Illustrious Brendar

Naked or Nekked?

2011-07-05T22:02:00.000-04:00

One thing I enjoy about reading the Bible is how the same old things can be revolutionary. I have been looking at the creation narrative in the book of Genesis lately. It is something I kind of take for granted. You know everything that is written there so you tend to avoid reading it but when you do read it, you find that you are being spoken to, being shaped. Don Miller once wrote about the whole “naked and not ashamed” idea and he said that in a perfect system we would be so saturated with awareness of God that we would be completely unaware of ourselves. I was thinking about that when I read the most incredible verse when God says to Adam,

“Who told you that you were naked?”

So, I'm asking the same question. Who told you that you had to be ashamed? Who told you to hide from God? Who is telling you to run away, cover your tracks and put on a mask? I hope it isn't me.

I think that it is important to think of things in these terms. Sometimes we overlook these one liners in scripture. Like God just decided to include some dialogue in the Bible to make it more readable. But this question resounds through scripture. You can almost here Jesus saying this very line to Nicodemus or the Samaritan woman at the well.

So think about who is telling you that you are naked...stop listening to them.

A co-worker from the South once told me that there is a difference between naked and nekked; naked is when you ain't got no clothes on, nekked is when you ain't got no clothes on and you're up to something.

ART

2010-05-15T11:02:00.001-04:00

There is a coffee house in Charlottesville where they feature local art on their walls. When I was there for a long weekend I discovered a guy named Mike Clark whose paintings were displayed so, every morning I would stop there and have a coffee and look at his work. They really weren't paintings but rather bas-relief images. That means he takes a photograph and then cuts part out of it to make a stencil. He puts the stencil on a panel and then uses drywall joint compound to fill in the stencil. It's really a unique medium, but here's what I liked the most about Mikes art; he chooses old junk and trash as the subject for his pictures. This is what he says on his website,

"In my paintings, I seek to capture the beauty in things that are marginal,abandoned, ruined. To me, traces of forgotten industries, such as old buildings, smokestacks, street signs, and pre-modern machinery, are inherently striking and physical, markers to the overlooked realities of daily life." -Mike Clark

I found it interesting because people usually associate art with the beautiful, I mean like nature or a woman, things that are already beautiful. In a way, if you think about it, it's kind of like cheating. Anyone with a little talent can reproduce the natural beauty of a flower or a landscape or a woman holding a baby. It takes considerable effort to release the hidden beauty from that which we have discarded. Mike has effectively redeemed that which has been marginalized by society.

So, when we look for beauty in our contextual lives perhaps we should look deeper. Transfixed by this conundrum, a seeming paradox; the ugly becomes lovely, I inquired about the art but, alas, it was quite beyond my means.

Closed System

2010-05-11T07:41:00.001-04:00

My friend, the Asian Imports Attorney, once said that the system of human rights is a closed system. Meaning, I can’t ratchet up my liberties without ratcheting down someone else’s. An interesting concept, I think it applies not just to human rights but to many aspects of life.

As an ugly American I have been raised to think that I have to right to acquire comfort in life by working hard. We teach this concept to our children and it is the hallmark of a functional society that it produces what we call “productive members” of that society; people who have jobs, pay taxes vote and report for jury duty. In an open system as long as you follow the rules you can consume as much liberty as you choose and have nothing but a positive effect on the world. Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.

Nothing wrong with that. But what if we look at things differently. What if there wasn't an infinite supply of goodwill, comfort and happiness in the world. If it is a "closed system" then nothing is added or taken away, nothing is created or destroyed. Things are merely moved around. What if in order for me to be rich someone else has to be poor. What if in order for me to be right you have to be wrong. For me to be beautiful you must be ugly, for me to be comfortable you have to be tortured, for me to be happy you have to be hopeless, for me to feel safe and secure you have to be scared shitless.

I recently received an email containing this quote, “…the government cannot give anything to anyone -- that they have not first taken away from someone else.” This is, of course, true and not isolated to governmental affairs. Think about it the other way round also. It is impossible for the US to increase the standard of living of the countries around us unless we are willing to lower our standard of living. We just need to figure out if that is worth doing.

Now think locally. Can I increase the importance of a child or a neighbor or a coworker without decreasing my own self-importance?

Now if I examine myself and my culture and compare my existence to the existence of most I find that if this closed system theory is not true then it eerily describes what is true.

Where the rubber meets the road.

2010-04-30T10:44:00.002-04:00

Anyone can take a kid up to a mountain top, but it’s what he does in the valley that counts.
I’ve been struggling with fatherhood lately. Truth be told I’m just not as good at it as I had always imagined I was.

I remember being on a Men’s Retreat with church and a guy was telling us that we should make a timeline for our lives, kind of like we were going to write a story and the story would start with, “On a cold Baltimore morning in March Illustrious Brendar was born and subsequently dropped by the attending Obstetrician.” From there we would go through various mile markers of our lives; things that stood out for any reason, good or bad. Most people used mountaintop experiences and great tragedies in their lives for these mile markers. We had long pieces of paper on which to lay out the unfolding stories of life and were supposed to project into the future as so many magic-marker wielding prophets.

What I found interesting, as a few bold men shared their story boards with the group, wasn’t the future projections but the past. Most men had more mountain top mile markers than valley mile markers, but it became clear to me that these men were forged into who they were by what they did in the valley.

