Thoughts Negligible

My New and Final Blog site

2006-12-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if anyone still checks this thing, but if they do:

This is it. I decided to spring for a typepad blog, where there should be no problems viewing or accessing, plus there are many more cool features. This is the LAST TIME I WILL MOVE. The next move will be the death of thoughts negligible altogether.

I do hope you'll stop by and say hello.
http://thoughtsnegligible.typepad.com/thoughts_negligible/

NEW BLOG-ALOG

2006-11-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

There will be a transition to the new blog, which is mac and much sexier.
Hope you all enjoy! I think I'll try to move all of the previous entries to the archive of the new as well. Notice that all forthcoming entries will be at the new blog. I like it much better and I think you will too.

http://web.mac.com/tylerakers

the day they tore down the trees.

2006-10-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

They were my organic pleasure in this brick and mortar dungeon, those trees. Sitting in the backyard of my aunt's home here in Norman I could spy the last holdout of nature against urban sprawl. But I should've known it was coming. This outcrop had to go too.

I came home from a long day of classes to find earthmovers behind the house, in the open fields that had not been "developed" yet. The tallest tree, one of 50 or so feet, was shaking back and forth as I stepped out onto the back porch. It was as if it were pulling itself back into place at every shove of the tractor. This tree, maybe sixty years old, maybe one hundred, was resisting with all its might. And in all that time it had survived storm and hail, drought and flood, disease and parasite--all to be taken down by one man in an iron suit, its fall leaves tumbling down at each swish and sway. When the torture was over it would return to serenity, stoic strength, but all the while knowing it hadn't a chance. It was painful to watch. I may have even whispered to myself, "You bastards." But what did I expect, for man to leave anything standing as long as his grasp could reach it? It's one thing to know it happens, but to see it affected me more than I would have expected.

It took all of ten minutes to fall. How the mighty do fall! With each shove the ancient tree weakened. It got to where it couldn't recover its upright stature. Then crack. Crack. CRACK! Falls to a 40-degree angle and rests. Before a breath could be caught, the tractor puts the buck under an exposed root system, lifts up and pushes, finally severing what once was so planted in the ground. The metaphor used for centuries, of strength, durability, vitality, supplanted before my eyes in moments. I could almost feel the swish of branches still filled with leaves as they smashed to the ground. The fence line was clear, revealing another row of houses. I sat there stunned, feeling the same way I did when I saw a hawk rip a small bird out of a tree last summer, with a hundred other birds spurting out of the trees like hell. But that was terrifying and natural, this seemed more like a bodybuilder flexing his muscles in front of a crowd.

And I know it happens, and must. Otherwise we couldn't rape our planet so effectively or quickly, and American middle class families of three wouldn't be able to own 4-bedroom homes of 1800 square feet, two-car garages, and their own pretentious plots of green. This, my friend, is the American Dream! Who should be denied it, except for African Americans and Mexicans, those who haven't earned it and those who don't deserve it according to our latent racism and classism? This land is your land, this land is my land, friend!

The Weighty Topic of postmodern critique in Biblical Studies dealt with in one cheap example

2006-10-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

(not a study in Scripture)
I'm reading an interesting book called The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.

The Tower of Babel, historically seen as a negative for human relations and relations with God, is one of my favorite myths of the OT. According to Dr. Collins, two effects were negative: the attempts at bridging heaven and earth and the scattering of the people and diversification of tongues--the confusing of languages. What could be more disheartening for the human race--post-Edenic exile--than the destruction of community, the dissolution of linguistic commonality? It is language that binds us to all those who share that language, in case you haven't noticed, but it is also language that binds us as a human race as well. So is the point of the story the dissolve of community? Only partly, for anthropology and linguistics still point to our essential unity as a species, our cross-cultural alikeness. One linguist even has a theory that says all languages were birthed from one family; his examples are to examine the root words of several disparate languages and show how similar they really are. Like all of us, no?

But in postmodern critique of biblical criticism something changes--among many things: the second ill effect is turned on its head. No longer is the confusing of languages seen as a bad thing. It's supremely good! It's liberation from oppression and univocality. Collins says that some critics see the tower as symbols of domination and oppression, and for that effort to be confounded is to be the greatest liberation. But what of oppression and domination, did it end with the tower? Derrida says the tower represents "incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalizing, of saturating, of completing something of the order of edification, architectural construction . . ." There you have it. The ultimate obfuscation of human community is a good thing. I may not completely disagree, but it's a very interesting example of the postmodern turn. Notice how cultural, historic, and linguistic context is unimportant here. Why would it be?

(By the way, a new movie comes out in the next week or two called Babel, with Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett, and it looks terrific! I can't wait! It's the not-so-postmodern interpretation of the effects of the story.)

A Heavenly Voice

2006-10-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

On that Day Rabbi Eliezar brought forward every imaginable argument, but they [the rabbis] did not accept them. Said he to them: "If the halakhah agrees with me, let this carob tree prove it!" Thereupon the carob tree was torn a hundred cubits out of its place--others affirm, four hundred cubits. "No proof can be brought from a carob tree," they retorted. Again he said to them: "If the halakhah agrees with me, let the stream of water prove it!" Whereupon the stream of water flowed backward. "No proof can be brought from a stream of water," they rejoined. Again he urged: "If the halakhah agrees with me, let the walls of the schoolhouse prove it," whereupon the walls inclined to fall. But Rabbi Joshua rebuked them, saying: "When scholars are engaged in a halakhic dispute, what have ye to interfere?" Hence they did not fall, in honor of Rabbi Joshua, nor did they resume the upright, in honor of Rabbi Eliezer; and they are still standing thus inclined. Again he said to them: "If the halakhah agrees with me, let it be proved from heaven!" Whereupon a heavenly voice cried out: "Why do ye dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halkhah agrees with him!" But Rabbi Joshua arose and exclaimed: "It is not in heaven" (Deut 30.12). What did he mean by this?--Said Rabbi Jeremiah: That the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a heavenly voice, because Thou hast long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, After the majority must one incline (Ex 23.2)

Rabbi Nathan met Elijah and asked him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do in that hour?--He laughed [with joy], he replied, saying, "My sons have defeated Me, My sons have defeated Me."

On Justice and Intimacy with the Bridegroom

2006-09-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

In Gen 18.22-33, Abraham demands God to act justly on Sodom and Gomorrah: "Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?"

"I will not destroy, for the sake of ten."

None are righteous, no not one.

"When the LORD had finished speaking to Abraham, He departed; and Abraham returned to his place."

In Auschwitz, there was a group of Jews that put God on trial. All day they debated, back and forth, the prosecution against God. The evidence? Well, that was clear enough. They found God guilty. The Judge, who demanded the Jews to act justly, was judged. They found him guilty and then had evening prayers.

"Don't chastise me in your wrath, O LORD!"

Jacob had wrestled with a man all night, demanding a blessing. To loosen Jacob's hold the man pulled his hip out of socket, but he would not let go. The man said Let me go! The sun's coming up. "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and man and have prevailed." Jacob asked the man's name: "You must not ask my name!" He departed.

Jacob limped away.

Current state of desk and head

2006-09-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

My desk usually doesn't look like this until midterm or final weeks.

Great Movies Scene Recently

2006-09-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Last Kiss
Little Miss Sunshine
Trust the Man
The Celebration
The Inheritance
Caché
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

God's Mountain-Threats

2006-09-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested that God set up the circumstances that the Children of Israel could not refuse his covenant. For example, before the exodus, God tells Moses that He is going to harden pharaoh's heart (cf. Ex 4.21b). Rather comically, a few chapters later the LORD says, as if in jest, maybe laughing with joy over his own providence, "Pharaoh is stubborn; he refuses to let the people go" (Ex 7.14). He mocks the pharaoh, warming up for the climax.

The covenant between Israel was a mutual understanding, brought about after God told Moses to take his words down to the people and see what they say. They agreed.

But with what motivation?

In Exodus 19.17 we find the Israelites standing below the mountain. This is typically translated or understood as "in the valley" or just at the bottom of the mountain. But the Hebrew paints a different picture. It says that the Israelites stood beneath the mountain!

In Midrashic literature it has been suggested that God held the mountain over the people of Israel and asked them if they would obey his commands. They reply: “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do” (Ex 19.18).

Time is found--Time to blog

2006-09-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

To take a break from studying for a Spanish test.
I'm stressed out man! Applications for grad schools have to be finished; recommendations have to be rounded up; essays have to be written; honors theses topics must be decided upon; capstone research must be decided upon; reading must be completed; presentations must be prepared; the GRE must be prepared for and taken; etc., etc. All taken with the joys of senoritis.

In the Garden, the Serpent whispers to Eve, and for the first time in this story, he used 'Elohim (God) instead of YHWH 'Elohim (the LORD God). This subtle wordplay has an effect on Eve and the reader--or hearer as the story originally came about. What the Serpent has just done is to intimate the existence of other gods, a vast caste system in the cosmos, saying she will become like one. Thus, the Serpent shortens the perceived infinite gap between God and man, hinting the distance isn't so far as what Eve would have thought. The distance between God, gods, and man is not so great.

Go ahead Eve--"Mother-of-all-Living"--, eat up.

The fact that this is the first insight we have into the thoughts of Eve, coupled with the fact that that sneaky snake disappears immediately after this temptation, also joined with the fact that Adam seems to have been standing there all along, unawares--all of this may suggest that this entire event was in Eve's head, or heart. Perhaps this was the first greatest battle, not with Satan, but with ourselves. Furthermore, no other details are given, suggesting that details matter little in our relations with sin. Adam passively accepts.

