The Statistics On Perseverance

Over the last week, I have been working through economist Milton Friedman's public television series, "Free To Choose." As I watched the successive programs on Google Video, I noticed that that the view count was steadily diminishing. Despite my protests to the contrary, I still very much like numbers, and I was intrigued by what I was seeing. So, I did what any reasonable mathematician would do: I organized the data and made it visual.

You can see what happened. Over ten hours, viewer interest (or viewer tenacity) declined steadily, with most of the casual viewers leaving after the first two programs. A number of viewers took a "sampling," catching Program 5 and then skipping ahead to the last couple of programs.

I noticed a similar phenomenon on a construction forum that I frequent. A particular user had posted a series of photos - links that had to be opened in new windows - documenting a finish carpentry project. Number of views was indicated next to the link...

The graphs are astonishingly similar. Steeper rates at first, followed by a more gradual decline, with that characteristic "hump" at the end.

I imagine (with a shudder) that there are many people who read books this way. There is these days too much emphasis on starts and stops; we like to emphasize the two ends. Remove the middleman, fine, but don't remove the middle. For me, things are done properly when they are done like races: start to finish.

Till We Have Faces

Slowly, stealthily, I've been sneaking away from my sparsely furnished, rigidly efficient study into the forbidden world of fiction and fantasy; like a scared little boy peering out from under his bed, hardly daring to believe that the monsters are really gone. It is a delicate transition and one that is properly made cautiously.

I started with The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis's classic treatment of heaven and hell, which I heartily recommend. Now, even the Narnia Chronicles are beckoning, a work which three years ago I would never have entertained reading.

My most recent Lewis read, Till We Have Faces, is the latest continuation of this emancipation. (Or entanglement, as it may be.) In this novel, which is subtitled, "A Myth Retold," Lewis examines the classical story of Cupid and Psyche, weaving into it Christian themes about the nature and profundity of existence.

A friend pointed me to a very useful lecture on the book by the Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft (website) who appears to be an accomplished student of Lewis. Kreeft does a fine job of laying out the deep questions of the book.

How does one reconcile Faith and Reason? Why is there such tension between Religion and Philosophy Why must holy places be dark places? Why would something - someone - that is good, choose to hide his face?

(Some of this hearkens back to a Greg Boyd lecture I mentioned some time ago: "The Temptation To Practical Goodness." If you haven't listened to this one, please do; everyone should hear this message.)

Till We Have Faces develops themes also explored in The Four Loves and The Great Divorce. It is not one of my favorites from Lewis; my main impression was that the book could be a good bit shorter and still accomplish the same things. It is, however, a very subtle work, and deserves to be reread and pondered.

I'm not going to spill the punch line. To figure out the title, you'll need to read it.


Image courtesy of covbookstore.stores.yahoo.net

The Latest "Catch"

I haven't been able to bring myself to put these away yet; I just like looking at them. ("The World Is Flat" is on loan from a friend. Thanks Caleb!)

Words and Worlds

During a conversation this evening, I hit upon an analogy that helps explain how the sacred and secular - the "shallow and profound" - intersect. Credit for this post goes to one of my four favorite sisters.

Our entire lives are spent learning to communicate. As toddlers, our main goals in a life are attention and apple juice, and we possess a vocabulary remarkably suited to these objectives. As we mature, we begin to take an interest in the kinetic, mechanical side of things - us boys anyhow. (Well, girls too, in their own way.) This is the time for screwdrivers and spaceships; (or noodles and needlepoint, if you prefer.)

Our vocabulary begins to grow. We learn to spell beyond four letters. Occasionally, on sultry, God-forsaken afternoons, we have writing assignments. Of course, we resent it, just as a becalmed schooner resents it when the wind begins to fill her sails.

But we keep at it, (growing up,) and the words keep coming. And they keep getting longer, and thicker. Life itself is broadening and reaching in a thousand new directions, and we find we actually need these new words desperately in order to contain these new dimensions.

And here we come to the fundamental thing: vocabularies are accrual. The long, precise words are invaluable, but we find we are still in need of all the short ones in between. Words build together, like a rubber-band ball, around the very elementary core of the language.

And so it is in spiritual things. Profundity is intoxicating, but we must not overlook the humbler ingredients of the pie. We still need the little words. Any skyscraper will tell you that the first floor is strictly essential. The view from the 40th floor is stunning, and we sometimes think we should remove the lower 39 floors because, we say, they are just weighing us down. Rubbish! They are not weighing us down. They are holding us up.

"Precept upon precept, line upon line..." The whole thing is incremental; that is the whole point. We get frustrated about the drudgery of daily life, but we forget that the flights of stairs exist for the view - indeed, for the climb. To put it in bumper-sticker terms, "Don't arrive, thrive!"

Spirituality needs the everyday. We need to be able to talk about baseball, or bologne, or even (gulp) the weather. It is an integrated, living whole, not intended to be chopped up into little pieces and sorted into colored bins.

The life that is whole has God at the center, and a center necessarily implies an outer. Oswald Chambers calls it "the full-orbed life;" most of us are about as full-orbed as a pancake.

Reading Rituals

Reading, like writing, or music, is highly subjective; not only the what, but the how. Everyone assumes their own idiosyncratic posture, breathing, and wrinkled brow. It is an intensely personal matter.

I myself have the odd conviction of running only one bookmark at a time, (excepting devotionals, or the Bible,) which in practice is both a mercy and a madness. I appreciate the discipline and thoroughness of the approach, but it does cause you to sometimes treat the book as an obstruction: an irritating inconvenience that is preventing you from moving on. This can be somewhat unhealthy. (Of course, if the book is just plain daft, I will put it down (sometimes the putting is more violent) and move on.)

I don't know if it is the quantity of my reading, or the rapidity, but I find it difficult to absorb and retain much real substance. So, to this end, I employ a number of strategies.

The first and most useful of these strategies is a fifty cent highlighter. The advantage is twofold: it helps me remain (relatively) alert, and also performs an invaluable service in making the exceptional portions of the book immediately available for later reference.

