The Beginning and the End

Then He who sat on the throne of God said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' 

And He said to me, 'Write, for these words are true and faithful.' 

And He said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.' 

Revelation 21: 5,6 (ESV)

He Came for the Sick

A short reflection on the nativity from sunergoi blog.

http://sunergoi.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-christmas-is-for-losers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Sunergoi+(sunergoi)&m=1

What Christians Can Learn from Veterans

Military people understand the intersection of Faith and Authority. The centurion understood Christ's sovereignty over nature, space, and time -- that all of nature was under the authority of it's Creator and would obey. He didn't need to see Jesus touch his servant to acknowledge Christ's Lordship over this illness. "All things were made through him" (John 1). 

Matthew 8: 5-13

5 When he [Jesus] had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him,6 “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant,[c] ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel[d] have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 And to the centurion Jesus said,“Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

(Source: cut and pasted from Bible Gateway)

The Meaning of Exile

Some Christians are predicting an imminent exile for the church in modern times. Whatever you believe about our future, what does exile mean about the church historically?

What Exile Means

Food Sources and Sustainability

Several of my family members are cattlemen and farmers in Iowa. Debates over feed, sustainability, and such are of personal, immediate interest to them.

Here is an article a cousin posted by a young cattleman on being careful as we consider food source issues. Lacking much knowledge, I have no real opinion about this kind of thing, but think its good to hear from all sides. I learned some things about cows/beef by reading this article.

4 Frustrating Agricultural Messages

Lemuel at the Ballot Box

3 Reasons You should Care about Election Day

The Case for the Mundane

(Re-posting)

A letter to a gifted prep school friend

Dear Friend,

You are caught up in a hundred little deaths of your soul these days. You are forced to sit through classes which are beneath you.

You know more about these books, these histories; you understand them better than your peers. You are better read, even, than some of your teachers, at least in a certain academic sense.

In other classes you are made to study material you know you will never use as an adult. Odds are good you won't need that quadratic formula in graduate school or in catching the bus or in cooking your dinner.

And this is an indignity. You, O Suburban Minion, must abide the endless chores of polite conversation, lunchroom shufflings, leading questions, obvious observations, endless chores, polite conversation....

You have better taste.

Every day you are forced to eat food lacking in subtlety, speak to people lacking in insight and nuance, and grind through homework assignments lacking in imagination and spark, taught by adults who punch the card when you include "setting," "characters," and an ample amount of ham-handed adverbial verbiage.

Similes that sit like a knuckle sandwich in your mouth.

What's the use? Where are Sartre and Camus and Kerouc and Woolf in all of this mundane flotsam and jetsam? Where is the Green Knight?

Where is Keats in this tedious homework assignment to analyze Fanny Brawne -- 'til the Bright Star herself becomes thick-limbed, ugly, and graceless with dead eyes? Nothing like the sun.

Oh to be one of those noted intellectuals! Those brilliant sparks, caught up in thought and conversation, and not hampered by The Daily Bourgeois of suburban high school and carpool line and vacuuming the stairs.

Oh to feed that bright fire of the mind, all day, with people who understand and appreciate the heat!

Yet, you are well-read. What about those characters you know so well?

What about Saruman in his tall tower hanging in the thin air far above the plains and the little men and the beasts.

What about Uncle Andrew and Queen Jadis, and their "high and lonely destiny"?

What about Wells' Invisible Man, and his lone scientific pursuit of autonomy, fed by a withered heart lacking in human connection?

What if Dr. Frankenstein was a monster and the Monster had a soul?

What about Virginia's Lighthouse? Did it help her see the rocks?

And you have read the intellectual greats. What if:

What if many of those ivory tower intellectuals were tiresome bores in the pub or the parlor?

What if it would be insufferable to share just one drink with them? What if they were the ones everyone avoided at the cocktail party or on the street?

What if they were people that made other people look at the clock to mutter about appointments and traffic and "needing to go, so nice to touch base with you...."

What if -- in their rejection of humility, humanity, and the simplicity of duty -- they lost touch with glory, divinity, and the deeply complex?

What if, in their single-minded pursuit of truth and beauty in isolation -- in the rarefied company of themselves and their toadying salons -- they lost both. (Truth and beauty, that is.)