Go ahead Adam--"Mankind"--, eat up.

a short play

2006-08-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

Young Man enters dark room.

YOUNG MAN
O Where is love?

FROM THE DARK
It is here.

YOUNG MAN
Where?

FROM THE DARK
Here.

YOUNG MAN
Where?

FROM THE DARK
Here.

YOUNG MAN
How the echoes of darkness mock me!

Young Man shifts and leaves the room.

Emerging

2006-08-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

When I have nothing to do, my days are measured in rain showers, breezes, breaths, words, affections, pages turned, not minutes, hours, seconds, femtoseconds. And on those days I live quite differently. But why?

I remember growing up in a Pentecostal church and waiting for the rapture. Not one Sunday could pass without reference to the good old day that would come, when the pathetic troubles and quibbles of this temporal life would end. “What a day that will be.” I’m wondering now why I was never offended by the fact that no one wanted to stick around and hang out with me. Chopped liver. I always heard that the rapture would happen in our lifetime (I think every Christian since the patristic age has heard the same). We were pilgrims, and pilgrims want nothing more than to move past the present. Pilgrims don’t enjoy the scenery, they kill all the natives and build shopping malls. Right?

I was always feeling confused and guilty for wishing to stick around for my driver’s license, maybe a beer, a wife, and love. How could I be so selfish and blinded by this world and its evils! I remember waking up one summer day, much like today, and being sure Jesus had come back. Call mom. No answer. Call a friend. Nothing, but how did he go without me? Finally, I reached someone who I was certain would have been gone if Jesus had split that eastern sky. I was safe . . . for now. But if Jesus didn’t come back this rainy summer day, I don’t believe he ever came at all.

But where did this leave me? Loathing what this world had to offer. Our other-worldly longing was not appreciation for what was to come. It was escapism. It saw evil in the world and said the world needed destruction. But why did we never think of what God saw at one time: “And God saw that it was good.” In the end, I think it was sin, for God fashioned the world and mankind, his work of creation beautiful and loving: How could we hate this? And what would be the consequences of our hate? I fear we will see this only too soon.

In Genesis 1, something other than the earth and the heavens and all that dwell therein was created. Time beeped like a stopwatch into existence. Eugene Peterson shows me that six times sections of creation are introduced with “And God said . . .” and each time it is concluded with “And there was evening and there was morning . . .” On the seventh day, “seven” is emphasized three times, and it introduces the passage instead of ending the day. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 7. The first six days are split further into two groups of three. The first gives form to pre-creation chaos (the tohu), the second is the filling of the void (the bohu). Rhythm. Further, the third day of the three-day set makes up a double creation: 1 2 3/3 4 5 6/6 7 7 7. Speak the text aloud and you can feel the rhythm, the assimilation, the unity. There is a cadence: one two three three, four five six six, seven seven seven. Rhythm! 7 days, four times matches the phases of the moon in its 28-day rotation. Repeated twelves times gets the earth and moon around the sun. Seasons burst forth from Rhythm, in step with something set forth in Creation.

But we are set in Rhythm as well, sixty or eighty or a hundred times a minute our hearts beat. We can do nothing but acquiesce and go forth, in cadence. The rhythms slow but do not stop. Creation was not called forth out of the abyss with lambasting cacophony, but musical regularity and beauty. The Rhythm of our lives is set, we must but fill in the tap with lyric and melody. We are punctuated by that great entrance, a timpani perhaps, ex nihilo and swelling crescendo, and we go out with the clap of decrescendo, moving softly into oblivion.

Time has even been stamped with divinity. But today the fecundity of Rhythm is sacrificed to the gods called Efficiency and Punctuality—and Escape. Soon I will be asked to heed the clock again, but will I remember to call upon the creativity of the moment, of each second, so that Christ would work in me, to join in God’s creative task? “These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present,” says Annie Dillard. Every year a leap-second is added to the real time to fix for earth’s lack of punctuality. Our planet can’t even keep up with us! Time is not the problem; our obsession with numbers is. But Jesus splits the eastern sky daily, hourly. He has come back, he holds the curtain between heaven and earth open so that the Kingdom can come. Or he rips it. And that Kingdom will not come if the little Christs are looking only upward to a Mansion Over the Hilltop, ignoring a scattered Babel. Whether it be through busyness, laziness, or ideology, the only thing that separates heaven from earth is ourselves.

Further reading: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: a conversation in spiritual theology by Eugene Peterson

pome (2.25.06)

2006-08-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

An Enlightened Buddhist
Walked upon a baby starving and felt nothing;
He walked upon a baby smiling and felt nothing;
He walked upon a passionate and fiery sunset and felt nothing;
He heard the wails of the hungry and sick and felt nothing;
He saw the hopping of a playful calf and felt nothing
He received the smile of a lovely woman and felt nothing—
I, for one, felt very sorry for him.

Prolegomena to a Personal Organic Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews

2006-08-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

1:1 “Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.”

Knowledge that God speaks, and spoke, reveals tremendous and astounding truth of his and our character, even before knowledge of what is actually said.

In self-revelation and condescension, God “spoke” to the Hebrew ancestors in many occasions and in “many ways”: fire, manna, tablets, clouds, rods to snake, rods blooming and growing fruit, split seas, frogs, Shakinah, fires by night, burning swords, nature itself, prophets’ mouths, the still small voice, the Ark of the Covenant, the rainbow, audible voice, writing on the wall, whales, strong men, stairways to heaven, fallen walls and blasts of horn, sacrifice, the Law, burning bush, the death of Egyptian warriors and firstborn, locusts, quail, water from stone, the slowing of the sun’s movement, Sinai, plague, victory in battle—and the list would continue here if my memory and cursory flip through the OT hadn’t failed. But was this not enough? Who would not be impressed, converted?

Apparently it never was enough, for the Hebrews were constantly grumbling and worshiping idols. Were they crazy? As crazy as the rest of us. We are so destitute that nothing short of constant, overt revelation would do to keep him in our thoughts at all times. But is all Creatioin not that awareness? It is constant revelation of the hands of its potter. But the trick is always to be looking; the moment the Israelites turned to idols was the moment they chose not to look, to turn away from he who is the only thing worth seeing. He is revealed! We must but look. He hides, as it were, in the mountains and trees and seas, in reason and truth, and in smile.

But it was not sufficient for the ancient Israelites, who had the God of the universe as their seeking, passionate lover, those who held his providence and love in their hands, who gazed upon his glory and had his law written, in his own hand upon stone, and it’s not enough for us either. If they failed so miserably in this regard, in response to general and specific revelation, how much more do we? How much more prone to wander are we? Today I sin because for moments--- eternity when it comes to the soul---I have taken my eyes off Christ himself, who is the final and complete revelation of God.

But let’s not skip ahead. If God indeed speaks to us through many ways and at many times, this tells us many things about him. First off, he is relational, seeking to be found, no hide-and-seek here. He wishes for us to find him; he wishes us to be found in him. He wants commitment and relationship, otherwise he would not wish to be heard. He would have no decrees for holiness and reconciliation and conduct: it is only through these things that he could have contact with the Israelites; his justice would not allow it any other way.

Secondly, God will not limit his revelation. No, all revelation is bespeaking and speaking from Christ, the λογος (Logos). This is the only way, but with a number of translations, a pseudonymous authroship of which the true author’s personality, style, and character shine so brilliantly through the entire gamut of names. The names serve only to confound those who choose not to see, not those who earnestly seek. I love what Wesley says about “spake”: “A part is put for the whole; implying every kind of divine communication.”

Every part is put forth until, and so, the entire revelation can be found in Christ. According to Barth, the λογος will be found in proclamation, Scripture, and in Christ. But the second in the Trinity is the foundation and truth, the direction, culmination, completion, and source of every Word—he is the Word, shining forth through every “voice” of God, speaking to those to whom he will. Every kind of divine communication has occurred before Christ, yet the message was still incomplete. Voices were not enough; there had to be someone, the actualized λογος in flesh.

But what else does it say of God as he speaks through many ways and times? That God, the Creator and great Lover of the universe is supremely and infinitely patient! Surely his speaking once would be enough! Need we any more? Why should God speak over and over and over, as if the Hebrews deserved, by what they were, such repetition and attention? God has no duty to speak “many times and in many ways.” He has no responsibility to the Hebrews, nor to all humanity. Apparently, he placed this responsibility upon himself, for surely when God speaks just once, the whole cosmos should listen and copy down those words or burn them into its fabric, as few as they may be. He does so because he’s chosen to do so, not out of any need in himself. Or perhaps he’s created the need, the longing within himself; otherwise, why weep over a sparrow? So he calls and calls, in many times and in many ways, as a patient lover, the Cosmic Paramour. How many millennia ago would I have given up, stopped my whispering, singing, and shouting? The universe continually responds, whether we do or not, by its very existence is worshiping—and, maybe, so are we, whether we wish to or not. The atheist unwittingly, and much against his will and much to his dismay, praises his God with his each and every breath.