Of course, there are practical difficulties. In the car, you wind up with lines that look more like sloshing soap suds than something drawn by a serious scholar. And certain books have such a pronounced crest in the pages that it is difficult to keep the highlighter from dashing down into the crease at the end of the line.

The first streaking scar in a crisp new book is never easy. But by the time I reach the end I am humming along in a nice rhythm, patches of yellow or blue or pink appearing across the pages in chaotic choreography.

There remains, of course, the vexing question of what to highlight and what to leave alone, and certain passages present quite the dilemma. Because really, that "worth highlighting" quality is not necessarily based on any definitive standard and often proves extraordinarily elusive. Which brings us to the next strategy: the good old-fashioned dog-ear.

Dog-ears are somewhat less useful, but they have their place, as when confronted with such a quantity of spectacular material that the prospect of highlighting the mass is enough to make your palms sweaty. A dog-ear does the almost-same thing much more economically. Fold the corner of the page at a 45 degree angle, to the width of about three-quarters of an inch. Not the same as a bold splash of pink, but it works, in a pinch.

It is sometimes helpful to have a pen available; for adding appropriate scripture references, or squiggling a quick question mark. (Actually, I am afraid lest the question mark in the margin will become a trademark notation. The legacy of a cynic is rarely a positive one.)

The only remaining task, after the Afterword, is one you are all familiar with by now: the infamous blog review. Boil down the sap, bottle the syrup, and hang the pail back in the woodshed. Another spring, another preface, is arriving.

Image courtesy of cancergroup.com

Thinking About Symbolism

Throughout the last several years, I have moved increasingly away from the stiff and mathematical, which used to be my predominant life-lens, toward a more holistic ideal. Life is mathematical, yes, but it is also many other things. For a long time I missed this, and I feel that I am still only catching it in pieces.

It used to fascinate me how various ones could take the book of Daniel, for instance, and weave a watertight historic or prophetic theory, working off the almost digital nature of the material. I loved calculations. I loved remembering to account for the leap years. It was all very intoxicating.

Of course, there is value in symbolism, and there is value in the prophetic. I do not intend at all to deny either. But there is also value in perspective.

Sometimes I wonder, supposing there were three Gospels, if we would not all piously squeak: "How exquisite! Just like the Trinity!" But there are not three. There are four. It may help cast our conjectures in the proper light when we consider the might-have-beens that aren't.

Numbers have a power all their own, arising from how they signify absolute ideas. This "absoluteness" can be dangerous; it may, in extreme cases, very well lead to idolatry. Numbers have often served as the impetus behind historical "enlightenment" movements toward rationalism or reductionism, which are Biblically symbolized, unflatteringly, by the Tower of Babel. (A very valuable book in this respect is James Nickel's Mathematics: Is God Silent?)

Most of this is a reaction against my own imbalances: I am questioning these things because I have, in the past, had a strong inclination towards them. As my long-dormant appreciation for the mysterious and paradoxical unfolds, I must inevitably outgrow my juvenile love of sums and squares. Like a lizard shedding a skin, the reality remains, but the old container is no longer adequate. A sort of "reverse enlightenment," I suppose, where two plus three still makes five, but somehow it's not so important.


Image courtesy of math.missouri.edu

Emotions, Eagles, and Eternity

It is astounding to me how well our very-human nature lines up with God's very-spiritual nature. There are only two possible explanations for this. We must either write off the congruency as a cosmic coincidence, or we must warm to the wonder of being made in the very image of God.

Human emotions, as chaotic as they seem, are nevertheless rooted in spiritual reality. I was reading along in my Bible the other day, minding my own business, when I was suddenly struck by how the great themes of existence - the rush of romance, or the bravado of battle, for instance - are weighted with divine significance. Which brings us to a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma: which came first?

Is spiritual reality built like a scaffold around human emotions? Or are human emotions born on the wings of spiritual reality? I believe we know the answer, but it seems we forget.

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart..." (Eccl. 3:11)

"...They should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts 17:27-28)

I owe a good portion of this idea, if not all of it, to G. K. Chesterton. His journey of faith, as presented in Orthodoxy, is a remarkable account of how a man who is honestly honest with himself will finally, joyfully, recognize and receive the truth he has been stupidly staring at for so long.

"The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness. I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old." -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Image Books, 2001) pg. 126

Contrary to New Age thought, you do not have the truth inside you. But you do have inside you enough clues to make the truth very near. In "hunt-the-thimble" terms, you are "really hot."


Image courtesy of passageministries.org

Sunshine and Sawdust

After a moderate summer, I'm back working and having a blast. I thought I'd share some of my recent sawdust and show you a little of what I've been up to.

This is one of the two spec homes I have been working on. They are within shouting distance of one another, and are being built by the same corporation. The whole arrangement is very clean and very convenient.

The footing forms, waiting for concrete. The shrouded apparatus on the right is my cement mixer; (apparently, a finish carpenter with a cement mixer is a bit of an anomaly.)

Preliminary framing. When you're setting a hundred joist hangers, it's nice to have one of these.

I missed getting any pictures of the completed raw frame. Here is the decking going down. I run the ends wild over the seams...

...and then cut them off later for a nice, clean line.

Most of the decking down.

All of the decking down.

The view to the north. Oakhurst lies beyond the ridge.

Each post is notched and then bolted to the beam with 1/2" x 8" hex bolts.

Preparing to install the skirt boards. The skirt boards wrap the edge of the decking and help create that wonderful "finished" look.

The wild ends cut and the skirt boards applied.

Last Thursday, installing the railing. This was my first all-composite railing. In the past I have always used redwood.

The other side, around the prow.

All that remains is to install the railing cap, install a few remaining post caps, and finish screwing off the decking. I hope you enjoyed seeing the project, because this is the closest I get to "decking the halls."

The Trinity Review

This morning I read an interesting piece from the Trinity Foundation entitled "The Religious Wars of the 21st Century." Written by editor John W. Robbins, (actually taken from his 2006 book, Freedom and Capitalism,) it is a remarkable collection of history. I appreciated most of his views, both assumptions and conclusions, and will be looking further into the Foundation's material. More to come.