What if we all felt sorry for their wives and children and dogs and next door neighbors?

And more.

What if Mother Teresa was a genius and Sartre was a fool (himself telling tales full of sound and fury, signifying nothing)?

What if Einstein practiced piano scales daily as a kid?

What if the capitalist down the street is a philanthropist, the humanist down the street is a misanthropist, the scholar is a bigot, and the small town sheriff is a sage?

What if theology is the queen of the sciences?

It's complicated, isn't it?

Think:

What if we maintain our connection to the divine, in part, by maintaining our relationship with the human?

What if we love God in part by loving others and performing daily duties?

What if even the Word Himself became flesh. And dwelt among us.

And what if to love and know and learn, we have to go where the unwashed they are, and live where the un-nuanced they live, and eat their casseroles, vegetables, and drink their iced tea, and do their homework assignments?

And in meeting with daily life and daily people, what if we find not just truth and beauty, but also ourselves right there?

What if we find that we, in fact, are just another one of them: merely a co-regent of all creation. (Nothing big.)

My friend, what if we find our best selves in the mundane performance of daily duties that bring order and abundance, done with love, joy, and humility?

Here is your next homework assignment for "Life 101"

* Read the Gospel of John to yourself aloud and slowly
* Read "The Practice of the Presence of God" by Brother Andrew
* Read "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson
* Discuss with your fellow co-regents. (Ie, your middle class parents, teachers, and friends. You might be surprised at how much they know.)

Sincerely,
An old friend, who once hated homework, wore black turtlenecks, and choked on both gnats and Camels

"By Water, Wood, and Hill"

I stumbled upon this letter (on theonering.net) to Peter Hastings from J.R.R. Tolkien describing Tom Bombadil, my favorite character. (Emphases below are mine, as are paragraph breaks; it's a long chunk of text) 

“I don’t think Tom needs philosophizing about, and is not improved by it. But many have found him an odd or indeed discordant ingredient. In historical fact I put him in because I had already ‘invented’ him independently (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine) and wanted an ‘adventure’ on the way. But I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out. 

I do not mean him to be an allegory – or I should not have given him so particular, individual, and ridiculous a name – but ‘allegory’ is the only mode of exhibiting certain functions: he is then an ‘allegory’, or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with ‘doing’ anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture. Even the Elves hardly show this : they are primarily artists. 

Also T.B. exhibits another point in his attitude to the Ring, and its failure to affect him. You must concentrate on some pan, probably relatively small, of the World (Universe), whether to tell a tale, however long, or to learn anything however fundamental – and therefore much will from that ‘point of view’ be left out, distorted on the circumference, or seem a discordant oddity. The power of the Ring over all concerned, even the Wizards or Emissaries, is not a delusion – but it is not the whole picture, even of the then state and content of that pan of the Universe.”

Dividing Joint and Marrow

from an earlier post....

Our God is personal. He is intimate. He is far too much concerned with loving us to let us idle along forever in indolent accusations, or in the opiates of endless logical disputes or smoky mysticism or worldly pragmatics.

Christianity has laws, but it is not a religion of laws and rules. Christianity has miracles and mysteries, but it is not a religion of magic and smoke. Christianity is reasoned and wise, but it is not a religion for the proud academic and all-knowing logician. 

The Greeks seeks wisdom, the Jews look for miracles. But we His people, both Jew and Gentile, seek something else. Him. Crucified. 

It's a stumbling block, for some. A relationship, for others.

Christianity is a most intimate love story of a Groom for His bride, a Father for his child, a King for his subject, a Doctor for his patient.

Communion with Christ is a most uncomfortable and invasive surgery, a nakedness, a subjection, and a knowing.

For we're sick and hurting sore, and He is our Doctor. We are weak and defenseless, and He is our protecting King. We are lost and crying out, and He is our shepherding Father.

We are ugly, unloved, wrinkled, bitter, barren, sour, and cast-off. We wear a hood to hide our ugliness. And He is our beloved Groom, making us radiant, smooth, strong, healthy, and whole. He removes our masks and shrouds, looks in our face, and clothes us in white. 

"Let the bones you have crushed rejoice." 

Jesus, lover of souls.

Sister Talk

Because I can....

