So not only is the new Spike Lee joint, Inside Man, an amazing movie, it opens and closes with a song called "Chaiyya Chaiyya Bollywood Joint," sung by Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi. Most of it is sung in Hindi but there's some English rapping by Panjabi MC.
I've been playing this freaking song for three days straight and it still puts a huge, stupid smile on my face - it's just so full of energy and joy and it's got this funky bass line that just doesn't quit. And from the translations I've seen, it seems like some kind of love song infused with Quranic religious imagery.
But that's not all I want to write about. There's something else. And it has to do with...well...blogging. I mean, for the past couple weeks I've been on a roll - posting long assed posts three, four, sometimes five of them per week. And there's been a lot on my mind and it was just spewing out onto the page.
But I've been off my game this week. And I'm not sure why. And it's not that I don't have things to write about, I actually started a list of topics and ideas that I want to flesh out because I don't want to forget them.
And I'm wondering if maybe that's the problem. I mean, maybe worrying about forgetting topics and ideas was something that kept me motivated to get to writing - so that I got it down before I forgot. And maybe by making a list, I've lost that incentive because now I have a pool from which to draw.
See, even though I've been writing a lot, I'm actually a pretty lazy guy. Left to my own devices, I'd watch Law & Order reruns all night (they're playing on two channels during the week). That's by far my favorite television show because I think they have some of the smartest writing. Law & Order, Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent, all three of them are amazing in their own way.
Anyway, I'm not sure why I haven't been blogging as much this week. I mean, every time I thought about sitting down and putting some ideas down, I just got a really bad case of uninspired. And it's not like that's stopped me before. Don't ask me why but there were a lot of blogs where I sat down and started typing without really knowing what I wanted to say.
"Why'd you do that?"
I told you not to ask me.
And does this happen to any of you? You get into something, maybe it's a new candy bar or a catchy song on the radio or some geeky toy at an electronics store. You get all into this thing but maybe you can't afford it right now so you can only play with it at the store. Or maybe you love hearing the song on the radio but you're not sure if you want to buy the entire CD. But then you bite the bullet and you get whatever you were jonesing for and then once you get it, you're over it.
And I'm wondering if this is what happened once I started keeping a list of things I wanted to write about. I mean, like I said above, maybe being worried about getting the idea down onto the blog before I forgot about it was what kept the blog moving. Maybe starting a list somehow sapped my creative energy, removing the urgency and spontaneity.
Now I suppose I could just delete the blog-idea list, but then what if that wasn't why I haven't been blogging as much and I got rid of all those good ideas for nothing. It's not a long list, but still, there are some juicy ideas in there that need fleshing out.
I don't know, this is a really pointless, stupid blog entry.
"Yeah, like your other entries are any better."
Who are you?
Oh, but there was one other thing. If you've made it this far down then I guess you're one of the hundred or so people who visit this blog a couple times per week. And I was just wondering if there was anything any of you wanted to ask me or any topic you wanted to get my opinion on. This is a kind of open invitation to ask the LoneTomato whatever you want. And for those MySpacers out there, if you want to remain anonymous, you can leave your comment on my mirror blog at The LoneTomato Stand.
Or maybe you just want to say something about why you read this thing.
Or maybe you want to leave me a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Or you can just keep reading.
No big whoop.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
187. Christianity and culture (part 2)
(Finally got back to finishing part 2. You can find part 1 in blog 184.)
Culture can most simply be defined as, "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group" (Apple OSX Dictionary). And is it just me or do you get the sense that American culture has reached a kind of dead-end? Think about it. When's the last time you saw a TRULY original work of art or television show or movie? Movies and television are all about remakes and sequels and genre pieces. Paintings have run the gamut from hyper-realism during the Renaissance to nonrepresentational abstraction in the twentieth century, and today every painting just seems to fall somewhere along that spectrum.
And art in general is seen as irrelevant by the general population. And this is a puzzling phenomenon because, as I heard in a speech given by current National Endowment for the Arts chairperson, Dana Gioia, we are living in a time of unprecedented access to works of art in all its forms. There are more journals of poetry than ever before, there are more art galleries than ever before, the internet provides access to art at all levels from the mediocre and the banal to the accomplished and sublime.
But at the same time, interest in art is at an all time low. It's seen as an elitist, merely academic interest. It doesn't speak to (unless speaking down to) day to day persons. Its immediate influence only extends out to a small, rather exclusive circle of practitioners, patrons, and critics. And I qualify that statement with the word, "immediate" because even though it goes largely ignored at the time, certain shifts and eruptions in the art world can eventually be felt at all levels of society - particularly as it finds expression in advertising.
"Okay, big deal. So what does this have to do with Christianity?"
Here it is. As Christians, we should have the most compelling stories to tell because we commune with the ultimate Creator, the God of the universe and we make it a practice to study the story that he tells in his revealed word, the Bible. The first thing we learn about God in Genesis 1:1 is that God is a creative being - an artist. Later in that same chapter, we learn that we are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26). Put the two together and I think a powerful argument can be made for the idea that one of the primary things that separates humans from all other animals is the capacity to create not just tools, but culture-building works of art.
But Christians today, have neglected this mandate. Christian institutions have not nurtured, supported, or even encouraged the practice of art at the highest and most innovative levels. Instead, it perpetuates an unfortunate and inferior imitative model where we take what those outside the church have created and fashion our own derivative copies.
This pattern can most clearly be seen in the area of popular music. Innovations in music come from those outside the walls of the church and at first, the church ridicules, criticizes, and attempts to censor it. Think of how churches first responded to rock music and more recently to hip hop. Eventually, they come to accept the form and then Christians start producing the very music that their churches once tried to suppress.
"Uh huh, you already said that in your other blog about Christianity and culture (see blog 184)."
What I'm trying to get at is the idea that Christian institutions (be they churches or para-church organizations) need to start encouraging (with words) and supporting (with money) new, life-affirming, culture building works of art.
"Art? You think art is going to make Christianity relevant to society?"
Yes I do. Go back to the definition at the top of the blog. Culture can be defined as, ""the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group" (Apple OSX Dictionary). And I believe that a true, redemptive, beautiful new movement in the arts can play a huge role in building bridges, in healing wounds, in bringing back a sense of community to our nation and ultimately to the world. And who better to bring about this new vanguard than true, God fearing (as opposed to church fearing) Christians?
"Geeze Randall, when did you start writing speeches for Mrs. America pageants?"
No, I really mean it. If churches would pull their collective heads out of the ass of the Christian sub-culture; if we would remember that our task is to be about ushering in the Kingdom of God; if we would stop retreating from this aching, lonely world and start the long, hard work of healing and reconciliation. If churches would reclaim their rightful place as leaders and examples, there wouldn't be seats enough in all the church pews in the world to contain the masses longing to worship together.
"Seriously, Randall, you've lost it."
And it begins with art because people will sooner rally around an image than an idea, a story than a theory, a song than an essay. I think of the movie Braveheart and how the stories that circulated about William Wallace were larger than life and that is why men followed. And (to use another work by Mel Gibson) I think of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and how churches from denominations that would otherwise have nothing to do with one another, sat together in rooms around the nation.
That is what art can do. It can remind us to look beyond ourselves and focus on prizes larger than statistical church attendance charts or doctrinal nit picking. A good story, the right cause, excellent craftsmanship can help us lift our eyes from the storms and waves that rage around us and to strain towards our Savior who waits for us with outstretched arms.
"You're mad if you think that art can do all that and you're downright daffy if you think the church has any hope of being at the forefront of such a movement, should it ever happen."
And yes, it is mad and daffy and stupidly impossible. But isn't it time we started praying for things that are larger than our ability to bring them about? What's the use of praying that the ATM will give you a twenty when you've got hundreds in your account? Besides, I think this is something God wants to do and he's just waiting for people with enough faith to believe in the impossible.
Truth be told, that last paragraph is more about me than about anyone else. I only have enough faith to write about it. Does that qualify as a mustard seed amount? Because I really do believe that we are at a crossroads and that the church has a great opportunity to stand up and point towards faith, hope, and love, to bring meaning back to humanity (humanity that modernism stole from us), to take the lead in society instead of huddling together in subcultural bubbles. And yes, I really do believe that it starts with the arts.
Culture can most simply be defined as, "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group" (Apple OSX Dictionary). And is it just me or do you get the sense that American culture has reached a kind of dead-end? Think about it. When's the last time you saw a TRULY original work of art or television show or movie? Movies and television are all about remakes and sequels and genre pieces. Paintings have run the gamut from hyper-realism during the Renaissance to nonrepresentational abstraction in the twentieth century, and today every painting just seems to fall somewhere along that spectrum.
And art in general is seen as irrelevant by the general population. And this is a puzzling phenomenon because, as I heard in a speech given by current National Endowment for the Arts chairperson, Dana Gioia, we are living in a time of unprecedented access to works of art in all its forms. There are more journals of poetry than ever before, there are more art galleries than ever before, the internet provides access to art at all levels from the mediocre and the banal to the accomplished and sublime.
But at the same time, interest in art is at an all time low. It's seen as an elitist, merely academic interest. It doesn't speak to (unless speaking down to) day to day persons. Its immediate influence only extends out to a small, rather exclusive circle of practitioners, patrons, and critics. And I qualify that statement with the word, "immediate" because even though it goes largely ignored at the time, certain shifts and eruptions in the art world can eventually be felt at all levels of society - particularly as it finds expression in advertising.
"Okay, big deal. So what does this have to do with Christianity?"
Here it is. As Christians, we should have the most compelling stories to tell because we commune with the ultimate Creator, the God of the universe and we make it a practice to study the story that he tells in his revealed word, the Bible. The first thing we learn about God in Genesis 1:1 is that God is a creative being - an artist. Later in that same chapter, we learn that we are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26). Put the two together and I think a powerful argument can be made for the idea that one of the primary things that separates humans from all other animals is the capacity to create not just tools, but culture-building works of art.
But Christians today, have neglected this mandate. Christian institutions have not nurtured, supported, or even encouraged the practice of art at the highest and most innovative levels. Instead, it perpetuates an unfortunate and inferior imitative model where we take what those outside the church have created and fashion our own derivative copies.
This pattern can most clearly be seen in the area of popular music. Innovations in music come from those outside the walls of the church and at first, the church ridicules, criticizes, and attempts to censor it. Think of how churches first responded to rock music and more recently to hip hop. Eventually, they come to accept the form and then Christians start producing the very music that their churches once tried to suppress.
"Uh huh, you already said that in your other blog about Christianity and culture (see blog 184)."
What I'm trying to get at is the idea that Christian institutions (be they churches or para-church organizations) need to start encouraging (with words) and supporting (with money) new, life-affirming, culture building works of art.
"Art? You think art is going to make Christianity relevant to society?"
Yes I do. Go back to the definition at the top of the blog. Culture can be defined as, ""the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group" (Apple OSX Dictionary). And I believe that a true, redemptive, beautiful new movement in the arts can play a huge role in building bridges, in healing wounds, in bringing back a sense of community to our nation and ultimately to the world. And who better to bring about this new vanguard than true, God fearing (as opposed to church fearing) Christians?
"Geeze Randall, when did you start writing speeches for Mrs. America pageants?"
No, I really mean it. If churches would pull their collective heads out of the ass of the Christian sub-culture; if we would remember that our task is to be about ushering in the Kingdom of God; if we would stop retreating from this aching, lonely world and start the long, hard work of healing and reconciliation. If churches would reclaim their rightful place as leaders and examples, there wouldn't be seats enough in all the church pews in the world to contain the masses longing to worship together.
"Seriously, Randall, you've lost it."
And it begins with art because people will sooner rally around an image than an idea, a story than a theory, a song than an essay. I think of the movie Braveheart and how the stories that circulated about William Wallace were larger than life and that is why men followed. And (to use another work by Mel Gibson) I think of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and how churches from denominations that would otherwise have nothing to do with one another, sat together in rooms around the nation.
That is what art can do. It can remind us to look beyond ourselves and focus on prizes larger than statistical church attendance charts or doctrinal nit picking. A good story, the right cause, excellent craftsmanship can help us lift our eyes from the storms and waves that rage around us and to strain towards our Savior who waits for us with outstretched arms.
"You're mad if you think that art can do all that and you're downright daffy if you think the church has any hope of being at the forefront of such a movement, should it ever happen."
And yes, it is mad and daffy and stupidly impossible. But isn't it time we started praying for things that are larger than our ability to bring them about? What's the use of praying that the ATM will give you a twenty when you've got hundreds in your account? Besides, I think this is something God wants to do and he's just waiting for people with enough faith to believe in the impossible.
Truth be told, that last paragraph is more about me than about anyone else. I only have enough faith to write about it. Does that qualify as a mustard seed amount? Because I really do believe that we are at a crossroads and that the church has a great opportunity to stand up and point towards faith, hope, and love, to bring meaning back to humanity (humanity that modernism stole from us), to take the lead in society instead of huddling together in subcultural bubbles. And yes, I really do believe that it starts with the arts.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
186. a million thoughts
A million thoughts stirring, stewing in my head.
One by one, that's the beauty of the writing process. You can only write one sentence at a time.
And so:
1. Spike Lee is one bad ass director. His last movie, 25th hour was great. His new movie, Inside Man, is...I don't even have the word for it...I mean, all I can say is, top to bottom, shot for shot, line by line, it's the most amazing movie I've seen in a very long time. And if you go see the movie, you might not think it merits such high praise, but that's part of what's so amazing about the movie - its restraint, the way Lee plays with audience expectation, the way he uses well worn tools of the cinematic trade in ways that are not so much novel as they are correctly implemented. What I mean is, the movie is a movie's movie in that it could not have been told as well through another medium.
If you love movies, not action movies, not romantic comedies, not thrillers or mysteries or period pieces - if you love movies, I think you'll be delighted by Inside Man.
2. I'm getting into the meat of the book, _Decoding The Universe_ by Charles Seife. It's a book about a new branch of science organized around information theory. And I don't have my head around the ideas just yet (and I know I never will), but the concepts and the promise of the science behind it all are dazzling.
And I've said it before(see blog 66), but when I read about how mind-bogglingly amazing the universe is and how intricately it's put together, I can not help but worship at the feet of the Creator who put the whole thing together. And I can picture him watching these brilliant minds working with their numbers and theories and their expensive, geeky experiments, and he's having a ball watching them stumble towards what he already knows.