Image courtesy of health.state.nm.us

Writing to Learn

Writing to Learn, my second read from William Zinsser, is an intriguing overview of the role of writing in everyday education. The ideas presented, while perhaps somewhat simplistic, are nevertheless extremely important, and likely fresh news to many of us. Read on.

Most of us are used to thinking of writing as a dread duty from deep in the dark dungeons of English class. Nothing could be further from the truth. Zinsser demonstrates that writing, as a universal communication tool, is the single key capable of unlocking the vast empires of knowledge, information, and ideas.

But wait, you say, what about reading? Can't I read my way to mastery in a subject? Well, you can and you can't. Here's why: on my beloved activity/passivity scale, reading falls somewhere above television, but somewhere below writing. I know from personal experience that it is possible to be reading along happily, look up, and then not have the faintest clue where you were. Not very productive.

Writing is different. As Zinsser says, quoting from a Professor-friend of his: "Writing is an effective means of improving thinking skills because a person must mentally process ideas in order to write an explanation. Writing also improves self-esteem because mentally processed ideas then belong to the writer and not just to the teacher or the textbook author." (- Ch. 11, Writing Physics and Chemistry) Coincidentally, today's Utmost adds a sharp spiritual dimension to this point. ("If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can...")

To summarize Zinsser's main premise in one sentence, it is that writing serves as a universal aid to clear thinking. (Hence the title of the book.) He demystifies the process, noting simply that "writing is thinking on paper," and then assigns the blame where it is due: "The hard part isn't the writing; the hard part is the thinking."

"We write to find out what we know and what we want to say. I thought of how often as a writer I had made clear to myself some subject I had previously known nothing about by just putting one sentence after another - by reasoning my way in sequential steps to its meaning. I thought of how often the act of writing even the simplest document - a letter, for instance - had clarified my half formed ideas. Writing and thinking and learning were the same process." (-Preface)

"They looked like writers - they were thinking hard and laboriously putting sentences on paper and crossing out sentences that obviously didn't express what they were thinking, perhaps because their thinking kept changing as they wrote and discovered what they really thought." (-Ch. 9, Writing Mathematics)

Zinsser divided the book into two sections. The first develops the core ideas, and the second applies these ideas to the various branches of learning. There are generous samples of "accessible literature" from a wide spectrum of disciplines, from calculus to connotation to chemistry.

The book brims with an exuberant humanism, which is hard to disparage. I'm starting to feel that the problem with humanism is not that it goes down the wrong road, but rather that it does not go far enough down the right road. Christianity is, at least in a sense, the epitome of humanism, as I have hinted at in several previous posts.

"There was no mistaking the men and women I wanted to have along on the ride. They all had the rare gift of enthusiasm. Again and again I was struck by the exuberance that these writers brought to what they were writing about. Whatever the writer and whatever the subject ... the common thread is a sense of high enjoyment, zest, and wonder. Perhaps, both in learning to write and writing to learn, they are the only ingredients that really matter." (-Preface)


Image courtesy of amazon.com

December Wallpaper

Not sure why, but I'm in the mood for something stark and somber. Besides, this is an incredible image, and it reminds me of Rich Mullins.

Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

Image courtesy of interfacelift.com

On Ruts And Ditches

The differences between a rut and a ditch may at first seem superficial. I aim to show that they are not. A rut is an accident, an awkward inconvenience, a nag. A ditch is direct, deliberate, intended for useful work. The physical attributes point to the metaphysical differences.

When we say "stuck in a rut," we are employing a circular cliché that deplores it's own banal existence. But we know what it means, and that is the main thing. It means we are frozen in a futile exercise, making the same sad excuses and singing the same sad songs. It also means we are behind, and that is where the real trouble comes in: what really bothers us about the whole thing is not where we are but where we could be.

We often blame our ruts on our surroundings, and the accusation has some truth to it. But the mud notwithstanding, we must take responsibility for steering the car into it. The mistake, in itself, is honest enough. What is inexcusable is to sit and sulk instead of doing the common-sense thing and getting the shovel.

A ditch is another proposition altogether. The story of 2 Kings 3 demonstrates well the requirements and rewards of the chore, and has been cropping up frequently for the last while; for instance, in this fine passage from C. S. Lewis's Reflections On The Psalms:

"We are merely, as Donne says, tuning our instruments. The tuning up of the orchestra can be itself delightful, but only to those who can in some measure, however little, anticipate the symphony. The Jewish sacrifices, and even our own most sacred rites, as they actually occur in human experience, are, like the tuning, promise, not performance. Hence, like the tuning, they may have in them much duty and little delight; or none. But the duty exists for the delight. When we carry out our 'religious duties' we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order than when at last the water comes, it may find them ready. I mean, for the most part."

It's hard to dig ditches when we are loath to part with the dirt in our lives. But the dirt must give way to the discipline of the dredge as we carve out the depths of our depravity, clearing out the sediment, until the waters of God run through us wide and clear and cold. He bottles our tears and pours them out in joy.

You "make" a rut, through negligent habit, and "dig" a ditch, through diligent industry. Ruts just happen; ditches don't. That's the easiest way I know to tell the difference.


Image courtesy of infomotions.com

Thinking About News

I'm coming off an awesome week. Here we are in downtown December, and it's been 70 degrees, deck framing, Granny Smith apples, and roast-beef/fried-egg sandwiches. Now the weekend is here, the tools are safely stowed away, and it's raining tenderly. It all makes for an endlessly delicious place to live and work.

In line with my new Green Coffee project, I've been thinking more about what makes a Christian approach (and response) to news, the media, and the general information explosion. Some see following the headlines as unhealthy; others see it as simple responsibility. I am sympathetic to both views, and will take them in order.

As I noted dryly two months ago, most news is bad news, for the simple reason that most things are bad. (Not fundamentally, but sociologically.) To have 6.5 billion people stranded in space on a big blue ball, all thinking about themselves, does not incline one to optimism. And every day we see the fallout, the trail of tears, the collective wreckage that we make of collective existence.

