I've Moved!

You can check out my new blog at The Sunny Country of Common Sense.

See you there!

Wigs.

This post is a bit of a deviation from the norm, but I wanted to share this little story with my readers.
This all took place about a month and a half ago...

I was driving home from work one day and saw my cat, dead, on the side of the road. I flipped my car around and pulled over, preparing myself to scoop up my nearly dead little Muffin and bring him home for his last moments. As I neared the wet (it was raining) pile of fur, I realize something: this was not my cat--it was a wig!

Strange, I thought. But I went home, hugged my kitty for being alive, and went on with my day.

Then things get weird: a week later, I went into a restaurant for a meeting. When I came out, immediately behind my car was another wig.

Very strange.

Don't worry--I'll let you know if The Wig reappears.

A Proclivity for Pop

I consider my taste in music to be unusually well-rounded. I listen to Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. I'm a minor fan of Willie Nelson and Hank Williams. I like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and am quite fond of the Eagles and U2. I like musicals and I like Billy Idol.

Because my taste in music spans decades (and generations!) I have always thought of my taste in music as being "grown up." But after reading a post on John Mark Reynolds' old blog about a month ago, I've been reconsidering. (As a sidenote, I think that this is how I usually make major conclusions about things in my life. An idea is planted and somehow wriggles itself under my skin where it festers for days until I'm forced to deal with it. And by then, I've already made up my mind.) I like the music that my grandfather liked...when he was a teenager. I like the music my uncles liked...when they were teenagers. I'm stuck in a post-pubescent musical rut. And I want out.

I got a new car stereo a few weeks ago and still don't have it quite figured out. Yesterday, I accidentally reset all my stations. In flipping through my new stations, I stumbled upon Capitol Public Radio. In addition to playing great classical music, the afternoon DJ has a delightful British accent.

And so...March has become Music Month. Specifically, if I'm able to swing by Borders to use a gift card, March will be Mozart Month. I want to start learning about good music. Music that isn't just fun poetry set to music, but music with depth. Music that has inspired music throughout time. Maybe I'll even rent Amadaeus.

Here's to Mozart!

Indifference

I'm reading 1984 with my seniors this quarter. This is my first time teaching the book, so I find myself encountering new ideas as I teach (of course, I hope that I find myself doing the same thing years down the road!). Orwell describes the proles--or proletariats--as being the only hope for the nation. The problem is that the proles don't get it. They are so tied up in their day-to-day that they are unable to see beyond it. Orwell says:

In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activites were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizons of their minds.

It's funny (and not ha-ha funny) to me how much this resembles most Americans. We get caught up in living our day-to-day lives and become blind to the princibles behind our lifestyles. Orwell continues:

No attempts was made to indoctrinate [the proles] with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils inevitably escaped their notice.

Orwell is talking about a group of people who are so consumed with the petty happenings of their lives that they cannot see beyond them, in the political sense. I encouraged my students today to strive to see beyond their daily duties to what lies behind those actions. This is political--absolutely. We should be making our opinions known to the decision makers; we should be drawing attention to important issues. But it is even bigger than politics, I think. It we stay focused on the political arena, we are still guilty of the same shortcoming as Orwell's pride. We need to look beyond the specific and, while not neglecting the specific, make sure we understand the big picture. Do I have a philosophy of life? Do I have an opinion (even a loosely held opinion!) on how God and the government should work together? Do I have sentiments toward God that are more than a general belief in a higher being whom I can call on in the midst of personal or national crises? My hope today is that I'm able to do well in my day-to-day because I am focused on the Big Picture.

Word of the Day

This is the kind of person I want to be!

From Doctor Dictionary's Word of the Day, February 14, 2005:

autodidact \aw-toh-DY-dakt\, noun:
One who is self-taught.

He is our ultimate autodidact, a man who made himself from
nothing into a lawyer, a legislator -- a president.
--Kevin Baker, "Log Cabin Values," [1]New York Times, April
2, 2000

Consider the autodidact in Sartre's Nausea, who is somewhat
unbelievably working his way alphabetically through an
entire library.
--James Wood, "Human, All Too Inhuman," [2]New Republic,
July 24, 2000

Buck's prose is a lot better than you'd expect from a
high-school dropout, but he turns out to be a reader and
autodidact.
--Jonathan Yardley, review of [3]North Star over My
Shoulder: A Flying Life, by Bob Buck, [4]Washington Post,
April 7, 2002
_________________________________________________________

Autodidact is from Greek autodidaktos, "self-taught," from
auto-, "self" + didaktos, "taught," from didaskein, "to
teach."

Top 10 Reasons to Blog

10. Because I can.

9. Because everyone else is doing it.

8. Because, soon, twice as many people will be doing it.

7. Because sometimes there really is nothing better to do during my prep period.

6. Because I get to tell people "I have a blog," and that just sounds cool.

5. Because I can talk about whatever the heck I want to whenever the heck I want to.

4. Because it helps me crystallize my ideas, to remember what I think and why I think it.

3. Because it's free.

2. Because of all those added benefits like building community.

And my number one reason to blog...