The whispering, singing, and shouting in "many ways" leads to another great revelation: that God is creative and creating. We know he “covers the sky with clouds; / he supplies the earth with rain / and makes grass grow on the hill. / He provides food for the cattle / and for the raven when they call” (ps. 147:8-9). So he expands the universe and grows stars—and kills them. “His words run swiftly (ps. 147:15). His fecundity in self-expression is ceaseless. He’s constantly coming up with new ways to speak: a burning bush did for Moses; a whale worked for Jonah; a voice worked for Avram and sent him from Ur; a dream showed Joshua that God was all around. Always speaking in different ways, he is always saying the same thing—“I am God, your God.” His methods have changed, he, never lacking ways to woo. The Hebrews could stand by the fact that God had chosen to reveal himself, and he had done it with never-ceasing fire, never-waning in passion and clarity—his inexhaustible means to his inexhaustible end.

In his revelation he never allows his words to go unheard. He chose to use the clanky human contraption of language to show himself to the Hebrews. Nor did he defy reason. He was almost always comprehendible in his action and word, though not in his personal unknowability and infinity. Or is it that he bestowed upon humanity his divine and spiritual gift of language? It is commonly held that God only uses language in relation to us. But what if we use language in relation, as a source and function, of him? What if we speak because he first spoke, not because he had to find a way to communicate with us? This would certainly explain poetry, mythology, song. Do we not sing because we have a singing God? Nonetheless, he communicates, not above us, but to us. Whether there be fleshy conductors or through his divinely inspired magic that separates us from all other animal, he does not leave himself without witness. And he will not defy the rules that allow us to seek him without specifically uttering it so, namely through conscience, reason, and nature (Rom 2).

Mankind’s first direct or audible contact with God occurred not through anyone seeking him. He initiated post-Eden contact to that righteous pagan Avram, or Abram. He called mankind, mankind did not call him. This fact serves to prove his infinite grace and mercy. I do not talk to the ants in my ant farm, nor a pot that I sculpted and painted. How much greater the contrast between God and myself? I am much closer to the ant than God is to me. But this is only true in essence, power, personality, not in relationship or proximity. He chose us; he chooses us.

If to know him as a speaker God reveals this much of his nature, it tells us more—more than what I could here exposit—but this will be the last revelation drawn from the fact that God spoke in many times and in many ways. If it is taken into consideration all that has previously been stated regarding God’s self-revelation, there is now one more important thing to be learned. If God speaks, God will judge. In making his voice heard he has made himself known. We now know what it is he wants, even without his specific declaration of it. If God is relational, patient, creative and passionate, reasonable, initiating of relationship, could it possibly be imagined that he would call his people to be isolationist, alienated from each other, impatient, lazy, uncreative, unreasonable, and shunning of relationship? Surely we can easily conclude NO! Then there has been a standard set; if he is not left without witness, we are left without excuse. If God is reasonable, as he has shown, he is just and there is justice. We are to begin to live as he has shown us in the very act of speaking, because this is not contradictory to his words. But we have words, and they are great and awesome; we have THE Word.

Surely, even if we had no clue as to what he said, we would be able to derive this much as true, just by the knowledge of the fact that God spoke at all, in many times and in many ways.

Mid-year picks for those who appreciate good--and bad--movies (with some random reviews)

2006-06-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Magnolia (because it’s always #1)

Dancer in the Dark (#2) – a tragic but beautifully made tale of injustice and the innocent victim of it all (Bjork, who is both absolutely breathtaking and charming in her performance).

Me and You and Everyone We Know – a touching and simple critique of the dehumanizing and impersonal force of technology, the social incompetence and alienation that ensues. Alienation has never been so beautiful. Be aware of the thick symbolism.

Matchpoint – Woody Allen: one of the few atheists willing to follow his worldview to its logical conclusion, and he does it tragically and poignantly in this film, with no regret, but utter nihilism. And Scarlett’s not too hard on the eye either. Pretentious dialogue, but great story.

Amores Perros – a Magnolia-esque drama of intersecting lives, tragedy, love lost and love forsaken, and redemption.

Wings of Desire – with dialogue like a poem and shot well

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – beautiful music with dialogue sung (but I wouldn’t call it a musical), and a good redeeming story . . . where people make less selfish decisions in the end and don’t destroy everyone who loves them as in the last movie here reviewed)

A Man and a Woman – a love story with baggage and extended useless scenes.

Troll II - The worst movie of all time, good laughs.

Quest for the Mighty Sword - The second worst film of all time. The extended walking and running scenes are quite possibly the most moving ever, with the troll's accompanied with the lonely cry of the keyboard-synthesizer oboe. You'll most likely wet yourself if you're watching it with someone else who appreciates it for what it is.

When Harry Met Sally - Am I a girl? or are you just not man enough to love it?

Brokeback Mountain - not because it’s great (I don’t even believe it’s a love story), but because it’s a reflection of the condition of our national character as self-obsession—a great study of our depravity in shedding responsibility and praising selfishness.

The Apartment
Junebug
Contact
Winter Light
Shopgirl

paseos y encuentros

2006-06-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

I tell others and myself that I ride my bike for the exercise, but if they knew the depth of my depravity, they would know my motivations were much more gratuitous. I’ve got an addiction, and you, dear reader, are my confessor: I want to catch sunsets, gold-light-sprayed fields, miles of expanse, glowing clouds, and cows that look like black and red dots. But look too close and—as always—you’ll find something unexpected.

Yesterday I passed through a veil of scents about half a mile out. Something was blooming, spreading thick and palpable, seeking passionless asexual love, in sweet tones with a hint of metallic. If I knew scents I would describe it better—about a quarter-mile of sweet smell to send me on my way.

Two point five miles in comes the overpass where interstate 35 runs over Vermont Ave. You look over your shoulder because it always sounds like a car is coming up on you fast. It’s loud and the roar oppresses: “It sounded like a freight train!” Continuous motion: the fear of being still. For one moment, as the cars pass, I’m a part of the travels of faces I do not see, our lives intertwine at a crossroads where I’m aware of others’ existence, individuals and families, lovers and haters, all loved by God whether I call them by their first name or curse them for the air pollution. I really can’t help but be indifferent. But I am still invisible to them under the overpass; I’m simply an unknown recipient to the law of the conservation of energy. If they knew I was there, would they care? If I feel hard enough I can feel the rumble beneath my feet; but can I feel the downward flow of energy from above? That indestructible force makes its way through me, headed to China, then maybe to Jupiter, then to the Mizar star system, where one of its five suns will swallow it up and spit it out again in a million years, back to us in some cosmic game of catch, I suppose, because nothing’s going to stop it, not even the core of the world or a star—“neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Why does an overpass drive me to such musing? In the words of the psalmist, “My zeal wears me out.”

Above is usually where I find a hundred little black birds dancing around their adobe nests, their anchorite holds on vibrating concrete. They fly around under the bridge to keep from going insane I suspect. But tonight there are none but one, a baby left on the road, learning to fly under a captive audience. The tires of my bike halt within a foot of her. She crouches in fear and her fast-beating heart rocks her body forth and back. From a brown mud house comes a screech, a “NOOOO!” I push the wheels forward to get it off the road after some mutual admiration, she awing at my size, I awing at hers. She hops to the side and her flight mechanism heightens as she lets out white, but she still has no flight in her flight mechanism. I wish her well with a prayer of safety and hope God still cares more than I do in my abandonment.

Every evening, every few feet, there’s a rustle in the grass as something goes leaping for its life away from my threatening roll. Every time my head shoots in the direction of sound hoping to catch the varmint fleeing. Sometimes a pheasant flutters in front of me, but most times I have no idea what it is. One time I caught a glimpse of what looked like the form of a squirrel. On the way back home yesterday I was looking up at the fiery mid-level cumulus, alighted with tilted light that had already reached the other side of this, the first Arbuckle rise. They look like flames upside down, a lighted wisp above the mountain almost every night. I heard one of God's joyous creatures coming to greet me. The first one ever that actually came to me, and as he struck his head and shoulder from the brush my heart sank in horror. About four feet away, his black body with white head and two white stripes stretching down his sides brought memory of his smell immediately to mind. My flight mechanism kicked in and I labored uphill as fast as possible. His fight mechanism kicked in and he turned, decided against flight, and lifted his tail. I cursed and fifteen feet later I looked back to find his tail still up. I waited till it was down to press on, the thrill of narrow escape in my mouth. The cows that normally run beside me were too far away, so I had no companion to share the experience with. The cows, they chase me along the fence and watch me, not as a threat, but as a sideshow, the freak that goes on wheels with two perfectly healthy legs and often hollers at them for no apparent reason—the beast.

Nearing the top of the hill that I love to fly down going about 45 mph, I caught sight and another encounter ensued. The coyote had just crossed the road and was wistfully jogging in a clearing about twenty-five feet away, into the woods. "Hey!" I hollered. He stopped and turned, no more interested in me than if he were looking at a fly. He disinterestedly pawed at something on the ground when I yelled again. “HEY!” A whistle. He turns and trots away. I had just seen an apparition, but he had seen nothing so amazing. I keep yelling trying to get him to stop…he just goes. All encounters are fleeting.

I flew down the hill, wind-whipped and amazed.

poe-m

2006-06-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

Who Am I?
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a country squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

bloggin' exhaustion

2006-05-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time,
When the world was just a pancake,
Fears would arise,
That if you went too far, you'd fall.
But with the passage of time,
It all became more of a ball;
We're as sure of that,
As we all once were,
When the world was flat.
--Dave Matthews

Pythagoras, around 570 BC, was the first to estimate that earth was a sphere. Tyco Brahe was the best naked eye observer there ever was. Kepler was his partner. In the late 16th century, they both looked at the same sun, the same data. Brahe was convinced the sun revolved around the earth; Kepler saw it the other way around. Brahe lost his nose in a duel over who was the best mathematician. He had a midget as a pet. Kepler was a stinky pious fellow. Sometimes the strongest don't win.