One man was on the crew of an airplane in WWII and, as he put it, “We got shot up, caught on fire and had to ditch her in the Pacific.” He did not want to elaborate on this event but was obviously moved by it. All he would say was, “We got through it…most of us.” If you added up all of his achievements of life, his enduring marriage, his wonderful family, his success at work, nothing had as profound an impact on his life that his experience that day in the drink.
At the time, the exercise seemed corny but looking back I’ve learned from it. A friend recently told me that parenting is often more about enduring than enjoying. This might mean walking through the valley with a child instead of coaching them from the high ground. I’m sure that when my kids and I look back on our lives together we will want to focus on the mountain tops. Those will be highlighted on our story board, but when it comes to character and who we are as people, it’s slogging through the dark valleys of life and not giving up on each other that has made us who we are. And we will be able to say, “We got through it…most of us.”

odd shoe

2010-02-21T23:16:00.002-05:00

Uncle Gary was the uncle who was always on some kind of a kick. He would easily get caught up in the excitement of something new. I'm thinking about him because of a story I told my wife's family about fads. I reminisced about one Christmas when Uncle Gary had sent my father a pair of running shoes. Now this was back in the seventies and no one whore running shoes. they were very strange looking with their nylon and suede. The rubber from the sole was turned up at the toe and the heel to give the illusion that you could actually use more of you foot than was practical if you were a "runner". People didn't run back then unless they were being chased. Nobody thought about health or exercise very much. But Uncle Gary was in to it and my father announced that he was now (by virtue of the shoes alone) a "runner". I recall a total of two trips to Woodlawn High School track, my father in his ridiculously small shorts and t-shirt and new running shoes, the three kids in their toughskins and jack parcel's. My father lumbered around the track and we followed amazed at his speed and form. It seemed like it took an eternity but we finally made it around the track once and retired to Hersch's Tavern. Dad at the bar with a beer and his bar-fly friends , us at a table with tragically small glasses of Coca-cola with a cherry floating in it.

Have you seen this chicken?

2009-05-29T06:47:00.003-04:00

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
-C. S. Lewis
I was pondering some writings of Clives Staples Lewis while my kids were watching Wallace and Grommit and it all resulted in a strange blog...

I believe in beauty. Beauty helps us link what is ideal with what is real. In our culture, beauty has been reduced to glamour, and we settle for it. I believe that there is a deep need in our lives to identify with beauty. In our culture there is a tendency to equate identity with biography; you are what has happened to you. But I don’t believe that is who we are. I believe there is a place within the soul where neither time nor space nor flesh nor no created thing can touch. There is a place with in each of us where no one has ever gotten to us; where we are undamaged; there is a seamless sureness and a natural confidence and tranquility. This is who we are and it is the intension of an active spirit to take us, through imagination and creativity, to this place of spiritual beauty as frequently as possible.

Ambition amoung the Religious

2008-11-07T08:45:00.004-05:00

Ambitious people annoy me. I allow things to annoy me too much. I have noticed a trend among some of my Christian friends. It is a trend in the religious community at large and perhaps my Christian friends are merely victims of it. To me, the concept looks like this;

a.) Christianity is awesome.

b.) People want awesome stuff.

c.) People pay cash for the stuff they want.

d.) I should be able to leverage "a + b = c" to my advantage.

The ambitious are always repackaging things and preying on the fact that the future is unknown and the unknown scares the hell out of normal people. The Christianity that was portrayed by Jesus Christ was not sellable, it consisted of the stuff everyone knows they need but no one will do. Solitude, service, silence and selflessness are hard sells.

Good luck my Christian friends.

2008-10-13T08:53:00.004-04:00

The picture is from Brandon Muth, a blog I've enjoyed. Too bad he is on Indefinite Hiatus, forcing me to start blogging again.
Tired of pointing my finger at other people, I finally realized and now firmly believe that the standard of living of the entire country needs to be lowered...I mean my standard of living needs to be lowered.
My #1 son was rummaging through the refrigerator and my wife said, "Didn't you just eat something?"
He replied, "yes, but I'm not completely full."
I spat out that 95% of the world has never felt "completely full". Only in America are people even familiar with "completely full".
"A little heavy", says the wife.
The company for which I work was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy a couple of weeks ago, our stock price was $107 in January...last month it hit $13. The reason: greed. Way too much risk, walking away from the real assets of you company to play with invisible speculations. It must be tempting for the CEO of a Fortune 200 company (or what used to be one). Hell, it's tempting for me with my puny fiduciary means. But I am angry. I watched my 401k nearly evaporate before Warren Buffett came to our rescue. Then I clenched my fists and gnashed my teeth as the legislature forsook the sacred "will-of-the-people" and passed the "more-credit-to-get-us-out-of-debt-bill". The country needs to get back to actually producing something. We need to work with our hands. Stop selling options to buy the future to sell the hedge against selling what someone just bought. Start building, manufacturing and really working. Start creating real things like the rest of the world instead of selling imaginary things.
Myself, I need to take my own advice. I need to live within my means so I can pay my kid's tuition without borrowing instead of just feeling good that my house is still worth more than I owe on it. I need to do real things for real people instead of just imagining how the would be better off if the world were a better place. I need to stop talking and start doing.