3. And I haven't forgotten to get to the second part of my blog about Christianity and art and culture (see blog 184). I've just been taking a couple days off from the blog to read and to give myself some mental space for a while. I'll finish up my writing on this matter soon.
One by one, that's the beauty of the writing process. You can only write one sentence at a time.
And so:
1. Spike Lee is one bad ass director. His last movie, 25th hour was great. His new movie, Inside Man, is...I don't even have the word for it...I mean, all I can say is, top to bottom, shot for shot, line by line, it's the most amazing movie I've seen in a very long time. And if you go see the movie, you might not think it merits such high praise, but that's part of what's so amazing about the movie - its restraint, the way Lee plays with audience expectation, the way he uses well worn tools of the cinematic trade in ways that are not so much novel as they are correctly implemented. What I mean is, the movie is a movie's movie in that it could not have been told as well through another medium.
If you love movies, not action movies, not romantic comedies, not thrillers or mysteries or period pieces - if you love movies, I think you'll be delighted by Inside Man.
2. I'm getting into the meat of the book, _Decoding The Universe_ by Charles Seife. It's a book about a new branch of science organized around information theory. And I don't have my head around the ideas just yet (and I know I never will), but the concepts and the promise of the science behind it all are dazzling.
And I've said it before(see blog 66), but when I read about how mind-bogglingly amazing the universe is and how intricately it's put together, I can not help but worship at the feet of the Creator who put the whole thing together. And I can picture him watching these brilliant minds working with their numbers and theories and their expensive, geeky experiments, and he's having a ball watching them stumble towards what he already knows.
3. And I haven't forgotten to get to the second part of my blog about Christianity and art and culture (see blog 184). I've just been taking a couple days off from the blog to read and to give myself some mental space for a while. I'll finish up my writing on this matter soon.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
185. words, words, words
You know, I'm eager to get back to my thoughts on art and culture and Christianity (see blog 184), but I've been realizing lately that for the past month or so, all my entries have been about things that I've been thinking about. I mean, all my blogs used to be about...well, me - how lonely I felt, or how confused I was, or what I wanted, or what I wasn't getting out of life, etc.
And I wrote back in blog 162 about how I've finally found contentment as a single person. And you don't get the sense of it from that blog, but there was a part of me that worried that I was jinxing myself by writing that - that the plates would shift and my mood would come avalanching down and I'd be back to writing pitiful, "I'm so lonely," blogs again.
But it didn't happen.
I'm actually still content.
And I find that mildly surprising. And perhaps it should come as more of a surprise, but well, it's happening to me so...I mean, how do you be surprised at yourself?
Anyway, I just wanted to take a break from all that thinking and wrestling and fretting over matters of faith and orthodoxy and culture and all the rest of it. Tonight, I just want to keep it short and simple.
Me? I'm doing well, overall. I mean, I'm getting by in life. And maybe that should worry me. I mean, maybe I should be worried about being more passionate, about taking a bigger bite out of life. Maybe I should be about reading smarter books or more spiritual books. Maybe I should be worried about being single for the rest of my life. Maybe I should be getting out more, I mean I've pretty much spent this whole week home at night with my books or at this blog. Maybe this is what it is to be 34 and single. Maybe contentment will settle into sloth and apathy. Maybe I'll start bringing stray cats home and raise them as my furry, substitute family.
But I'm not ready to throw in the towel, to buy the farm, to settle into the rut of routine. I have life left in me to live, even if only through these words. For I do love to write. No, I don't fancy kittens enough to start bringing them home with me (and besides, my parents hate cats), but I do love these silly words that I string together.
And I write in part for you, my readers, and I write in part for myself. And I write because I can. And I'll admit that I might not write so much if no one was reading or if blog counters left no trace of an audience. But more than anything else, I write because I'm almost always surprised at what I end up with. I follow the sentences where they lead - word by word like tiny stepping stones, I write them as they come.
Until they bring me to the end.
And I hit the "post" button.
And go to bed.
And I wrote back in blog 162 about how I've finally found contentment as a single person. And you don't get the sense of it from that blog, but there was a part of me that worried that I was jinxing myself by writing that - that the plates would shift and my mood would come avalanching down and I'd be back to writing pitiful, "I'm so lonely," blogs again.
But it didn't happen.
I'm actually still content.
And I find that mildly surprising. And perhaps it should come as more of a surprise, but well, it's happening to me so...I mean, how do you be surprised at yourself?
Anyway, I just wanted to take a break from all that thinking and wrestling and fretting over matters of faith and orthodoxy and culture and all the rest of it. Tonight, I just want to keep it short and simple.
Me? I'm doing well, overall. I mean, I'm getting by in life. And maybe that should worry me. I mean, maybe I should be worried about being more passionate, about taking a bigger bite out of life. Maybe I should be about reading smarter books or more spiritual books. Maybe I should be worried about being single for the rest of my life. Maybe I should be getting out more, I mean I've pretty much spent this whole week home at night with my books or at this blog. Maybe this is what it is to be 34 and single. Maybe contentment will settle into sloth and apathy. Maybe I'll start bringing stray cats home and raise them as my furry, substitute family.
But I'm not ready to throw in the towel, to buy the farm, to settle into the rut of routine. I have life left in me to live, even if only through these words. For I do love to write. No, I don't fancy kittens enough to start bringing them home with me (and besides, my parents hate cats), but I do love these silly words that I string together.
And I write in part for you, my readers, and I write in part for myself. And I write because I can. And I'll admit that I might not write so much if no one was reading or if blog counters left no trace of an audience. But more than anything else, I write because I'm almost always surprised at what I end up with. I follow the sentences where they lead - word by word like tiny stepping stones, I write them as they come.
Until they bring me to the end.
And I hit the "post" button.
And go to bed.
184. Christianity and culture
About a week ago, I asked the question, "what is Christianity good for?" (see blog 179). And I asked the question because I believe that the church in America has lots its way. It's in danger of joining the list of things that were once great but then lost it- the Roman empire, Pink Floyd, NASA, and MTV come to mind. It doesn't have to be this way, but if Christians want to keep Christianity from becoming a marginalized, irrelevant social minority (some might say we're already there), we need to remember why it is we're here and what it is we're called to do.
And when I last wrote on this topic, I admitted that I didn't have an answer to the question. But I do have some ideas. Well, actually, I only have one idea but I think it's an important one. And it's a general kind of idea that merely hints at the answer to the question, but it's a good idea.
"So get to it already, Randall!"
Okay, I don't have a specific answer to the question, "what is Christianity good for," but I believe that a big part of the answer will have to do with culture forming. And I use the word, "forming," as opposed to words like, "redeeming," or "influencing, or even "transforming" because those words suggest a kind of evolution, taking what's there and remaking it. I envision something more grandiose, something more transcendent. I believe that a truly effective Christianity will require nothing short of revolution.
But let me be clear. I'm not talking about remaking America as a Christian nation through force or compulsion. I'm talking about communities of Christians living out the teachings of Christ in such a way that non-Christians want to join in. Did you catch that? ". . .in such a way that they WANT to join in." But that's not the case with Christianity today.
So much of church planning, when it comes to evangelism, has to do with figuring out new ways to market Christ to an increasingly disinterested demographic. And this sometimes leads to distasteful bait-and-switch campaigns that trick people into listening to a gospel presentation.
For example, when I was in college (University of Hawaii at Manoa), one of the on-campus Christian organizations was putting on this campaign where they were taking surveys. You'd be walking to class and someone would walk up to you with a clipboard and they'd say, "hey, I'm doing a survey for a project I'm involved with, would you like to participate?" If you said yes, they'd start asking you some generic questions about your background and then little by little the questions would get more personal until two of the last questions were, "do you ever wonder what will happen to you after you die?" and then the clincher, "would you like me to tell you about Jesus?"
Someone actually gave me one of these surveys while I was a student there, and I remember how I felt. At first, it was cool because participating in a survey kind of makes you feel important because instead of just reading about some anonymous statistical result, you actually get to be one of the people who participated in the study that led to that result. But then the questions started to get weird and by the time the surveyor got to those last two questions, I knew the survey was a ruse. And then I felt cheap, lied to, manipulated. And I was a Christian. I can only imagine how non-christians felt about it, but I'm sure it wasn't good.
And what is it about Christianity that makes it so distasteful that we have to hide it under a so-called survey? If being a Christian is so great, why aren't people clamoring to be in on it?
And although the one doesn't seem to have anything to do with the other, I believe people don't care about becoming Christians because Christians in America have no culture of their own. They only have a subculture.
More and more, everyday, Christianity is becoming entrenched into its own subculture. We have our own record companies, our own radio and television stations, we have our own bookstores and cafes and in some places, we even have our own nightclubs. And it would be one thing if we were offering something compellingly original, something hopeful, something fresh. Instead, the only thing the Christian subculture has to offer is a refried, recycled, repackaged version of the culture at large. We have Christian hip-hop, Christian fiction, Christian diet fads, Christian leadership books, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it sounds and reads and tastes like its secular equivalent, only sanitized and stripped of all originality and flavor. And why would anyone want to sign on and be a part of a poor imitation?
And when I last wrote on this topic, I admitted that I didn't have an answer to the question. But I do have some ideas. Well, actually, I only have one idea but I think it's an important one. And it's a general kind of idea that merely hints at the answer to the question, but it's a good idea.
"So get to it already, Randall!"
Okay, I don't have a specific answer to the question, "what is Christianity good for," but I believe that a big part of the answer will have to do with culture forming. And I use the word, "forming," as opposed to words like, "redeeming," or "influencing, or even "transforming" because those words suggest a kind of evolution, taking what's there and remaking it. I envision something more grandiose, something more transcendent. I believe that a truly effective Christianity will require nothing short of revolution.
But let me be clear. I'm not talking about remaking America as a Christian nation through force or compulsion. I'm talking about communities of Christians living out the teachings of Christ in such a way that non-Christians want to join in. Did you catch that? ". . .in such a way that they WANT to join in." But that's not the case with Christianity today.
So much of church planning, when it comes to evangelism, has to do with figuring out new ways to market Christ to an increasingly disinterested demographic. And this sometimes leads to distasteful bait-and-switch campaigns that trick people into listening to a gospel presentation.
For example, when I was in college (University of Hawaii at Manoa), one of the on-campus Christian organizations was putting on this campaign where they were taking surveys. You'd be walking to class and someone would walk up to you with a clipboard and they'd say, "hey, I'm doing a survey for a project I'm involved with, would you like to participate?" If you said yes, they'd start asking you some generic questions about your background and then little by little the questions would get more personal until two of the last questions were, "do you ever wonder what will happen to you after you die?" and then the clincher, "would you like me to tell you about Jesus?"
Someone actually gave me one of these surveys while I was a student there, and I remember how I felt. At first, it was cool because participating in a survey kind of makes you feel important because instead of just reading about some anonymous statistical result, you actually get to be one of the people who participated in the study that led to that result. But then the questions started to get weird and by the time the surveyor got to those last two questions, I knew the survey was a ruse. And then I felt cheap, lied to, manipulated. And I was a Christian. I can only imagine how non-christians felt about it, but I'm sure it wasn't good.
And what is it about Christianity that makes it so distasteful that we have to hide it under a so-called survey? If being a Christian is so great, why aren't people clamoring to be in on it?
And although the one doesn't seem to have anything to do with the other, I believe people don't care about becoming Christians because Christians in America have no culture of their own. They only have a subculture.
More and more, everyday, Christianity is becoming entrenched into its own subculture. We have our own record companies, our own radio and television stations, we have our own bookstores and cafes and in some places, we even have our own nightclubs. And it would be one thing if we were offering something compellingly original, something hopeful, something fresh. Instead, the only thing the Christian subculture has to offer is a refried, recycled, repackaged version of the culture at large. We have Christian hip-hop, Christian fiction, Christian diet fads, Christian leadership books, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it sounds and reads and tastes like its secular equivalent, only sanitized and stripped of all originality and flavor. And why would anyone want to sign on and be a part of a poor imitation?
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
183. a prodigious wave...millionaire (part 3)
Okay, so it's 10:55pm and I want to be in bed by 11:30. My blogs usually take about two hours to write, edit (yes, I do edit them, despite what typos and errors remain), and post (I still use dial-up). So I should just forget about posting and go to bed. But I have TONS on my mind and if I don't get to some of it, I'll never get to any of it (I have the memory of a cheese grater).
So I'll share a little something I wrote this past Monday. See, Pastor Imiel Abadir (yeah, the same guy I kind of blasted in blog 182) was going to be speaking at the Monday night healing service at Moanalua Gardens Missionary Church. And I probably wouldn't have gone but for the fact that a bunch of people from my home church (see blog 175) were going.
So I went.
And it turns out that I actually enjoyed...no, really enjoyed what Pastor Imiel had to share. But that will have to wait for another blog, another day. I want to talk about the worship that preceded the message. It was from the same couple that led worship for the conference (see blog 182). And here's what I wrote while people were worshiping all around me.
I'm sitting/standing here in the middle of a worship service - a prelude to the work of the same speaker who spoke at the conference over the weekend.
And I want to describe the sound and the sway, how the room is alive with joy and love - a passion I don't think I've ever known. It's thick. Notes resound and melodies soar, unchained. There is the most mysterious, beautiful, haunting undertone to the sound that mists between the aisles like a strange, holy fog.
And I want their passion, their abandon.
Instead, woe is me for I am a dead, useless stump of ignorance. The limbs and branches that once stretched heavenward lie about in broken, hollow, termite-riddled scratches of kindling. They no longer wait for rain, it's too late for that now. It waits for fire to consume, to burn away, to start anew and to bring life again, even if only for a single, fiery instant.
And there exists a conflict between my heart that wants to burst and to burn, and my mind that lays like a field riddled with land-mines set to detonate at the slightest untoward movement, the smallest deviation from my rickety, patchwork understanding of orthodoxy.
And I still remember how I felt when I was writing that. And I think of a dance floor.
