Efficient Christians

Gasoline engines operate at 20%-37% efficiency. That means that for every 10 gallons of gas you use, about 7 ($23.00!) accomplish absolutely nothing. All this precious energy simply disappears in the form of heat, exhaust, and friction.

Now efficiency is not to be confused with productivity - they are two distinct terms. Just as in the parable of the talents, it is not how much you do that counts, but how much you do with what you've been given.

As with engines, much of our efficiency as Christians is lost in the form of hot air, exhaust, and friction. Our efficiency suffers when we blow hot air about the kingdom, exhaust ourselves with busy work like Martha, or neglect to address frictional situations and relationships.

***

Hot Air
One identifying characteristic of the truth is its ability to defend itself. Not only is it very tiring to defend one's own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Kingdom, it also does incalculable damage to the name of Christianity. It isn't enough to be talking about the things of God; we must be talking truth about them. The more we align our thinking and teaching with God's revealed truth, the better chance God's unblunted Word has of getting through our pasty rhetoric and the fewer words we will waste talking nonsense.

Exhaust(ion)
Driving ourselves into the ground with misguided effort and busy work will further reduce our efficiency. Like a power tool that is forced to cut too fast, we will choke, sputter, and overheat, confused and hurt that we have so little to show for all our effort. The solution is simple: put God first, and stop trying so hard to be an amateur deity. The last thing Christianity needs is more demigods. More on this in an upcoming post.

Friction
Frictional relationships prevent us from walking before God with the peace he desires us to have. He exhorts us to "live peaceably with all" (Rom. 12:18, Heb. 12:14). Leaving wrongs unrighted and apologies unsaid is no way to live the abundant life. We have to get used to confronting mistakes, embarrassments, and misunderstandings head-on. This is uncomfortable. "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." (Heb. 12:11) If there is something between you and your brother, it must be set right before you can render service to God. (Matt. 5:24)

***

Living for the maximum glory of God necessarily means identifying and eliminating those things that decrease our spiritual efficiency. By "spiritual efficiency" I do not mean offering copious prayers or writing stacks of books or witnessing to hordes of people, though those are all good things. I simply mean doing whatever God has called you to do as fully and effectively as possible - whether that is saving the poor of Cambodia or simply sitting at His feet.

Also, I do not wish to make efficiency itself into a kind of fetish. As Sandra McCracken sings, "Love is not efficient / and even if it was / I wanna take the long way home..." Living the Christian life involves doing things that make no sense by ordinary standards, but this should not surprise us. We're part of a different Kingdom and a different economy, and therefore we must be faithful to a deeper efficiency - that of the woman with the alabaster flask.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." -Hebrews 12:1

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The Space Trilogy

Kenneth Tynan, the British drama critic, theater historian and playwright, used to play a rather odd game with his old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis. Lewis asked Tynan to pick a number from one to forty to identify a bookshelf in Lewis's sitting room at Magdalen College. Another number from one to twenty would select a book on that shelf. In similar fashion, Tynan was required to pick a random page and then a line on the page, which he read aloud. Lewis then immediately named the book and discussed the material on that particular page.*

This little anecdote is remarkable - accordingly I shall make some remarks about it. It is easy to forget the vigorous intellects behind the stories we take for granted. The common metaphor of a steel trap is grossly inadequate for describing the depth, discipline, and multi-dimensional capacities of Lewis's mind, which could perhaps be compared more fairly to a honeycomb, full of delicate chambers and intertwined passageways, tidy, sweet, and very much alive.

For someone who could digest books as surely and easily as he could digest broiled fish, inventing planets, histories, and civilizations was simply a favorite pastime. Here was a man who was so in touch with the way things are that he could go beyond them into the way things are not, and further still into the way things ought to be.

Out of the Silent Planet
In this the first volume of the Trilogy, Dr. Ransom finds himself shanghaied to a distant planet called Malacandra, quite beyond the reach of the Royal Navy. Once there, he is confronted with several new species (old species, really, but new to him), and must learn how to interact and survive. This strange situation gives Lewis ample opportunity to comment on what it means to be - and act - human.

