Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.
Yo-Yo Ma
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Yard Sale Mix Tapes
They say one man's trash is another man's treasure. But, sometimes, one man's treasure becomes the same man's trash. And, in rarer instances, that first man's trash can become another man's treasure.
The yard sale came first. Well... technically, the mix tapes came first, but the yard sale was where I came in. The yard sale where I stumbled upon a drawer full of an unknown person's mix tapes. "You can use them as blanks," I was told, "25 cents a piece."
But I didn't want to use them as blanks. I wanted to see what it would be like to know, literally, nothing about a person except for the mix tapes that they had, at one time, cared enough to make.
So, I have created a new blog where I will dissect a stranger's mix tapes, one tape at a time, track by track. I have no idea what I am in for. I am excited to hear.
The yard sale came first. Well... technically, the mix tapes came first, but the yard sale was where I came in. The yard sale where I stumbled upon a drawer full of an unknown person's mix tapes. "You can use them as blanks," I was told, "25 cents a piece."
But I didn't want to use them as blanks. I wanted to see what it would be like to know, literally, nothing about a person except for the mix tapes that they had, at one time, cared enough to make.
So, I have created a new blog where I will dissect a stranger's mix tapes, one tape at a time, track by track. I have no idea what I am in for. I am excited to hear.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Too Sick To Pray
I've been too sick to pray Lord
That's why we ain't talked in awhile
It's been some of them days Lord
I thought I was on my last mile
But I'm feeling okay Lord
I'm glad that I called you today
Never needed you more
I would have called you before
But I've been too sick to pray
-Willie Nelson
That's why we ain't talked in awhile
It's been some of them days Lord
I thought I was on my last mile
But I'm feeling okay Lord
I'm glad that I called you today
Never needed you more
I would have called you before
But I've been too sick to pray
-Willie Nelson
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The Right Question
The first question that the priest asked; the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But then the good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question, "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
But then the good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question, "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Truth and Misery
"People have always been depressed, but, during the early 80's, there just seemed to be this overwhelming public consensus that being depressed was the most normal thing anyone could be; in fact, being depressed sort of meant you were smart." -Chuck Klosterman
One of the perks of working at a place like BookPeople (maybe the biggest perk, in fact) is that the environment invites conversations about the whys and wherefores of life, as well as the sort of co-workers that you would want to have these sorts of conversations with. One such co-worker is my friend, Jenn. Jenn is crazy smart and super literate, but is not at all pretentious or off-putting. She can speak intelligently about art and about what art says and why art matters without being someone who can only talk about such things. Anyway, Jenn's cool, but cool in a way that both my sister and my grandfather would like, and not just in a way my hipster ex-girlfriend would like.
So, today Jenn and I are talking about authors writing today and about how literary seems, to an increasing degree, to equal miserable. She gives as one example the fact that more than a few of the novels she has read recently include the brutal death of an animal. She says, more generally, that it seems as if classic literature used to allow that a book could be hopeful and its characters generous, kind, and even happy without this ever seeming shallow or sappy; and yet, more recent fiction seems set on being dark, depressed, and even violent.
Granted, that's a broad statement, and Jenn knew that when she made it. She knows that dark and violent novels have been around a lot longer than the last decade. She wasn't trying to offer up an indisputable fact so much as to address a mood, a feeling that the current trend in literary fiction is towards something darker and meaner, more cynical and clinical. Her question was this; can you give an example of recent fiction that was both literary and yet not miserable?
I could only come up with one, off the top of my head, and that was Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Robinson's novel has its sad moments, but it is, ultimately, a hopeful and redemptive story. But it was the only example I could come up with. I consulted my "Kester's Best of the Decade" display in the store; Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, these are miserable stories, every one. I tried to rack my brain, but couldn't come up with one other example of a novel, written in the past decade, that wasn't more miserable than not.
My contribution to this conversation was to wonder if we haven't started to equate truth with misery; to assert that the hopeful people are just those who aren't paying attention. Understand that neither I nor Jenn are complaining that these more miserable fictions aren't good (they made my "Best of the Decade"), or even that they should be less miserable (how do you write an upbeat version of The Road?), but we did share a concern that the smartest among us may have given up hope and may even have embraced the idea that doing so is the smart thing to do.
