i updated my flikr photos it's a pretty cool visual journey, if a bit sparse of late. i swear, all i do is work and sleep, work and sleep, work and sleep, and wonder at the world.
in other news, i discovered this old draft that i never published, from June 2004. part of my perennial frustration with womenfolk. tee hee.
and, i want to live with these guys for a while. maybe in a summer or two i'll take a leave of absence.
31 October 2005
30 October 2005
sabbath
this evening has an apple-cider-sunday sort of peace to it. it's slow flowing: my childhood sundays were meandering affairs, curled up in a blue comfy chair reading or playing chess or slowly watching castles and spaceships take shape from the lego bricks that formed the building blocks of my playground. all was quiet, for mom and dad were napping after our formal sunday meals, and all was slow, for our chauffers were taking us nowhere and we had no work or school to occupy our days. sunshine poured in through the silence and warmth bathed our solitude, our creativity, our joy.
today, the sunlight is already gone, but the warmth persists in my scratchy wool sweater and battered easy chair. i woke a few hours before sunset, to the stillness left unmolested by alarm clocks and phones and their ilk--i woke to smile and relax and ponder the strange dreams that filled my daytime slumber. i took idle note of some imposing restlessness: i worked almost eighty hours this week, six overnights straight with little time but to sleep and eat breakfast and hit the road in between. in two days i will work at least four more, and my larder is as empty as my laundry basket and email inbox are full. my bike my only vehicle, needs maintenance and there is also the pressing impulse to justify my recent library additions by actually reading them. the wasted time was beginning to pile in on me.
but, graciously, my baser instincts asserted themselves, and i curled up in my sleeping bag and with a cheerful grin acknowledged the day's unfettered potential for procrastination and thought about breakfast. breakfast. i decided to forego breakfast as i was out of syrup, eggs, and bread, and had been subsisting for entirely too long on cereal. if Cheerios lose their inherent joy, i shall truly be in for a long string of morning drudgery.
well. that left beans and rice. i was uninspired. i wandered downstairs, past the tragic empty spaces on my food shelves, clinging to my shabby hiking shorts and scratchy wool armor (manfully worn with no intervening t-shirt) for warmth and comfort and memories of mornings on the trail. i sadly shook a box of swiss cake rolls, knowing from yesterday's shake that ther would be no reassuring thump of one last happy little package tucked in the back. granola bars and canned green beans simply wouldn't do. the box pile of odds and ends salvaged from my brother's relocation to Africa yielded crackers, a novelty for my palate these days. not bad. lima beans, stuffing and turkey helper? uninspiring.
but the fridge yielded gold: the remnants of a half-gallon of apple cider that Mike and I split on a whim a week or so ago. suddenly rice and crackers and beans didn't sound so simple. apple cider is exciting, in an expectant sort of way. you cannot drink apple cider in a hurry--it's disarming presence gracefuly disallows action. like sundays at home, it must meander in gentle sips, cradled in both hands, to be enjoyed in solitude and peace or the glowing warmth of fireplaces and fellowship. it is a drink for warming the hands while coming in from the cold, to share with friends when the day's business is done and there is to be no hustling, bustling, or voices raised in anything but laughter. it is for sprawling on couches or huddling on logs or being tucked into scratchy old sweaters and curling up in comforters. it proclaims evenings settled in, boots tucked away and ignored, and the anticipation of trekking no father from the living room than the kitchen, the den, or where two or more are gathered in unpurpose-driven fellowship.
it is, in short, an excellent excuse to postpone foraging forays and any quest or duty reeking of importance--as long as it was still good. i had yet to actually drink any: i hadn't found the time on my 4 p.m. "morning" dash out the door find and clean a proper cup in order to partake. the old empty plastic gatorade bottles and glass beer bottles that carry fauceted water to my hydration needs simply will not do for cider: it's too tough to pour cider into the beer bottles and drinking cider from plastic nears blasphemy for lack of proper ceremony.
a sniff from the jug provided enough hope to scour the cupboards for glass, to be thoroughly cleaned for taste's sake and thoroughly rinsed in cold water to preserve coolness. the cider poured as it should. it looked as it should, in simple unassuming brown. it tasted as it should. i read a little, of the beauty of Oregon and the change of seasons and the cycle of births and deaths, leavetakings and homecomings, and how all things grow and change and return. soon Jake joined me from the cellar where he dwells, and i ate my rice while he cooked his. we talked about the outdoors and wand'ring and friends who have hitch-hiked or train-hopped or bicycled their ways across vast distances, great oceans of beauty. i sat and sipped cider. after a long week's labor and stress and isolation, i was still and at home, my day for cooking a slow meal and sipping cider and for rest.
and then i remembered. today is sunday. apple-cider sunday.
shabbat shalom!
