the potential to be like God, but also the potential to behave more like the animals.

Obviously much more can be said about these chapters, but this is a starting point.

The Blog is Back Online

2011-10-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I recently took a job as the Children's Pastor at Seattle Community Church. Since then, it has come to my attention that some of my Sunday school teachers would like some direction regarding the Bible stories each week, which strikes me as a good reason to re-start the blog. My plan is to give short expositions of each of the passages covered in the FaithWeaver Fall 2011 curriculum by Group Publishing. These will be directed toward adults, to give them a greater understanding of the text, as opposed to a kid-oriented explanation that they can repeat to their classes. This may change at some point, but that is my plan for now. I invite anyone and everyone to leave comments on the posts, including questions, and I will do my best to respond to them promptly.

Disconnecting, or Re-energizing?

2011-08-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided that it is time to substantially reorganize my virtual life, as it has been subtly strangling me for awhile now. It appears that as an introvert, not only do I need physical space to re-energize. I also need distance from all these virtual spaces: email, facebook, twitter, google+, blogs, and linkedin. I need to feel like I am isolated from everything in order to be completely calm and prepare myself for activity. I have simplified my facebook account, reduced the notifications I will get, locked down my blog, reworked how my email reaches my phone, and am considering what else can be done, which will not keep me from missing any important messages. If you want to reach me, please call or text. The blog may be coming back into action, maybe.

Why an apparently shy person must be a pastor

2010-11-14T23:11:00.000-08:00

When God’s word has the kind of effect on you as it did on Jeremiah when he said: “But if I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” And when you cannot read it, sing it, or hear it proclaimed without a raised heart beat, quickened breath and the feeling that you are going to burst if you cannot talk to someone about it. And when you feel like your soul is quenched when you have no outlet to speak about the Word, and feel unified as a person when you do speak ... then a shy person knows that the ministry of the Word is a call and not a goal. And though your denomination may be dying a slow, ugly death, and good people may try to dissuade you from joining in that agony, remember that the Lord has given you a message for just such a time: These dry bones, they are they whole house of Israel. Behold, though they may say 'our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are finished,' you must prophesy to them saying "Hear the word of the LORD, Behold! I will open your graves and raise you from your graves O my people, and I will bring you home into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. Then I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord.

2 Years

2010-03-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

To despair or to be courageous - that is the question. I wish there was a date set for the resurrection of the dead, so that I could go stand at my Dad's grave, tapping my foot impatiently for the moment when I could forget that spot in the ground forever. The dead in Christ shall rise, bodily - I believe this.

A Self Authenticating Carefree Euro-Task

2010-03-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

I arrived home from work at the brightest point of the waning day, when the tree blossoms glow. Taken by a singular impulse, and almost breathless with anticipation, I leapt on my bike and road west. Cresting the ridge, speeding downwards, I smelt cherry blossoms [spring, soccer, college, drew, england, relaxed, peace, thickness]. The Olympic Mountains, cast in shadow. I turn south, across the locks, the cascading water is mesmerizing but I continue! The hill is long, time short, breath sharp, air cold, legs burning, I think of this one thing: to be at the top at the critical moment when the sun sets over the city and Rainier is clad in gold behind it. I reach the top, drop my bike on the ground, wheels spinning. Running to the clearing, I am 30 seconds late, and yet the moment is still glorious.

Interesting Excerpts of Bowen Theory

2010-03-09T20:59:00.000-08:00

I have been studying Bowen Family Systems Theory in my counseling class this semester, and as I am working on my final paper, I figured it would be appropriate to share a few salient points.

-Within a family system (or other relational system), the one who accommodates the most (taking too much responsibility for the distress of others), absorbs anxiety and thus is the family member most vulnerable to problems such as depression, alcoholism, affiars, or physical illness.

-The less developed a person's 'self,' the more impact others have on his/her functioning and the more he/she tries to control, actively or passively, the functioning of others.

-The basic building blocks of a 'self' are inborn, but an individual's family relationships during childhood and adoolescence primarily determine how much 'self' he/she develops. Once established, the level of 'self' rarely changes unless a person makes a structured and long-term effort to change it.

-People with a poorly differentiated 'self' depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that either they quickly adjust what they think, say, and do to please other or they dogmatically proclaim what others should be like and pressure them to conform.
--Bullies depend on approval and accepptance as much as chameleons, but bullies push others to agree with them rather than their agreeing with others. Disagreement threatens a bully as much as it threatens a chameleon. An extreme rebel is a poorly differentiated person too, but he/she pretends to be a 'self' by routinely opposing the positions of others.

-A person with a well-differentiated 'self' recognizes their realistic dependence on others, but they can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality. They defines themselves without being pushy and deal with pressure to yield without being wishy-washy.

-Dysfunction in one spouse if one of the 4 basic relationship patterns: one spouse pressure the other to think and act in certain ways and the other yields to the pressure. Both spouses accommodate to preserve harmony, but one does more of it. The interaction is comfortable for both people up to a point, but if family tension rises further, the subordinate spouse may yield so much self-control that his or her anxiety increases significantly, possibly fueling the development of psychiatric, medical, or social dysfunction.

-Parents transmit their emotional problems to their children through what is called projection. The inherited problems that most affect children's lives are relationship sensitivities such as heightened needs for attention and approval, difficulty dealing with expectations, the tendenc y to blame onceself or others, feelings responsible for the happiness of others or that others are responsible for one's own happiness, and acting impulsively to relieve the anxiety of the moment rather than tolerating anxiety and acting thoughtfully.

-The projection process: 1)the parent focuses on a child out of fear that something is wrong with the child. 2) the parent interprets the child's behavior as confirming the fear. 3) the parent treats the child as if something is really wrong with the child.

-One reason the projection process is a self-fulfilling prophecy is that parents try to 'fix' the problem they have diagnosed in the child; for example, praents perceive their child to have low self-esteem, they repeatedly try to affirm the child, and the child's self-esteem grows dependent on their affirmation.

-Commonly parents get critical of a child with whom they have been excessively involved if the child's performance drops. They push for the child to have therapy or tutors rather than think about the changes they themselves need to make.

-Parents often blame the influence of their children's peer group for their bad behavior, which places the problem outside themselves. Peers are an important influence, but a child's vulnerability to peer pressure is related to the intensity of the family process.

1 Year, 10 Months, 6 days

2010-01-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

First visit to the cemetery today.

Thinking without inner monologue, because words are inadequate, even unspoken ones.

Thinking, maybe I am so intent on gaining new skills these days because I can't call my dad for help.

Thinking, there are memories of me that are gone, that might have helped me understand myself.

Ah, The New Job/Hobby!

2010-01-11T22:58:00.000-08:00

I am now employed full time doing commercial upholstery, and I'm totally digging it. We've recently been working at the Salish Lodge above Snoqualmie Falls (the picture below, before we re-upholstered the chairs).

One of the perks of the job has been getting up early in the morning and seeing the sun rise.

I feel very blessed. The Lord provides.

A Book To Live By

2010-01-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

I have begun a new journal containing existence defining quotes and plan to continually expand and read it to keep me focused on those things which are worth living for. I am also steeping myself in the reformed tradition as I prepare for my ordination exams in a few weeks. Here are the first three quotes in my journal, read them a few times, each word was carefully chosen:

Q: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
A: That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death - not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
~Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1

Q: What do you believe when you say: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth"?
A: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth with all that is in them, who also upholds and governs them by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father. I trust in him so completely that I have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul. Moreover, whatever evil he sends upon me in this troubled life he will turn to my good, for he is able to do it, being almighty God, and is determined to do it, being a faithful Father.
~Heidelberg Catechism, Question 26

Q: What is the meaning of the little word "Amen"?
A: Amen means: this shall truly and certainly be. For my prayer is much more certainly heard by God than I am persuaded in my heart that I desire such things from him.
~Heidelberg Catechism, Question 129, the last.

The Heidelberg Catechism was written by Zacharias Ursinus and Kaspar Olevianus in 1562 to unify Lutheran and Reformed Christians. The Lutheran reformation had been moving down the Neckar River and the Reformed movement up the Rhine from Switzerland, and they met in Heidelberg, Germany.

To Be

2009-11-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

"Father, accept your servant J----- into your care, who walking with you these many years in darkness will now walk with you in light. Match his struggling devotion with your faithfulness and forgive his sins, both real and imagined. As you remember J-----, remember us too, and comfort us. Hasten the day when with renewed bodies we will stand before you in your new creation."
"Yes, this world is an oil on canvas, and every day I wake with the desire to tear through it to another reality."
Nothing is meaningful to me. Where does meaning lie? "Meaning resides in God. A meaningful life is life in God, it is God's presence. Living meaningfully is like imagining that God is with you and in you at every moment, but it is not that. It is the reality above your imagination."
"I have the most distinct memory of riding through frosty fields at sunrise, singing because I was alive and only God could hear me, and I feel only bitterness, because I can no longer know joy without pain."

Gilead in Retrospect

2009-11-03T22:54:00.001-08:00

Places I don't want to die:

In a restaurant

watching tv

reading a book

in a cubicle

only good candidate i could think of for a place to die:

cliffs of more

Highlights from Gilead: "While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been, in the strength of my youth, with dear ones beside me. You read the dreams of an anxious, fuddled old man, and I live in a light better than any dream of mine - not waiting for you, though, because I want your dear perishable self to live long and to love this poor perishable world, which I somehow cannot imagine not missing bitterly..."

"I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try."

"Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, 'Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had energy. But two is much more than sufficient for my purposes.' So he's just sitting there multiplying the feel of the wind by two, multiplying the smell of the grass by two."

The protagonist's conclusion: though the reality that awaits us after death will surely exceed all we can imagine, the fact that we cannot imagine it leaves us to live on this earth as if it were all we will ever have. We must relish every scent and scene in courageous resignation to our own impending demise. I call it the tragi-heroism. Not a bad place to be.

Bored with the internet

2009-10-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

Rainy Days

2009-10-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

I love rainy days in Seattle. Not downpours, just those characteristic sprinkling days, because they make the multitude of coffee shops so inviting. What shop should I occupy today? There are so many good ones to choose from within 2 miles of my apartment that I haven't even been to them all, in fact I don't even know they all exist. Today I choose an old standby, Ladro in Fremont. Perhaps the most perfect place to study. We're like a big family here.

A surreptitious webcam photo. ;-)

Better a handful of quietness than two of toil

2009-10-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

I have not finished reading Gilead, it is a heavy book. Today I read Ecclesiastes instead because I was riding my bike yesterday thinking about what a robber death is - I needed the perspective of wisdom to think me through reality. Wisdom is a wonderful thing. In the Bible it gives us a perspective on the world that transcends religion, culture, and history. It doesn't reference covenants and revelatory events, it just looks at the world squarely and clearly, helping us navigate its vicissitudes with poise. I've been drawn to that word lately. It does not mean assuming a stoic posture towards life - a poised person will feel pain and pleasure intensely, but see through them both. I was comforted by Qoheleth's elucidation of all the vanity of our lives, coupled with the recommendation to embrace and enjoy it, because that is nearer to the reality I wrestle with. I was comforted that scripture addresses this aspect of my life as well as so many others, and that the wisdom tradition does not negate the evils of life with neat and trite explanations.

Is Anybody Else Wondering

2009-09-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Why Marilyn Robinson's male narrator sounds like a woman? Do I just have a subconscious vocabulary list which I associate with females? Is there such a thing as stylistic softness corresponding to emotional availability?

How futile humanity's macro existence is? People spend 60, 70, 80 years acquiring wisdom, knowledge, existential poise, and by the time they get it they're gone, with a trail of lemmings following close behind, seeking to become up to the very moment they cease to be. It makes me want to buck the trend somehow, but there aren't many options on the table.

If we just might be better off living a frugal but meaningful life?

Why we are so stuck on negative reinforcement when it gives us the opposite results we want?

If we truly understood ourselves, would we find that we value retribution and hostility more than peace?

Why people become less pliable with age, and if I may be different and remain in a constant state of transformation and repentance.

Sullivan Street No-Knead Bread

2009-09-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

This is my second time making this recipe, I used more salt, and added garlic to one of the loaves. The recipe is pretty great - you just have to let it rise for about 14 hours before you bake it. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside! Here are the before and after pictures.

For Karl A. - So He Doesn't Get Bored At Work

2009-09-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

The equipment

The dose

The pull

The ristretto

and then the profile

I'm baking sullivan street bread in a couple hours and will post pictures of that as well.

New Things

2009-08-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

First of all, Amy and I have an apartment.

^^^that is the living room

^^^that is the kitchen

^^^that is the study.

this is my favorite appliance>>
this is Amy's new hair>>>

More to come. Hopefully it will include a new job for me!

87% of Americans commit to bicycle commuting...

2009-08-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

"RUBY SLIPPERS, KS— Results are in for America's most comprehensive survey of bicycle transportation. Almost nine of ten adult Americans say they definitely might occasionally be likely to bicycle to work once in a while given a government-provided bicycle and a commute less than 3 miles with no hills on sunny days between 64 and 71 degrees when they had no other errands to run if their employer provided monetary incentives with mileage reimbursement, shower facilities, indoor secured bicycle parking and free taxi rides home for emergencies if gasoline prices skyrocket except for Mondays and Fridays if a bicycle path was available. A spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration called the survey results exciting verification for FHWA's bicycle transportation program which helps local transportation agencies find a scenic creek bank where the bike path can be installed."

I just like being outside.

Things to do when back in Seattle...

2009-08-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

1. turn apartment into home
2. find lever espresso machine
3. ride bikes
4. get job
5. translate Job
6. restore typewriter
7. read intense book
8. get ring
9. help sister move
10. write
11. go to dicks
12. pickup soccer

Silence!

2009-07-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

Silence is a gift. Not the momentary pause of children's voices outside my window, nor the hours long translation marathons, nor too, the relative quiet of going about one's business in the company of others. I mean heavy, imposing, inescapeable silence; or perhaps I should call it stillness or nothingness. Ah, how I crave it! That time which eventually defeats every dawdler and busybody, forcing them towards introspection. Hurray for introspection! (insert Ode to Introspection). It is the spring of creativity, discovery, vision and understanding; the keeper of night owls and day dreamers. If I ever own a business I am considering thirty minute paid stints in solitary confinement. It'll be revolutionary.

Job

2009-04-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, as in the occassion of my writing, I feel betrayed...by God. I'm not saying that everything needs to be good in life, far from it. I see the value and the beauty of tragedy and I embrace it with (what I imagine) is a grim heroism. I can even accept that maybe, just maybe, there is some hidden purpose behind God taking my father away, which I might discover in years to come. But if he is going to take my father, can't he at least step up and be worthy of his name of "heavenly father?" It's like taking advantage of a little kid by pretending you love them and then treating them like they don't exist when they actually need something. Of course, if that's what God is doing, then he's just a sick torturer, which I find hard to believe. But by every imaginable law of fairness, shouldn't God at least give me some little sliver of comfort when I cry out to him in distress? I know you might be content with God remaining aloof and "spiritual," and maybe you'll be more blessed than me, but I'm not satisfied doing imaginitive contortions to trick myself into feeling like God is present with me, helping me. He might be here, but if so, he's doing a good job being invisible and silent. In my opinion, God has some explaining to do. Now some of you are probably worried about me all of a sudden, but let's be clear: if staying in the house is faith, and leaving it is unbelief, then I've handcuffed myself to the dining room table, and I'm gonna sit here and raise a ruckus until I'm satisfied. That's what Job did, and he got told. I'm fine with getting told, just not this silence.

Meet Hercules

2009-04-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

I ransomed him this afternoon from the garage of an old fat man in southwest chicago. I spent all afternoon polishing him up. He's an all original, English 3-speed, made in 1972, and in perfect working order. I road him to the library this afternoon, it was wonderful.

Orpheus and Eurydice

2009-04-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

This is the penultimate story of mortals attempting to overcome their mortality. The grief of Orpheus is strong enough to move gods and men to prompt him to descend to the underworld to beseech the return of Eurydice whom he loved. But his love is not strong enough to overcome his frailty and doubt. Consider the final lines, and their paradoxical affirmation of life.