See, I used to like going to clubs that played good house music. I loved it because once I got out on the dance floor, I didn't care what I looked like or who was watching. I just let myself get lost in the beat, the four-on-the-floor, and the disco samples. It was intoxicating, even while sober. And to me, the genius of dancing to house music was how individual limbs would get caught up in the different elements of the house beat. The feet and the booty would get caught up in the four-on-the-floor, while the torso hooked up with the up-beat of the hi-hats, and the arms would kind of swing along with whatever melody or sample was playing on top of it all.
Anyway, before I could get my groove on, there was always that moment before stepping out onto the dance floor where I would hesitate. I'd look at the other dancers already out there and think about how smooth they were and how cool they looked and who was I to go out there with my drunky chicken, cole slaw cabbage patch nonsense. And I knew once I got out there that the music would take control and I wouldn't care, but that first step of just getting out there was always so hard.
And that's kind of how I felt during the worship time. But this was different because there was no dance floor to step out onto, and even if I wanted to surrender to "the sound and the sway," I didn't really know how. I mean I don't mind raising my hands during worship, but it was like I wanted to jump into something more, to take a bigger bite out of the worship, to immerse myself in the experience and the moment just a little bit more. But I didn't know how.
And let me be clear here. I'm not just talking about getting lost in some kind of mystical experience or just abandoning myself to the music. I mean, there was that, but it was a means to an end. What I really wanted to get at was more of an encounter with the Living God of the universe.
So instead, I sat down and wrote about what I was feeling. And I really did feel like a dead stump of a tree.
Funny thing though. I get done writing that bit I shared above and then I looked up from my journal and what do I see? On the backs of the folding chairs are what must be the church's logo. A tree, whole, intact, thriving.
And I think, now, of the quote from G.K. Chesterton:
Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the 'wonders' of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper.
So I'll share a little something I wrote this past Monday. See, Pastor Imiel Abadir (yeah, the same guy I kind of blasted in blog 182) was going to be speaking at the Monday night healing service at Moanalua Gardens Missionary Church. And I probably wouldn't have gone but for the fact that a bunch of people from my home church (see blog 175) were going.
So I went.
And it turns out that I actually enjoyed...no, really enjoyed what Pastor Imiel had to share. But that will have to wait for another blog, another day. I want to talk about the worship that preceded the message. It was from the same couple that led worship for the conference (see blog 182). And here's what I wrote while people were worshiping all around me.
I'm sitting/standing here in the middle of a worship service - a prelude to the work of the same speaker who spoke at the conference over the weekend.
And I want to describe the sound and the sway, how the room is alive with joy and love - a passion I don't think I've ever known. It's thick. Notes resound and melodies soar, unchained. There is the most mysterious, beautiful, haunting undertone to the sound that mists between the aisles like a strange, holy fog.
And I want their passion, their abandon.
Instead, woe is me for I am a dead, useless stump of ignorance. The limbs and branches that once stretched heavenward lie about in broken, hollow, termite-riddled scratches of kindling. They no longer wait for rain, it's too late for that now. It waits for fire to consume, to burn away, to start anew and to bring life again, even if only for a single, fiery instant.
And there exists a conflict between my heart that wants to burst and to burn, and my mind that lays like a field riddled with land-mines set to detonate at the slightest untoward movement, the smallest deviation from my rickety, patchwork understanding of orthodoxy.
And I still remember how I felt when I was writing that. And I think of a dance floor.
See, I used to like going to clubs that played good house music. I loved it because once I got out on the dance floor, I didn't care what I looked like or who was watching. I just let myself get lost in the beat, the four-on-the-floor, and the disco samples. It was intoxicating, even while sober. And to me, the genius of dancing to house music was how individual limbs would get caught up in the different elements of the house beat. The feet and the booty would get caught up in the four-on-the-floor, while the torso hooked up with the up-beat of the hi-hats, and the arms would kind of swing along with whatever melody or sample was playing on top of it all.
Anyway, before I could get my groove on, there was always that moment before stepping out onto the dance floor where I would hesitate. I'd look at the other dancers already out there and think about how smooth they were and how cool they looked and who was I to go out there with my drunky chicken, cole slaw cabbage patch nonsense. And I knew once I got out there that the music would take control and I wouldn't care, but that first step of just getting out there was always so hard.
And that's kind of how I felt during the worship time. But this was different because there was no dance floor to step out onto, and even if I wanted to surrender to "the sound and the sway," I didn't really know how. I mean I don't mind raising my hands during worship, but it was like I wanted to jump into something more, to take a bigger bite out of the worship, to immerse myself in the experience and the moment just a little bit more. But I didn't know how.
And let me be clear here. I'm not just talking about getting lost in some kind of mystical experience or just abandoning myself to the music. I mean, there was that, but it was a means to an end. What I really wanted to get at was more of an encounter with the Living God of the universe.
So instead, I sat down and wrote about what I was feeling. And I really did feel like a dead stump of a tree.
Funny thing though. I get done writing that bit I shared above and then I looked up from my journal and what do I see? On the backs of the folding chairs are what must be the church's logo. A tree, whole, intact, thriving.
And I think, now, of the quote from G.K. Chesterton:
Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the 'wonders' of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper.
Monday, March 20, 2006
182. how to be a millionaire (part 2)
So about that conference thing I attended this weekend (see blog 181). Well, more accurately, it's the conference that I bailed out on. It started on Friday night and then continued all day Saturday. I went to the Friday night opening with the intention of staying for the whole thing, but I was so disturbed, confused, upset, and bent after just the first night that I couldn't go back for the rest of the conference.
The night started with worship with a couple from England (how come all the worship leaders come from England or Australia...is it the accent?). The worship was fine. There was one thing that really tripped me out though, but it had nothing to do with the worship per se. It had to do with the drummer, or more accurately, the drum set he was playing.
See, back in December I sold one of my drum sets. It was a really nice looking, top of the line, Pearl Masters Studio drum set. Unfortunately, it didn't sound as good as it looked, which is why I sold it and purchased a Pacific drum set. And even though my Pacific set cost less than half as much as my old Pearl kit, I still think it sounds better than the Pearl ever did.
Anyway, I mention this because the drummer at the conference was playing my old Pearl drum set. Don't know what that means, if anything.
Okay, so worship is over, there's a short prayer time, and then they introduce the main speaker for the conference, Imiel Abadir. I'd never heard of the guy, but from what I could gather, he's originally from Egypt and he's suffered and escaped from some pretty heavy persecution there. Now he travels the world, sharing his prophetic gifts with people.
He started his talk, quoting from Exodus 3:1-5.
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."
When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."
And his first point has something to do with how those who want to operate in the prophetic must be consumed with fire. He says that Moses was the bush and that this was a holy encounter with God. Abadir then goes on to talk about God telling Moses to take off his sandals. Abadir explains that in order for the people of God to operate within the prophetic, they need to "get rid of thoughts, perspectives, ideas, and insides." And by "insides," he meant (as far as I could tell) selfish, motives - one's desire to speak prophetically.
Now, I'm not going to comment on the Moses being the burning bush bit, but when Abadir spoke about getting rid of thoughts, perspectives, and ideas, big red flags started to go up. I mean, I feel like there's this divide between people who experience Christianity in a spiritual, experiential way and those who experience it in a more intellectual, conceptual way. As a Christian, I was raised in the latter although I've been wanting to experience and understand more of the former. That said, I still believe that God gave us a mind for a purpose, which basically is to think, and for someone to come right out and say that we need to get rid of our thoughts and ideas...that tweaked me.
But I didn't want to automatically write the whole thing off at that point. I mean, I decided to attend this conference because I wanted to understand more about spirituality and I figured the best way to do that was to go where people talked about being in the sprit. So I tried to do my best to listen with an open mind. Besides, he speaks with a pretty heavy accent and the sound system wasn't very good and so maybe I misheard him.
But he kept going back to the need to let go of the intellect. He went next to Exodus 14:13-14.
The Israelites had just escaped from Egypt and the Pharoah was pissed and sent his armies to destroy them in the desert. The Israelites had nowhere to flee because they were at the banks of the Red Sea and so they started to complain to Moses.
Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.
Abadir goes right back to the point about letting go of the intellect. He says that the only way Moses could make such a declaration in the face of certain annihilation was by letting to of reason and letting God speak through him. If Moses had trusted what his eyes were telling him (that they were about to get their ass kicked by the Egyptians), he wouldn't have told the Israelites not to worry. He then went on to say, "if you are an intellectual, you see the visible and you are a deceived man. God's territory is the invisible."
Again, he hits on intellectuals and not that I consider myself to be some towering genius, but I have a geeky streak in me, and so I try to examine things and think about the world around me. But putting that aside for a moment, let's just deal with his reading of scripture.
Going back to his first example from Exodus 3, how is it that the burning bush represents Moses and then by extension, those who want to operate in the prophetic (a phrase that came up over and over that night, though I'm not sure precisely what it means). I mean, it's pretty clear from the text that God was using the burning bush to get Moses' attention. And it's not Moses who speaks out of the bush, it's the voice of God that emerges.
And then in Exodus 14, Abadir makes the point that it was only by letting go of his intellect that Moses was able to tell the Israelites not to worry about the Egyptians, but the Bible makes it clear that Moses was in on God's plan all along.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon. Pharaoh will think, 'The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.' And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD." So the Israelites did this.
Now God didn't tell Moses that he was going to part the Red Sea until he got there, but still, God told Moses that the Egyptians were going to show up and so when they do, contrary to Abadir's advice, Moses uses his mind and deducts that the things that God has told him have been right so far, so there's reason to believe that God will deliver them. Logical deduction led Moses to make the statement he did to the Israelites, not some spiritual indwelling or super-spiritual utterance.
Now I could go on with other examples of what Abadir said that night, but it's not very different from the examples I shared above, and I'm getting pissed all over again so I'll leave it at that. And I don't want to dis the speaker or the people who enjoyed the event. I mean apart from what I consider to be a questionable reading of scripture, I didn't hear anything that I would call heresy, although admittedly, I'm no expert in orthodoxy. And if people got blessed by the event, kudos for them.
The night started with worship with a couple from England (how come all the worship leaders come from England or Australia...is it the accent?). The worship was fine. There was one thing that really tripped me out though, but it had nothing to do with the worship per se. It had to do with the drummer, or more accurately, the drum set he was playing.
See, back in December I sold one of my drum sets. It was a really nice looking, top of the line, Pearl Masters Studio drum set. Unfortunately, it didn't sound as good as it looked, which is why I sold it and purchased a Pacific drum set. And even though my Pacific set cost less than half as much as my old Pearl kit, I still think it sounds better than the Pearl ever did.
Anyway, I mention this because the drummer at the conference was playing my old Pearl drum set. Don't know what that means, if anything.
Okay, so worship is over, there's a short prayer time, and then they introduce the main speaker for the conference, Imiel Abadir. I'd never heard of the guy, but from what I could gather, he's originally from Egypt and he's suffered and escaped from some pretty heavy persecution there. Now he travels the world, sharing his prophetic gifts with people.
He started his talk, quoting from Exodus 3:1-5.
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."
When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."
And his first point has something to do with how those who want to operate in the prophetic must be consumed with fire. He says that Moses was the bush and that this was a holy encounter with God. Abadir then goes on to talk about God telling Moses to take off his sandals. Abadir explains that in order for the people of God to operate within the prophetic, they need to "get rid of thoughts, perspectives, ideas, and insides." And by "insides," he meant (as far as I could tell) selfish, motives - one's desire to speak prophetically.
Now, I'm not going to comment on the Moses being the burning bush bit, but when Abadir spoke about getting rid of thoughts, perspectives, and ideas, big red flags started to go up. I mean, I feel like there's this divide between people who experience Christianity in a spiritual, experiential way and those who experience it in a more intellectual, conceptual way. As a Christian, I was raised in the latter although I've been wanting to experience and understand more of the former. That said, I still believe that God gave us a mind for a purpose, which basically is to think, and for someone to come right out and say that we need to get rid of our thoughts and ideas...that tweaked me.
But I didn't want to automatically write the whole thing off at that point. I mean, I decided to attend this conference because I wanted to understand more about spirituality and I figured the best way to do that was to go where people talked about being in the sprit. So I tried to do my best to listen with an open mind. Besides, he speaks with a pretty heavy accent and the sound system wasn't very good and so maybe I misheard him.
But he kept going back to the need to let go of the intellect. He went next to Exodus 14:13-14.
The Israelites had just escaped from Egypt and the Pharoah was pissed and sent his armies to destroy them in the desert. The Israelites had nowhere to flee because they were at the banks of the Red Sea and so they started to complain to Moses.
Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.
Abadir goes right back to the point about letting go of the intellect. He says that the only way Moses could make such a declaration in the face of certain annihilation was by letting to of reason and letting God speak through him. If Moses had trusted what his eyes were telling him (that they were about to get their ass kicked by the Egyptians), he wouldn't have told the Israelites not to worry. He then went on to say, "if you are an intellectual, you see the visible and you are a deceived man. God's territory is the invisible."
Again, he hits on intellectuals and not that I consider myself to be some towering genius, but I have a geeky streak in me, and so I try to examine things and think about the world around me. But putting that aside for a moment, let's just deal with his reading of scripture.
Going back to his first example from Exodus 3, how is it that the burning bush represents Moses and then by extension, those who want to operate in the prophetic (a phrase that came up over and over that night, though I'm not sure precisely what it means). I mean, it's pretty clear from the text that God was using the burning bush to get Moses' attention. And it's not Moses who speaks out of the bush, it's the voice of God that emerges.
And then in Exodus 14, Abadir makes the point that it was only by letting go of his intellect that Moses was able to tell the Israelites not to worry about the Egyptians, but the Bible makes it clear that Moses was in on God's plan all along.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon. Pharaoh will think, 'The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.' And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD." So the Israelites did this.
Now God didn't tell Moses that he was going to part the Red Sea until he got there, but still, God told Moses that the Egyptians were going to show up and so when they do, contrary to Abadir's advice, Moses uses his mind and deducts that the things that God has told him have been right so far, so there's reason to believe that God will deliver them. Logical deduction led Moses to make the statement he did to the Israelites, not some spiritual indwelling or super-spiritual utterance.
Now I could go on with other examples of what Abadir said that night, but it's not very different from the examples I shared above, and I'm getting pissed all over again so I'll leave it at that. And I don't want to dis the speaker or the people who enjoyed the event. I mean apart from what I consider to be a questionable reading of scripture, I didn't hear anything that I would call heresy, although admittedly, I'm no expert in orthodoxy. And if people got blessed by the event, kudos for them.
