One of my favorite blogs is posting again.
Single cell cartoons by one of the coolest, most enigmatic guys I've had the privilege of knowing.
http://allergic2umbrellas.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Sunday, May 28, 2006
209. I spanked the monkey...(thanks M)
Ugh, the Random Trivia section killed me!
Link: Monkey Challenge Trivia Quiz
I beat the monkey by 11 points.
Take the Monkey Challenge
Your Final Quiz Score: 28 right out of a possible 60
The Monkey's Final Score: 17 right out of 60
Well done, you have sent the monkey to his defeat. Your score is unquestionably higher, and thus the lowly monkey has been proven once again to be humankind's intellectual inferior. Good work, however your score does leave room for improvement. We should like to see the human dominate even more completely!
You scored in the 62nd percentile.
(62f quiz takers scored worse than you)
The Monkey's Final Score: 17 right out of 60
Well done, you have sent the monkey to his defeat. Your score is unquestionably higher, and thus the lowly monkey has been proven once again to be humankind's intellectual inferior. Good work, however your score does leave room for improvement. We should like to see the human dominate even more completely!
You scored in the 62nd percentile.
(62f quiz takers scored worse than you)
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Link: Monkey Challenge Trivia Quiz
I beat the monkey by 11 points.
Take the Monkey Challenge
Saturday, May 27, 2006
208. can I get a witness?
A few days ago I ended my blog entry with the admission that I don't actively share my faith as a Christian. And let me make it clear that it's not because I'm ashamed of Christ. On the contrary, I believe that he is the way, the truth, and the life. I believe he died on a cross for the sins of the world. And I believe that he rose again on the third day.
And I could go on and list other things that I believe about Christ but they are all facts about Christianity. Call me a weak Christian, call me ungrateful, call me disobedient, but I don't want to share a bunch of facts to my non-christian friends. I want to share something deeper, something more profound. I want to talk about why my life ceases to make sense apart from Christ.
But I can't.
"Why not?"
Because facts are all I have.
"That's sad."
Yes, it is.
Usually, when Christians ask about how to share Christ with others, the advice they get is to talk about what their life was like before they knew Christ and how it's changed since knowing Christ. And that's a good way to go because it's simple and practical and effective because a non-christian might want to debate facts about Christ but what can they say about what Christ has done for someone personally?
Unfortunately, that technique never helped me because I don't have much of a before-knowing-Christ to talk about. I first claimed Christianity when I was in the 2nd grade. That's the year I started attending a Christian school where once per week (or maybe it was once every two weeks) we would all attend a chapel service where we heard messages about God and the Bible and Jesus. I don't know who it was or what the rest of that particular service was about, but I remember at one of these chapel services, the speaker basically said, "if you believe in Jesus you go to heaven and if you don't then you go to hell." And I thought going to heaven sounded better than going to hell and so I prayed some kind of prayer and then I was a Christian.
I don't remember much of my elementary school days but as far as I can remember, it wasn't a bad life. I wasn't dealing with issues like being slapped around by my parents or severe emotional trauma or issues of self-doubt. Back then, a crisis consisted of not being able to find the Lego piece I needed to compete my latest intergalactic battleship. And I was eight so I wasn't really looking for meaning or purpose in life. I mean, I did consider becoming one of those Lego engineers who designed spaceships for kids with lesser imaginations than mine, but I preferred to keep my designs to myself. Accepting Christ in the second grade didn't really change much for me. There wasn't any kind of baggage that I had to be delivered from and I still found myself searching for certain Lego pieces in the bottom of my Lego bucket.
All that to say that there was never really any kind of before and after Christianity for me to draw upon to develop my testimony, and so that method of witnessing to friends kind of goes out the window.
But there's more to my problem of not wanting to share Christ with others.
See, I attended this Christian school until I graduated and in my Sophomore year I rededicated my life to Christ in a big way (see blog 199). After that I started going to church and all the other things that I thought Christians were supposed to do.
Now, I'm a good Asian kid and so I do what I'm told and I don't ask a lot of questions. But looking back now, I can see that I was merely aping Christianity - I was going through the motions without really knowing what I was doing or why. And I had questions, but I didn't ask them because I didn't know enough to even know how to phrase them and I didn't want to look stupid and I didn't want to make waves (the good Asian kid) and most of all, I tried to ignore my questions because I felt like they made me a weak or a bad Christian. There weren't any other Christians around me who were asking questions, everybody just seemed to know what to say and how to behave and so I assumed there was something wrong with my faith and the only way I knew how to hide this problem was to do more Christian stuff hoping that things would eventually make sense or that God would see how good I was and heal me of my questions.
Neither happened. I burned out on trying to please God through volunteering at church and the questions never went away.
But God is full of grace. He didn’t give me what I wanted (answers to questions) but he brought me back to himself through other means. But it wasn’t the same as it was before. Instead of quiet, self-imposed obedience, I spoke up and started voicing my discontent and my questions. It wasn’t an overnight shift, it began quietly and only among close friends but as I found that more and more people had the same questions, I became less and less inhibited about my questions to the point where I now blog about it on a regular basis.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that my experience with Christianity hasn’t exactly been something that would encourage others to sign on if I were to tell them my story.
“So why are you still a Christian?”
Because I do believe the facts of Christianity. On top of that, it’s the only belief system that I have (see blog 155).
But behind my questions, behind my less than ideal experiences with Christianity, I know there's something beautiful and true. Because I do believe the Bible when it says that God is love and even though I'm not sure I understand what love is (see blog 205), I know it's there and that God will let me in on it one day. Or maybe I'm already smack dab in the middle of it but just don't know how to recognize it - maybe I'm missing the forrest because I'm staring at a blade of grass.
I don't know.
But here's something I do know. I'm getting closer to the understanding that I've been searching for. Brian McLaren's book, The Secret Message of Jesus (see blog 207), and NT Wright's book, Simply Christian, are opening up the life and message of Jesus in ways that make Christianity far more real to me than ever before.