Orpheus and Eurydice
Standing on flagstones of the sidewalk at the entrance to Hades
Orpheus hunched in a gust of wind
That tore at his coat, rolled past in waves of fog,
Tossed the leaves of the trees. The headlights of cars
Flared and dimmed in each succeeding wave.
He stopped at the glass-paneled door, uncertain
Whether he was strong enough for that ultimate trial.
He remembered her words: “You are a good man.”
He did not quite believe it. Lyric poets
Usually have - as he knew - cold hearts.
It is like a medical condition. Perfection in art
Is given in exchange for such an affliction.
Only her love warmed him, humanized him.
When he was with her, he thought differently about himself.
He could not fail her now, when she was dead.
He pushed open the door and found himself walking in a labyrinth,
Corridors, elevators. The livid light was not light but the dark of the earth.
Electronic dogs passed him noiselessly.
He descended many floors, a hundred, three hundred, down.
He was cold, aware that he was Nowhere.
Under thousands of frozen centuries,
On an ashy trace where generations had moldered,
In a kingdom that seemed to have no bottom and no end.
Thronging shadows surrounded him.
He recognized some of the faces.
He felt the rhythm of his blood.
He felt strongly his life with its guilt
And he was afraid to meet those to whom he had done harm.
But they had lost the ability to remember
And gave him only a glance, indifferent to all that.
For his defense he had a nine-stringed lyre.
He carried in it the music of the earth, against the abyss
That buries all of sound in silence.
He submitted the music, yielded
To the dictation of a song, listening with rapt attention,
Became, like his lyre, its instrument.
Thus he arrived at the palace of the rulers of that land.
Persephone, in her garden of withered pear and apple trees,
Black, with naked branches and verrucose twigs,
Listened from the funereal amethyst of her throne.
He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of the tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above a bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.
I don’t know - said the goddess - whether you loved her or not.
Yet you have come here to rescue her.
She will be returned to you. But there are conditions:
You are not permitted to speak to her, or on the journey back
To turn your head, even once, to assure yourself that she is behind you.
And so Hermes brought forth Eurydice.
Her face no longer hers, utterly gray,
Her eyelids lowered beneath the shade of her lashes.
She stepped rigidly, directed by the hand
Of her guide. Orpheus wanted so much
To call her name, to wake her from that sleep.
But he refrained, for he had accepted the conditions.
And so they set out. He first, and then, not right away,
The slap of the god’s sandals and the light patter
Of her feet fettered by her robe, as if by a shroud.
A steep climbing path phosphorized
Out of darkness like the walls of a tunnel.
He would stop and listen. But then
They stopped too, and the echo faded.
And when he began to walk the double tapping commenced again.
Sometimes it seemed closer, sometimes more distant.
Under his faith a doubt sprang up
And entwined him like cold bindweed.
Unable to weep, he wept at the loss
Of the human hope for the resurrection of the dead,
Because he was, now, like every other mortal.
His lyre was silent, yet he dreamed, defenseless.
He knew he must have faith and he could not have faith.
And so he would persist for a very long time,
Counting his steps in a half-wakeful torpor.
Day was breaking. Shapes of rock loomed up
Under the luminous eye of the exit from underground.
It happened as he expected. He turned his head
And behind him on the path was no one.
Sun. And sky. And in the sky white clouds.
Only now everything cried to him: Eurydice!
How will I live without you, my consoling one!
But there was a fragrant scent of herbs, the low humming of bees,
And he fell asleep with his cheek on the sun-warmed earth.

~Czeslaw Milosz, one of his final poems before his death at 93.

For What?

2009-04-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

There is too much to do; too many people to save, too many people to mourn for, too many ambitions to pursue, too many people to comfort, too many responsibilities to fulfill, too much pain to process, too much to lose. What's it all for? If I were given a single question to ask, that would be it. And if we don't know what it is for, then why are we doing it? The names for that are futility, vanity, meaninglessness, a puff of smoke.

You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning;
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
For all our days pass away under your wrath;
our years come to an end like a sigh.
The days of our life are seventy years,
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.
Turn, O Lord! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,
and as many years as we have seen evil.
Moses in Psalm 90

My Favorite Architect

2009-04-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

Tom Kundig's designs are some of the most innovative I have ever seen. I love it. He's also from Seattle. Here are four different projects. You can see the rest here.

what is good II

2009-04-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

"silence is golden, some would say,
but music is like diamonds" ~n. h. kramer

grief

2009-04-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

there is a forest where trees grow larger than life
adding rings of grief year after year
a woodcarver always comes to this forest
and carves these trees
into villages homes people lives of grief
his creations are precious and brittle
like porcelain dolls

what is good

2009-04-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Someone asks what is good.
To be told it is well
to stay or go
to have dissatisfaction silenced
behind thick glass
to attempt neither to give or receive, but to succeed in both

To Relate

2009-03-31T10:54:00.001-07:00

I recently picked up where I left off last year in Bonhoeffer's Letter's and Papers from Prison, and read this:
"Dear Eberhard, When I read your letter yesterday, I felt as though a spring, without which my intellectual life was beginning to dry up, had begun once again to produce the first drops of water for a long, long time... I have the feeling that everything that I see and hear is putting years on me, and I'm often finding the world nauseating and burdensome...I often wonder who I really am - the man who goes on squirming under these ghastly experiences in wretchedness that cries to heaven, or the man who scourges himself and pretends to others (and even to himself) that he is placid, cheerful, composed, and in control of himself, and allows people to admire him for it (i.e. for playing the part - or is it not playing a part?). What does one's attitude mean, anyway? In short, I know less than ever about myself, and I'm no longer attaching any importance to it."

I am struck by the beauty of that opening sentence. To have people in your life to whom you can write that is a blessing above all things. I have friends like that. Then I am struck by my affinity with Bonhoeffer's struggles of identity. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I like him so much. I see him struggling with his own inconsistency and hypocrisy, and that is real. People often think I am someone who has everything together, but I know that isn't the case, but I swear I deceive myself at times as well. But until reading this I hadn't considered what Bonhoeffer says next, that whatever the answer, he is no longer attaching any importance to it. He mentions later that he is less inclined to analyse the state of his soul, and I appreciate that - because when is my soul ever entirely placid and whole and healthy? And if it is, I need to just let it be so, and not taint it by the self satisfaction of identifying it as healthy.

I Hate! - I Like!

2009-03-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

I hate Bible Commentaries. I hate that scholars write the insipid things and I hate the other students who hoard them in the library when I need to use them!

I like bikes.

I hate citing sources and compiling bibliographies! I hate that I waste my time flipping through books to write down something I already know, just so I can get points for quoting somebody else and thereby being "scholarly."

I like waking up in the morning and sitting next to my open window drinking freshly brewed BLACK COFFEE.

I hate insecure professors who assign more work that I can finish just so they can feel superior - and then don't grade it for MONTH'S because they are soooooo "busy."

I like grassy fields.

I hate paying 15 cents for each page I print in the library because my printer is out of ink!

I like the news.

I hate hate googlebooks even though it saves my butt when all the commentaries are gone from the library!

One Year

2009-03-12T23:20:00.001-07:00

My New Ride

2009-03-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

My friend Karl has been helping me build a bike the last few months. Though it isn't exactly a recession bike, the goal is to put more miles on this than on my car.

It's going to be above freezing tomorrow, and I'm riding.

Joy>Horror In One Mile

2009-02-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

I woke up in a daze this morning, not wanting to get up, but not wanting my roommate to get in the shower before me, so I got up. I was not looking forward to going to church because Amy flew to Virginia this morning and wasn't going to be there, and I was teaching sunday school alone and didn't know what activities I was going to have the kids do - and the sunday school director's husband was helping out in my class in Amy's absence, so I wanted to do well...I read the old man and the sea instead of preparing last night, my bad. I got to church right as the service was starting which gave me 20 minutes to prepare. The last few weeks we have only had 5-6 kids, which makes activities difficult. Anyhow, I struck on a brilliant idea almost immediately after arriving. I was teaching about how Rahab hid the Israelite spies in her house in Jericho, and I managed to find a red cord, and we (all 12 kids that showed up today!) snuck around the church, swam across the Jordan river, spied all over Jericho (the gym), and hung the red rope in the second floor window that looks into the gym. They loved it, it was great. I left church in a good mood, having overcome the ominous prospect of being a lame teacher. I didn't make it far, however. Before I got to the freeway, I was sitting at a light waiting for it to turn green, when a car came cruising through the intersection at 40mph and was t-boned on the driver's side door and spun 180 degrees across the intersection and came to a stop about 20 yards in front of me. It was a middle aged woman in a ford focus hatchback, and the car that hit her was a large SUV. Since she spun around, I could see her clearly. She was already sobbing when her car came to a stop, the glass was broken, half her door was gone, then she looked in the mirror and saw blood all over her face and just started screaming. It was surreal. That's about the time it struck me that I should call an ambulance. I probably should have thought of that right away, but it was like I was watching a movie, and it took me a minute to recognize that that blood shouldn't be there. However here is what bothered me, aside from watching this woman in hysterics - immediately after the accident, my light turned green, and all the cars that could just drove right off, and when the next light turned, all the cars just drove right around the accident. I had a guy come knock on my window and tell me to get moving, and he seemed kinda upset. Even the guy that hit the woman didn't do anything. He got out of his car to check it out, then walked slowly over to her car, saw her, and walked away, and started kicking the crash debris off to the side of the road with his hands in his pockets. The woman next to me ran over with some tissue and stayed with the woman. Anyway, it was all rather disturbing, and it seemed like people just didn't know what to do, so they fled the scene, which seems to me like the wrong response, even if you are in a hurry. The parable of the good samaritan comes to mind.

The Old Man And The Sea

2009-02-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading the old man and the sea by ernest hemingway. I was engrossed in it like a 12 year old reading harry potter. I've never had a book suck me into a herculean struggle of mental and physical endurance like this one has. Finishing it is like breaking the surface after a long dive into the pithy depths of victory and defeat. I highly recommend it. If anyone has read it I would love to hear their thoughts.

Why Christians Are Afraid Of Confession

2009-02-17T20:16:00.001-08:00

I hardly need to mention the value that Christianity places upon honesty. However, I am pretty sure that Christians have just as difficult a time being honest, especially about their mistakes, as anyone in the world. I assume that at some point or other you have made a mistake, and though you were hoping it would go unnoticed, it did not, and you had the option to come clean or cover up. I hope you came clean, but then again, that might have been a very bad idea, even, and perhaps especially, if your confessor was a Christian. Why do I say this? It is because Christians have a penchant for merciless retribution when their moral statutes are transgressed. Don't ask me how this came to be, but nothing is sweeter to many Christians than bringing down the hammer of judgment upon those who have done wrong. I imagine their subconcious speaking to them thus: "O how sweet is the wine of self-righteous judgment! Let the vindictive hammer fall upon the wrongdoer that I may be vindicated and feel my superiority by the gap created between us!" This is where the Church, and all Christian community fractures or forges. All fall short, and most fall short often, and then a moment comes when they must be covered or exposed and...they often grasp the fig leaves and hide because they know that their Christian brothers and sisters have no grace in their hearts. No, they have been trained to hate sin and the unjudged sinner. It need not even be something serious; perhaps just a minor foible or faux pas, but somehow these minutia are often understood the least and hated most bitterly. So the stumbled runner does not confess because it is not safe to confess to brothers and sisters. In this way the Christian community piles up shame upon shame; its ranks are rife with it.

"In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community." ~Bonhoeffer

If we are to build this community in the Church, our first step is to become people who are eager to erase the faults of others, to offer them every extenuation, to defend them from all consequence that they may know the superabundance of God's mercy - then there will be safety in this community to confess sin and throw off shame. Only then will we be able to become enamored by the possibility of holiness.

If this had a part 2, it would be on costly grace - not the cost exacted from the transgressor, but the cost exacted from the Savior for the transgressor. Because grace is costly to him, we may never cheapen it by letting sin abound.

What Does Barack Obama Have To Do With Karl Barth?

2009-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

I recently enjoyed watching the first memorable presidential inauguration of my life. I am generally disinclined as a budding pastor, to comment on politics, as I am afraid it will come back to bite me later. But since nearly all my friends have joined hands in the celebration of our new president, I do not wish to be left voiceless.

Let me begin with Karl Barth, my one steady theological obsession since the ripe age of 18. From him I have absorbed a strong notion of the discontinuity between the kingdom of God, and kingdoms of the world. Naturally, in the current political situation, with a president whose rhetoric is oftentimes beautifully suggestive of heavenly kingdom-like aims, I listen hopefully... but no matter how well articulated and no matter how much overlap there may be between President Obama's agenda and that of the Church, it would be a grave error for Christians to believe that political and social achievements in the United States are at all congruent with the redemption of God. I believe that Christianity is persistently counter-cultural because it witnesses to a reality that transcends culture - that God is present always and everywhere behind a thin veil which we mistakenly call reality, writing a story of existence where he is the main character, and where the restoration of all things (especially people) is the primary aim. His kingdom will consist in the resurrection of this world, not the bandaging of its many wounds.

Now, it is the Church's mandate in this age to bandage and heal wherever it can, but this healing impulse is to be another form of the Church's witness to God and his coming kingdom. It is not simply the outworking of a moral ideal which the Church may or may not share with society. If Christians, and by long extension, the Church, obtain their primary moral impulse from a political figure, they risk the silencing of their proclamation of God's kingdom through their actions. Therefore, with unspoken nuance, I believe that the Church must pursue its aims apart from the state, lauding the state in its attempts to maintain justice in all its forms, but maintaining that the Church operates at a far more profound level which the state cannot even dream of attaining. The Barmen Declaration, written primarily by Karl Barth, was the statement of faith of the German confessing church in the midst of an increasingly long-armed Nazi state - I offer you two of their rejections:

"We reject the false doctrine that the church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day. "
"We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the state should and could become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfill the vocation of the church as well."

In response to Ric, I liked the whole speech - I liked it because it seamlessly blended the story of Christian faith with the story of America - and I'm scared by how moving such a rendition of the story is.

The Humanity of Christ

2008-11-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

This is a short treatise I wrote last spring summarizing why Christians affirm that Christ is a full-blooded, 100% genuine human. This sort of thing makes me feel very patristic.

If Christ is not fully human, then Christ is not fully for us. Being for us means that Christ comes to redeem and heal all of our brokenness and sickness. Redeeming and healing us requires that Christ become like us. This is not a matter of appearance, as if the important thing were that we perceived Christ as our brother. Nor is it sufficient for Christ to have a human body but fill it with a divine spirit, when our spirits as well as our bodies languish. Only those parts of humanity that are assumed by Christ may be healed by Christ, so if Christ does not have a fully human mind, then human minds have not been healed. Likewise with our bodies, our spirits, and any other division one makes of our humanity. Moreover, if Christ is not human, then he cannot bear our sin and our guilt before God. Only a human can stand in the place of humanity in this way, and thereby restore humanity’s relationship with God.
The character of this restored relationship hinges upon Christ’s humanity, for if he is not fully human, then he is not our brother, and does not recapitulate true humanity. Why is it important to us that Christ be our brother? This is our affirmation that we can intimately relate to Christ, and that when we suffer, he understands our sufferings and is able to comfort us. It is what assures us that we can relate to God as creatures. When Christ says “follow me,” we can indeed follow him, because he is one of us. Following him and becoming like him would have no meaning for us if we could not do so as human beings. Our conception of humanity is distorted until we discover true humanity in Christ. If it were simply a quantity of life that we were concerned about, whether for thousands or millions of years, or for eternity, then Christ would not need to be fully human. Christian salvation, however, consists of a certain quality of life, for which Christ’s humanity is necessary. This quality is provided by Immanuel, God with us. We do not mean by this, that God is in our spatial vicinity. What we mean is that God has joined himself to humanity in Christ, never to be separated again, and that as we participate with Christ in his life, we receive life through him from God.
Besides our salvation and our present life with God, our future hope is also jeopardized if Christ is not human. What sort of resurrection does a non-human Christ have? It is certainly not one that we can hope to have as well. We base our hope for the future of our bodies on the resurrection of Christ, complete with his human body. It is from this event that we hear God’s “yes!” to materiality, and are able to take seriously the health of our bodies and of the world. If any hope remains when the humanity of Christ is lost, then it is a hope where our sin remains with us, our broken hearts and minds remain unhealed, no viable example exists for us to follow, our Lord is distant from us, and where our future is uncertain. It is only the fully human Christ who can redeem us.

Separation Anxiety

2008-11-11T20:13:00.000-08:00

I have not started writing my Hebrew exegesis paper which is due tomorrow, but I am organizing my thoughts here. Here is the text I am writing on:

"'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord GOD, 'That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but shall not find it.'"

These are the final words of Amos against Israel before it is wiped from the face of the earth.
Do you see the child, so eager to run ahead, suddenly finding herself lost in a crowd in the city, separated from her parents, looking frantically for them in every direction but not finding them? That child feels the purest terror and despair in the universe. This is the terror of the climax of God's judgment. Real famine could be endured, but not this, not the famine of the words of the Lord.

Once upon a time, the people of Israel were hungry for food, and the Lord fed them with manna from heaven. They were thirsty for water in the desert, and God caused water to flow out of a rock, and Moses said to Israel: God "fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD." Many years later, God's people have forgotten. To lose the word of the Lord which holds the world together is death.

I was in Boston once, sitting on a bench in a playground, and I watched a boy refuse to leave with his parents. He wanted to keep playing. He refused and refused, and went about his business, ignoring his parents' entreaties. They told him they were leaving. He kept playing. They began to walk away, and he kept playing but watched them. And they DIDN'T TURN AROUND. They left the playground and kept walking, and just before they reached the distance of vocal separation, the boy burst into tears and ran after them, inconsolable. The removal of God's word is the removal of God's very self from his people, and no disaster in the world compares to it.

To Look At The Pieces You Would Think It Could Never Be Put Together

2008-10-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

That's how I feel a lot of the time, but thankfully I am proven wrong now and then. In other news, I just scraped through midterms and am recovering from a wicked multiweek illness. I have seen an old friend who has moved to chicago to sink into obscurity, talked to an ex-by a couple hours-con who was polishing off his supersized beer on the train, talked with two inner city catholic school teachers on the CTA...all on friday. As soon as I'm feeling better, I will have all kinds of news to write about, not to mention some reflections on the brokenness of the world.

A Crisp Fall Coffee Kind Of Day

2008-10-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

I insist on luxury. This post is a luxury I am insisting on right now. It is nearly 8 pm, and I still have two essays to write by 9 am, but I'm not writing them, I'm writing this. It's a little ritual of mine to reassure myself that I'm in control.
Last night I got an unexpected call from my nomadic friend, informing me that he would be in Chicago today. Yes of course I want to spend my entire morning with you with three essays of doom looming over my head. No question about it. It reminded me that I like school and am blessed to be able to spend twelve or more hours today in front of my computer getting carpal tunnel.
So I'm on my way back to Seattle with a new book to read on the plane, "Dostoyevsky: language, faith & fiction" by Rowan Williams. I was going to spend my time on the plane reviewing hebrew grammar and syntax, but this arrived today so...
For all of you literary seattlites, you would do well to be at the seattle public library tomorrow at 7 pm to hear Marilynne Robinson, the author of Gilead give a reading from her new book Home.
My objectives for the weekend: acquaint myself with my new nephew, ride my bike, run with John, drink coffee with Erin, write in my journal, and find a new -spot- for myself in the city.
If you want to get together, call me. I'll be in town until tuesday.