Friday, March 17, 2006
181. how to be a millionaire
There's this concept that goes, "if you want to learn how to be a millionaire then hang out with millionaires." Because chances are, you will end up being like the people you hang around. And so if you want your life to be different than it is today, hang around people who have what you want. Hanging out with millionaires will help you think/talk/act like they do, and if you start thinking/talking/acting like they do, then your chances of achieving success go up. And even if you don't become a millionaire, at least you get to attend some cool parties.
But that's not really what this blog entry is about.
I mean sure, I'd like to be a millionaire but not bad enough to hang around them. What I do want, though, is a kind of spiritual discernment and/or understanding. I've been blogging a lot about this for the past month or so (see blogs 167-169 and 174), and basically what I'm trying to get at is a taste of the vibrant, experiential Christianity that some Christians have as opposed to the more bland, cerebral, theoretical Christianity that I have now.
And so this weekend, I'm attending a conference that, from what I can tell, is going to be full of Holy Ghost, tongues speaking, Pentecostal types of people. The conference is called Maturing in the Prophetic and is being sponsored by Laulima Ministries International - an organization that desires "to see ordinary people trained in Christ centered healing prayer." The way I figure it, it's kind of like the hanging out with millionaires deal, only this time it's "if you want to experience the spiritual side of life, hang out with people who are filled with the spirit."
And I know I'm going to be way outside my comfort zone, but that's kind of the point. Back to the millionaire thing again, part of the reason more people aren't millionaires is because they keep living their comfortable, normal non-millionaire lives. Hanging out with millionaires will probably be uncomfortable at first because they talk different and act different because they have their own way of seeing the world...that and they probably have nicer shoes. And the advice is to hang around them because if you keep living life the way you do today, chances are your life will stay the same, whereas hanging out with millionaires will get you to change your way of thinking/living/speaking/acting and those changes can better your odds of financial success...ideally.
So I'm not so worried about feeling weird or out of place. I expect that. What I am worried about is not being able to turn off that nagging critical voice inside me that seems to want to explain away any manifestation of the spiritual side of life. But at the same time, God gave me a brain and I'm going to use it.
And so my worry is finding the balance between the two...but I'm not that worried.
But that's not really what this blog entry is about.
I mean sure, I'd like to be a millionaire but not bad enough to hang around them. What I do want, though, is a kind of spiritual discernment and/or understanding. I've been blogging a lot about this for the past month or so (see blogs 167-169 and 174), and basically what I'm trying to get at is a taste of the vibrant, experiential Christianity that some Christians have as opposed to the more bland, cerebral, theoretical Christianity that I have now.
And so this weekend, I'm attending a conference that, from what I can tell, is going to be full of Holy Ghost, tongues speaking, Pentecostal types of people. The conference is called Maturing in the Prophetic and is being sponsored by Laulima Ministries International - an organization that desires "to see ordinary people trained in Christ centered healing prayer." The way I figure it, it's kind of like the hanging out with millionaires deal, only this time it's "if you want to experience the spiritual side of life, hang out with people who are filled with the spirit."
And I know I'm going to be way outside my comfort zone, but that's kind of the point. Back to the millionaire thing again, part of the reason more people aren't millionaires is because they keep living their comfortable, normal non-millionaire lives. Hanging out with millionaires will probably be uncomfortable at first because they talk different and act different because they have their own way of seeing the world...that and they probably have nicer shoes. And the advice is to hang around them because if you keep living life the way you do today, chances are your life will stay the same, whereas hanging out with millionaires will get you to change your way of thinking/living/speaking/acting and those changes can better your odds of financial success...ideally.
So I'm not so worried about feeling weird or out of place. I expect that. What I am worried about is not being able to turn off that nagging critical voice inside me that seems to want to explain away any manifestation of the spiritual side of life. But at the same time, God gave me a brain and I'm going to use it.
And so my worry is finding the balance between the two...but I'm not that worried.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
180. fear, hope, faith
I've been sick so I haven't been walking during my lunch breaks which means I've had time to read my at-work book, Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza (see blog 177).
A few nits to pick before I get to what I want to get at.
The writing is far too polite. She doesn't paint a vivid picture of the horrors and so you have to strain a bit to put yourself in her shoes. And that's difficult from the perspective of a sheltered American life.
Now on to what I wanted to talk/think/write about.
There's a bit where Immaculee is hiding in the cramped bathroom in a Pastor's house along with six other women. At one point, a killing squad surrounds this Pastor's house because they believe that he's hiding Tutsis (the ethnic group they're trying to massacre). Immaculee peeps out the window to see what's going on and what shocks her isn't the fact that there are hundreds of crazed, bloodthirsty men outside, it's the fact that these people are her neighbors, people she knows by name.
Because it's one thing to die at the hands of a stranger. Because that stranger must be evil and misled and crazed. But for death to come at the hand of your neighbor, someone you've had dinner with, someone you played in the streets with, someone you wave to on your way to work - that's simply unacceptable.
Here's how she describes it:
Hundreds of people surrounded the house, many of whom were dressed like devils, wearing skirts of tree bark and shirts of dried banana leaves, and some even had goat horns strapped onto their heads. Despite their demonic costumes, their faces were easily recognizable, and there was murder in their eyes.
They whooped and hollered. They jumped about, waving spears, machetes, and knives in the air. They chanted a chilling song of genocide while doing a dance of death: "Kill them, kill them, kill them all; kill them big and kill them small! Kill the old and kill the young . . . a baby snake is still a snake, kill it, too, let hone escape! Kill them, kill them, kill them all."
It wasn't the soldiers who were chanting, nor was it the trained militiamen who had been tormenting us for days. No, these were my neighbors, people I'd grown up and gone to school with - some had even been to our house for dinner.
I spotted Kananga, a young man I'd known since childhood. He was a high school dropout my dad had tried to help straighten out. I saw Philip, a young man who'd been too shy to look anyone in the eye, but who now seemed completely at home in this group of killers. At the front of the pack I could make out two schoolteachers who were friends of [my brother] Damascene. I recognized dozens of Mataba's most prominent citizens in the mob, all of whom were in a killing frenzy, ranting and screaming for Tutsi blood. the killers leading the group pushed their way into the pastor's house, and suddenly the chanting was coming from all directions.
I can't remember what the name of the game was, but I remember the commercial. There's a bit at the end where a lady is taking money out of an ATM. She puts the money into her purse and then someone runs up and rips her purse from her hands. The lady starts to scream and while screaming, her face melts into this grody demon-faced thing. And the voiceover says something like, "civilization is only skin deep." (Okay, I googled it and it's from the game Primal.)
I thought about that commercial when I read the scene quoted above. And although that sounds like something that only happens in third world nations, something that could never happen here, I wonder.
I don't know much about economics (and even that is a gross understatement), but I do know that there are policy makers who use mind-twisting algorithms to build economic models that lead to shady back room deals (that I imagine involves a bit of secret handshaking). These people are involved with the tricky business of maintaining the value of the dollar.
And I have no idea how they do that and I only have the vaguest notion of what "the value of the dollar" really means, but I do know that it involves some really tough choices in a very uncertain arena. I also know that if these people make the wrong decision on some key global-economic issue, it could cause the value of the dollar to plummet and that means items on McDonald's Value menu could go for $100 instead of $1.
Think that's science fiction? Ask someone who's lived through the Great Depression.
And so I go back to the story of Immaculee and her neighbors. That's the bit that scares the hell out of me - that her would-be killers were her neighbors. Think that couldn't happen here? I think it would be far easier than we suspect.
I think of news reports from a couple years ago about people fighting one another at department stores to get a Tickle Me Elmo doll. And from last year, I remember this story about shoppers who were climbing over one another to get their hands on discounted laptops. Now imagine that instead of clamoring for a toy or a computer, people were fighting to get their hands on the last can of food on the shelf or the last bag of rice. And it's easy to say that will never happen, but ask someone who used to live in New Orleans.
Okay, I'm going to stop now. Shit, I'm even starting to scare myself. And I don't mean to paint such a bleak, apocalyptic view of the future, but it kind of goes to the question I asked in my last blog (blog 179): what good is Christianity? It would be nice to have a compelling answer to that question if the shit ever does start to hit the fan in a really bad way.
But it's not all doom and gloom. I think of September 11th, 2001. I think of the way the nation pulled together and how amazing it felt to be an American. I think of how New York pulled together. And I mentioned the Great Depression. It was a dark period that gave birth to some amazing stories of strength and inspiration - think of the movies, The Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe and Seabiscuit starring Tobey Maguire. And America is still here.
Fear and hope. Seems hard to choose between the two sometimes. But here's where faith offers a third, more holistic option. Yes, there's reason to believe that a series of economic missteps could lead to a worldwide meltdown of the economy (fear). And yes, chances are that adequate safeguards are in place to keep something like that from happening (hope). But ours is not a world limited to the material (faith). God is the ultimate safeguard and his concern is not with petty economic issues, his concern is with our heart and our soul and our mind.
And so I can sleep in peace at night whether in my comfortable bed in America or in a crowded, secret room in Rwanda with death squads kicking the doors down.
A few nits to pick before I get to what I want to get at.
The writing is far too polite. She doesn't paint a vivid picture of the horrors and so you have to strain a bit to put yourself in her shoes. And that's difficult from the perspective of a sheltered American life.
Now on to what I wanted to talk/think/write about.
There's a bit where Immaculee is hiding in the cramped bathroom in a Pastor's house along with six other women. At one point, a killing squad surrounds this Pastor's house because they believe that he's hiding Tutsis (the ethnic group they're trying to massacre). Immaculee peeps out the window to see what's going on and what shocks her isn't the fact that there are hundreds of crazed, bloodthirsty men outside, it's the fact that these people are her neighbors, people she knows by name.
Because it's one thing to die at the hands of a stranger. Because that stranger must be evil and misled and crazed. But for death to come at the hand of your neighbor, someone you've had dinner with, someone you played in the streets with, someone you wave to on your way to work - that's simply unacceptable.
Here's how she describes it:
Hundreds of people surrounded the house, many of whom were dressed like devils, wearing skirts of tree bark and shirts of dried banana leaves, and some even had goat horns strapped onto their heads. Despite their demonic costumes, their faces were easily recognizable, and there was murder in their eyes.
They whooped and hollered. They jumped about, waving spears, machetes, and knives in the air. They chanted a chilling song of genocide while doing a dance of death: "Kill them, kill them, kill them all; kill them big and kill them small! Kill the old and kill the young . . . a baby snake is still a snake, kill it, too, let hone escape! Kill them, kill them, kill them all."
It wasn't the soldiers who were chanting, nor was it the trained militiamen who had been tormenting us for days. No, these were my neighbors, people I'd grown up and gone to school with - some had even been to our house for dinner.
I spotted Kananga, a young man I'd known since childhood. He was a high school dropout my dad had tried to help straighten out. I saw Philip, a young man who'd been too shy to look anyone in the eye, but who now seemed completely at home in this group of killers. At the front of the pack I could make out two schoolteachers who were friends of [my brother] Damascene. I recognized dozens of Mataba's most prominent citizens in the mob, all of whom were in a killing frenzy, ranting and screaming for Tutsi blood. the killers leading the group pushed their way into the pastor's house, and suddenly the chanting was coming from all directions.
I can't remember what the name of the game was, but I remember the commercial. There's a bit at the end where a lady is taking money out of an ATM. She puts the money into her purse and then someone runs up and rips her purse from her hands. The lady starts to scream and while screaming, her face melts into this grody demon-faced thing. And the voiceover says something like, "civilization is only skin deep." (Okay, I googled it and it's from the game Primal.)
I thought about that commercial when I read the scene quoted above. And although that sounds like something that only happens in third world nations, something that could never happen here, I wonder.
I don't know much about economics (and even that is a gross understatement), but I do know that there are policy makers who use mind-twisting algorithms to build economic models that lead to shady back room deals (that I imagine involves a bit of secret handshaking). These people are involved with the tricky business of maintaining the value of the dollar.
And I have no idea how they do that and I only have the vaguest notion of what "the value of the dollar" really means, but I do know that it involves some really tough choices in a very uncertain arena. I also know that if these people make the wrong decision on some key global-economic issue, it could cause the value of the dollar to plummet and that means items on McDonald's Value menu could go for $100 instead of $1.
Think that's science fiction? Ask someone who's lived through the Great Depression.
And so I go back to the story of Immaculee and her neighbors. That's the bit that scares the hell out of me - that her would-be killers were her neighbors. Think that couldn't happen here? I think it would be far easier than we suspect.
I think of news reports from a couple years ago about people fighting one another at department stores to get a Tickle Me Elmo doll. And from last year, I remember this story about shoppers who were climbing over one another to get their hands on discounted laptops. Now imagine that instead of clamoring for a toy or a computer, people were fighting to get their hands on the last can of food on the shelf or the last bag of rice. And it's easy to say that will never happen, but ask someone who used to live in New Orleans.
Okay, I'm going to stop now. Shit, I'm even starting to scare myself. And I don't mean to paint such a bleak, apocalyptic view of the future, but it kind of goes to the question I asked in my last blog (blog 179): what good is Christianity? It would be nice to have a compelling answer to that question if the shit ever does start to hit the fan in a really bad way.
But it's not all doom and gloom. I think of September 11th, 2001. I think of the way the nation pulled together and how amazing it felt to be an American. I think of how New York pulled together. And I mentioned the Great Depression. It was a dark period that gave birth to some amazing stories of strength and inspiration - think of the movies, The Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe and Seabiscuit starring Tobey Maguire. And America is still here.
Fear and hope. Seems hard to choose between the two sometimes. But here's where faith offers a third, more holistic option. Yes, there's reason to believe that a series of economic missteps could lead to a worldwide meltdown of the economy (fear). And yes, chances are that adequate safeguards are in place to keep something like that from happening (hope). But ours is not a world limited to the material (faith). God is the ultimate safeguard and his concern is not with petty economic issues, his concern is with our heart and our soul and our mind.
And so I can sleep in peace at night whether in my comfortable bed in America or in a crowded, secret room in Rwanda with death squads kicking the doors down.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
179. bowling for Christianity
What's Christianity good for, really? There are psychological studies that show that our natural tendency towards empathy can be overridden by (among other things) religious ideology and thus can cause people to be less than excellent towards one another. If this is true then what is Christianity good for?