today, the sunlight is already gone, but the warmth persists in my scratchy wool sweater and battered easy chair. i woke a few hours before sunset, to the stillness left unmolested by alarm clocks and phones and their ilk--i woke to smile and relax and ponder the strange dreams that filled my daytime slumber. i took idle note of some imposing restlessness: i worked almost eighty hours this week, six overnights straight with little time but to sleep and eat breakfast and hit the road in between. in two days i will work at least four more, and my larder is as empty as my laundry basket and email inbox are full. my bike my only vehicle, needs maintenance and there is also the pressing impulse to justify my recent library additions by actually reading them. the wasted time was beginning to pile in on me.
but, graciously, my baser instincts asserted themselves, and i curled up in my sleeping bag and with a cheerful grin acknowledged the day's unfettered potential for procrastination and thought about breakfast. breakfast. i decided to forego breakfast as i was out of syrup, eggs, and bread, and had been subsisting for entirely too long on cereal. if Cheerios lose their inherent joy, i shall truly be in for a long string of morning drudgery.
well. that left beans and rice. i was uninspired. i wandered downstairs, past the tragic empty spaces on my food shelves, clinging to my shabby hiking shorts and scratchy wool armor (manfully worn with no intervening t-shirt) for warmth and comfort and memories of mornings on the trail. i sadly shook a box of swiss cake rolls, knowing from yesterday's shake that ther would be no reassuring thump of one last happy little package tucked in the back. granola bars and canned green beans simply wouldn't do. the box pile of odds and ends salvaged from my brother's relocation to Africa yielded crackers, a novelty for my palate these days. not bad. lima beans, stuffing and turkey helper? uninspiring.
but the fridge yielded gold: the remnants of a half-gallon of apple cider that Mike and I split on a whim a week or so ago. suddenly rice and crackers and beans didn't sound so simple. apple cider is exciting, in an expectant sort of way. you cannot drink apple cider in a hurry--it's disarming presence gracefuly disallows action. like sundays at home, it must meander in gentle sips, cradled in both hands, to be enjoyed in solitude and peace or the glowing warmth of fireplaces and fellowship. it is a drink for warming the hands while coming in from the cold, to share with friends when the day's business is done and there is to be no hustling, bustling, or voices raised in anything but laughter. it is for sprawling on couches or huddling on logs or being tucked into scratchy old sweaters and curling up in comforters. it proclaims evenings settled in, boots tucked away and ignored, and the anticipation of trekking no father from the living room than the kitchen, the den, or where two or more are gathered in unpurpose-driven fellowship.
it is, in short, an excellent excuse to postpone foraging forays and any quest or duty reeking of importance--as long as it was still good. i had yet to actually drink any: i hadn't found the time on my 4 p.m. "morning" dash out the door find and clean a proper cup in order to partake. the old empty plastic gatorade bottles and glass beer bottles that carry fauceted water to my hydration needs simply will not do for cider: it's too tough to pour cider into the beer bottles and drinking cider from plastic nears blasphemy for lack of proper ceremony.
a sniff from the jug provided enough hope to scour the cupboards for glass, to be thoroughly cleaned for taste's sake and thoroughly rinsed in cold water to preserve coolness. the cider poured as it should. it looked as it should, in simple unassuming brown. it tasted as it should. i read a little, of the beauty of Oregon and the change of seasons and the cycle of births and deaths, leavetakings and homecomings, and how all things grow and change and return. soon Jake joined me from the cellar where he dwells, and i ate my rice while he cooked his. we talked about the outdoors and wand'ring and friends who have hitch-hiked or train-hopped or bicycled their ways across vast distances, great oceans of beauty. i sat and sipped cider. after a long week's labor and stress and isolation, i was still and at home, my day for cooking a slow meal and sipping cider and for rest.
and then i remembered. today is sunday. apple-cider sunday.
shabbat shalom!
28 October 2005
a transcontinental, one-sided conversation :)
Hey bro -
Like the link about "thoughts dear to you." I've heard a lot of McLaren secondhand, but not read any directly.
I take exception with one point. I agree with the first list of things God hates: sin, selfish arrogance, indifference and hate. And we ought to be for what God is for and against what He is against. But the second list: God being against exclusion and suffering, I am not so sure about. Is God really against suffering? Perhaps, but it seems he is against sin more, it pleasing Him to have Jesus suffer too for sin. Having God be primarily concerned with suffering and exclusion seems like an attempt to remake God in a "sensitive 90's guy" definition of God and love - which I don't buy. Just ruminated on love in church Sunday - perhaps love means causing "suffering" in the short run for someone's better in the long run? Perhaps it is more loving and merciful for God to cause me to suffer and change rather than leave me in my pitiful, pathetic current state...
Peace,
Jeff
broski,
it's a pity you are far away and we cannot share this "baada ya kazi" style over Tusker. i have a section of my budget labeled "Africa" and it's growing, albeit way too slowly. so sometime we will fellowship again in this lovely realm of ideas.
I do not see how God could be more against sin than suffering--staring into the eyes of someone starving or lonely or suicidal or just plain bored and saying, no, what's really important is to follow these rules; because you broke these rules, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to have anything to do with you and you're going to have to suffer forever when you die. It's really your fault: you broke the rules.