Two men lip synch mother and aunt talking

Mainframe to Mobile in Minutes

BusinessWire announcement from GT Software:

Mainframe to Mobile in Minutes Challenge

Greener Epistomological Pastures?

Article by Scott Redd in The Christward Collective on biblical inerrancy and its critics and supporters.

One pertinent quote: "Self-loathing is the evil twin of repentence."

Biblical Inerrancy and the Greener Pastures Fallacy 

Fighting Malaria

A committed Christian, a humble man, and a family friend...a good example of a believer quietly advancing the kingdom for years, under two presidents, through hard work and dedication in unglamorous places.

The Malaria Fighter

Out of Death into Life

This is one prayer said just before Eucharist, or Holy Communion, in the Anglican church. It's a very brief summation of God's creative and redemptive work in human history.

***

We give thanks to you, O God, for the goodness and love which you have made known to us in creation;

in the calling of Israel to be your people;

in your Word spoken through the prophets;

and above all in the Word made flesh, Jesus, your Son.

For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

In him you have delivered us from evil, and made us worthy to stand before you.

In him you have brought us out of error into truth, 
out of sin into righteousness, 
out of death into life. 

(Book of Common Prayer, page 368)

Generous

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" (Simone Weil).

Fully, completely, unhurriedly, until it's all been said, not antsy to make my own point, without agenda, without multitasking, without iPhone on, without TV on, without computer on, without music blaring, without thought for the time, without worry for the traffic, or the future...paying attention.

Christian in the Arts

Here's a link to a kickstarter campaign for a young friend of ours, Allison Mattox. She is a believer and an actress in Los Angeles.

She is working hard, paying her own way -- "earning her chops" as they say -- in a tough industry in an expensive town. I'll be frank, as as mom -- aside from the fact that she comes from a creative family -- the things that recommend her to me are that she is earnest, hard working, and basically figuring this out without acting entitled. We all know that in the Mom World these things are a deal maker.

Mattox is producing a small film called Three in June based on a family account of a Southern girl on her wedding day. If you are interested in supporting Christians in the arts, please check it out and consider donating or sharing the word.

It's tempting to moan about Hollywood, millennials, the culture. But instead let's help hard-working Christian millennials get in the game, get experience, and make a difference.

Three in June

Thanks,
Anne

Tex Mex Recs

David loves Tex Mex so we have been getting to know a few in our town.

Cafe del Rio in Allen, off  95 at Main/McDermott street -- new in town since July. David and I waited only 10 minutes for seat on the patio at about 6 pm on a Saturday night, delicious food came out hot and speedily, yummy salsas, and a delicious "3-Gs Margarita."

Live music was a band playing Eagles and America-type covers -- guy had a good voice and sound, especially given the fact that he had been through the desert on a horse with no name. Family or date friendly, but music may be loud on patio if you are there to try and catch up with old friends or have an intimate conversation. Inside restaurant was clean and cute 50's-diner, Mexican kitsch look, sort of a less-cluttered Chuy's feel. There was even a little store to buy somberos and tchochkes. (Remember this if you find yourself in need of a neon red sombero. You can thank me later.) Free ice cream.

Downsides: you can hear 75 on the patio and the hostesses that night were helpful but lacked a bit of the old  joie de v. as Bertie Wooster might remark. That's it.

Jalapenos in Allen, on East McDermott on the northwest corner of Greenville and McDermott. A family run, non chain Tex Mex -- we thought everything we ordered was yummy.

The server was smiling and attentive with my Meg-Ryan-From-Harry-Met-Sally complicated orderers -- kids wanting to hold the tomatoes, beans on the side, extra sour cream, multiple soda refills. (I want to warn "First World Problem Alert" when we enter a restaurant!)

Food was good! Remodeling, so expected a bit of the topsy-turvy visually when were were there this summer. This place has a lot of loyal, longstanding customers, and has that comfy, local-yokel feel. We liked it.

In Adam's Fall

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

I have been staying up late at night reading, and reading desperately in carpool line, and reading distractedly at gas station pumps -- the picture of the undisciplined, novel-engrossed housewife someone might have written a cautionary tale about in 1890. (Well, minus the carpool lines and gas station pumps.) Thanks a lot, David Mitchell.