Weariness

2008-09-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Stress is associated with sickness and death for me. For the last couple weeks I've been noticing a dramatic increase of flashbacks. I am busier than ever with school and other activities, and at the same time I am in mourning all over again. It's as if the feeling of intensity itself now carries memories with it that overlay each new stressful experience, and judge them. Nothing else really compares to those days. So I'm dreaming about my dad, I'm thinking about him in class, I'm remembering the odd feeling of dealing with his sickness through two thousand miles of abstraction. Every time I get on a flight between Seattle and Chicago, it's the same thing that I did, seven times last year. And I'm not depressed, but this heightened awareness of life brings me to the point of weariness sometimes.

Vanishings

2008-09-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

I like to go running at sunset. I take the trail through the woods to duffy lane which runs straight east to west for miles. The other day I was approaching my favorite tree. It's a 40 foot tall, perfectly symmetrical maple, all alone in the middle of a large grassy field. I round the corner only to be shocked to find it missing! I do a double take - it is definitely gone, not even a stump, just a circle of grassless dirt. I can't stop because I'm timing my run, but I can't stop thinking about how weird it is that the tree is just gone. Poof! It wasn't even a very old tree. Anyway, I keep running into the sunset, and realize suddenly that everything is quiet, quieter than it should be. In fact, there is not a single sound besides my moderately heavy breathing and my feet beating the concrete. Usually there are a few cars, a few thousand cicadas, an occassional deer, maybe some Wind, but today there is nothing. I don't know when all the sound stopped, but there is none left. I run. I just keep my eyes focused on the sunset. I try not to think of how far I've come, or how far I still have to go, I just keep my feet moving through this westward light vector. Pretty soon I stop feeling my legs and lungs. I've entered the zone of running without feeling. I should be able to go the rest of the distance unconciously. I'm running without shoes. I don't know where they went. I didn't even notice they were gone until I stepped in a puddle. No matter, I might run into them on the way back. The light goes out. Oh! how long have I been running? The sun set so fast, it was too bright to look at just a minute ago, and now it's like it dropped off the edge of the world. Total Darkness - no moon, no stars. I run on towards the vanished sun, without shoes, thoughts, feelings, in silence. There is no tree to go back to, it's as if it never existed, just a blank space in the middle of a field, forgotten by everyone but me, the last runner on the last road into the dark.
In me it is dark, but with you there is light
I am lonely, but you do not desert me
My courage fails me, but with you there is help
I am restless, but with you there is peace
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience
I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me.
Father in Heaven praise and thanks be to you for the night’s rest,
Praise and thanks be to you for the new day.
Praise and thanks be to you for all your loving-kindness and faithfulness in my past life.
You have shown me so much goodness
Let me also accept what is hard to bear from your hand. ~Bonhoeffer

For the confused: tonight I looked at some old pictures - an empty spot in a field - and tried to describe my life.

Six Senses of Fall

2008-09-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

Six things on my mind. Yes, six. That seems like the right number for a day of squalor, with clouds as massive as old monks' beards and a sickening drizzle. I can feel the cold knocking at my door, and its only September in the windy city. Boy does Chicago need a new name. It's a windy son of a bitch of a city. I said six things! I have a nose for coffee and smoke. You're living in an old drafty house, a house old enough to be a loner in a city of a million, with a fireplace so efficient it lowers the air temperature a degree every ten minutes, but it'll keep you toasty for ten feet. So you wake up in the morning under six layers of blankets and you put on a pot of coffee and shuffle over to the fireplace and shove in some cedar and light it. It spurts and splutters and pops like gunshots, then roars like the wind off Lake Michigan. You get your coffee and drink, and that's it.

Incandescent light bulbs are the wave of the past, before that we had the carbon filament bulb which was even better. Houses glowing with yellow light and puffed up like hot air balloons with the smell of roasted turkey...I'm cold. I'm outside making fog until my fingers turn white and I start to get that asthmatic burning in my throat. It's almost time to go inside, for the warmth of the light to fold over me, leaving my finger tips tingling. Almost. And then I do. Ahhh, and that's it!

So the temperature drops, the leaves change, and nature heaves with measured, massive elegance, in a single funereal dance before lying down in its grave until Easter. It's fall. Maybe the chill is invigorating because I can defy it. I transcend seasons, but the fall means I'm book-eyed. This evening's reading: the portable graham greene. A feast of twisted surprises.

Was that six? Anyway, it was an ideal number. Count them however you wish, for that's it.

Newness Everywhere!

2008-09-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

I have taken a long sabatacle from writing, but I have taken it up again recently, and am just beginning to rebuild my spirit enough to blog again. In the interval:

I now have a nephew, Josiah Earl, who you can see here. This is turning out to be an even greater blessing than I imagined in advance. I keep having visions of playing with him, and this morning I imagined him talking with us a few years from now with all the personality he will have. It is going to be amazing. Praise the Lord for his health, as well as my sister's!

I am rediscovering my first love, scripture. I am reading it and writing about it every day with a new sense of urgency, like my life depends upon digesting these words and stories. I want to be immersed in it, to have it be the substance of my thought and speech, to have it color my chores and errands and studies and relationships! I can feel my bones becoming more solid each day I dive anew into the scriptures, my thoughts becoming clearer, my desires crystallized. I want everyone to experience this.

I am back at school for year two of seminary. I am on the strictest regimen of my life, but I have everything I love scheduled in. I am not sacrificing life on the altar of academics. I refuse. However, that refusal has proven to so energize my studies that I feel I am doing better in school than at any other time. I am also teaching 3rd grade sunday school at my church, and I am SO EXCITED to be doing some kind of ministry, and am committed to being the most inspired sunday school teacher those kids have ever had.

I am not going to the sigur ros concert in chicago because tickets were sold out before I got any, and resale tickets are over $150. Very disappointing.

My friends around the country and world continue to bless me. From Seattle, to San Bernardino, to Minneapolis, New Hampshire, and Germany. Not to mention new friends here in Chicago, praise the Lord for them. The Lord has considered it good to make his presence known to me here in Chicago through them.

Now, may I live with relish and urgency. For the musically inclined, my song for these moments: Feist "I feel it all".

My Mind is Bursting With Text

2008-07-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

My reading since school got out, for those few who are interested and might wish to talk about some of it:
-The Complete Short Novels of Anton Checkov
-To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
-An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore (minus the autobiographical parts)
-Czeslaw Milosz Poetry 2001-2004
-Henry V - Shakespeare
-Henry VI p.1 - Shakespeare
-Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
-A Short Life of Kierkegaard - Walter Lowrie
-Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus - Ludwig Wittgenstein
-Wittgenstein - A.C. Grayling
-Jesus Christ and Mythology - Rudolf Bultmann
I've also read parts of:
-Hegel - Charles Taylor
-The Existentialists - James Collins
-Philosophical Fragments - Kierkegaard
-Church Dogmatics v. 1 - Karl Barth
-Systematic Theology - Paul Tillich
I am currently reading Catch-22 for the 3rd time, and Milosz's "Visions of San Francisco Bay", and will start tomorrow on Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and then commence to read more of Barth's "Dogmatics" as well as some of his "Protestant Theology in the 19th Century," and Nietzche's "Antichrist."

Joe Discovers His Magical Roots

2008-07-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

The lake was glistening below me as I walked along the unfamiliar dirt road to I knew not where, when I saw a strange sight: a bright yellow car pointed nose first down the hill off the road. Weird, I thought, and kept walking. Fifty feet later the phenomenon was repeated, only with the car at a slightly different angle, and more thickly covered in bushes. I kept walking. I am not qualified to deal with these sorts of disasters. In another hundred paces, the sun,which had been high in the sky receded to the horizon and twilight set in as I reached the third yellow car, and as I passed, I heard a voice from within, an indistinct mumbling voice which beckoned me closer.
Before I know it I'm inside the car and a faceless man is telling me in a poison sugar voice to relax, that he will take me home. I try to get out but he stops me, I lunge for the door but he grabs my wrist and takes my elbow in his face before paralyzing me. He doesn't break me neck or anything, it has something to do with his thoughts. He has an unusual power.
He takes me to his dim, impregnable barn, instantly, I don't know how, but I can move again. I am now the slave of the magician without a face. I can't tell you how long I was there. There was no way to escape, it wasn't a place one could run from. I was lonely and outraged. What a tyrant! How could this happen to me! All my creativity was useless to get me out of there, but I learned things. I learned that to be a magician, one had to have magic in their blood. One needed a magical inheritance - but many have them unknowingly. My futility increased.
Then one day we had to leave, and I discovered how to enter and exit the magic lair. I watched him as he stuck his fingers into the ground and it began to liquify. He began stirring the ground faster, creating a larger hole, until a goat emerged! He grabbed me hand and put his other on the goat, closed his eyes, and we were beside the yellow car again. He said that the goat took you wherever you most desired to go. He turned his back, and suddenly I had a ridiculous urge. I couldn't explain it, but something was pulling my hand to the ground and before I knew it, I was swirling my fingers into a bigger and bigger circle and my own goat popped right out of the ground. It was bigger with a large black spot down the underside of its neck (not all magicians have teleporting goats, and each one is unique), and as the magician turned around and yelled in outrage, I disappeared and reappeared in Grand Central Station, New York. I had a job to do.

Let me tell you what is good.

2008-06-18T01:10:00.000-07:00

The welcoming smile of a long distant friend,
The voice of the woman you love in the morning,
Eating one last good meal before the bank is broke,
Reading by candlelight, waking to the sunrise.
Living with brothers, riding bikes through spring awakened woods,
Rivers.
Going you know not where, finding you know not what,
being filled with wonder.
What is good? To be smitten with fear, and to shed it
because you are not alone.
Christ, my friends, thank you.

Czeslaw Milosz "In Common" - Drew, Nick and I meditated on this poem again and again during our time together. It was the substance of my thoughts during those weeks.

What is good? Garlic. A leg of lamb on a spit.
Wine with a view of boats rocking in a cove.
A starry sky in August. A rest on a mountain peak.

What is good? After a long drive water in a pool and a sauna.
Lovemaking and falling asleep, embraced, your legs touching hers.
Mist in the morning, translucent, announcing a sunny day.

I am submerged in everything that is common to us, the living.
Experiencing this earth for them, in my flesh.
Walking past the vague outline of skyscrapers? anti-temples?
In valleys of beautiful, though poisoned, rivers.
________________________________________________

Psalm 77 - I read this to my dad once while he was in the hospital at the UW. He had read it earlier and asked me to read it to him again. I read it now, remembering that time, and my thoughts trace the contours of its despair and faith. If you really want to understand, read it alongside the psalm.

Written on a deck in deutschland, upon the receipt of a letter from R.

I cry to God in my trouble - my trouble is so great that I cry audibly with my voice. People next door probably hear, but my trouble is so great that I cry again and again and again and slam my hand on the table until the pain stops me. And God Hears Me.

I don't sleep, I rave in my bed silently. I lose all control of my thoughts as they are mixed with panic, fear and grief. My faith gives me no comfort. I can hardly pray, I am angry. Nothing can comfort me because nothing can change this situation

I inadvertently remember God and am troubled. I try to complain to God, implore him to act on my behalf, but I dissolve into groans. I cannot confront this pain, it overwhelms me.

Damn it, God holds my eyelids open night after night as I attempt to find some resolution, some consolation. I have no words so I will groan and scream NO in my anguish, but I will not remain silent, I will not concede to the silence of death. Does God hear me? How long, how loud must I scream until he hears me? I have already forgotten that he is listening.

I remember. I remember the works of God for his people of which I am a part. It hurts to remember. I want to be dissolved by my anguish - let it be quicklime, let it press me into the earth, let it poison my veins, let me be a martyr to sorrow. I think I have never been more human than now.

I dare God to answer me - and the voice, the soft persistent one begins recounting the stories. God has redeemed his people. I cower from this glimmer of hope - it is too bright to look at, too hot to touch, I am timid.

The waters fled from our God and we walked through the sea. Yes, I see it, I remember. The waters fear God, the skies thunder his presence. God walks in the sea, the terrible sea. God walks where the people drown.

We never knew. We never saw your footsteps there, but you were there. You led us through the waters, we walked through them, on them. I will silence my complaint - until I forget again that you are with me.

At Last, Pictures

2008-06-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to get the pictures off my camera, a few days before I go home. We leave most of the picture taking to Nick because he's the true photographer, and when I get my hands on his pictures I may post of few of them. These are just a selection, beginning with the characters below: Nick, Rae, Carolyn, Drew, and Me.
This is the view from the hike Drew and I went on in Switzerland.

This is Drew and a very good looking cow.
Drew and Carolyn the day after I got here. They're totally into each other.

Drew and a little german girl who sort of played frisbee with us.
I love this. It's has to be the best swing jump of my life - caught on tape.

Shrinking By The Mile

2008-05-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

The more I travel, the smaller I feel. I'm in Rupperswil, Switzerland now, on my way to luzern tomorrow. I'll pass through a dozen or more towns along the way and thousands of people carrying on their lives - known by so few people on the planet that it approaches zero. That's not meant to be depressing, its just a little bit of perspective that has been forcing itself on my lately.
So Drew and I are here in Switzerland. We dropped Nick off in Stuttgart on our way here, and we'll all be back in Nurnberg by monday. I should relate a few of the last week's occurences: Nick and I had another run in with the polizei. As I mentioned before, Life got locked to a cafe in Lauf right on a busy sidewalk, and we didn't have the tools to break the lock, but we attempted it with what we did have, which was a quarter-size hammer, a screw and a metal hinge. This didn't work, so we managed to borrow some wire cutters which got the job done in about 90 seconds, and we made our way up to the bike store to get a new tube for Ghost. I stayed outside with the bike while Nick went in to buy the tube, and two polizei came up and started questioning me (and then Nick) about the bike. Evidently someone had seen us cutting the lock and called them. Luckily we had the stub of the key and pointed to the rest of the key in the lock, and convinced them that it was ours. They were reasonable but they took Nick's name and address. I kept my mouth shut and they ignored me.
As you may have read on Drew's blog, Nick and I also had some fun with the neighborhood kids in the courtyard that same day. We can see the ping pong table from our deck, and we waited until the kids weren't using it and started playing. Normally we keep score in German, but Nick wanted to keep score in English, probably so the kids wouldn't realize the disparity between our scores, but that meant that they found out we weren't german, which got them very excited. They kept coming up to us and saying simple things to us in English and then laughing and running away, and when drew came around the corner from work, there were at least a dozen of them crowded around the table in total chaos. Of course they weren't all sweet. Drew caught one of them f-bombing us in german as we walked away, and he turned and let him know that HE at least spoke german, and the kid turned into a sheep.
Yesterday drew and I got up at the crack of 11, played soccer with carolyn for 2 hours, walked around for 3 hours, then rode our bikes through the woods with carolyn to Arrau to see Indiana Jones. We road back through the woods in the dark with pedal generated bike lights. Today Drew and I rode our bikes for an hour to a mountain we saw during our ride yesterday. It's the highest point in sight, so we decided to climb it. The hike took 3 hours and another hour to ride home, and we were exhausted. We met some enormous cows along the way and romped through a swiss meadow, but we didn't sing. My apologies for still not being able to put up pictures.

Shine a Light

2008-05-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

The sun is young in Deutschland and each day the years fall from my head. Last I checked, I was in 5th grade again, exploring unfamiliar roads on bicycles with a wide-eyed anticipation of the new. We found a pink church and a path through every dead end. Unfortunately, Life is now locked to the side of a cafe with the key broken in the lock, and Ghost has a flat tire, so our mobility is limited. Our task for today is to free and heal them. My other task for the day is to plan my trip to Switzerland. I have a minor obsession with standing on top of the Alps - it is my quest after my affair with Zurich. We got up at 8:30 today, I made swedish pancakes, drew is getting ready for work, nick is playing guitar, the sun is shining lightly through the windows, clothes are drying on the balcony, the orange, pink, and yellow daisies in the wine glass on the table have revived over night.

Drew and I are reading Checkov novelettes, Nick just finished Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and is reading Umberto Eco essays, Rae is reading Anna Karenina. Our flat is filled with candles, 15 in fact. Our flat.

We have a limited amount of food, so we try to use every ingredient we have for every meal. Last night we used the cream of broccoli soup to make cream of broccoli potatoes to go with our spaghetti, bier and bruschetta. It was fantastic. And some incredible smell just wafted through the window from one of the apartments next door.

There is a ping pong table made of granite in the courtyard outside our apartment. I learned to count to twenty one in german so we could play - in german. I had trouble with 2 for awhile but I've got it now. Swei. We're ping-pong criminals though because some flat dweller called the polizei on us because we were playing past quiet hours, which evidently begin at 8 - so at 10:30 we were told to pack up the head lamp and go home. Sorry. A Quiet the Hell Down in deutsch from a balcony would have sufficed.

Our little triumvirate took on Munich last week and swam the river through the english gardens. The river runs so fast that when I grabbed a root to get out, my body was pulled horizontal down stream, and it was so cold I could barely talk to the german girl waiting for me who asked if I'd seen a cap in the river. No, sorry (prn. Saw-Ree). Unfortunately I have no way to get the pictures off my camera. I may commandeer some of Nick's, but I suggest you just read his blog. Plug. What? It was what inspired me to hop on a plane to frankfurt two days after finals and train it over to nurnberg. Life is good.

Earl J Thomson III

2008-05-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

Leave your own stories as comments on this post.