I used to think that the Seven Deadly Sins were a list of things you didn't do because if you did, Jesus would kill you. Then, for a while, I became more enlightened and realized that no, you wouldn't die now, you'd die the second death and never get to be happy in heaven.
Then I met Mike Walters, a theology prof at Houghton, who convinced me that the whole idea started with a dude named Evagrius, who lived with a bunch of other dudes in one of the first monastic communities; he came up with the Eight Bad Thoughts, or something like that, to explain all the pain and sorrow and suffering that each member of the community inflicted on each other and themselves. Later a pope with a flair for the dramatic and a little knowledge of numbers trimmed it down to seven and added the flashy title and wrote a bestselling book about the Seven Deadly Sins.
The Big Secret behind the seven deadly sins isn't some law code, where you break them and the judge in the wig says, "sorry son, but you broke the rules. you lose. go to hell. do not pass go, do not collect any celestial goodies that are saved up for good people who make me happy by following rules..."
The Big Secret is that they Seven Deadly Sins are Deadly. They kill you. Then they kill people around you. They start with your soul, Greed and Envy stealing your happiness and your purpose, and then Gluttony and Sloth destroys your body and mind while Rage and Lust and Pride wreak havoc in your relationships. You end up a miserable, lonely, angry, fear-filled, hollow, disappointed whining person. These things, when they run your soul, destroy it. This is a place I have been. Sin, in truth, destroys you. It makes you miserable, it turns you into a pathetically vicious and self-centered monster.
Forget far-off pond'rings about heaven and hell--I want to be saved right now from becoming any more of a soul-sucked zombie than I already am. I want good relationships with people; I don't want to spend my days being disappointed by fame, material posessions, my own impressive self, mind-numbingly lonely sex, and my slowly decaying body and mind. I've looked around the world and seen nothing but miserable people deluding themselves about their own importance and happiness--crumbling monuments built on slavery and oppression and suffering.
Why then, would people sin? My guess is suffering. People have suffered so much that they do not, in G.K. Chesterton's words, know how to be human anymore. All they know how to be is monsters, tearing at each other and themselves in an frenzied orgy of destructive attempts at living. Love is painful and doomed to failure or betrayal or both; lust is a safer option for the short-term, and all we know for no one has shown us what love looks like. Sharing is dangerous, hoarding is safe--for the short term. As life becomes increasingly more meaningless, people turn to whatever they can get for the ailment in their souls. And find only disappointment.
It helps to look at human society as the combined result of the worst natural disaster and most horrifying act of war ever perpetrated (Donald Miller's idea, not mine). Bloody, wounded, and scared, they will do anything to survive--even if it ensures their prolonged misery. They strike out at each other in fear and blindness. They band together in little communities for survival. They submit to abusive power structures because they fear that they cannot survive on their own. They are always edgy and uncertain of their place within the community, reflexively attempting to prove their importance at every chance.
Then Robert Jervis' security dilemma pops up, as communities run into each other. They know that other groups can threaten them, so each one becomes a threat to the others by amassing power out of fear. Ideology is used to strengthen the community and ensure "our" safety; us verse them becomes more and more tense. Fragmentation and war ensue.
The thing is, no one knows how to live anymore. All we know how to do is lust and die alone. No one knows what it's like not to be ruled by fear, or have relationships untainted by envy, greed, and lust. We all suffer, and we all cause ourselves and others to suffer and slowly die inside--if we ever even knew life at all.
The exciting thing about Jesus is--He was the first to suffer, but not sin. He was the first to grow up in a world that specializes in breeding miserable monsters out of babies without becoming a monster himself. He showed us the way out of our miserable, self-destructive lives that didn't involve avoiding the everyday suffering of living with everyone else's sin.
He was sinned against, but did not sin. And if we follow his example, we discover that the way of life we are used to--the diseased and self-destructive habits we've picked up from those around us unconsciously or used to cope with the suffering in our lives--is soul suicide. But His way--the way of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control--is the way of life. Our lives, day by day, become what they were meant to be: glorious, full of life and joy and creativity and community.
Christ did not avoid the suffering inherent in living in our world--but he was no slave to its destructive and debilitating patterns. Our challenge and calling is to likewise belong in this world, to taste of its suffering and joy deeply, and to become part of the Restoration--the Redemption.
But I am off-topic. We were talking about sin verses suffering, and which is more important to god.
The stories tell of a god who walked the earth, suffering and laughing and teaching monsters how to become people, who spent a great deal of time at parties with drunk people and strippers and prostitutes and he wasn't sad for them because they were breaking the rules--he was sad for them because after the drugs and sex and the thrill of money and power and toys and prestige wore off they were still miserable, hurt and alone. Life, in the unforgettable words of Thomas Hobbes, was solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short, and they were making the best way of it that they could. He was happy that they knew that there was a fundamental problem with the earth--they were ready for an answer that way.
