Read it, loved it, and I quit too. FIrst thing I remember consciously agreeing with the Morningstar on.
I've had a few friends and colleagues with similar disdain for comic books, but I keep winning them over. I regularly buy my wife the "Strangers in Paradise" trades because she can't get enough of them,and a friend of mine from WCN Newspapers is now well and truly hooked on Sandman. I just lent him "Fables and Recollections" and "The Kindly Ones" to get him on the home stretch. Working at WCN, Brian doesn't have the money to buy them, but he loves a good horror story and figures he probably will buy them later on.
And of course, he was hooked enough that I was able to get him to read "V for Vendetta" and since has started looking up other comics on his own. So I claim him as another convert to appreciating comic books as a latter 20th-century art form.
"A Doll's House," since it's set at a "cereal convention," does suggest some fairly graphic stuff, although most of it is left to the reader's imagination (thereby making it worse). Still, it's important because of what happens with Rose Walker toward the end of the collection; it introduces the majorly significant Lyta Hall and her son, Daniel; it relates the story of Dream's relationship with Nada; it introduces Hob and sets up Shakespeare's indentureship under Dream; and also contains the first appearance of the Corinthian, Fiddler's Green and Matthew. Each of those ends up playing a vital role in later stories.
The dead return in "Seasons of Mist," which includes the story of Edwin Paine and how he continues his education. (At least I think that's his name -- my copy is on loan to another friend.) That volume had some disquieting parts, but nothing that gave me nightmares. Mostly I got a kick out of the idea of Morningstar quitting as the Adversary, and I loved the irony of Duma and Remiel being told by the Voice to take office at hell -- especially when Remiel complained it was unjust and how he would rebel, and then realized there was nowhere else for him to go but into hell if he chose to reject the Presence.
The collections generally stand well independently. They're self-contained and give you enough information to figure out what's going on -- something made necessary by the medium, since "Sandman" originally was published over something like a seven-year period in monthly 30-page installments. I can understand a reluctance to read it -- one of the stories in "The Kindly One" actually gave me nightmares -- but the English degree-holding part of me still has to underscore the significance of the volume for the overall series.
Because it is a single cohesive work, and not merely episodic like many superhero titles, it has a certain cadence that reaches a tremendous climax in "The Kindly Ones" before tapering off into the denoument of "The Wake." Without question, it's the finest comic to come out a mainstream publisher in ages. (It's also deservedly recognized as resurrecting horror comics and breathing new life into the comics medium as a whole.)
From what I heard, Gaiman kept expecting to get canceled each issue because of the content.
I've also discovered a certain odd thrill in discovering the depths of literature and comics that Gaiman plumbed for Sandman. Cain and Abel once were the hosts of two of D.C.'s other, long-canceled horror comics, called "House of Mysteries" and "House of Secrets" respectively. I even owned a copy of an issue of the former, at one point. No idea what's happened to it since then. Prez appeared in a miserably conceived comic about 30 years ago.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
'the sandman'
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
we are the branches
Which branch of Christianity do you belong to?
In terms of views of the Bible or even most major doctrines, I don't think there are substnative differences between the labels evangelical and fundamentalist. I think the difference comes in connotation.
The Associated Press notes that the term "fundamentalist" generally is considered derogatory and should not be applied to an organization or individual unless the organization or individual so referenced uses the term in that way already. My own interpretation of that term is that fundamentalist churches usually are withdrawn from society at large, which it holds in some disdain. Fundamentlist groups also are more likely to be less educated. That's the connotation I take away from the image, anyway.
Evangelicals, however, are more likely to be involved in things like politics as a means of saving the world from itself. There might be a condemnation of society but usually less so of individuals within it. In my experience, evangelical groups often are more educated, generally speaking.
Pentecostals can be of either school, but they are marked by practices such as speaking in tongues and prophecy, and it's also -- generally speaking again -- among Pentecostals that you're more like to find some of the excess that dogged the American Church in the 1980s and 1990s.
All that said of the stereotypes, it's true that you'll find goodhearted people and knuckleheads in every sect of Christianity.
2602.20 in reply to 2602.16
That's certainly the popular depiction of liberation theology in evangelical circles, but that's a pretty extreme view. Working that way, I might well classify evangelicalism as a belief system that holds that Jesus was a hard-working member of the upper-middle class who believed that people should rise or fall on their own merits, hated welfare cheats, and thought the economy would do better if only the wealthy got to keep more of their money.
Yeah, you'll find that Marxists have used liberation theology to hijack the church in some parts of Latin America, just as you'll find that some Republicans have hijacked evangelicalism to muster the votes they need to win. Neither case should be considered a fair representation of the beliefs.
As I understand it, liberation theology teaches that the poor have a special place in God's economy. When Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," he means that: The gospel has a special relevance for the poor, and that they stand to enter it ahead of the wealthy. That's why he says things like "The Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor" and "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That's why Jesus grew up in a working-class home, worked a simple trade, and spent his adult life primarily with the outcasts of society -- because the people society has rejected, have a special value to God.
Salvation remains by grace, through faith, but the epistle of James loses none of its meaning: Remember that he says that faith that produces no works in keeping with righteousness is a sterile, dead faith. And James -- like the prophets in the Tanakh -- has some incredibly stern words for those who make themselves wealthy at the expense of others. "Woe to you who are rich," he writes. "The wages you have denied the workers cry out against you. You have hoarded wealth in the last days." Many evangelicals I've known have been ignorant of those words, or view them as less inspired than Paul's words, "You have been saved by grace, through faith, not by works, lest any man should boast."
It's not just about money, although that's one indicator of inequity that's easy to latch onto. Jesus in his Parable of the Sheep and the Goats runs through a whole laundry list of things we're to do, and at the end of it, he consigns to everlasting fire and torment a group of people who ask with puzzlement, "Lord, when did we ever see you in need and not minister to you?" These aren't non-Christians being sent away; they're people who believed they were following.
In "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck observed that the church often tells the poor just to sit back and fold your hands, because you'll be eating ice cream off gold plates in heaven. Phooey to that, I say. John the Baptist says, "If you have two cloaks, give one to the man who has none." Jesus told people to set aside their prejudices and care for the wounded, even if the wounded man was an individual who would just as soon throw stones at you as give you the time of day.
To me, that's what liberation theology is about. It's about recognizing that Christ is in the need, and responding to him. It's about meeting the needs of others, and it's open making real and physical connections with other people. It's about correcting social inequities and problems by helping the people caught in them.
That's liberating, and that's good theology.
- Roman Catholic
- Orthodox
- Coptic
- Mainline Protestant
- Evangelical
- Pentecostal
- Fundamentalist
- Liberation theology
- Other
- I'm not a Christian
In terms of views of the Bible or even most major doctrines, I don't think there are substnative differences between the labels evangelical and fundamentalist. I think the difference comes in connotation.
The Associated Press notes that the term "fundamentalist" generally is considered derogatory and should not be applied to an organization or individual unless the organization or individual so referenced uses the term in that way already. My own interpretation of that term is that fundamentalist churches usually are withdrawn from society at large, which it holds in some disdain. Fundamentlist groups also are more likely to be less educated. That's the connotation I take away from the image, anyway.
Evangelicals, however, are more likely to be involved in things like politics as a means of saving the world from itself. There might be a condemnation of society but usually less so of individuals within it. In my experience, evangelical groups often are more educated, generally speaking.
Pentecostals can be of either school, but they are marked by practices such as speaking in tongues and prophecy, and it's also -- generally speaking again -- among Pentecostals that you're more like to find some of the excess that dogged the American Church in the 1980s and 1990s.
All that said of the stereotypes, it's true that you'll find goodhearted people and knuckleheads in every sect of Christianity.
2602.20 in reply to 2602.16
That's certainly the popular depiction of liberation theology in evangelical circles, but that's a pretty extreme view. Working that way, I might well classify evangelicalism as a belief system that holds that Jesus was a hard-working member of the upper-middle class who believed that people should rise or fall on their own merits, hated welfare cheats, and thought the economy would do better if only the wealthy got to keep more of their money.
Yeah, you'll find that Marxists have used liberation theology to hijack the church in some parts of Latin America, just as you'll find that some Republicans have hijacked evangelicalism to muster the votes they need to win. Neither case should be considered a fair representation of the beliefs.
As I understand it, liberation theology teaches that the poor have a special place in God's economy. When Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," he means that: The gospel has a special relevance for the poor, and that they stand to enter it ahead of the wealthy. That's why he says things like "The Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor" and "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That's why Jesus grew up in a working-class home, worked a simple trade, and spent his adult life primarily with the outcasts of society -- because the people society has rejected, have a special value to God.
Salvation remains by grace, through faith, but the epistle of James loses none of its meaning: Remember that he says that faith that produces no works in keeping with righteousness is a sterile, dead faith. And James -- like the prophets in the Tanakh -- has some incredibly stern words for those who make themselves wealthy at the expense of others. "Woe to you who are rich," he writes. "The wages you have denied the workers cry out against you. You have hoarded wealth in the last days." Many evangelicals I've known have been ignorant of those words, or view them as less inspired than Paul's words, "You have been saved by grace, through faith, not by works, lest any man should boast."
It's not just about money, although that's one indicator of inequity that's easy to latch onto. Jesus in his Parable of the Sheep and the Goats runs through a whole laundry list of things we're to do, and at the end of it, he consigns to everlasting fire and torment a group of people who ask with puzzlement, "Lord, when did we ever see you in need and not minister to you?" These aren't non-Christians being sent away; they're people who believed they were following.
In "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck observed that the church often tells the poor just to sit back and fold your hands, because you'll be eating ice cream off gold plates in heaven. Phooey to that, I say. John the Baptist says, "If you have two cloaks, give one to the man who has none." Jesus told people to set aside their prejudices and care for the wounded, even if the wounded man was an individual who would just as soon throw stones at you as give you the time of day.
To me, that's what liberation theology is about. It's about recognizing that Christ is in the need, and responding to him. It's about meeting the needs of others, and it's open making real and physical connections with other people. It's about correcting social inequities and problems by helping the people caught in them.
That's liberating, and that's good theology.
Sunday, February 01, 2004
assemblies of god
I belonged to the Assemblies of God for about seven years after I became a Christian.