After Loss - week VII

2008-05-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

5-8-08
I've been dreaming about my dad, but I don't remember most of them for very long after I wake up. In the one I still have an image of, I go to visit my dad in the hospital, and I knock on his door, and he answers it, and as I walk in, his back is to me and he is walking, without crutches or brace or anything, back to his bed. The room is lit by a single lamp which gives it a yellow glow, and the blinds are closed. I make some confused remark about him walking, because I wasn't expecting it, I had thought that he couldn't do that anymore.
In the last month before he died I began imagining him completely healthy again. I would go through each of his physical ailments, picturing him without them. The change was unbeleivable. I would imagine him getting up and walking and think "My God, that is incredible!" I would imagine him lifting things and jumping. I would imagine him with healthy organs, wound free, medication free - thinking about it made me long for it. I told him about it all over the phone, and he encouraged me to keep doing it. I feel like he said he thought about the same thing. At times when I was home I would stand by his bed when he was sleeping and pray over every part of his body that was ailing. Now I think about it as I contemplate the resurrection.

5-9-08

My dad liked to teach me things. Whenever he had some project he was working on, he would invite me to come see what he was doing. It made me feel like we were the father-son combo that I would read about in old books. I actually felt like he was passing something on to me - though it wasn't clear at the time what that was. Of course it was his love he was passing on, through sharing hammering duties with me, teaching me how to use the skillsaw or change a bicycle tube. He wanted me to feel like I was a part of his life, and that my services mattered. He always thanked me for the little "help" I gave, and he always attributed the best ideas to me, even if he probably thought of them first. I got to be skeptical about all of this positive affirmation, because at a certain point it seemed rather excessive to me, yet it still communicated the most important thing: you're needed and appreciated here. My dad didn't have a problem leaving all the credit to others. He was always giving to each their due, and more, which made people love him I think. I am challenged as I think about it.

5-10-08

We are able to continue living, and we will be joyful again. There will be joy when new life is brought into our family this summer, and we will continue to be joyful in the relationships which have blessed us in both fair and stormy weather. However, for those of us who were close to my dad, who cannot forget, there can be no more flippancy about life. We cannot take it for granted like we did. Our joy is going to be backgrounded by sorrow, but not bittersweet for that reason. It will be joy mixed with the sorrow of thankfulness - thankfulness that we knew and were shaped by my dad, and that we can now pass on his love to those whom he would have loved had he lived. So what will that new life look like, and when does it begin?

After Loss - week VI

2008-05-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

5-1-08
Some memories are too terrible to be written. One night last december in particular.
Healthy people don't generally like being around sick people. Sick people are unclean. Sick people are infectious. Sick people are...disgusting. If we don't know them, then we can at least objectify them as "sick people," rather than human beings on par with ourselves. If we are unfortunate enough to know them, then we can simply classify them as demoted human beings. Third class people whose better days we remember fondly enough to continue treating them with sympathy, however feigned. We still don't like to sit too close to them, or get sucked into their world of misery. If a loved one of ours becomes sick, however, we may overcome these fears and prejudices. If we don't, we have no hearts.
Sometimes I was scared of the symptoms of my dad's sickness, but these were not strong enough to keep me from him. This was the case far more with my mom, who learned to do jobs that are normally left for qualified nurses, in order that he could stay at home as long as possible.
What about all the people whose visitors slowly but discreetly shut them out of their memory, even as they hire others to perform deeds of love without heart?
5-2-08
I've been reading old emails, looking for some forgotten nugget. I haven't found anything. These are the times when I wish my dad had been more of a writer, so that I could continue to hear him speak his mind even now. I have one letter from him with me. He slipped it into my bag when I moved to chicago last summer. I didn't find it until I had arrived. That was the sort of thing he would do - sneak a letter into your bag so that you would be surprised by it later.
My dad didn't hesitate to give me tips about how to treat girls. I can't help laughing when I think about it. His thing was to open the car door for my mom. I think he was being a gentleman, but for the longest time I figured he just hadn't gotten used to automatic locks.
Alright, this is what bothers me, I can't believe I didn't think to talk to him about this: what was going on in his head when he pulled all those practical jokes? I want to know if the same thing was going through his head as goes through mine. I think its hard as a child to understand the workings of your parents' brains the way you understand your peers. I want to know how alike we are. That's what I really want to know.
5-3-08
Some thoughts on what it means for us who are left: it means that my soon due nephew will not have a grandfather - which means that the rest of us in the family will have to take more responsibility to ensure that *nephew* is raised well. It means that my mom will need help around the house, since there were a number of jobs that my dad always did. It means a new career for my mom. It means a significant decrease in my family's collective wisdom. It means that none of us will receive expert resume-writing help anymore. It means that nobody is left to steal my socks...
I'm not sure what good this serves, but - he would have been a fantastic grandfather. He would have played with his grandkids like he played with me. Probably taken them on all kinds of adventures, fascinated them with his stories, indulged them with candy bars, taught them to love God. He would have continued to be a great husband, father, brother, friend, hr manager. I'm not looking for any explanations from myself or anyone else. Feel free to keep them to yourself. What is certain, though, is that much good will come out of this great loss, but that good will not in any way diminish the greatness of the loss.
5-4-08
It is remarkable how death purifies our memories. We no longer harbor resentment, or brood over petty annoyances. Whatever wrongs might have been held against someone are dropped when they pass away. It doesn't bring us any gratification to remember those things anymore. Or maybe that is only the case when they lived and loved well. I'm glad that the bad things die and the good remains. I wonder if this view is the proper one all the time. Unfortunately, my eyes readily fixate on faults.
5-5-08
Why does pain grow less with time? Part of me worries that as the pain diminishes, my memories will become fuzzy. Sometimes it feels like life will just go on as normal, sometimes it feels like the life I imagined for myself has turned to dust and blown away. It is becoming easier to acknowledge that mourning cannot and need not go on forever. My sorrow is mellowing, but its hot embers will burn for a long time, even as they give way to our continuing lives. But I still want flames, so I will throw on the gasoline now and then, and let them scald me again. I suppose when you lose someone, you feel closest to them in grief, so you hold on to it as long as possible. Or maybe that is just some of us.
When my dad was in the hospital over Christmas, I had a single refrain enfolding my mind:
Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia.
I sang it over, and over, and over - aloud when nobody was around, and to myself when they were. I didn't know the rest of the words, but i couldn't stop singing those.
5-6-08
Dad, I liked planning things with you - projects, trips, my life. I remember drawing pictures of the fort I wanted to build in second grade, and you drew pictures too, and we would talk it over in the evenings, thinking of new features we wanted, and different ways of building it. I liked that you always listened with interest when I talked about whatever passion was consuming me at the time. Whether it was a particular soccer team, goal scoring strategy, a new book or movie or band, something I was studying in school or some shifty hobby. Your demeanor always communicated "continue!" - talking that is. You would listen until I was satisfied with my talking, and you would either encourage me or make some suggestions, but you were a master of the non-threatening suggestion. I wish my friends had known you better. I always wanted to bring them to the hospital so that you could impart some wisdom to them, but it never seemed appropriate. You had the strength of a giant in you. It showed when you were sick. It made me proud. I felt like I was cheering you on in a great contest - dad v. death. I've always felt like you won.
5-7-08
With another summer coming, I am thinking about last summer. My dad was home last summer, and relatively healthy. It was the eye of the storm for us. He was making the most of his convalescence by cooking and weeding, and doing other small tasks around the house. He also slept alot. It was a good summer. Amazingly, I felt like things were pretty normal, even though they weren't. It was easy for me to go about my business, going to work, going running, spending time with my friends all over the city, and forgetting that my dad was confined to the house. What was even crazier to me, was how I got used to my dad being in the hospital. He was confined to his bed from december to march the first year, and then again from december to march this year. I would go visit, and he was always there in the same spot, but since I wasn't dealing with confinement, it was particularly hard for me to identify with. Maybe he just fooled me by seeming so much himself whenever I was there.

After Loss - week V

2008-04-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

4-24-08
I never saw his body, but I've been told that it was beautiful. My mom said that he stayed warm for a long time. Despite talking to him right before he died, death itself remains incomprehensible to me. Does it become comprehensible when you are there, and you hear the breathing stop, and you feel the chill spread into the hands, and you look into the unresponsive eyes? Is there a moment when something snaps inside you and the body ceases to be the person you have known and loved? I don't know. I wasn't there. I can only relive it secondhand.
There wasn't always a lot to talk about in the hospital, so since Christmas, my dad and I started playing backgammon. He taught me to play when I was young, and we played on the board that his parents (at least that's what I think he told me once) gave him when he went into the navy. After many aircraft-carrier trips, this board made its way to his hospital room. When we played I sometimes felt an unwelcome role reversal. He might role his dice and miscount, and I would realize, but I wouldn't say anything. I didn't feel like I could be competitive, but I really wanted to be competitive and have him still beat me. I wanted him to be my superior from his hospital bed.
Christmas maybe three years ago, my dad, my sister and I were playing risk, and my dad was just beginning to win. Oh how he relished it. Sarah and I could both see it in his eyes. He knew that he was just beginning an unstoppable extermination of our armies, and he was so satisfied with himself - hanging out there in australia, appearing so harmless. I won't speak for my sister, but I hated him at that moment. I hated that he relished my demise, that he felt so connivingly superior to me. He crushed us both and I went up to my room and fumed, and wrote in my journal about how it was because of moments like this that Jesus said whoever hates his brother is guilty like a murderer.
How times change.
4-25-08
It's common for people to casually mention their parents in conversation, but everytime they do, I feel the distance between us. If they talk about their fathers, I can't say "me too" in the present tense. If I say anything at all it has to be "my dad was..." but I usually don't participate in these conversations. It is so uncommon among people my age to have a deceased parent, that it is uncomfortable to have to explain it to those who don't know, so I avoid having to explain. People don't know what to say anyway, so why make them uncomfortable?
We were perpetually tense throughout my dad's illness. We were always anticipating and fearing some turn for the worse. It was like being in the surgery waiting room for a year and a half, not knowing what was going on upstairs, waiting for the doctor to come down and give us an update, and too often being sick about it when it came. It's hard to adjust to life without that intensity. I've almost forgotten what it's like.
4-26-08
In high school I was concerned about asserting my independence and differentiating myself from my dad. I had convinced myself that he and I were completely different, but I remember when it dawned on me that the opposite was the case. I believe it was my senior year. My dad was on his longest ever business trip (3 weeks? 5 weeks?), and he called one night, and my mom wasn't home, so I talked to him. We talked for over an hour, deeply and personally. It was dark outside, and I laid on my bed looking out the window, with all the lights out, as I always did for long conversations. It was strange because we weren't at a stage just then when we were talking deeply or seriously or at length about life. I was keeping to myself.
He talked to me about the growth of his faith during his trip. He had a lot of time to himself, and he devoted it to reading the bible and praying. This resonated with me, and as we talked, I began to realize that we weren't so different after all. He talked about when he was my age, and it was a portrait eerily like my own. There is no connection like the one a son can have with his father. I will meet other people in life with whom I share all kinds of similar experiences, desires, and abilities, but I won't for a moment think that their lives have been passed on to me in any way. I won't discover in their experiences the clues to unlock my identity, the reasons for my likes and dislikes, or the things that shaped me before I can remember.
He told me he really enjoyed that conversation. I thought he should cut the sentimentality, but I didn't say anything. I had enjoyed it too.

4-27-08
I miss my dad. Not all the time, but when things around me are quiet, or I am miserably tired, my thoughts inevitably turn to him. The more vivid my memories, the stronger the sense of loss. Tonight I can’t get the hiking trip we went on for my 18th birthday out of my head. It’s not that the details of our trip were profound in any way, or that I attached any special meaning to them. It is simply recollecting a richly textured memory until it reproduces its original emotions and you begin to feel like it Just Happened – and then to feel the distance again – that brings sweetness and bitterness. So, the details:
We were driving from banff to jasper in our camper, through a bone dry valley on a hot summer day. The road wound back and forth through the bottom of the valley, then climbed up the side in a steep, sweeping C shape. At the top of this there was a large area for cars to pull off and view the valley. As we were driving up, enjoying our air conditioned truck, we passed half a dozen bicyclists, in obvious pain, laboring their way up to the turn off. We got there several minutes before them, and were enjoying the view as they began to appear over the crest of the hill. One of them came over to us and asked if we had any water, since he had run out. We told him that we actually had about 40 gallons of fresh water in our camper, and we ended up filling up the bottles of all of the bicylists. They were very grateful and we felt like good samaritans, sort of. Jasper was the last destination on our trip before we headed back to Calgary, and we got it in our heads that we wanted to see the sunrise - so our first day there, we were on the trail at 5:15, but we were rushing, because it was already light out, and we needed to get up to a good viewing spot before the sun came over the horizon. We hurried up the trail to a meadow, where I whipped out my dad's old pentax k1000 slr to take pictures of the sun. This was theh result:

We blew through that hike and hardly talked. There were tons of bugs, so we wore bug nets over our faces most of the time. At one point we came upon thousands of moths, which completely covered the ground of the trail in white. We walked all over them. My dad was behind me, and slipped towards the end of the hike, almost falling down a hill. That was a little scary. I never liked seeing him hurt (like the time he messed his shoulder up while playing goalie for me). We finished the hike in 5 1/2 hours and were very pleased with our fitness. So I miss him.
4-28-08
I prayed for my dad a lot when he was sick. Now I mine memories. I've found myself lying in bed at night, thinking about my dad, often thinking about what I have just written here, and not praying. I haven't been able to get a little phrase out of my head this week - "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted," according to Jesus. It's amazing that it took me five weeks to recognize this as applying to me. I'm glad that mourners come under the blessing of God.
Last spring, when my dad was home again from the hospital, the younger sister of a friend of mine had a heart attack, and was hospitalized. My dad had met this girl once, when she came over to our house with my friend Jamie. I heard the news shortly after it happened and told my dad, and it brought tears to his eyes, and he prayed for her all day long, and the next day. I couldn't believe how much it affected him. I was the one who actually knew the girl, but it was he who couldn't think of anything else for days. He spent a lot of time praying for other people while he was sick.
4-29-08
My dad was a big fan of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Simple. He wore baseball caps when he worked in the yard. He could grab the rim of a ten foot basketball hoop, but not quite dunk. He really liked flying airplanes. One of his frequent comments when my mom was in the distance was "your mom is so beautiful." His way of stopping family strife was to absorb it, so he wasn't one to vent annoyances about anyone, if he had any. He was willing to accept blame for things unjustly if it brought peace. He adapted well to changes of plans. He was liable to forget things at the grocery store. He had 20/10 vision most of his life. This made it all the easier to construe him as a low level super hero when I was younger. All the way until college, he always read the books I was reading. I would finish, and he would start. I'm not sure whether he was keeping tabs on me, or if it was just convenient. He always wore his wedding ring. He didn't care much for extravagant things.
4-30-08
Let me tell you what happened:
I came back to my room and I saw from the light on my phone that I had a message. This is what I heard: "Hey Joe, its your mom. um, i'm just letting you know that your dad took kind of a bad turn last night, and i'm here with him and he's a little unresponsive, so they're concerned about him, but i didn't want to call you on your cell phone and catch you at a bad time, so...i'm gonna be staying here, and you can call if you want, but just...just pray for him that he gets through this. i don't think they expect him to though honey. so...i'll talk to you soon. i love you, bye."
I called right away, I talked to him, I hung up and left for the airport, he died.
I was completely calm. I journaled in the car on the way to the airport and throughout my flight home. I immediately began thinking about my dad's death in pre-arranged categories. Categories full of hope and comfort, drawn from the christian story. The next day I read Lewis's The Last Battle.
Since then I've found myself wanting to paint a blacker picture. To taste the dark sweetness of hopelessness, but it just isn't in me. Despair is something I can't embrace even if I want to, but I can't say why.
So no despair. But all around me people are fretting. Fretting so much that you would think we were living in the worst of all possible worlds. People are fretting about their careers, their classes, their home improvement projects, their vacations, their finances, what they will eat, what they will wear, what they will say, how they will secure their future. And I get caught up easily enough.

...then you wake up one morning and something is wrong with your body, and you no longer have a career, or the ability to stand on a ladder, or travel on a plane, or taste food, or go out in society. And the horizon that was your future comes rushing forward until you stand right on the brink of nothing, only able to look backwards. I've seen it.
But I have hope for the future. I want to have peace in the present.

After Loss - week IV

2008-04-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

4-17-08
I am meditating on this picture. I become more and more unsettled the more I look at it. Look at that young man - quietly self-satisfied, talented, ambitious, and confident. His proud father at his side, also satisfied to see his son fulfill all his potential and succeed in all his endeavors.

They like being alive. They liked getting up this morning. The father knows that his son is following his example, and the son knows he is doing it well and that it brings his dad pleasure. So at this moment their eyes shine with tranquility. Tonight, for the first time, the father will see his son get up and speak before thousands of people. This son will acknowledge his father before them all. The father looks healthy, doesn't he? Healthy and full of possibility. But damn it, even here his health is a mere sliver of what his smile lets on. Here is a memory that is imprinted in my memory and still makes me shiver. That night I spoke at my baccalaureate service. I walked off the stage afterwards, and began walking around the side of the room towards the back, and he was walking towards me as fast as he could with his crutches and his brace, with tears in his eyes, and he hugged me. It wasn't that he was proud of me. At that moment I sensed something deeper and unexpected. It was thankfulness. Something akin to 'everything has been worth it, now that I have been able to be here.' I can't express how thankful I am for the part I was able to play in that.

4-18-08

I was blessed to have two parents who loved each other, as well as their kids. Writing about my dad each day, it has become clear to me how much I love family, and the prospect of someday having a family. Thinking about my dad makes me want to be a father myself, so I can love in that unique way that my dad loved our family.