1. If you disagree with me, I can delete your comments.

The Theater of the Absurd

I have had issues with this idea of blogging for a while. Why blog? No one is going to read it, except maybe my friends and family--and they already know what I think. And where do I get off thinking that anyone out there cares about my thoughts or the minutia of my daily life? It's so pompous to blog, that it becomes ridiculously silly.

I found this article on the A-Team's Blog a while back. (I'm telling ya, they have great stuff!) It can be found in its entirety here, at Reformation 21.

In "The Theater of the Absurd," Carl Trueman suggests the danger of blogging is that blogmeisters begin to believe that, along with the right to speak, they have the right to be heard. And the internet makes it so easy to be heard! Trueman suggests we combat that nonsense out there by spending the majority of our blog-reading time on blogs that have substantial credentials. It makes far more sense to read the blog of a minister, perhaps, than the blog of some kid with a network computer in his bedroom.

Two sections in this article are worthy of quoting here:

It is that the whole blog phenomenon is inherently ridiculous; that the
more serious it tries to be, the more absurd and pompous it becomes; and that I
believe that if you can't beat the inevitable blogological deconstruction, you
might as well join it, and that with relish. As the old Buddhist proverb says,
'When faced with the inevitable, one must merely accept the inevitable.'

[...]

Or you could try another way, what we might call the 'Samuel Beckett' option: face this theatre of the absurd head-on; join in with the other nobodies pretending to be somebodies; laugh at your own ridiculous complicity in this nonsense; expose the systemic contradictions for all they are worth; mock the blogworld for all of its inane self-importance; and in so doing try in some small way to subvert the system from the inside. It may not ultimately work; but you'll have fun in the process.

So from this nobody pretending to be somebody, Happy New Year and Happy Blogging!

From Saint Nick

The year was sinking into late December, and I was stuck in the waiting room in the Health Center at Biola, a Christian University. I checked the clock frequently while I reviewed my assigned weekly reading for my next class. I was, admittedly, a bit impatient--a vice my family will tell you they often see in me--but the lab technician did seem abnormally slow in printing and bringing me the results of my blood work.

I looked at the time--25 minutes before class. No need to panic, yet. A friend came in to pick up some medicine and we chatted for a bit before she left and I looked at the time again.

Seventeen minutes before class. If the technician didn't hurry up, I would be late. Today, of all days, I didn't want to be late. It was a communications class, one that I had with my dear friend Michelle. Michelle and I had to perform a piece of literature together the next week and were planning to spend this week noting the performance techniques used by our classmates. I looked at the time again: fourteen minutes.

I still had my book open on my lap, but I was staring at the clock when the old man walked in. He was the sort of man that would often make me smile, but today I was far too worried about getting to class on time to take joy in his countless wrinkles and powder white hair.

I watched the old man as he struggled with the front door and hobbled to the front desk. "'Scuse me," he said to the young receptionist behind the desk. "I need to see a doctor to help me put these in." He held up a small bottle of eye drops.

"Oh, you don't need a doctor for that, do you?" replied the receptionist joyfully. "Just a friend."

She was obviously not in a hurry to get to class. I checked the clock again--eight minutes to get to class. If the technician came with my results soon, I could still get to class and review my notes with my friend before the professor arrived.

I watched as the young woman directed the old man to a seat and helped him place a few drops of medicine into each eye. The man thanked her profusely, and she went back to her spot behind the front desk.

But the old man sat still. I was still watching him as he wiped the wet from his face with a crumpled Kleenex pulled from his shirt pocket when he turned and looked me square in the face.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

I was surprised at the direct contact from this stranger in the waiting room, but I smiled and replied anyways, "Merry Christmas, sir."

"What's your name?" he said.

"Danielle."

"Danielle?" he repeated. "Nice to meet you."

I nodded.

"I’m Saint Nicholas." He matter-of-factly stuck out his hand to shake mine.

My smile, I'm sure, at this point faltered. Though I shook his hand, I asked cautiously, "Saint Nicholas, huh?" I chuckled at the quaint old man in front of me.

"Sure. Saint Nicholas. Saint Nick. Either one is fine. Look."

He showed me an ID card bearing his picture. And sure enough, there in black and white "Saint" was printed before Nicholas’s first and last name.

"That’s--funny," I said, not knowing what else to say to a man who had gone through the trouble of having an ID card made with the name of a legendary Christmas icon. Thoughts of sleigh bells, reindeer and elves danced through my mind, quickly followed by thoughts of padded walls and straight-jackets.

"'Course it is," Nicholas said. "But you're a saint, too, you know."

I shook my head, still too dense to see what he meant.

"You know Jesus, don’t you?"