And this is one of those questions that seems too sacrilegious to ask. But there it is. And the thing that is important to note about the question is why I'm asking it, to what ends, what are you trying to get at? Because if I were hostile towards Christianity then the question would be just another way to discredit its claims. But I believe that the Bible is a book of truth that points towards hope and reconciliation in a world that seems all too eager to tear itself to pieces. And I believe that the life that Christ lived, as outlined in the Bible, is the best representation of that truth.
So why do I ask the question?
Because (with all due respect to those in ministry at all levels) I believe that the way Christianity is preached and practiced is largely ineffective, particularly as it finds expression in America. I ask the question because I believe the church in America has become fat and lost and lazy, and as such is not being a good representation of the body of Christ. I ask the question because I'm tired of opening the paper, watching the news, listening to social commentary and seeing a nation that, as a whole, is getting worse and farther away from its ideals.
And I suppose the claim could be made that the question I should be asking is, "what is the church good for?" But I level the question at Christianity because my hope is that a compelling answer to the question, "what is Christianity good for," will cause churches to rally around it.
Perhaps an analogy would help here.
When people start to bowl, they keep their eyes on the pins at the end of the lane because that's the goal - to knock the pins down. However, one of the first lessons one will be taught (after learning the mechanics of holding the ball and how to approach the lane) is to look at the little arrows posted about a quarter of the way away from the foul line. See, the idea is that aiming at the pins is asking too much of yourself. What you do instead is focus on getting your ball to hit the arrow (or one of the boards between the arrows) because that makes for much more consistent throws and that causes more pins to fall down.
Aiming for a great church system in America is like aiming for the pins and hoping for a strike. I ask the question because I want to know which arrow we're supposed to be aiming for.
And I don't know, maybe that's not even the right question. Back to the bowling analogy, when you get to the professional levels of the game, bowlers bring a bunch of balls (stop giggling, you know what I mean) with them because the ideal ball for a set of lanes changes depending on when the lane was last oiled, how it was oiled, what kind of oil, and a host of other factors.
Maybe I am asking the wrong question, but the principle is the same. I think churches need a cause to rally around and without one, they will be unorganized and they will fight with one another instead of working together towards the prize. And it's got to be bigger than individual causes like the right to life or the rights of those in the gay community or the growing decadence and depravity of television or AIDS in Africa or how to reach the 10/40 window. I'm convinced that if we have a clear understanding of what it is that Christ was trying to do, of what God has been about since day one, that churches would be reenergized and would rally around this idea.
Unfortunately, I don't have any answers, only questions, starting with this one.
I do have some ideas - hints that may point towards answers - but I'm still sick and I promised myself I wouldn't write for too long.
to be continued...
"Randall, you're a bastard! Don't just leave us hanging."
Well, pray for God to heal me and I can write longer.
And this is one of those questions that seems too sacrilegious to ask. But there it is. And the thing that is important to note about the question is why I'm asking it, to what ends, what are you trying to get at? Because if I were hostile towards Christianity then the question would be just another way to discredit its claims. But I believe that the Bible is a book of truth that points towards hope and reconciliation in a world that seems all too eager to tear itself to pieces. And I believe that the life that Christ lived, as outlined in the Bible, is the best representation of that truth.
So why do I ask the question?
Because (with all due respect to those in ministry at all levels) I believe that the way Christianity is preached and practiced is largely ineffective, particularly as it finds expression in America. I ask the question because I believe the church in America has become fat and lost and lazy, and as such is not being a good representation of the body of Christ. I ask the question because I'm tired of opening the paper, watching the news, listening to social commentary and seeing a nation that, as a whole, is getting worse and farther away from its ideals.
And I suppose the claim could be made that the question I should be asking is, "what is the church good for?" But I level the question at Christianity because my hope is that a compelling answer to the question, "what is Christianity good for," will cause churches to rally around it.
Perhaps an analogy would help here.
When people start to bowl, they keep their eyes on the pins at the end of the lane because that's the goal - to knock the pins down. However, one of the first lessons one will be taught (after learning the mechanics of holding the ball and how to approach the lane) is to look at the little arrows posted about a quarter of the way away from the foul line. See, the idea is that aiming at the pins is asking too much of yourself. What you do instead is focus on getting your ball to hit the arrow (or one of the boards between the arrows) because that makes for much more consistent throws and that causes more pins to fall down.
Aiming for a great church system in America is like aiming for the pins and hoping for a strike. I ask the question because I want to know which arrow we're supposed to be aiming for.
And I don't know, maybe that's not even the right question. Back to the bowling analogy, when you get to the professional levels of the game, bowlers bring a bunch of balls (stop giggling, you know what I mean) with them because the ideal ball for a set of lanes changes depending on when the lane was last oiled, how it was oiled, what kind of oil, and a host of other factors.
Maybe I am asking the wrong question, but the principle is the same. I think churches need a cause to rally around and without one, they will be unorganized and they will fight with one another instead of working together towards the prize. And it's got to be bigger than individual causes like the right to life or the rights of those in the gay community or the growing decadence and depravity of television or AIDS in Africa or how to reach the 10/40 window. I'm convinced that if we have a clear understanding of what it is that Christ was trying to do, of what God has been about since day one, that churches would be reenergized and would rally around this idea.
Unfortunately, I don't have any answers, only questions, starting with this one.
I do have some ideas - hints that may point towards answers - but I'm still sick and I promised myself I wouldn't write for too long.
to be continued...
"Randall, you're a bastard! Don't just leave us hanging."
Well, pray for God to heal me and I can write longer.
Monday, March 13, 2006
178. I be illin'
This weekend kind of conspired against me and I think I have the beginnings of some kind of bug. It's not too bad now, just a kind of achy discontent. But it's got potential and I intend to keep it from reaching that potential. And so I'm turning in early tonight.
But...
But I've found a kind of affinity with my blogdience (my new word, you like?). I mean last week there were something like 200+ readers to my MySpace blog and something like 60 hits to my Blogger blog. Both blogs have the same content, I started the Blogger one so that friends not on MySpace could read my entries, and I kept the MySpace blog because it was getting so many hits that I didn't want to just pull out.
Anyway, all that to say that I just because I'm too sick to spend two hours composing a blog (yeah, it takes that long sometimes...sometimes longer), I don't want to leave my readers hanging.
So...
So I decided to put together a list of "essential entries" from my blog - blogs that I'm particularly proud of or that say something about who I am and what I'm about. The links will be to the Blogger site because I'm not sure how to link to the MySpace entries (and my Blogger site could always use more hits...yeah, I'm vain like that).
Here we go - entries (very loosely) ordered from mostest favorite to less favorite.
1. A Flower of Prose November 26, 2003.
It all started here and it's kind of a fitting beginning. I remember writing this entry. I was feeling that itch to write but I was already in bed for the night. But the itch wouldn't go away. And I don't know what made me post my writing instead of just writing it in my journal, but I remember getting out of bed, logging on, and writing this tiny entry.
And it's kind of funny how it sort of sets the tone for the rest of the blog. I had no idea I'd still be posting two and a half years later, but the line, "Is this a flower? No, it's a bud that wants to burst but it waits for rain, for God to take notice and to touch the skies." is kind of, sort of what my blog has become - a place where I can post my thoughts and wishes, and a lot of times, I write because I'm trying to work something out, to understand something about myself or God or the world. And these posts are like buds (no, not that kind of buds) that long to open up, to be a bit of beauty in a darkening world. But it can't open yet, it's still waiting for...for...for something it hasn't found yet.
123. viva la revolucion November 29, 2005.
This is one of my favorite posts of all time. I'll be honest, I haven't lived up to its ideals, but I still believe in the cause.
158. the problem when it comes to Christian art January 31, 2006.
I love the questions this blog raises - questions that frustrate as much as they fascinate.
30. rant (caution, potty mouth) April 2, 2005.
Phew, when I said "potty mouth," I wasn't kidding. This blog marks the emotional low point of my blog. I felt the frustrations I shared in that blog on a regular basis back then, and although I'm in a much better place now emotionally, I still recognize the things that I shared there.
Luckily, things start (slowly) looking up from there. As you can see in...
34. the arc of change (part 1) June 6, 2005.
36. the arc of change (part 2)...aka Cusack vs Giamatti June 9, 2005.
These two entries mark a huge turning point in my life. There are some really big realizations in those entries that have changed the way I see the world and it's made a...uh...world of difference.
If you don't want to read through the entries (and I don't blame you, they're kind of long...but also kind of funny and relatively well written, if I do say so myself), here are the key ideas:
1. I had a twisted understanding of who God was.
2. My past is not a pattern destined to recycle itself throughout the rest of my life. Instead, "Every day, the sun rises on a new day. God designed it like this because he wants to drill into us the idea that as soon as we're ready we can pick our sorry selves off our ass and get back at living the life extraordinary."
Damn...somebody offer that writer a publishing deal! (pop...as in pop my big head before it gets too big)
62. too much information August 9, 2005.
Near the end of this entry I list the qualities that I'm looking for in a woman. That list still cracks me up because I can't believe I actually shared that with the world.
7. Statues October 8, 2004.
This is the first of my experimental short story things.
Oh, and here's a little clue about my titles. Titles for entries that are just plain blog entries are all lowercase except for proper nouns. Titles for story or (wanabe) poetry entries have proper title capitalization.
I actually created another blog as a kind of storehouse for my short stories and (wanabe) poetry things. It's called The LoneTomato Sauce.
43. and she was tired of talking so he told her a story... July 7, 2005.
The title of this story breaks the rule I set about titles (see the description under blog 7, above). I can't remember why I did that.
Anyway, this is still one of my favorite short stories. The three stories within the story all came out in one sitting. I have no idea where they came from...well, that's not entirely true. I had a big crush on this girl (later to be referred to as Orange, see blog 92) and this is the first in a series of stories loosely based on my feelings for her. See, I was pretty sure she didn't read my blog, but I didn't know for sure and so I'd work out my feelings through these story things.
The series continues in blog 57, blog 61, blog 64, and blog 67.
58. Wishful Thinking August 3, 2005.
This is another of my favorite story things. And even though it comes in the middle of the story series on Orange, it isn't about her. I know this because Orange isn't a reader, at least not the kind of reader in the story.
It's pretty easy to see (I mean, it's in the title) that this is me writing about my ideal girlfriend/wife. To write the story, I just kind of told myself to imagine that I was already in a relationship with the girl of my dreams. What would our relationship look like?
I especially like the bit at the end where she points out the typo and the comma.
136 embarrassing stories December 28, 2005.
These are just two stories that really happened to me. Enjoy.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I was planning on this being a short blog entry so I could get to bed early and now I've been writing this stupid thing for almost two hours!
I'm done. That's a good list. Good enough, anyway.
Thanks again for reading.
(more original posts when I'm feeling better)
But...
But I've found a kind of affinity with my blogdience (my new word, you like?). I mean last week there were something like 200+ readers to my MySpace blog and something like 60 hits to my Blogger blog. Both blogs have the same content, I started the Blogger one so that friends not on MySpace could read my entries, and I kept the MySpace blog because it was getting so many hits that I didn't want to just pull out.
Anyway, all that to say that I just because I'm too sick to spend two hours composing a blog (yeah, it takes that long sometimes...sometimes longer), I don't want to leave my readers hanging.
So...
So I decided to put together a list of "essential entries" from my blog - blogs that I'm particularly proud of or that say something about who I am and what I'm about. The links will be to the Blogger site because I'm not sure how to link to the MySpace entries (and my Blogger site could always use more hits...yeah, I'm vain like that).
Here we go - entries (very loosely) ordered from mostest favorite to less favorite.
1. A Flower of Prose November 26, 2003.
It all started here and it's kind of a fitting beginning. I remember writing this entry. I was feeling that itch to write but I was already in bed for the night. But the itch wouldn't go away. And I don't know what made me post my writing instead of just writing it in my journal, but I remember getting out of bed, logging on, and writing this tiny entry.
And it's kind of funny how it sort of sets the tone for the rest of the blog. I had no idea I'd still be posting two and a half years later, but the line, "Is this a flower? No, it's a bud that wants to burst but it waits for rain, for God to take notice and to touch the skies." is kind of, sort of what my blog has become - a place where I can post my thoughts and wishes, and a lot of times, I write because I'm trying to work something out, to understand something about myself or God or the world. And these posts are like buds (no, not that kind of buds) that long to open up, to be a bit of beauty in a darkening world. But it can't open yet, it's still waiting for...for...for something it hasn't found yet.
123. viva la revolucion November 29, 2005.
This is one of my favorite posts of all time. I'll be honest, I haven't lived up to its ideals, but I still believe in the cause.
158. the problem when it comes to Christian art January 31, 2006.
I love the questions this blog raises - questions that frustrate as much as they fascinate.
30. rant (caution, potty mouth) April 2, 2005.
Phew, when I said "potty mouth," I wasn't kidding. This blog marks the emotional low point of my blog. I felt the frustrations I shared in that blog on a regular basis back then, and although I'm in a much better place now emotionally, I still recognize the things that I shared there.
Luckily, things start (slowly) looking up from there. As you can see in...
34. the arc of change (part 1) June 6, 2005.
36. the arc of change (part 2)...aka Cusack vs Giamatti June 9, 2005.
These two entries mark a huge turning point in my life. There are some really big realizations in those entries that have changed the way I see the world and it's made a...uh...world of difference.
If you don't want to read through the entries (and I don't blame you, they're kind of long...but also kind of funny and relatively well written, if I do say so myself), here are the key ideas:
1. I had a twisted understanding of who God was.
2. My past is not a pattern destined to recycle itself throughout the rest of my life. Instead, "Every day, the sun rises on a new day. God designed it like this because he wants to drill into us the idea that as soon as we're ready we can pick our sorry selves off our ass and get back at living the life extraordinary."
Damn...somebody offer that writer a publishing deal! (pop...as in pop my big head before it gets too big)
62. too much information August 9, 2005.
Near the end of this entry I list the qualities that I'm looking for in a woman. That list still cracks me up because I can't believe I actually shared that with the world.
7. Statues October 8, 2004.
This is the first of my experimental short story things.