This book is the shortest of the three, while simultaneously managing to lay the groundwork for the rest of the series.

Perelandra
Similar to Narnia in The Magician's Nephew, Perelandra is a virgin world of innocent pleasure and unspoiled beauty. As you might guess, the enemy is not about to let the truth reign free and unchallenged, and before long the battle lines for the soul of Perelandra are drawn. The nail-biting temptation narratives that constitute the core of the book are by turns exquisitely painful and breathtakingly profound, leaving you with a new sense of how convincing the Devil's sleight-of-hand can be.

It is in the latter part of Perelandra where we find Lewis's famed "sexless" male and female archetypes - keeping alive the ancient mythical significance of Mars and Venus. This book seems to be the most oft-quoted of the Trilogy.

That Hideous Strength
Somewhat disappointingly, no character in That Hideous Strength is abducted for a hair-raising interplanetary expedition. However, while the story remains rooted in familiar earthen soil, things are far from safe. Lies are falling like acid rain, history is being plundered, and the peaceful English countryside is being overrun by obscene machinery. All this creates a vivid backdrop for Lewis to demolish some of his favorite targets - nihilism and pragmatism - in broad, unanswerable strokes.

This story reminded me of the work of Frank Peretti, mostly because of it's deeply conspiratorial plot. It is quite different from the first two books, but arresting in its own way.

"He had passed from Hegel into Hume, thence through Pragmatism, and thence through Logical Positivism, and out at last into the complete void." -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 353

*C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, Signature Edition (HarperCollins, 2005), 780

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Big Family Survival - Part 3: Taking a Shower

This is the last post (for now) in the celebrated Big Family Survival series. The whole series - including Mealtime and Traveling - can be found here.

Taking a shower is a relatively simple pleasure of civilized existence that most of us take for granted. Until you've lived in a large family, however, you have no idea of the myriad difficulties that can complicate this basic task.

There are five ingredients necessary for a satisfying shower: warm water, soap, shampoo, a towel or other absorbent object, and about 20 minutes of uninterrupted bathroom time. Shouldn't be too hard, should it? We shall see.

Warm water is generally a non-issue, thanks to our obscenely monstrous 75 gallon water heater. Still, on Sundays, you'd better go the night before, get in early, or be prepared for a brisker sprinkle than usual. And Sundays aside, you'd better hope that nobody knows the right toilet to flush in order to give you that "refreshing" dash of cold water. Arrggghh!

Soap is the next item on the list. Contrary to most people's experience, soap is not generally available in bar form. Usually, it consists of a sticky glob of small fragments piled in a dish. You grab a handful, and as long as you use a little imagination, you can pretend you're using the regular bar stuff that you see in stores. Oh well - it gets you clean, and that's the main thing.

For guys, shampoo is simple. Squirt some goopy stuff in your hand, "massage into scalp", and rinse. Repeat as desired. (Actually, I think shampoo companies added that last part just to increase sales.) Anyway, it's not a big deal.

For girls, it's different. Shampoo is intensely personal, like the color of a purse, and like purses, you can't have just one. You need a bottle of this, a bottle of that, one for Sundays, one for Tuesdays, one for when you're in the mood for a little "moisturizing" (isn't that what the water is for?), one for when you have a cold, and so on. You get the idea.

I can understand the need for conditioner; it does something different. Granted, I've never been able to figure out exactly what that something is, but that's okay: I'll take their word for it. Really, a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner is reasonable enough, but why, in the name of all that is decent and sensible, must we have four varieties of each? And even then, there isn't a single bottle of just plain ordinary normal-person shampoo. Occasionally, the situation has become so dire that I've been reduced to rooting around inside the vanity cabinet for one of those little freebie vials they give you at hotels. It's absurd, utterly absurd.