So the news is often - inevitably - depressing. And to the extent that it distracts us from the standards of Philippians 4:8, it should be avoided. (Becoming entangled in idle, old-fashioned Athenian-style gossip is another danger.) But to the extent that we are selfishly insulating ourselves from the uncomfortable, I feel our aloofness could be questioned.

Based on Jeremiah 29:7 and 1 Timothy 2:1-2, we understand that we are to pray for society as a whole, as well as for specific leaders. This is key. To intercede, we must be informed; to be informed, we must be interested.

We do not desire to advance a Christian political agenda. But it is only fair that we jump in, get our hands dirty, and wrestle along with everyone else with the tough questions, instead of pretending that they don't exist, which is not a very useful answer. It does no good to claim that we are somehow above the grimy issues of existence, when the world knows that is just a smokescreen for laziness. Snobbery is the bane of spirituality.

This is likely an area where Anabaptists and Reconstructionists can learn from each other. The Amish and the Religious Right have similar problems for opposite reasons.


Image courtesy of simentra.com

Enviable Employment

I think if I wasn't in construction I would have a doughnut shop. The benefits are numerous.

• Early hours. All bright and chipper at 6 while the rest of the citizenry is stumbling in half asleep.
• Instant news. Keep close tabs on the pulse of your community. Those old guys must be talking about something.
• Free afternoons. Perfect for reading or sweeping the porch, whichever needs doing.
  
• Dietary benefits. Continual access to fresh, first-quality doughnuts.

Image courtesy of moccasin-coffee.de

Curvy Roads

Lately Jesse and I have been biking up our road together on a somewhat regular basis. It's only about 4 miles, but it's a pretty good workout.

Today, toiling along at 7 miles an hour, I was thinking about how nice it is that the road is broken up into short twists that allow you to focus on the task at hand - riding - without having to mentally tackle the whole route. It would be unbearably intimidating to face the entire 4 miles in a straight, strong line, reaching up into the distance as far as you can see.

There is a common fallacy regarding the shortest distance between two points, and I am as guilty as anyone of going along with it. The truth is, were we to be confronted with our future in the form of a titanic to-do list, most of us would promptly faint.

That's why God does not generally spread the map out on the table like we often want Him to. He requires us simply to trust, and "do the next thing." The twin sins of pride and procrastination make this plenty challenging: so often we scurry about worrying our petty selves over this or that when we really just need to brush our teeth and go to bed.

Nearly everything about life is incremental and repetitive; eating a meal in bites, taking a walk in steps, singing a song in notes, even breathing. I believe the Lord wants us to break things down and enter the mystery we commonly call the moment. As C. S. Lewis said, "The Present is the point at which time touches eternity." (There is an excellent examination of the distinctly Christian nature of the moment in ch. XV of The Screwtape Letters.)

So thank the Lord for curvy roads, and realize that step-by-step is not confining; step-by-step is survival.


Image courtesy of livinginoneness.com

Cream and Sugar?

I've had a growing urge to disseminate some of the miscellaneous interesting information that I pick up around the web, but the last thing I want to do is turn Sojourner's Song into a news heap. So, to resolve the dilemma I launched a simple aggregator blog - probably not amounting to much more than an RSS feed - that will host the shallow, colorful nonsense that doesn't belong in a serious blog. It just helps to maintain a sense of place and a semblance of order, kind of like the "No Wal-Marts in San Diego" idea.

See you at the grind.

Blogging or Globbing?

I developed early on a sort of unspoken rule that I would not spend too much time blogging about blogging, as it seemed to me a rather circular endeavor. Besides, I'm largely unqualified to sermonize on the subject, being somewhat of a muddled milksop when it comes to cybernetics. But never mind; just think of this post as "Mr. Bean goes to Blogville."

I am thoroughly fascinated with blogging as a both personal and information-rich medium. There is a staggering quantity of ideas, news, and research that is available to anyone, anytime. I am starting to feel that this budding technology, for all it's flukes and flaws, will be playing a significant role in the immediate future of Christianity.

About a week ago I was invited to join Christian Bloggers. Whether they found me by pure accident or were tipped off, it earned me another button on the sidebar and possibly a few more daily hits, (not that either has any meaning). This network stops far short of embodying what I see as the medium's Kingdom potential, but it appears to be hardboiled and harmless. (If you happen to be interested, it is simple to join on your own initiative.)

In the reading department, I recently plowed through BLOG to try to bring myself up to speed a little and stop blogging by torchlight. Written by Hugh Hewitt, a Christian radio talk show host and blogger, the book describes how the blogosphere is dismantling the Mainstream Media monopoly on information, and describes some statistics and stories that are quite interesting.

According to BLOG, a full two-thirds of blogs that are started are ultimately deserted by their bloggers: the average abandoned blog lasts about four months before trailing off into the cold oblivion of outer-cyberspace. I guess that means I am either safely out of danger or inescapably hooked.

The book has a decided political emphasis, and commercialized blogging is preached as a matter of course. For myself, I can't help but hope that there remains a remnant who see advertising as the distasteful distraction it is. Blogging may be a marvelous tool, but much of it remains grossly and unquestionably materialistic.

The Economist has some interesting things to say about Web 2.0, the budding internet standard devoted to new media such as blogs and podcasts. (Speaking of the Economist, you may want to check out this recent article from Mercator.net about the magazine. I don't agree with all of Mercator's conclusions, but it's an informative third-party overview nonetheless.)

As I have intimated in previous posts, the whole affair is a good bit trickier than it looks. There is a fine line between blogging and globbing. Mud is easy to find. Diamonds are not.


Image courtesy of hovedetpaabloggen.dk

Heaven and Hell

A month ago I promised to examine the subject of Heaven and Hell a little closer. Since then, courtesy of Garrett, I had the chance to read C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, in which a senior devil coaches a young apprentice through the finer points of sophism and chicane. (The book reads rather uncomfortably, for two reasons: firstly, it is properly uncomfortable to be thinking in the devil's shoes, and secondly, it gradually occurs to you that he is watching you too.) I guess you could say I've had the benefit recently of viewing the topic from several angles.