Oh, and here's a little clue about my titles. Titles for entries that are just plain blog entries are all lowercase except for proper nouns. Titles for story or (wanabe) poetry entries have proper title capitalization.
I actually created another blog as a kind of storehouse for my short stories and (wanabe) poetry things. It's called The LoneTomato Sauce.
43. and she was tired of talking so he told her a story... July 7, 2005.
The title of this story breaks the rule I set about titles (see the description under blog 7, above). I can't remember why I did that.
Anyway, this is still one of my favorite short stories. The three stories within the story all came out in one sitting. I have no idea where they came from...well, that's not entirely true. I had a big crush on this girl (later to be referred to as Orange, see blog 92) and this is the first in a series of stories loosely based on my feelings for her. See, I was pretty sure she didn't read my blog, but I didn't know for sure and so I'd work out my feelings through these story things.
The series continues in blog 57, blog 61, blog 64, and blog 67.
58. Wishful Thinking August 3, 2005.
This is another of my favorite story things. And even though it comes in the middle of the story series on Orange, it isn't about her. I know this because Orange isn't a reader, at least not the kind of reader in the story.
It's pretty easy to see (I mean, it's in the title) that this is me writing about my ideal girlfriend/wife. To write the story, I just kind of told myself to imagine that I was already in a relationship with the girl of my dreams. What would our relationship look like?
I especially like the bit at the end where she points out the typo and the comma.
136 embarrassing stories December 28, 2005.
These are just two stories that really happened to me. Enjoy.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I was planning on this being a short blog entry so I could get to bed early and now I've been writing this stupid thing for almost two hours!
I'm done. That's a good list. Good enough, anyway.
Thanks again for reading.
(more original posts when I'm feeling better)
Sunday, March 12, 2006
177. somebody stop me!
Hi, my name is Randall.
"Hi, Randall."
My name is Randall and I have a problem...
"Tell us about it, Randall."
My name is Randall and I'm a book slut.
*gasp*
"You sick freak."
Yeah, I've been on a kind of book buying binge lately and I decided it was time to face up to the facts. I decided to take all the books I've purchased recently, put them in a stack and get to reading through them. Also, I wanted to get all my new books together in one place so I can see what I've done to myself and stop buying new ones - kind of like a personal intervention.
Anyway, thought I'd share my stack of books with you.
1. The Rapture Exposed - The message of hope in the book of Revelation. By Barbara R. Rossing.
This is actually a book I just finished. I just wanted to list it here because it enlightened me on something that I think more people (especially Christians) need to know. The view of the end times described in the Left Behind books and through authors like John Hagee and Hal Lindsey, is a very recent invention - within the past 150 years. This view of the end times is called Dispensationalism and was created by John Darby.
Now the Bible teaches that Jesus is coming back to earth. What differentiates dispensationalists from more traditional views of the end times is that dispensationalists believe that Jesus will return to the earth TWICE - first to "rapture" believers off the earth and then then "a second time after seven years of global tribulation to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth. . ." (Rossing, 22).
The danger of this two-stage return of Christ is that it encourages Christians to live with a kind of abandon-the-world mentality because it's all going to be destroyed anyway. It also has disastrous implications for those working for peace between Israel and the Palestinians because dispensationalism outlines a timetable leading up to the return of Christ. Part of this timetable includes the rebuilding of the Jewish temple and a reestablishment of the original borders of Israel. And that means the Palestinians have to go because they're standing in the way of the fulfillment of this timetable. And this is not just a theoretical danger. Right now there are so-called Christian organizations that "are deeply involved in Israeli political life, with goals of aiding Israel in achieving regional dominance, control of water resources, and more." (Rossing, 66)
I always thought there was something fishy about what was being taught about the end times, and this book really helped give me some history and perspective on the issue. I still don't know what the end times will look like and honestly, I think that might be the most Biblical way to see the issue.
2. To Own a Dragon - Reflections on growing up without a father. By Donald Miller.
This is the book I'm currently reading and it's a fun, fast read. Like the subtitle says, it's about growing up without a father and some of the problems that causes and what the Bible says about how God wants to fix these problems. Like Miller's other books, he writes with a refreshing candor, not afraid to call a spade a spade but at the same time, not afraid to share his understanding of spirituality.
For example, there's a section where he's trying to open up the whole God-as-father metaphor in very practical, tangible ways and at one point he admits, "I know it all sounds like mushy new-age spirituality, like I ought to be living in a tent out in Colorado, asking a tree what I should eat for breakfast. . ." (Miller, 69) And though he admits that some might see it as "mushy," he steps right in it anyway because God gives hope and healing for those whose fathers' weren't there or weren't there enough.
- side note - I'm going to try and breeze through the rest of the books in my stack, and that shouldn't be a problem because for the most part, I haven't started them yet and so don't have all that much to say about them. Oh, and the books are presented in no particular order. I'm not sure which books I'll read first or last or if there are some that I'll never get to. On with the list:
3. A Tale of Three Kings - A study in brokenness. By Gene Edwards
Kelli donated this book to the home church I've been attending (see blog 175) and I picked it up because I know a friend who was really touched by it.
4. Quest for Love - True stories of passion and purity. By Elisabeth Elliot
Uh...normally I'd run from a title like this (see blog 73) but Kelli suggested it and she's really cute so I couldn't think of a polite way to turn the offer down. That said (and I'll flesh this out more in an up-coming blog), I know I've finally found contentment as a single person (see blog 162), but at the same time I don't want to give up on the whole love and marriage thing all together. And maybe this book will help me find the right balance between the two - looking too hard and not looking hard enough.
But that's not a very guy-friendly title, and the Harlequin/Danielle Steel looking cover doesn't help either. But at the same time, it's been a while since I've done much thinking about relationships and so maybe this will be a kind of refresher course.
5. Church Re-Imagined - The spiritual formation of people in communities of faith. By Doug Pagitt
You know, I'm looking at this book and I'm trying to remember why I bought it. This might end up on the give-away stack.
6. Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places - A conversation in spiritual theology. By Eugene H. Peterson
Peterson is the man who wrote the paraphrase of the Bible known as the Living Bible or the Living Translation. I'm really looking forward to getting into this book because it aims to provide a reasoned, theological framework for Christian spirituality. And I realize that doesn't sound like a very sexy read, but I'm excited about it.
See, for the most part, books on spirituality are heavy on feelings and are written from/to the heart but they tend to be a bit light when it comes to feeding the mind. On the other hand, books on theology and absolutes and apologetics tend to be heavy on logic and reasoning but they leave the heart wanting. I want both - a Christianity for the heart and the mind - and I'm hoping this book will describe a way to integrate the two.
7. The Great Giveaway - Reclaiming the mission of the church from big business, parachurch organizations, psychotherapy, consumer capitalism, and other modern maladies. By David E. Fitch
Over the past few years, I've become increasingly suspicious of the close ties between the church and the voracious consumeristic (whoring) culture that we live in. I think this book will speak directly to those suspicions, and point towards a better way.
8. The Opposite Of Fate - Memories of a writing life. By Amy Tan
I picked up this book while attempting to write a novel for the National Novel Writing Month event. I love Tan's writing and even though I don't think she's ever equaled her work in The Joy Luck Club (a book that reduces me to a quivering, weepy mess), I love her liquid prose and her surprising plot turns.
This isn't a book I'm in a rush to get through from beginning to end. It's more a book that I keep on my night stand and flip through when I can't get to sleep. And I know that doesn't do the book justice, but hey, it's my book and I doubt I'm hurting her feelings.
9. Memories Of My Melancholy Whores. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is the only work of fiction in this list. I bought it after a reviewer gushed over it in an NPR review. Marquez has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I admit, I bought this book because it seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, NPR gave it a great review and Marquez is this award winning writer and I want to be a writer so I should read great writing...but I don't like the book. I don't get it. Maybe it reads better in its original language, Spanish.
This is another candidate for the to sell/give away pile.
10. New Way to Be Human - A provocative look at what it means to follow Jesus. By Charlie Peacock
Now who doesn't want to read "a provocative look at what it means to follow Jesus?" But it wasn't just the catchy subtitle that got me to buy this book. It was also the fact that it's written by an artist and the reviews on the Amazon website promised a unique perspective on Christianity.
I actually started this book a few months ago and from what I remember, it didn't live up to the hype.
Potential sell/give away pile.
11. Left to Tell - Discovering God amidst the Rwandan holocaust. By Immaculee Ilibagiza
See the movie Hotel Rwanda? Here's a first-hand account.
This is the book I take with me to work - the book I read during my lunch break when it's raining too hard to go for a walk (see blog 146).
12. Crunchy Cons - How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). By Rod Dreher
I really can't wait to dive into this book. Like I explained about Christianity above (see point 7, The Great Giveaway), the conservative movement has been hijacked by corporate greed. Now I believe in a free market system of economics, but at the same time there's a point where the government needs to intervene. This book aims to reclaim conservatism, bringing it back to its core principles.
13. Decoding the Universe - How the new science of information is explaining everything in the cosmos, from our brains to black holes. By Charles Seife
I just bought this book TODAY (hence the blog title). I was browsing the Kahala Mall Barnes and Noble and innocently started flipping through the first pages and then I got sucked in. Big time.
See, even though I suck at math (I hit a brick wall once I got to pre-pre-Calculus, AKA Algebra III in high school), I'm fascinated by it and so I enjoy books that talk about cutting edge mathematics in layman's terms.
I also enjoy books about modern theoretical physics - books like The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene and Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.
Geeze, that took WAY longer than I thought it would and I have even more books than I thought I did. Even minus the books on the chopping block, I'm still left with nine unfinished books.
Okay, enough writing, back to the reading.
"Hi, Randall."
My name is Randall and I have a problem...
"Tell us about it, Randall."
My name is Randall and I'm a book slut.
*gasp*
"You sick freak."
Yeah, I've been on a kind of book buying binge lately and I decided it was time to face up to the facts. I decided to take all the books I've purchased recently, put them in a stack and get to reading through them. Also, I wanted to get all my new books together in one place so I can see what I've done to myself and stop buying new ones - kind of like a personal intervention.
Anyway, thought I'd share my stack of books with you.
1. The Rapture Exposed - The message of hope in the book of Revelation. By Barbara R. Rossing.
This is actually a book I just finished. I just wanted to list it here because it enlightened me on something that I think more people (especially Christians) need to know. The view of the end times described in the Left Behind books and through authors like John Hagee and Hal Lindsey, is a very recent invention - within the past 150 years. This view of the end times is called Dispensationalism and was created by John Darby.
Now the Bible teaches that Jesus is coming back to earth. What differentiates dispensationalists from more traditional views of the end times is that dispensationalists believe that Jesus will return to the earth TWICE - first to "rapture" believers off the earth and then then "a second time after seven years of global tribulation to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth. . ." (Rossing, 22).
The danger of this two-stage return of Christ is that it encourages Christians to live with a kind of abandon-the-world mentality because it's all going to be destroyed anyway. It also has disastrous implications for those working for peace between Israel and the Palestinians because dispensationalism outlines a timetable leading up to the return of Christ. Part of this timetable includes the rebuilding of the Jewish temple and a reestablishment of the original borders of Israel. And that means the Palestinians have to go because they're standing in the way of the fulfillment of this timetable. And this is not just a theoretical danger. Right now there are so-called Christian organizations that "are deeply involved in Israeli political life, with goals of aiding Israel in achieving regional dominance, control of water resources, and more." (Rossing, 66)
I always thought there was something fishy about what was being taught about the end times, and this book really helped give me some history and perspective on the issue. I still don't know what the end times will look like and honestly, I think that might be the most Biblical way to see the issue.
2. To Own a Dragon - Reflections on growing up without a father. By Donald Miller.
This is the book I'm currently reading and it's a fun, fast read. Like the subtitle says, it's about growing up without a father and some of the problems that causes and what the Bible says about how God wants to fix these problems. Like Miller's other books, he writes with a refreshing candor, not afraid to call a spade a spade but at the same time, not afraid to share his understanding of spirituality.
For example, there's a section where he's trying to open up the whole God-as-father metaphor in very practical, tangible ways and at one point he admits, "I know it all sounds like mushy new-age spirituality, like I ought to be living in a tent out in Colorado, asking a tree what I should eat for breakfast. . ." (Miller, 69) And though he admits that some might see it as "mushy," he steps right in it anyway because God gives hope and healing for those whose fathers' weren't there or weren't there enough.
- side note - I'm going to try and breeze through the rest of the books in my stack, and that shouldn't be a problem because for the most part, I haven't started them yet and so don't have all that much to say about them. Oh, and the books are presented in no particular order. I'm not sure which books I'll read first or last or if there are some that I'll never get to. On with the list:
3. A Tale of Three Kings - A study in brokenness. By Gene Edwards
Kelli donated this book to the home church I've been attending (see blog 175) and I picked it up because I know a friend who was really touched by it.
4. Quest for Love - True stories of passion and purity. By Elisabeth Elliot
Uh...normally I'd run from a title like this (see blog 73) but Kelli suggested it and she's really cute so I couldn't think of a polite way to turn the offer down. That said (and I'll flesh this out more in an up-coming blog), I know I've finally found contentment as a single person (see blog 162), but at the same time I don't want to give up on the whole love and marriage thing all together. And maybe this book will help me find the right balance between the two - looking too hard and not looking hard enough.
But that's not a very guy-friendly title, and the Harlequin/Danielle Steel looking cover doesn't help either. But at the same time, it's been a while since I've done much thinking about relationships and so maybe this will be a kind of refresher course.
5. Church Re-Imagined - The spiritual formation of people in communities of faith. By Doug Pagitt
You know, I'm looking at this book and I'm trying to remember why I bought it. This might end up on the give-away stack.
6. Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places - A conversation in spiritual theology. By Eugene H. Peterson
Peterson is the man who wrote the paraphrase of the Bible known as the Living Bible or the Living Translation. I'm really looking forward to getting into this book because it aims to provide a reasoned, theological framework for Christian spirituality. And I realize that doesn't sound like a very sexy read, but I'm excited about it.
See, for the most part, books on spirituality are heavy on feelings and are written from/to the heart but they tend to be a bit light when it comes to feeding the mind. On the other hand, books on theology and absolutes and apologetics tend to be heavy on logic and reasoning but they leave the heart wanting. I want both - a Christianity for the heart and the mind - and I'm hoping this book will describe a way to integrate the two.