The stories tell of god walking the earth, and getting angry when the churchgoers and pastors and dignified, successful, upstanding community members didn't realize that their lives, too, were full of misery and loneliness. They, too, were simply making the best of it they could, except they thought that their best was a lot better than everyone else's best and Divinely Ispired and Purpose Driven and Morally Superior and all that drivel. They denied their common plight, their common wounds, their common needs, expressed in different forms but fundamentally the same illness that they shared with the pimps and car thieves and loose women and child molesters and hookers and tax collectors and politicians and Pharisees.
When they denied their common plight, their common lost-ness and their common human experience of suffering and confusion, they cut their hearts off from compassion. Compassion is not pity, bemused or otherwise, bestowed from the better position. It is literally suffering great emotion with. The religious made no effort to understand their neighbors, much less to love and fellowship with them. Instead of glorying in the image of God in everyone, they began judging people through a rubric: good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and non-Christian, acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. The people became judged by the behavior, instead of the behavior by the people. The story of the individual went out the window with fellowship and compassion.
I think that if I believe anything, I believe that what Christ is doing is not setting up some cosmic contest where the holier or those with better doctrine are rewarded and those who are more screwed up or less intellectual and punished. God does not institute suffering to correct sin: he corrects sin to end suffering. Kids in a fight will often try to get Mom or Dad to prove them right, or at least more right. The point is not that some will say "Ah-Hah! We told you so!" while others hang their heads. The point is not to reward the good kids and make sure the bad ones feel ashamed.
The point is to keep surprising all of them by bringing them face-to-face with themselves and all the evil and distortion that is there, and then to surprise them even more with grace and redemption until they laugh at the notion that they ever called each other "good" or "bad" or any other names but those which they were called by Christ.
I don't know if this is about sin or suffering anymore--but it is much easier to isolate sin and define yourself out of it when you isolate it from suffering. Sin without suffering becomes someone else's problem, then someone else's fault, and soon those people are bad and we are good. Sin without suffering ends blaming without understanding, accusation without compassion, blame without involvement. Then it can be individual, it can belong to someone else and not be our whole, messed up common heritage as human beings. If sin were divorced from suffering, and the two could be weighed in the balance, what kind of god would find sin more important than suffering, the proper formalities more important that the lifesaving measures?
Sin alone seems detatched, academic, as simple as an individual choice, something we've overcome, why haven't they? Suffering, that has meat to it. You see it in people's eyes, you know it when it haunts you, you feel its pangs when you find yourself embroiled in it, causing it in your neighbors without even realizing it, discovering it raw and open in your heart in places you thought were all right. And usually, you can follow it, track it by the blood and body parts in its wake, right to the evil in your own heart. And then you can pick up your cross and join the war on suffering, the Redemption War, the only one worth fighting, reclaiming this tortured battleground one injured heart at a time.
well, as usual brother, i've wandered off topic almost immediately and stayed there despite all attempts to remain within the scope of the question. but i think that's the problem--we're asking different questions, trying to feel each other out from different definitions, different passions, different emphases. i hope that this serves as not as a challenge, but as a chance to feel with me some emotions, and explore with me some ideas in the way that i am exploring them.
cheers!
dan
Like the link about "thoughts dear to you." I've heard a lot of McLaren secondhand, but not read any directly.
I take exception with one point. I agree with the first list of things God hates: sin, selfish arrogance, indifference and hate. And we ought to be for what God is for and against what He is against. But the second list: God being against exclusion and suffering, I am not so sure about. Is God really against suffering? Perhaps, but it seems he is against sin more, it pleasing Him to have Jesus suffer too for sin. Having God be primarily concerned with suffering and exclusion seems like an attempt to remake God in a "sensitive 90's guy" definition of God and love - which I don't buy. Just ruminated on love in church Sunday - perhaps love means causing "suffering" in the short run for someone's better in the long run? Perhaps it is more loving and merciful for God to cause me to suffer and change rather than leave me in my pitiful, pathetic current state...
Peace,
Jeff
broski,
it's a pity you are far away and we cannot share this "baada ya kazi" style over Tusker. i have a section of my budget labeled "Africa" and it's growing, albeit way too slowly. so sometime we will fellowship again in this lovely realm of ideas.
I do not see how God could be more against sin than suffering--staring into the eyes of someone starving or lonely or suicidal or just plain bored and saying, no, what's really important is to follow these rules; because you broke these rules, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to have anything to do with you and you're going to have to suffer forever when you die. It's really your fault: you broke the rules.
I used to think that the Seven Deadly Sins were a list of things you didn't do because if you did, Jesus would kill you. Then, for a while, I became more enlightened and realized that no, you wouldn't die now, you'd die the second death and never get to be happy in heaven.
Then I met Mike Walters, a theology prof at Houghton, who convinced me that the whole idea started with a dude named Evagrius, who lived with a bunch of other dudes in one of the first monastic communities; he came up with the Eight Bad Thoughts, or something like that, to explain all the pain and sorrow and suffering that each member of the community inflicted on each other and themselves. Later a pope with a flair for the dramatic and a little knowledge of numbers trimmed it down to seven and added the flashy title and wrote a bestselling book about the Seven Deadly Sins.