VOICE

2007-10-31T14:53:00.000-04:00

Listening to Rebecca sing in church on Sunday got me thinking. Her voice is amazing. I was telling my wife about it after Church and she asked what song Rebecca sang. I couldn’t remember and it didn’t matter, none of the words registered, only the voice. It could have been a different language for all I knew. There were only two people in the room at the time: Rebecca and her God. It was that worshipful.

Hers is one of the most soulful voices I’ve ever heard, soft like a comfortable pillow with a cool side underneath. There are a lot of different voices you hear. Some of them belt out and hit you like a baseball bat and make you say wow. Others are more utilitarian like a screwdriver or a pipe wrench; not real pretty but they get the job done. But those aren’t the kind of voices that move you to a place you weren’t planning to go.

I think voices can do that without sounding pretty, voices like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. People say they sound bad but you really have to listen to what they’re saying, they don’t give you an option. Their voices are harsh and cruel and they wake you and tell you things that you don’t want to hear, things that you need to hear, warnings. And warnings aren’t pretty. I doubt that Tom or Bob have ever been accused of being pretty.

All this made me think about what my voice sounds like, not my singing voice, I’m well aware of that. What do people hear when they hear me? Is it the voice of worship and purity or something else? Is it a voice of confrontation and warning? Do I voice the Gospel or do I just say words? The answer is not what I want it to be. More of a clanging gong than anything else.

God and Beer

2007-10-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Ah! This is nice. I have not posted in while. I have occupied myself with other activities and forgot how much I enjoyed this. As usual my topics will be limited to the only two things I know anything about: God and Beer.

Lately I've been discussing the book of James with some friends. Studying James is a mixed bag. The book is contentious and the source of certain forms of dispute. Many thought that the book had no place in the Bible because it stood awkwardly in contrast to other books, most notable those of Paul. But stand it does, it’s cumbersome in-your-face examination of the conflict between what we do and what we say we believe peering head and shoulders above some less prickly letters. On the other hand it’s common sense nature is timeless as it calls for balance and caution in the words and deeds of the faithful.

I wouldn’t make a very good salesman. A friend asked me if I ever feel like I’m not doing enough for God. I think that if we constantly had people coming up to us telling us how great our relationship with God is we would feel a lot better about things. But that wouldn’t really affect our relationship with God it would just make us feel good about ourselves. I was reading some Don Miller the other day and here are some of his words mixed in with my thoughts:
As it is I feel very much like my relationship with God is looked at as a religious system or as a product that keeps falling apart and who ever is selling it holds the broken pieces behind his back to try to divert everybody’s attention.

I don’t think I can do that, it’s exhausting. Let God worry about holding it all together. James doesn’t tell us to sell God. Instead he begs us to dive headlong into the relationship with him and with people in general. I guy named Pat Goodman always used to say, “Love God and love people, that’s all that matters.”

Far as the curse is found.

2006-12-21T07:02:00.000-05:00

A friend recalled this line from the Christmas Carol "Joy To The World" last night:
"He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found..."
It is interesting to think that this was the only purpose for the incarnation and we have made quite a mess of it. But the phase "far as the curse is found makes me wonder. Is there a human soul untouched by the curse? Is the curse worse in some then in others? I also wonder if our missionaries of the past have spead more blessing or more curse to the people they have reached.

False Advertising

2006-12-14T12:36:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I feel like the term “Conservative Christian” has been hi-jacked by assholes. In the public mind it no longer provides an accurate representation of what real conservative Christian people stand for. It’s a kind of false advertising in a way.
I just read an article by Dennis Prager. He wrote about Keith Ellison, D-Minn who happens to be the first Muslim to be elected to congress. Keith Ellison has announced that he will not place his hand on the Bible when he is sworn in.
Prager writes, “…it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism -- my culture trumps America's culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book. “
Prager is a Christian as am I. Prager is also a conservative; I am a tad more moderate than he but conservative by most standards. Here’s what bugs me, the status quo, the idea that we have always sworn on the Bible and any deviation from that is a threat to my culture. What Prager doesn’t get is common among conservatives-it’s not a competition.
As a Christian who reads the Bible I am bothered by the practice of swearing by the Bible. The Bible itself cautions man not to swear:
James 5:12 Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.
The practice of swearing on the Bible before taking the stand in court is only slightly more common than the practice of perjuring oneself there after. It cheapens the Bible to have someone who doesn’t value it devalue it by swearing on it and then lie. It cheapens the symbolic shininess of the 10 Commandments to have them aloft watching over the very systematic lawlessness of behavior of our Judiciary. It would be better, truer if you will, to leave the 10 Commandment out of it. It is people that are supposed to abide by divine law, let it be sacred to them without being soiled by the government. Conservatives act as though their religion will lose something, perhaps some of its power, if it is not considered a standard in our culture. So Christians in the public eye continue to piss me off. What else is new.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.