Paul Simon was the only living boy in New York, and I suspect I am the only living English major to discover Mitchell just last week. By the time I hear about The Next Big Thing it is usually The Last Big Thing. That said:

Starting with the gradual decline (and final redemption) of the ship bound Adam Ewing, the novel is a tight, satisfying story compiled of tight, satisfying stories, a walk through time and the human condition via reincarnation (or perhaps it is generations): racism, courage, liberation, political economy, stewardship of the earth, and, ultimately, human nature.

Reformed friends, we may reject Buddhist and hyper-feminist notions, but if you want a moving picture of both original sin and human potential, this novel is that. Consciously or unconsciously, it is also profoundly pro-life, especially the story of Sonmi. (Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is even more starkly pro-life.)

Maybe you are just interested in reading a good story? Cloud Atlas is a novel and also a collection of several stories in different genres -- the journal travelogue, the letter, the spy thriller, the humorous narrative, the sci-fi novella. His characters are full but his language is efficient.

Zac Brown

Saw Zac Brown band at Gexa pavilion in Dallas last night. Sat on the grass. Great venue. Band draws families and old people and teens. But still, we didn't fit in. Because we don't have cowboy boots.

Here's their skilled rendition of a favorite. Not sure if you can catch it, but towards the end, Zac Brown does some great stuff with his guitar.

Devil Went Down to Georgia 

David Mitchell Quoting Gibbon

"A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon conquered by the corruption of taste."

(quoted in Cloud Atlas p 147)

Single Moms in North Texas

I want to draw your attention to two Christian ministries people in our church are heavily involved in here in North Texas.

This is really a "genius scenario" as it turns out -- the first ministry provides counseling and assistance to women with unplanned pregnancies, and the second ministry provides shelter and career counseling for single mothers who need it. In both ministries mothers will receive not only physical help but the gospel. Living water and material sustenance and guidance to help them get on their feet and provide for themselves and their children.

Please consider finding out more about these ministries, sharing information with people who made be in need, and giving if you are led. Both are in McKinney Texas.

Hope Resource Center

Shiloh Place

An Organic Family Farm Near You, North Texans

A family at Will's school, Coram Deo Academy in Collin County, recently opened an organic farm. They supply locals with organic produce and honey -- including the "Harvest" farm-to-table restaurant in McKinney. This is truly a sweet family who has found a way to work hard doing what they love together.

Check out the link and have a visit some time! It's right in Celina -- so not far away from north Dallas towns. You can also see their facebook page -- with some really gorgeous photos.

Cartermere Farms

HGTVs Elbow Room, Tuesday 11:30 EST,10:30 Central

...features my sister-in-law and brother's house -- Adam and Leigh Anne Redd's in Atlanta. Host Chip Wade and his team did an innovative renovation.

http://www.hgtv.com/elbow-room/show/index.html

One Critique of "Courtship:" Or, Why DO We Have to Go Steady?

Mid-century (as in non-"courtship") American dating practices can remove heavy pressure and unwholesome emotional intensity in dating, and promote young people gaining wisdom and knowledge about the kind of person they should marry. This guys asks -- what about the good, old-fashioned casual date of a movie and ice cream? (Remember Elisabeth and Jim Elliot and their "coke dates"?)

How "Courtship" Is Flawed

After Sunday: With Gladness and Singleness of Heart

"Eternal God, heavenly Father,

You have graciously accepted us as living members

of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ,

and you have fed us with spiritual food

in the sacrament of his body and blood.

Send us now into the world in peace,

and grant us strength and courage

to love and serve you

with gladness and singleness of heart;

through Christ our Lord.

Amen"

(Book of Common Prayer, Holy Eucharist II p 365)

Something Good Happened in Russia

A report from the Russian Orthodox Church on an international gathering of government officials, clergy, and others: "International Forum on the Large Family and the Future of Humanity" 

'Addressing the forum, Patriarch Kirill said in particular, “The large family is a phenomenon that influences very many because the large family is an example of how people build a very solid community by dedicating their life to others. The large and healthy family is a factor defining the moral health of the whole society. That is my profound conviction and for this reason I support all the events and the program which you have carried out in cooperation with like-minded people from many countries of the world”.