Note: In the interest of brevity we will take for granted here that Heaven and Hell are valid realities.

We're all familiar with "fire insurance" Christianity, (that shallow nonsense preached by all those "cheap Christians",) but I doubt we're aware of how deeply this cancer has penetrated our own thinking. Present-day society has infected Christianity with a preoccupation around m-e. We have found the sickness difficult to be rid of, so we conveniently spiritualized it, and wound up with a cute little creed that "gets you into Heaven."

Don't let anyone tell you the Bible is simple. It is not. Even Peter described the writings of Paul as "hard to understand," and we do well to approach the word of God with reverence and respect. And it's not bad to be plain puzzled once in awhile.

For some time I was roundly stumped by a few particularly thorny verses. Listen to Moses, in Exodus 32:32, pleading with God for the children of Israel: "Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Paul echoed a similar sentiment in Romans 9:3: "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

Now those to me seemed to be some the most reckless, ridiculous statements in the whole of scripture. That they were made by devout, sincere men only further baffles the enigma. What gives?

Somewhere along the line, we have purchased this idea that Christianity exists mainly for my own personal comfort, I mean, (ahem!) my own eternal destiny. This rhetoric sounds very slick and spiritual until we notice God standing there shaking his finger and saying to us, like a parent to a selfish child, "Now who are you thinking about?"

As Lewis points out, we are working the problem the wrong way around. (If you didn't read this excerpt from Reflections on the Psalms, you should do so.) Too many of us are devoted to ourselves, and too many of the rest of us are devoted to God for ourselves. It is severely difficult to just be devoted to God.


Image courtesy of bamjam.net

World War II: Deeper Perspectives

Os Guinness inspired me to cram some history into my reading schedule, so I turned to two book-sale acquisitions covering the second world war.

A Quiet American chronicles the life of Varian Fry, an American who traveled to unoccupied France and set up an underground immigration network for refugees who were in political danger as intellectuals, artists, or writers. Over the course of a year, he helped many now-famed personages evade the clutches of the Gestapo and reach Ellis Island. (Incidentally, I just found Lion Feuchtwanger's Proud Destiny in a local book nook.)

Replete with forged passports, money from the black market, and boldfaced lies, Fry's operation raises all sorts of knotty ethical questions. The author is predictably sympathetic to Fry and his tactics, and draws you into the urgency of the moment, as the ebb and flow of French patriotism surges around you and the world wakes up to the harsh reality of world war.

These questions run much deeper than multiple-choice mathematics. Even the mild Dietrich Bonhoeffer snapped when confronted with the stark horror of Nazi brutality, joining the July 20 plotters in their unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler. In Fry's case, he based his network on entirely secular morals, and it seems his work is properly applauded as a triumph for the cause of secular freedom.

Last Words, "A Memoir of World War II and the Yugoslav Tragedy," recounts the experiences of Yugoslav POW Boris Todorovich, who escaped a German concentration camp to eventually rejoin the Yugoslav resistance forces. Composed of numerous ethnicities, Yugoslavia was ruptured in several directions by the war. The Croats defected to the Germans, turning in Serbs as prisoners or worse, and the Serbs were divided into two parties: the Communists, led by Josip Tito, and the Chetniks, led by Draža Mihailović.

Todorovich, a passionate nationalist and freedom fighter, identified strongly with the latter group. Unfortunately, since the Communists struck more effective blows against the Germans early on, they became the de facto recipients of Allied aid, which they used to vanquish their rival party. Mihailović was eventually executed by Tito's Communist regime.

Being an autobiographical account, certain pieces are undoubtedly skewed to fit Todorovich's ego and ethics, and the narrative lacks the usefully critical commentary of an outsider. There is, however, value in the firsthand, and the book offers a singularly cutting perspective in that the story does not end well.

Thinking About Originality

If you've known me (or read my blog) for any length of time you know I have a bad case of broken-record syndrome. I like books. I like dismantling society. I like Rich Mullins.

It doesn't help that my vocabulary tends to run in circles. I like vague, squishy words such as beauty, or truth, or real. I teeter between the poetically profound and the peculiarly preposterous. (And I suppose I should admit an alliteration addiction, as well.)

My number one writing aid? Thesaurus.com, by an embarrassingly wide margin. Secret of the just-add-water pundit? None other than the venerable and indispensable Wikipedia.

Really, to be shallow is no crime. Oswald Chambers put it well on the 22nd: even the ocean has a shore. (Sometimes, of course, we may need to verify whether the shore has an ocean.)

Sometimes I think the reader's patience must be the eighth wonder of the world. There is certainly plenty of typographical turbulence around here. It must be supremely frustrating to be bored as bananas one day and startled out of your skin the next. To simply be interesting is not as easy as it sounds. And as for originality, forget it. There's nothing new under the sun, and no one knows it better than the pioneer. (Not to mention the large degree of mutual exclusivity between education and originality.)

But we don't appreciate people primarily for being original; we appreciate them for being themselves. We love the baker, not because he is always busy mixing up some new recipe, but simply because he makes really good bread.

The "I" in iPod

Progress is not truly progress solely because it is labeled so. What looks to be a new standard of freedom may often be nothing more than a new standard of sterility.

The ipod may be one example. It is now possible to carry 1,000 songs around in your pocket like a pack of gum, redefining "music to-go." And so we have this sort of mini-revolution in the realm of personal audio. Everywhere you go you see folks with the telltale white cords hanging out of their ears, enjoying - or enduring - their own private concert.

I'm trying to get used to it, and I'm not sure it's working. I feel like I'm crowded into my own little world - the music is all cramped up, and so am I. With an ipod, you no longer feel inclined to roll the windows down for that really good song, and it's putting me a little out of sorts.

Music is meant to be shared. It's meant to float out into the open air (within the constraints of consideration, of course,) where it can reign free in the auditory atmosphere. You can't sing along with an ipod without sounding stupid; even tapping your foot is bound to earn you a quizzical stare. No: now music, along with everything else, must be all business.