And it's exciting and wonderful and I can't wait to get through these books so I can go back and read them again - they're both that good. And I can't wait to write about what I'm learning. Most of all, I can't wait to have an understanding of what it is to follow Christ - an understanding and excitement that I can share with my non-believing friends. Because that's what witnessing should be, a spontaneous desire to want to tell others the amazing, life changing news about Jesus.
And I could go on and list other things that I believe about Christ but they are all facts about Christianity. Call me a weak Christian, call me ungrateful, call me disobedient, but I don't want to share a bunch of facts to my non-christian friends. I want to share something deeper, something more profound. I want to talk about why my life ceases to make sense apart from Christ.
But I can't.
"Why not?"
Because facts are all I have.
"That's sad."
Yes, it is.
Usually, when Christians ask about how to share Christ with others, the advice they get is to talk about what their life was like before they knew Christ and how it's changed since knowing Christ. And that's a good way to go because it's simple and practical and effective because a non-christian might want to debate facts about Christ but what can they say about what Christ has done for someone personally?
Unfortunately, that technique never helped me because I don't have much of a before-knowing-Christ to talk about. I first claimed Christianity when I was in the 2nd grade. That's the year I started attending a Christian school where once per week (or maybe it was once every two weeks) we would all attend a chapel service where we heard messages about God and the Bible and Jesus. I don't know who it was or what the rest of that particular service was about, but I remember at one of these chapel services, the speaker basically said, "if you believe in Jesus you go to heaven and if you don't then you go to hell." And I thought going to heaven sounded better than going to hell and so I prayed some kind of prayer and then I was a Christian.
I don't remember much of my elementary school days but as far as I can remember, it wasn't a bad life. I wasn't dealing with issues like being slapped around by my parents or severe emotional trauma or issues of self-doubt. Back then, a crisis consisted of not being able to find the Lego piece I needed to compete my latest intergalactic battleship. And I was eight so I wasn't really looking for meaning or purpose in life. I mean, I did consider becoming one of those Lego engineers who designed spaceships for kids with lesser imaginations than mine, but I preferred to keep my designs to myself. Accepting Christ in the second grade didn't really change much for me. There wasn't any kind of baggage that I had to be delivered from and I still found myself searching for certain Lego pieces in the bottom of my Lego bucket.
All that to say that there was never really any kind of before and after Christianity for me to draw upon to develop my testimony, and so that method of witnessing to friends kind of goes out the window.
But there's more to my problem of not wanting to share Christ with others.
See, I attended this Christian school until I graduated and in my Sophomore year I rededicated my life to Christ in a big way (see blog 199). After that I started going to church and all the other things that I thought Christians were supposed to do.
Now, I'm a good Asian kid and so I do what I'm told and I don't ask a lot of questions. But looking back now, I can see that I was merely aping Christianity - I was going through the motions without really knowing what I was doing or why. And I had questions, but I didn't ask them because I didn't know enough to even know how to phrase them and I didn't want to look stupid and I didn't want to make waves (the good Asian kid) and most of all, I tried to ignore my questions because I felt like they made me a weak or a bad Christian. There weren't any other Christians around me who were asking questions, everybody just seemed to know what to say and how to behave and so I assumed there was something wrong with my faith and the only way I knew how to hide this problem was to do more Christian stuff hoping that things would eventually make sense or that God would see how good I was and heal me of my questions.
Neither happened. I burned out on trying to please God through volunteering at church and the questions never went away.
But God is full of grace. He didn’t give me what I wanted (answers to questions) but he brought me back to himself through other means. But it wasn’t the same as it was before. Instead of quiet, self-imposed obedience, I spoke up and started voicing my discontent and my questions. It wasn’t an overnight shift, it began quietly and only among close friends but as I found that more and more people had the same questions, I became less and less inhibited about my questions to the point where I now blog about it on a regular basis.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that my experience with Christianity hasn’t exactly been something that would encourage others to sign on if I were to tell them my story.
“So why are you still a Christian?”
Because I do believe the facts of Christianity. On top of that, it’s the only belief system that I have (see blog 155).
But behind my questions, behind my less than ideal experiences with Christianity, I know there's something beautiful and true. Because I do believe the Bible when it says that God is love and even though I'm not sure I understand what love is (see blog 205), I know it's there and that God will let me in on it one day. Or maybe I'm already smack dab in the middle of it but just don't know how to recognize it - maybe I'm missing the forrest because I'm staring at a blade of grass.
I don't know.
But here's something I do know. I'm getting closer to the understanding that I've been searching for. Brian McLaren's book, The Secret Message of Jesus (see blog 207), and NT Wright's book, Simply Christian, are opening up the life and message of Jesus in ways that make Christianity far more real to me than ever before.
And it's exciting and wonderful and I can't wait to get through these books so I can go back and read them again - they're both that good. And I can't wait to write about what I'm learning. Most of all, I can't wait to have an understanding of what it is to follow Christ - an understanding and excitement that I can share with my non-believing friends. Because that's what witnessing should be, a spontaneous desire to want to tell others the amazing, life changing news about Jesus.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
207. awful title, great book
I'm reading this amazing book by Brian McLaren called, The Secret Message of Jesus. And I hate the title because it sounds mystical and Gnostic and along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, but it's not that. It's quite the opposite, in fact, because what McLaren is trying to do is to strip away all the baggage that church culture has piled on top of the message of Jesus. McLaren accomplishes this by reinvestigating the message that Jesus came to bring by going back into first century Israel and trying to understand what it was that the Jews heard when they listened to Jesus speak. For example, when they heard the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" they heard something very different from the way we hear it today.
It's a fascinating and exciting read and I can't wait to finish the book so I can go back to the beginning and read it again - it's that good. But it's also a bit frustrating because McLaren never really spells out what the "secret message of Jesus" is, at least not in so many words. But this is intentional because what I think McLaren is getting at, is that the message that Jesus came to bring is not one that simply says, "do X, Y, and Z." Rather, it is a radically new way of living that is holistic, comprehensive, and all encompassing. And I know there are some Christians who bristle at what I'm about to write, but the Gospel isn't black and white.