In his speech, Metropolitan Hilarion stated a demographic crisis in Russia and Europe caused among other things by the crisis of the family, “especially the crisis of the large family. The life of a large family in today’s Russia is an everyday hard work and feat; it is a life against all the patterns of a society of comfort”. Among the acute problems impeding the preservation of moral family climate in Russia is an enormous number of abortions. Metropolitan Hilarion called for solidarity of all religious confessions and all people of good will in the efforts “to safeguard the family against challenges of the secular world thus protecting our future."'

Family Worship Part II: The Time and Manner of Family Worship

To follow up from the first article, The Heart of Family Worship, here is the second and last installment on the topic of family worship by Scott Redd.

The Time and Manner of Family Worship

How High Is the Divorce Rate among Practicing Religious People?

Bears repeating, in case you missed it -- a correction to a common misconception.

Gospel Coalition fact checker on Divorce

Divorce stat article by same author at "Church Leaders" site

Jesus As a Model of Manliness

Contrasting the first and second Adam -- Lecrae Moore, Reformed Christian music artist.

Beware What You Revere

One analysis of various cultures that foster rape, Rape and Rotherham, and the misplaced reverence within those cultures..

Cycling and the Brain

David pointed out to me this interesting article on the intersection of cycling, behavior, and brain function

Brain Function and Cycling

If I were a man I'd want his name

The newly discovered viking ring fortress of Sweyn Forkbeard.

A Bad Month

Thoughts on the month of August and the hope that does not disappoint.

What This Summer Taught Us by Scott Redd

Pleading the Case for the Mundane

A letter to a gifted prep school friend

Dear Friend,

You are caught up in a hundred little deaths of your soul these days. You are forced to sit through classes which are beneath you.

You know more about these books, these histories; you understand them better than your peers. You are better read than some of your teachers. This is really true, at least in an academic sense.

In other classes you are made to study material you know you will never use. Odds are good you won't need that quadratic formula in graduate school or in cooking your dinner.

And this is an indignity. You, O Suburban Minion, must abide the endless chores of polite conversation, lunchroom shufflings, leading questions, obvious observations, endless chores, polite conversation....

You have better taste.

Every day you are forced to eat food lacking in subtlety, speak to people lacking in insight and nuance, and grind through homework assignments lacking in imagination and spark, taught by adults who punch the card when you include "setting," "characters," and an ample amount of ham-handed adverbial verbiage. Similes that sit like a knuckle sandwich in your mouth.

What's the use? Where are Sartre and Camus and Kerouc and Woolf in all of this mundane flotsam and jetsam? Where is the Green Knight?

Where is Keats in this tedious homework assignment to analyze Fanny Brawne -- 'til the Bright Star herself becomes thick-limbed, ugly, and graceless with dead eyes? Nothing like the sun.

Oh to be one of those noted intellectuals! Those brilliant sparks, caught up in thought and conversation, and not hampered by The Daily Bourgeois of suburban high school and carpool line and vacuuming the stairs.

Oh to feed that bright fire of the mind, all day, with people who understand and appreciate the heat!

Yet, you are well-read. What about those characters you know so well?

What about Saruman in his tall tower hanging in the thin air far above the plains and the little men and the beasts.

What about Uncle Andrew and Queen Jadis, and their "high and lonely destiny"?

What about that invisible man, and his lone scientific pursuit of autonomy, fed by a withered heart lacking in human connection?

What if Dr. Frankenstein was a monster and the Monster had a soul?

What about Virginia's Lighthouse? Did it help her see the rocks?

And you have read The Intellectual Greats. What if:

What if many of those ivory tower intellectuals were tiresome bores in the pub or the parlor?

What if it would be insufferable to share just one drink with them? What if they were the ones everyone avoided at the cocktail party or on the street?

What if they were people that made other people look at the clock to mutter about appointments and traffic and "needing to go, so nice to touch base with you...."

What if -- in their rejection of humility, humanity, and the simplicity of duty -- they lost touch with glory, divinity, and the deeply complex?

What if, in their single-minded pursuit of truth and beauty in isolation -- in the rarefied company of themselves and their toadying salons -- they lost both. (Truth and beauty, that is.)

What if we all felt sorry for their wives and children and dogs and next door neighbors?

And more.

What if Mother Teresa was a genius and Sartre was a fool (himself telling tales full of sound and fury, signifying nothing)?

What if Einstein practiced piano scales daily as a kid?