But this is a travesty, and here's why: music is meant to be absorbing. It's meant to lift you up, to be something that is simultaneously, gloriously, wholly connected to life and yet wholly other. (It may be significant to some that, in heaven, we "sing" the "song" of the Lamb. Why couldn't we just recite a eulogy?) But in the new world-to-myself mania, music is in danger of becoming just another boring backdrop, drumming along in the borders of your consciousness like a squeaky shopping cart. Rock 'n' dull.

So, as much as I treasure the space between my ears, ultimately I desire that my world would outgrow the confines of that narrow spread. God calls the very mountains to sing - to send the crashing crescendos of redemption echoing through the cosmos. That tells me we ought to take the lid off: as Steven Curtis Chapman put it, "Live out loud."

The Last Honest Holiday

Thanksgiving is the one secular holiday I can celebrate without scruples; free of the commercialization of Christmas, the obscenity of Halloween, the absurdity of Easter, or the uncomfortable patriotism of The Fourth of July.

Besides, I really like cranberries.

The Definitive Orthodoxy

I have completed my upside-down exploration of the authoritative Chesterton trilogy, consisting of The Everlasting Man, St. Francis of Assisi, and now, Orthodoxy.

It is rather intimidating to approach a book that has attained nearly mythical status. These days it seems that if you want your work to be taken seriously, you must include the obligatory quote from Chesterton, and this is hard to do without casting a pallid gray shadow over your own writing.

Because of this, it's the kind of déjà vu classic that continually stirs your consciousness with remotely familiar passages, like driving through the shaded streets of a town you have never been in but many people have told you about.

I was not disappointed. The work is deserving of its decorations: in the awed words of the Queen of Sheba, "The half was not told me." I just love the way authors like Lewis or Chesterton sneak Christianity up on you, skillfully presenting it as the surprising, satisfying thing that it properly is.

This is Chesterton's Mere Christianity; likely his most fundamental work, certainly his most formidable: a crashing coup d'etat of the sour skeptics. In a healthy but reasonable 170 pages, He embarks on a wild romp through doctrine and discovery, taking the Apostles' Creed as a sort of loose outline. His enthusiasm for life is unmistakable, converting one's anxious prejudices almost immediately.

A work of this impregnable proportion is difficult to criticize, and it is with fear and trembling that I suggest an oversight. It seems that Chesterton, in his zeal for provocative paradoxes, has overlooked the essentially nonviolent nature of Christianity. He appears to have accepted and even defended the legacy of the Church Militant, which I find extraordinarily difficult to do with a clear conscience. It is not enough for this history to be dusted off and propped up; it must be repudiated. For myself, I see nothing unorthodox about representing the Inquisition or the Crusades as colossal mistakes.

Foibles aside, this masterpiece has earned its place in the list of required reading for the conscientious Christian. But perhaps "required" is the wrong word; "rewarding" may be more appropriate.

"Whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth." - Chapter VI, The Paradoxes of Christianity


Image courtesy of stfrancisonline.com

Postscript on Friedman

While it may seem rather morbid, it is nevertheless a truism to say that death often constitutes one's crowning contribution to mortal society. (Take Jesus, or Samson, for instance.) You just aren't around to observe the fallout.

This obituary from the Economist chronicles some of Friedman's stands and successes, and provides a nice biographical sketch. Friedman authored several books which have quickly become classics in economic literature: Capitalism and Freedom, Free To Choose (with his wife), and Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz). He appeared last year on Charlie Rose; and it is inspiring to watch him, at 93, reflect on the meaning of his life and existence in general. He comments sagaciously on historical events and personages, current trends, the replacement of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan with Ben Benanke, and the state of the international economy. Fascinating in the highest degree.

Economics and Excuses

The purpose of the post is two-fold. I must attempt to dispel some misunderstandings which could potentially arise around my adventurous post on the evils of television. I would also like to comment on the recent death of an eminent economist who has just finished making history.

Milton Friedman, who died of heart failure earlier today in Southern California, was a brilliant economic thinker who argued for small government, individual responsibility, and common sense. Born in New York City in 1912 to Jewish parents, Friedman weathered the depression and went on to become an icon in socio-economic circles, reviving the rich legacy of classical liberalism for the 20th century. (This revival is credited jointly to Friedman and F. A. Hayek, whose book The Road To Serfdom is probably the best discussion of government theory that I have ever read.)

Friedman generally identified himself as a classical liberal, although he self-deprecatingly minimized the issue: "I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person." Today a lot of people are thinking about the person; I'm sure Friedman would be hopeful that this will lead them to examine the ideas.

(For those of you who are, like me, compulsively interested in these things, there is a tidy collection of Friedmanism in this post. You may also enjoy this charming, vintage interview in which Friedman brilliantly discusses minimum wage, social security, and limited government. Being a working man with a Schedule C, the lucid genius of it all almost makes me want to vote.)

But wait a minute. Was that last item a link to a video? What new standard of inconsistency is this?

Now for the excuses part. While I do not flinch at the prospect of a world without video, I am not prepared to argue, as Mander does, for the complete elimination of the medium. I distrust it, and distrust it broadly, but I must retain a place, however small, for the useful recording and retrieval of knowledge that televised technology has made possible.

Qualifications are boring, but they are preferable to the alternative. Thanks for your patience.


Image courtesy of wikipedia.com

Smashing Televisions

It may be prudent to provide some clarification concerning a little piece of information in my profile, which cites "smashing televisions" as one of my "interests." This may seem somewhat out of character, considering the non-violent type of person that I am (or attempt to be). Let me provide some background.

Growing up, we often watched television while sick. This means that, for me, the medium carries some unfavorable associations: watching television was something you did with a large, ominously empty plastic bowl next to you.

This deep-seated distaste has now festered into something rather formidable. Some would say I have blamed a disproportionate number of the world's ills on the unfortunate tube. I'm not convinced. Simultaneously stimulating and stupefying, television seems to me to border on the hypnotic, which should at least brand it as incredibly dangerous, if not downright deadly.