What do you think?
One of the perks of working at a place like BookPeople (maybe the biggest perk, in fact) is that the environment invites conversations about the whys and wherefores of life, as well as the sort of co-workers that you would want to have these sorts of conversations with. One such co-worker is my friend, Jenn. Jenn is crazy smart and super literate, but is not at all pretentious or off-putting. She can speak intelligently about art and about what art says and why art matters without being someone who can only talk about such things. Anyway, Jenn's cool, but cool in a way that both my sister and my grandfather would like, and not just in a way my hipster ex-girlfriend would like.
So, today Jenn and I are talking about authors writing today and about how literary seems, to an increasing degree, to equal miserable. She gives as one example the fact that more than a few of the novels she has read recently include the brutal death of an animal. She says, more generally, that it seems as if classic literature used to allow that a book could be hopeful and its characters generous, kind, and even happy without this ever seeming shallow or sappy; and yet, more recent fiction seems set on being dark, depressed, and even violent.
Granted, that's a broad statement, and Jenn knew that when she made it. She knows that dark and violent novels have been around a lot longer than the last decade. She wasn't trying to offer up an indisputable fact so much as to address a mood, a feeling that the current trend in literary fiction is towards something darker and meaner, more cynical and clinical. Her question was this; can you give an example of recent fiction that was both literary and yet not miserable?
I could only come up with one, off the top of my head, and that was Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Robinson's novel has its sad moments, but it is, ultimately, a hopeful and redemptive story. But it was the only example I could come up with. I consulted my "Kester's Best of the Decade" display in the store; Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, these are miserable stories, every one. I tried to rack my brain, but couldn't come up with one other example of a novel, written in the past decade, that wasn't more miserable than not.
My contribution to this conversation was to wonder if we haven't started to equate truth with misery; to assert that the hopeful people are just those who aren't paying attention. Understand that neither I nor Jenn are complaining that these more miserable fictions aren't good (they made my "Best of the Decade"), or even that they should be less miserable (how do you write an upbeat version of The Road?), but we did share a concern that the smartest among us may have given up hope and may even have embraced the idea that doing so is the smart thing to do.
What do you think?
Saturday, May 1, 2010
What The Trinity Teaches
While recently reading H.W. Brands' newest book, American Dreams, I was struck by a section on the birth of the American suburb. This portion in particular caught my eye:
The suburbs were designed as bedroom communities, havens of rest from the workaday world...The domestic routine of the suburbs tended to block out the rest of the world. "It's not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside," one Levittown woman conceded.
Brands states this simply as a fact, but the description, literally, gave me chills. Not so much as an indictment on what is worst about the American suburb (though I think it is); I was particularly struck by how this mentality has invaded the American church.
Think about it. Would it be unfair to describe most American churches as "havens of rest from the workaday world"? Would it be surprising to hear a pastor say his church is "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
My decade of experience working in churches has often revealed that a conversation that begins to steer us towards how we might bless those outside of the church quickly begins to backpedal whenever the pursuit of said blessing might put the community at risk. We think first about how a course of action might burden us and then, if it won't, about how it might bless others. Of course, we want to bless others. Of course, we want to tell them about Jesus. But what if they bring their messiness into our midst? What if the demands of being Jesus to people take more of my time, money, and energy than I want to give? What if we bless them but never receive anything in return; no saved souls, no new members, no bigger budget? Usually, these concerns are enough for a church to tone down its mission, to risk less, to ask less, and to do less. We've got a good thing going here; why would we want to put that at risk?
This is where right belief informs right behavior, where principle informs practice and where theology is key; in this case, a theology of the Trinity.
In the Trinity we see 3 separate entities so closely connected that they are all, mysteriously, one. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share a union unheard of among the closest of human beings. God is, in and of Himself, a community. And the incarnation puts all of that at risk.
In the very act of becoming human, Jesus begins to experience an otherness that had not previously existed. He has to go off to pray, to spend time in the desert, to experience a closeness with the Father and Spirit that may not, in fact, be first nature. Clearly, a bond still exists, but is it like the union that existed before God became man?