My biggest problem with the AoG is one that I think someone else already has mentioned, and one that I think is endemic in evangelical circles, not just in Pentecostal ones: self-righteousness. It's fairly customary in evangelicaldom to hear about how sinful the world is, and to castigate the world for failing to be godly, all the while telling other believers how much Jesus loves them.
I think that's a pretty backward approach, personally. The message we have is supposed to be life to a dying world, but we usually reserve our words of hope for other Christians, when the prophets usually had their harshest words for those who claimed to be following God. Back when Lawrence came out of the closet in Lynn Johnston's "For Better or for Worse," our pastor wrote a scathing letter to the editor of The Ashton Express-Times blating it for pushing sexual immorality. At the same time, there was a general feeling of sympathy for Jim Bakker, that he had been judged too harshly. (Swaggart didn't come up much, but I did know a few people who still regarded his teaching quite highly.)
Growing out of that is an increasing withdrawal from the world into safe little enclaves of Christianity. The AoG churches I was involved with operated Christian schools to keep the kids safe from the evils of public schools -- parents were generally discouraged from sending their kids to a public school or secular college, if not overtly than certainly by the attitudes regularly expressed toward such institutions -- and frequently they also provide all sorts of other approved alternatives to secular society. AoG runs its own version of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts -- Royal Rangers and Missionettes -- and so on.
And of course, you have all the other weird stuff popular in the Christian subculture: our own music and radio stations, our own TV shows and movies, our own T-shirts and books, and our own language, filled with words we all bandy about without really understanding. And of course there was the tendency to overlay spiritual values onto political ones. I can't recall a single negative thing being said about Bush Senior, or a single positive thing about Clinton. Pretty ridiculous.
The AoG is widely known for the emphasis it places on ecstatic experiences, particularly speaking in tongues. I really don't want to get into a major discussion on glossolalia, but I do think some of the negative reputation is well deserved. I remember one guest preacher actually *pushing* me backward so I would be "slain in the Spirit." If he were to do that today, I probably would have made more of an issue of it; as it was, I just got back up and told somebody else later what the idjit had done.
I heard a number of messages delivered in tongues while I was at the AoG. Virtually all of them were the sort of "prophetic utterance" you can find from a street-corner wingnut on any given day, a roiling mishmash of thoughts and personal convictions, delivered in a confusing ramble of King James and contemporary English, and invariably irrelevant to anything the church was going through at the time, except in the most generic way.
The emphasis on tongues and ecstatic experience took the place of solid understanding of Scripture. I was amazed at what people who have been Christians for years didn't know. Sylvia, one grandmotherly woman who attended the church the same time as me, once explained that she recently had hurt her back when she had been "slain in the Spirit," and had been told by the pastor (!) not to tell anyone about it, since that could be a stumbling block. After all, if God is behind it, no one should be hurt, right?
So anyway, Sylvia wanted to know if it said in the Bible that you shouldn't be hurt when you fall over under the Spirit's anointing. As you're probably aware, the Bible never says that you're supposed to fall over in the first place, whether the Spirit is moving or if it's just Benny Hinn waving his coat around.
That's probably the greatest flaw with Pentecostalism, actually, whether in the AoG or in the Nazarenes or some other denomination. Allowing experience to be its own validation, rather than measuring it against the revelation of Scripture, severs us from any objective standard for Truth, and allows us to be taken in by hucksters like Hinn, to be wowed by millionaires like Pat Robertson, to fall for the razzle-dazzle of prosperity gospels and to think we actually can make this a better nation through legislation and power-brokering.
That probably contributed to the distrust of intellectualism I encountered in the church, although I think this was mostly a product of the area. (The two AoG churches I was most involved with were located in predominantly blue collar areas.) This actually ended up being the last straw behind my decision to leave the church and start attending an evangelical free church with Niki, whom I was engaged to at the time.
Shirley Webber, the pastor's wife, had been teaching a series on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Much of it was marked by an enthusiastic endorsement of all sorts of behavior that clearly the Holy Spirit had to be behind. (One was a guy who supposedly ran around his church on the *backs of pews*. The proof that this was Spirit-driven? If it weren't, he would have fallen off.)
I have a lot of questions about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how the gifts appear to manifest in Pentecostal and charismatic churches these days. Shirley finally told me that God had told her I needed to stop questioning and just have faith.
I finished out my commitment in children's church, and left.
Actual mileage is going to vary from one AoG church to another. Still, to be fair, I should point out that there was much that is good about the Assemblies of God. For starters, they have a cool name -- much better than "Presbyterian" or "Lutheran," to pick two other churches I've belonged to in my time. :-)
Secondly, the worship truly was phenomenal at Ashton Assembly of God. Mike Poppa, who pastored the church for its first 14 years, was a man who was well grounded in Scripture and who was determined to present the gospel in a way that would be accessible to today's culture. The worship I participated in there was some of the best I have ever known. Because the church was more spontaneous than many other churches, I'd say there also was a greater openness to being led by the Spirit than in churches dead set on following the strict order of things.
Thirdly, the devotion of many in the Assemblies of God is considerable. Although I think it's fair to say the church is withdrawn from society, I think the AoG churches I attended had a pretty good turnout for Sunday and Wednesday evening services. It wasn't just a one-hour-a-week thing. People took seriously the scriptural admonition to pray, and I knew several people who took the charge to evangelize seriously as well, and went out on the streets every week. I don't personally go for that style myself, but I do recognize its legitimacy among those who are so called and so gifted.
Fourthly, the things I'm talking about were overall trends, not indicators of every person in the church. I knew other church members who objected to the emphasis on tongues and had tough questions about the legitimacy of the way tongues was practiced as a gift; Pastor Mike Poppa was a phenomenal preacher who knew the Scriptures better than many preachers I've heard elsewhere; and while there were some nincompoops who believed in the standard bogeymen and toed the line, there were others who had no problem with believers who were trying to figure it out, no matter which way they ended up going.
I showed up at my old church about 18 months ago, out of the blue, after being gone for five years. I showed up with a full beard and a ponytail, having had neither when I left. I also had a black child with me in a lily-white church. I got not one cold shoulder, and everyone who figured out who I was was thrilled to see me again. Not a word of criticism about my appearance or anything else.
Lastly, many of the problems I encountered there are problems found throughout evangelicaldom. Good luck findng a church that is free of such ills. When you do, you will ruin it by gracing it with your presence, as I surely have done to some I have attended.
My biggest problem with the AoG is one that I think someone else already has mentioned, and one that I think is endemic in evangelical circles, not just in Pentecostal ones: self-righteousness. It's fairly customary in evangelicaldom to hear about how sinful the world is, and to castigate the world for failing to be godly, all the while telling other believers how much Jesus loves them.
I think that's a pretty backward approach, personally. The message we have is supposed to be life to a dying world, but we usually reserve our words of hope for other Christians, when the prophets usually had their harshest words for those who claimed to be following God. Back when Lawrence came out of the closet in Lynn Johnston's "For Better or for Worse," our pastor wrote a scathing letter to the editor of The Ashton Express-Times blating it for pushing sexual immorality. At the same time, there was a general feeling of sympathy for Jim Bakker, that he had been judged too harshly. (Swaggart didn't come up much, but I did know a few people who still regarded his teaching quite highly.)
Growing out of that is an increasing withdrawal from the world into safe little enclaves of Christianity. The AoG churches I was involved with operated Christian schools to keep the kids safe from the evils of public schools -- parents were generally discouraged from sending their kids to a public school or secular college, if not overtly than certainly by the attitudes regularly expressed toward such institutions -- and frequently they also provide all sorts of other approved alternatives to secular society. AoG runs its own version of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts -- Royal Rangers and Missionettes -- and so on.
And of course, you have all the other weird stuff popular in the Christian subculture: our own music and radio stations, our own TV shows and movies, our own T-shirts and books, and our own language, filled with words we all bandy about without really understanding. And of course there was the tendency to overlay spiritual values onto political ones. I can't recall a single negative thing being said about Bush Senior, or a single positive thing about Clinton. Pretty ridiculous.
The AoG is widely known for the emphasis it places on ecstatic experiences, particularly speaking in tongues. I really don't want to get into a major discussion on glossolalia, but I do think some of the negative reputation is well deserved. I remember one guest preacher actually *pushing* me backward so I would be "slain in the Spirit." If he were to do that today, I probably would have made more of an issue of it; as it was, I just got back up and told somebody else later what the idjit had done.
I heard a number of messages delivered in tongues while I was at the AoG. Virtually all of them were the sort of "prophetic utterance" you can find from a street-corner wingnut on any given day, a roiling mishmash of thoughts and personal convictions, delivered in a confusing ramble of King James and contemporary English, and invariably irrelevant to anything the church was going through at the time, except in the most generic way.
The emphasis on tongues and ecstatic experience took the place of solid understanding of Scripture. I was amazed at what people who have been Christians for years didn't know. Sylvia, one grandmotherly woman who attended the church the same time as me, once explained that she recently had hurt her back when she had been "slain in the Spirit," and had been told by the pastor (!) not to tell anyone about it, since that could be a stumbling block. After all, if God is behind it, no one should be hurt, right?
So anyway, Sylvia wanted to know if it said in the Bible that you shouldn't be hurt when you fall over under the Spirit's anointing. As you're probably aware, the Bible never says that you're supposed to fall over in the first place, whether the Spirit is moving or if it's just Benny Hinn waving his coat around.
That's probably the greatest flaw with Pentecostalism, actually, whether in the AoG or in the Nazarenes or some other denomination. Allowing experience to be its own validation, rather than measuring it against the revelation of Scripture, severs us from any objective standard for Truth, and allows us to be taken in by hucksters like Hinn, to be wowed by millionaires like Pat Robertson, to fall for the razzle-dazzle of prosperity gospels and to think we actually can make this a better nation through legislation and power-brokering.
That probably contributed to the distrust of intellectualism I encountered in the church, although I think this was mostly a product of the area. (The two AoG churches I was most involved with were located in predominantly blue collar areas.) This actually ended up being the last straw behind my decision to leave the church and start attending an evangelical free church with Niki, whom I was engaged to at the time.
Shirley Webber, the pastor's wife, had been teaching a series on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Much of it was marked by an enthusiastic endorsement of all sorts of behavior that clearly the Holy Spirit had to be behind. (One was a guy who supposedly ran around his church on the *backs of pews*. The proof that this was Spirit-driven? If it weren't, he would have fallen off.)