As of July 2006, the world's population is estimated at 6,525,170,264 people. But the number of dead will always outnumber the living. It's estimated 70 to 100 billion rest below our feet. “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.” Ironically, Stalin said that; and, ironically, he was right.

The Indonesia quake has killed 6,000, displacing over 650,000. Java was its target. I remember reading a semester or two ago that Java was the sight of hundreds of thousands of refugees who had been forced off their land in east Indonesia. They were encouraged to take up free land to cultivate--a land run--but land had been swallowed up by the rich, and they had neither the know-how nor the resources to cultivate what land they could get. Violence has erupted as disillusioned pilgrims have nowhere to turn, forced there by the government. It was a mess before the quake. Does a rumbling in the ground make their lives suddenly more important to the world? Does God rumble?

Would any of those Indonesians be interested in knowing that if the universe ever achieved critical density (the precise density marking the line between eternal expansion and eventual collapse) it will snap back like a stretched out rubber band. Would we have existed at all, if the universe reverts to the before-day when time and space began? No matter, I'll content myself with the fly on the swing staring at me.

I have before me a picture of the night sky 700 million light years across; galaxies in jumbles; their organization resembles a cross. We are less than electrons floating in a back alley of the universe. We should feel something like paramecium floating in the Atlantic--if paramecium could feel. That's our blessing and curse: we are sometimes struck with the enormity of our insignificance, and then moved to pray to God it's not so. All the while, we're convinced of our importance, that we can feel and think at all must account for something. Right? That we are loved by God--that counts for everything.

I always contrast tragedy with the immensity of the universe. I'm finding I'm rather morbid. But my intention is not to minimize suffering or the lives of people. A coping mechanism, nonetheless. But I wonder, if we realized our smallness in infinitude, would we then truly realize how very infinitely God loves us? I've seen a cross in Creation more than once, many times in fact. Once I saw it as a black locust thorn at the creek (http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5976/1129/1600/Camera%201053.2.jpg); every bush down there had thorns shaped as crosses. I held it for an hour thinking about the implications, the divine irony I held in my hands. Another time was just today, looking at that expanse of galaxies, time and space unintelligible, damn near infinity to a guy like me. And there it was, a cross, made up of galaxies. Paul knew what he was talking about: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

a humble admonition

2006-05-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

I begin to worry when I start excitedly telling others about the clear crawdad in the creek, lightning bugs and their early arrival, the way the colors fell in last Thursday’s sunset, how the baby blue jay hopped right up to the swing, squawked, and leapt on my shoulder. What am I doing? Who am I trying to convince? I see their eyes go blank, their voices on the telephone grow apathetic and wary. We had a saying when I was in the Assembly of God church regarding the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit, which meant speaking in tongues for us at the time: “It’s better felt then tellt.” But I wonder if my baptism isn’t occurring in my swing or at the creek? Sometimes I want to yell “Sha la la la la!” Tongues. It’s easy. No one telling me to keep pressin’ in. With this baptism I don’t have to press in; I just have to open my eyes. There he is---Spirit! Tongues of fire! A lingua comes pouring forth that I didn’t know I possessed. It’s worship and awe, utter thankfulness at such gratuity. Creation is nothing if it’s not gratuitous. Please! See this! God burns for you to receive and reciprocate his affection, and he burns the sky each day to show it. He’ll burn you! He sends grace fluttering by as sparrow; he shows fierceness, even urgency—the danger of staying put—in the ants that bite your feet; he shows his everlasting strength in the immortal sycamore; he shows his creativity and commitment to life in death and decomposition itself, the energy cycle; his fecundity in birth and spring; his compassion and providence in the rain; his passion in the storm; his irresistibility in gravity; his consistency in the laws of motion---"In the absence of a net force acting upon it, an object moves with constant velocity." What is that force that keeps you from leaping into the blue? God wants you here, or he would have given you the capacity for escape velocity. You would have been made less, an angel.

Please! See this!

Don’t let concrete and steel, television and internet hypnotize you. Stop reading now, and step outside. Just open your eyes and you’ll see something. Scan the ground, the base of a tree, the sky, the brick wall or sidewalk. You may have seen it a thousand times, but intricacy, the Spirit, has a funny way of striking you when you ask, seek, knock. Don’t think! Look! Look, feel, hear, taste! Think afterwards. Breathe. Lay down your defenses and problems and let creation speak to the heathen; it will, as Paul says, reveal that God IS, even tell us what he’s about. Find a sermon in the songbird, the grass, the clouds, the junebug, your lover’s eyes (don’t relegate “nature” to “wilderness,” it’s more; you’re in it whether you’re in Yellow Stone or New York City, but some places you have to look a little harder). I’ll give you a hint: look. No really! You’ve got to see it. See the color changes, the texture, the shapes, the pores, the moisture, the eyes, the whisps, the direction. I want you to see it. Look before you tell me I’m crazy. You've got to train yourself, force yourself to do it or it won't get done, and you'll miss too much. What you see is really what you get! Happy hunting.

dialectic meditations on majesty and tragedy: scale matters

2006-05-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

At the center of a star, nuclear fusion takes the only two elements the Big Bang created--hydrogen and helium--and turns them, smashing passionately into each other, into heavier elements. To be sure, scientists estimate the universe's mass to be made up 70 parts hydrogen, 28 parts helium, and 2 parts heavy elements. Those heavy elements explode from the heart of stars when they die and are flung to all parts of the universe.

Now, find the "You Are Here" arrow that points about halfway from the bright huge center of the Milky Way galaxy (much like Andromeda shown above) to its edge. It's in the Orion Arm. A nebular cloud floats naked. This particular cloud is no more than two light-years across (a light-year is how far light can travel in one year, which is, astonishingly, about 9.5 trillion km). Made of a loose conglomeration of hydrogen, helium and heavy elements in gases, it begins to spin faster, faster still, even faster. As it spins it begins to collapse in on itself, drawing its scattered elements to a center (think of an ice-skater, how she spins faster as she draws her arms in). As it spins and the heaviest matter comes to the center, the center heats up tremendously. Spins still faster. A frost line forms as a star does, those heavy elements within the line condense and become solid and the light elements--again, hydrogen and helium--become gaseous. Outside the frost line, heavy elements remain gases and light elements freeze.

See the sun as the center heated mass spins. See a few collections of heavy elements condense, or solidify, under its heat, rotating around it like little gnats. There's earth. There's life. There's a hominid. Is that Adam? There's fire. There's a pyramid. There's you!

"If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow"

Ten percent of known animal species are parasitic, and I've been being effectively sucked dry by mosquitoes since Sunday. They're monsters that not even the repellent will keep away. I stay outside despite them. The sun has only got 5 billion more years and damnit if a few mosquitoes are going to keep me from enjoying its death throes while I'm here!

I remember learning one time that a third of the world's population is probably infected with pinworms. If you want to not sleep tonight, look 'em up.

Good Hamlet says, " . . . We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service - two dishes, but to one table. That's the end."

Last night I shot an armadillo. What better way to spend your summer? It had been digging up our precious green lawn, leaving blackened, open craters throughout, making a real mess. So last night about 11:30 I looked outside and there he was. One shot knocked him behind the wheel of my swing--my Pew in the Natural Tabernacle, as I call it, now desecrated with armadillo brains; he's still moving though. One more shot to stop. Buzzard food. No remorse. Ya know, it's either kill or have your yard dug up in this life. I'm a cold killer.

Annie Dillard says, "Our excessive emotions are so patently painful and harmful to us as a species that I can hardly believe that they evolved. Other creatures manage to have effective mating and even stable societies without great emotions, and they have a bonus in they need not even mourn. (But some higher animals have emotions that we think are similar to ours: dogs, elephants, otters, and the sea mammals mourn their dead. Why do that to an otter? What creator could be so cruel, not to kill otters, but to let them care?) It would seem that emotions are the curse, not death--emotions that appear to have devolved upon a few freaks as a special curse from Malevolence.

"All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then, go back to the creek lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first."

You're going to have to grow some hide if you want to make it in this world. The world you're living in is heartless and hungry. You think I'm cruel for ending Steve (an aside: there's an armadillo that's always bustling around at the creek when I go down. One day I affectionately named him Steve the Blind and Deaf Armadillo. I could reach out and grab him before he knew I was around. One day he meandered right up to my feet. It remains to be seen if that was Steve). I'd never stick you with a needle and suck your blood, or live in your intestines and give you diarhea, colic, or hydrocephalus. I won't give you cholera or pneumonia! Everything is after you! And everything is after everything else!

"J. Henri Fabre . . . Describes a bee-eating wasp, the Philanthus, who has killed a honeybee. If the bee is heavy with honey, the wasp squeezes its crop 'so as to make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which she drinks by licking the tongue which her unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks out of her mouth at full length . . . . At the moment of some such horrible banquet, I have seen the Wasp, with her prey, seized by the Mantis: the bandit was rifled by another bandit. And here is an awful detail: while the Mantis held her transfixed under the points of the double saw and was already munching her belly, the Wasp continued to lick the honey of her Bee, unable to relinquish the delicious food even amid the terrors of death. Let us hasten to cast a veil over these horrors.'"