The Big Secret behind the seven deadly sins isn't some law code, where you break them and the judge in the wig says, "sorry son, but you broke the rules. you lose. go to hell. do not pass go, do not collect any celestial goodies that are saved up for good people who make me happy by following rules..."
The Big Secret is that they Seven Deadly Sins are Deadly. They kill you. Then they kill people around you. They start with your soul, Greed and Envy stealing your happiness and your purpose, and then Gluttony and Sloth destroys your body and mind while Rage and Lust and Pride wreak havoc in your relationships. You end up a miserable, lonely, angry, fear-filled, hollow, disappointed whining person. These things, when they run your soul, destroy it. This is a place I have been. Sin, in truth, destroys you. It makes you miserable, it turns you into a pathetically vicious and self-centered monster.
Forget far-off pond'rings about heaven and hell--I want to be saved right now from becoming any more of a soul-sucked zombie than I already am. I want good relationships with people; I don't want to spend my days being disappointed by fame, material posessions, my own impressive self, mind-numbingly lonely sex, and my slowly decaying body and mind. I've looked around the world and seen nothing but miserable people deluding themselves about their own importance and happiness--crumbling monuments built on slavery and oppression and suffering.
Why then, would people sin? My guess is suffering. People have suffered so much that they do not, in G.K. Chesterton's words, know how to be human anymore. All they know how to be is monsters, tearing at each other and themselves in an frenzied orgy of destructive attempts at living. Love is painful and doomed to failure or betrayal or both; lust is a safer option for the short-term, and all we know for no one has shown us what love looks like. Sharing is dangerous, hoarding is safe--for the short term. As life becomes increasingly more meaningless, people turn to whatever they can get for the ailment in their souls. And find only disappointment.
It helps to look at human society as the combined result of the worst natural disaster and most horrifying act of war ever perpetrated (Donald Miller's idea, not mine). Bloody, wounded, and scared, they will do anything to survive--even if it ensures their prolonged misery. They strike out at each other in fear and blindness. They band together in little communities for survival. They submit to abusive power structures because they fear that they cannot survive on their own. They are always edgy and uncertain of their place within the community, reflexively attempting to prove their importance at every chance.
Then Robert Jervis' security dilemma pops up, as communities run into each other. They know that other groups can threaten them, so each one becomes a threat to the others by amassing power out of fear. Ideology is used to strengthen the community and ensure "our" safety; us verse them becomes more and more tense. Fragmentation and war ensue.
The thing is, no one knows how to live anymore. All we know how to do is lust and die alone. No one knows what it's like not to be ruled by fear, or have relationships untainted by envy, greed, and lust. We all suffer, and we all cause ourselves and others to suffer and slowly die inside--if we ever even knew life at all.
The exciting thing about Jesus is--He was the first to suffer, but not sin. He was the first to grow up in a world that specializes in breeding miserable monsters out of babies without becoming a monster himself. He showed us the way out of our miserable, self-destructive lives that didn't involve avoiding the everyday suffering of living with everyone else's sin.
He was sinned against, but did not sin. And if we follow his example, we discover that the way of life we are used to--the diseased and self-destructive habits we've picked up from those around us unconsciously or used to cope with the suffering in our lives--is soul suicide. But His way--the way of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control--is the way of life. Our lives, day by day, become what they were meant to be: glorious, full of life and joy and creativity and community.
Christ did not avoid the suffering inherent in living in our world--but he was no slave to its destructive and debilitating patterns. Our challenge and calling is to likewise belong in this world, to taste of its suffering and joy deeply, and to become part of the Restoration--the Redemption.
But I am off-topic. We were talking about sin verses suffering, and which is more important to god.
The stories tell of a god who walked the earth, suffering and laughing and teaching monsters how to become people, who spent a great deal of time at parties with drunk people and strippers and prostitutes and he wasn't sad for them because they were breaking the rules--he was sad for them because after the drugs and sex and the thrill of money and power and toys and prestige wore off they were still miserable, hurt and alone. Life, in the unforgettable words of Thomas Hobbes, was solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short, and they were making the best way of it that they could. He was happy that they knew that there was a fundamental problem with the earth--they were ready for an answer that way.
The stories tell of god walking the earth, and getting angry when the churchgoers and pastors and dignified, successful, upstanding community members didn't realize that their lives, too, were full of misery and loneliness. They, too, were simply making the best of it they could, except they thought that their best was a lot better than everyone else's best and Divinely Ispired and Purpose Driven and Morally Superior and all that drivel. They denied their common plight, their common wounds, their common needs, expressed in different forms but fundamentally the same illness that they shared with the pimps and car thieves and loose women and child molesters and hookers and tax collectors and politicians and Pharisees.
When they denied their common plight, their common lost-ness and their common human experience of suffering and confusion, they cut their hearts off from compassion. Compassion is not pity, bemused or otherwise, bestowed from the better position. It is literally suffering great emotion with. The religious made no effort to understand their neighbors, much less to love and fellowship with them. Instead of glorying in the image of God in everyone, they began judging people through a rubric: good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and non-Christian, acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. The people became judged by the behavior, instead of the behavior by the people. The story of the individual went out the window with fellowship and compassion.