I have a lot of questions about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how the gifts appear to manifest in Pentecostal and charismatic churches these days. Shirley finally told me that God had told her I needed to stop questioning and just have faith.
I finished out my commitment in children's church, and left.
Actual mileage is going to vary from one AoG church to another. Still, to be fair, I should point out that there was much that is good about the Assemblies of God. For starters, they have a cool name -- much better than "Presbyterian" or "Lutheran," to pick two other churches I've belonged to in my time. :-)
Secondly, the worship truly was phenomenal at Ashton Assembly of God. Mike Poppa, who pastored the church for its first 14 years, was a man who was well grounded in Scripture and who was determined to present the gospel in a way that would be accessible to today's culture. The worship I participated in there was some of the best I have ever known. Because the church was more spontaneous than many other churches, I'd say there also was a greater openness to being led by the Spirit than in churches dead set on following the strict order of things.
Thirdly, the devotion of many in the Assemblies of God is considerable. Although I think it's fair to say the church is withdrawn from society, I think the AoG churches I attended had a pretty good turnout for Sunday and Wednesday evening services. It wasn't just a one-hour-a-week thing. People took seriously the scriptural admonition to pray, and I knew several people who took the charge to evangelize seriously as well, and went out on the streets every week. I don't personally go for that style myself, but I do recognize its legitimacy among those who are so called and so gifted.
Fourthly, the things I'm talking about were overall trends, not indicators of every person in the church. I knew other church members who objected to the emphasis on tongues and had tough questions about the legitimacy of the way tongues was practiced as a gift; Pastor Mike Poppa was a phenomenal preacher who knew the Scriptures better than many preachers I've heard elsewhere; and while there were some nincompoops who believed in the standard bogeymen and toed the line, there were others who had no problem with believers who were trying to figure it out, no matter which way they ended up going.
I showed up at my old church about 18 months ago, out of the blue, after being gone for five years. I showed up with a full beard and a ponytail, having had neither when I left. I also had a black child with me in a lily-white church. I got not one cold shoulder, and everyone who figured out who I was was thrilled to see me again. Not a word of criticism about my appearance or anything else.
Lastly, many of the problems I encountered there are problems found throughout evangelicaldom. Good luck findng a church that is free of such ills. When you do, you will ruin it by gracing it with your presence, as I surely have done to some I have attended.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
perfection
Our ideas of perfection are really pretty bland. We imagine a heaven that is rather like Nirvana, where we understand everything, and there's nothing to do except sit around and bask in the radiance of God and his wholeness. There's nothing to do, no conflict and nothing else that we find imperfect or frustrating down here.
That's nonsense, of course. Adam and Eve had work to do in the Garden of Eden, and had different levels of understanding and different perspectives on things. I imagine that it'll be much the same in heaven as in Eden. We won't always see eye to eye, but we'll be able to work through our disagreements without getting angry with one another, judging or committing a sin in our disagreement. We'll be able to look at God's judgments and understand them in all their terrible mercy and justice, and be able to rejoice in them all, even the ones that now make us blanche.
And we'll be able to look at art, our own or someone else's, and recognize the beauty and value of each, and also recognize that some art is better than other art. There's no shame or sin in that; it's simply recognizing that God has gifted each of us in different ways, and acknowledging the gift for what it is. To borrow from C.S. Lewis, it'll be when an architect can look at his building, and realize it is quite possibly the finest structure ever made, and yet take no more pride or delight in it than if somebody else had made it.
That's nonsense, of course. Adam and Eve had work to do in the Garden of Eden, and had different levels of understanding and different perspectives on things. I imagine that it'll be much the same in heaven as in Eden. We won't always see eye to eye, but we'll be able to work through our disagreements without getting angry with one another, judging or committing a sin in our disagreement. We'll be able to look at God's judgments and understand them in all their terrible mercy and justice, and be able to rejoice in them all, even the ones that now make us blanche.
And we'll be able to look at art, our own or someone else's, and recognize the beauty and value of each, and also recognize that some art is better than other art. There's no shame or sin in that; it's simply recognizing that God has gifted each of us in different ways, and acknowledging the gift for what it is. To borrow from C.S. Lewis, it'll be when an architect can look at his building, and realize it is quite possibly the finest structure ever made, and yet take no more pride or delight in it than if somebody else had made it.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
my job officially sucks
So here I am at work, and I've had enough of this ####ing #### to choke a camel to death. It's 3:35 a.m. and I only stopped myself from going completely postal earlier tonight (this morning?) by taking some time off to worship and to decompress before I complete the last stretch.
This job is just too much for too little. I'm gone from home two whole days out of the week, with the result that Natasha is unduly stressed-out on those days, and she handles it generally worse than I do, which is rough on the girls.
I can't stay here. I just can't. But, thanks to years of living hand-to-mouth, we don't have a cushion to handle a period of unemployment longer than 12 hours, and we certainly don't have any insurance if I quit this job. I need to quit anyway, which I cannot do unless I can find that safety net.
The PR sideline has not taken off yet, since I haven't had time to finish the web site and finish my promotional material for the different groups I'm trying to appeal to. The only contract I have so far is the barter for art lessons, which -- nice at is -- will not pay the bills.
If I had a church, I'd be calling the pastor to see if the church can offer us any support while we take a step out, particularly support I can work for. We have no church, though, nor any real network I can fall back upon. I'm thinking of calling the pastor of the church we've been attending for the last two months, although if the truth is to be told, I'm not wild about it by any stretch of the imagination. Pillar of Fire is an island church, where they inadvertantly -- at least I assume it's inadvertant -- foster a Christian subculture that is largely removed from and uninvolved with the world at large.
I wouldn't mind returning to the missions field, but my impression right now is that we're where we're supposed to be. I don't know how much of that is wisdom, how much of it is contentment and how much of it is the world finding its place in me, but there you have it.
Natasha and I have discussed relocating at various points, but we've always ended up settling on staying in Iowa. It must be that masochistic streak.
I'm at the breaking point, and something has to give.
This job is just too much for too little. I'm gone from home two whole days out of the week, with the result that Natasha is unduly stressed-out on those days, and she handles it generally worse than I do, which is rough on the girls.
I can't stay here. I just can't. But, thanks to years of living hand-to-mouth, we don't have a cushion to handle a period of unemployment longer than 12 hours, and we certainly don't have any insurance if I quit this job. I need to quit anyway, which I cannot do unless I can find that safety net.
The PR sideline has not taken off yet, since I haven't had time to finish the web site and finish my promotional material for the different groups I'm trying to appeal to. The only contract I have so far is the barter for art lessons, which -- nice at is -- will not pay the bills.
If I had a church, I'd be calling the pastor to see if the church can offer us any support while we take a step out, particularly support I can work for. We have no church, though, nor any real network I can fall back upon. I'm thinking of calling the pastor of the church we've been attending for the last two months, although if the truth is to be told, I'm not wild about it by any stretch of the imagination. Pillar of Fire is an island church, where they inadvertantly -- at least I assume it's inadvertant -- foster a Christian subculture that is largely removed from and uninvolved with the world at large.
I wouldn't mind returning to the missions field, but my impression right now is that we're where we're supposed to be. I don't know how much of that is wisdom, how much of it is contentment and how much of it is the world finding its place in me, but there you have it.
Natasha and I have discussed relocating at various points, but we've always ended up settling on staying in Iowa. It must be that masochistic streak.
I'm at the breaking point, and something has to give.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
'exceptions' to the first amendment
First go read this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Now ask yourself which is worse, that the Bush administration is keeping protesters out of sight, out of earshot and out of mind, or that it's prosecuting people who exercise their free speech rights on public property anyway?
This isn't a partisan thing. This practice stank when Clinton did it too. People are being arrested for protesing on public property, not private property; and it's the side that disagrees with the president that's being pushed away. I suppose people who are opposed to a policy are more likely to be outspoken than those who support it, perhaps even violently so, but this still strikes me as a bastardly way to get rid of unwanted criticism and to make everything into a nice photo opp.
A friend of mine had these observations to make on how President Bush is handling public criticism of his actions by voters, as compared to how other political figures have handled similar situations. I thought his comments were interesting:
The Bush administration in recent weeks has been slapped hard by the federal courts for its unlawful and extended detainment of noncitizens under the Patriot Act, and also ordered a hold on an EPA measure that would have relaxed our environmental standards conected to power plants tremendously. Beyond that, we're seeing a pretty lax attitude toward trade that is spelling disaster to longstanding American manufacturing industries.
I'm not impressed.
I give Bush credit for doing a tough job in the wake of 9-11, but the stands his administration has taken on civil liberties, the environment, trade and free speech really have me hoping the Democratic Party can present a candidate who I can get behind in November. It's been slim pickings ever since I became a registered voter in '88.
Now ask yourself which is worse, that the Bush administration is keeping protesters out of sight, out of earshot and out of mind, or that it's prosecuting people who exercise their free speech rights on public property anyway?
This isn't a partisan thing. This practice stank when Clinton did it too. People are being arrested for protesing on public property, not private property; and it's the side that disagrees with the president that's being pushed away. I suppose people who are opposed to a policy are more likely to be outspoken than those who support it, perhaps even violently so, but this still strikes me as a bastardly way to get rid of unwanted criticism and to make everything into a nice photo opp.
A friend of mine had these observations to make on how President Bush is handling public criticism of his actions by voters, as compared to how other political figures have handled similar situations. I thought his comments were interesting:
"I think I had read somewhere that Hu Jintao (the Chinese guy) actually was much more highly commended during his speeches abroad than Bush attending the same events, because he was accessible while Bush was not.
"Bush took a big PR hit for stunts like this. Public opinion was much more favorable towards the Chinese gov (famous for repressing individual rights) instead of the American gov (supposed to be supporting open discourse and interest in the little guy).
"Personality analyses by folks on the inside suggest that Bush looks amiable and laid back /open in his demeanor (making him seem likeable during campaign time, for example), but internally is pretty closed-minded and even a bit tyrannical. In other words, he can portray himself as flexible and amiable, even while he is not very open to change in his opinions."That fits what I've read of Bush, and it certainly fits some of his more foolish remarks during the presidential campaign. In 2000 there was one satirical campaign web site, the name of which I can't recall at this time, that outlined a faux platform in which Bush supported early release for drug offenders who had "learned their lesson" as he had, Later, when Bush heard about the satirical site and asked about his support for such early release, he complained that the site had poked fun at him, saying, "There ought to limits to freedom."(The site for its part lauded his boldness in addressing the issue of Americans having too much liberty.)