The elusive nature of the core message of the Gospel can be frustrating, and I wonder if this frustration comes out of our quick-fire, sound bite society. We want the gospel to fit into three or four spiritual bullet points that we can print out on tracts which we can pass on to our friends. Or perhaps the frustration comes out of the Gospel's resistance to our modernist tendency to want to break things down and define them. But just as scientists working at the bleeding edge of physics are running into the limits of observable phenomenon (at subatomic levels, the very act of measuring, recording, or observing an event can change the outcome of the experiment), maybe some theologians’ quest to deconstruct the gospel and define it’s individual parts has also reached its limits.
And I don’t mean to minimize the importance of theology and orthodoxy because theology can be compared to the grammatical rules that undergird a language. Rigorous study by gifted scholars of God's word keeps us from descending into heretical nonsense. But, on the other hand, a comprehensive understanding of the grammatical rules of Japanese won’t do you a bit of good if you’re lost in some Japanese village and need to use the bathroom. And even if you know enough of the language to function in their society, you’d still be lacking the familiarity and mastery needed to appreciate their poetry.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that I’m tired of just knowing rules and structure (although I am glad I got some training in that area in the past). I want to get at the poetry of Christianity, to appreciate the beauty of its architecture in addition to the genius of its framing. But I’m not just trying to expand my own knowledge base for the sake of knowing more. I’m after an understanding of Christianity that’s big enough to point towards a just society, to teach us how to bring reconciliation into an increasingly fragmented world, to be about peacemaking rather than peacekeeping, to be about appreciating and preserving the beauty and the natural resources of the earth.
McLaren’s books speaks to all of these ideas with fresh, vibrant, sometimes surprising insight. And I can’t wait to get more of a handle on the ideas in the book so I can start blogging about them. More than that, I'm hoping to finally have an understanding of Christianity that I want to share with my non-christian friends.
"You mean to say that you don't witness to your friends? What, are you ashamed of the Gospel?"
No, I don't mean that at all.
"So why this reluctance to talk about Jesus?"
*sigh*
I'll get to that in another blog.
It's a fascinating and exciting read and I can't wait to finish the book so I can go back to the beginning and read it again - it's that good. But it's also a bit frustrating because McLaren never really spells out what the "secret message of Jesus" is, at least not in so many words. But this is intentional because what I think McLaren is getting at, is that the message that Jesus came to bring is not one that simply says, "do X, Y, and Z." Rather, it is a radically new way of living that is holistic, comprehensive, and all encompassing. And I know there are some Christians who bristle at what I'm about to write, but the Gospel isn't black and white.
The elusive nature of the core message of the Gospel can be frustrating, and I wonder if this frustration comes out of our quick-fire, sound bite society. We want the gospel to fit into three or four spiritual bullet points that we can print out on tracts which we can pass on to our friends. Or perhaps the frustration comes out of the Gospel's resistance to our modernist tendency to want to break things down and define them. But just as scientists working at the bleeding edge of physics are running into the limits of observable phenomenon (at subatomic levels, the very act of measuring, recording, or observing an event can change the outcome of the experiment), maybe some theologians’ quest to deconstruct the gospel and define it’s individual parts has also reached its limits.
And I don’t mean to minimize the importance of theology and orthodoxy because theology can be compared to the grammatical rules that undergird a language. Rigorous study by gifted scholars of God's word keeps us from descending into heretical nonsense. But, on the other hand, a comprehensive understanding of the grammatical rules of Japanese won’t do you a bit of good if you’re lost in some Japanese village and need to use the bathroom. And even if you know enough of the language to function in their society, you’d still be lacking the familiarity and mastery needed to appreciate their poetry.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that I’m tired of just knowing rules and structure (although I am glad I got some training in that area in the past). I want to get at the poetry of Christianity, to appreciate the beauty of its architecture in addition to the genius of its framing. But I’m not just trying to expand my own knowledge base for the sake of knowing more. I’m after an understanding of Christianity that’s big enough to point towards a just society, to teach us how to bring reconciliation into an increasingly fragmented world, to be about peacemaking rather than peacekeeping, to be about appreciating and preserving the beauty and the natural resources of the earth.
McLaren’s books speaks to all of these ideas with fresh, vibrant, sometimes surprising insight. And I can’t wait to get more of a handle on the ideas in the book so I can start blogging about them. More than that, I'm hoping to finally have an understanding of Christianity that I want to share with my non-christian friends.
"You mean to say that you don't witness to your friends? What, are you ashamed of the Gospel?"
No, I don't mean that at all.
"So why this reluctance to talk about Jesus?"
*sigh*
I'll get to that in another blog.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
205. what is love?
Recently, I've been thinking again about love and relationship and desire and beauty. And I wonder how much (if any) of the world can be understood (as God means for us to understand it) from a life devoid of love - and by love, I mean the kind of love experienced between a man and a woman, devoted to one another through holy matrimony 'til death do them part. Because according to Jesus, the two greatest commandments of the Bible are all about love (Matthew 22:36-40).
See, I've been thinking about my relationship with God and in particular, I've been asking myself this question, "do I love God?"
But to answer that question, I have to ask, "well, what is love?"
And I don't have an answer.
And I think about never having been in a relationship with a woman, and I wonder if that hinders me from understanding the blissful, heady, messy tangle that I imagine love to be. And I think of the movie The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and how love transformed him from a man with such bad luck that he was used to break winning streaks in Vegas casinos to a man with strength and courage and an incredible streak of good luck. And I think of the movie Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and how love turns him from a bumbling, mumbling wimp to a bumbling, mumbling stud who says to the man trying to extort money out of him, "I have a love in my life and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine," and it does.
And yes, I know I'm talking about hollywood movies but (to reference another movie) there's a scene in some romantic comedy that I can't think of right now, but it contains a scene where a woman is confronted with the charge that her romantic notions are all based on fictionalized accounts in movies and books and she replies with something along the lines of, "well, the fact that someone wrote that means it came from somewhere." And what she was getting at was the idea that in order for these idealized romantic cliches to have weight, they must have some kind of resonance with something in the real world.
On top of that, even though I've never been in a relationship, I have been around for the fireworks that happen at the start of such relationships and so I know a bit about how love empowers me, how it makes me feel giddy and invincible, how (as Jack Nicholas put it in the movie As Good As It Gets) it "makes me want to be a better man."