Even if the bond remains unchanged upon Jesus' becoming human, it is certainly rendered, in some meaningful way, at the cross. Whatever the Trinity had before Jesus' birth is, in some way, lost in Christ's cry of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
And yet, because of God's love for us, it was a risk that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were willing to take. Instead of simply enjoying their good thing going, they showed great care for what was going on outside.
The good news that is then offered in the resurrection is that, in Christ, communion can be restored. The Trinity is made whole and invites us to be in Jesus and, therefore, in community with God.
The church that is willing to risk its own well-being can offer the same invitation. As long as we fear death, we cannot love, and we cannot offer hope to those going on outside. But if a church will risk its own death for the sake of the world around it, it can experience new life that others may be invited into.
As the church in America, we must ask ourselves if we are truly the Body of Christ; the Christ who so loved the world that he risked death, knowing that even death is not the end, but only a life lived in fear of death; "for he who wishes to save his life will lose it, but he willing to lose his life, for Christ's sake, will save it."
What are the objections voiced when our church talks about mission? Are they objections born of a desire to be faithful or from a stance of fear? Are we a community that is willing to risk for the sake of the world or are we "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
The suburbs were designed as bedroom communities, havens of rest from the workaday world...The domestic routine of the suburbs tended to block out the rest of the world. "It's not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside," one Levittown woman conceded.
Brands states this simply as a fact, but the description, literally, gave me chills. Not so much as an indictment on what is worst about the American suburb (though I think it is); I was particularly struck by how this mentality has invaded the American church.
Think about it. Would it be unfair to describe most American churches as "havens of rest from the workaday world"? Would it be surprising to hear a pastor say his church is "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
My decade of experience working in churches has often revealed that a conversation that begins to steer us towards how we might bless those outside of the church quickly begins to backpedal whenever the pursuit of said blessing might put the community at risk. We think first about how a course of action might burden us and then, if it won't, about how it might bless others. Of course, we want to bless others. Of course, we want to tell them about Jesus. But what if they bring their messiness into our midst? What if the demands of being Jesus to people take more of my time, money, and energy than I want to give? What if we bless them but never receive anything in return; no saved souls, no new members, no bigger budget? Usually, these concerns are enough for a church to tone down its mission, to risk less, to ask less, and to do less. We've got a good thing going here; why would we want to put that at risk?
This is where right belief informs right behavior, where principle informs practice and where theology is key; in this case, a theology of the Trinity.
In the Trinity we see 3 separate entities so closely connected that they are all, mysteriously, one. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share a union unheard of among the closest of human beings. God is, in and of Himself, a community. And the incarnation puts all of that at risk.
In the very act of becoming human, Jesus begins to experience an otherness that had not previously existed. He has to go off to pray, to spend time in the desert, to experience a closeness with the Father and Spirit that may not, in fact, be first nature. Clearly, a bond still exists, but is it like the union that existed before God became man?
Even if the bond remains unchanged upon Jesus' becoming human, it is certainly rendered, in some meaningful way, at the cross. Whatever the Trinity had before Jesus' birth is, in some way, lost in Christ's cry of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
And yet, because of God's love for us, it was a risk that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were willing to take. Instead of simply enjoying their good thing going, they showed great care for what was going on outside.
The good news that is then offered in the resurrection is that, in Christ, communion can be restored. The Trinity is made whole and invites us to be in Jesus and, therefore, in community with God.
The church that is willing to risk its own well-being can offer the same invitation. As long as we fear death, we cannot love, and we cannot offer hope to those going on outside. But if a church will risk its own death for the sake of the world around it, it can experience new life that others may be invited into.
As the church in America, we must ask ourselves if we are truly the Body of Christ; the Christ who so loved the world that he risked death, knowing that even death is not the end, but only a life lived in fear of death; "for he who wishes to save his life will lose it, but he willing to lose his life, for Christ's sake, will save it."
What are the objections voiced when our church talks about mission? Are they objections born of a desire to be faithful or from a stance of fear? Are we a community that is willing to risk for the sake of the world or are we "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)