Today I found two bird eggs that had fallen out of their nest, one cracked, and one appeared unscathed. Looking closer at the whole one revealed an entire side caked with ants. They were a blanket! Were they trying to incubate it, to let the bird hatch healthy and alive, to fly away with joyous rapsody once the ants had raised it and taught it to sing? I turned it over and when the blanket tore I found the egg was cracked. The ants were sucking on the yellow of the egg, maybe even trying to pry it open to get to the inside. Nature is cold and impossibly hungry.

Simone Weil says, "Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love."

In Springer there was a wreck last week. A neighbor said he was driving west on the highway and found the smashed truck with a bloated body hanging out of the window. The obituary tells me Kevin Ray Kirk, 43, died in Springer May 14.

"I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things." - Isaiah 45:7

"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, THE TRUE JUDGE"

Again, Hamlet says, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will--"

It's not a wonder that we die here; it's a miracle that we live at all.

My politics quiz

2006-05-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

You are a
Social Liberal
(61% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(18% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Gracías a Dios es verano

2006-05-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

…the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Today's the first day of my summer, and I awoke alive, after three hours of sleep, too excited to return to slumber. I'll be heading home tomorrow in time for Mom's Day. It's great because I'm ready to live now. I've got big plans! At the beginning of spring I start to thaw, but by finals I'm a drone, plodding through life as if my lot is to make A's and try hard not to be too depressed. I can't help it, I just forget to live, forget the present and its "freely given canvas." By summer I can think and feel again. Spring breezes have wisped away the last final, the last hurriedly written essay, the last sleepless night, even the pain experienced in a semester. It's sad really, at this point in my life I measure time by essays and deadlines, semesters and summers.

My thawing process begins with the quickening of spring, which reminds me to read Annie Dillard, which frees me from monotony. If you were going to be stranded on a desert island with room in the bag for one book, or were going to die after the next 288 pages you read, and so desperately wanted my advice as what to take or read, I would never hesitate, now and forever, to recommend (almost tearfully plea) you take Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Never before have I been so challenged and excited to take in each moment and to see things in the world I never knew were there. To hallow the beauty and meaning of it all. Dillard is not some romantic nature observer; she's fire! Don't take the Bible! Take Dillard! You have enough memorized Scripture to do you fine and, most likely, if you're on an island, a missionary will find you soon enough and dump a handful of green New Testaments in your hands: "Share them with your friends!" If he's got black pants, a black tie and white shirt, and found you on his bike, and the book is blue, don't take it! Just starve with Tinker Creek in your hand. You'll die quicker of boredom by reading the blue book anyhow.

Just go to the library and spend an hour pouring over chapters 2 and 6--"Seeing" and "The Present": "Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you can catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall."

Did you ever think you could learn something about the world--even God!--by reading how a giant water bug sucks the liquefied innards from a frog? You won't, unless you see it for yourself or have Annie Dillard describe it to you. What about a female mantis mating with the always-sex-ready male as she devours his head down to his abdomen, where he just can't stop? Literally, his body's sayin' yes but his mind is sayin' no (did I just quote Brittany Spears?).

Have you ever seen the lights in the trees? I never had until Annie Dillard told me about them. Have you ever watched a 4.6 billion year-old sun set just past a green pasture while little calves--only weeks old--buck and run like little black shadows? Well then come to my house this summer! We'll have a beer and sit on the corner posts of the barbed wire fence, get oxidizing beige paint on our asses, and take it all in; we'll watch till the last light drains the sky and leaves us in black. I'm serious: Come! After that we might walk down to our own little Tinker and listen to the water if it hasn't been too dry. Then we'll talk about the 5 billion years the sun has left before it croaks, eats up the earth and all the energy that was once you and I, then collapses on itself. Where were you when the sun died? We'll talk about catching neutrinos! They pass right through your body, a thousand trillion of them in the time it takes you to read this sentence. You'll say, "And we'll never catch one." We'll laugh until we realize what a metaphor for so many other things that little neutrino is. That's the point: reverence. Reverence, mystery, and awe. God's fierce, he is, and if we ever thought otherwise I wonder why we serve him in the first place. It's a captivating display of love and might, even terror, but we've got nothing else to do but turn our faces to the burning white world, then, like so many monks and sages, we'll see what's in ourselves.

Get ready to be annoyed by all my meandering summertime "Natural Meditations."

To Whom it Most Likely Does Not Concern

2006-03-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

I haven't given up on the wisdom series, only given up on trying to do it right now. Frankly, I'm overwhelmed. But I hope to start it up full swing maybe this summer.
Blessings

A Country Scene

2006-03-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

The heifer had placed herself in the far of the field, alone. I watched her as she paced circles, laid down, and got up again. She would soon have her calf. I walked out with a handful of hay to throw in front of her while reciting to myself a poem I was trying to memorize— “O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago ...” I left and watched her from afar—lie down, get back up, lie down, get back up. After about an hour of this ritual she had birthed her first calf. Twenty minutes later the calf was pushing itself into air to test its newfound legs. It’s funny, even though there’s been no threat to these domesticated cattle for over 5000 years, their calves still feel the need to be walking after a few short minutes of air-breathing. What’s our excuse?

“I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you...”

As the calf gained confidence in his still-shaky legs he began to go after his mother’s milk. He would launch forward, looking for sustenance, and his mother would turn her body so he could not reach her teat. She would not allow him to eat—“These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution...” A first-time mother often doesn’t know how to take care of her calf. If the calf doesn’t suck within a short time of birth, it quickly loses strength as the protein-rich and antibody-rich colostrum wastes in the mother’s bag. The cow had lovingly cleaned him off, but would not let the calf eat, like the beauty-show moms who doll their daughters up and feed them celery while reminding them they’ll be fat and ugly if they eat real food.

But cows have no aesthetics. I sang songs to them yesterday and they just stared at me dumbly with meatball eyes. I played the guitar and sang of how dumb they were. My lyrics turned evangelistic as I called for the cows—young and old—to turn from their wicked ways, their sloth and gluttony and stupidity. If only St. Francis had been here! He would have converted all eight of them, my mighty herd, along with the birds, maybe my cat Muffin too (I’ve always wished she’d get saved because she’s getting old and she always looks so unpleasant). Why would they not turn? Why did they not fall, repentantly, to their knobby knees? Perhaps my tone wasn’t urgent enough, my chords not dark and persistent enough? I suppose a G, C, and D were bad choices—too typical, over-used, too churchy, too cliche—but, alas, my imagination was dry. Perhaps their hearts are too cold? Maybe my presentation wasn’t flashy enough? No strobe lights. No amps. No stage. Just my wooden chair and Martin, a cup of water for my parched throat, and my cell phone turned to vibrate as not to disturb the service. That’s not very culturally relevant, even for cows. The sun was our only light, which was warm enough for me, but they see that every day; the grass, our carpet, but they eat from there, it’s nothing new to them; the barbed-wire fence was our sanctuary walls (which I, mistakenly, sat outside of), but it is too constricting, too threatening. How could they relax in these conditions? They seemed relaxed to me though, masticating their cud with apathetic, unworried eyes. They were unconcerned with the Hellfire that awaits them.

I was about to shake the dust from my feet when the calves became interested in my message, for they congregated near the fence, gazing at me in song. You’ve got to get them young! Teach them in the ways of God young so they won’t forget when they’re older, so they’ll return later.

All of these cows are single mothers. Their bull is introduced to them once—WHAM! BAM! Thank you ma’am!—then he’s gone. Another dead-beat. They raise these kids on their own. Maybe I need a Minister to Single Mothers? A Minister to Fatherless Calves? How much are they running these days?

All these single mothers became a nuisance as they knowingly sniffed around the wobbly calf. I could hear them all insisting this young mother didn’t know what she was doing. She was clearly intimidated as she shuffled back a little to allow the other three mothers a closer look. Even the little calves got in on the action. The new calf would pathetically wobble into the bags of the other mothers who would disdainfully push it away with their heads, knocking it around in a dizzy haze.

I held the baby in my arms as my mother drove the eighty yards to the barn. He rested his head lazily on my arms. Even an Old Testament temple priest would have been moved to compassion. I smiled as he turned his head towards his back legs seeming as comfortable as on the ground. This calf was heavy and didn’t help any as I had lifted his dead weight into the back of the mule (the vehicle, not the animal). We tried to get the mother to follow, but she just stayed behind, helpless as we kidnapped her still-wet calf. So we took it back and laid it down.

After a bit longer she allowed the calf to suck and it began to hop around its mother with the joy of the living, the joy I often forget. Such a stupid animal with joy and enthusiasm I envied. Such a stupid animal that taught me so many lessons today. If only I had page enough to share more with you.

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

2006-03-13T23:26:00.000-08:00

I've been doing some reading in wisdom literature lately while simultaneously reading renown literary critic Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? I realize that my life over the last few years has been a search for the answer to this very question, and will continue till...forever. Wisdom is out there, for I've read and known those who have found it. Or maybe they just pretend?

Many criticize Bloom, and he certainly merits criticism at times, but he's brought this question--Where shall wisdom be found?--to the front of my mind, whereas before it was an unstated motivation. I seek wisdom to live fully alive, submit to God, and to live humbly in service to others. The way the Old Testament talks about wisdom is in a manner of pressing urgency:

Lady Wisdom goes out in the street and shouts … :
"Simpletons! How long will
you wallow in ignorance?
Cynics! How long will you feed your cynicism?
Idiots! How long will you refuse to learn?
About face! I can revise your
life.
Look, I'm ready to pour out my spirit on you;
I'm ready to tell
you all I know.
As it is, I've called, but you've turned a deaf ear;
I've reached out to you, but you've ignored me.