Unfortunately these relationships never took off, but I got enough of a taste to know what a powerful, life-changing force love can be.
But a taste is not a meal and so even though I've parted the curtains and seen the rich banquet that love can be, I've never been given a spot at its table.
All that to say, I don't have a first-hand experience of what love is. I can barely imagine what it's like to have a woman love me in return. That sounds too impossibly, amazingly beautiful to be true, but it is true. The other night I saw an elderly couple walking out of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and they were holding hands and I couldn't help but wonder at what their life was like.
And I know there are kinds of love other than the romantic type. Parental love, for example. And yes, I know my parents love me but they show their love through material, monetary support - putting me through a private high school and through college and letting me live with them, etc.
And now that I think about it, that's the only kind of love I know how to give - I'm generous when it comes to helping my friends in need whether it be loaning them money (without expecting to be paid back, although they usually do) or by fixing their amps or helping them move. I do stuff and I give them stuff, and I suppose that's a kind of love.
But to be honest, it doesn't feel like love. I mean, I've always been a generous person, sometimes even towards people I don't like and so is my generosity towards friends love or is it just the way I'm put together or something that emerges from my upbringing?
I don't know.
And back to the relationship bit, what is it that I'm longing for? What if I had had a relationship in the past, how would that change things for me now? What if I ended up damaged and confused as a result, instead of just ignorant and confused, as I am now?
But again, I think of something I read about Thomas Merton (and I've written about this before - see blog 51 and blog 52), about how even as a trappist monk who spent years contemplating the things of God 24/7, he didn't fully come to understand love until he had been in a relationship.
I don't know.
And I suppose it doesn't matter, because I can long for and theorize and write about these ideas about love until my fingers fall off but the fact would remain that I am who I am and I've only experienced what I've lived through. Maybe I am less of a fully formed individual for never having been in a deep, committed, loving relationship. Maybe I can't really understand the power of love until I've been through the thick of it.
Oh well. That doesn't excuse me from living. Yeah, maybe I don't understand, but I do the best I can with what I have and what I know.
And maybe that's enough to get me by until love comes to town and I catch that train.
See, I've been thinking about my relationship with God and in particular, I've been asking myself this question, "do I love God?"
But to answer that question, I have to ask, "well, what is love?"
And I don't have an answer.
And I think about never having been in a relationship with a woman, and I wonder if that hinders me from understanding the blissful, heady, messy tangle that I imagine love to be. And I think of the movie The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and how love transformed him from a man with such bad luck that he was used to break winning streaks in Vegas casinos to a man with strength and courage and an incredible streak of good luck. And I think of the movie Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and how love turns him from a bumbling, mumbling wimp to a bumbling, mumbling stud who says to the man trying to extort money out of him, "I have a love in my life and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine," and it does.
And yes, I know I'm talking about hollywood movies but (to reference another movie) there's a scene in some romantic comedy that I can't think of right now, but it contains a scene where a woman is confronted with the charge that her romantic notions are all based on fictionalized accounts in movies and books and she replies with something along the lines of, "well, the fact that someone wrote that means it came from somewhere." And what she was getting at was the idea that in order for these idealized romantic cliches to have weight, they must have some kind of resonance with something in the real world.
On top of that, even though I've never been in a relationship, I have been around for the fireworks that happen at the start of such relationships and so I know a bit about how love empowers me, how it makes me feel giddy and invincible, how (as Jack Nicholas put it in the movie As Good As It Gets) it "makes me want to be a better man."
Unfortunately these relationships never took off, but I got enough of a taste to know what a powerful, life-changing force love can be.
But a taste is not a meal and so even though I've parted the curtains and seen the rich banquet that love can be, I've never been given a spot at its table.
All that to say, I don't have a first-hand experience of what love is. I can barely imagine what it's like to have a woman love me in return. That sounds too impossibly, amazingly beautiful to be true, but it is true. The other night I saw an elderly couple walking out of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and they were holding hands and I couldn't help but wonder at what their life was like.
And I know there are kinds of love other than the romantic type. Parental love, for example. And yes, I know my parents love me but they show their love through material, monetary support - putting me through a private high school and through college and letting me live with them, etc.
And now that I think about it, that's the only kind of love I know how to give - I'm generous when it comes to helping my friends in need whether it be loaning them money (without expecting to be paid back, although they usually do) or by fixing their amps or helping them move. I do stuff and I give them stuff, and I suppose that's a kind of love.
But to be honest, it doesn't feel like love. I mean, I've always been a generous person, sometimes even towards people I don't like and so is my generosity towards friends love or is it just the way I'm put together or something that emerges from my upbringing?
I don't know.
And back to the relationship bit, what is it that I'm longing for? What if I had had a relationship in the past, how would that change things for me now? What if I ended up damaged and confused as a result, instead of just ignorant and confused, as I am now?
But again, I think of something I read about Thomas Merton (and I've written about this before - see blog 51 and blog 52), about how even as a trappist monk who spent years contemplating the things of God 24/7, he didn't fully come to understand love until he had been in a relationship.
I don't know.
And I suppose it doesn't matter, because I can long for and theorize and write about these ideas about love until my fingers fall off but the fact would remain that I am who I am and I've only experienced what I've lived through. Maybe I am less of a fully formed individual for never having been in a deep, committed, loving relationship. Maybe I can't really understand the power of love until I've been through the thick of it.
Oh well. That doesn't excuse me from living. Yeah, maybe I don't understand, but I do the best I can with what I have and what I know.
And maybe that's enough to get me by until love comes to town and I catch that train.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
204. against a pragmatic view of the arts
pragmatic - adjective, dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations
Art, in the world but perhaps more so in the church, is often forced to justify itself. "To what ends?" the question goes. "What's it for, what will it do, what will the return on investment be?" But I think about a flower sent to a woman one loves. Maybe there are some who send that flower with those utilitarian questions answered in their minds - "to woo, to get her to love me, to get some booty." What woman wants a flower weighed down by all that baggage? And I think art that is forced to submit to utilitarian ends becomes just as crass and meaningless. But to the one who gives their love a flower out of unconditional love, that is an act of beauty. And that's the kind of patronage Christian artists need from the church. In fact, it's the kind of support that all artists need regardless of religious affiliation.
ps. sorry for the lack of blog entries recently. I have a bunch of ideas in the queue so stay tuned.