Occasionally - steamy, clean, and satisfied - you'll pull back the curtain and reach for your towel, only to be startled by an empty hook. Shucks - must have been wash day yesterday. Some will open the door and holler for help; I myself don't favor this approach as much. I have learned from experience that it is possible to dry yourself quite satisfactorily with nothing more than a hand towel. Remember - we're talking survival here, not posh bathing.

There is no worse feeling than to be just waking up, stretch, smile at the day, and then hear the bathroom door shut and lock with an ominous click. So much for setting your alarm: your day has just been set back half an hour. What's worse, there is not a thing you can do about it, for no quarter is ever given in the early morning bathroom wars. In this case, it is most definitely the early bird who gets the worm. The latecomer - sometimes missing the door by seconds - must sit in their bedroom in their pajamas and wait, which can be very traumatic. I'm sure we'll all need counseling at some point.

Guys are generally quite efficient in the shower. Girls, not so much. (Nothing against the gals, of course.) I've never figured out what you do for an hour in there, and it seems poor taste to ask, so I don't. Just be advised that it's important to pay attention to who you allow to get in before you.

One other word of wisdom. When you're getting in the shower, don't be swayed by all those pleading little faces claiming they "just need to brush their teeth." Yeah, right. Come back later, or we'll be here till noon. There's a time to be nice and a time to be mean; it's all in Ecclesiastes.

Long live the family! ("Hey in there, are you done yet?!?!")

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A Writer's Thanksgiving

We offer thanks,

for words and wit,

for color and metaphor,

for alliteration and assonance,

for pronouns and parentheses,

for rhythm and style,

for beauty and balance,

for new days and old books,

but most of all, for spell checkers!

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Drink Water, Not Sugar

Whether one is working, hiking, or just goofing off, hydration is always important. I'm always on the prowl for ways to stay hydrated easier, so I was excited when I recently had the opportunity to sample a new product called HINT.

HINT is bottled water with a "kiss" of flavor. The flavoring - or kissing - is accomplished naturally, with no sweeteners or preservatives. So far, so good.

This product is not an electrolyte replacement drink: it's just water. So don't expect the performance of a sports drink. 0 calories. Bummer.

HINT comes in a variety of interesting flavors, such as Mango-Grapefruit, Pomegranate-Tangerine, and Raspberry-Lime. Pear was one of my favorites, and Cucumber was quite good also. Peppermint tasted exactly like going to the dentist.

One particularly notable thing about HINT is the quality of the bottles. I've saved all of mine for use on the job: they're a nice size, they're really sturdy, and their mouths are wide enough to accept ice cubes.

I tend to be a purist about things, and water is no exception. Generally speaking, I still prefer my water straight. However, if you're the type that has trouble drinking enough to stay properly hydrated, HINT might be just the thing for you.

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Thinking About Evangelism, Again

When I shared a few thoughts about evangelism last year, I thrashed about, made a ruckus, and pretty much left everyone generally confused as to what I was really saying. I have since come to the conclusion that I just don't understand the subject very well. Accordingly, this post is more about exploration than experience.

Having the opportunity to participate in an evening of witnessing at the Bible School I attended recently set me to thinking about the subject once again, and on a more practical level. My thinking is currently geared more towards street evangelism than white-collar apologetics, so my comments will reflect that.

The central thing I keep coming back to is this: underneath all the stereotypes and sarcasm and sin, we need to see a person. For me, a large part of evangelism consists in establishing that human connection. This is why I prefer to actually talk to people one-on-one, without any predetermined programme, instead of holding signs or passing out literature. Unless a person is directly under the conviction of the Spirit, someone holding a strongly worded sign may just as well be an alien from outer space to the average streetwalker. Their worlds just do not overlap.*

When I'm talking to someone, I want to communicate that I am very much a person, and not a very good one at that. That is something people can relate to. (Most can also relate to ice cream, and we should not be above taking advantage of these simple expressions of good will.) People are much more willing to talk if you avoid giving the impression that you have all the answers. Worldly people are sinful, but they are not stupid. They know perfectly well that nobody has all the answers.