7. The Great Giveaway - Reclaiming the mission of the church from big business, parachurch organizations, psychotherapy, consumer capitalism, and other modern maladies. By David E. Fitch
Over the past few years, I've become increasingly suspicious of the close ties between the church and the voracious consumeristic (whoring) culture that we live in. I think this book will speak directly to those suspicions, and point towards a better way.
8. The Opposite Of Fate - Memories of a writing life. By Amy Tan
I picked up this book while attempting to write a novel for the National Novel Writing Month event. I love Tan's writing and even though I don't think she's ever equaled her work in The Joy Luck Club (a book that reduces me to a quivering, weepy mess), I love her liquid prose and her surprising plot turns.
This isn't a book I'm in a rush to get through from beginning to end. It's more a book that I keep on my night stand and flip through when I can't get to sleep. And I know that doesn't do the book justice, but hey, it's my book and I doubt I'm hurting her feelings.
9. Memories Of My Melancholy Whores. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is the only work of fiction in this list. I bought it after a reviewer gushed over it in an NPR review. Marquez has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I admit, I bought this book because it seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, NPR gave it a great review and Marquez is this award winning writer and I want to be a writer so I should read great writing...but I don't like the book. I don't get it. Maybe it reads better in its original language, Spanish.
This is another candidate for the to sell/give away pile.
10. New Way to Be Human - A provocative look at what it means to follow Jesus. By Charlie Peacock
Now who doesn't want to read "a provocative look at what it means to follow Jesus?" But it wasn't just the catchy subtitle that got me to buy this book. It was also the fact that it's written by an artist and the reviews on the Amazon website promised a unique perspective on Christianity.
I actually started this book a few months ago and from what I remember, it didn't live up to the hype.
Potential sell/give away pile.
11. Left to Tell - Discovering God amidst the Rwandan holocaust. By Immaculee Ilibagiza
See the movie Hotel Rwanda? Here's a first-hand account.
This is the book I take with me to work - the book I read during my lunch break when it's raining too hard to go for a walk (see blog 146).
12. Crunchy Cons - How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). By Rod Dreher
I really can't wait to dive into this book. Like I explained about Christianity above (see point 7, The Great Giveaway), the conservative movement has been hijacked by corporate greed. Now I believe in a free market system of economics, but at the same time there's a point where the government needs to intervene. This book aims to reclaim conservatism, bringing it back to its core principles.
13. Decoding the Universe - How the new science of information is explaining everything in the cosmos, from our brains to black holes. By Charles Seife
I just bought this book TODAY (hence the blog title). I was browsing the Kahala Mall Barnes and Noble and innocently started flipping through the first pages and then I got sucked in. Big time.
See, even though I suck at math (I hit a brick wall once I got to pre-pre-Calculus, AKA Algebra III in high school), I'm fascinated by it and so I enjoy books that talk about cutting edge mathematics in layman's terms.
I also enjoy books about modern theoretical physics - books like The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene and Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.
Geeze, that took WAY longer than I thought it would and I have even more books than I thought I did. Even minus the books on the chopping block, I'm still left with nine unfinished books.
Okay, enough writing, back to the reading.
Friday, March 10, 2006
176. The Fish and the Farm
Then there's the story of the fisherman who, unlike Ahab, chose to let the one that got away get away. He pulled up his poles, turned the bow towards shore, and throttled up the engine. Done with years at sea, he decided to try his hand, finally, at farming. As he piloted his boat, he imagined the joy he would see in his wife's eyes when he gave her the news - because she knew as well as he that the sea was always his first love. Until today. He rehearsed the words he would use to tell her, speaking them into the wind. He tried different versions, each simpler and more to the point, until he decided on two simple words. "I'm home."
Just before he pulled past the buoy that marked the entrance to the harbor, not ten feet off his starboard side, the water erupted as if shot out of a cannon and within this column of water, a fish like the one he had been chasing throughout his life. And as in movies, and as in memory, and as it is during those fleeting, pivotal moments in life - time slowed to a crawl, slow enough that he could trace individual trajectories of drops within the cascade. That is, he could have if he was watching the water, but he was not. He was transfixed on the glorious, silver specimen rising up out of the deep, pelagic blue.
Time continued to slow, winding down like clock whose balance spring has lost all tension. And this fish continued its ascent up out of the water. It reached the apogee of its arc through the shimmering, salty air, and for one transcendent instant, it hung there as if mounted on his wall by taxidermy. In that moment, the fisherman was transported back to his house, three streets back from the pier. No, it wasn't he that was transported, it was more that his trophy room materialized out on the open sea, framing itself around the fish right at the spot that he'd been reserving for this one last token of the sea.
There was a splash and the sting of salt in his eyes. The boat rocked, caught his sea legs unprepared, and he nearly fell over but muscle memory kicked in and kept him upright. He shook the water from his hair and the fish was gone. He raised a hand to wipe his eyes. His sleeves were wet. With his other hand, he throttled the engine back, all stop.
And though the fish was gone, and he was still out there at sea, his mind lingered in his trophy room. There was the space on the wall where he had intended to mount his prize. Without it, the room seemed incomplete, empty, wrong somehow. In this space, a need to fill it, to set things right. He could feel the need crescendo, morphing into desire, flooding his heart with bitter want, a livid thirst to complete the room with this one last token from the sea. And then his wife walked in, wrapped her arm around his waist, tilted her head, resting it on his shoulder. And she whispered into his ear.
The propellers spun the sea into a frothy foam. The bow pushed forward through the choppy waters. Thoughts of corn, carrots, leeks, and radishes (all of them organized, row by row) ran through his head.
Just before he pulled past the buoy that marked the entrance to the harbor, not ten feet off his starboard side, the water erupted as if shot out of a cannon and within this column of water, a fish like the one he had been chasing throughout his life. And as in movies, and as in memory, and as it is during those fleeting, pivotal moments in life - time slowed to a crawl, slow enough that he could trace individual trajectories of drops within the cascade. That is, he could have if he was watching the water, but he was not. He was transfixed on the glorious, silver specimen rising up out of the deep, pelagic blue.
Time continued to slow, winding down like clock whose balance spring has lost all tension. And this fish continued its ascent up out of the water. It reached the apogee of its arc through the shimmering, salty air, and for one transcendent instant, it hung there as if mounted on his wall by taxidermy. In that moment, the fisherman was transported back to his house, three streets back from the pier. No, it wasn't he that was transported, it was more that his trophy room materialized out on the open sea, framing itself around the fish right at the spot that he'd been reserving for this one last token of the sea.
There was a splash and the sting of salt in his eyes. The boat rocked, caught his sea legs unprepared, and he nearly fell over but muscle memory kicked in and kept him upright. He shook the water from his hair and the fish was gone. He raised a hand to wipe his eyes. His sleeves were wet. With his other hand, he throttled the engine back, all stop.
And though the fish was gone, and he was still out there at sea, his mind lingered in his trophy room. There was the space on the wall where he had intended to mount his prize. Without it, the room seemed incomplete, empty, wrong somehow. In this space, a need to fill it, to set things right. He could feel the need crescendo, morphing into desire, flooding his heart with bitter want, a livid thirst to complete the room with this one last token from the sea. And then his wife walked in, wrapped her arm around his waist, tilted her head, resting it on his shoulder. And she whispered into his ear.
The propellers spun the sea into a frothy foam. The bow pushed forward through the choppy waters. Thoughts of corn, carrots, leeks, and radishes (all of them organized, row by row) ran through his head.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
175. home church
I can't believe it's taken me this long to blog about it, but I've been attending a house church for the past five months. And it's been so good for me for so many reasons. Let me count the ways:
1. No sign dancing.
Huge, HUGE pet peeve of mine. I really don't get sign dancing. Look, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings here (and I mainly want to talk about the house church) so I'll just leave it at that.
2. It's interactive.
At any point in the "service," people can ask questions. The sermon is more of a guided discussion than a sermon because the person speaking not only allows for questions, but encourages them. I mean how many times have you listened to a preacher and he drops some bomb that you need clarification on or that you disagree with or that you think is inaccurate, but you can't just raise your hand and ask about it and so you just sit there and stew while the rest of the message breezes by you.
At this church, we usually don't even bother to raise our hand, we just blurt out a question or objection or observation. In my case, I just furrow my brow and purse my lips and the speaker gets the hint and asks, "what now, Randall?"
3. It's real.
For better or for worse, this church was started by (and has attracted) Christians who were fed up with bigger, more organized (aka politicized) churches. See, a lot of Christians (and even more so their church leaders) don't realize that there is a conformist church culture that runs through most congregations. Now I have no problem with the church having a culture - almost by definition, any group that gathers regularly will develop common, cultural features. It's the conformist part of church culture that I (and many of the others at the house church) despise.
We have one guy who comes to church in pajama pants because he feels comfortable in them (he also wears them to nightclubs and while grocery shopping, so it's not just something he does for church). We have a guy who brings a cooler of beer with him. We have non-christians who would never set foot in any other church. And for the most part, everybody just comes as they are. Of course the hope is that they leave a bit more like Jesus, but they'll never get that way if they don't feel welcome in the first place.
4. It's unscripted.
This is not a church for control junkies or for people who get edgy and uncomfortable when there's no schedule to follow. I don't mean to say that it's chaos, it's more like a casual family kind of a thing where we have a list of things that need to get done but it's not timed to the micro-second. Fellowship flows into worship which naturally leads into prayer which brings us to the message. And then we close. And then some hang out and talk, some pray, some just go home or to work. And then we're done.
5. It's intimate.
Not in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog photo kind of way, but in a communal, family kind of way. Because it's a small group, we can actually get to know the people that attend. And we're too small for cliques to form. Instead of investing into some anonymous church mission statement, we're investing in one another.
I'm sure if you were to ask some of the other people at the home church, you'd get other examples of why they love what's happening, but that's my list off the top of my head in no particular order.
And here's the really cool bit. Turns out this house church phenomenon is happening all over. Here's an article in Time magazine about it. But we didn't know this movement or this trend was occurring when we started the church. I mean the guy who started this church got the idea from a friend visiting from Sweden who has a house church there, but it's not like he started this home church just to be trendy or because it's the new in-thing in Christianity. He started it because he didn't know what else to do and then we find out that it's something that's happening nationwide. That makes it feel like we've stumbled onto something that God's kind of unleashing right now.
There's definitely a new wineskin kind of vibe happening. And that wineskin metaphor is an interesting one. See, last Sunday, some of the people who attend this home church went to the monthly corporate service at Hope Chapel Manoa - Hope Manoa adopted a home church format about a year ago and their individual home churches (about eleven of them) get together once per month to celebrate together. At this service, Mark Hsi (senior pastor) shared a brief message about some of the potential dangers he sees as the house church movement grows. One of them was the temptation to diss more traditional forms of church. He talked about the need for respect on both sides, and here's where I want to kind of break open the wineskin metaphor a little bit.
Basically, the idea is that change is a part of life and expressions of faith are not exempted from this cycle. And when change happens, it's got to find new receptacles to contain it because it's not going to fit in the old forms. It's a beautiful image, really because even though the old wine is, well, old, it's also mature and rich and complex and stable. On the other hand, younger wine is more direct, the flavors are more fruity, and it changes quite a bit as time goes by. And the discerning wine lover can appreciate both.
The same thing happens with churches. A new stylistic change comes along or a shift in doctrinal emphasis occurs (within reason, we're not talking about heresies here) or technology brings about new ways of spreading the gospel. Change happens and it has a hard time fitting in with what's already established and so it breaks away and finds new containers. And everything is cool and fruity and fun until this new wine starts to mature and another shift occurs and all of a sudden what was hip and new has become established and stable and is not flexible enough to accommodate this new shift.
But here's what ties the old and the new together - tradition. Changing environmental factors guarantee that every year's harvest of grapes will be different from the last but the methods of making wine, those stay the same. In the case of the church, creeds and theology and orthodoxy represent the tradition of winemaking, the mechanics that makes it all work. Any new form of church ignores these at their own peril.
1. No sign dancing.
Huge, HUGE pet peeve of mine. I really don't get sign dancing. Look, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings here (and I mainly want to talk about the house church) so I'll just leave it at that.
2. It's interactive.
At any point in the "service," people can ask questions. The sermon is more of a guided discussion than a sermon because the person speaking not only allows for questions, but encourages them. I mean how many times have you listened to a preacher and he drops some bomb that you need clarification on or that you disagree with or that you think is inaccurate, but you can't just raise your hand and ask about it and so you just sit there and stew while the rest of the message breezes by you.
At this church, we usually don't even bother to raise our hand, we just blurt out a question or objection or observation. In my case, I just furrow my brow and purse my lips and the speaker gets the hint and asks, "what now, Randall?"
3. It's real.
For better or for worse, this church was started by (and has attracted) Christians who were fed up with bigger, more organized (aka politicized) churches. See, a lot of Christians (and even more so their church leaders) don't realize that there is a conformist church culture that runs through most congregations. Now I have no problem with the church having a culture - almost by definition, any group that gathers regularly will develop common, cultural features. It's the conformist part of church culture that I (and many of the others at the house church) despise.
We have one guy who comes to church in pajama pants because he feels comfortable in them (he also wears them to nightclubs and while grocery shopping, so it's not just something he does for church). We have a guy who brings a cooler of beer with him. We have non-christians who would never set foot in any other church. And for the most part, everybody just comes as they are. Of course the hope is that they leave a bit more like Jesus, but they'll never get that way if they don't feel welcome in the first place.
4. It's unscripted.
This is not a church for control junkies or for people who get edgy and uncomfortable when there's no schedule to follow. I don't mean to say that it's chaos, it's more like a casual family kind of a thing where we have a list of things that need to get done but it's not timed to the micro-second. Fellowship flows into worship which naturally leads into prayer which brings us to the message. And then we close. And then some hang out and talk, some pray, some just go home or to work. And then we're done.
5. It's intimate.
Not in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog photo kind of way, but in a communal, family kind of way. Because it's a small group, we can actually get to know the people that attend. And we're too small for cliques to form. Instead of investing into some anonymous church mission statement, we're investing in one another.