The Bush administration in recent weeks has been slapped hard by the federal courts for its unlawful and extended detainment of noncitizens under the Patriot Act, and also ordered a hold on an EPA measure that would have relaxed our environmental standards conected to power plants tremendously. Beyond that, we're seeing a pretty lax attitude toward trade that is spelling disaster to longstanding American manufacturing industries.
I'm not impressed.
I give Bush credit for doing a tough job in the wake of 9-11, but the stands his administration has taken on civil liberties, the environment, trade and free speech really have me hoping the Democratic Party can present a candidate who I can get behind in November. It's been slim pickings ever since I became a registered voter in '88.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
health care
Check out this story on Common Dreams.
I'm kind of curious to hear people's thoughts on this subject. We have insurance through my employer, but it's not exactly great. It would cost me about $80 to get a prescription filled for the topical ointment I need to treat my psoriasis. Not surprisingly, my psoriasis has gone untreated for some time, even though it covers probably about 25 percent of my back at this point. I have insurance, but I can't afford to use it.
Having a child, incidentally, would cost us about $3,000 before the insurance kicks in. Nice, huh?
I don't think I would favor national health care, on the simple grounds that it likely would make health care a total nightmare. But I have to admit, the direction we're going now doesn't seem much better.
I'm kind of curious to hear people's thoughts on this subject. We have insurance through my employer, but it's not exactly great. It would cost me about $80 to get a prescription filled for the topical ointment I need to treat my psoriasis. Not surprisingly, my psoriasis has gone untreated for some time, even though it covers probably about 25 percent of my back at this point. I have insurance, but I can't afford to use it.
Having a child, incidentally, would cost us about $3,000 before the insurance kicks in. Nice, huh?
I don't think I would favor national health care, on the simple grounds that it likely would make health care a total nightmare. But I have to admit, the direction we're going now doesn't seem much better.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
My child, the folk musician
I was singing some folk songs today while I was making lunch this afternoon, in the presence of Evangeline. As I fumbled around, trying to remember if there is a third verse to Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind," she generated her own lyrics:
How many octopuses can fit in a room
Before they fall through the floor?
Could it be one, or maybe two?
I think it's probably four.
I think from here on that will be my favorite verse.
How many octopuses can fit in a room
Before they fall through the floor?
Could it be one, or maybe two?
I think it's probably four.
I think from here on that will be my favorite verse.
dora tangent
We don't actually own any of the tapes, but we rented a few from Blockbuster back in the summer, including the one with Swiper the Fox and the mantra necessary to stop him: "Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no-o-o swiping!" Well, after about five exciting iterations of that, I convinced Evangeline that we needed variations.
The most enduring one has been Chomper the Crocodile, where one of us chases the other snapping our arms together like a giant crocodile mouth, all the while saying "Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!" Of course, you stop Chomper by saying, "Chomper, no chomping! Chomper, no chomping! Chomper, no-o-o chomping!"
Mindless, I suppose, but it's fun coming up with new variations every time one of us engages in a repetitive behavior like sneezing, or eating or whatever.
(Naturally, being a 4-year-old, her favorite version is something like "Poopy, no pooping!")
The most enduring one has been Chomper the Crocodile, where one of us chases the other snapping our arms together like a giant crocodile mouth, all the while saying "Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!" Of course, you stop Chomper by saying, "Chomper, no chomping! Chomper, no chomping! Chomper, no-o-o chomping!"
Mindless, I suppose, but it's fun coming up with new variations every time one of us engages in a repetitive behavior like sneezing, or eating or whatever.
(Naturally, being a 4-year-old, her favorite version is something like "Poopy, no pooping!")
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
science lesson
Schrodinger came up with the quantum theory that the state of particles could best be described in probability fields. Rather than saying with certainty where a particle is, we can only say with varying degrees of probability where it is; thus a particle potentially exists in many places at the same time.
Suppose that your computer is the range of all probability, and we're trying to track a quantum particle as it travels from the top middle of your screen to the bottom middle. From past experience, we know that 40 percent of the time, our chosen particle travels a route somewhere within the middle third of your screen. Next to that middle third are paths it has taken in the past with less frequency. Maybe the next strip on each side has been traveled 20 percent of the time, and the strip after that only 5 percent of the time, and so on, out to the edges where there is only an infinitessimal probability that our quantum particle will travel that route. (More or less your standard bell curve distribution.)
This quantum field is actually useful for some sort of mathematical/physics thing I dimly remember from some reading I did in high school.
Anyway, Shrodinger, whose umlauts I am too lazy to recreate at this point, illustrated his principle with this suggested mechanism: Take a cat and put it in a box. Elsewhere there is a radioactive isotope that is going to decay; at the point it decays, a poison gas will be released into the box where the cat is, and the cat will die. You have no way of knowing the state of the particle and therefore have no way of knowing if the cat is alive or dead.
Time elapses. At this point, there is a 10 percent chance the isotope has decayed. Is that cat alive? There's a 90 percent chance it is.
More time elapses. The isotope has a 25 percent chance of having decayed. Is that cat alive, or is it dead? There's a 75 percent chance it is alive, and a 25 percent chance we will need to explain to the university president why it was necessary to poison a cat during a physics lecture.
For purposes of the experiment, the cat as an entity does not exist. It exists in a state of probability; it may be a cat, or it may be that it wouldn't voom even if you put 80,000 volts of electricity through it. For this reason, the principle of probability in quantum mechanics became known as Schrodinger's Cat.
Fred Pohl (?) did a fairly decent -- or so it seemed at the time, to me -- sci-fi novel where he applied Schrodinger's ideas to spacetime, where we know the startpoint and endpoint of the universe, from Big Bang to Big Crunch. Which path does the universe take in-between? Well, we live upon one probability strand, but there are other timelines of other probabilities -- alternate timelines, where history worked out differently. On those, you will find Americas where 9-11 was prevented, or ones where Gore was president and it happened. On still others, Bill Bradley or John McCain was president at the time of 9-11. There is another timeline exactly like the one we are in now, but I used a different example of the timelime, or didn't fix my typo in the word "example," and so on. In Pohl's novel, and in later books too, I believe, people who travel across those probability lines, from one alternate history to another, are called Quantum Cats.
And this concludes today's lesson in quantum theory.
Suppose that your computer is the range of all probability, and we're trying to track a quantum particle as it travels from the top middle of your screen to the bottom middle. From past experience, we know that 40 percent of the time, our chosen particle travels a route somewhere within the middle third of your screen. Next to that middle third are paths it has taken in the past with less frequency. Maybe the next strip on each side has been traveled 20 percent of the time, and the strip after that only 5 percent of the time, and so on, out to the edges where there is only an infinitessimal probability that our quantum particle will travel that route. (More or less your standard bell curve distribution.)
This quantum field is actually useful for some sort of mathematical/physics thing I dimly remember from some reading I did in high school.
Anyway, Shrodinger, whose umlauts I am too lazy to recreate at this point, illustrated his principle with this suggested mechanism: Take a cat and put it in a box. Elsewhere there is a radioactive isotope that is going to decay; at the point it decays, a poison gas will be released into the box where the cat is, and the cat will die. You have no way of knowing the state of the particle and therefore have no way of knowing if the cat is alive or dead.
Time elapses. At this point, there is a 10 percent chance the isotope has decayed. Is that cat alive? There's a 90 percent chance it is.
More time elapses. The isotope has a 25 percent chance of having decayed. Is that cat alive, or is it dead? There's a 75 percent chance it is alive, and a 25 percent chance we will need to explain to the university president why it was necessary to poison a cat during a physics lecture.
For purposes of the experiment, the cat as an entity does not exist. It exists in a state of probability; it may be a cat, or it may be that it wouldn't voom even if you put 80,000 volts of electricity through it. For this reason, the principle of probability in quantum mechanics became known as Schrodinger's Cat.
Fred Pohl (?) did a fairly decent -- or so it seemed at the time, to me -- sci-fi novel where he applied Schrodinger's ideas to spacetime, where we know the startpoint and endpoint of the universe, from Big Bang to Big Crunch. Which path does the universe take in-between? Well, we live upon one probability strand, but there are other timelines of other probabilities -- alternate timelines, where history worked out differently. On those, you will find Americas where 9-11 was prevented, or ones where Gore was president and it happened. On still others, Bill Bradley or John McCain was president at the time of 9-11. There is another timeline exactly like the one we are in now, but I used a different example of the timelime, or didn't fix my typo in the word "example," and so on. In Pohl's novel, and in later books too, I believe, people who travel across those probability lines, from one alternate history to another, are called Quantum Cats.
And this concludes today's lesson in quantum theory.
Chronicling the five stages of faith
1. Awakening
The person awakens to spiritual things and to the presence and love of God. This can happen suddenly, in an instant conversion, or it can take place over months or years: The person becomes aware of God's love as never before, and the experience comes with feelings of joy and even exaltation.
2. Purgation.
Having experienced the love and holiness of God, the believer recognizes that she is out of sync with God. Thus begins a period of mortification, the killing off of desires, habits, and states of mind that get in the way of God. Often serious disciplines are taken up -- longer prayer, fasting, self-examination retreats, sexual chastity, relinquishing possessions -- to conquer spiritual sloth and pride. The period is characterized by moral effort and spiritual pain.
3. Illumination.
Now more morally and spiritually honed, the believer becomes joyfully aware of God at a new level. The knowing in the awakening phase is like enjoying the light of a full moon on a cloudless night; like basking in the noontime sun on a summer day. Many, if not most, people do not proceed beyond stage 3.
4. Dark night of the soul.
The most terrible experience is sometimes experienced at various points in each stage, and sometimes as an extended period of its own. Sometimes called "mystic death," it entails the final and complete purification of the self. It takes its name from a book by John of the Cross, who described the experience.
The chief characteristic is absolute loss of God, a sense that the sun has been completely obliterated. Desolation and despair are the usual emotions the seeker experiences. It isn't that God literally withdraws, but he does withdraw every emotional benefit the seeker has so far derived from faith. The seeker continues through the spiritual loneliness knowing that this "spiritual crucifixion" is necessary: One must learn to seek God for God's sake, not for the sake of the happiness God brings.