Though it was terrible for my dad to be sick, it was a beautiful thing to see my mom take care of him. I think it was satisfying in some way to see her love manifested so concretely and consistently, over such a long period of time, and with so little relief. I am glad that there were times when I was able to care for him too. I think it was my way of saying "I love you" in a more meaningful way. If I hadn't had the (is opportunity really the right word to use?) to care for him, I think I may have had to deal with a lot more remorse over not expressing my love to him sufficiently. It would be hard to lose him without knowing that he knew how much I loved him.

4-19-08

Routine: just before my dad left the office each day, he would call home to let us know he was on his way. His dinner prayer was always a variation of "dear lord, thank you for this day. Bless this food to our bodies. amen." He always sat in the north east chair at the table.

My dad passed down a number of unique skills to me. He had a special way of making paper airplanes which could fly suuuper far. I only make paper airplanes that way now. He also had a distinct way of cradling a pool cue in his hand, which I adopted. This is actually something I didn't learn until very late, when I was in college. You see, I played pool all the time at my friend Karl's house, and I had no idea that my dad could play, but he came to pick me up one night (my car must have been broken down or something), and he came in for a minute and decided to play a game with us, and he blew me away! I couldn't believe it. Here I am, having played thousands
of games over the past 5 years, and he walks in, the old man, and woops me. It turns out he lived with a guy in college who had a pool table and they played all the time. So I started shooting the way he did from that point on. The most important skill, however, was towel snapping. I was in 5th or 6th grade when I discovered the wonders of turning a hand towel into a lethal weapon. I'm not sure how it happened, but one night my mom and dad somehow started snapping each other with towels. It was a game of course, very exciting to watch. The battle moved from the kitchen to the tv room and back, with an occasional yelp. Afterwards, my dad taught me the special way he rolled his towels into a 'rat's tail.' The results were incredible. I remember being especially impressed with him snapping a napkin in two in mid air. I guess he learned to snap towels in the navy. I suppose you had to be good to defend yourself. Of course once he had bequeathed all his lethal wisdom to me, he very seriously made me promise that I wouldn't go doing it to anybody at school. He said that having a skill like this was something that had to be used with great caution. Of course as I got older I put this skill to good use. I still remember the first time my towel snapping made somebody bleed. Poor brad up at bible camp. Anyway, the point is that I always felt like he prepared me well for life.

4-20-08

I've mentioned this before, but as I think about my dad, my mind often goes back to my childhood, and that makes me want to be what he was to me. I feel like he has left me with a treasury of wisdom about being a father, and I want to pour it out on kids of my own (or more immediately on a nephew), as a tribute to him. His death has greatly accelerated this desire in me. Basically I want to be my dad. I'm in neo-childhood adoration mode, where I want to imitate him because he is clearly the greatest person in the world.

Secondly, I am wishing I were an artist, because I have a piece of art that I want to create for myself but I don't have the skill. I'll describe it to you:

I've died and I'm lying face up, stretched out in a shallow grave. The sun is shining. Two men kneel beside me. All three of us appear to be the same age, in the bloom of health. One of the men is Jesus, the other is my dad. Jesus is taking me by the hand, and the picture is at that instant when he has just begun to raise me up. My head is just an inch off the ground, my eyes have just opened with surprise, but the focus of the picture is on my dad's face as he leans over Jesus' shoulder. It is like the face he had on when he was holding me right after I was born. It is the face of untroubled joy. He is the alive one waiting for me to wake up to new life and a sweet reunion. I want to hang it on my wall to keep my mind thinking clearly about what the future holds for me.

4-21-08

When does a person give up hope?

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, and we knew it was bad, but we had hope that his initial surgery would go well, that they would get good margins, and that the cancer would not be very aggressive. The surgery did not go well, they did not get good margins, the cancer turned out to be very aggressive, and this was followed by a slew of surgeries just trying to stabilize him from the complications caused by the first one. There were moments then when we had very little hope for him pulling through. He did. He was able to return home from the hospital eventually, and we hoped that it would be a long time before the cancer came back, and we hoped that the nerve damage he had suffered would repair itself, and we hoped that he would get well enough to have bone graphs put in so he could stop wearing his brace and begin walking again. We even hoped that after that he might be able to return to work. The cancer came back before any of that happened. However, we hoped that it would grow very slowly. It grew very fast. We hoped that he could have more surgery or go through some sort of treatment to at least slow down the cancer. There were no viable surgeries and no effective treatments. The treatment he did have brought on more problems and more suffering. We hoped he would live until Christmas and by some miracle he did. We hoped for a couple weeks and he lived a couple more months. He kept looking further ahead than I could bring myself to look. Just a couple weeks before he died, I was talking to him, and he was still looking forward to what the spring and summer held for us.

My question: what are we hoping for now?

4-22-08

Sometimes my thoughts are expressed best in different forms.

Me: Death, why have you come here?

"to take your father."

Me: Why my father?

"Because my appetite is for the least deserving."

Me: Are you ever satiated?

"Never."

Me: Who is with you?

"Despondency is with me."

Me: Why is he here?

"To take you and your family into a living death."

Me: How will he do that?

"He will remind you of the finality of death and separation and say 'you have been disenfranchised, you are lost, you having nothing left to hope for and nowhere left to go.'"

Me: Death, you may take my father, but you will not have a feast. As for Despondency I will bloody my fists with him.

My dad wanted me to continue with my life while he was sick, so I finished college and moved away to graduate school, but flew home as often as possible to see him. I was not always at peace about this, especially as his health worsened in the fall and winter. His view was for my future. While we were hoping for his recovery, he was also hoping for our continued abundant living. The fact that his sickness brought trouble upon us was one of the things that bothered him the most. However, there is something appealing about despondency. We desire to drown in it, but it is again that desire to lie down and not get up, to stop thinking, to die; and if my options are life and hope, or despondency and death, then I will try to find hope.

The height of my childhood despondency came in (2nd?) grade. The monstertrucks were coming to the tacoma dome and my dad and I went to go see them. I watched them on tv, so I had my favorite - gravedigger. I watched them on channel 22, which we only got if I channel surfed through the vcr. This event was the biggest, coolest, most spectacular event of my short life. It was bigger than the mariners, or fishing, or going on vacation. It was fantasyland come true. So we drove down to tacoma, and the traffic was terrible. When we got off I-5 within sight of the tacoma dome there was a line of cars extending for a mile, all waiting to get in. We waited for hours. I began to panic. My dad maintained hope and tried to reassure me. I maintained minimal optimism another hour. It's dark when people begin turning around. Car after car drives past us in the opposite direction, and my dad asks one of them what is going on. "They're sold out, no more tickets." I'm furious and distraught. I stop talking to my dad. I am still sad and mad when I go to bed that night. I felt like there was nothing left to hope for. I wish I could ask him now what went through his head. I suspect he felt pretty bad, he probably could have gotten tickets beforehand.

4-23-08

Who is going to tell me what it is like to grow up? Who am I going to call when I have a problem? When I am scared of life? Who else is going to rejoice with me in my insignificant triumphs? You were the only one whose presence meant all was well. I hate this. How were you so damn cheerful all the time? I'm grateful for it, but how did you do it? Nothing is the same without you! Nothing is entirely well without you. What fun is it for me to accomplish something if I can't anticipate telling you about it? Talking to you at that last minute is one of the most important moments of my life. "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." That was you. I remember how you would get candy bars at the gas station and we would eat them before we got home so mom wouldn't know. I liked that you got yourself one too, that way we both had a secret. You were so patient that the few times you lost your cool I was scared something really bad was happening, even if it was just because you couldn't pound a nail in straight. I know that good things await me, and I know that you were confident that I would take hold of them all, but I want you to see it all. I miss talking to you.

After Loss - week III

2008-04-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

4-10-08
I used to think it was cool the way my dad rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirts. When I started wearing button up shirts, I did the same, for that reason.
My family went to a large church when I was growing up. This church put on large musical productions, and since my sister was [the best] singer, she would be in them, and my dad used to man one of the spotlights in the balcony. This was one of those giant tripod-mounted spotlights that you manually changed the color filters on. Well I thought my dad and I were pretty cool, up in the balcony, taking care of the light artillery. I figured that only a select few were ever allowed to do these jobs.
How about that time we went to Whistler in the summer, and waited in that restaurant for our food for 2 hours, only to find out that they had completely forgotten our order - so they gave us the complete sample desert platter and dinner for free? Man was that worth it.
Again, what is going on as I remember these things? The stories we tell amongst ourselves while we are alive are suddenly changed when one of us dies. These little reminiscences would have simply merited laughs in my family not too long ago. Suddenly they carry with them all the weight of meaning we attached to our relationship with my dad but never needed to express. The meaning we create in relationships is lost in death. If the dead are not raised, then we are left truly empty. As we cultivate our memories, we work to maintain this relationship through a long cessation of communication, so that we are ready for the day when we are reacquainted - we do the same with Jesus, who is the first of many to be raised.
4-11-08
I use the word father when I philosophize, but dad is the name of my father. Sometimes when we were in large crowds I would yell out "dad!" and he wouldn't hear me, so I would have to resort to "earl!" which was always strange. Isn't it strange that children, who are so close to their parents, never call them by their names?
I was in junior high when my dad and I went on our first overnight backpacking trip. We packed way too much, and we were already extremely tired when we were only a quarter of the way to the top. At one point we asked a hiker coming down the trail how far along we were, and he said about 45% and we thought he was joking. He wasn't. We eventually made it to an old fire look-out where we planned to spend the night. We made stew, filled our bowls, ate, returned for more but a rat got into it first. The weird thing about all of this was that there was a woman at the lookout when we got there. She had blown past us earlier in the day with nothing but a large purse on her shoulder, and she was up in this lookout unable to hike back down because she was sick from dehydration. She had just woken up that morning and decided to go hiking (which she never did), and so she grabbed a bottle of water and a few granola bars and went on a 7 mile, 4500 foot elevation gain hike and got sick. She was so sick she had to spend the night. Oh, and she was also severely sunburned because it had been a hot july day and she hadn't worn any sunscreen. Great. So she spent the night with us in the hut. I woke up the next morning to her crying, because the look out was completely enveloped in clouds. The fog had moved in overnight and visibility was less than ten feet, and she thought that we wouldn't be able to get back down. Anyway, my dad made ponchos for us out of garbage bags, and we made it down alright. She was very grateful, thought we were angels, my dad prayed for her at some point - but we definitely thought she had some issues. This is one of those times that my dad and I would reminisce about.
4-12-08
If it's quiet enough I can hear my dad's voice answering the phone. So I sit hear and call, again and again and again. Then I hear him saying I love you for the last time. Hey Joe! I love you. Replay it. I love you. I love you.
This is when it becomes real. I can remember his voice but I can't talk to him. I can call out to him but there is no answer except in my memory. I close my eyes until my ears stop hearing and I am wrapped in clean darkness, then I step through the veil into my memories. But it's never enough.

I lie down. I'm mute. I lie still and quiet for a long time. I don't feel like getting up again, ever. This dialogue begins:
"you have to get up some time"
silence
"you can't lie here forever, you have to get up sometime"
silence
"you have to get up"

"I won't get up from this place unless you go with me"
silence
"Answer me"
silence
"tell me you'll go with me"
silence
"tell me you will be with me!"
"I will be with you always, even to the end of the age"
I get up.

4-13-08
Yesterday was one month since my dad died.
My dad told me when he was sick this past year, that when I was born, he prayed and gave me up to God for ministry. Well here I am in seminary, planning to become a pastor. What am I supposed to think of what he told me? My first inclination is to not take it seriously, to disbelieve. But, he told me, and he wasn't the sort of person to lie.
He never told me that he had prayed this prayer. He never so much as nudged me towards ministry, never even made a passing, vague suggestion that I consider it. Yet, here I am. What strange providence has been at work?
He prayed another prayer in December when he thought he was going to die, and my sister told us that she was pregnant - the snippet I recorded in my journal: "from its very beginning may this child be honoring and glorifying to you. Preserve it. We thank you for this gift of life."
By prayers like these, his influence will continue to manifest itself for many years to come.
4-14-08
My dad used to be the one to pray at our family gatherings. Now I'm expected to.
It started when he was just in the hospital and couldn't gather with us for Christmas dinner, and it has continued. The absence is acute. Nobody else prays for all of us. Nobody else leads all of us. I feel like I pray in Earl's place, as some sort of memorial to his role in our family.
I don't mind praying in other contexts. It might be because my extended family, for the most part, are not christian. It never made a lot of sense for us to pray at all at these gatherings, except that my dad was the spokesperson for our family, as my aunt said at his funeral. So I have to wonder what his absence means for the future of our family. It is hard enough for me to think about who I am now that I don't have a father, but who are we as a family, now that the one person who gave us some sort of spiritual guidance is gone? Moreover, how can someone remember him apart from his faith, and not lose what was most essential to him? Loss is not dealt with merely at the individual level. As I seek to put my life back together, I must also begin the process with the rest of my family to put our life back together. I sincerely hope that we may do so, and that we may discover more richness now than in the past.
4-15-08
The process of my dad's long illness haunts me. It is the process that has scandalized my carefree soul, caused me to gaze for months at a time into the valley of despair, and awakened my sense of mortality while I am still at the peak of physical health. I just re-read the reflection I gave at SPU's baccalaureate service last year, and it reminded me of the roller coaster I have been on. It has been so long now that I have ceased to think about the inital shock in the fall of 2006 when my dad was diagnosed. I've ceased to think about how dramatic his initial stay in the hospital was, when we weren't sure he would make it. Those first 3 1/2 months he spent in the hospital are now only a piece, not even half of the time he ended up spending there.
In that reflection on the first 6 months of my dad's illness I said: "I chose to believe that God is powerful enough to redeem even the tragedy of someone I love dying, even though I cannot see any possible way for that redemption to happen...These days I pray for peace, for rest, for health, but if those do not come, then I will keep on repeating the words of the psalmist, as I have been doing for the last 6 months – I keep repeating them because if I stop, I might stop believing them: “behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine.”
I continue to be conflicted. This should never happen anywhere to anyone. I guess that means I'll keep reading the psalms. My dad did. Every day until he died.
4-16-08
Lord thank you for health. I thank you that at this moment in my life I wake up each morning, and rise from bed, and walk briskly to class. I thank you that I can run. Thank you for giving and sustaining seeing eyes and hearing ears, and a nose that can smell good food. Lord, thank you that my mind still thinks clearly. May I accept all these gifts of yours with gratitude each day, savor them each day, and bless you each day.
I remember playing soccer in my yard in the evenings. It would be fall, so it would be brisk, but not cold, and my dad and I would play 1v1 with two goals, and I would run around in circles until my throat was on fire and I'd have to call a time out to catch my breath. I could never tell if I was really beating him or if he was letting me win. At some point I was just beating him, but it was never clear, and it didn't really matter. I think he enjoyed tricking me into thinking I had beat him fairly, more than he enjoyed winning himself. It was good for my self-esteem.
I remember going to my grandma's beach property in hood canal to get oysters. The first time we went I was in grade school (not sure exactly how old), and my aunt and uncle and cousins were there too, and I was really excited about opening up the back hatch of our blazer and sitting on it with my feet dangling out as we drove down the dirt road to the beach. I didn't do much shucking that time, but I had a grand time gathering buckets and buckets of oysters for my mom and dad to shuck. We made a fire on the beach, and had "oysters on the half-shell" with melted butter, which my mom almost convinced me was amazing, but deep down I couldn't get over the gooey brain texture of them.
When my dad took me driving for the first time, we went up to the parking lot of the old woodway high school, and after doing a few circuits around the parking lot, he had me line up on a straitaway and told me to put the peddle to the floor until he told me to stop, and then slam on the brakes as hard as I could. I was a little nervous, but he insisted. He wanted me to get a feel for those antilockers. So we did. It was a good time. He was a great driving instructor. He said that when his dad taught him to drive, he would put his wallet on the dashboard of the car, and make him brake and accelerate without having it slip off. So my dad did it to me too. Aside from that little incident with my grandma's range rover, I have a perfect record.