I think that if I believe anything, I believe that what Christ is doing is not setting up some cosmic contest where the holier or those with better doctrine are rewarded and those who are more screwed up or less intellectual and punished. God does not institute suffering to correct sin: he corrects sin to end suffering. Kids in a fight will often try to get Mom or Dad to prove them right, or at least more right. The point is not that some will say "Ah-Hah! We told you so!" while others hang their heads. The point is not to reward the good kids and make sure the bad ones feel ashamed.
The point is to keep surprising all of them by bringing them face-to-face with themselves and all the evil and distortion that is there, and then to surprise them even more with grace and redemption until they laugh at the notion that they ever called each other "good" or "bad" or any other names but those which they were called by Christ.
I don't know if this is about sin or suffering anymore--but it is much easier to isolate sin and define yourself out of it when you isolate it from suffering. Sin without suffering becomes someone else's problem, then someone else's fault, and soon those people are bad and we are good. Sin without suffering ends blaming without understanding, accusation without compassion, blame without involvement. Then it can be individual, it can belong to someone else and not be our whole, messed up common heritage as human beings. If sin were divorced from suffering, and the two could be weighed in the balance, what kind of god would find sin more important than suffering, the proper formalities more important that the lifesaving measures?
Sin alone seems detatched, academic, as simple as an individual choice, something we've overcome, why haven't they? Suffering, that has meat to it. You see it in people's eyes, you know it when it haunts you, you feel its pangs when you find yourself embroiled in it, causing it in your neighbors without even realizing it, discovering it raw and open in your heart in places you thought were all right. And usually, you can follow it, track it by the blood and body parts in its wake, right to the evil in your own heart. And then you can pick up your cross and join the war on suffering, the Redemption War, the only one worth fighting, reclaiming this tortured battleground one injured heart at a time.
well, as usual brother, i've wandered off topic almost immediately and stayed there despite all attempts to remain within the scope of the question. but i think that's the problem--we're asking different questions, trying to feel each other out from different definitions, different passions, different emphases. i hope that this serves as not as a challenge, but as a chance to feel with me some emotions, and explore with me some ideas in the way that i am exploring them.
cheers!
dan
23 October 2005
yeah. boo - yah baby.
boo yah baby. the high for the day was 54 Fahrenheit, not counting a stiff wind off the water. it was down to 42 Fahrenheit by the time we got back to my place, again not counting the stiff breeze, six hours later (three and a half solid pedaling, two and a half split between a pastry shop and Becca's house). it rained the entire time. our breath made fog, our tires made spray, our heroism made family history. we bicycled 31 miles in all, northeast to pick up the Amherst Conservation trail, west and north along the Erie Canal to the Niagara River, south along the waterfront downtown to the the pier, east through a new trail along the Scajaquada/Hoyt Lake/Delaware Park, up the final stretch of Hertel.
by the power of Gore-Tex, Under-Armor and courage bordering on the foolhardy, compelled by a strange notion to do something completely nonsensical in a name of stiff upper lips and manly determination and the bold tradition of "because it's there!", we lived the day laughing at the silly mortals cowering in their four-wheeled boxes.
they hide from glory that shun mother nature's wild embrace.
then we drank hot chocolate and took warm showers and did inherently manly bike maintenance and ate mom's homemade cinnamon rolls.
what can i say--my dad's cool. i'm cooking up an even doozier ride for next time...
21 October 2005
courtesy of the other dan holcomb
quick thought of the day
if you have more time, courtesy of Aram Mitchell:
i have had these ideas, but not so clearly, and they are dear to me. so read them. please.
and, for fun, some other fruits of the day:
yeah, I know the guy who wrote the first two
wishin' on a star
if you have more time, courtesy of Aram Mitchell:
i have had these ideas, but not so clearly, and they are dear to me. so read them. please.
and, for fun, some other fruits of the day:
yeah, I know the guy who wrote the first two
wishin' on a star
20 October 2005
wow
read this! be joyful!
in other news, i have become a creature of the night: i work from five p.m. to five a.m. every night, in the city, four days on followed by four days off. so basically, for four days i work all night and sleep all day, rise, breakfast and repeat.
and for the other four? i'm about to find out. but i think it involves a lot of slept-through days and a lot of long nights reading, writing, and watching Lost. and by the way, madame diercks: playing golf while struggling verse the elements to survive and overcoming obstacles like polar bears and strange frenchwomen is a sophisticated portrayal of the paradox between surviving and living, and the human need to find fulfillment instead of just getting by with food, shelter, and all the other mundane realities of life. it's brilliant in fact. Seinfeld? Swinefilled. Pshaw! Rubbish! other British slang and idiom!
ps--if you find yourself stricken by insomnia (or dinner) between the hours of five pm and five am next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights...call me. I'm awake. and quite possibly bored.
in other news, i have become a creature of the night: i work from five p.m. to five a.m. every night, in the city, four days on followed by four days off. so basically, for four days i work all night and sleep all day, rise, breakfast and repeat.
and for the other four? i'm about to find out. but i think it involves a lot of slept-through days and a lot of long nights reading, writing, and watching Lost. and by the way, madame diercks: playing golf while struggling verse the elements to survive and overcoming obstacles like polar bears and strange frenchwomen is a sophisticated portrayal of the paradox between surviving and living, and the human need to find fulfillment instead of just getting by with food, shelter, and all the other mundane realities of life. it's brilliant in fact. Seinfeld? Swinefilled. Pshaw! Rubbish! other British slang and idiom!
ps--if you find yourself stricken by insomnia (or dinner) between the hours of five pm and five am next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights...call me. I'm awake. and quite possibly bored.