5. Union.
In this stage, the seeker enjoys God not as an illumination, in which God shines down upon her; here she becomes one with God. Again, this is not one in the sense that the seeker is destroyed, but one in the sense that husband and wife become one. This stage is often called "Mystical Marriage."
In my experience, this goes in cycles. In the sense of salvation, the Old Man dies once, but in the long haul, his death is a prolonged and painful thing. He appears to die, but he is only asleep, and when God appears to withdraw, the Old Man stirs and wakens again, and the flesh cries out in rebellion over the unfairness of God and his wanton cruelty.
Eventually we submit those areas to God again and find that completion comes in the Giver and not in the gifts, and we find that we can experience the Giver by walking in his ways and being like him to others around us. That's what the list refers to as unity, but it never lasts. God is very jealous; he does not share us with anyone, not even with ourselves, and he will not be content until we are wholly is. Each drink from Christ's cup is a deeper and more bitter draught, but it also fills us with more of his character and life.
I also have to say in all honesty that I think I've only been through that stage once, when my son returned to his birth parents. There have been bad times before, but none of them ever came close to the agony that I went through in the months leading up to and following Chris' departure.
I say that this period is something I would not exchange because, now that I feel I'm finally starting to see the sunlight and feel the breeze again, I've also getting a sense of what I've learned. It's hard to explain in a nutshell, and I don't feel like trying to reduce it to words again at this moment, but essentially it's been a time for depending upon Christ in greater amounts, for embracing the Cross to the bitter end, learning to love others endlessly and experiencing Christ's presence amid meaningless suffering. If I have suffered for doing what is right, and if my son has suffered for no reason at all, then so has Christ. He not only understands, but he shares in our suffering and we have shared in his. And though the experience still makes me cry, that's something I wouldn't trade for anything.
Rather than seeing the stages -- especially the last two -- as exclusive options, I'm thinking of them more of something that we reach by degrees. After the terrors of the dark night come new depths of understanding and closeness to God that bring us closer to what I would call "wholeness" but is labeled here as "unity." One never experiences the entire thing in this lifetime, but by degrees and by the grace of God we start to find our fulfillment in him and not in what he gives us. That's beyond the euphoria of Stage 3 -- what I call "infatuation with God" -- which is why I didn't check that option.
Grief and pain have a way of wakening us to a new understanding of Christ's love and mercy, and I would say anyone who has gone through the long dark night -- anyone who knows that spot where Despair sinks her hook into your heart; anyone who remembers being at that dark and lonely place where there was every sign that God had abandoned them but still said, "Not my will but yours be done"; anyone who has cried out into the void for an answer, for a reason, for hope and heard only the dispassionate response "Follow me," and done just that -- anyone who has survived God's violent love, at some level, through the grace of God, has found wholeness in him.
My own limited experience indicates that the roads to Calvary and Zion are one and the same, and that the more closely we follow Christ, the more it is going to hurt. In the end, the Cross will kill us, but by that time, we will be so full of the light of Christ that his grace will carry us through.
I've been through the Long Dark Night, and it ain't pretty. But I wouldn't trade that pain or grief for any other joy.
The person awakens to spiritual things and to the presence and love of God. This can happen suddenly, in an instant conversion, or it can take place over months or years: The person becomes aware of God's love as never before, and the experience comes with feelings of joy and even exaltation.
2. Purgation.
Having experienced the love and holiness of God, the believer recognizes that she is out of sync with God. Thus begins a period of mortification, the killing off of desires, habits, and states of mind that get in the way of God. Often serious disciplines are taken up -- longer prayer, fasting, self-examination retreats, sexual chastity, relinquishing possessions -- to conquer spiritual sloth and pride. The period is characterized by moral effort and spiritual pain.
3. Illumination.
Now more morally and spiritually honed, the believer becomes joyfully aware of God at a new level. The knowing in the awakening phase is like enjoying the light of a full moon on a cloudless night; like basking in the noontime sun on a summer day. Many, if not most, people do not proceed beyond stage 3.
4. Dark night of the soul.
The most terrible experience is sometimes experienced at various points in each stage, and sometimes as an extended period of its own. Sometimes called "mystic death," it entails the final and complete purification of the self. It takes its name from a book by John of the Cross, who described the experience.
The chief characteristic is absolute loss of God, a sense that the sun has been completely obliterated. Desolation and despair are the usual emotions the seeker experiences. It isn't that God literally withdraws, but he does withdraw every emotional benefit the seeker has so far derived from faith. The seeker continues through the spiritual loneliness knowing that this "spiritual crucifixion" is necessary: One must learn to seek God for God's sake, not for the sake of the happiness God brings.
5. Union.
In this stage, the seeker enjoys God not as an illumination, in which God shines down upon her; here she becomes one with God. Again, this is not one in the sense that the seeker is destroyed, but one in the sense that husband and wife become one. This stage is often called "Mystical Marriage."
In my experience, this goes in cycles. In the sense of salvation, the Old Man dies once, but in the long haul, his death is a prolonged and painful thing. He appears to die, but he is only asleep, and when God appears to withdraw, the Old Man stirs and wakens again, and the flesh cries out in rebellion over the unfairness of God and his wanton cruelty.
Eventually we submit those areas to God again and find that completion comes in the Giver and not in the gifts, and we find that we can experience the Giver by walking in his ways and being like him to others around us. That's what the list refers to as unity, but it never lasts. God is very jealous; he does not share us with anyone, not even with ourselves, and he will not be content until we are wholly is. Each drink from Christ's cup is a deeper and more bitter draught, but it also fills us with more of his character and life.
I also have to say in all honesty that I think I've only been through that stage once, when my son returned to his birth parents. There have been bad times before, but none of them ever came close to the agony that I went through in the months leading up to and following Chris' departure.
I say that this period is something I would not exchange because, now that I feel I'm finally starting to see the sunlight and feel the breeze again, I've also getting a sense of what I've learned. It's hard to explain in a nutshell, and I don't feel like trying to reduce it to words again at this moment, but essentially it's been a time for depending upon Christ in greater amounts, for embracing the Cross to the bitter end, learning to love others endlessly and experiencing Christ's presence amid meaningless suffering. If I have suffered for doing what is right, and if my son has suffered for no reason at all, then so has Christ. He not only understands, but he shares in our suffering and we have shared in his. And though the experience still makes me cry, that's something I wouldn't trade for anything.
Rather than seeing the stages -- especially the last two -- as exclusive options, I'm thinking of them more of something that we reach by degrees. After the terrors of the dark night come new depths of understanding and closeness to God that bring us closer to what I would call "wholeness" but is labeled here as "unity." One never experiences the entire thing in this lifetime, but by degrees and by the grace of God we start to find our fulfillment in him and not in what he gives us. That's beyond the euphoria of Stage 3 -- what I call "infatuation with God" -- which is why I didn't check that option.
Grief and pain have a way of wakening us to a new understanding of Christ's love and mercy, and I would say anyone who has gone through the long dark night -- anyone who knows that spot where Despair sinks her hook into your heart; anyone who remembers being at that dark and lonely place where there was every sign that God had abandoned them but still said, "Not my will but yours be done"; anyone who has cried out into the void for an answer, for a reason, for hope and heard only the dispassionate response "Follow me," and done just that -- anyone who has survived God's violent love, at some level, through the grace of God, has found wholeness in him.
My own limited experience indicates that the roads to Calvary and Zion are one and the same, and that the more closely we follow Christ, the more it is going to hurt. In the end, the Cross will kill us, but by that time, we will be so full of the light of Christ that his grace will carry us through.
I've been through the Long Dark Night, and it ain't pretty. But I wouldn't trade that pain or grief for any other joy.
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
key life lessons
"Everything I need to know about life I learned from Monty Python"
