What does it look like, specifically, to do justly in Austin? How can we do this together?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tag and Response
My buddy Wes tagged me on his blog the other day. The rules are:
*Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog
*Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself
*Tag seven other people at the end of your post and link to their blogs
*Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
1) Whenever I clock out at work I hear the words "Seacrest out" in my head.
2) Occasionally, when I am up on a roof or other high structure, I get the sense that I have flown before and that, if I took a leap, I would do it again.
3) I've always short of wished I could have replaced Jim Henson as the voice of Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, etc. and so on
4) I have an idea for what I think would be the ultimate Superman story
5) I can't stand My Bloody Valentine, but have always felt I should like them
6) I make the sign of the cross whenever I pass the scene of an accident
7) I like eggs and cheese, but hate foods that mix eggs and cheese
I'd like to see the following people respond to this tag:
Top 40 of 2008
For those of you who are new to my best of lists, here's the rules.
Albums must have been released in 2008, not just have been discovered by me in 2008.
One representative track per album will be placed on cd mix.
Number of songs on list will be determined by number of songs that can fit on said cd.
This year's list is made up of 24 songs based upon the best 24 albums (in order):
1. Nothing Ever Happened -Deerhunter (Microcastle)
2. Fools -The Dodos (Visiter)
3. But For You Who Fear My Name -The Welcome Wagon (Welcome To The Welcome Wagon)
4. Skinny Love -Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago)
5. Little David, Play On Your Harp -Nimrod Workman (I Want To Go Where Things Are Beautiful)
6. When We Embraced -Micah P. Hinson (Micah P. Hinson & The Red Empire Orchestra)
7. White Winter Hymnal -Fleet Foxes (Fleet Foxes)
8. Boneless -The Notwist (The Devil, You + Me)
9. Rooks -Shearwater (Rook)
10. Family Tree -TV On The Radio (Dear Science)
11. 5 Years Time -Noah and the Whale (Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down)
12. People Talk -Cheap Time (Cheap Time)
13. American Gangster Time -Elvis Costello (Momofuku)
14. Sequestered In Memphis -The Hold Steady (Stay Positive)
15. The Old Days -Dr. Dog (Fate)
16. Not Your Lover -Blitzen Trapper (Furr)
17. The Next Time Around -Little Joy (Little Joy)
18. Strange Victory Strange Defeat -Silver Jews (Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea)
19. Pieces of What -MGMT (Oracular Spectacular)
20. Where Is The Puzzle? -Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Lie Down In The Light)
21. Gardenia -Stephen Malkmus (Real Emotional Trash)
22. When We Were Still Friends -Herman Dune (Next Year In Zion)
23. Call It A Ritual -Wolf Parade (At Mount Zoomer)
24. A-Punk -Vampire Weekend (Vampire Weekend)
And, because this was such a good year for music, here's 16 more songs I liked more than the albums they appeared on:
1. Sultan -What Made Milwaukee Famous
2. In The New Year -The Walkmen
3. California Girls -The Magnetic Fields
4. What It's All About -Girl Talk
5. Warchild -Emmanuel Jal
6. No One Does It -Department of Eagles
7. Bruises -Chairlift
8. Lost Coastlines -Okkervil River
9. Sitting -White Denim
10. Taking The Farm -The War On Drugs
11. Black Rice -Women
12. Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2 -My Morning Jacket
13. Grapevine Fires -Death Cab For Cutie
14. Snowblind -plus/minus
15. Psychotic Girl -The Black Keys
16. Miniature Birds -Grand Archives
Monday, October 27, 2008
A Biblical Concept of Justice
At the heart of the Biblical concept of justice is this; until everyone has enough, no one should have more than enough.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The ACU Difference
Went back to my alma mater (ACU) for a 10 year reunion this weekend. I have mixed feelings about my alma mater, but not about the people I went to school with and spent time with over the past two days. One of said friends, commenting on "the ACU difference" that is spoken of in all the school's print material, put it best: "You know, much as I hate to admit it, I look around at these people and think 'there really is an ACU difference.'"
He's right. I'll probably always have mixed feelings about my ACU experience, but never about my ACU friends.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Pretending To Be Real
A woman from Immanuel recently shared with me an interaction between her and her 3 year old daughter. The daughter had come to her saying something about scary monsters. The mother had asked if they were pretend monsters. The exchange then went like this:
"Yes, but they're pretending to be real."
"Your pretend monsters are pretending to be real?"
"Yes, my pretend monsters are pretending to be real."
I have the same problem with my pretend monsters. Or, as Neil Young once wrote, "Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away."
My prayer this week is that the reality of God might fill up my life and banish my pretend monsters.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Thoughts From Sabbatical
I'm in Abilene this week, trying to sit quietly and listen and discern what God wants to do with me this next year and what He wants to do with Immanuel. It has been a rewarding and challenging and draining experience; I'm tired, but I'm good tired.
I was also, inexplicably, inspired to write a poem. It's in progress. Here's a sample:
Christ walks out onto troubled waters
And He bids us follow Him
In shallow pools, we may not sink
But we will never learn to swim
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!