Art, in the world but perhaps more so in the church, is often forced to justify itself. "To what ends?" the question goes. "What's it for, what will it do, what will the return on investment be?" But I think about a flower sent to a woman one loves. Maybe there are some who send that flower with those utilitarian questions answered in their minds - "to woo, to get her to love me, to get some booty." What woman wants a flower weighed down by all that baggage? And I think art that is forced to submit to utilitarian ends becomes just as crass and meaningless. But to the one who gives their love a flower out of unconditional love, that is an act of beauty. And that's the kind of patronage Christian artists need from the church. In fact, it's the kind of support that all artists need regardless of religious affiliation.
ps. sorry for the lack of blog entries recently. I have a bunch of ideas in the queue so stay tuned.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
203. paying it forward (thanks Willie)
I've written before about my frustrations with being a generally generous person (see blog 123 and blog 199), but something happened two weeks ago at house church.
After the "formal" church time where we pray, praise, and then listen to a message, we have a more quiet, more private prayer time in a room apart from where everyone else is hanging out. In this prayer session, we pray for special prayer requests, for healing, for friends, and sometimes, even for fish.
Anyway, two weeks ago, during this prayer time, I can't remember how it came about but a great friend of mine, the uber-talented Willie Branlund, shared a bit of information with me that was like a kick in the head - in a good way.
(backstory)
See, Willie is a photographer and like any artist, there was a time when he suffered serious bouts of self-doubt. Because the unfortunate truth is that the career path of anyone aspiring to turn creative energies into cash is a rocky, twisty, unpredictable one. And for one as talented as Willie, there is the constant frustration of seeing others make a name and a career for themselves out of mediocrity and pandering. Compounding this are the practical pressures of trying to figure out how to find jobs that pay well enough to live.
With all the forces lined up against them, it's a wonder artists ever make it at all. Certainly, there were all too many times when Willie wanted to throw in the towel and get a "regular" job. Much of the generosity that Willie credits me with has to do with the times I made the long (for Hawaii - Makiki to Mililani) drive out to his house to convince him not to give up, to reassure him of his genius and his talent. And at times, the support went beyond the verbal and was financial, but in my mind, they are one and the same - you can't just give a hurting person money and at the same time, a person who needs to buy film for his next project can't pay for it with warm, fuzzy encouragements.
Looking back now, I have to say that my encouraging Willie to keep going with is art was, in part, as much for me as it was for him. See, I've always been interested in the arts (see blog 187 and blog 198) and at the time, Willie was the only person actually involved in making art as something more than a hobby (and who actually had the talent to take him somewhere). I encouraged (and, at times, begged) him not to give up on his art because I needed to have some kind of contact with someone who was operating in the world of art. Keeping his dream alive kept mine alive as well. Misery loves company, but so does desperation.
Thankfully, things are finally looking up for Willie. In a few weeks he flies out to Vegas where he'll be working with a graphic design firm that will be netting him quite the handsome salary.
(end backstory)
So it's after house church and we're in the back room getting ready for a prayer session, and again, I can't remember what brought it about but Willie comes out and shares with the group about how all the generosity that I poured out on him in those times of need has made him a more generous person as well. He'd say things like, "duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut 'cause before I would neeeever have. . ." and then he'd go into some example about how he responded to a family member or a friend with kindness instead of a harsh retort. And he credited me, in part, with that change.
And duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut because in the past (and I still think this way far too often) I thought that my generosity just evaporated into thin air, that it went unnoticed, that it was disposable and basically anonymous. But here was Willie, telling me that it helped bring about a change in him that, in a way, allowed my generosity to reach into places I could never go. What I mean is, my investment (even though at the time I didn't think of it as an investment, I was just helping a friend) of generosity made Willie a more generous person and in a way, when Willie shares a bit of himself with someone he might not have otherwise (without my generosity), it's like Willie extends the reach of my ability to give life and love back into the world. And I've never seen the movie Pay It Forward, but it's my understanding that this is what the movie is about - passing on generosity to one who will, in turn, pass it on to yet another person.
And I wonder if there are other Willies out there who are more generous themselves because of some token of generosity that I gave to them on some rainy afternoon. And I wonder if, in some small way, my revolution is taking hold.
But even if Willie is the only person out there who was ever changed by some small gesture of my generosity, it would be more than worth all the frustration I've ever felt.
And then some.
And then some more.
After the "formal" church time where we pray, praise, and then listen to a message, we have a more quiet, more private prayer time in a room apart from where everyone else is hanging out. In this prayer session, we pray for special prayer requests, for healing, for friends, and sometimes, even for fish.
Anyway, two weeks ago, during this prayer time, I can't remember how it came about but a great friend of mine, the uber-talented Willie Branlund, shared a bit of information with me that was like a kick in the head - in a good way.
(backstory)
See, Willie is a photographer and like any artist, there was a time when he suffered serious bouts of self-doubt. Because the unfortunate truth is that the career path of anyone aspiring to turn creative energies into cash is a rocky, twisty, unpredictable one. And for one as talented as Willie, there is the constant frustration of seeing others make a name and a career for themselves out of mediocrity and pandering. Compounding this are the practical pressures of trying to figure out how to find jobs that pay well enough to live.
With all the forces lined up against them, it's a wonder artists ever make it at all. Certainly, there were all too many times when Willie wanted to throw in the towel and get a "regular" job. Much of the generosity that Willie credits me with has to do with the times I made the long (for Hawaii - Makiki to Mililani) drive out to his house to convince him not to give up, to reassure him of his genius and his talent. And at times, the support went beyond the verbal and was financial, but in my mind, they are one and the same - you can't just give a hurting person money and at the same time, a person who needs to buy film for his next project can't pay for it with warm, fuzzy encouragements.