"Since you laugh at
my counsel
and make a joke of my advice,
How can I take you seriously?
I'll turn the tables and joke about your troubles!
What if the
roof falls in,
and your whole life goes to pieces? [like Job?]
What if catastrophe strikes and there's nothing
to show for your life but rubble and
ashes?
You'll need me then. You'll call for me, but don't expect
an answer.
No matter how hard you look, you won't find me.

"Because you hated Knowledge
and had nothing to do with the Fear-of-God,
Because you wouldn't take my advice
and brushed aside all my offers to train you,
Well, you've made your bed--now lie in it;
you wanted your own way--now, how do you like it?
Don't you see what happens, you simpletons, you idiots?
Carelessness kills; complacency is murder.
First pay attention to me,
and then relax.
Now you can take it easy--you're in good hands.

(Prov 1:20-33 The Message)

And this:

Good friend, take to heart what I'm telling you;
collect my counsels and
guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That's right--if you make Insight
your priority,
and won't take no for an answer, . . .
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
you'll have come upon the Knowledge
of God

(Prov 2:1-5 The Message).

You'll notice in both of these passages that "wisdom" and "Fear-of-God" are synonymous. The wooing from Lady Wisdom strikingly resembles God's impassioned pleas to Israel to return to him in passages throughout the OT.

So, there! We have our answer, concisely and powerfully: Wisdom is the fear of God. You can stop reading now if this has quenched your desire for wisdom. But this answer opens up more questions for me. What is fear of God? Is it like hiding from a grizzly bear in the forest? Is it wistful submission to any injustice? Is it demeaning our suffering by saying "Well, God's God, and he can do whatever he wants or allow what he will; after all, it's our fault for turning against him and sinning"? I find this kind of God one not worth serving. All too often this is the comfort I hear--or most likely have given--to the problem of others pain. But why do we have to hide this kind of God from those being evangelized, only to slap them in the face with his apathy when they've made a commitment:

Taking a cue from dating is helpful on this point. If we desire people to be happily married to Jesus as his loving bride, it makes sense to let them go out on a few dates with him instead of just putting a shotgun to their heads and asking them to hurry up, put on a white dress, and try to look happy for the
photos. --Mark Driscoll

The first book we will look at, I believe, offers some good, perhaps not too comforting, answers to these questions. I'm finding, however, that those things which initially offend me in wisdom literature, and in the gospel in general, turn out to be my biggest comfort. Must we peel back the fabric of the cosmos so there is no more mystery? Are answers really always comforting? Are answers always wisdom? Take a moment and ponder that last question. It seems we often cheapen wisdom, God's wisdom, with explanations. I'm not sure the two are always the same, and I think the two proffer differing levels of comfort when actual troubles strike. The beauty of Job is that we are left with ambiguity, gaping in awe in the presence of a boundless God and a universe which may be in fact ambivalent to our existence. Job insists that answers aren't wisdom, nor are they comforting when we are confronted with tragedy, doubt, and injustice. Job insists that we live with a sense of mystery, that our lives are something less faithful when we demand the death of mystery; in the end, the death of mystery is our arrogant denial of God.

Where shall wisdom be found? Since we know the answer to the question, let's find out how we got there. Let's take the wisdom-journey, a path so few take, a road narrow, but the only one worth traveling.

If you can, spend some time looking over Job 1-15, and 38-end. I would also suggest you meditate on the Lady Wisdom passage above, unpack the call to Wisdom, the wisdom of Wisdom.

An Open Letter to the Youth of CCC

2006-03-02T15:58:00.000-08:00

God gave them an unusual aptitude for learning the literature and science of the time -- (Daniel 1:17).

Dear friends,

Since I’ve noticed Artie has linked me from the CCC blog, and also that he posted on college recently, I felt the need to address you concerning something I feel passionate about and to encourage those who are planning to attend college. I want to offer advice, and some warnings.

God has given us an amazing gift in our mind; it is that which brings together our heart and spirit; as in the physical body, it is one part of the body of Christ, but as science (and decapitation!) has taught us, without it, the rest of the body will not function. The mind is the gateway to the world, with it we perceive everything around us and apprehend the deeper things of God.

All Christians are called to cultivate this amazing gift. As Jesus said: “The most important commandment is this . . . you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength” (Mark 12:29-30). I put all these forces in italics because not one is more important than the other. And in my opinion, all are completely tied together in a way that one can’t be taken out and nothing could be added in. Jesus put it succinctly and powerfully: your love for God not only demands your complete self, it also promises to make you complete!

I have attended two universities and my college experience has been enlightening and humbling. At the moment I am at the University of Oklahoma as a junior in anthropology with a minor in religious studies. I am now making plans for graduate school. My faith has been greatly challenged at university, but after every battle with doubt, my faith has solidified into something stronger—not weakened. I say this not in pride, for I have done nothing while Christ is everything, but as encouragement. It’s not a necessity that secular university destroy your faith, but it also doesn’t necessitate that you compartmentalize it from the rest of your learning. In fact, later in this letter I will encourage you to meld your faith completely with your “secular” learning. I will encourage you to take away the distinction between secular learning and sacred learning.

College has confronted me with questions I never asked before and a world I had never seen before. At many times my faith has been labeled as an antique and a crutch. The problem with this criticism is I agree! I’m finding I can no longer walk without a crutch, and this modern- post-modern society offers me little to hope in. Christ is all we have—of this I’m more convinced every day! But let me say this to you: If your faith cannot be questioned and challenged, and if it cannot hold up to scrutiny, it is not a faith worth having. Faith—especially faith in Christ—is not for the faint of heart, especially not today, when it is despised and criticized from every corner. “Don’t let anyone mislead you” (Matt 24:4).

This leads me to another important point. As I have moved through the college scene I’ve seen more and more the need for educated Christians working faithfully IN the world, FOR the Kingdom. Christians have an amazing responsibility to engage our culture on our culture’s terms; if we shy away from this freedom, we shy away from addressing the needs of Jesus Christ in those who surround us (see Matt 25:31-46). We Christians do not live in a bubble. When we do, not only does the world around us suffer, but we suffer as well. We must bring the Love of Christ to those around us, to those who don’t believe, to those who do believe, and to those who despise believers. Ours is a holistic faith, not a compartmentalized one.

This is my Trojan Horse Strategy. We must place ourselves in the halls of leadership, academia, business, humanitarian work, etc., not so we can wrest power from a “Godless” government or force our moral convictions on those who do not agree, but to share the Love of Christ, that Glorious Promise, and to spread the Gospel through kindness, utilizing the resources that our different career paths offer us for the Kingdom. We also must seek to show the world the face of God, not the hateful or authoritarian face that so many Christians we see in the media show to the world which makes the world hate Him, but the face of compassion, social justice, conviction, humility, and infinite Love. While college isn’t necessary to love others, it is part of the cultural arena with which we must deal in, just as Daniel did when the Jews were captive in Babylon.

Artie is right when he says that money and a secure future should not be your motivation for college! I have seen a number of students fail miserably because this was their motivation (among other things). Put simply, money is not motivation enough for you. It won’t help you endure the seemingly pointless YEARS of studying Spanish, writing crappy Comp essays, studying American history, and living without adequate sleep and nourishment. We need a new motivation for college, and here is my suggestion. Don’t look at college as that necessary evil that you must endure to live the American Dream. Let me tell you, you’ll be miserable seeking the American Dream. It is hollow and shallow, with no substance for your soul, encouraging you to become mindless consumers lacking heart. In your pursuit for higher education seek to become a student of God and the world, for the world is his masterpiece and grand letter to us, convincing us of His Love and Dedication. In all of your classes seek the tidbits of God, or as Annie Dillard calls them, the pennies that are strewn all around us, to find and to be amazed at (See this passage quoted in the post below). Find God in your studies and be astounded by His Creation. You are not studying Jewish history; you’re studying God’s exemplary love for all humanity. You are not studying the root systems of trees; you’re studying a metaphor for our precious faith, which need roots deep and strong to weather the storms of doubt. You are not studying English literature; you’re finding hidden treasures as writers who had no intention of relating God’s purpose feed your soul with truth . . . the list goes on and on. Hallow the truth from everything. Don’t be a passive learner. Be passionate in your studies because you are studying God’s Workmanship itself!

I feel like I could say more but this letter is getting ridiculously long and you probably have school work to do, like me. Let me leave you with the admonition to love God and others. Artie has taught you this and he is right. You may find in college or after high school that the way you love God is different than the way you’ve been taught. This is good. God touches us in various ways depending on our personalities and pasts. What you find meaningful, someone else may not. But seek him earnestly, with gusto, in all you do! God will not be loved passively. Study Scripture as you study in school. Become students of God’s heart and creation and I assure you, you will be truly astounded! God bless you all. My prayers are with you.

In Christ,
tyler

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

2006-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

Enjoy my favorite author---Annie Dillard:

"When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.

It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is a dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make you day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get."

"...how Christian, how stupid!"

2006-01-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

"He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense." --C.S. Lewis

Some would contest the fact that this God is one of love; Lewis would reply that their "conception of love needs correction." Thankfully, and most divinely, "As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished [Heb 12:8]." Thank God I'm a bastard!