What if the capitalist down the street is a philanthropist, the humanist down the street is a misanthropist, the scholar is a bigot, and the small town sheriff is a sage?

What if theology is the queen of the sciences?

It's complicated, isn't it?

Think:

What if we maintain our connection to the divine, in part, by maintaining our relationship with the human?

What if we love God in part by loving others and performing daily duties?

What if even the Word Himself became flesh. And dwelt among us.

And what if to love and know and learn, we have to go where the unwashed they are, and live where the un-nuanced they live, and eat their casseroles, boiled vegetables, and drink their iced tea, and do their homework assignments?

And in meeting with daily life and daily people, what if we find not just truth and beauty, but also ourselves right there?

What if we find that we, in fact, are just another one of them: merely a co-regent of all creation. (Nothing big.)

My friend, what if we find our best selves in the mundane performance of daily duties that bring order and abundance, done with love, joy, and humility?

Here is your next homework assignment for "Life 101"

* Read the Gospel of John to yourself aloud and slowly
* Read "The Practice of the Presence of God" by Brother Andrew
* Read "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson
* Discuss with your fellow co-regents. (Ie, your middle class parents, teachers, and friends. You might be surprised at how much they know.)

Sincerely,
An old friend who once hated homework, wore black turtlenecks, and choked on both gnats and Camels

Little birthday poem

for Sarah

She of the soft brown hair
Bright brown eyes
Math problem sighs
Puppy dog highs
Pink lip gloss

She of the cartwheels,
Handsprings
Trampoline tumbling
Shy-brave smiling
Flip-flop flipping
Flowered shorts

She of the tie-dye
Shirts,
Daddy flirts
Besties texting
Cookie baking
"Iced-chai-latte" thirst
Queen of Latin First
(and Second) Declensions
Our third
Is 12 today

North Pond Hermit

Interesting story, link below, about a man who lived a quarter of a century alone in the woods in Maine.

While socially a hermit, it's interesting to consider that he hovered so close to civilization always and was completely dependent on the takings and leavings of the civilization he rejected -- food, books, clothes, radios.  An isolated consumer who even, finally, seemed to have lost a realistic sense of self or personhood. It's as if, in total isolation from intimacy he lost perspective about his own personhood and community, both.

When we lack intimacy and community with others, do we lose intimacy even with our own person?

Discussing the article, my mom and I chuckled at He-of-the-Propane-Tanks-and-Cheetos calling Thoreau a "dilettante."

Aside from all of this, it's interesting to think about re-entering the modern world after so long from it. His comments on the blaring lack of "nuance" as he re-entered our culture are interesting. Can you imagine the starkness of a lack of nuance and subtlety faced by this guy as he was driven down any town street or, for goodness sakes, when he turned on the tv?

And I am also fascinated that every winter he woke himself every morning at 2 am to be sure to stay warm

What a strange 25 years for the people in that community!

The Strange Tale of the North Pond Hermit

Small Cool One

Liquid fur
Flows, crossing concrete and curb
Streaming through green grass

Silky, threading disaster
Needling cars, boys, and falling leaves
Skirting tires and mailboxes
Dashing at trees

To mix with light and shadow
Of brown leaf and log
To ripple in hiding on a branch
And wink at barking dog

"Religion without the Good Bits"

A critique of Richard Dawkins atheist cult of personality in The Spectator:

The bizarre -- and costly -- cult of Richard Dawkins

Dawkins comments on "mild pedophilia" -- a necessary conclusion of a subjective, man-centered morality

Richard Dawkins Under Fire for Mild Pedophilia Remarks

Question and Answer

What are God's deeds like?

God's deeds are great and amazing.

What are God's ways like?

God's ways are just and true.

What has been revealed?

God's righteous acts.

Who, alone, is holy?

God.

Who will come and worship before him?

All nations will come and worship before him

Revelations 15

2 And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. 3 And they sing the song of Moses,the servant[a] of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,

“Great and amazing are your deeds,
    O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
    O King of the nations![b]
4 Who will not fear, O Lord,
    and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
    All nations will come
    and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Family Worship

First part in a two-part series by Scott Redd, at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals site, "The Christward Collective."

The Heart of Family Worship

Book Larnin'

Intriguing article in the New Republic for parents of high schoolers by William Deresiewicz. (And even if you are not considering a top-tier school, helpful in considering why you are sending them to college.) 