Looking back now, I have to say that my encouraging Willie to keep going with is art was, in part, as much for me as it was for him. See, I've always been interested in the arts (see blog 187 and blog 198) and at the time, Willie was the only person actually involved in making art as something more than a hobby (and who actually had the talent to take him somewhere). I encouraged (and, at times, begged) him not to give up on his art because I needed to have some kind of contact with someone who was operating in the world of art. Keeping his dream alive kept mine alive as well. Misery loves company, but so does desperation.
Thankfully, things are finally looking up for Willie. In a few weeks he flies out to Vegas where he'll be working with a graphic design firm that will be netting him quite the handsome salary.
(end backstory)
So it's after house church and we're in the back room getting ready for a prayer session, and again, I can't remember what brought it about but Willie comes out and shares with the group about how all the generosity that I poured out on him in those times of need has made him a more generous person as well. He'd say things like, "duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut 'cause before I would neeeever have. . ." and then he'd go into some example about how he responded to a family member or a friend with kindness instead of a harsh retort. And he credited me, in part, with that change.
And duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut because in the past (and I still think this way far too often) I thought that my generosity just evaporated into thin air, that it went unnoticed, that it was disposable and basically anonymous. But here was Willie, telling me that it helped bring about a change in him that, in a way, allowed my generosity to reach into places I could never go. What I mean is, my investment (even though at the time I didn't think of it as an investment, I was just helping a friend) of generosity made Willie a more generous person and in a way, when Willie shares a bit of himself with someone he might not have otherwise (without my generosity), it's like Willie extends the reach of my ability to give life and love back into the world. And I've never seen the movie Pay It Forward, but it's my understanding that this is what the movie is about - passing on generosity to one who will, in turn, pass it on to yet another person.
And I wonder if there are other Willies out there who are more generous themselves because of some token of generosity that I gave to them on some rainy afternoon. And I wonder if, in some small way, my revolution is taking hold.
But even if Willie is the only person out there who was ever changed by some small gesture of my generosity, it would be more than worth all the frustration I've ever felt.
And then some.
And then some more.
202. heart vs mind
I'm hanging out with a friend who's about to get her PhD in Psychology. And I haven't seen her in a while (other than the time I bumped into her two weeks ago which is kind of how we ended up hanging that night) and I'm having a blast asking her all kinds of questions about psychology and culture and church and Christianity. And then I share with her, something that I've always been curious about - brilliant people falling in love. And I used the movie, A Beautiful Mind, as an example. I shared with her how I've always found it fascinating that someone as brilliant as John Nash would fall in love.
I suppose the fascination came from an image that I had of geniuses that painted them as passionless analytical minds, wrestling with arcane, intractable problems. For some reason, the thought that such a mind would subject itself to the wild passions of love seemed incongruous to me. And my friend called me out on that issue by asking me something along the lines of, "why do you think brilliant people are immune to love?"
And I was stumped.
Looking back now, I suppose that it was kind of silly to impose that disconnect between the mind and the heart. See, I think I was unknowingly buying into a kind of dualism where intellect and emotion were at odds with one another and so, in my mind, someone with a gigantic brain would have little to do with emotions and the same would be true the other way around.
But I think I know how I ended up with this misshapen idea. Okay, think about a time when you fell in love, and I mean fell HARD? You basically became a blathering idiot - reason and rationale evaporated and you were left wandering in a turbulent wasteland where wonder and desire clashed and warred (or maybe that's just my experience with love). It seems like the antithesis of reason.
And on the flip side, I think of people who work in think tanks, people who spend their time in front of dusty chalkboards white from ideas tasted then jettisoned, rubbed out into the ether of eraser dust. To me, these people love number and data and algorithm - the solidity and certainty of formula, of theorem and postulate. I thought they would have no patience for the messy uncertainty of love.
But now I think of Spock and Data from Star Trek. Spock tried to rid himself of emotion through discipline and logic but there were times when he let his love for his fellow crew influence him in ways that betrayed his logical paradigm (and I'm no Trekkie so don't ask me for examples). On the other hand, Data was, by definition, a product of logic circuits (a computer), but he was always fascinated by human emotion and tried to emulate it through behavioral study.
I wonder now how (cow brown) these characters both reinforce and undercut the disconnect between intellect and emotion. How one tries to suppress his emotions through discipline and how the other is created without emotions but yearns for them.
And I'm not sure how yet, but I think this misunderstanding (that the heart and the mind are at odds) has something to do with the chaos and injustice of the world today. I mean this whole postmodern unrest has its roots in a distrust of the heady, mechanical cosmology of modernism. But we don't need to discard the mind in order to embrace the heart, we need to find a way to let the two work in concert.
But I'm not sure how, but it sure is fun to think about...more blogs on this to come, I'm sure.
I suppose the fascination came from an image that I had of geniuses that painted them as passionless analytical minds, wrestling with arcane, intractable problems. For some reason, the thought that such a mind would subject itself to the wild passions of love seemed incongruous to me. And my friend called me out on that issue by asking me something along the lines of, "why do you think brilliant people are immune to love?"
And I was stumped.
Looking back now, I suppose that it was kind of silly to impose that disconnect between the mind and the heart. See, I think I was unknowingly buying into a kind of dualism where intellect and emotion were at odds with one another and so, in my mind, someone with a gigantic brain would have little to do with emotions and the same would be true the other way around.
But I think I know how I ended up with this misshapen idea. Okay, think about a time when you fell in love, and I mean fell HARD? You basically became a blathering idiot - reason and rationale evaporated and you were left wandering in a turbulent wasteland where wonder and desire clashed and warred (or maybe that's just my experience with love). It seems like the antithesis of reason.
And on the flip side, I think of people who work in think tanks, people who spend their time in front of dusty chalkboards white from ideas tasted then jettisoned, rubbed out into the ether of eraser dust. To me, these people love number and data and algorithm - the solidity and certainty of formula, of theorem and postulate. I thought they would have no patience for the messy uncertainty of love.
But now I think of Spock and Data from Star Trek. Spock tried to rid himself of emotion through discipline and logic but there were times when he let his love for his fellow crew influence him in ways that betrayed his logical paradigm (and I'm no Trekkie so don't ask me for examples). On the other hand, Data was, by definition, a product of logic circuits (a computer), but he was always fascinated by human emotion and tried to emulate it through behavioral study.