I'm not even sure what to write tonight, though I feel pressed to write something. Even at my lowest I am convinced, so very convinced, that I am loved beyond what I even know, and certainly beyond what I deserve. I have been paid that "intolerable compliment." The love of God is so crazy it must be true: for who would dream to love the unlovable, the pathetic, the stupid, the bumbling, the ugly, the failure? No one could make up such a ludicrous idea! How much more the Incarnation? I absolutely love this Kierkegaard quote:

"That one should push through the crowd in order to get to the spot where money is dealt out, and honor, and glory--that one can understand. But to push oneself forward in order to be flogged--how sublime, how Christian, how stupid!"

God's "inexorable sense" of love is truly something miraculous, and if he feels it, it is only because he has made himself to do so. We have not created the need in him, but he made it for us: "If he requires us, the requirement is of His own choosing. If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has so subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding."

For pain to be an irreconcilable problem with the idea of a loving God, two things must be happening: (1) We posses a trivial understanding or attach a misguided ideal to the word 'love'. (2) We look on the world as if man were the center.

What Lewis says is true:

"It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness."

Tonight I use the words of others, because theirs are the only ones that make sense.

God is surely good.

"The little clause 'God is' signifies a revolution." --Barth

Even the Thorns Speak of Him

2006-01-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

I suppose it should be no other way, that the same day I post about pain, I be confronted with my utter lack of personal experience. Of course I had no delusions that I did know anything of serious suffering going into the thing. That’s why I put my words in the mouth of someone suffering, hopefully to lend meaning to the words that I could not empower. I had thought about adding a disclaimer, but I assumed the fact that I used a dying man to speak my thoughts would be self-evident: it’s hard to accept it coming from someone who knows so little on the subject.

So it had been arranged. I was to watch the humbling and moving Shape of the Moon the night after I posted. It’s a documentary of a Christian Indonesian family living in a Muslim world, being poor and sad and contentious. To be reminded of the suffering of more than two-thirds of the world is a powerful thing. But the more I think about it, the more it confirms the good of pain. Could it be that pain is a problem because we don’t have the right grid to deal with it?

I saw in the film a family toiling under the weight of poverty, greed, loss of life, abandoning faith, perilous living conditions, underemployment or unemployment, a corrupt system—but I also saw them laughing, acting silly, singing songs, working together, being loved and giving love, forgiving, repenting, praying. Are they so different from me? And must I degrade my own perceivably pithy pain? I should think not. Perhaps I should be the one being pitied, for I often lack in those good things I saw in abundance that lay just under the surface in that family. Are they truly worse off because they have to worry about fixing a leaky thatched roof? Or am I worse off for worrying about the highest GB storage I can get for my ipod, or which book I will buy next, or how many I can buy this time, or whether Brad and Jen will ever reconcile, or how I’ll pay my satellite bill next month? Is there not poverty in riches? And can there not be found riches in poverty? I think Jesus was pretty clear on that.

Of course poverty is only one kind of pain, and there are plenty of others that come along with it. The thing I took away from the film is that we all suffer the same. While our sufferings may come in different degrees and styles we all must deal with it by our faith or shrivel up. C.S. Lewis said that pain should be a problem only for the Christian because they have to reconcile suffering with a loving God. Surely pain can’t be a problem for those who have no faith, it’s just the way of the world. For them it’s just natural—a hindrance, yes, but nonetheless pointless. With this mindset, suffering is wholly arbitrary and inconsequential. But with Christ, suffering has not only an end, but a good.

“All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time…. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us…But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.” --Romans 8:18-25

“The sufferings of the present time cannot, therefore, be compared with this glory. In Christ Jesus they have indeed been compared, and have been shown not merely to be simply characteristic of our life in this world, but actually to mark the frontier where this life is dissolved by life eternal. The time in which we live and suffer is the present time, the time when glory is made manifest in suffering. So clearly does God manifest His glory in the secret of suffering, that, so far from shrinking for His sake from the contemplation of suffering, it is for His sake that we are bound to gaze upon it, to see in it the step, the movement, the turning-point from death to life, and to apprehend it as the place where Christ is to be seen. To overlook suffering is to overlook Christ.” –Karl Barth, from The Epistle to the Romans

A Monologue on the Problem of Pain

2006-01-09T05:27:00.000-08:00

“If any message from the core of reality ever were to reach us, we should expect to find in it just the unexpectedness, that wilful [sic], dramatic anfractuosity which we find in the Christian faith. It has the master touch—the rough, male taste of reality, not made by us, or, indeed, for us, but hitting us in the face.” --C.S. Lewis

Up stood an old man, frail and pale, looking as if he were suffering from a deadly consumption, he began to whisper something barely audible to his audience. He closed his eyes to the light, seeming too hard to remember the lines of a long-passed third-grade play. Speaking with dire weakness, his words held a pointed authority built up by years of life, a strength that juxtaposed his physical state. And everyone listened, quieted, listening for a humming bird’s wings.

“I stand as one dead,” he whispered, his breath already short, “yet I stand somehow. I stand humbly, and I stand in awe.

“Today I awoke unable to breathe, fatigued, with a crushing headache, pain in my chest, unable to open my eyes to the beautiful morning’s God-light. And I thanked our Creator for that light, even though I could not bear it in my present state. My eyes watered as I struggled for breath, until finally my lungs were opened; I smiled as I breathed—as if for the first time. Today I was reborn, from ashes I came. Brought back from the dead as it were. Just call me Lazarus of Bethany. Today I feel confident that I was created from dust and to dust this flesh will return. But I am moved today by that fact.

“You see, I’ve done nothing to bring about this disease, nothing but exist—and what better thing to do? It’s a painful existence, yes, but what alternative is there? There are things I know now. I’m not guaranteed health and happiness, and, certainly not life. I don’t deserve any of these things, though I deserve fully a decrepit body, death of body and even soul. Though I deserve death, I taste only life—even at the end of this terrestrial stage, or, perhaps, especially at the end of this mortal breath. Would that we never forget the fact that we deserve absolutely nothing.”

Some would later swear they saw tears in his eyes as his posture strengthened and he said with passionate conviction, “Yet my God loves me! He gave me a free will, to express his love to others, back to him, and now, to share with you my turmoil—my blessing.

“There stands before me nothing to obstruct the choices that are capable within me besides my physical limitations and moral inclinations. This morning I opened a door for a young lady and that simple gesture got me to thinking. This door was an obstruction to that girl’s intentions, whatever her destination and purpose. The door had closed behind me, but I returned to open it. I intervened in the natural world, working against the laws which closed it and which would work against that young lady’s efforts as she went on her way. My courtesy was a simple blessing to her, and a miraculous testament to my free will. I’ve learned, that if I’m traveling smoothly downhill, there must be someone toiling upward on that very hill. Nature demands this be so and if you tried to fashion another system, you’d take away the very life we have.
“It has been said that nature maintains autonomy so man can maintain free choice. If nature were perfectly fitted to suit everyone’s each need and desire, where would free will stand? If nature were precisely tuned to your good alone, where would I stand when your will or good ran contrary to my own? I would then have no free choice, as nature bent its knee to you alone. So nature has its own fixed trajectory, not preferring one person over another. Yet that nature can be manipulated—just as it was when I opened that door, or even, when someone made that door—but if compassion and good can be worked by using the fixed state of matter and employing my free choice, so can malevolence and evil. C.S. Lewis said, ‘The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it for hitting our neighbor on the head.’ So the laws of nature provide for good and the free will of individuals can make nature conform, even in the smallest ways, to fit their desires. Lewis also said that ‘if souls are free, they cannot be prevented from dealing with the problem [natural problems] by competition instead of courtesy.’

“I suppose you’ve noticed, but this is practiced every day, both good and evil. But this is the goodness of God: that even our Fall, our conscious choice against his loving intentions for our race, will not deter him from making something good from it. He will not let us muddle things up. No! He’ll take the very consequence of our sin—our failing bodies, our sweat and toil, hate and pain, even our death—and turn it into a blessing. But in Christ, he shared our suffering, took our pain and lived this ragamuffin human life—yet in triumph. And our Redeemer will remain in that super-fleshly body forever as an affirmation that the work he started in us is indeed good, as he said. So now we suffer not in vain, but agree with Christ in his sufferings, partaking in his salvific grace, becoming more like him; therefore, in all suffering we are made to know more deeply the love of God, that he, of all, should suffer for us.

“The truth is that you would not be without your pain. Think for a moment on the suffering of the lepers and that their predicament is nothing less than a deadening of the nerve receptors that warn the brain of physical harm. And think on the sweetness of the sweet, how it would be diminished or impossible without the bitter, even the bitterest. Can you imagine this world without it? What then could we appreciate? What then could we resist? Reject? Abhor? . . . Love? Where would be our sin? And where our forgiveness and grace? Would we be better as angels, those who give ceaseless love to God, yet are not adored by their Master in return as we are—we who least deserve it?

“For the Love of our God, let us understand our problem of pain and sin, for it is what we have! It is our necessary path to salvation through Christ. Without this we’d know neither love nor life! I will die soon, and so shall you, but let us, in these free moments, glorify the Son of God with our suffering and our health alike, for both make our condition salvageable and wonderfully worthwhile. We must have them until we reach the other side where the troubles of this life will not compare to the Glory that shall be revealed. We must have them so Christ may be glorified and his—our—Father will find those trespasses wiped from his memory as our salvation is complete. Let us suffer and celebrate, together, so that our merciful God may be glorified! We diminish pain where we can, but when we cannot, we embrace him. Fear not, for he is with you always!”