I half-smiled and nodded. "Yes, but--"

"Look it up in your Bible then. You're a saint." Nicholas then proceeded to quote to me from Romans, where Paul calls the beloved of God saints.

I smiled again at Nicholas, this time more assuredly than before. I am a saint, though often times a quite unsaintly one.

Nicholas began telling me how he often uses his name and ID card to connect with people everywhere. He talks to people at the grocery store, on the street, whenever he has the opportunity. The audience is especially open this time of year. Once he has introduced himself, he is able to explain to people that there is nothing about him that makes him a saint, but Christ in him that makes him worthy of the name.

As Nicholas was pulling out pictures of his children and grandchildren to show me, the lab technician arrived with my report.

I stood up and took the report from the lab technician and folded it up to put in my pocket. I looked down at Nicholas as he fumbled to remove the small pictures from his wallet. I picked up my backpack and looked at the clock; only four minutes to get to class, now.

I smiled, took off my backpack, and sat back down, right next to Saint Nicholas.


This year, as the day we remember Christ’s birth draws to a close, I remember Saint Nicholas who shone in his single desire to love his Lord and spread his word.

May I remember Saint Nicholas year-round as I strive to live my faith with my head, heart, and hands, rejoicing in the astonishing fact that my savior--who came to this earth in form of a lowly, poor, infant--has called me his own, one of his saints.

the Creeds

THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED

We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of
all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His Kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

How refreshing it is to read a solid creed, one that states so clearly some of the basics of our Faith. Some would say that this "definition" is too finite for an infinite God. Of course it is! But it is something, and perhaps the best something we can get while we’re on this earth.

What I love about the ancient Creeds is that they do not spend their time writing about why a person should disbelieve Apolloniarianism. They do not focus on proving why it is foolish to believe that Christ is not fully man. Instead, they manage to find a way to boil down their beliefs to the core--to the things that are of the absolute most importance.

With all of the difficult doctrinal/theological/ecclesiological issues that I've been thinking about lately I'm glad to be reminded of the Truth Whom I stand in front of. As I work to understand Him, I am glad that He IS Truth and find peace knowing that of this I can be sure.

Two Great Websites

Two Great Websites

A couple of sites I’ve come to enjoy.

First: the A-team Blog, written by a group of conservative Christians on all things cultural, political, theological.  Excellent thinking and easily navigable!
www.ateam.blogware.com

Second: Challies.  I haven’t quite figured this site out yet, but love the book reviews.  www.challies.com

Dealing with Donald

Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz has been sweeping through my church since summer, like a wildfire unchecked. It has been read to our students in high school--the students are now reading it on their own, voluntarily. The college group has begun three book groups, all centered around Blue.

Now, Mr. Miller seems like a great fellow. Easy to get along with, sufficiently opinionated, moderately eloquent. My heart connects with Miller when he makes statements such as "Perhaps, I thought, Christian spirituality really was the difference between illusion and magic." Yes! it is magic--real, deep magic, the magic before time. And Christianity really does fit the "story formula" because it is the greatest story of all. Delightful! All of this talk of story and magic is vaguely reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton's "Ethics of Elfland," a chapter in his story of discovering Christianity for the first time, Orthodoxy.

Yet...yet. There's something about this whole movement that gives me the willies. Miller's approach is similar to Chesterton's in Orthodoxy. Similar, for that matter, to Sheldon Vanauken's in A Severe Mercy. All three men make their point by sharing with the reader slices of life, little vignettes that tell far more than an exposition of doctrine could do.

I am comfortable with Vanauken and Chesterton's approach. (Comfortable is, of course, not quite the right word. For, as Chesterton says, Orthodoxy is far from being safe! Real orthodoxy is dangerous and alive.) Vanauken and Chesterton use story, use life experiences, use personal beliefs and anecdotes, to help the reader connect with Christ.

I think that is what Miller is trying to do as well. Near the end of his book, Miller says:
"I thought that was beautiful because, while it [jazz music] is music, it is very hard to put on paper, it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel; I think it is very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful."

Yes, Christian spirituality is something difficult to get on paper. And it is something you real, meaningful and beautiful, that, at times, should be felt and not explained.

But my faith is so much more than a feeling. It is a delightful--magical, if you will--blend of feeling, intellect and action. My head, my heart and my hands must understand my faith and acquiesce to its premises. Leaving one's intellect or behavior unmoderated by one's faith while increasing an emotional affection is like a king asking all of his knights to stand guard at the front of the castle while leaving the back and sides unmanned.

My conclusion: read Blue Like Jazz, but also read Elizabeth Eliot, Augustine, the Apostolic Fathers. Cultivate your emotion, but also cultivate your mind.

Check out a far better review on Blue at Challies Dot Com.

Entry One

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she chould have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was kissed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death iself would start working backward. And now--"
"Oh yes. Now?" said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.
"Oh, children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!"
--The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

"Then [Aslan] breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.
"And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me, Beloved, me who am but as a dog--"
--The Last Battle