One of the many reasons I get annoyed by Mark Driscoll. First off, any good reading of the Biblical language knows this passage isn't male specific. Also, it isn't about being stay-at-home, it's about being a deadbeat. It's about guys who play Nintendo while their families starve. It is NOT about dad's who stay at home and do the hard work of raising kids. Just watch it for yourselves on YouTube.
Blog Action Day -Enough Is Enough
I know this seems like a copout post, but every time I try and write something for today, I find that this previous post and the conversation it inspired is what I really want you to read. Please read and join in. Thanks.
Also, visit the Blog Action Day post at www.austinklings.blogspot.com
Blog Action Day -I Have Your Coat
Years ago I sat in a room full of middle schoolers and asked them how they felt about helping those in poverty. Expecting them to say that the problem felt overwhelming or that helping made them feel good, I was, instead, met with a quick barrage of reasons not to help those in need:
They won't appreciate it
They spend money on the wrong things
They'll go back to the same old life the next day
They wouldn't need help if they'd just work
Of course, I could hardly blame these middle schoolers. They were voicing what they'd heard spouted by adults, most likely around a dinner table.
Briefly at a loss as to how to respond, I recovered and asked them what would happen if God withheld His grace using the same reasoning.
They wouldn't need help if they'd just work
They'll go back to the same old life the next day
They spend money on the wrong things
They won't appreciate it
Now, I know that helping those in need is a complicated issue and that handing a guy on the street a couple of bucks can be as much about avoiding the issue as actually helping, but it concerns me how many of us are still looking for any excuse not to help. Our money is hard earned, our time is precious, our resources and what we do with them is no ones business but ours.
Me and my fellow Christians can be the worst of the bunch. We embrace the pursuit of happiness as if it were a part of our own story and not one handed to us by others. We cling to what it ours, say things like "honest work for honest pay", and accuse those in need of being lazy or con-artists or out and out thieves.
But the Bible takes an interesting view on theft. In the Old Testament, God's people not only viewed taking from others as theft, they viewed withholding from others as theft.
This is echoed throughout Jesus' teaching and the New Testament as a whole. John the Baptist says in Luke 3:11, "The man with two coats should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
I'm tired of hearing that this kind of teaching is communism or socialism, just because it isn't capitalism. The fact is that this kind of sharing is simply Christian. It is the understanding that if I have two coats and you have no coat, I have your coat.
And I should give it back to you.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Church
Though there is some debate as to who first said it (I've most often heard it attributed to Augustine), some Christian thinker once famously said: The church is a whore, but she's my mother.
God once commanded the prophet Hosea to take an adulterous wife, so that their marriage might serve as a picture of the relationship between God and His people.
I've been thinking a lot this week about the church and have asked, not for the first time, what is God doing with her? He could do so much better! Why stay faithful to one who, as Sartre famously stated, "sells her favors to the rich." One who chases after lesser lovers and is never content to simply be with God.
Put another way, why does God keep putting up with me? I take more than my fair share, even when He commands me not to, I am given over to greed and lust and anger and apathy and pettiness and ugliness and selfishness.
Derek Webb puts it this way:
So could you love this bastard child?
Though I don't trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And the other in your side
I'm too easily distracted, too easily sedated, too easily satisfied and pacified and pleased.
And, for that, I repent.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
"...As Long As We Don't Get What We Deserve."
My brother and I like to share quotes with one another, and one of our favorites is, "we may not always get what we want, just as long as we don't get what we deserve."
It's a good reminder and yet one I find myself kicking against.
In C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce, Lewis imagines a circumstance in which citizens of hell can take bus tours of heaven and, if they so choose, may stay there. What his characters discover is that there is an unfairness in God's mercy that they cannot accept, even when it would do them good.
Too often, I find myself having that same struggle. As one of the visitors in Lewis' book shouts, "I only want my rights. I'm not asking for anybody's bleeding charity." I begin to think that I'm not that bad and that, if I did get what I deserve, it wouldn't be that bad either.
But it would be. If I take time to really examine myself, my thoughts, my actions, my life, I would be lost without the Bleeding Charity of Christ. It's why grace will, for me, always trump karma, because karma will always make me a bug, only grace can make me a man.
I know the grace of Christ is often viewed by outsiders (and, too often, by insiders) as simply being let off the hook to behave in all sorts of horrible ways, but that misunderstands the grace of God. God's grace allows me chance after chance to be less like my worst self and more like my best, it puts to death my old life and gives me a new one.
And that is more than I deserve. It is more than I can ever earn or repay and that fact doesn't compel me to work less, but to work more. To strive to live a life worthy of my calling instead of doing only that which will get me my rights. It allows me to give up my self along with my sin and to be someone better than I could ever be.
One of the angels in Lewis' book declares, "Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought."
But I keep trying to pay for what I cannot afford instead of living gratefully for what I've been given.
And, for that, I repent.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Exception
Just read a hopeful post about engaging in conversation about faith and Christ. I get opportunities to do this all the time, often with a similar result. And yet, those I engage with seem convinced that I am the exception to Christianity and not the rule.
This is my prayer for the universal church as well as the Immanuel Austin community: that we might make the exception the rule.
Read the post and respond here. Thanks.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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