16 October 2005
wiki endi
ahhhhhhhhhh...
yes, as a matter of fact:
i am typing snazzily to the jazzy and ever-hip soundtrack of Ocean's Twelve.
[several points of clarification, in the name of accuracy, make themselves necessary]
-it's been a...fine weekend.
-my battered, Houghton-issue $96,000 laptop has been upgraded in the name of frugality and well-connected housemates to become a DVD player.
-by "weekend"--call it four and a half days off between the end of an old rotation and the beginning of a new one. an October Break for the working class.
-by Fine...lets say it involved--karaoke, a dash of rum, off-road biking citified style with uber-fast wingman Jake, pancakes with Kilpats and Mighty Taco with Mr. Lilley back home from Asbury. and an evening's stroll along the waterfront with Kat'n'Amy and, of course, Paul and Dave.
but I must confess that such speaks only for half the weekend. the other half--rests in the makeshift DVD player.
you see, last weekend Blockbuster informed me that while they have had an entire wall devoted to the Lost television series first season DVDs for the past month, they have yet to recieve the first DVD in the set.
well. i hadn't the time for full-length movies. i hadn't the creativity for anything else but dinner and TV. i hadn't cable. so i went for Desperate Housewives in the name of culture critique and evaluation. and at the time, i was happy with it...i thought it was pretty decent. for TV.
that, you see-- that was before this weekend. for Friday, i discovered that they had, yes, finally--after a month of sloth exceptional even for a national chain with accompanying bureaucracy--they had recieved such first four episodes.
those--i rented. those--i watched, over a lovely dinner of hot pockets with dr. pepper. i was enchanted. i was delightfully surprised by twists and turns and characters i'd never imagined. i finished them and sat in my five-dollar rummage-sale armchair pondering. it just past midnight. perhaps Danny Ocean and his folks would term it "O-Dark-Fifteen". it was precisely at said time when, in typical half-timed flashback action, i remembered an overheard snippet, one of those little pieces of conversation that clicks into place only hours later. it had occurred as i breezed out the blockbuster door, zipping up my ever-fashionable rouguish softshell jaquet, and pulling on my of-questionable-taste bright yellow SPAM took.
"we're open until one a.m."
enter snazzy, percussive, Latin dancing music. and, my own flip-flopped feet flip-flopping down stairs half-balanced, throwing earlier mentioned softshell on and my elbow into the windowframe halfway down the stairs. and nothing but the velvety cushion of my newly shorn auburn locks between my head and the overly low arch finishing off the staircase.
DVD number two, after a short nighttime bicycle rain with a dash of ride...took me until a bit later in the evening. morning. it doesn't matter, i'm on break, and i'm working overnights for the forseeable future. i am considering getting cable. it's that good. Housewives...hah. whatever. tramps meandering about suburbia getting flustered when the toilet clogs. try being charged by a wild boar, or learning to sew up wounds, track a lost friend, or sleep at night with the jungle howling at your ear.
so, for the time being, if you see me perhaps, mind wandering--i'm marvelling at how much fun it would be to combine two pursuits that I already dabble in: transportation disasters with medical emergencies and wilderness living. and leadership in a diverse group under stress. so that's three pursuits. oh, and philosophy, themes of redemption in people's lives, and mysteries. that's six. looking incredibly good with a tan? oh, make that a round seven!
well. at any rate. the show's about surviving on a desert island after a freak plane crash, and about the people on that island sorting through who they were and who they are and who they are becoming. in a blatant attempt to lend myself some legitimacy: a great monastic (I think Evagrius) once said that the world after the Fall was a collection of the survivors of a sinking ship, bearing whatever wounds and treasures they collected among the wreckage. Lost is the entire world in a nutshell: all sorts of people bouncing off each other's idiosycracies, wounds, fears, miracles and histories, and if that were not enough...
there's a polar bear. in the middle of the south pacific...
and a bald dude who sounds like a zen monk, throws knives, tracks, hunts, and smiles with the beautiful look of peace on his face whenever the rain washes over it. then he maintains that the island that everyone else is terrified of and wants to get off is a place of miracles and beauty.
basically, exactly the kind of guy i want to be if i grow up.
yes, as a matter of fact:
i am typing snazzily to the jazzy and ever-hip soundtrack of Ocean's Twelve.
[several points of clarification, in the name of accuracy, make themselves necessary]
-it's been a...fine weekend.