2006-11-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

My job requires that I troubleshoot electro-mechanical systems in a nuclear power plant. I have been doing this for a while and find it quite enjoyable. It’s not just the work that I enjoy but the interaction of people in stressful situations where they must think rationally to progress toward a solution to the problem. People have a tendency to overcomplicate things and build assumptions upon assumptions. Similarly, people seem reluctant or at times even incapable of letting go of an idea or a solution in order to grasp a new, more rational one. Instead they will devise a system of hypotheticals that seem to cast a favorable light on their original thought process. This not only extends the amount of time it takes to reach a reasonable solution to the problem but frustrates the process to the point of exhaustion.
I tend to cling to Occam’s Razor as a way of keeping my thought process clear and on track. I return to it often in my work when formulating a troubleshooting approach.

Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those assumptions that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation. This is often paraphrased as, "All things being equal, the simplest solution which makes the fewest assumptions tends to be the best one."

Recently, I have begun to apply Occam’s Razor to more than technical situations. It pulls me away from the worry that clouds life when you are continuously thinking, ”What if…”It also allows me to not demonize those with a different point of view. If someone opposes me on a certain point I could easily discount them by saying they don’t have the right information or they only disagree out of spite, surely any rational person would see things my way, right? BUT Occam demands that I treat all other views as plausible as mine providing they are based on fact not assumption.

I wish that Kevin McCullough would have used this trusty Razor while writing this piece on Rick Warren and Barak Obama. In this diatribe McCullough demonizes both men for doing what more leaders in this country should do, uniting against poverty and sickness. This was the same tactic that was used by Jesus Christ. Jesus personally fought poverty and sickness to bring comfort and health to people that mattered only to Him and he didn’t worry at all about with whom he would be “associated” in this act. Occam says that the solution is as plain as the nose on our collective faces but the reason we can’t find it is because we all are choosing to turn our eyes from the problem in a trance of self importance. That’s the way I see it anyway.

Jeepers Creepers.

2006-11-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

I Found out over the weekend that my Uncle passed away.
Gary L. McCauley was one of my favorite people. He was an adult who still acted like a kid. Haven’t seen him in a long time but I have some great memories. He was a load of fun and would let us get away with just about everything. Back in the 70’s we would walk from my Grandfather’s house up to Dick's Country Store to buy a soda. Uncle Gary would give me a dollar to buy him a package of Kent cigarettes and let me keep the change. I have missed him and will continue to do so.

I'm pretty sure it's Him...

2006-10-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

I was finishing up a Bible study in the Gospel of John last night and while reading the last chapter (21) I was gripped by the idea that Jesus was quite unrecognizable to his followers after he was resurected. His disciples would see him and not react, but then when Jesus spoke or when Jesus did something they would suddenly realize who he was. Isn’t this interesting, as if he was relating to them in a whole new way. Almost as if to say that we used to trust in the temporal thing of familiarity but now we must rely on the more effective and more “real” spiritual realm. John 21 is a chapter where a handful of disciples have this surreal meeting with Jesus. It seems to me that the disciples had started to slip back into the lives that they lived before meeting Jesus for the first time, spending all night on the lake and catching no fish. Then Jesus calls to them much like he did in the beginning. In fact many of the events that occur in this section are strangely similar to events that happen earlier. Jesus gives them successful fishing tips, feeds them mysteriously and Peter tries to walk on water. He is bringing them back, reminding them that it is all real. Sitting by the fire after eating fish Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than this”? There is a lot of talk about what Jesus meant, and I guess there are as many different answers as there are different people, but for me he is saying, “Do you love me more than familiar, temporal comfort?” You see there isn’t much better than sitting by a campfire eating fresh kill with your friends. I am the one who must eternally answer, “You know everything and you know that I love you, you know that there is more than meets the eye.”

Take up your cross.

2006-08-31T08:44:00.000-04:00

I often write down my thoughts and share them with others and ask their opinion to broaden my point of view on the matter. Recently I asked some people at SoMD what they thought about taking up their cross and following Jesus.

From Matthew 16:21-28

Some expressed the classical explanation of the verse which is actually what I’ve been pulling away from lately, the idea that the Christian life is burdensome. It usually goes along with the idea that we need to wait until we pass from this world to the next to experience the “Kingdom of Heaven”. I’m wondering if in some ways we can’t pass from this world, after all John the Baptist preached, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
I’ve been thinking lately about my human perspective and what it means to die to self. If I look at the context in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says this about your “cross” right after he admonishes Peter for having in mind the things of man instead of the things of God. I think that the “system” of this world (the things of man) is going to kill us. Its substance is the lumber of that cross upon which will hang the frame of our worldly self. I think that bearing our cross is the same dieing to self that Jesus mentioned earlier but now more vividly. But it is no burden, only the trading of the worthless things for those of great value. These who learn to pass through the worldly system unaffected are those referred to as “not tasting death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”

Discovery vs. Scholarship

2006-07-31T09:58:00.000-04:00

True love begins with discovery, not scholarship. However scholarship goes far in nurturing your appreciation for that which you love. I am talking of course about beer. I made a discovery last week while driving through the Canaan Valley area of West Virginia. I noticed a wooden builing off the road with a sign that said something about beer brewing. I was enjoying homemade ice cream with my kids at The Purple Fiddle when it struck me that the soft, bluegrass playing on the stereo was strangely familiar. (Click on the title above to hear a sample) It was a wonderful rendition of Jimi Hendrix' Little Wing done by the The South Austin Jug Band. While strolling around the shop half memorized by the music I notice a refrigerator while three beer taps protruding through the door. This caught my attention because I am an armature beer brewer myself. I was informed that the beer was made at the very same establishment that I drove by earlier. That evening a few of us patronized the afore mentioned establishment. There was live Bluegrass being produced by two local huckleberries in the corner, the beer was exquisite and the scene was made complete with the entrance of two of the oldest, ugliest and smelliest dogs to disgrace the Mountain State.