Jerry Mander, in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, (which is sitting patiently on my bookshelf,) agrees. This cursory review from TurnOfYourTV.com is a worthwhile essay in its own right and touches on many of the more salient points of the issue.

Working on a trash-hauling job with my brother a few weeks ago, I was powerless to resist the urge to plunge a 2x4 through the blank screen of a doomed television monitor. Besides the sweet, momentary indulgence of the male thirst for destruction, it provided an outlet for my increasing frustration with this devilish device that has all but bewitched western humanity.

But rest assured: as of yet I still respect other people's property, so you needn't hide away your television if I'm coming to dinner. Only please do not invite me over for football or Peter Pan, as I may find it necessary to respectfully decline.


Image courtesy of drabbytux.com

Beauty or Babel?

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." - Ecclesiastes 11:9

Emerging from adolescence may well be the pinnacle of existence, as all the things you thought you had to prove begin to fade away, and you are free and fresh to pursue the wonder that is life. As intimated above, this idea may not be wholly unbiblical.

The tireless force of maturity continually refines our awareness of both self and surroundings. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, and discovery is the regnant theme - the watchword of the brightening dawn. And the train gathers reckless speed.

This rushing wind has been breathed by God Himself; He is the headwaters of this deliciously drenching torrent of truth. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights..." (James 1:17) The understanding opens, words falter, and the heart leaps for joy.

But for the catapult to be effective it must be aimed. It is desirable that youth be found sober, discreet, self-controlled, centered, purposed. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth," is more than pithy advice: it is the path of life. For there is a distinct danger that the heart may become enraptured by its own reflection, which danger is only intensified in this age of personalization and individuality, where the tendency is for man to create God in his own image.

It is not sinful for a flower to open, it is only sinful for it to congratulate itself for such talent, flattered by its own finesse. The Gift and gifts of life are tokens from God of His bottomless love, and we thrive in the delight to the extent that we glory in the source. "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (Isaiah 40:30-31)

That original sin still haunts us: the reaching for the self-contained knowledge of good and evil and the implicit rivalry of God. And this is the danger, namely, that our very passion for the real will prove once again to be our undoing.

Will your bricks and mortar be a temple for the living God, or a Babel of self-serving egoism?

November Sky

It's a full moon over California

Orion's shining in the autumn sky

The night so cold, and yet so intimate

I can't explain it so I just won't try




Image courtesy of flickr.com

Caedmon's Call

A few months ago, on a whim, I decided to check out the relatively obscure Christian band Caedmon's Call. A college-oriented group, they take their name from the 7th-century English poet Caedmon, and their music has a very metaphoric, poetic flavor. There is a richness and depth to the songs that is refreshing.

It's hard to decide what is most impressive about Caedmon's Call: the songwriting or the delivery. They seem to take music, and life in general, seriously, and it shows. Almost all of the earlier songs came from Aaron Tate and Derek Webb, who both possess exceptional songcrafting ability, especially Tate. Today, most of the writing is done by Josh Moore, Randall Goodgame, and Andrew Osenga.

One unique thing about Caedmon's is the way they share the stage; they are a team, and they act like one. They have always had three singers capable of holding their own (Cliff and Danielle Young, and Andrew Osenga, who replaced Derek Webb in 2004); lead vocals on their albums tend to be split in more or less equal thirds. The others in the band, Todd on drums, Garrett on percussion, Jeff on bass, and Josh on everything else, are essential to achieving the coherent, quality sound that is Caedmon's Call.

In 2004, the band took an international tour and produced an album highlighting the ministries of Compassion International and The Dalit Freedom Network. Share the Well has a very ethnic sound: a number of the songs were actually recorded in the field with local musicians. The result is pretty powerful.

When something captures me like this, I tend to be rather headlong about it. I haven't been as excited about music since discovering Rich Mullins (who was also very involved with Compassion) two and a half years ago. So I round up the complete discography and learn the songs forwards and backwards, loving every minute of it.


Now that this is all ending / I wanna hear some music once again / 'cause it's the finest thing / I have ever found - Rich Mullins

Art and Appreciation

There is no art that does not first appreciate. Art may be born in the afterthought, but never in the flippant or the unaware. It is a necessary antecedent of the artistic to be, in the truest sense, awake.

I have often wondered if it is really possible to teach appreciation as a subject, like geometry or grammar. In most areas of knowledge or art, honest study or sympathetic exposure should be enough to kindle a warm appreciation, if arising only from the sense of having invested a part of yourself in something. (Most of us do not find it particularly difficult to appreciate ourselves.) But to present it as a costume or a pill is to cheapen the rugged authenticity of the thing. It may be encouraged, it may be contagiously developed through exposure, but it cannot be taught, and it certainly cannot be tested.

For it is not about appreciating a certain predetermined set of things - abject veneration of civilization's laundry list of "classics" is hardly virtuous. It is not a crime to remain unmoved by Mozart or Mona Lisa; indeed, a certain measure of autonomy is healthy in that it may protect us from the frequent hubbub over the emperor's new clothes.

You will notice that art, or most art that is worth anything anyway, is by and by submitted to a sort of gauntlet, undergoing close scrutiny from any number of distinguished authorities who judge its relative merit or mediocrity. We call these folks critics. They seem to be of a different ilk than the artists; rarely do they coexist in the same personage. (This could be why my head hurts as it does.) But this begs the question: have we produced a society where those who can, create, and those who can't, critique?

Pablo Picasso said that "Good taste is the enemy of great art," and this may very well be true, to the extent that good taste is taken to mean political correctness. (I would prefer that good taste retain its innocent imagery a little while longer.) For art necessarily deals with the sensitive, and political correctness has no time or capacity for probing the deeper reaches of things. Art is made out on a limb, where the view is better.

I am currently reading a book depicting the disintegration of Europe under the crushing weight of Nazism. Artists, poets, and writers, as political threats, were systematically hunted. It is revealing to observe that the artists, as a unit, represented that strain of secular man that is, on the whole, liberal and sane, comfortable with fair play and unanswered questions. The Gestapo, on the other hand, held the ethical convictions of a pack of dogs, with no respect for life, let alone appreciation or even patience for the thoughtful, aesthetic work of their intellectual betters.