The saturation of our society in postmodernism has had the positive side-effect of making most people willing to talk and open to new ideas. However, like the men of Athens, they are often a bit too willing to talk and open to a preposterous overabundance of new ideas. The challenge, then, is not acquiring a hearing: the challenge is awaking the shapeless mush that is the modern mind. Postmodernism and Christianity may overlap on certain points, but they are fundamentally incompatible because of their polarized opinions on the question of objective truth.

One of the disturbing complications we face in our time is the problem of drugs. When someone's mind is full of nonsense and butterflies, it's very difficult to carry on a meaningful conversation. But if God can get past demons, He can surely get past drugs. Sometimes we may need to be content to be Balaam's donkey, faithfully sharing the truth and preparing the way for the Angel of God and the Sword of the Spirit.

Because evangelism can be so difficult, I tend to indulge in a little sub-conscious self-congratulation following a witnessing stint. I swap war stories with friends, and make myself out to be manning the front lines of the faith. This is dangerous. Evangelism ought to excite us, but it ought to excite us about the power of God, not about our own supposed spirituality. It is a weighty responsibility, and we must not be satisfied to merely check a box.

But it doesn't need to be complicated. (As an old sage has said, “It is easy to those who do it.”) The logical thing to do with Good News is to tell somebody.


*This is not to deny that such signs could themselves produce conviction. They can and they do. I am merely observing that on the whole, they seem to provoke more anger, confusion, and defensiveness in people. Of course, this in itself does not unilaterally invalidate the method. But it deserves to be thought about.

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Thinking About Milestones

As Sojourner's Song approaches 200 posts and 10,000 hits, it has me thinking about milestones. Honestly, milestones leave me conflicted. The rugged rationalist in me insists that numerically interesting moments in the linear progression of time ought to remain completely irrelevant. (Why should a certain day be special just because it happens to be the first day of the year? What's the bloody difference between visitor 10,000 and visitor 9,999?) The romantic part of me, however, shyly admits the whimsical appeal of New Year's resolutions, turning 21, and that magic moment twice a day when your digital watch reads 11:11:11. (Don't tell me you've never stopped what you're doing to see the numerals align. I know you have. It's positively mesmerizing.)

The problem with milestones, as I see it, is that they - like deadlines - never seem to give you time to observe them properly. They start approaching, and you feel nervous, and then they're here, and you don't know what to do, and then they're gone, and you're relieved. Time grinds along, exactly like a giant grist mill, and always our frenzied, last-minute attempts at sentimentality come up short. This can be extremely frustrating for those who very badly want to see the moment handled with the sensitivity and emphasis it deserves. This frustration may cause them to abandon the idea altogether and adopt a programme of ignoring the whole business, in order to safeguard their sensitivity. Paradoxically, then, sometimes it is the stoical utilitarians who are really the most sensitive at heart. (I really am sensitive, really, I am.)

So, to plagiarize a quote from Douglas Adams, I love milestones. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. If our perception of time wasn't so strongly quantitative and mathematical, perhaps we wouldn't be tempted to attach so much importance to all of these anniversaries and equinoxes. But it is, and we are. I suppose one might as well make the best of it.

Thanks for 10,000 visits everyone. Whatever that means.

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Tolkien On Fairy Stories

Over the last several years, my views on fantasy have progressed from scorn to suspicion, and from there to undisguised admiration. The joy of story - both of story itself and of the truths contained within it, like peanuts within brittle - fills a very specific place in the heart.

(Note: In this post I restrict fantasy and fairy-stories to mean 20th-century English works, having no experience with anything else, and very little even with these.)

Tolkien's essay On Fairy-Stories is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. It is readily apparent, both from his excellent treatment of the topic and his own "fairy-stories", that Tolkien knows a thing or two about his craft. Behind the enchanted woods and secret doors and flaming black swords, there's a master at work with an eye for beauty and a nose for truth.