I'm sure if you were to ask some of the other people at the home church, you'd get other examples of why they love what's happening, but that's my list off the top of my head in no particular order.
And here's the really cool bit. Turns out this house church phenomenon is happening all over. Here's an article in Time magazine about it. But we didn't know this movement or this trend was occurring when we started the church. I mean the guy who started this church got the idea from a friend visiting from Sweden who has a house church there, but it's not like he started this home church just to be trendy or because it's the new in-thing in Christianity. He started it because he didn't know what else to do and then we find out that it's something that's happening nationwide. That makes it feel like we've stumbled onto something that God's kind of unleashing right now.
There's definitely a new wineskin kind of vibe happening. And that wineskin metaphor is an interesting one. See, last Sunday, some of the people who attend this home church went to the monthly corporate service at Hope Chapel Manoa - Hope Manoa adopted a home church format about a year ago and their individual home churches (about eleven of them) get together once per month to celebrate together. At this service, Mark Hsi (senior pastor) shared a brief message about some of the potential dangers he sees as the house church movement grows. One of them was the temptation to diss more traditional forms of church. He talked about the need for respect on both sides, and here's where I want to kind of break open the wineskin metaphor a little bit.
Basically, the idea is that change is a part of life and expressions of faith are not exempted from this cycle. And when change happens, it's got to find new receptacles to contain it because it's not going to fit in the old forms. It's a beautiful image, really because even though the old wine is, well, old, it's also mature and rich and complex and stable. On the other hand, younger wine is more direct, the flavors are more fruity, and it changes quite a bit as time goes by. And the discerning wine lover can appreciate both.
The same thing happens with churches. A new stylistic change comes along or a shift in doctrinal emphasis occurs (within reason, we're not talking about heresies here) or technology brings about new ways of spreading the gospel. Change happens and it has a hard time fitting in with what's already established and so it breaks away and finds new containers. And everything is cool and fruity and fun until this new wine starts to mature and another shift occurs and all of a sudden what was hip and new has become established and stable and is not flexible enough to accommodate this new shift.
But here's what ties the old and the new together - tradition. Changing environmental factors guarantee that every year's harvest of grapes will be different from the last but the methods of making wine, those stay the same. In the case of the church, creeds and theology and orthodoxy represent the tradition of winemaking, the mechanics that makes it all work. Any new form of church ignores these at their own peril.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
174. on spirituality (part 4)...prayer
So I finally got to meet with my friend who was going through that rough bit (see blog 173). Things aren't all resolved, but some elements of the bum-out are better, some are the same. Overall, he's coping and doing well, all things considered. But it was three or four days between the time he left a voicemail saying he needed prayer, and the time when I finally got to talk to him about what was troubling him. In the mean time, all I could do was pray, even without knowing exactly what he was going through. And so I prayed.
And then I realized.
It's been a long time since I've made it a point to take time out to pray - I mean actually carving out a few minutes to stop and devote myself to praying (as opposed to praying while driving or walking or other kinds of multitasking prayer).
Truth be told, I was never one of those people Christians refer to as, "prayer warriors" - people who pray religiously (sorry, I couldn't help myself), people who keep prayer journals, people who have amazing stories of answered prayer. For me, prayer has always been a one-sided conversation (see blog 60) and so it's never been easy to make it a consistent part of my life.
And there's another thing.
For years, there was one prayer that I would pray everyday - I mean, I used to pray for lots of different things, but this one thing was something that I tried to hit every time I prayed. I was praying for a girlfriend. More specifically, I was praying that I would meet my wife, but wives start out as girlfriends and so I kind of prayed for both. And as far as I can tell, that prayer was never answered.
"What do you mean, 'as far as I can tell,' everybody knows you've been single for all your life...or at least they do now."
What I mean is, my prayer was that I would MEET my wife and so it could be that I've already met her but we're not meant to start a relationship yet and so that's why I'm still single. But even then, I was aware of that loophole, so I know there were times when I prayed, "let me meet my wife and start going out with her today." Seriously, I prayed that - I heard teachings that talked about praying specifically and so that's what I did. And there were stretches where I'd pray this every morning for months. I would pray for other things as well, but this was the one prayer that was closest to my heart - the one that I longed for the most.
But here I am, 34 years old and I've never had a girlfriend.
And that has been a kind of burden on my prayer life. It's like a hurdle that I have to negotiate whenever I try to get prayer back into my life. Because here's this one thing that I wanted, just this one thing, and it never happened.
But there's more to it than just this unanswered prayer.
See, there was a time when I thought God was answering this prayer. There was this girl, let's call her Kay. Back in the early 90's, let's make it 1992, Kay and I went out for a while but it was platonic. The relationship never went anywhere because once it got to the point where I wanted to be more than just friends, she freaked out and things ended badly.
Fast forward three or four years. I'm volunteering a lot of time at a church and I'm trying to get into praying and it's like I heard from God. And here's what I thought I heard. "Kay is still the one for you." Now if you've been reading my blog lately, you know that I'm not one who hears from God on a regular basis. It's quite the opposite, I almost never hear or sense or intuit any kind of message from God. And so my first reaction when hearing this is that I'm making it up, that I'm not hearing from God. But like I said, at the time I was working closely with my church and they were encouraging me to work on spiritual discernment and so I kind of prayed, "well, okay, if she's still the one then let it be."
And then I start bumping into Kay around town in totally random places. And somehow we exchanged numbers and I ended up talking to her on the phone a couple times and it was instantly back to the way it was before things got all messy. But she had a boyfriend at the time and that threw a wrench in the whole, "Kay is still the one," thing. But then something really crazy happened.
I call her one night, and she tells me that she and her boyfriend just broke up. And it's not like this is something I engineered (I have no game, remember? See blog 62). He was acting stupid and she called him on it but he wasn't getting it. She gave him some time to get it together but he didn't and so she dumped him. And I'm thinking, "holy shit, this thing might actually happen." God tells me this amazing, impossible thing about Kay and I, and it looked like things were lining up to make it happen.
But her ex-boyfriend makes nice, drops some smooth lines, and weasels his way back into her life (I'm over it now, but that really is how he got back in the game - through some pretty slimy maneuvers). And I felt like Charlie Brown floating through their air after Lucy pulled the football away yet again. See, back then I had this image of God, that he played shooting gallery with my dreams. I initially didn't want to believe the word about Kay still being the one, but once things started lining up, I decided to take a leap of faith and believe that God was going to make it happen. I leapt but never made it to the other side.
After it was all over and Kay was back together with Slime-ball, I was angry and confused because I thought I had heard from God. And not only that, I thought I was finally going to see an answer to this prayer I'd been praying for so long. And not only that, but it was going to be an answer that was nothing short of a miracle. But it never happened.
As you can imagine, that whole episode put a pretty big dent in my faith in prayer and the ability to hear from God. To this day, I still don't understand how God could have allowed me to be so misled, how he could allow the devil to toy with something so close to my heart.
Okay, all that to say that I bring baggage with me when I pray. And even though I'm emotionally over what happened all those years ago, I still have a kind of lack of confidence in both my ability to pray effectively and in my ability to hear from God.
But...
But I'm trying again to pray because I'm at a point where my desire to experience God in a more real way outweighs the doubts that have. And all it took was my friend asking me for prayer. And it's been less than a week, but I'm trying to stay with it. And no, I still don't understand what happened all those years ago with the Kay incident but I don't care anymore. I just want to have a more tangible, experiential Christianity and I know that must begin with prayer. And I don't deny my reservations - I offer them up to God when I pray. And I try to listen for a reply.
(Oh, and in case you're wondering, Kay and Slimy got married a couple years ago. That's the last I heard of either of them.)
And then I realized.
It's been a long time since I've made it a point to take time out to pray - I mean actually carving out a few minutes to stop and devote myself to praying (as opposed to praying while driving or walking or other kinds of multitasking prayer).
Truth be told, I was never one of those people Christians refer to as, "prayer warriors" - people who pray religiously (sorry, I couldn't help myself), people who keep prayer journals, people who have amazing stories of answered prayer. For me, prayer has always been a one-sided conversation (see blog 60) and so it's never been easy to make it a consistent part of my life.
And there's another thing.
For years, there was one prayer that I would pray everyday - I mean, I used to pray for lots of different things, but this one thing was something that I tried to hit every time I prayed. I was praying for a girlfriend. More specifically, I was praying that I would meet my wife, but wives start out as girlfriends and so I kind of prayed for both. And as far as I can tell, that prayer was never answered.
"What do you mean, 'as far as I can tell,' everybody knows you've been single for all your life...or at least they do now."
What I mean is, my prayer was that I would MEET my wife and so it could be that I've already met her but we're not meant to start a relationship yet and so that's why I'm still single. But even then, I was aware of that loophole, so I know there were times when I prayed, "let me meet my wife and start going out with her today." Seriously, I prayed that - I heard teachings that talked about praying specifically and so that's what I did. And there were stretches where I'd pray this every morning for months. I would pray for other things as well, but this was the one prayer that was closest to my heart - the one that I longed for the most.
But here I am, 34 years old and I've never had a girlfriend.
And that has been a kind of burden on my prayer life. It's like a hurdle that I have to negotiate whenever I try to get prayer back into my life. Because here's this one thing that I wanted, just this one thing, and it never happened.
But there's more to it than just this unanswered prayer.
See, there was a time when I thought God was answering this prayer. There was this girl, let's call her Kay. Back in the early 90's, let's make it 1992, Kay and I went out for a while but it was platonic. The relationship never went anywhere because once it got to the point where I wanted to be more than just friends, she freaked out and things ended badly.
Fast forward three or four years. I'm volunteering a lot of time at a church and I'm trying to get into praying and it's like I heard from God. And here's what I thought I heard. "Kay is still the one for you." Now if you've been reading my blog lately, you know that I'm not one who hears from God on a regular basis. It's quite the opposite, I almost never hear or sense or intuit any kind of message from God. And so my first reaction when hearing this is that I'm making it up, that I'm not hearing from God. But like I said, at the time I was working closely with my church and they were encouraging me to work on spiritual discernment and so I kind of prayed, "well, okay, if she's still the one then let it be."
And then I start bumping into Kay around town in totally random places. And somehow we exchanged numbers and I ended up talking to her on the phone a couple times and it was instantly back to the way it was before things got all messy. But she had a boyfriend at the time and that threw a wrench in the whole, "Kay is still the one," thing. But then something really crazy happened.
I call her one night, and she tells me that she and her boyfriend just broke up. And it's not like this is something I engineered (I have no game, remember? See blog 62). He was acting stupid and she called him on it but he wasn't getting it. She gave him some time to get it together but he didn't and so she dumped him. And I'm thinking, "holy shit, this thing might actually happen." God tells me this amazing, impossible thing about Kay and I, and it looked like things were lining up to make it happen.
But her ex-boyfriend makes nice, drops some smooth lines, and weasels his way back into her life (I'm over it now, but that really is how he got back in the game - through some pretty slimy maneuvers). And I felt like Charlie Brown floating through their air after Lucy pulled the football away yet again. See, back then I had this image of God, that he played shooting gallery with my dreams. I initially didn't want to believe the word about Kay still being the one, but once things started lining up, I decided to take a leap of faith and believe that God was going to make it happen. I leapt but never made it to the other side.
After it was all over and Kay was back together with Slime-ball, I was angry and confused because I thought I had heard from God. And not only that, I thought I was finally going to see an answer to this prayer I'd been praying for so long. And not only that, but it was going to be an answer that was nothing short of a miracle. But it never happened.
As you can imagine, that whole episode put a pretty big dent in my faith in prayer and the ability to hear from God. To this day, I still don't understand how God could have allowed me to be so misled, how he could allow the devil to toy with something so close to my heart.
Okay, all that to say that I bring baggage with me when I pray. And even though I'm emotionally over what happened all those years ago, I still have a kind of lack of confidence in both my ability to pray effectively and in my ability to hear from God.
But...
But I'm trying again to pray because I'm at a point where my desire to experience God in a more real way outweighs the doubts that have. And all it took was my friend asking me for prayer. And it's been less than a week, but I'm trying to stay with it. And no, I still don't understand what happened all those years ago with the Kay incident but I don't care anymore. I just want to have a more tangible, experiential Christianity and I know that must begin with prayer. And I don't deny my reservations - I offer them up to God when I pray. And I try to listen for a reply.
(Oh, and in case you're wondering, Kay and Slimy got married a couple years ago. That's the last I heard of either of them.)
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
173. this broken world
I get a call from a friend, a voicemail actually. He tells me he wants to meet. He needs prayer. And in the tone of his voice, I can hear that he is hurt. But he doesn't provide details, this is just voicemail after all.
I am at work and on task with another when I retrieve the message so I cannot return the call until hours later. Once free, I make the call but he does not answer and I leave a message of my own, asking him to call when he can.
I haven't heard back from him yet.
And all afternoon and even now, my mind is divided between what must be done and what he might be going through.
And then I'm reminded.
This is a broken world and we do our best to find beauty where we can, sometimes in the margins, sometimes on the mended plains, sometimes in the fractures themselves. We band together to keep the decay at bay. We do our best to diagnose and to mend, but we are surgeons with well-meaning, but careless, cotton hands.
And them I'm reminded.
I've been seeking after the spiritual kind of life, and what could be more spiritual than the humbling act of prayer. A deed so small and weak as to appear insignificant. But behind it, the possibility of miracles and wonders, the opportunity for the divine to break through.
And them I'm reminded.
There's so much I just don't understand.
I am at work and on task with another when I retrieve the message so I cannot return the call until hours later. Once free, I make the call but he does not answer and I leave a message of my own, asking him to call when he can.
I haven't heard back from him yet.
And all afternoon and even now, my mind is divided between what must be done and what he might be going through.
And then I'm reminded.
This is a broken world and we do our best to find beauty where we can, sometimes in the margins, sometimes on the mended plains, sometimes in the fractures themselves. We band together to keep the decay at bay. We do our best to diagnose and to mend, but we are surgeons with well-meaning, but careless, cotton hands.
And them I'm reminded.
I've been seeking after the spiritual kind of life, and what could be more spiritual than the humbling act of prayer. A deed so small and weak as to appear insignificant. But behind it, the possibility of miracles and wonders, the opportunity for the divine to break through.
And them I'm reminded.
There's so much I just don't understand.
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