G. K. Chesterton said that "Art is the signature of man." Perhaps we could add that contempt is the characteristic of the criminal.


Image courtesy of prechtelfineart.com

As The Sparks Fly

"Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." - Job 5:7

I never really understood this wisdom from the book of Job until studying a campfire earlier this year, observing that the life expectancy of an upward-bound spark is not lengthy. Sooner or later, usually sooner, the cold darkness strangles the feeble glimmer of light: mute, astonishing testimony to the brute power of the void we find ourselves in.

Sparks do not burn on their own, they merely absorb and radiate the energy of their fiery origin. Created in the image of God, we retain within the very fabric of our fragility the light of the divine. (John 1:9, 2 Corinthians 4:7) But it is only an infinitesimal sliver of the blazing bonfire that is God.

(We too often underestimate the dramatic nature of the incarnation: the frank condescension of Phillipians 2. God "in the likeness of men," stripped of his rank and radiance, criticized and crucified by his own. As Lewis put it, "If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.")

So here we are, barely. The Biblical view of existence is not particularly flattering: a vapor, a vanity, a passing wind. It gives a whole new meaning to "this little light of mine."



Image courtesy of Jesse T.

Timely or Trendy?

Words mean things. Sometimes they mean the wrong things. Occasionally, therefore, some rectifying semantics are in order.

In this book, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance, contemporary author and speaker Os Guinness sets the record straight on relevance and presents a masterful case for faithfulness over and against fashion.

“Relevance is not the problem but rather a distorted relevance that slips into trendiness, triviality, and transcience.” This distortion seems to be caused by pursuing relevance as an end in itself, rather than reaping relevance as a fruit of faithfulness. Our true aim, after all, is to be relevant by God’s standard: not the standard of the world. Not that the two are necessarily doomed to mutual exclusivity, only that we must keep the crust outside the filling, and the filling inside the crust, if we want to have a nice pie.

I have for some time felt that the church must stop allowing the world to lead her around by the nose. Along this line, Guinness argues brilliantly for the church to retain (or regain) “the Archimedean point.” “In today’s world, the stance of the wagging tail has been elevated to the level of a creed. In 1966, the World Council of Churches even adopted the bizarre dictum, ‘The world must set the agenda for the Church.’”

Guinness summarizes three postures the Church can take towards society, (resistance, negotiation, and adaptation,) dismissing the two extremes which both reduce the Church to insignificance, and favoring negotiation, which, he says, means “taking seriously the biblical admonition to be ‘not conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of the mind’ […] an ongoing practice of discerning between true and false, good and bad, the godly and the worldly.” He wisely avoids a reductionist approach to this discernment: “Which of us can read enough, think enough, and pray enough to be wise enough? There is simply too much to take in and to ponder.”

Continuing on, Guinness discusses “resistance thinking,” (quoting C.S. Lewis: “Progress is only made into resisting material,”) and also the under-appreciated value of history. "Whereas science deals with the predictable and the repeatable, with laws and uniform regularities, history deals with one-of-a-kind human choices, with accidents, disasters, ironies, and events that are totally unforeseeable and unpredictable. […] History provides a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of our humanity than science does."

I appreciated and resonated with the general tenor of the book, with only a few minor quibbles. The first two chapters deal exclusively with the subject of time, (the “tool that became a tyrant,”) and I am still debating their “relevance” to the primary subject matter. Also, there are numerous quotes from Nietzsche, primarily as an articulation of the secular perspective, but occasionally employed to support Guinness’ own arguments. Still, it serves well as a concise (119 page) yet careful discussion of the issue.

“It takes the eternal to guarantee the relevant; only the repeated touch of the timeless will keep us truly timely.”


Image courtesy of amazon.com

Thoughts From Isaiah

If Isaiah is one of the most perplexing books of the Bible, it is also one of the most beautiful. Some of the imagery is unmatched throughout the whole of scripture. While I don't understand all of it, (or perhaps even much of it,) I have for a long time liked this book very much.

One of the chief joys of heaven will be the ultimate culmination and realization of wisdom. Seeing "face to face," clear as the sky, instead of darkly, as "through a glass," when all of our baggage and bias falls like scales from our eyes and we are left gloriously alone with the wonder that is God.

"They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine..." (29:24)

"The heart of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly..." (32:4)

We so desperately desire to plumb the depths of what is truly real - to peel back the veneer of existence and apprehend the eternal. But it is easy to confuse the zealous and the rash, and I have many times acted in the mode of the latter, all the while believing it to be the former.
Here in these verses the Lord recognizes the genuine (if misguided) zeal that burns in the "heart of the rash," and the beauty and tenderness in these promises is enough to make one weep for joy.

But here, in the "meantime that is our life," our limited mortal faculties of apprehension and comprehension are only part of the problem. Anyone who has ever seen the moon or held a baby knows that our faculties of expression are also woefully hollow and inadequate. In spiritual, immaterial things, like beauty, or truth, we all possess the "tongue of the stammerers." But we go on hammering and stammering away at what we feel we must express, for fear that it will burst us if we don't. (Job 32:19-20) Unfiltered understanding, along with the ability to express it with ease and precision, must be very ecstasy.

"And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." (35:8)

For a long time I pictured heaven as being rather mushy, trying to imagine what it must be like to walk on clouds. But the geography that Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, while perhaps not entirely accurate, might be a better way to think of it, as it seems closer to the Biblical picture of a city with foundations and hard golden streets. No one knows, really, but whatever awaits us, it must be something far more solid than anything we can experience here, (unless of course our very perception of solidity has become warped somewhere along the way, which is entirely plausible.)

I derive abundant comfort from this promise of holiness as a highway rather than a hut, where despite all our foolishness and lack of direction we are no longer stumbling around in the dark, bumping into each other. Because sometimes I'm afraid that in my best moments that's exactly what I am: a wayfaring fool.


Image courtesy of landscapedvd.com