1. Never answer the door for an encyclopedia salesman unless he's a burglar
2. If you can't think of a name for your pet, call it Eric
3. Never be afraid of Scotsmen on Horses unless they play tennis
4. Lupines make excellent currency
5. When crossing the street, don't trust Keep Left signs
6. When buying a bed ask for the dog kennels
7. Never suppress a man's right to gestate a fetus in a box
8. Always keep your cat confused
9. To be named Bruce even if you're not Bruce is acceptable
10. Never underestimate the power of a bicycle repairman
11. It's not polite to stare at anyone even if they have two buttocks
12. White mice are very musical
13. Always read the ingredients before eating chocolate
14. Remember to always ask politely when you want more beans
15. If you become king, remember to brush up on your knowledge of swallows and gravity
16. Always check carefully before buying any parrots
17. Never trust strangers in suits of armor carrying chickens
18. Keep your eye out for 16 ton weights falling out of nowhere
19. Never expect the Spanish Inquisition
20. Always be careful of moose bites
21. When asking to leave the military before you get killed always say "please"
22. Never tell your waiter if you have a dirty fork
23. If you're a Colonel, you CAN stop the sketch and anything else you deem too silly indeed
24. When writing a formal complaint, always address it "Dear Sirs," even if it's to your mother
25. If you are ever on the game show Blackmail, get to a phone!
26. If your name is Carol, don't go into show business with a group of British crazies
27. Being a loony is not only a privilege but a good waste of time
28. The words "knickers","bum" and "semprini" are part of the naughty bits *
29. "Lord Reginal" is not a naughty bit
30. Albatrosses do not come with wafers
31. Now the penguin on top of your television set will explode
32. NEVER trust Hungarian phrasebooks
33. Be careful not to get squished by huge feet from the sky
34. Not everyone likes SPAM
35. Lumberjacks are okay
36. There is nothing quite so wonderful as money
37. When all else fails, have an argument
38. When you need to identify a bishop, look for the tattoo on the back of its neck
39. A witch will float, as will a duck, and you can build a bridge out of rocks, but wood burns and so do witches.
40. When learning to walk, make it silly
41. Never think twice about waking up the neighbor if you're a upperclass twit
42. Tinny words are not as nice as woody ones
43. It's important to know how not to be seen
44. Don't even ask about the Camembert; you know the cat's eaten it
45. Don't think that rabbits are nice, harmless animals
46. Pantomime horses make the best secret agents
47. Learning to fly means more than being suspended from the ceiling and flapping your arms
48. Never trust a show to end when the end credits start rolling
49. Always check your seat for hidden pigs
50. The most dangerous of animals is a clever sheep
51. The earth is banana-shaped
52. Fresh fruit can be dreadful weapons
53. When answering the phone, remember to check your shoe-size
54. Nine out of ten British housewives can't tell Whizzo butter from a dead crab
55. Policemen make wonderful friends (And boy, can they sing!)
56. When speaking on television, indicate pauses with appropriate gestures
... and most of all,
57. Always look on the bright side of life.
1. Never answer the door for an encyclopedia salesman unless he's a burglar
2. If you can't think of a name for your pet, call it Eric
3. Never be afraid of Scotsmen on Horses unless they play tennis
4. Lupines make excellent currency
5. When crossing the street, don't trust Keep Left signs
6. When buying a bed ask for the dog kennels
7. Never suppress a man's right to gestate a fetus in a box
8. Always keep your cat confused
9. To be named Bruce even if you're not Bruce is acceptable
10. Never underestimate the power of a bicycle repairman
11. It's not polite to stare at anyone even if they have two buttocks
12. White mice are very musical
13. Always read the ingredients before eating chocolate
14. Remember to always ask politely when you want more beans
15. If you become king, remember to brush up on your knowledge of swallows and gravity
16. Always check carefully before buying any parrots
17. Never trust strangers in suits of armor carrying chickens
18. Keep your eye out for 16 ton weights falling out of nowhere
19. Never expect the Spanish Inquisition
20. Always be careful of moose bites
21. When asking to leave the military before you get killed always say "please"
22. Never tell your waiter if you have a dirty fork
23. If you're a Colonel, you CAN stop the sketch and anything else you deem too silly indeed
24. When writing a formal complaint, always address it "Dear Sirs," even if it's to your mother
25. If you are ever on the game show Blackmail, get to a phone!
26. If your name is Carol, don't go into show business with a group of British crazies
27. Being a loony is not only a privilege but a good waste of time
28. The words "knickers","bum" and "semprini" are part of the naughty bits *
29. "Lord Reginal" is not a naughty bit
30. Albatrosses do not come with wafers
31. Now the penguin on top of your television set will explode
32. NEVER trust Hungarian phrasebooks
33. Be careful not to get squished by huge feet from the sky
34. Not everyone likes SPAM
35. Lumberjacks are okay
36. There is nothing quite so wonderful as money
37. When all else fails, have an argument
38. When you need to identify a bishop, look for the tattoo on the back of its neck
39. A witch will float, as will a duck, and you can build a bridge out of rocks, but wood burns and so do witches.
40. When learning to walk, make it silly
41. Never think twice about waking up the neighbor if you're a upperclass twit
42. Tinny words are not as nice as woody ones
43. It's important to know how not to be seen
44. Don't even ask about the Camembert; you know the cat's eaten it
45. Don't think that rabbits are nice, harmless animals
46. Pantomime horses make the best secret agents
47. Learning to fly means more than being suspended from the ceiling and flapping your arms
48. Never trust a show to end when the end credits start rolling
49. Always check your seat for hidden pigs
50. The most dangerous of animals is a clever sheep
51. The earth is banana-shaped
52. Fresh fruit can be dreadful weapons
53. When answering the phone, remember to check your shoe-size
54. Nine out of ten British housewives can't tell Whizzo butter from a dead crab
55. Policemen make wonderful friends (And boy, can they sing!)
56. When speaking on television, indicate pauses with appropriate gestures
... and most of all,
57. Always look on the bright side of life.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
'o holy night'
I've only ever sung "O Holy Night" once, but to this day it remains a Christmas hymn that makes me soar.
It was Christmas 1990 in Haiti, when I was teaching at Quisqueya Christian School. We had a staff Christmas party. This was in the tropics, mind you -- about as un-Christmasy as I can imagine. No snow. No evergreen trees. It was hot, dry and dusty as all get-out, and I was a bachelor living more than 1,500 miles from the family I had celebrated Christmas with 20 times previously.
Jim Muchmore was playing his guitar, the kerosense lamps were flickering -- I don't think the power had even been on that night -- and as we sang "O Holy Night," the worship was one of the most tremendous Christmasy experiences I've ever had. That scene is burned indelibly into my mind and I see it again whenever I hear this song.
It was Christmas 1990 in Haiti, when I was teaching at Quisqueya Christian School. We had a staff Christmas party. This was in the tropics, mind you -- about as un-Christmasy as I can imagine. No snow. No evergreen trees. It was hot, dry and dusty as all get-out, and I was a bachelor living more than 1,500 miles from the family I had celebrated Christmas with 20 times previously.
Jim Muchmore was playing his guitar, the kerosense lamps were flickering -- I don't think the power had even been on that night -- and as we sang "O Holy Night," the worship was one of the most tremendous Christmasy experiences I've ever had. That scene is burned indelibly into my mind and I see it again whenever I hear this song.
old ghosts
Way back in 1988-89 when I was a college freshman, I had a fairly close friendship with a woman named Sharon. At the time she was going steady with a football player from another school -- and, you know, this is getting pretty hard to write. I have 15 years' distance from the situation now, so I think my perspective is a little clearer now. Let me tackle it another way, now that I've rewritten this paragraph 32 times.
We were pretty close. I characterized our relationship, to myself at least, as one where we were fairly transparent with one another. We talked about our goals, our struggles, our faith and our pasts with an openness that I had never known before. I don't know that anyone ever considered us a couple -- certainly she didn't -- but I wouldn't have minded. I even asked her to go out with me, knowing full well that she was dating somebody at another school.
Know something? This isn't getting easier to write about. I'm getting more confused the longer I write.
Essentially what it boils down to is I was in love with her. She was the first woman I ever had those feelings for, and even now 15 years later I'm stirring up something as I think about freshman year.
Sophomore year was completely different. Sharon distanced herself from me dramatically. Previously when I had visited her room, we could talk for hours. Now, she pretty much pretended I wasn't there. She was still friendly to me, but there was a very big and invisible wall. At the time I told myself that she had been bothered by how close we had become and had distanced herself from me. That probably is a bunch of post-adolescent hogwash, and the truth is that she didn't share my attraction and hoped that with distance I would eventually leave her alone.
I did, but oh how it hurt. It still hurts thinking about it, and I'm happily married to Natasha now and have been for five years. Throughout the rest of college, I felt like I had been ripped in two and kept waiting for her to come to her senses and "come back" to me. It wasn't until she got engaged to someone else that I realized that not only wasn't I in the game, I was playing the wrong sport. I must have held the candle out for Sharon for four years after my freshman year before I finally saw the light.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that men are essentially a bunch of losers. When we've been in a relationship with a woman and thought that she might be The One, it's damn near impossible for us ever to get her out of our mind and stop thinking that What If is really Should Be, and that given the right combination of events, things will work out the way we know they should. Am I making sense?
Probably this is why the Song of Solomon cautions us not to awaken love until the proper time arrives.
We were pretty close. I characterized our relationship, to myself at least, as one where we were fairly transparent with one another. We talked about our goals, our struggles, our faith and our pasts with an openness that I had never known before. I don't know that anyone ever considered us a couple -- certainly she didn't -- but I wouldn't have minded. I even asked her to go out with me, knowing full well that she was dating somebody at another school.
Know something? This isn't getting easier to write about. I'm getting more confused the longer I write.
Essentially what it boils down to is I was in love with her. She was the first woman I ever had those feelings for, and even now 15 years later I'm stirring up something as I think about freshman year.
Sophomore year was completely different. Sharon distanced herself from me dramatically. Previously when I had visited her room, we could talk for hours. Now, she pretty much pretended I wasn't there. She was still friendly to me, but there was a very big and invisible wall. At the time I told myself that she had been bothered by how close we had become and had distanced herself from me. That probably is a bunch of post-adolescent hogwash, and the truth is that she didn't share my attraction and hoped that with distance I would eventually leave her alone.
I did, but oh how it hurt. It still hurts thinking about it, and I'm happily married to Natasha now and have been for five years. Throughout the rest of college, I felt like I had been ripped in two and kept waiting for her to come to her senses and "come back" to me. It wasn't until she got engaged to someone else that I realized that not only wasn't I in the game, I was playing the wrong sport. I must have held the candle out for Sharon for four years after my freshman year before I finally saw the light.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that men are essentially a bunch of losers. When we've been in a relationship with a woman and thought that she might be The One, it's damn near impossible for us ever to get her out of our mind and stop thinking that What If is really Should Be, and that given the right combination of events, things will work out the way we know they should. Am I making sense?
Probably this is why the Song of Solomon cautions us not to awaken love until the proper time arrives.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
My last wishes when I ring down the curtain and join the choir invisible
When I die, I want what's done with my body to be what makes a difference for the living.
This seems only appropriate, all things considered. What happens to my body won't make much difference to me since I'll be dead. Stuff me afterward with all the sawdust you want, cremate me and stick my ashes in an urn on the mantlepiece, or turn me into fertilizer. I really won't care. I'll already be dead.
That's why I want things to benefit the living. I want all my harvestable organs and blood removed. Give someone else a chance.
Cremate me if you want. Scattering the ashes makes a degree of sense since it symbolizes that I am being borne away to heaven, but only if my family wants it that way. My wife's dad was cremated after dying while she was a college sophomore. Not only didn't she get to see his body, she doesn't have a place to visit. Kind of a double-whammy.
My grandmother was cremated before her funeral in 1991, and it was hard for me to feel a sense of closure because I never saw her body. Cremation's fine, I just wish emotionally that I had been able to say goodbye.
Death is a long way off, I hope; and when it comes, I hope to greet it with as much sass and snark as I've greeted life. But when I say goodbye, I want to do it with a grace that befits the people around me. Give them what they need, and let me go my way in peace.
Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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That's why I want things to benefit the living. I want all my harvestable organs and blood removed. Give someone else a chance.
Cremate me if you want. Scattering the ashes makes a degree of sense since it symbolizes that I am being borne away to heaven, but only if my family wants it that way. My wife's dad was cremated after dying while she was a college sophomore. Not only didn't she get to see his body, she doesn't have a place to visit. Kind of a double-whammy.
My grandmother was cremated before her funeral in 1991, and it was hard for me to feel a sense of closure because I never saw her body. Cremation's fine, I just wish emotionally that I had been able to say goodbye.