So beer and Bluegrass are two of my loves and (much like the people in my life) I fell in love with them upon first discovery, I did not learn about them first. I knew what I liked about beer before I knew how to make it. I knew what I liked about my wife before I figured out why she is the way she is. However, after discovery I have learned more and more about my loves and this is essential to continuing enjoyment.

Pervert!

2006-07-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

I was recently reading a children’s adaptation of Poe’s “The Black Cat” to my son. He has an affinity for the creepy (like old Pop). I was intrigued while reading and later went to my grown-up copy to enjoy with a libation. I came across this passage and was thrown by the keen insight into the human condition displayed by Mr. Poe.

“And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart --one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself --to offer violence to its own nature --to do wrong for the wrong's sake only --that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.”

C. S. Lewis puts it thusly:

“When you say that Nature is governed by certain laws, this only means that nature does in fact behave in a certain way. The so called laws may not be anything real-anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of man this will not do. The Law of Human Nature, Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond the actual facts of human behavior. In this case, besides actual facts, you have something else-a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey and yet we do not!”

I was shocked that two men, so different could pen with such similitude. Perhaps they had more in common then I realized...perhaps we all do.

Purity and Moral Authority

2006-06-02T08:31:00.000-04:00

Hypocrisy is the acid that erodes both authority and credibility. As human beings we don’t take advice well. There are always qualifiers that we put in place before listening to or taking advice from others. There are many in the world in need of wise council and there are equally many willing to distribute this council but we are hesitant to disclose our problems and listen to advice. We are not likely to sit down and discuss our marriage problems with, say, a priest who has never been married. Nor am I about to take child rearing advice from a middle school student. I’m not saying that this is the way it should be, just the way we are. The reason may be sound or, perhaps it is because we want the “counselor” to have an assailable record, that way we can have reason to disregard their advice after we have heard it. When it comes down to it good advice is good advice no matter the source, right? So why don’t I listen to a greedy swindler when he tells me to give more to the church. Why am I offended by the adulterer that tells me to keep my mind from impure thoughts, or by the pastor who preaches humility while pandering to the social elite?

If we lose our moral authority how can we distinguish between good and bad? How can we lead others away from sins that we embrace? I am puzzled by what is happening today in Iraq, where good men have been abandoned in a terrifying place and have succumbed to the forces of appalling corruption. How can we lead a nation to freedom, liberty and justice when we have embraced wretchedness, deceit and violence?
God save us from ourselves.

2006-04-11T07:27:00.000-04:00

I was in Manhattan (sorry Joe) this weekend and I went to two churches, Riverside Church on the left and Saint Patricks Cathedral on the right. I love NYC and though I've never been there for more than a few days I think I could live there.

Guess what I am sinking.

2006-03-27T15:30:00.000-05:00

Spring has arrived which this year is quite boring due to the fact that we all used so much aerosol anti-persperant in the 70's that there be a gaping hole in our ozone layer coupled with our affinity for producing green house gases suffice it to say that if the whole globe has not warmed significantly my small portion of it has. The winter came and left unnoticed with the exception of a short lived blizzard which dumped about a foot of white stuff which was gone in 2 or three days. I love springtime but with out the contrast of winter it is less appealing. Or maybe not less appealing as much as less refreshing. It's like spring is trying to say, "I'm here!" But it can't be understood.

At times I feel like I have just the right thing to say and that I can eloquently crystallize the thoughts of others. Communication is very important to me and the only thing that I find more frustrating than working with a poor communicator is the times when I realize that I am not communicating well. I actually come from a long line of notoriously poor communicators. My family has a way of ignoring the obvious and clinging to the, "If she had something to say she would say it." attitude.
Watch This on the importance of proper communication.

2006-03-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine recently wrote this:

“And in life, I figure, you are going to pretty much do the things that make you feel good about yourself, make you feel important and on purpose, and walk away from things that make you feel like a loser.”

Smart guy he is. It seems like an over-simplified life statement that most people of faith would call a “cop-out”. I think that it is stunning in both its truth and its simplicity.
About a week ago I went to a father/son paintball event. It was one of those times when men act like boys and boys act like men. There were discussions fit for only male ears.
“Hope I don’t get hit in the nuts.”
“That’s why I’m wearing a cup.”
“You’re wearing a cup?!? Dad, should I be wearing a cup?!?”
“No one is allowed to shoot anyone in the nuts!”
It was old guys against young guys and even though we unleashed a fury of 185 MPH paint at their young arses that was akin to Armageddon. They kept coming back for more. We kept saying, “Are you sure you want it to be Dads against kids?” And they kept saying, “We’re gonna beat you this time.”
In the end…we killed them, 5 games to 1, but you could tell that they felt on top of the world, they felt good about themselves, important and purposeful. No one had handed them anything that day, they snatched defeat with their own hands. The conversation on the way home was predictably boyish and juvenile, “Did you see when So-and-So took that shot to the back of the head?” As my son and I drove the long drive home he fell asleep next to me and I thought, “I’m so glad no one got hit in the nuts.”