Fantasy, despite its dramatic proportions, can be traced to quite ordinary beginnings: the humble adjective. Tolkien observes, "When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power." This ability to extract elements and properties and juxtapose them into fresh combinations is the lifeblood of Faerie, without which it would not exist.

In the end, all of man's creations and inventions remain the products of an imagination which must of necessity be confined to what is. There is no escaping the Periodic Table of Elements. Thus, man is - to use Tolkien's term - a "sub-creator."

Tolkien devotes considerable space to examining the common association between fairy-stories and children, which association he holds to be rather more forced than free. "Children as a class - except in a common lack of experience they are not one - neither like fairy-stories more, nor understand them better than adults do; and no more than they like many other things. They are young and growing, and normally have keen appetites, so the fairy-stories as a rule go down well enough." For some reason, Tolkien says, adults have got it fixed in their minds that fairy-stories are for children, and children for fairy-stories. He ably demonstrates that this is not in fact the case, arguing that fairy-stories ought to be taken seriously if they are to be taken at all, not passed off like second-hand clothes to be worn for dirty chores.

Some of Tolkien's comments near the middle of the essay create the impression that he was opposed to film or drama adaptations of fairy-stories on any level. He writes, "In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it. Silliness or morbidity are frequent results." This is true enough. C. S. Lewis similarly deplored those "horrible lithographs of the Savior (apparently seven feet high, with the face of a consumptive girl)..."*

Sometimes imagery and drama are guaranteed to come up short, in which cases it may be better not to make the attempt. Tolkien continues: "Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited."

It appears that the first animated adaptation of Lord Of The Rings was attempted in 1978, five years after Tolkien's death. I still wonder, as I'm sure many others do, what Tolkien's opinion of Peter Jackson's Trilogy would have been. Perhaps, had he seen what type of results modern cinematic technology was able to produce, he would have conceded that the Trilogy was one of the "hardly ever" successful marriages of Fantasy and Drama.

We have observed that fairy-stories are merely unfamiliar combinations of familiar things, and are not, in that sense, original. There is nothing particularly unusual about a frog or a princess or a marriage; only the combination of the three. The most preposterous fairy-story cannot invent even one new color. (Or it will say, "There was a new color," which is about all that can be said.) For those of us who are tied up in knots over originality, Tolkien's commonsense is tonic:

We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three “primary” colours. We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red... This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Tolkien here sounds very much like Chesterton; or is it Chesterton who sounds like Tolkien? No matter: the point is the same. Open your eyes. Take in the blue sky. Remember your Creator.

I close with Tolkien's brilliant apologetic in verse, taken from the essay.

"Dear sir," I said - Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Through all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons - 'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made."

*C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 234
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The Weight Of Your Hand

Nose to the grindstone -

Can't smell the flowers
Angry at nothing
And weary of hours
Spent in the darkness
Numb with the pain
Hating the sunshine
And dreading the rain

It's because of my pride -
I know what You'll say
It's because I hold on
And can't give it away
It seems that I'm trying
To want what is right
But I love the illusion
Of walking by sight

So turn out the lights
And let me alone
And I'll lick my wounds
Right down to the bone
For my fine little kingdom
Of whitewash and sand
Is crumbling under
The weight of Your hand

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Thinking About Art and Ethics

I have from time to time wondered whether it is dishonest for a photographer to arrange "random" fern fronds or beach pebbles or Black-Eyed Susans for a picture. It seems to me that the viewer expects the shot to be wild and virgin - why else would it have been photographed? The artist is supposed to be promoting his photography, not his leaf-arranging. Anyway, maybe one of you photographers can help me with my dilemma. The practice smells suspiciously unethical.

Art by its nature must be ethical. When an artist embraces the ethical element of creative expression, the borders of his license are clearly defined, and thus he is set free. A river gets where it is going because it has banks: that is why rivers are so much more romantic than puddles. Puddles have no banks - only a soggy shore where the sprawl of muddy water stops. Puddles lack the purposeful concentration of rivers, which focus their energy and resources in a particular direction. This is what ethical borders - and rules - are for.