Death is a long way off, I hope; and when it comes, I hope to greet it with as much sass and snark as I've greeted life. But when I say goodbye, I want to do it with a grace that befits the people around me. Give them what they need, and let me go my way in peace.
Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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'the enemy within'
There's an episode from the first season of Classic Trek where a transporter malfunction splits Kirk into two halves. The first half contains all his nobler characteristics: gentle manner, restraint, compassionate, friendly and so on -- but as the sheep, it is incapable of command and making decisions. The second is his "dark" half: self-indulgent, brutal, violent and incapable of control. Call it the Wolf. The Wolf attacks a crew member and even tries to rape Yeoman Janice Rand.
The episode's quite interesting from a psychological perspective, and it's even been used to assist some psychiatrict patients by getting them to see that both sides of their personality are essential for them to be a fully functioning human being.
Now at the end of the episode, when they fixed the transporter and reintegrated the two halves of Kirk, he remarks to Spock, "I've seen a side of me no one should have to see." I think we're led to consider the Sheep to be the real Kirk since it's the one we see at the start of the episode, and so we understand that he's referring to the Wolf.
I'd argue that he's also referring to the Sheep -- that he holds the interal weakness in his much disdain as the internal predator.
Any takers?
The episode's quite interesting from a psychological perspective, and it's even been used to assist some psychiatrict patients by getting them to see that both sides of their personality are essential for them to be a fully functioning human being.
Now at the end of the episode, when they fixed the transporter and reintegrated the two halves of Kirk, he remarks to Spock, "I've seen a side of me no one should have to see." I think we're led to consider the Sheep to be the real Kirk since it's the one we see at the start of the episode, and so we understand that he's referring to the Wolf.
I'd argue that he's also referring to the Sheep -- that he holds the interal weakness in his much disdain as the internal predator.
Any takers?
Friday, December 19, 2003
'the undiscovered country'
"The Undiscovered Country" was decent, but it had a few flaws that I think knock it down in rank to probably the fourth-best Classic Trek film:
1) Valeris. Who the heck is she? She appears out of nowhere and yet her betrayal is supposed to catch us off-guard and to shock the other, established characters. Sorry, this completely failed to work for me. Earlier scripts called for having Kirstie Alley reprising her role of Saavik and having Saavik betray Kirk. If only "Cheers" had worked around the movie filming schedule -- Alley wanted to do the role -- it would have been tremendous. Saavik was deeply established in fans' minds because of the parts she played in TWoK and TSFS, plus her cameo is TVH. It would have shocked the bejesus out of us to see her betray the Federation, but it would have *fit*.
Thanks to the novelisations, it was generally accepted among fans that Saavik and David Marcus had been lovers, and it was the Klingons who had killed David. She would have wanted to avoid peace with the Klingons as much as anyone else. She also would have seen the logic to what she was doing; the movie as written continued her relationship with Spock and the others perfectly from where it had been; and so on. Honestly, either the "Cheers" crew should have adjusted, they should have got Robin Curtis to reprise the role; or they should have waited until there was a break in the "Cheers" filming.
2) Kirk should have died. Actually, in the earlier scripts -- I think as late as the penultimate draft -- he *did* die. It was perfect; he dives to save the Federation president and takes the phaser blast for him. It gives Kirk a hero's death, balances Gorkon's sacrifice with one from the Federation, completely exonerates Kirk of complicity in Gorkon's death, and it ties back into the words of the Klingon chancellor in Star Trek IV: "There will be no peace while Kirk lives!" Instead, he lives for no good reason.
3) Continuity errors. At the start of the movie, Sulu is commanding the USS Excelsior, which has been on a mission studying gaseous anomalies. Later on, Spock and McCoy rig up a photon torpedo with a sensor used to study gaseous anomalies so they can peg General Chang's ship. Absolutely smegging brilliant, but for one thing -- the Enterprise hasn't been studying gaseous anomalies. The Excelsior was. Again, I understand earlier drafts had Sulu's ship getting in this first critical shot -- a perfect way to pass the baton -- but that was changed so the Enterprise could get it in.
4) Too many stupid jokes and rehashed ideas. "I've been dead before," Spock quips. Kirk wrestles someone who looks just like him. (Saw that in "Whom Gods Destroy," "What are Little Girls Made of?" and "The Enemy Within," among others.) Valeris firing a phaser inside the galley just to illustrate something she could have explained very easily and without destroying a pot of mashed potatoes.
5) Mind rape. There is no way Spock would ever -- ever -- do that.
It was fun to watch the first time, but it doesn't really hold up so well to repeat viewing.
1) Valeris. Who the heck is she? She appears out of nowhere and yet her betrayal is supposed to catch us off-guard and to shock the other, established characters. Sorry, this completely failed to work for me. Earlier scripts called for having Kirstie Alley reprising her role of Saavik and having Saavik betray Kirk. If only "Cheers" had worked around the movie filming schedule -- Alley wanted to do the role -- it would have been tremendous. Saavik was deeply established in fans' minds because of the parts she played in TWoK and TSFS, plus her cameo is TVH. It would have shocked the bejesus out of us to see her betray the Federation, but it would have *fit*.
Thanks to the novelisations, it was generally accepted among fans that Saavik and David Marcus had been lovers, and it was the Klingons who had killed David. She would have wanted to avoid peace with the Klingons as much as anyone else. She also would have seen the logic to what she was doing; the movie as written continued her relationship with Spock and the others perfectly from where it had been; and so on. Honestly, either the "Cheers" crew should have adjusted, they should have got Robin Curtis to reprise the role; or they should have waited until there was a break in the "Cheers" filming.
2) Kirk should have died. Actually, in the earlier scripts -- I think as late as the penultimate draft -- he *did* die. It was perfect; he dives to save the Federation president and takes the phaser blast for him. It gives Kirk a hero's death, balances Gorkon's sacrifice with one from the Federation, completely exonerates Kirk of complicity in Gorkon's death, and it ties back into the words of the Klingon chancellor in Star Trek IV: "There will be no peace while Kirk lives!" Instead, he lives for no good reason.
3) Continuity errors. At the start of the movie, Sulu is commanding the USS Excelsior, which has been on a mission studying gaseous anomalies. Later on, Spock and McCoy rig up a photon torpedo with a sensor used to study gaseous anomalies so they can peg General Chang's ship. Absolutely smegging brilliant, but for one thing -- the Enterprise hasn't been studying gaseous anomalies. The Excelsior was. Again, I understand earlier drafts had Sulu's ship getting in this first critical shot -- a perfect way to pass the baton -- but that was changed so the Enterprise could get it in.
4) Too many stupid jokes and rehashed ideas. "I've been dead before," Spock quips. Kirk wrestles someone who looks just like him. (Saw that in "Whom Gods Destroy," "What are Little Girls Made of?" and "The Enemy Within," among others.) Valeris firing a phaser inside the galley just to illustrate something she could have explained very easily and without destroying a pot of mashed potatoes.
5) Mind rape. There is no way Spock would ever -- ever -- do that.
It was fun to watch the first time, but it doesn't really hold up so well to repeat viewing.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
die now
I wrote a column about Toys for Tots for the paper this week, and apparently caught everyone off-guard.
The column doesn't so much take issue with the notion of giving toys to underprivileged children as it does with the notion that this is enough, that the spirit of Christmas doesn't call us to somthing greater than merely handing out toys. Everyone at the office has known for some time that I'm not only a Christian but a former missionary, but unless I'm mistaken, interest in what I believe has just experienced an upsurge. I hope that's true among the community when the papers hit the stands tomorrow evening and Thursday.
Jesus doesn't ask merely the difficult of us; he asks us to do the impossible. The Cross is not a matter of inconvenience; it's about death. Jesus doesn't say, "Follow me and I'll give you everything you want," or even, "Make a couple sacrifices and follow me." What he says is, "Follow me and die."
I don't want that. You don't want that. None of us wants that. But that's what he calls us to. It's something that flies in the face of every ounce of who we are as people, our urge to matter, to have meaning in our lives, even to survive.
In exchange for dying now -- and he means death, real death to our selves -- he promises us not self-fulfillment or happiness, but grief, suffering, pain, and an eternity filled with a wilder, more unbelievable love than we've ever known before.
Everyone who knows me or who has read my blog, knows how I've wrestled with the grittiness of the faith. Paul and Jesus alike tell us that God is merciful and compassionate, sending rain upon the just and unjust alike.
And if we look at life that way, we do see incomparable mercy: Even men like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have known the untrammeled joys of seeing their children born and watching them grow through infancy and into full-fledged childhood. Even miserly scrooges can be touched by the beauty of a sunset, and the worst employers have discovered loyal workers and true friends.
But if life is beautiful, it's also foul. Children are abducted, raped and murdered. Teens are tormented brutally for being too slow in gym class, for being too smart in math class, for enjoying reading in a TV world or for watching the wrong TV shows.
Men like Matthew Shepard are murdered for being gay, and teen parents who kill their newborn children are let off with probation while people who smoke marijuana pass years in a jail cell.
Power is on the side of the strong, the wicked sit in positions of authority, and the law is corrupt. It's been that way since the beginning. God appears to be either schizophrenic or indifferent, but he claims to be good.
The defining moment of history was the Cross, where Jesus took on our sins -- became our sins -- and died. At the Cross, we find expiation for our sin. At the Cross, what righteousness we have through faith comes alive and grows us into the likeness of Christ so that God sees us fully realized in his son as we never have been realized here.
At the Cross, the old man dies and the new man comes to life as everything is stripped painfully away, and at the Cross we find the full depths of God's wild and reckless love, and everything else -- including the senseless suffering of children -- finds its meaning.
What we're left with is a love that defies understanding; it's wild, it's reckless and it's destructive. It's a raging torrent that, if we let it, will sweep us away and never let us be the same again.
Every now and then, I hear strains of that music through the noise of life, and it makes me dance with reckless abandon.
Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.
The column doesn't so much take issue with the notion of giving toys to underprivileged children as it does with the notion that this is enough, that the spirit of Christmas doesn't call us to somthing greater than merely handing out toys. Everyone at the office has known for some time that I'm not only a Christian but a former missionary, but unless I'm mistaken, interest in what I believe has just experienced an upsurge. I hope that's true among the community when the papers hit the stands tomorrow evening and Thursday.
Jesus doesn't ask merely the difficult of us; he asks us to do the impossible. The Cross is not a matter of inconvenience; it's about death. Jesus doesn't say, "Follow me and I'll give you everything you want," or even, "Make a couple sacrifices and follow me." What he says is, "Follow me and die."