2006-01-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican City on January 25, 2006 warned in his first encyclical that sex without unconditional love risked turning men and women into merchandise.

This is a point that has been cast aside by civilization and lost forever. I don’t see how modern society could swallow the pill prescribed by Pope Benedict XVI. I wonder if there has been a civilization where human beings were not treated as merchandise, more poignantly though the Pope narrowed in on the modernity of the issue that is an obsession with the commodity of sex:
“With Eros reduced to pure "sex", the Pope writes, physical love has become a commodity to be bought and sold. Man himself has become a commodity, he adds.
"This is hardly man's great 'yes' to the body... Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body."
Critics have said that the Pope could have tackled a more crucial topic in his first address such as ethics but I think he hit the nail on the head.

Energy monger

2006-01-19T09:12:00.000-05:00

Have you ever thought about new energy sources? I was reading about bio-diesel as an alternative auto motive fuel a few months ago and was pretty excited about the prospects of freeing ourselves from dependency on foreign oil, which is a pretty popular idea these days. I find the topic interesting and have often thought that it is a simple solution to a complex problem.
Did you know who invented the Diesel engine? Rudolf Diesel was an ingenious inventor and he wanted to design an internal combustion engine that required no spark but ignited the fuel by means of compression. He also wanted to make an engine that would allow farmers and craftsmen to be free from the shackles of industry. He wanted and engine that could use vegetable oil and grain alcohol as fuel thereby allowing a farmer to grow a portion of his crops for fuel and be self-sustaining. Rudolf’s dream was practical socially and culturally but impractical from an engineering standpoint in 1890. Fast forward 115 years and now we have the technology to produce high quality bio-diesel fuel from corn oil and grain alcohol however the social-economic structure is such that mixing the sources of food and fuel would be akin to shitting where you sleep. Look at it this way: A farmer would not be satisfied just converting a portion of his crops to fuel when lack of supply drives fuel prices higher than food prices, in-fact the government is paying subsidies to keep more food being produce then the farmer can sell. The laws of supply and demand would mean that the cost of foreign oil would not only affect the cost of fuel but also the cost of food. There would be an abrupt reversal of the downwardly spiraling agricultural industry and the DOA would struggle to enforce measures to prevent massive strip harvesting of crops that could decimate the fertility of Americas farmland each year.

Americans use energy to get away. We live further away from work and we vacation further away from home. Some day when we realize the truth of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity we will unlock the huge stores of energy contained within each atom of matter. The Earth will be destroyed as we use its mass-turned-to-energy to launch ourselves into space in search of a place, a nice spot in the suburbs of the galaxy, to call home.

Escape from Self

2006-01-05T11:48:00.000-05:00

I was considering my place in time and the thought (spurred by a C. S. Lewis book) that right now is eternity. We hear a lot of mumbo jumbo in the Christian world and we just swallow it because we’ve always heard it. Here’s one: “Someday we shall live in eternity.” Say what? What then are we doing now, waiting for eternity to begin? How will we know when it starts?
I was thinking all of this when I read Brother Larry’s most recent blog. It seems most obvious to me that we are now, each moment, each one of us caught up in the only thing that really matters. How easily I am distracted from reality and life by idealisms and dogma that offer me neither happiness nor security. It is better to embrace mystery and people than some idea of what you will do or some despair over what you have done.There is a bigger thing of which we are part. Here’s a quote by someone smart:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
-Albert Einstein

Right now is the only link, the only connection that I have with the rest of this thing called a universe and all of it’s other parts. How will I free myself from this prison and consume the mystery of my place in time.

This I believe.

Just plain mean.

2005-12-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

I had just gotten my hair cut and paid the man a few days ago when my barber looks at me and says, “Happy Holy Day.” in a very thick Vietnamese accent, which is odd because he is Cuban (kidding).
Upon hearing his words I was struck by their nature. The simplicity of the situation was plain. This man was merely repeating what has now become the safest, blandest and most non-offensive of winter/end-of-year greetings. And yet it spoke to me by nature of his unique and quite accidental inflection. And that is how live happens I think, the harmless and hapless expressions become the most fertile fields for thought.

Meanwhile, back at the attitude farm, a co-worker was ranting about how the company Christmas Party has been renamed the “End of Year Celebration”. “They’ve taken everything else away from us and now they’ve even taken away our Christmas.”, he protested.
I confronted the sour puss by asking him what Christmas meant to him. As it turns out he doesn’t do anything religious on Christmas, he doesn’t reflect on the meaning of deep ancient mysteries and his understanding of Christmas as a holiday is based on very recent occurrences in history. Somehow he has staked out a battle ground (with the help of Fox News no doubt) upon which if you don’t acknowledge Christmas and affirm his family tradition then you have made yourself his opponent. How thin, cheap and temporal is your “Holy Day” if it falls apart when it isn’t affirmed by your Wal-Mart clerk upon check-out?

I told him that he needed to watch “The Grinch” again. If the Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas by stealing everything else then Christmas can’t be taken away.
Remember, it came anyway:

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons!
It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

Sometimes I wonder if Christmas wouldn’t mean a whole lot more if we concentrated on it just a little less.