After Loss - week II

2008-04-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

4-3-08
I never felt any compulsion to "perform" for my parents, but I always anticipated their affirmation, and it always came. I refer to both my parents, because I find it hard to talk about just my dad alot of the time. They worked as a unit. I remember being at my best friend's house in grade school, and being baffled by the existence of an entire part of the house that was off limits, that was "dad's office," but which was actually the entire top floor. Our house didn't have limits, we shared all the space, and I went right ahead and snooped around in everybody else's rooms when they weren't around without the thought that I was being invasive.
My dad was extremely generous with me. Alot of people were and are generous with me, but it strikes me now how natural it all was with my dad. Nearly everything he had could have been mine if I wanted it, and I wouldn't have had to pull teeth to get it. It's a powerful bond I realize now, when people can honestly say "what's mine is yours," and truly believe it. Most of the time we say this but worry that someone will take advantage of our generosity. With my dad, and really in my family, this wasn't a worry I had. I always trusted him completely. He didn't have to earn it, he just had it and never lost it, and there was never any doubt about him losing it. I suppose I could say my dad was extremely predictable - but in the best sort of way. The way that makes other people trust and be at peace. I am not sentimentalizing, though it might sound too good to be true. When did he not take me seriously? Ridicule me? Strip me of hope? I can't think of a time. Sometimes I wonder if I read "dark" literature because I was supplied so little darkness growing up and want to be well-rounded. I think there's more to it, but I will say, that the optimism and hope within the Christian story are all the more believable to me as a description of reality, since I have lived a life and been in a family where hope and love were so solid they were unquestioned.
4-4-08
I went to bed last night thinking about my dad. I woke up thinking about him, and continued to most of the day today, though it is often in my second consciousness. The first one deals with the day to day: driving, working, studying, talking to people - the second reflects, and I am aware of it all the time. Today it gave me a headache for which two ibprofen did the job. I think talking to my family is one of the best things for me right now. Grief is binding us together in new ways.
4-5-08
Today, a friend of mine casually mentioned a desire to learn to play racquetball. I responded with some enthusiasm that I would love to play with him; that my dad and I used to always play. Used to... I once played with my father, and I will play again with others, but I'm sure it will always make me think of him. Other things that remind my of my dad: riding bicycles, swimming, hiking, pancakes, tacos, lawn mowing, kites, teaching people how to drive, tying knots, ties, airplanes, australia, the roman numeral III... My dad always made fluffy pancakes and my mom made thin ones. My dad was satisfied with the butter in the pancakes, my mom always put butter on them. We always made them from scratch, always. We have gone through three different pancake skillets in my lifetime. The first was round, made for four pancakes. It now resides with the camping gear. The second was long and covered two burners; good for 6 pancakes at a time. The third was square - four at a time. We need a new one. Saturday mornings were pancake mornings. They were usually already cooking when I came downstairs. My dad usually served two at a time, but if I was hungry I would take two stacks of four. We always made a double batch because we ate alot. We usually drank non-fat ice cold milk with them, but sometimes orange juice, which was usually sour because my dad mixed it with too much water. These were good mornings.
4-6-08
"You'll be fine eventually," sounds a lot like "you'll forget eventually." I don't want that to be the case. Also, the notion of "getting over it" doesn't set well with me, because I'm not sure we're supposed to get over the loss of someone close to us, since most people seem to think this means returning to normal. Yet, our lives must continue, and as we are God's people, they must continue in hope. I'm a bit unclear about where we're supposed to end up in this situation though. What has been normal up to this point is lost, but if there is no returning to normal, then where do we go? What life awaits us, and how in the world are we supposed to imagine it, when for instance, my whole paradigm of being a son to my father is no longer valid? I am... who am I?
4-7-08
My dad had me put worship music on his ipod, and it just occurred to me to look and see what songs he listened to the most. These are the words of his most played song.

"To you I give my life, not just the parts I want to
To you I sacrifice, these dreams that I hold onto
Your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
This is no sacrifice, here's my life

To you I give the gifts, your life has given me
How can I hoard the treasure, that you designed for free
Because your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
This is no sacrifice, here's my life

To you I give my future, as long as it may last
To you I give my present, to you I give my past
Because your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
This is no sacrifice, here's my life."

I'm trying hard to not abstract my dad's faith. My immediate inclination is to fit his life into a paradigm of -nevertheless, I will trust the Lord.- That is, "though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord" (Hab. 3:17). That is, though everything, including my life falls to pieces, nevertheless I will trust in God my savior.

Though this is the most profound of all confessions of faith, it diverts me from thinking concretely about my dad. I can assure you that he listened to this song because the desires it expresses were his desires - but not desires that were maintained effortlessly. Songs like this help us affirm our faith, we pray along with them as we listen. But where do I begin to comprehend the intensity of my dad's journey the last year and a half? I have so many memories of going to the hospital to see him.
The hospital. At times I hated it. I hated all it represented for me, all the suffering of my family within its white rooms, all the lonely nighttime trips from my car to the the sixth floor, the feeling of having my heart slowly asphyxiated, of the endless mental screaming because of the relentless tension of trying to maintain external order in my life. I would walk up to that vast hospital imagining its demonic banner above the doors "Futility," and I would say "Screw YOU." We are not a family to be mastered by despair.

I was looking through my journal, and I also have an entry like my sister's. Evidently this is something that left a very strong impression:
"I remember being in the balcony in church with my dad as a young boy, and singing, and him raising his hands and being terrified! It was so strikingly worshipful, so uncommon, like a great power lifted those hands to heaven - perhaps it was real to me then for the first time." 12-13-07

4-8-08
Two years ago this june, I was in Washington D.C. with my dad. I was visiting graduate schools in massachusetts and new jersey, and I met him in DC where he was on a week long business trip. I remember my flight from boston to dc was delayed because of bad weather, but he was waiting for me in the terminal when i got in late that night. DC was sweltering. I divided my days between reading Anna Karenina, and visiting the smithsonian, while my dad was at conference events. One evening we went to the shakespeare theater and emerged afterwards to the opened heavens, the greatest monsoon of my life. My dad and I had to huddle in a restaurant doorway with other theater goers, and stay there for nearly 30 minutes. The rain was so spectacular, that we spent most of those 30 minutes turning to each other and laughing in disbelief. "I can't believe this!" Another evening, I was walking the mall (not the shopping mall) when my dad called me to let me know he was done for the day and ready to go to dinner. I told him to pick me up by the lincoln memorial since it was over a mile back to the hotel. Two hours later I was sitting on the steps of the lincoln memorial, people watching, wondering what happened to my dad. Eventually he called and told me that the traffic was bad (1 mile! 2 hours!) and so I started walking towards where he was. I reached our designated rendezvous point and waited another twenty minutes, saw fireflies for the first time, then sought shelter up the block because it started raining. 20 minutes later my dad came zooming up - the one way street, the wrong way, I hopped in, and we tried to exit the city in the Worst Traffic of my Life. It took us 3 hours to get away and have an unspectacular dinner at an unspectacular restaurant in an unspectacular neighborhood. It was thoroughly depressing as I recall, but I thank God for even my depressing memories. Some of them are the most vivid in my mind, and they are now part of my treasury of sweet sorrows. I want them back, but I can't have them.
What am I doing by writing all these memories? I am beginning to think that this is how we lay someone to rest. But that scares me. I am scared of the day when I will have memories, but be unable to hear his voice in my head, or remember the texture of his hands. He always smiled when I came into the room, and I relied on that smile. I relied on the love behind it.
Do you remember the plums? Do you remember the abundance of the plums?! Thousands of them, filling grocery bags in our kitchen and smashed on the grass where I played soccer with my dad. Then they just stopped coming one year. Is that a trivial memory? NO. Lots of plums - that may not seem to have anything to do with my dad, but it is a memory from my life, in my home, where I had two parents and a sister and nothing was wrong.
May the Lord come quickly. Never until now have I desired it in order to be reunited with those I love. I can see that day like I see van gogh's cafe terrace at night on my wall - its lights, stars and stones more alive and glorious than any I know, but I can't get in! I can taste it like I smell tea, but I can't drink yet.

4-9-08

Today I noticed that rather than petering out, my thoughts about my dad have been growing. I hope this continues, despite the fact that my lengthening reflections take more time away from my schoolwork.

I was in 5th grade when my dad got cancer the first time. There were only about two weeks between him being diagnosed, and having surgery. The night before his surgery, I remember him sitting me down in my room, and attempting to prepare me for everything that might happen (and reassure me), but I don't remember what he said. I just remember being stoic, but trying really hard to have enough faith when I prayed for his healing. I remember feeling pretty helpless though, because I didn't feel like I had the faith I needed when I asked God to heal him.

The morning of the surgery I went to school, a christian school mind you, and during prayer requests that morning I didn't say anything, but my friend rory said that my dad was having surgery, and I put my head in my hands and cried.

My dad wasn't entirely well for the next year since he had a month and a half of radiation and then a year of chemo. Spring of my 6th grade year however, my entire class went on an overnight retreat to miracle ranch, and my dad was my cabin leader, as well as one of the chapel speakers. I don't remember what he talked about, except I remember him talking about a dove, and mainly that he got choked up at the end - intense. 6th grade and your dad is crying in front of your entire world; but mixed with the terror, there was something powerful about it, and I think everyone knew it. I'm grateful for my sister's wedding pictures. Mainly for these two:

Because we don't have many candid shots of my dad, and if it weren't for these and some others, I might forget some of his more unique facial expressions. There is a lot of meaning in his face in that first picture that some of us can read very clearly.

After Loss - week I

2008-03-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

This is a sustained reflection that will continue growing each day.
******************************************************************
3-27-08
There are no words. Outside, everything is silent. Inside there is a great fury. Life continues around me and I experience it through thick glass, which muffles sounds, emotions, and sensations.
"What are you thinking?"
The only thing I can think of is the roaring ocean sound, the avalanch, the thunder, the explosion. Evidently it can go on for weeks. Actually, maybe it's more like white noise. Like the unbearable static of a television set turned up all the way until the sound drowns out everything else. Stare at the static until you stop thinking. But maybe it's not an imperative; it may be that the static takes you and makes you a pillar of salt.
So you're stuck here. You're shrink wrapped by the static. Then you begin realizing that some of the old things: excitement, laughter, longing, energy - they can be reconstructed in your shrunk world on a miniature scale. Sometimes you can even forget that there is a great big world on the other side of the static. It doesn't last long though.
3-28-08
My dad couldn't teach me math. He was good at teaching all kinds of other things, but he couldn't teach me math. One time in particular, I think I was taking algebra, so 8th grade, he spent probably a good hour+ trying to explain a problem to me and I wasn't getting it, and I was mad at him, maybe even to the point of tears, and I wanted him to just GET AWAY. I couldn't stand him. Then my sister sat down and in 2 minutes had explained the problem perfectly and I understood it.
I used to mow our elderly neighbor's lawn. I started when I was about twelve, and often my dad and I would do it together, and he would let me keep all the money. If I did it by myself it took 2 whole hours. Whenever we did it together, I had him mow the orchard, because that was the most difficult. I didn't like mowing under all the trees and running into all the spiderwebs that hung between all the low branches. He never made the slightest objection to taking the hard part of the job. I was always in a bad mood about mowing that lawn if he didn't do it with me.
Each day it sinks in a little more. I don't let it happen too fast - this isn't a conscious decision so much as a meditative flinch. Each time I glimpse reality, I close my eyes again, but like someone coming from darkness into a bright room, after blinking for long enough, I will see things clearly. But this is a time when the oblivion of darkness is more desirable. I would rather look backward than forward.
3-29-08
Throughout my dad's illness, I was constantly wrestling with issues surrounding the meaning of life. Milosz has a poem called "prayer" that I have read alot, which begins with him noting his age (approaching ninety), and hence, approaching death, and ends with him saying to God "give me certainty that I toiled for your glory, free me from guilt real and imagined." The line about toiling for God's glory has stuck with me. It seems to be the measurement of the meaningfulness of all that we do. I imagined that if I were approaching death, the question of whether or not I toiled for God's glory would be the one I would be obsessing over, however, now that my dad has actually died, I don't find this thought quite as compelling, at least not right this moment. It is so obvious that my dad's toiling (in its sum total), was for God's glory, and that that resolves this whole imagined crisis. I even worried sometimes that he wouldn't conclude this about his own life, but he wasn't particularly concerned about this question. He was concerned about the more immediate problem of remaining faithful to the end. God will pick up the pieces for the one who remains faithful to the end. The one who finishes well can look back upon his entire life (as can those who remain afterwards) and say yes, God has validated me completely, I am not in vain.
3-30-08
My dad always said that he wanted to live to be 120 years old. 120 of course is the limit God puts on how long people live after the flood story in the book of Genesis (whether this is the correct interpretation or not is debated). The point is that he had every intention of going to the limit. It was a joke he liked to make, and he even had the audacity to keep making it at various points throughout his illness, even when he was in the hospital! I liked that. I liked that he relished living so much.
Which brings me to my second thought, and I had initially considered building my eulogy around this, but I wasn't sure how to talk about it, or if I was simply inferring my own sentiments onto my dad (though I don't think I am) - I love life. I relish life. I hope that comes through in the things I write, and in my conversations with people, and the way I live. I have often had my senses overloaded with bliss, and I have tried to sharpen my senses to take in more of the glory of existence. That's me in my joyful moments. I think my dad was the same, at least in his love for life. He liked his job, he loved his family, he liked working in the yard with my mom and playing every sport and game with me when he came home from work, and he liked to help people and talk to people and a hundred other things, and he filled his life with them. At 53, he definitely had enough curiosity and enthusiasm to keep him from getting bored for another 70 years, if he were to have made it that long.
I always liked (i can't speak for anyone else), that he was interested in learning new things, reading new books, learning new skills, or you know, trying to make/fix/build things that he may or may not be able to. I have that same desire. To my eye, life never became stale for him. Contentment? Perhaps that is the word. He was content with his life, and it made all the difference.
3-31-08
I have lost my father. I can think that thought steadily and abstractly. I cannot look at that picture of my dad in his suit on our front steps, and look at his smiling face, and remember his voice, realizing that that face will not speak to me again the rest of my life, that there is no living person behind that picture who I can touch, without my body becoming numb. I stare at that picture and a voice in my head says "Dad! Dad!" as if I were entreating him to hear me.
I cry as I haven't been able to since he died.
For my eighteenth birthday we spent 2 weeks hiking in the canadian rockies. I remember taking turns driving our F-350 down long stretches of highway. One night we got to our campsite in a valley, just before sunset, and we looked up at the mountains and decided that the sight was too spectacular to miss, so we jumped back in the truck and drove several miles up, up, up the pass until the entire valley was spread below us in shadow, and we watched the sun go down. That night my dad woke me up in the middle of the night to go out and look at the stars. We could see the entire milky way.
Everybody asks how I'm doing. What am I supposed to say? I usually say "alright" and leave it at that.
When I was in grade school, my sister did ballet in seattle several days a week (I don't really remember how often, maybe it was just once a week), and alot of the time, my dad would drive her down and since I was young, I would have to go with them. In the beginning, the ballet place was at what is now the Good Shepherd Center in wallingford, and it had a great big park behind it. While we waited for my sister to be done, my dad and I would play. We had this game where he would go to the top of the slide, and I would be at the bottom, and I would role my soccer ball up the slide, and he would role it back. This doesn't sound very fun, I know, but it was all about precision for me, trying to roll the ball just to the top, but not past, and then catching it as it came careening down towards me again. I think he got bored of this quicker than me. Also, the swings at this park are enormous. I've gone back to visit just to make sure. They are still the biggest swings in town, I swear, but when I was little they were absolutely ginormous, and he would push me forever, and I would feel like I was going to die I would go so high. We'd do that until I started to feel sick. Next, soccer. There was a great big hedge that went down the middle of the lawn, and there were two trees that I used as my goal, and two more at the other end for my dad. Lots of running. Sometimes I brought my little huffy bike. I distinctly remember riding around the field as fast as I could, and it was bumpy, and I had this police siren/microphone thing on the handlebars, and it fell off because of the bumps. Very disappointing. The rest of the time, and this is really what I was getting at, probably when it was cold or rainy outside, we would read. Or more exactly, my dad would read to me. All the usual stuff, hardy boys, chronicles of narnia, probably the boxcar children, maybe some nancy drew if I ran out of hardy boys. He would read to me for hours, and I would just sit, sometimes with my eyes closed, sometimes with them just glazed over, and I would see the stories unfolding before my eyes. I remember being disgruntled when he started having me read to him. I had a harder time imagining things when I did the reading. I remember really really looking forward to those story reading times.
4-1-08
I am writing every day because it would be an offense against my soul to do otherwise. I would say that I owe it to my dad to grieve him as thoroughly as I know how, and I suppose this makes me sound rather heartless, but it takes a certain amount of discipline to do this. Life doesn't stop. It continues breathing its demands down your neck, tempting you to just forget what is past. But to forget my dad is to forget myself and to not exert my whole heart and mind in grief would be to lose a piece of my soul. I find myself needing to do penance, not to God, and not to other people, but to my own soul. My dad isn't the one who is going to be offended, and God doesn't demand that we grieve, but how can I emerge from this as a whole person unless I pull together all the memories, with their strains of both love and frustration, and fix them permanently in myself before time causes them to fade?
When I was younger I slept in my parent's closet. It was a big closet, and it had it's own door out into the hallway as well as into their room, and I was small, so I thought it was an actual bedroom. I remember riding my dad up the stairs each night - he would get on hands and knees, and I would get on his back, and we would go upstairs. I would get in bed, and he and my sister and I would pray. My dad came up to my room and pray with me pretty much every night I think until I was 12 or 13. That's what I remember.
4-2-08
I'm having a difficult time becoming excited about anything. It may come in a flash, but it quickly disintegrates. What am I doing with my life? My dad was a bearer of security. I had the sense that he would not let my life flounder, but suddenly I am quite independent, and my idealism is being put to the test. My dad's success gave me confidence that I too, could succeed in life, but I no longer have him as a living reminder. Today, this moment, I am aware of an unforseen challenge to my faith. Will I still put my trust in this God, and believe in this story's account of reality, when it is no longer safe - that is, when there is nobody else to put my life back together if things don't work out. The context of this is a sense of urgency to shore up all the details of my life that were formerly managed by my dad. My desire to attend to these things, some of which are concrete, and others which are quite intangible (such as my self-confidence), often does not entail any turning to God. These needs are altogether too pressing to bring before God it seems. So then, some very practical and existential questions: is our God real? Does our God act on our behalf? How long must we wait? How far may we go 'on our own?' The faithful are fools, filled with the foolishness of God, banking their bottom dollar that God at his most foolish, is wiser than all the wisdom of humanity.

Earl J Thomson III 1954-2008

2008-03-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

My dad died yesterday, a few minutes after I talked to him on the phone one last time. He was reading through the Bible, and he left off with Isaish 40 "...but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

The Daily Office-Year2-4th Sunday of Lent

2008-03-04T22:56:00.000-08:00

I only want to talk about two of the passages, Psalm 66 and Genesis 48. The following begins as a scripture dialogue.

"Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth"
-Shut the he** up, i don't want to right now. This is just great, what is the point of reading something that is so manifestly unrealistic.
"sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! Say to God, "How terrible are thy deeds!"
-Amen. Things are not going so well right now and I want to accuse you, O God, for what is out of my control.
"So great is thy power that thy enemies cringe before thee. All the earth worships thee"
-Not this house. This house is void of worship. No voice goes up to glorify thy name from here. We are silent.
"they sing praises to thee, sing praises to thy name. Come and see what God has done: he is terrible in his deeds among men. He turned the sea into dry land; men passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, who rules by his might for ever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations -- let not the rebellious exalt themselves."
-I am supposed to read this figuratively and recognize that the story of the Israelites is My story, and that I too have passed through the sea on dry land. I am supposed to realize that You O Lord have attended to My needs and saved me. But where is your saving hand Now? Where is your peace now? What good can you do me when I cannot even imagine what deliverance might look like? Or when deliverance borders on the absurd? How is this supposed to be my story if my life sucks?
"Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. For thou, O God, hast tested us; thou hast tried us as silver is tried. Thou didst bring us into the net; thou didst lay affliction on our loins; thou didst let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet thou hast brought us forth to a spacious place."
-Maybe so, but am I comforted? Even if I believe I will be brought into a spacious place, is that comforting? And how am I supposed to believe that this "spacious place" will be anywhere close to compensation for the frickin "affliction on our loins?!"
"I will come into thy house with burnt offerings;"
-will I?
"I will pay thee my vows, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. I will offer to thee burnt offerings of fatlings, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for me. I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; he has given heed to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!"
-All the earth sings God's praises. The psalmist then remembers God's deeds on behalf of his people - the deeds of his faithfulness are part of a collective memory. I have to wonder how our view of God is skewed when we understand his faithfulness too personally - self-referentially. This perspective is too narrow. When we withdraw from community - not just physically, but when we imagine our identity apart from the community of faith, then we are no longer able to know God properly. In fact, we are in great danger. Becoming the Church which rises and falls as one body, addresses the problem of unanswered prayer and of Christians praying conflicting, mutually exclusive prayers. I must understand that the works of God are not comprehensive in my life. The fulness of God's character is not manifest in my experience of God. God's faithfulness is not faithfulness to Me exactly. It is faithfulness to us, the Church.

"When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, 'Who are these?' Joseph said to his father, 'They are my sons, whom God has given me here.' And he said, 'Bring them to me, I pray you, that I may bless them.' Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. So Joseph brought them near him; and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, 'I had not thought to see your face; and lo, God has let me see your children also.' Then Joseph removed them from his knees, and he bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand upon the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the first-born...When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; and he took his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, 'Not so, my father; for this one is the first-born; put your right hand upon his head.' But his father refused, and said, 'I know, my son, I know...Then Israel said to Joseph, 'Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you."

-I have worked with this story alot here, but new readings always bring new observations. First, the narrator makes it quite clear that Israel cannot see. He is blind. Then he says that he sees. Now before you decide that I am making too much of figurative language, follow the story further. Joseph, knowing his father's blindness, is scrupulously careful about aligning his sons for proper blessing reception. When Israel "messes up" Joseph assumes that it is a mistake. However, just as Israel said "God has let me SEE your sons," so now he insists that he is not making the mistake of a blind man by crossing his hands. He knows perfectly well where his primary blessing needs to land.
-There are many implications that come to mind with all of this. First: my sense as I read this story is that at this point, Israel is embodying the preferences of God for the underdog to be lifted up. The younger son will be greater than the elder son. On the same note, I cannot help but think that Joseph's protest is in fact a protest against God. Do we not "kick against the goads" with God, attempting to make God act "properly?" But God does not act properly, or even fairly, for it is certainly unfair for the younger son to receive the greater blessing. In Christian thought, however, this principle of the lowly being raised up is beautiful and glorious.
-Further Questions: How is our application of this story complicated when we ask whether we are the younger or the elder brother? In fact, consider how we play all of these roles: we are the protesting Joseph often enough, and I believe we are called to be like Israel, like God, with a preference for short people. That is, for the weak. Moreover, what are we supposed to make of Israel's seeming contradiction of the narrator? The narrator of the story says that Israel is blind, and the narrator is ALWAYS right. Israel is blind. Yet he sees very very well, as well as God. Or is God blind?

To Heaven We Flee the Conductor: A Dream and a Real Life Aberration

2008-03-03T23:21:00.000-08:00

-Come my dear we will leave tonight, to heaven!
~But Joe, how can I? My parents! They would be so upset!
-Dear! The door between the worlds will only be open for a moment and we must slip through. How could I go without you?

Sunset. We sit on my pinewood bed, feet dangling before the creeping shadows. The view of the lake is beautiful and Dear's small hand is warm and soft in mine. Idyllic, yes? A fluttering shortness of breath feeling tells me that I am on the edge of the world about to fall off. I am completely still.
-Omigosh, this is it, it's happening!
We float upwards hand in hand, through the roof, out of my bedroom, into the sky. Suddenly we are moving through layers of light, passing between the worlds to - newness? Bliss? Unending love and peace? We land.
Dear looks around, we both silently contemplate that
~it looks alot like your room.
-well not exactly, this is more of a shop than a bedroom. The lake is nice though.
~do you feel any different?
-I don't know? What are you so worried about?
Chill! We're in heaven, we're happy!
~What should we do?
We walk around the room. It is entirely constructed of oak hardwood stained nearly black. It is like a room in an old colonial house that feels as solid as granite. I am secretly worried that I don't feel any different here in heaven. A few others appear and silently look around. A tour bus arrives.
=Come aboard, i'll show you around the place.
I begin to board.
=It's seven dollars.
Now luckily we all arrived in heaven with twenty eight dollars of cash in our pockets to start us off. I appreciate the divine welfare, but I am wondering
-What if someone can't pay the seven dollars?
=Oh, we just lock 'em up.
-Oh (!)
Dear and I, and the others board.
We drive down a grey street eerily reminiscent of pine st. Seattle, WA, south capitol hill. Our first stop is a salon. I duck out to use the public restrooms. I try to rush lest I be left behind, but unfortunately it's been awhile and rushing is impossible. I come outside to no bus.
But I know it will come around the block. It does. The driver is irritated by me. He has picked up more passengers. All the seats are full and I cannot sit next to my dear.
-(thinking) lock them up? send them to jail? This is all wrong, this is wrong, this is a sick place.
We drive on. I awake.

After saying goodbye to Nick in Chicago I rush to catch the train from Ogilvie to College Avenue, Wheaton. The train leaves at 7:40 and I need to buy a ticket at the booth before I board on track 4.
7:34 - I'm in the ticket line.
7:35 - I realize the ticket line is not moving. 6'3" *ss man in the fancy hat and trenchcoat is at the only open ticket window asking QUESTIONS.
7:36 - man asking questions, 3 people behind me look at their watches with worried looks and run for the train.
7:37 - I also succumb and run for the train. Having no ticket means I have to buy my ticket from the conductor on the train... and pay the full fare. Twice as much!
I decide to try to evade the train man. I've done it once before almost inadvertently, but that was on a different line. There is no place for me to sit, so I stand between cars in the middle of the train, watching as train men close in from either end, collecting tickets. I'm doomed.
I see that I won't make it to the first stop (my one hope, since the people get on and off and the train men have to start over). I decide to hide in the bathroom.
Problem: I decide this too late and must walk right past the train man to do so, giving him a good look at me. I wait in the bathroom until he moves into the next car. I come out and walk to the opposite end of the train. I make it to the first stop. Then...he comes. All of his enormous burly blue suited brooding gruff comes and he is pissed!
-I had to come find you. Don't you go trying to get away from me again, i should throw you off the train.
He doesn't ask where I got on. He demands the full fare. I hand him my money.
Guilt. I feel like a criminal. Then... laughter, this is the stuff that sermon illustrations are made of! What would life be like without a little small scale naughtiness to mix it up? I spend the ride reflecting on the feeling of being caught and the self justification that follows.

For the Joy of Existence

2008-02-10T20:40:00.001-08:00

I realize it's lent and I'm supposed to be somber... but it's a feast day today. Indulge me while I gush about my existence. I'm happy to report that it is -10 degrees outside right now. Apparently it was -30 with the wind chill this morning, and I could barely breath as I was walking to my car... and I could barely walk on the quarter inch of shimmering ice that covers my parking lot - but what an experience! Everytime I go outside my body begins to go into survival mode and I feel so invigorated! Moreover, I've been enjoying two days of new music - Jens Lekman is making me happy (thanks for the tip Erin). I have completed my application for a summer internship at UPC, and due to a series of fortuitous events this evening I popped into my college group for the first time in 2 months, and ended up talking to my pastor for half an hour - for no good reason he has decided to do whatever he can to help me along in life. Besides feeling carried along by the winds of providence, I am full of Drew's reflections on the richness of our friendships, even as they span the globe. Yes, despite any loss we might be facing, there is still much to rejoice about.

Aside: Read Czeslaw Milosz! I have never read anything - either literature or theology, that turns life into art so profoundly and succinctly.

"Pure beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered
From a life that was bitter and confused,
In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own.
Wonder kept seizing me, and I recall only wonder,
Risings of the sun over endless green, a universe
Of grasses, and flowers opening to the first light,
Blue outline of the mountain and a hosanna shout.
I asked, how many times, is this the truth of the earth?
How can laments and curses be turned into hymns?
What makes you need to pretend, when you know better?
But the lips praised on their own, on their own the feet ran;
The heart beat strongly; and the tongue proclaimed its adoration."

Random Pericopes from my Notebook

2008-02-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

"The kids needed a victim so they chose Monica because she had an unattractive mouth. The boys, when they gathered in their chummy meetings, would say she was the ugliest girl in school, though they didn't know why they said this. They didn't really dislike her, or think she was ugly, but the verdict was set. She was the outsider. Who knows what Monica went through all those years? By high school she was bitter. She resented society and no wonder, we had all wronged her. But we were all busy fortifying our social positions which were always in danger of collapse. There was no time for compassion. We should have become the fellowship of the despised - but I didn't have the love to face that shame."

Comments: There is an evolution of pronouns in this paragraph, which models the way we should read scripture. This is a paragraph about sin, and it begins very generally "the kids," then specifies "the boys," then becomes "we" (suddenly the speaker/reader is included), then it becomes "I." When we read scripture we must make these same moves from reading the stories as those of others, to those of our community, to those of ourselves.

In response to listening to Jurgen Moltmann: "Hope is not a bright expanse, extending out before us; it is a new beginning. Hope is the present moment, experienced by us again and again as a gift from God - of being able to start our lives anew. Christian faith is progressive. We are a people of hope and possibility, not a people of the past, of stagnation, of rust and sentimentality, but of creative energy, extending to the world a vision of goodness and a reason for renewal. We look at the world, and we address it saying: "you are full of pain and full of unsatisfied craving, but this is not the final word. There is a reason for you to feel alive, to anticipate joy, to start fresh, and to love lifefulness." Let us show the world the way forward crying "Life!" by which we mean the vivification of the despondent and the resurrection of the dead. Hope is the mode in which human beings thrive. We deteriorate as people when we are without hope - and let me add, a great hope. We must embrace a deep and wide hope in order to counter the depth and width of the world's decay."

The Beautiful Game

2008-01-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

I step out onto the pitch among the smell of decomposing leaves. The chill air fills my body

with the whole world.
slow down. breath. feel it.
I fly.
I don't even have legs. I run with complete concentration and no self-awareness (if I had any I would know that this deep down tingling was the laughter of blood rushing through my veins). go. don't stop. mmm.
There are others here for the same reason. 44 feet to dance with one partner. I desire it like a soul desires a body. had. held. then released in anticipated euphoria.
Soccer Nirvana.

An Ode to Vocabulary

2008-01-19T19:55:00.000-08:00

I have heard that if a fool keeps silent he will be thought wise. I have observed that people love the music of their own voices, but still wish to be thought wise. These adopt wisdom's timbre - a nimble business! They swiftly judge the need for complexity or simplicity and deliver their generalities with a furrowed brow and a knowing nod. I am skeptical. I find wisdom best served by rationed words. But perhaps this is none but the spryness of my profound feet? Hopping from one crafted turn of phrase to another - maybe my deftness will pass for wisdom? Beware of the wordsmith!
I suddenly dislike this post. It is foolish, yet I love its smithied phrases! Oh my fine words, how I love your surprises! Oh shy vocabulary, be born anew! What word is jostling its way to your lips? Surly, impetuous, brazen, boisterous, moist? Think of the power of moist. Moist bread. Moist skin. Moist chicken. Moist feet. Moist eyes. Moist sheets. Moist lips. Smack. Adieu.

Imagine

2007-12-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

You marry someone strong and healthy and you have great plans for your future. Suddenly, far sooner than you ever expected, your spouse becomes terminally ill. The illness, however, drags on for over a year, and it is you who takes care of them. You quit your job to stay home and nurse them, feed them, go days without sleeping, getting up at intervals throughout the night to check on them, and it goes on and on. People say to you: "Don't you feel like your life has been put on hold?" Your response is an emphatic "No. This is my life." How could anyone suggest that taking care of the one who you swore to be faithful to "in sickness and in health," was some kind of infringement on your rights? This is love. This is what we live for.

A Smatteringofmyfavoritepictures Revisited

2007-12-11T18:01:00.000-08:00

If we do not stop to remember those we love, we will soon forget that we love, and in our forgetfulness cease to love.

The Sacred Day

2007-12-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

The sacred day is pervaded by remembrance of all God has done. As often as we eat we will pray to God and worship God.

In the Morning: Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your priase. Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
-Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

At Noon: Give praise, you servants of the Lord; praise the name of the Lord. From the rising of the sun to its going down let the Name of the Lord be praised.
-O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength.
-Blessed Savior, at this hour you hung upon the cross, stretching out your loving arms: Grant that all the peoples of the earth may look to you and be saved; for your mercies' sake.

In the Early Evening: You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds.
-Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love.

At the Close of Day: Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you that stand by night in the house of the Lord.
-Lord, you are in the midst of us and we are called by your Name: Do not forsake us, O Lord our God.
-Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
-Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
-The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless us and keep us. Amen.

We will remain faithful by turning to God in supplication and praise at all times and in all places. By constantly remembering God's promises we will not become fearful. By remembering his great love for us, we will not be overcome by anxiety. We will walk on the raging sea and not sink because we will look not at the great waves but upon Jesus who makes our steps firm. We will fix our eyes on Jesus until we see him in the flesh. We wait for that day with patience and courage.

Common Prayers

2007-12-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

These are some of the prayers from The Book of Common Prayer that I have found especially helpful.

For the Absent: O God, whose fatherly care reaches to the uttermost parts of the earth: We humbly beseech you graciously to behold and bless those whom we love, now absent from us. Defend them from all dangers of soul and body; and grant that both they and we, drawing nearer to you, may be bound together by your love in the communion of your Holy Spirit, and in the fellowship of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For those we Love: Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to your never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that you are doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For Recovery from Sickness: O God of heavenly powers, by the might of your command you drive away from our bodies all sickness and all infirmity: Be present in your goodness with your servant Earl, that his weakness may be banished and his strength restored; and that, his health being renewed, he may bless your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life: Raise us, we humbly pray, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; that when we depart this life we may rest in him, and at the resurrection receive that blessing which your well-beloved Son shall then pronounce: "Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world." Grant this, O merciful Father, through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer. Amen.

Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

2007-11-20T00:30:00.000-08:00

I quote:
Whenever my mother spoke of my father, she, in common with all the women in her town, simply used the personal pronoun in Arabic corresponding to 'him'. This form of speech was characteristic of every married woman, from fifteen to sixty.

After she had been married for a few years, my mother gradually learnt a little French. She was able to exchange a few halting words with the wives of my father's colleagues who had, for the most part, come from France. I don't know exactly when my mother began to say, 'My husband has come, my husband has gone out . . . I'll ask my husband,' etc. Nevertheless, I can sense how much it cost her modesty to refer to my father directly in this way. It was as if a flood-gate had opened within her, perhaps in her relationship with her husband. Years later, during the summers we spent in her native town, when chatting in Arabic with her sisters or cousins, my mother would refer to him quite naturally by his first name, even with a touch of superiority. What a daring innovation!

Years went by. As my mother's ability to speak French improved, while I was still a child of no more than twelve, I came to realize an irrefutable fact: namely that, in the face of all these womenfolk, my parents formed a couple. One day something occurred which was a portent that their relationship would never be the same again - a commonplace enough event in any other society, but which was unusual to say the least with us: in the course of an exceptionally long journey away from home, my father wrote to my mother - yes, to my mother! He sent her a postcard, with a short greeting written diagonally across it in his large, legible handwriting.

The radical change in customs was apparent for all to see: my father had quite brazenly written his wife's name, in his own handwriting, on a postcard which was going to travel from one town to another, which was going to be exposed to so many masculine eyes, including eventually our village postman - a Muslim postman to boot - and, what is more, he had dared to refer to her in the Western manner as 'Madame So-and-So ...', whereas, no local man, poor or rich, ever referred to his wife and children in any other way than by the vague periphrasis: 'the household'.

This postcard was, in fact, a most daring manifestation of affection. Her modesty suffered at that very moment that she spoke of it. Yet, it came second to her pride as a wife, which was secretly flattered. The murmured exchanges of these segregated women struck a faint chord with me, as a little girl with observing eyes. And so, for the first time, I seem to have some intuition of the possible happiness, the mystery in the union of a man and a woman. My father had dared 'to write' to my mother. Both of them referred to each other by name, which was tantamount to declaring openly their love for each other, my father by writing to her, my mother by quoting my father henceforward without false shame in all her conversations.