I wonder now how (cow brown) these characters both reinforce and undercut the disconnect between intellect and emotion. How one tries to suppress his emotions through discipline and how the other is created without emotions but yearns for them.
And I'm not sure how yet, but I think this misunderstanding (that the heart and the mind are at odds) has something to do with the chaos and injustice of the world today. I mean this whole postmodern unrest has its roots in a distrust of the heady, mechanical cosmology of modernism. But we don't need to discard the mind in order to embrace the heart, we need to find a way to let the two work in concert.
But I'm not sure how, but it sure is fun to think about...more blogs on this to come, I'm sure.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
201. questions/thoughts on prayer
Out of all the mysteries of the Christian faith, one of the top questions has got to be, "how does prayer work?"
I mean think of it from a purely empirical standpoint. The idea of speaking requests into the air, hoping that an omnipotent spiritual being will hear you and then rearrange the universe to grant your request sounds pretty hopeless if not downright arrogant. And on the flip side, the idea that a supreme, omniscient deity would command us to ask (through prayer) for what he already knows we want, sounds like a cruel power trip.
And in the end, no one can know whether a particular prayer will or won't be answered.
A woman (let's call her W) who's been coming to our house church for about a month now, asked the members to pray for her fish who was dying. Now W has issues with God due to traumatic, painful events in her past. As a house church, we rallied around Operation Heal-fish, seeing it as a potential opportunity to see the power of God at work and to allow an opportunity for God to show W that he really does care for her needs. And we went at it, praying for her fish, praying that when W went home she would find it doing backflips a la Flipper.
But the fish died.
And I wonder if we did the best thing in this case. I mean, even W asked that we pray for a quick and peaceful death instead of healing because she believed that the fish was done for. But we didn't want to waffle. We prayed for all or nothing, and the fish died. Would it have been better for us to have prayed for a quick and painless death instead of complete healing? Should we have prayed for both? And the thought of praying for both was suggested but rejected as a sign of wavering in our faith.
Were we putting God to the test? Well, speaking for myself (and I'm sure the others who prayed felt the same), I only wanted to see God demonstrate his love for W by performing the simple act of healing a tiny, little, innocent fish. It wasn't as much about the fish as it was about W, because we all love W and we wanted her to see that God cared about her fish and by extension, cared about her as well.
And maybe some people reading this are thinking, God's got better things to do than heal fish. And maybe that's true, but how many people around the world are, right now, sitting in some hospital waiting room, praying for the life of their spouse, their parent, their son or their daughter. Surely those lives are more important that that of W's fish, but some of those prayers will be answered and some will not.
And I think about the morning of September 11th 2001. I think about people who were running late on their way to work at the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. I'm sure there were some who were praying for an opening in traffic so that their boss wouldn't fire them. And some of those prayers were answered and those people died. And some prayers weren't answered and those people lived. And what does that say about how prayer works?
I don't know.
All I know is that God asks us to pray. Jesus prayed and as one who aspires to follow the example of Christ, I should pray. And I try to. But it's not easy. I've never been one of those Christians for whom prayer is a vital, vibrant part of their lives. But I try.
Maybe it's intellectually dishonest of me to pray with all of these unresolved questions muddying up the waters. I'm sure there are non-christians who will point to this blog and say, "see how irrational Christians are? This guy knows that prayer doesn't work but he prays anyway." And I'm sad to say that I don't have an adequate rebuttal. But I try to pray anyway.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, I can't explain it, but I do my best to pray. And I'll admit that I don't spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer and so who am I to ask these questions. Maybe it's like that scene from Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi is teaching Daniel san karate by having him paint fences and wash cars and sand floors. Daniel doesn't understand what's going on and just when he's about to give up, Mr. Miyagi shows him that there was a purpose behind the chores - that what seemed irrational and meaningless (and even selfish on Mr. Miyagi's part from Daniel's perspective) was actually the very training that he thought he was still waiting for.
But even Mr. Miyagi knew when to let Daniel in on the secret.
I think of the one prayer of my life, the one prayer that I've prayed for more than any other, the one prayer that was never answered. My prayer for companionship, for a girlfriend, for a wife. God himself said that it's not good for man to be alone, and for the longest time, I couldn't have agreed with him more. But I don't care so much about finding a spouse anymore. And I don't know if it's because God has given me a sense of peace regarding my singleness or if it's because my heart just plain gave up waiting and shut down the dream machine. And I'm wondering if it's the latter.
See, I've been meaning to write on the topic of prayer all week, but I didn't get to it until tonight because I was working on a different entry that I was hoping to post before getting to this one. If you've read any of my short stories you know that most of them are about love. Well I've been trying to finish up another little story bit but I just can't get it to work because I'm finding that it's just about impossible for me to get into the heads of my characters. And so the story falls flat. In fact, there's no story there at all because nothing happens, because my heart isn't in it, because I don't care about finding love anymore and so my characters don't care either and so they don't reveal their inner-selves to me and so the story stinks.
W's fish. My prayer for love. Victims of 9/11. How does prayer work?
I don't know.
But I do my best to pray anyway.
But it's not easy.
But I try.
But I fail.
But I try.
And if prayer works for you then pray for me because I don't understand.
But I'm trying.
In the end, I do try to pray despite the fact that I have no idea how it works.
"But why?"
Because it's all I can do. Because God wants me to. Because prayer is at the center of every Christian who ever made a difference in this world. And maybe they didn't understand prayer either.
I mean think of it from a purely empirical standpoint. The idea of speaking requests into the air, hoping that an omnipotent spiritual being will hear you and then rearrange the universe to grant your request sounds pretty hopeless if not downright arrogant. And on the flip side, the idea that a supreme, omniscient deity would command us to ask (through prayer) for what he already knows we want, sounds like a cruel power trip.
And in the end, no one can know whether a particular prayer will or won't be answered.