Reach for the sky.

2005-11-29T08:28:00.000-05:00

Fall is a quiet, sublime submission to time. Life is a memory of what could have been and time is a landslide. A friend tells me that we should be more intentional about life. I think that he means that I shouldn’t just let life happen to me. I am a very good bystander, I don’t make things happen. My cynical side says that my friend is suffering from his own illusion. Life happens to all. We can work really hard to feel like we are happening to life; we are the cause of things. Perhaps I’m wrong, but still, I think I’ll sit back and see what happens…I don’t want to miss anything.

Pay No Attention to The Psycho Behind the Curtain.

2005-11-15T08:47:00.000-05:00

My wife (blessed be she) has had an epiphany of sorts. Our youngest has some strange bathroom habits. He will walk past the perfectly functioning bathroom in the basement and run upstairs to the powder room in the hallway. On Sunday morning, while snug in our bed we will hear a knock on the door. It is our son wanting to use our bathroom instead of the one in the hall way. I never really thought that much of it, just chalked it up to weirdness. Yesterday my wife and I were watching me drink a beer in the kitchen when the youngster ran up the basement steps and down the hall to the bathroom. She looks at me (the wife) and says, “It’s the shower curtains.” If there is a closed shower curtain in the bathroom he won’t go in. “He denies it so I know its true.” she continued. It’s amazing how I can observe the same behavior in a person over and over and never really understand what I’m observing. I see what is going on but the reality of the event escapes me. Like my son I tend to be more concerned with what I can’t see, what’s behind the curtain. My son hides what is true, as do I. We are avoiding that which is hard to see. Taking a lead from Gar I have taken to leaving the shower curtains open in the house, after all there's nothing to fear there, just a little stubborn mildew, but we've all got some of that haven't we?

George's Heart

2005-11-09T12:18:00.000-05:00

A coworker of mine had a heart attack about a month ago. George always used to walk around here snarling and complaining about how much he had to do and how big the backlog was. He’s been slowly coming back to work, putting in half days, taking it easy. He and I sat down with our supervisor and talked about how he’s doing. My boss asked him if he had looked at our work backlog and George said, “I don’t care about that anymore, now all I care about is people.” I never would have thought that George would say that. I guess we all know people who have these life changing events and get their priorities straighten out. They suddenly realize they’re mortals, their days are numbered and they’ve thought about the fact that their not ready to die, they want to live the remaining portion of their lives differently then the previous. The rest of us smile politely as we listen to the revelation. It doesn’t really sink in, but then sometimes as I walk through the market place I look at people and seem to see a soul. I see a mortal frame but every now and then it strikes me that all of these people are souls with eternal significance. It can be a frightening feeling. So often I treat the people in my life the way that a banker treats money, like and instrument. Don Miller talks about how he feels like people are just actors that enter and exit the stage in a play about his life. When we see the people around us as eternal beings our lives are changed. Listen to this essay from NPR: This I Believe

Lack of Culture

2005-11-02T10:49:00.000-05:00

It has become fashionable in this neck of the woods to involve yourself in affairs not your own. A couple of weeks ago my white, upper-middle class neighbors decided to go to the local mosque and enjoy a feast to celebrate the first fast breaking of Ramadan. Why? He was raised Mormon, she-Baptist, neither are very interested at all in “life-changing” religion but there is some allure to collecting with people different than yourself an partake in celebration and ceremony. I call it culture. I think that America is culturally starving itself and it is bad for us individually and collectively.

When I grew up in Baltimore there was always a festival going on somewhere. The Italian Festival, the Afro-American Festival, The Polish Festival, they were so much fun. The food was out of this world. The people would dress-up in costumes and dance; there would be some ethnic music being performed and all kinds of crafts and such. This enriched my childhood and gave me a profound sense of community that has helped form my world view. I don’t think the festivals are still as big of a deal and it may be because of the nature of urban America. Urban Sprawl is the scourge of this country and I am guilty of it myself. I moved away from the city for my job and have missed it ever since. It is here in distant suburbia that I have found a community so lacking in culture that “bland” seems appealing. We have a few cultural icons; the watermen (they keep to themselves), the tobacco farmer (now an illegal occupation), the insane commuter (too busy to hold a conversation-driving 2hrs each way into D.C.). It’s kind of a cultural desert, so people seek out ways to expand their horizons. I guess that there’s nothing wrong with it but I think we cheapen the religion of others when we view it as nothing more than a cultural experience for ourselves.

I myself find cultural riches in digesting the foods of other regions. Being that I live in the before mentioned cultural wasteland, I must drive to the city to find ethic food. There was a great little place called India Garden about 15 minutes from my house that had incredible fare (the lamb Vindaloo would make you cry) but it soon was burned to the ground in an intense conflagration. Seems the whole kitchen was operating off of one outlet. Consider my plight and mourn.