I don't want that. You don't want that. None of us wants that. But that's what he calls us to. It's something that flies in the face of every ounce of who we are as people, our urge to matter, to have meaning in our lives, even to survive.
In exchange for dying now -- and he means death, real death to our selves -- he promises us not self-fulfillment or happiness, but grief, suffering, pain, and an eternity filled with a wilder, more unbelievable love than we've ever known before.
Everyone who knows me or who has read my blog, knows how I've wrestled with the grittiness of the faith. Paul and Jesus alike tell us that God is merciful and compassionate, sending rain upon the just and unjust alike.
And if we look at life that way, we do see incomparable mercy: Even men like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have known the untrammeled joys of seeing their children born and watching them grow through infancy and into full-fledged childhood. Even miserly scrooges can be touched by the beauty of a sunset, and the worst employers have discovered loyal workers and true friends.
But if life is beautiful, it's also foul. Children are abducted, raped and murdered. Teens are tormented brutally for being too slow in gym class, for being too smart in math class, for enjoying reading in a TV world or for watching the wrong TV shows.
Men like Matthew Shepard are murdered for being gay, and teen parents who kill their newborn children are let off with probation while people who smoke marijuana pass years in a jail cell.
Power is on the side of the strong, the wicked sit in positions of authority, and the law is corrupt. It's been that way since the beginning. God appears to be either schizophrenic or indifferent, but he claims to be good.
The defining moment of history was the Cross, where Jesus took on our sins -- became our sins -- and died. At the Cross, we find expiation for our sin. At the Cross, what righteousness we have through faith comes alive and grows us into the likeness of Christ so that God sees us fully realized in his son as we never have been realized here.
At the Cross, the old man dies and the new man comes to life as everything is stripped painfully away, and at the Cross we find the full depths of God's wild and reckless love, and everything else -- including the senseless suffering of children -- finds its meaning.
What we're left with is a love that defies understanding; it's wild, it's reckless and it's destructive. It's a raging torrent that, if we let it, will sweep us away and never let us be the same again.
Every now and then, I hear strains of that music through the noise of life, and it makes me dance with reckless abandon.
Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
forget toys for tots, give a real gift
I've had about all I can take of Toys for Tots.
It's not that I think it's a bad organization, nor that I disagree with its mission of distributing toys to disadvantaged children at Christmastime. I'm just sick to death of hearing about it.
It seems like every time I turn around, someone else is collecting toys for Toys for Tots. My employer is collecting them. A real-estate office down the street is collecting them. Today I got a piece of mail from yet another organization that's collecting toys for them.
Is this the most pressing need before us as a society today? You would think from all the hype there is for Toys for Tots at Christmas, that everything is hunky-dory in America today except for some poor kids who aren't getting enough presents for Christmas.
Since this is ostensibly done as a forerunner of the Christmas spirit, let's forget about the fat guy in the red suit for a little bit. Let's look instead at the little boy whose birth Christmas originally was intended to celebrate.
It's easy to forget sometimes amid all the junk that has accumulated around Christmas that it's meant to be a religious holiday. And it's easy to forget amid all the junk that's accumulated around the religion what it is that Jesus Christ was really about.
Aside from a cryptic reference in the Roman historian Suetonis' "Twelve Caesars," and a few other remarks made by other ancient writers like Josephus, the four gospels in the New Testament are pretty much our only source of information about the life of Christ.
Those gospels record Christ as making a pretty radical call on his followers. Unlike the modern Jesus of the political and religious right, the Jesus shown in the gospels didn't push a particular moral philosophy, he didn't champion one economic system over another, and he didn't really back a political party or agenda.
One thing he did ask of his followers: Love one another.
The sort of love Jesus emulated and that his earliest followers strived to uphold wasn't some warm, fuzzy, goodwill-toward-men sort of thing. It was a no-holds-barred kind of love, one that called for putting others' needs ahead of your own. He told his followers to give everything they had for other people, to be involved in their lives, and to care for them in real and tangible ways.
He also called for giving generously to the poor. He actually told one rich young ruler "Go, sell everything you have, and then you can be my disciple," without even once cautioning him to make sure that the poor weren't welfare cheats playing the system.
His rule of love doesn't allow for discriminating between friends, enemies and strangers. Everyone deserves the same level of compassion if you want to be called a follower of Christ.
Worst of all, Jesus never promised people it would be easy. In fact, he said if you follow him closely enough, that it would kill you.
That's a powerful kind of love. It's the sort of love that reached out and took hold of me when I was a teenager on the brink of entering college. I didn't understand at the time what it was I was getting myself into when I committed myself to following Christ, but I've learned. It's been hard, but I've learned.
The lesson was burned deep into my soul last year when my wife and I, following Christ's lead, opened our home to a boy whose parents had failed him so badly that the state had put him into foster care.
I learned how bitter and painful that love can be when my foster son returned to his parents before they were ready, against his caseworker's judgement and against the judgment of social workers familiar with the case, simply because some bureaucrat at DYFS wanted to close the case.
If you ask me, that sort of agony is one hell of a better way to share the joys of the season than dropping off a bunch of toys at a business.
Where's the human connection with Toys for Tots? The most you've got is a tax-deductible purchase, a smile from some overworked employee who's been asked to handle Toys for Tots in addition to his regular duties and some vague, disembodied sense that you made some child somewhere happy for a few minutes on Christmas.
Humbug.
Presents are great, but you know what? They're candy. They may make children happy for a few minutes, but they're not going to do a thing to really help the child in the long run. What good is candy to a child who doesn’t have dinner? What good are toys to children who have no homes to play in? What use are presents to children with no parents to speak of?
I really don't want to hear another word about Toys for Tots, or some other toy drive to collect a bunch of gizmos and widgets that will be broken by New Year's Day.
If you want to really make Christmas a special day for somebody, become a foster parent or adopt a child. If that's too much for you, then at least go to a homeless or battered women’s shelter, and play with the kids.
No, the kids might not get the latest toys to play with, but they'll have something better.
They’ll have love.
It's not that I think it's a bad organization, nor that I disagree with its mission of distributing toys to disadvantaged children at Christmastime. I'm just sick to death of hearing about it.
It seems like every time I turn around, someone else is collecting toys for Toys for Tots. My employer is collecting them. A real-estate office down the street is collecting them. Today I got a piece of mail from yet another organization that's collecting toys for them.
Is this the most pressing need before us as a society today? You would think from all the hype there is for Toys for Tots at Christmas, that everything is hunky-dory in America today except for some poor kids who aren't getting enough presents for Christmas.
Since this is ostensibly done as a forerunner of the Christmas spirit, let's forget about the fat guy in the red suit for a little bit. Let's look instead at the little boy whose birth Christmas originally was intended to celebrate.
It's easy to forget sometimes amid all the junk that has accumulated around Christmas that it's meant to be a religious holiday. And it's easy to forget amid all the junk that's accumulated around the religion what it is that Jesus Christ was really about.
Aside from a cryptic reference in the Roman historian Suetonis' "Twelve Caesars," and a few other remarks made by other ancient writers like Josephus, the four gospels in the New Testament are pretty much our only source of information about the life of Christ.
Those gospels record Christ as making a pretty radical call on his followers. Unlike the modern Jesus of the political and religious right, the Jesus shown in the gospels didn't push a particular moral philosophy, he didn't champion one economic system over another, and he didn't really back a political party or agenda.
One thing he did ask of his followers: Love one another.
The sort of love Jesus emulated and that his earliest followers strived to uphold wasn't some warm, fuzzy, goodwill-toward-men sort of thing. It was a no-holds-barred kind of love, one that called for putting others' needs ahead of your own. He told his followers to give everything they had for other people, to be involved in their lives, and to care for them in real and tangible ways.
He also called for giving generously to the poor. He actually told one rich young ruler "Go, sell everything you have, and then you can be my disciple," without even once cautioning him to make sure that the poor weren't welfare cheats playing the system.
His rule of love doesn't allow for discriminating between friends, enemies and strangers. Everyone deserves the same level of compassion if you want to be called a follower of Christ.
Worst of all, Jesus never promised people it would be easy. In fact, he said if you follow him closely enough, that it would kill you.
That's a powerful kind of love. It's the sort of love that reached out and took hold of me when I was a teenager on the brink of entering college. I didn't understand at the time what it was I was getting myself into when I committed myself to following Christ, but I've learned. It's been hard, but I've learned.
The lesson was burned deep into my soul last year when my wife and I, following Christ's lead, opened our home to a boy whose parents had failed him so badly that the state had put him into foster care.
I learned how bitter and painful that love can be when my foster son returned to his parents before they were ready, against his caseworker's judgement and against the judgment of social workers familiar with the case, simply because some bureaucrat at DYFS wanted to close the case.
If you ask me, that sort of agony is one hell of a better way to share the joys of the season than dropping off a bunch of toys at a business.
Where's the human connection with Toys for Tots? The most you've got is a tax-deductible purchase, a smile from some overworked employee who's been asked to handle Toys for Tots in addition to his regular duties and some vague, disembodied sense that you made some child somewhere happy for a few minutes on Christmas.
Humbug.
Presents are great, but you know what? They're candy. They may make children happy for a few minutes, but they're not going to do a thing to really help the child in the long run. What good is candy to a child who doesn’t have dinner? What good are toys to children who have no homes to play in? What use are presents to children with no parents to speak of?
I really don't want to hear another word about Toys for Tots, or some other toy drive to collect a bunch of gizmos and widgets that will be broken by New Year's Day.
If you want to really make Christmas a special day for somebody, become a foster parent or adopt a child. If that's too much for you, then at least go to a homeless or battered women’s shelter, and play with the kids.
No, the kids might not get the latest toys to play with, but they'll have something better.
They’ll have love.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
grammar and god
One of the things about English grammar is that it's so dynamic. Often there is not a single correct answer, but several answers that are defensible as long as you're familiar with the concepts.
Gaining a greater familiarity with language has made me feel like I understand Logos in a whole new way. Like language, you can discuss him until you're blue in the face, but he can only be understood once you experience him.
Gaining a greater familiarity with language has made me feel like I understand Logos in a whole new way. Like language, you can discuss him until you're blue in the face, but he can only be understood once you experience him.
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