At this crescendo the old man fell silent and walked off stage.

"The wrath of God is the judgment under which we stand in so far
as we do not love the Judge . . . . For the wrath of God cannot be His last
word, the true revelation of Him! . . . . The whole world is the footprint
of God: yes, but, in so far as we choose scandal rather than faith, the
footprint in the vast riddle of the world is the footprint of His
wrath.” --Karl Barth

The God of Abraham

2006-01-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

WE are made to believe that God became unnecessary through the advent of science, that the world became too harsh of a place, the universe too vast and empty and cold, as we hallowed the depths of both ocean and heaven. Such is not the case however. We find in the very first civilization, Sumer, the pessimistic Wheel of Life perception of how the universe functions, simply, that everything was born only to toil and die: “The creatures cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die” (Lewis). The seasons spoke of monotony, not diversity, endless patterns that brought distinct but equal troubles at each passing. Throughout the literature and lives of Sumerians, and every other ancient culture, life is most important when spent in conquest and riches. Even passionate love is something of a secondary notion, supplementing the most important substances—fame and glory—because in this mindset what one leaves behind is the only thing that really defines them, the only proof they ever existed at all. (If that doesn’t sound forbiddingly modern, I don’t know what does.) We find in the Epic of Gilgamesh—possibly the oldest written word dating from around 2600 BCE—the pursuit fully of these things material.

Though they had a rich pantheon of extremely anthropomorphized gods (as all pantheism goes), Cahill says we should take the Sumerians' piety with the same weight we do when a politician makes allusions to the Creator. They were an incredibly practical and secular people, for civilization wouldn’t have irrupted without such spirits, but their gods did little for them, being mostly bickering or wicked or half-hearted and, like humans, always looking out for their own interests. A pantheon like theirs was only a natural articulation of the ancients’ fear and misery of the monotony of this life, the turmoil and struggle, only to die in the end. This pain was not abated by their beliefs, only made more acute. Lewis describes a term that may fit this sad state as Numinous (that which inspired unspeakable awe or dread).

My point here was not to give a history of civilization or pantheism, but to show that the pointlessness that infuses the beliefs of most naturalists is not, as they claim, just realism that came along with science: this feeling was always there, this pessimistic outlook as real and painful for the ancients as the moderns.

The above is what makes what happens next absolutely and marvelously miraculous. A wealthy (and practical) Semitic Sumerian hears a voice, a deity who separates himself from the confusing god-buffet of his day, calling Abram by name, and telling him to leave Ur for the desert. Something’s going to happen. For the first and last time, a god begins to define his own attributes and thus establishes a personal and beneficent relationship with a human through his own initiative. This god will later identify himself to Moses as YHWH (Ex 3:14) which means “I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” or simply “I AM” (there are no vowels in original Hebrew. Since Jews have not uttered the Name from early on in their monotheistic history, the actual pronunciation is unknown; Cahill says the only way he knows to say it sounds like a breath, which is beautifully descriptive of the God who is Spirit or Breath or found in the “still small voice,” who will not be represented by idols).

We can’t underestimate the significance of this event: the “hostile immensity” of the universe rapped up in the ominous Wheel of Life began to unravel as linear history, based upon God’s self-disclosure, and became real and useful for the first time. Without this dictum, history and even life has no significance since it’s bound to return to the same place of nonexistence. Now progress can be made. Science and our entire Western world rest on this very moment—when a god became God. And today it's fashionable to disparage man in his earliest stages. We speak of ancients as ignorant, using a silly idea of spirituality and God to give them strength. Well, C.S. Lewis says to those who suffer from such hubris: “To them we owe language, the family, clothing, the use of fire, the domestication of animals, the wheel, the ship, poetry, and agriculture.” Not so stupid, were they? Lewis’s point is this: that it is truly a miracle that God became God to us in the milieu of such hopelessness; it was a truly novel occurrence, something that went profoundly against the literally “timeless culture of Sumer” (Cahill). This would be the start of something new, something explosive.

Read a deeper and more eloquent treatment of this subject in The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill.

A Place to Start

2006-01-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

I suppose it would be helpful to survey the foundation of any of my thoughts that will find themselves in this blog. Anyone who knows me knows I subscribe to few systems faithfully. I find it difficult to settle into some of the more contested views; yesterday I was a Piperian Calvinist, today a Molinist, tomorrow I won’t care at all. In such nonessentials my position is only as strong as the weakest breeze and possibly rests on my mood for the day. I would have a problem with this intellectual inconsistency if any other part of my life held any consistency (Maybe that’s why I need a system?). I see few pressing reasons to plant myself fully in such nonessential matters yet (aside from academic reasons), but only to take what’s helpful and what encourages me to love God and people more.

Though I waiver on some issues, others are confirmed for me. The Apostles Creed or the Nicene confession of 325 are good summations of my essential beliefs, but I should speak further on important issues to me.

Theologians differentiate between special and general revelation (Milne). All of creation, “moral experience”, the universal religious tendency, and subjective emotions, are general revelation. They speak directly of God’s character, plan, and law, but can’t give specific knowledge of salvation. This is why we need special revelation, to tell us specifically, more completely of God’s plan and love. This specificity comes first and most powerfully in the God-man Jesus Christ. In him we know as much as our finite minds can comprehend of God’s love and plan and how much he has chosen to condescend, how to achieve salvation and a relationship with the God of the universe. Scripture is also a direct testament to God’s heart and intentions. The first way to know about Jesus is through Scripture (apart from miraculous Christ- or angel-visitations—which, I’m told do happen), however, so we must put faith in God’s Word to understand him; but Christ is God’s final and full Word (Logos), his fleshly and incarnate revelation of himself (Jn. 1:1, 14; 14:10; Phil. 2:7, 8; Heb 1:3). I believe fully that the Bible is revelation of God, which is self-authenticated by the Spirit for those who will see. While seeking to develop a more structured biblical theology, my greatest desire is to know God more fully and abide in his beneficial law—to apply Scripture to life.

While natural theology has its limits in apologetics, I see it as extremely beneficial to the nature-inclined or romantic Christian. I’ve felt God as powerfully watching the sun set, or just staring out across the fields in Springer, or playing the piano, or listening to a Liszt concerto, as I ever have in the walls of the church. This is a strange thing to say, and I don’t expect anyone who hasn’t felt something similar to understand, but God makes himself real to each of us in a number of ways; however, I don’t base a soteriological (salvation) doctrine with my natural theology. Natural theology works as God-authenticating or love-inspiring in my life, as general revelation, but for the Christian, natural proclivities can inform his faith to an astounding degree. It’s good to keep in mind I use “natural theology” in two different ways: the first is the most common sense of apologetics, e.g., cosmological, ontological, teleological and moral arguments; the second way I can only describe as finding God’s love displayed through nature, through the beautiful, the mighty, the mundane, and even terrible. This is a more mystical, subjective idea, but it works for me. Not to be confused as pantheistic, I only speak of confirmation of God’s love and continuing insights, not that he himself is in nature, but testified to and worshipped by nature. Well, that makes me sound vitalist, but I’m not that either. Nor am I one to split hairs over semantics.

Well, I’m boring myself now, so we’ll rap up. This blog began as a journal of the reading I plan to start with a friend but I feel it will be more than that. I look forward to sharing what little I can and being able to share my thoughts on my current non-school reading. If you’re interested in joining the discussion and study, please do! I would encourage you to start your own blog (just tell me what it is and if you don’t mind your blog being put on my sidebar) and we can all link together to catch up on each others’ thoughts.

The first book is Lewis’s The Problem of Pain which will immediately be followed up by A Grief Observed, also by C.S. Lewis. The first book is his theoretical exploration of God and the purpose—or problem?—of pain, the other, his practical experience after the tragic death of his wife. There’s no official reading schedule as yet, but I will be done (with luck) with both of these books by mid-February. I’m starting this week. They are easy reads and short. All subsequent books or subject studies will be done each following month. We felt a month would give us enough time to dig a little deeper, reach a little further, but will not bog us down in our studies. It will also stretch the time out enough so it shouldn’t interfere with other responsibilities—we’ll see. Some months will be studies of literature itself; other months will be specific topic or character studies. I’m sure the subject matter won’t always interest everyone who might want to be involved, but it sure won’t hurt you if you go ahead and plug away to further your knowledge, and you may find things unexpected. Feel free to pop in and out as you choose. I will also be posting just general thoughts on numerous topics and will try to make the entries based on reading accessible and applicable for those who aren’t joining us as well.

This blog, I suppose, is what I’m learning about God and the Christian life, my thoughts made digital, and—for better or worse—public. As Barth says, “What is the attempt to speak of him but helpless sighing and stammering[?]” I don’t intend on helping or enlightening anyone, only to speak of the Only thing which matters in this world, albeit in “helpless sighing and stammering.”

On My Purpose

2005-12-31T00:31:00.000-08:00

I posses a negligible ability to journey into the depths of those things I find most fascinating--theology, literature, nature, philosophy, music, photography, history, culture, anthropology, etc.--but this, this is my attempt to do what little I can, to share with those who'd care, or who'd pass my way. This affectionately--and aptly--entitled blog is to share any insight which God has allowed me. We'll see where it leads.

In Christ.