Friction and Beauty

2005-10-20T09:43:00.000-04:00

I was watching reruns of Cop Rock and wondering how anyone could associate dancing and singing with police work. Sometimes the most absurd contrasts in life come together quite beautifully; Cop Rock is a notable exception. There are people in my life that I consider associates, we deal with each other, figure out how to interact, when to take each other seriously, when to blow each other off. We use each other for what we need, we are congenial, generally polite and we figure out how to exist side-by-side with no friction. This is a very functional relationship on a very basic level. I know people with marriages that function on this level. Hell, I know people who wish that their marriages functioned on this level. But there is something missing...Beauty. We often think of beauty as a quality that is born in quiet solitude, a gentle whisper of new thought, a natural selfless commitment or an unchanging standard that never disappoints. It would seem that friction is the last thing that you would associate with beauty. How is it then that the relationships that cause the most change in me are the beautiful ones? The conversations that come close to emotional eruption, the turmoil of miscommunication and poorly chosen words, the hurt of misunderstanding and the humility of confession and forgiveness, these are the events that have produced all of the beauty that I have found in life. Beauty that reaches beyond numb functionality and crude practicality and produces a spiritual form of interaction that slakes the cracking soul. Society seems to have been frozen in a stilted charade of impersonal interaction at times. I don't know if this is a new phenomenon in fact I doubt that I feel any different than any person in any society at the turn of any century. John O'Donohue says,
"...there's the whole homogenization of culture and consciousness in mass technology and media--although there's a lot more interaction than there once was between people, but it's all simulated, you know, and lacks the vitality and vigor and danger of a direct encounter with otherness. So these are some of the contexts which are creating a massive spiritual hunger."
This "danger of a direct encounter with otherness" is the kind of friction that creates sparks, direct contact, heat. We spend so much energy trying to become comfortable that we deny ourselves the beauty that comes from discomfort. I, myself, have traded joy for peace and found none.

Proverbs 27:17
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

Identity

2005-10-14T08:16:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine was watching the Baltimore Ravens completely implode and self-destruct on Sunday at a bar. He left feeling a bit self conscious about the Ed Reed jersey he was wearing. It is interesting how we identify ourselves. I have never seen my friend Wade wear any clothing that had an endorsement for anything on it except shirts and ball caps from the different schools at which he has taught. I’m pretty sure that he does this on purpose although I have never asked him about it.
A few weeks ago I noticed a young man sitting in front of me in church. He had covered the front of his Bible with a Bush-Chaney bumper sticker. It would seem that the protestant church has been so saturated by the right wing conservative movement that there is barely a distinction between the two. The distinction between conservatives and Christians has gone from a point of confusion to direct identification and because of that factoid a young man can get away with covering his faith with his politics. I suppose that is not a fair assessment of the young man’s purpose, but that is my point. When we choose a point of identification for ourselves it almost never produces the reaction or the effect of our liking let alone our intention.
In South Carolina, where my father lives, men and women alike derive a sense of identity from their affiliation with one of many college football teams. It consumes most of their activity and conversation. I find it to be a healthy diversion from life in that it is social interaction that barely etches below the very surface of existence and yet somehow these folk share a deep bond and I firmly believe that any of them would truly take a bullet for my father. He spent last weekend with us, my father did. Several times he used the term “born-a-gens”. “Chick-Fil-A, you gotta be a born-a-gen to own one of those.” “So-and-so quit coaching football and became a born-a-gen”. “They say George W. Bush is a born-a-gen”. It is a term with which he would never identify himself no matter what he believes. I don’t blame him. I feel the same way.
I come to a dilemma though when I read the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3:

5Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
9"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.

My father has an almost comical view of people who identify themselves as born again. He certainly does not see them as mysterious people born of the Spirit. Like I said earlier the identity that we choose for ourselves hardly ever brings about the intended effect, the desired change in our person, which is because the truth can’t be hidden by a moniker, by a label, by a bumper sticker or by a football jersey. The truth is still there and it speaks loudly; the Ravens are undisciplined and suck badly, politicians are shifty, Christians are in a messy situation of being filthy people trying to reflect the perfect glory. As my pal Nicodemus asked, “How can this be?”

What if there is no tomorrow...there wasn't one today.

2005-10-10T09:10:00.000-04:00

I found this text on my hard drive from my old blog before I destroyed it in a fit of self importance. Thought I would post it here.

I was at a Christian Education seminar where Dr. Tony Evans was the keynote speaker. He said that everyday we wake up in the same old bed, go to the same old job in the same old car and work for the same old boss. We do the same old stuff, come home to the same old so and so in the same old house and eat the same old dinner etc…He was talking about how we fail to take advantage of opportunity to serve God and man.
Groundhog Day was on again a few nights ago. This movie intrigues me because I look at it as a direct parallel to my spiritual life. I was discussing the movie with a coworker the next day. He said that he thought that it would be cool to be able to live the same day over and over again until you got it right. The two thoughts (Tony Evans speech and Groundhog Day) came together when my coworker made this comment. I said to him, “Isn’t that what we are doing?”

“I’ve killed myself so many times that I don’t even exist anymore.” Phil Connors says shortly after he tries repeatedly to commit suicide out of frustration with the continuous 24 hour loop that was his existence, he realizes that living for himself is futile and he finds the joy of living for someone else.
There are few calls in Christianity that are as intimidating as this:

Matthew 16:24-26
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

When will I become so bored with my 24 hour loop that I am no longer anxious to save this temporal earthly life, or this comfort and security? He that is willing to risk or lose his comfort and life here for my sake, shall find life everlasting and shall be saved. If you want to keep your life just the way it is, you will lose your life forever.