A woman (let's call her W) who's been coming to our house church for about a month now, asked the members to pray for her fish who was dying. Now W has issues with God due to traumatic, painful events in her past. As a house church, we rallied around Operation Heal-fish, seeing it as a potential opportunity to see the power of God at work and to allow an opportunity for God to show W that he really does care for her needs. And we went at it, praying for her fish, praying that when W went home she would find it doing backflips a la Flipper.
But the fish died.
And I wonder if we did the best thing in this case. I mean, even W asked that we pray for a quick and peaceful death instead of healing because she believed that the fish was done for. But we didn't want to waffle. We prayed for all or nothing, and the fish died. Would it have been better for us to have prayed for a quick and painless death instead of complete healing? Should we have prayed for both? And the thought of praying for both was suggested but rejected as a sign of wavering in our faith.
Were we putting God to the test? Well, speaking for myself (and I'm sure the others who prayed felt the same), I only wanted to see God demonstrate his love for W by performing the simple act of healing a tiny, little, innocent fish. It wasn't as much about the fish as it was about W, because we all love W and we wanted her to see that God cared about her fish and by extension, cared about her as well.
And maybe some people reading this are thinking, God's got better things to do than heal fish. And maybe that's true, but how many people around the world are, right now, sitting in some hospital waiting room, praying for the life of their spouse, their parent, their son or their daughter. Surely those lives are more important that that of W's fish, but some of those prayers will be answered and some will not.
And I think about the morning of September 11th 2001. I think about people who were running late on their way to work at the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. I'm sure there were some who were praying for an opening in traffic so that their boss wouldn't fire them. And some of those prayers were answered and those people died. And some prayers weren't answered and those people lived. And what does that say about how prayer works?
I don't know.
All I know is that God asks us to pray. Jesus prayed and as one who aspires to follow the example of Christ, I should pray. And I try to. But it's not easy. I've never been one of those Christians for whom prayer is a vital, vibrant part of their lives. But I try.
Maybe it's intellectually dishonest of me to pray with all of these unresolved questions muddying up the waters. I'm sure there are non-christians who will point to this blog and say, "see how irrational Christians are? This guy knows that prayer doesn't work but he prays anyway." And I'm sad to say that I don't have an adequate rebuttal. But I try to pray anyway.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, I can't explain it, but I do my best to pray. And I'll admit that I don't spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer and so who am I to ask these questions. Maybe it's like that scene from Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi is teaching Daniel san karate by having him paint fences and wash cars and sand floors. Daniel doesn't understand what's going on and just when he's about to give up, Mr. Miyagi shows him that there was a purpose behind the chores - that what seemed irrational and meaningless (and even selfish on Mr. Miyagi's part from Daniel's perspective) was actually the very training that he thought he was still waiting for.
But even Mr. Miyagi knew when to let Daniel in on the secret.
I think of the one prayer of my life, the one prayer that I've prayed for more than any other, the one prayer that was never answered. My prayer for companionship, for a girlfriend, for a wife. God himself said that it's not good for man to be alone, and for the longest time, I couldn't have agreed with him more. But I don't care so much about finding a spouse anymore. And I don't know if it's because God has given me a sense of peace regarding my singleness or if it's because my heart just plain gave up waiting and shut down the dream machine. And I'm wondering if it's the latter.
See, I've been meaning to write on the topic of prayer all week, but I didn't get to it until tonight because I was working on a different entry that I was hoping to post before getting to this one. If you've read any of my short stories you know that most of them are about love. Well I've been trying to finish up another little story bit but I just can't get it to work because I'm finding that it's just about impossible for me to get into the heads of my characters. And so the story falls flat. In fact, there's no story there at all because nothing happens, because my heart isn't in it, because I don't care about finding love anymore and so my characters don't care either and so they don't reveal their inner-selves to me and so the story stinks.
W's fish. My prayer for love. Victims of 9/11. How does prayer work?
I don't know.
But I do my best to pray anyway.
But it's not easy.
But I try.
But I fail.
But I try.
And if prayer works for you then pray for me because I don't understand.
But I'm trying.
In the end, I do try to pray despite the fact that I have no idea how it works.
"But why?"
Because it's all I can do. Because God wants me to. Because prayer is at the center of every Christian who ever made a difference in this world. And maybe they didn't understand prayer either.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
200. me, the wanabe songwriter
There was a time, back in the mid-nineties, when I thought about being a songwriter. I even applied to two music schools that offered song-writing as a major but I didn't get accepted into either. But I'm glad now because it's clear to me that I don't have the economy of words necessary for clear, taut lyrics - trim the bloat from some of my blogs and you'll be left with nothing but commas and hyphens.
Anyway, my band posted some new songs on our MySpace page and one of them is a song I wrote for the band called, "We Are Free." I like it because through the song, I got to express some of my frustrations with the way church gets played out today - how the freedom to make mistakes is kind of built into the Gospel, but a lot of churches don't talk allow for that. And that's sad because I think God wants life to be lived in all of its messy glory.
"We Are Free"
There was a time when you
thought all their words were true
Wrong and right were
black and white as a rule
But the world is wide as
the girl in the bubble was small
And you could not resist
when you heard curiosity call
And you found some things beautiful
and you found some things depraved
And you learned to be cynical
but you also learned how to be brave
They would call you
the prodigal daughter who
Ran from home
before her time was due
Could it be in the scheme of things
it's just part of some grand design
Could it be we're just waiting for
all the water to turn into wine
We are free
Anyway, my band posted some new songs on our MySpace page and one of them is a song I wrote for the band called, "We Are Free." I like it because through the song, I got to express some of my frustrations with the way church gets played out today - how the freedom to make mistakes is kind of built into the Gospel, but a lot of churches don't talk allow for that. And that's sad because I think God wants life to be lived in all of its messy glory.
"We Are Free"
There was a time when you
thought all their words were true
Wrong and right were
black and white as a rule
But the world is wide as
the girl in the bubble was small
And you could not resist
when you heard curiosity call
And you found some things beautiful
and you found some things depraved
And you learned to be cynical
but you also learned how to be brave
They would call you
the prodigal daughter who
Ran from home
before her time was due
Could it be in the scheme of things
it's just part of some grand design
Could it be we're just waiting for
all the water to turn into wine
We are free
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