Immediately, however, we are presented with a difficulty. There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding regarding not the application of rules, but rather the nature of rules. Commonly, rules are defined to be objective guidelines that bear little or no interpretation. They are presented in bulleted lists. Keeping them is approved. Breaking them is punished. End of discussion.

But what if rules are not objective at all, but rather inward and subjective? Further, what if particular rules are undiscoverable until the artist finds himself in need of one, and only then - intuitively - does he know how the thing must be?

There are rules behind the rules, and a unity which is deeper than uniformity. A supreme workman will never break by one note or one syllable or one stroke of the brush the living and inward law of the work he is producing. But he will break without scruple any number of those superficial regularities and orthodoxies which little, unimaginative critics mistake for its laws. The extent to which one can distinguish a just 'license' from a mere botch or failure of unity depends on the extent to which one has grasped the real and inward significance of the work as a whole.

-C. S. Lewis, Miracles, (HarperCollins, 2001), 153

"A unity which is deeper than uniformity" - think about that. It's an inspiring idea, to be sure. I have many times wondered, in despair, whether there is life after grammar checkers. Here is a glimmer of hope.

Great art is made by those who have cultivated this sense of the "living and inward law of the work" and who have properly related this sense to the "rules" developed by "experts." That is why good musicians trust their ear, good chefs their palate, and good craftsman their tactile intuition. That is also why great artists always surprise everyone, eliciting the adoration of the public and the wrath of the critics.

This, then, is the reason that art must be ethical. Without an active sense of what is appropriate, meaningful, and honest, there is no art - only noise and confusion. Breaking the rules just for the sake of breaking the rules will get you exactly nowhere. In order to break the rules properly, one must recognize a higher law - that immutable substrate on which hang all our imperfect and convoluted interpretations, like cheap dollar store ornaments on a stately Douglas Fir Christmas tree.

In challenging the supremacy of "rules," I have no desire to diminish the value of conventions, such as proper punctuation. Without conventions there can be no communication, and without communication there can be no art. For instance, a small dot at the end of a string of words emphatically marks the end of a thought. Don't believe me? Then. try. reading. a. sentence. like. this. one. Such a sentence is near impossible to read, because the convention has been violated.

(The violation of convention may at times serve a specific artistic purpose, or it may serve an instructional purpose, as my sentence above just did. The point is that it is important to distinguish between the breaking of rules and the violation of conventions if we are to achieve true artistry without sacrificing comprehensibility.)

Perhaps prohibitions against photographers intruding into their shot would be nothing more than dusty rules that only get in the way. Suffice to say that the artist must satisfy his own conscience regarding means and ends. The shortest road is not always the best.

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Tailgate The Moon

I tailgate the moon
Destiny denied
I'm chasing my tale
And racing my pride

Time goes slow for me
Does time go slow for you?

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The Scoop

You may be wondering if Sojourner's Song is becoming Aaron's Blog Of Songs That He Likes. While that might be fun, it is not necessarily my intention. You see, I enjoy blogging the way I enjoy Ben & Jerry's - as a treat. The plain fact is that my work (when I have it) demands most of my energy and attention, seeing as I have not yet discovered how to earn a living blogging and eating ice cream. Oh well - maybe I'll post soon about the joys of roofing.

I have a few drafts of real posts that I am refining, but writing (for me) requires thought, and time for thinking is scarce. (Come to think of it, time is scarce in general; but that's another topic for another day.)

I'm still reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag, and also Lewis's Space Trilogy, courtesy of the Werzinskis. Both are masterpieces in their own right, though Lewis's is by far the easier read.

Musically, besides the old standbys, I've been enjoying Alli Rogers, who we saw in concert last week by accident, Sandra McCracken, (Derek's wife), and U2 (please don't shoot me).

Oh, and our washing machine broke. That is bad. We're getting a new one Tuesday. That is good.

Keep doing the Kingdom!

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