-my battered, Houghton-issue $96,000 laptop has been upgraded in the name of frugality and well-connected housemates to become a DVD player.
-by "weekend"--call it four and a half days off between the end of an old rotation and the beginning of a new one. an October Break for the working class.
-by Fine...lets say it involved--karaoke, a dash of rum, off-road biking citified style with uber-fast wingman Jake, pancakes with Kilpats and Mighty Taco with Mr. Lilley back home from Asbury. and an evening's stroll along the waterfront with Kat'n'Amy and, of course, Paul and Dave.
but I must confess that such speaks only for half the weekend. the other half--rests in the makeshift DVD player.
you see, last weekend Blockbuster informed me that while they have had an entire wall devoted to the Lost television series first season DVDs for the past month, they have yet to recieve the first DVD in the set.
well. i hadn't the time for full-length movies. i hadn't the creativity for anything else but dinner and TV. i hadn't cable. so i went for Desperate Housewives in the name of culture critique and evaluation. and at the time, i was happy with it...i thought it was pretty decent. for TV.
that, you see-- that was before this weekend. for Friday, i discovered that they had, yes, finally--after a month of sloth exceptional even for a national chain with accompanying bureaucracy--they had recieved such first four episodes.
those--i rented. those--i watched, over a lovely dinner of hot pockets with dr. pepper. i was enchanted. i was delightfully surprised by twists and turns and characters i'd never imagined. i finished them and sat in my five-dollar rummage-sale armchair pondering. it just past midnight. perhaps Danny Ocean and his folks would term it "O-Dark-Fifteen". it was precisely at said time when, in typical half-timed flashback action, i remembered an overheard snippet, one of those little pieces of conversation that clicks into place only hours later. it had occurred as i breezed out the blockbuster door, zipping up my ever-fashionable rouguish softshell jaquet, and pulling on my of-questionable-taste bright yellow SPAM took.
"we're open until one a.m."
enter snazzy, percussive, Latin dancing music. and, my own flip-flopped feet flip-flopping down stairs half-balanced, throwing earlier mentioned softshell on and my elbow into the windowframe halfway down the stairs. and nothing but the velvety cushion of my newly shorn auburn locks between my head and the overly low arch finishing off the staircase.
DVD number two, after a short nighttime bicycle rain with a dash of ride...took me until a bit later in the evening. morning. it doesn't matter, i'm on break, and i'm working overnights for the forseeable future. i am considering getting cable. it's that good. Housewives...hah. whatever. tramps meandering about suburbia getting flustered when the toilet clogs. try being charged by a wild boar, or learning to sew up wounds, track a lost friend, or sleep at night with the jungle howling at your ear.
so, for the time being, if you see me perhaps, mind wandering--i'm marvelling at how much fun it would be to combine two pursuits that I already dabble in: transportation disasters with medical emergencies and wilderness living. and leadership in a diverse group under stress. so that's three pursuits. oh, and philosophy, themes of redemption in people's lives, and mysteries. that's six. looking incredibly good with a tan? oh, make that a round seven!
well. at any rate. the show's about surviving on a desert island after a freak plane crash, and about the people on that island sorting through who they were and who they are and who they are becoming. in a blatant attempt to lend myself some legitimacy: a great monastic (I think Evagrius) once said that the world after the Fall was a collection of the survivors of a sinking ship, bearing whatever wounds and treasures they collected among the wreckage. Lost is the entire world in a nutshell: all sorts of people bouncing off each other's idiosycracies, wounds, fears, miracles and histories, and if that were not enough...
there's a polar bear. in the middle of the south pacific...
and a bald dude who sounds like a zen monk, throws knives, tracks, hunts, and smiles with the beautiful look of peace on his face whenever the rain washes over it. then he maintains that the island that everyone else is terrified of and wants to get off is a place of miracles and beauty.
basically, exactly the kind of guy i want to be if i grow up.
13 October 2005
03 October 2005
[a recent heart-leaping moment]
I have always felt a dear spot in my heart for Catholics. I have always felt a vomitously wretched ulcer in my gut for church signs and their ability to pack arrogance and ignorance so efficiently and effectively into the noses of all who stand outside their walls.
So on the way back from Houghton, it was a moving and rather religious experience to witness a church that has finally, possibly, got the whole church-nonchurch relationship sorted out. It made my day:
Now, with due credit to Mr Brautigam for making the connection: the message of the gospel is a Pedro the Lion lyric from the song "Of Minor Prophets and their Prostitute Wives:"
"Come home, darlin'/All is forgiven/Please come home quickly."
And so Catholics in Arcade caught on...
So on the way back from Houghton, it was a moving and rather religious experience to witness a church that has finally, possibly, got the whole church-nonchurch relationship sorted out. It made my day:
Now, with due credit to Mr Brautigam for making the connection: the message of the gospel is a Pedro the Lion lyric from the song "Of Minor Prophets and their Prostitute Wives:"
"Come home, darlin'/All is forgiven/Please come home quickly."
And so Catholics in Arcade caught on...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