While I'm not sure I agree with the weighted SAT, I like many of his other suggestions. 

The Problem with Ivy League Schools

"Baby, tell me what you think about this..."

Some modern country for your listening pleasure

Love the way these two harmonize together, gorgeous harmony. Beautiful song and video.

Back at Mama's

And another good song by Miranda Lambert.

Automatic

Old stuff:
Nickel Creek 
The Hand Song

Out of the Woods

And of course some Alison Krauss. You didn't think I do even a wee post like this without her?

The Lucky One

Ghost in This House

Stay

From Sunergoi: A Simple Love

For those in search of a simple life, here is a post by my brother about a simple love:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/simplicity-is-about-god

And on creation ordinances:

http://sunergoi.blogspot.com/2014/07/during-conversation-today-seminary.html

Remembering an Old Friend

A friend of mine from college died recently. He was known for encouraging others in the faith, and loved by many friends. But he took his own life this April, overwhelmed with a heavy burden.

These two short pieces were both written by friends of Mark for a recent memorial service. They were both written independently of each other. The Lord knows us fully -- but our friends know us more than a little, too.

Remembering Mark
Scott Redd

I consider it a great honor that I was able to call Mark Finch a friend for so many years.

I suspect that many of the remembrances of Mark highlight his intellect and sense of humor. Mark’s depth of knowledge became more apparent to me over the years as we would talk about topics ranging from theology to politics and social life. Usually there was some topic that I had recently discovered only to find that he was not only familiar with it but had thought about it from several different perspectives. Mark was a consummate self-learner, broadening his own intellectual horizons far beyond the material covered in his formal education.

Much of his intellectual energy was, of course, directed toward memorizing lines from Saturday Night Live skits and Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey and then reciting them back at just the appropriate moment, when the situation was particularly fitting. The man could deadpan. I remember standing by the drink fountain at the William & Mary “Caf” when Mark sidled up, resting his arm on the ice dispenser, and saying in accented character, “You lika the juice, eh? Juice is very good, eh?” (from an SNL skit).

Mark was also a loyal friend. He helped me through several difficult times in my life, reminding me of the comfort that we have because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was immensely interested in the personal struggles Christians experience throughout their lives, and he would listen to me as I gave expression to my experiences. I knew he was listening, because he would often ask me about something I had said a week or a month before and inquire about how I was doing now.

I knew that Mark wrestled with deep things, personal things. The life of the Christian is often marked by conflict, spiritual and otherwise, and I know these matters concerned him deeply. I am profoundly saddened that the conflict isolated him and that his burden seemed too great for him to bear in this life.

I am so sorry for you, Mark’s family, grieving the loss of a dear brother and son. I have been lifting you up in prayer, for comfort in the Lord and the grace to grieve as ones who have hope (1 Thess 4:13-14).

I miss Mark. We had fallen out of touch in recent years, but he is one of those people whom the Lord used to influence me in my early Christian life. I miss him sharing this world with us, but I do know that our Good Shepherd lives, and he gathers his sheep to himself. He knows them and they know his voice.

Thank you, Lord, for letting me know Mark Finch.

Here is a link to my brother's blog about Mark's death.
http://sunergoi.blogspot.com/

***

Mark and I knew each other in college at William and Mary, we were part of the same social circle of InterVarsity friends. 

I best remember Mark's sense of humor. He enjoyed both nuanced and frank humor. He could tell a good joke -- and also he could spot a good joke from another source, and recount it with flawless timing and inflection. Mark would start to laugh while he was telling a joke and be overcome mid-sentence -- shaking with laughter and holding his side while he tried to get out the words.

In school Mark worked as a night guard in the foyer of the English building. This meant he sat at a big wooden table and checked people's ID cards. I would meet him there to study (we were both in the same classes), but more often than not, we ended up either in muffled laughter over something ('Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey') or in sharing good lines of Shakespeare. (Well, I guess that last part helped me in my classes a little bit!) 

Other people would come by to sit and talk. I remember that Mark was always game for a good discussion about Scripture (he was reading a tome called Hard Sayings of the Bible at one point) or Literature. In his studies, he could catch -- brilliantly -- the whole meaning of a passage, including the pathos and humor of any story. 