~Assia Djebar Fantasia

Christ in You, the Seed of Rebellion

2007-11-19T22:21:00.000-08:00

You are intrigued. I was supposed to say "the hope of glory," but I said rebellion. I am thinking of a very specific rebellion which will in fact bring us to glory if we have the courage. I am thinking of social rebellion, or rather, rebellion against the social colonization of my self. This is the colonization that is born from communal perception and expectation and my response to it of maintenance and fulfillment.
It happens like this: I enter a room full of people - I am immediately evaluated based upon my clothes, my hairstyle, my mannerisms and whatever intangible "aura" I might have. I then begin to make my way around the room meeting people. Someone who knows me introduces me in a certain way, "he is studying such and such, and wants to go into profession X. I met him here etc..." People's perceptions of me are further specified. Over the course of the next several hours I continue to be observed (granted, it is often out of the corners of eyes, because I am probably not that interesting), and people develop further perceptions based upon my habitual actions. Maybe I continue to talk people's ears off, maybe I remain on the periphery. This sort of thing then extends over weeks and months as that room of strangers comes to constitute my social world. It is not long before these people begin to expect certain things of me. They expect me to respond in certain ways to certain situations. They expect me to be annoyed with all the dirty dishes piling up in the kithen sink, and they expect me not to be annoyed with the clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor. They expect me to dress this way, and be uncertain about these matters - to be uncertain of how to respond in this situation but have a ready response in another. I find that people consult me on some matters but not on others, and that I am valued for some activities but not for others.
I am aware of these expectations. I feel like people expect me to be a certain way and they frown upon change. It seems that if I break out of this mold, then I will be shunned. I feel this way because when I tried to give my input on a subject I was not socially "certified" in, people turned away. Therefore, I do my best to maintain the way I am perceived and meet the expectations of my social group, because that is the way to avoid conflict or receive affirmation or maintain acceptance.
If this has happened, my self has been colonized. I am no longer able to live as a dynamic individual. Indeed, I am no longer truly alive, because life is movement and redemption and new beginning. The colonization of my self means that another, or some group of others, has defined what is possible for me. They have casted my identity with a handful of traits and activities, and it now acts as a straitjacket, preventing new forms of expression. Even if my own sense of identity is significantly larger or different, I am not able to experience it without external expression, so the quality of my life is significantly diminished.
This is where the gospel meets us. Yes, others have rebelled without the gospel, and in so doing have embodied the gospel, but many who have received the gospel have not embodied it.
Jesus of Nazareth dies on the cross to redeem the world. He swallows up death in victory. He brings life to dead bodies, souls, hearts and minds. He makes all things new.
The really remarkable thing about the redemption God effects, is that while he makes all things new, they remain the same things. That is, God redeems you, but you remain yourself. He makes you new, but you are not lost. This is not to say that there is no disjunction. Redemption always involves a kind of death, but disjunction alone is not redemption. That would be the crucifixion without the resurrection. Redemption always subsumes death with new possibilities. Nothing is lost that is not replaced a hundred times over, and nothing good is lost at all.
This gospel of redemption is a gospel of hope, because redemption is a continuous reality. At every moment, Christ resides in the redeemed person, proding them to begin anew - to begin anew loving justice and mercy - to begin anew rebuilding what was broken - to begin anew walking humbly with God.
It is Christ who insists that I rebel. When Christ redeemed me, it became a moral imperative for me to live in a state of change, that is, a state of repentance. It became an imperative for me to become a redemptive slap in the face to my society. The problem with the social world I described, is that it is not set up to value or expect repentance. As a redeemed person I am called - it is my first and foremost vocation - to rebel.
Perhaps it is not clear how social rebellion connects with personal redemption? It is quite simple. I have been defined as quiet, plaid-wearing, neat-freak, micro-manager, moderately intelligent, occassionally funny, somewhat interesting, rather untrustworthy... and the images have been casted and cannot be changed. It takes something violent to break these images, and unless I do so, no matter how much redemption is taking place in me, nobody will see it. Not that it matters whether people perceive that I am "improving" or not. What really matters is that my intense and accelerating experience of redemption clash head on with their stagnation and provide them a witness, an alternative possibility for their own lives - a picture of lifefulness which will vivify them and point them to God.
So I will rebel against this social straitjacket. Maybe I alter my appearance. Maybe I am assertive where it is not expected. Maybe I lose interest in the mounting dirty dishes and take interest in my messy bedroom. And when I get funny looks, or when I am shunned I will persist. I will not be disconcerted. It is also necessary for me to continually reinvent myself for myself, so that I do not forget the reality of my redemption. Whatever stifles life must begin anew. All the rest, I bless it.

Doors. I have been waiting to use these pictures.

2007-11-16T23:35:00.000-08:00

Today I entered a different world.
Look at that playground with the chain link fence triple my height.
What a strange outfit that girl is wearing.
That man is taking his shirt off on the sidewalk.
Oops, you just spilled all your clothes on the road; remember to zip up your suitcase next time.
I am full but that pesto pizza would be delicious.
I played soccer there when I was a boy.
How strange, this street leads nowhere. These buildings are falling apart. It is dark but we have halogen. We are together, we do not see or hear the beggar imploring us with her soft voice. No, I saw and heard and looked and looked away and walked on.
We build worlds. We build them with stories and sounds and tastes, and we secure them with smiles and handshakes and laughter and compliments.
Every time I step through these doors I emerge from a hall of mirrors of myself.
I want a wide-eyed life - seeing her, seeing him, and being startled to breathlessness.
They are other people. They are different people. They are not me or a part of me in disguise.
Make me big! I say in my soul as they pass by.
I'm like a little rubber ball, I bounce and roll, functioning properly, but I was made for inflation. I can stretch and be a bigger ball and bounce higher.
And I don't know how to end these pseudo aphoristic observations. Long live life! I bless it.

Feelin' the art.

2007-10-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

Listening: In Rainbows - Radiohead's new album which you can download from their website for free or $100. It's up to you how much to pay for it.
Reading: Czeslaw Milosz "New and Collected Poems 1931-2001"
Thinking: About my dad. Always thinking about my dad. He's really sick right now. I was reading him some of these poems on the phone a few days ago. They're cathartic, perhaps especially for the introspect.
Questions: Remember? when you were young and felt happiness without sorrow?
Milosz: "In advanced age, my health worsening, I woke up in the middle of the night, and experienced a feeling of happiness so intense and perfect that in all my life I had only felt itspremonition. And there was no reason for it...the past which I carried was there, together with my grief. And it was suddenly included, was a necessary part of the whole...The peace I felt was a closing of accounts and was connected with the thought of death...I realized that this was an undeserved gift and I could not grasp by what grace it was bestowed on me." ~Awakened

In other news: I am studying culture. My topic of interest is primarily middleschool girls and the effects of certain types of literature and advertisement on their lives. I just read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on Fashion Bullying, and I am writing a research paper for my Cultural Hermeneutics class on a series of books called Gossip Girl (now a tv show). If you are not concerned, let me tell you, these books sell in the millions and are promoted as "sex in the city for the younger set" eg: your 10 year old daughter.

I also need a car. If anyone knows someone around Illinois... let me know. Oh yes, and I will be coming home for a week and a half around thanksgiving.

God's Grandeur

2007-09-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Hovel

2007-09-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by the lovely concrete images Drew posted of his palace, so I thought I would go ahead and do the same. I live in Quad 3, room 115. It's at the end of the hallway, 12x12 ft. It's one of the "big" rooms. You'll be happy to know that I returned to my room this morning after my shower to notice a large, disgusting black bug on my floor. Being a courageous chap, I firmly secured my towel in case I had to flee, then took two sandals in hand (It was actually chillin' on a pair of my shorts that were on the floor), and not knowing whether it would fly, hop, or scurry, I decisively knocked it off my shorts by throwing one sandal across the room, then in a bound I pummeled it into the ground with the other. Apparently it was a cricket. This was unfortunate actually, because we have a lot of crickets here and I was under the impression that they weren't so disgusting. You'll also all be happy to know that I got a job today as a writer/editor
for the distance education department.

In the foreground you see my illegally copied "Joe" poster, and in the background is the vorticist manifesto "Blast." My favorite line being "Curse with expletive of whirlwind the Brittanic Aesthete, Cream of the Snobbish Earth."

Don't be deceived by the ambient lighting, this is not nice. I spend hours upon hours at this desk, which means that it necessitates a closer look.

From right to left: the karate couple, beatiful seattle, my change cup which was a water bottle that I cut in half with my pocket knife (I was being very resourceful in the beginning).

Notice the fan and Van Gogh. The fan is always on high. It is on high all day blowing air out of my room so that its natural odor doesn't become too pronounced, and it is on high at night pointing at my face, which is the only exposed part of my body, in the hope that no errant mosquitos will be able to navigate the crosswinds and land on me.

Ah yes, the view from my bed. For some reason we don't have doors on our "closets." I am still planning to get a couch for that blank wall.

I am memorizing greek and hebrew words all the time, but I like hebrew more right now because the characters are fun to write, and everything sounds earthy. "Erets" is my favorite word. It means ground. It reminds me of Frank Anthony Spina.

Cancer

2007-08-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

My Dad has two new tumors that probably aren't treatable. We don't know how long we've got. That's all I've got to say.

Alps of Despair

2007-08-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have sat here trying to conjure something profound, however, I am empty of art tonight. What if sickness is a mountain of despair? Nay, what if it is Alps of despair? Certainly that means it is larger than I. That despair can no more be removed by me than it can be removed by the whole sum of the genius and strength of mankind. This is a towering problem. (I tell you that he who has faith as small as a mustard seed can say to this mountain 'throw yourself into the sea' and it will be done).

What if the tragedy that strikes us is the senseless, blind evil of a shattered world? In that case the five-fold sickness of my Father would have no external meaning. The only meaning would be that which he creates. "When you are old you will be led" to hospital beds and cat-scan tubes and surgery tables "where you do not want to go." But Lord, what about that man, he is healthy, he is not struck by this tragedy. "If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you, You follow me!" And when your sick bed has been your pulpit, and you have preached the good news of the kingdom to every nurse and doctor and unsuspecting passerby, then you will find that your empty circumstantial vat may indeed be filled, and when you lay it before the feet of the LORD he will embrace you.

This and That

2007-08-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

There have been crazy thunderstorms here in Chicago the last two days. There was no power this morning and literally 30 seconds before I ran out of my room tonight to go running, it started pouring pouring down rain and lightening... so I'll go tomorrow. Also, my father is in the hospital again, this time for a blood clot in his leg. He's having all kinds of tests done, but he's been in since last Friday > no good. We're praying for health.

A few more reflections on Trinity: This is what shocks me > here we all are in the MDiv program which is basically the pastor degree, but almost everyone I talk to wants to be a teacher/professor. It doesn't make sense. All these people are devoting their lives to studying theology, but they don't want to use it in the Church! I have a hypothesis that this is the syndrome of conservative evangelicalism. I don't think that their theology is conducive to clerical ministry. It doesn't preach well, and it doesn't need to serve in order to exist, whereas in my mind the primary reason we do theology is for the building up of the Church. We Certainly do not do it to justify our worldview, though you wouldn't know that from my Apologetics class. I start Greek and Hebrew tomorrow, and then for a 3 1/2 day weekend (that will be every weekend). I'm looking forward to going to church this sunday.

Trinity Day 2.2

2007-08-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

I know you are hanging on every new development of this story, so you will be happy to know I now have milk, cereal, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My friend Brooks has arrived and we're heading downtown with his cousins. I am already contemplating the mutiny I will incite in Quad #3. Here is a picture of the nicer of the two "lounges" in my dorm.

Trinity Day 2.1

2007-08-16T08:20:00.001-07:00

You will all be happy to know that I could barely sleep and am now wide awake due to my first neighbor moving in, BUT I quickly took advantage of the situation to obtain a file which I used to cut open that lock. Praise the Lord I now have access to my shampoo and am going to take a shower.

Trinity

2007-08-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Chicago, in my room, which is a piece of bad language, and wondering what I should be feeling. I'm moderately pissed off and feeling rather (desperately) proactive which together are probably keeping me from just feeling sorry for myself. Amazing how useful anger can prove now and then, and I don't even feel bad about it because it's directed at a vague idea called the University. I have a few dried mangoes and a piece of home baked bread to sustain me, and I will either be borrowing a bicycle or running into town in the morning to find nourishment. That's 3-4 miles each way, but I'll do what I have to do to return with a backpack of food. Don't worry Mom, I'll be fine. I'd prefer sympathetic laughter. Amy, that bread is the best thing you've given me. Danny, thanks for the phone call 5 minutes after I arrived. Drew, somehow I don't think I'd be in this disagreeable situation if you were here, heck, we could make it work, and that goes for many of you. Unfortunately I'm alone(!) right now, but that too will change.

My other reflections on the day: parents with small children need to learn how to communicate. 3 year old kids are just not going to respond well to proliferating abstract concepts such as "why are you being annoying." 3 year olds do not understand the concept of annoying, and for some reason these parents seem to think it is an activity their kids are involved in, instead of their perception of their children's mode of existence. I was also convicted by MSN.COM of all places and their article on tipping which I fatefully read last night. Result: I made some shuttle drivers very happy today. People sure give better service when you pay them well.

So I've got this giant backpack that I brought, and it has a smaller backpack that zips onto the outside of it. Yeah, well I had alot of small, easily misplaceable items in that smaller backpack, so I thought it would be a good idea to put a small travel lock on it, after I had put the key inside. Smart Joe, now I have a little backpack full of trinkets that I can't open.

Has anybody else read 1 Corinthians lately? This is what struck me today (it struck me as a newly discovered and welcome attribute in an old friend). The subject is preaching. Here I am beginning seminary where I'm supposed to get smart so I can preach profound and interesting sermons, full of useful anecdotes. Let it be known now as I begin these studies, that I am not here to learn anything that will help me impress and convince people. I am not here to learn to communicate enlightened ideas or become an expounder of wisdom. I am here to learn to preach the foolishness of God which is wiser than man's wisdom and the weakness of God which is stronger than man's strength. That is, I am here to learn about preaching the Word of the Lord, and to learn to distinguish between God's words and my own. Amen.

More to come.

Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic Ever.

2007-08-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

Summertime Book Reviews

2007-08-01T16:25:00.001-07:00

I know you are all dying to know if these books I've been reading since graduation are any good. Well now you shall know, I will go in the order I finished them:

Dubliners - James Joyce: This is incredible stuff. I was probably all the more enthralled by it since it was one of the first things I'd read by an English writing author in awhile. Joyce's prose is superb, and his word pictures are stunning. This 'book' is really collection of short stories which collectively paint a picture of life in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. There is no great moral or existential message to it, just first rate storytelling.

Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens: As usual, Dickens starts off slow. If you're going to read any of his novels, plan on slogging through the first 100 pages or so before the action starts to pick up. Dickens covers broader territory than normal in this novel, moving past his usual focus on the downtrodden people of London, to the often retold tale of the French Revolution. A very moving and enlightening ending awaits readers of this book. I couldn't help but feel reminiscent of Les Miserables while reading this, but if Les Mis gets 5 stars, this gets about 3 1/2 (which is still dang good in my ratings).

Being as Communion - John Zizioulas: This is a book about "eucharistic ecclesiology" written by a prominent Eastern Orthodox (bishop or Metropolitan, I can't remember). It's really dense, and probably not that interesting to people not passionate about the Church and Community (and especially community over against individualism). Zizioulas gives fresh readings of the patristic fathers in order to redefine what makes the Church exist as the Church. Only recommended for the more advanced and ambitious little theologians.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: My literature friends had raved about this book, and since it was on Oprah's book club, I couldn't find a used copy anywhere - bad news. Anyway, be warned, this is long and at times repetetive, but that is all part of its genius. Marquez is the Man when it comes to Magical Realism, in fact, he practically defines the term. I rate this book highly because it is a complete work of literature, where each part of the story as well as the form of the whole work, combine to achieve the same purpose and produce the same effects upon the reader. You will never understand the brilliance of this book unless you finish it and then sit back and let it sink in for an hour, or two, or four. Recommended, but make sure you understand the purpose and uses of Magical Realism beforehand. It is an ambitious read, but brilliant, brilliant!

Evangelical Theology, an Introduction - Karl Barth: Barth is a genius and widely considered to be the most important theologian of the 20th century. Most of his works are massive (like 1000 pages) but this is a manageable 200. This is really a book for theologians, explaining to them how they become and remain what they are. The first third of the book (section 1) is absolutely stunning. Some of the most awesome theological preaching I've read. I call it preaching because his theology can be preached, which is a huge feat among many theologians. Many are "interesting" but not awe-inspiring. So my recommendation is to read section one, then move onto his book "Prayer and Preaching" or to a collection of his early sermons.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling: I won't say anything about this because my girlfriend threatened to break up with me if I gave anything away. Alright then.

King Lear - William Shakespeare: This is one of the great plays that I hadn't read yet, and I just finished it a couple hours ago, so I haven't had the chance to adequately process it yet, but I'll do my best. It certainly exceeds plays like Richard III and Henry IV, while working with similar story lines. For those of you who don't read Shakespeare let me just say that his stories are amazing. There is more action and intrigue in his short little 5 act plays than in most 600 page novels. And needless to say, his writing is unmatched. The reason people think it is boring is because it is so densely brilliant that they don't understand most of it. Anyway, If you liked Hamlet or Macbeth, this is a great play to read, though it is strangely strangely void of the existential/moral crises of those plays. Hence it is less complex. Anyway, I feel especially bad about butchering a review of Shakespeare, but I just keep thinking of more things as I write and I would go on forever. adieu.

Well that's all I've read so far. I'm not sure what's next. I only have two weeks before I leave for school, and I'm reading through the New Testament to prep for my NT competency exam. I encourage you to go read an old book!