Mark loved photography and taught me some basic things about taking good photographs. Once we spent a day on Cumberland Island in Georgia, with its beautiful modern ruins and white sands and dripping trees covered with Spanish moss. He taught how to catch just the right angle to make a shot interesting -- and to make one picture tell a story. His pictures could make you want to climb right into the shot.

Mark loved literature and read it with insight and understanding. In writing and in conversation and in humor and in photography, Mark was a master of nuance and understood something not just in the obvious way, but for what was implied, however subtly. 

It is a sadness to me that Mark is not here to listen to his friends remember him, and that such a gifted and insightful person is not here any more. I trust and hope that he is now with the One who fully knows him and loves him and enjoys him as he was made -- the Giver of all of his personality and significant talents and gifts.

-- Anne Chamberlin 

Christian Understanding

Paraphrase from pages 141-142 of People of the Book by David Lyle Jeffrey.

The Bible teaches us the Christian understanding of the invisible is limited, has not yet reached fullness (I Corinthians 13:9-12)

And yet Christian understanding of the invisible is also "referential" -- can be inferred from what we do see (Romans 1:20)

We are limited in our understanding of an infinite God, yet not fully limited -- we do enjoy revelation.

Marilynne Robinson on the Human Mind and Truth

* On the condescension of the modern thinker:

"Much of the power of an argument like Kugel's [that the Biblical flood narrative is diminished by modern confrontations with the Babylonion Gilgamesh flood story] comes from the notion that the information on which it is based is new, another one of those world-transforming thresholds, one of those bold strokes of intellect that burn the fleets of the past. This motif of a shocking newness that must startle us into a painful recognition is very much a signature of 'the modern,' and potent rhetorically, more so because we are conditioned to accept such claims as plausible. But it often achieves its effects by misrepresenting an earlier state of knowledge or simply failing to enquire into it."

And here she cites Hugo Grotius discourse confronting the Biblical and Babylonion flood narratives -- a discourse dating from 1622. In other words, the "modern" confrontation of the Biblical Flood narrative with the Gilgamesh epic is quite old news, and the implications of the Babylonian flood narrative on Biblical history have already been grappled with -- straightforwardly -- by long-dead thinkers. According to Robinson, Kugel condescends to critique older thinkers, yet seemingly hasn't actually read them.

Furthermore, "[Kugel's] low estimate of Babylonia becomes the basis for a lowered estimate of the Hebrew Bible--the modernist declension. Assuming one narrative is without meaning, we must or may assume the other is, too. [But] This conclusion in all its parts is perfectly arbitrary."

Makes me want to read Kugel (and more Robinson).

* Another quote, discussing the modern naturalist's view of the mind:

"The great breach that separates the modern Western world from its dominant traditions of religion and metaphysics is the prestige of opinion that throws into question the scale of reality in which the mind participates. Does it open on ultimate truth, at least potentially or in momentary glimpses, or is it an extravagance of nature, brilliantly complex yet created and radically constrained by its biology and by cultural influence?"

Absence of Mind, Marilynne Robinson

Training for the Kingdom of Peace

"In these days we are in training for the kingdom of peace that will come on earth. The bible is full of of promises regarding the things that are going to happen when Jesus returns. The wolf will lie with lamb, swords will be changed into plowshares, nuclear energy will be used to build up, to heal, and no longer to destroy."

NOT I, BUT CHRIST
Corrie ten Boom

2 Corinthians: "18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,[a] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."

From Genesis 2: "15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."

From Revelations 21:

"Then I saw ya new heaven and a new earth, for zthe first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.2 And I saw athe holy city, bnew Jerusalem, ccoming down out of heaven from God, dprepared eas a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, fthe dwelling place1 of God is with man. He will gdwell with them, and they will be his people,2 and God himself will be with them as their God.3 4 hHe will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and ideath shall be no more, jneither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

5 And khe who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I lam making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for mthese words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, n“It is done! oI am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. pTo the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 qThe one who conquers will have this heritage, and rI will be his God and she will be my son. 8 tBut as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, utheir portion will be in vthe lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is wthe second death.”

9 Then came xone of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full ofythe seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show youzthe Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And ahe carried me away in the Spirit to ba great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 chaving the glory of God, dits radiance elike a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal."