7.24.2006

I think I might barf if...

I hear one more person say, "You have to feel complete in yourself before you can be in a relationship with someone else." Or, the "Christianese" version: "You have to be content in this season of singleness before God will give you a relationship."

Sorry for the break from Total Truth. It just struck me today what an absurd sentiment this really is. I may elaborate more later, if my brain ever recovers from 89 kids at VBS today -- and that includes 29 preschoolers!!

7.18.2006

What is Total Truth?

(From a conversation recorded in Nancy Pearcey's book, Total Truth.)
"Your earlier book says Christians are called to redeem entire cultures, not just individuals," a schoolteacher commented, joining me for lunch at a conference where I had just spoken. Then he added thoughtfully, "I'd never heard that before."

The teacher was talking about How Now Shall We Live? and at his words I looked up from my plate in surprise. Was he really saying he'd never even heard the idea of being a redemptive force in every area of culture? He shook his head: "No, I've always thought of salvation strictly in terms of individual souls."
God has given me the grace of attending a church that views its task as transforming culture with the Gospel, so this concept was not foreign to me. But several years ago, it certainly would have been. And even had someone suggested to me that the job of the Church was to transform and redeem culture with the Gospel, I, like many (or dare I say most!) evangelicals today would likely have located that transformative power in political activism. How do we transform American culture? Well, by going to Washington and getting a bill passed, of course!

But have we gotten it backwards? A member of congress once told Pearcey, "I got involved in politics... because I thought that was the fastest way to moral reform. Well, we've won some legislative victories, but we've lost the culture."

If I haven't lost all of you by my long absence, discuss!

7.13.2006

Worldview

world·view (wûrldvy)
n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.
  1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
  2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.
[Translation of German Weltanschauung.]


"Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital "T." Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality -- and the intellectual holding of that truth and then living in light of that Truth."
-- Francis Schaeffer


cul·ture (klchr)
n.

The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
    1. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
    2. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
    3. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.

re·deem (r-dm)
tr.v. re·deemed, re·deem·ing, re·deems
  1. To recover ownership of by paying a specified sum.
  2. To pay off (a promissory note, for example).
  3. To turn in (coupons, for example) and receive something in exchange.
  4. To fulfill (a pledge, for example).
  5. To convert into cash: redeem stocks.
  6. To set free; rescue or ransom.
  7. To save from a state of sinfulness and its consequences.
  8. To make up for: The low price of the clothes dryer redeems its lack of special features.
  9. To restore the honor, worth, or reputation of: You botched the last job but can redeem yourself on this one.

7.12.2006

Coming Soon...

A post about Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth. I know I'm probably the last person to read it, but in case I'm not, I encourage you to go out and buy it.

There's so much great stuff in it that the problem will be narrowing down what to write about!

Meanwhile, sorry for the long absence from the land of blogs. I've missed you!

5.04.2006

A Writer's Challenge

I'm inspired by Bobby's latest post to give all you writers a challenge.

For the next month, write something, anything, EVERY DAY. Write two lines of dialogue you overheard in the grocery store. Write a question and its answer. Write two or ten haikus, one after another. Anything at all. Feel uninspired? Write about how uninspired you are. Some of my most satisfying poems have been about how I don't feel like writing poems. Overwhelmed by impending tests or papers or a deadline? Dash off a few quick lines about how your hands shake when you feel frantic and overwhelmed. ANYTHING.

Why? Here's why:

"To think how to express some passion properly is the only way to be possessed by it, for unformed feelings lack impact, just as unfelt ideas lose weight. So walk around unrewritten, if you like. Live on broken phrases and syllable gristle, telegraphese and film reviews. No one will suspect…until you speak, and your soul falls out of your mouth like a can of corn from the shelf."
-- William Gass

"Make my life a prayer to you
I want to do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers, no compromise."
--Keith Green

"Whatever you do, do it all for the Glory of God. Do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord."
--Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Colossians 3:17, and Colossians 3:23

4.27.2006

Nearing the end of Cultivate Beauty Month - Random thoughts in haiku form

clean, clean apartment
at least the bookshelf is clean
books lined up neatly

the Doppler effect
goose honks change pitch past window
high, lower, lower

dust on the keyboard
is it really true that it's
made up of my skin?

I have in my drawer
one-hundred and forty-three
real Hong Kong dollars

in case you wondered,
that much amounts to not quite
twenty of our own

can I help it if
on a prom-queen May evening
I cannot study?

can't write a haiku
about Mere Christiani-
ty, for I'll run out

looking at bookshelves
I guess I once loved pulp, dime-
store, sad, trite novels

I'm very thirsty
I guess that means this is the
penultimate one

dearest friends, near, far --
patient, indulgent of my
poetic whims -- thanks.

4.24.2006

Summer Reading List

I've got loads of books on my shelf, and not just school books, but fiction and anthologies from my college days as well as ones I've picked up since. I love books. I love everything about them. I love the smell of new books, and how the spines crackle when they're opened for the first time, and the rustle of thin pages. I've got a friend who will actually have time to read this summer, and I've made her a list of books to borrow, read, and enjoy. So, for the curious, and in honor of Cultivate Beauty month as it draws to a close, I will, Oprah-like, give you my recommended summer reading list, in no particular order:

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Beloved by Toni Morrison
How the Irish Saved Civilization (nonfiction) by Thomas Cahill
Proof (a play) by David Auburn
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Professor and the Madman (historical fiction, based on real events) by Simon Winchester
The Devil in the White City (another historical fiction) by Erik Larson
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Wit (a play) by Margaret Edson
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Had anybody read any of these? What are your favorite books, or some that you've lately read that you loved?

4.21.2006

Spurgeon on Missionaries Teaching Christ to the Natives

Hey, all. I took this from Wade Burleson's blog (with permission, bien sur) because I think it reminds us to focus on what's important. This month, I want to remember that nothing is more beautiful or worthy of cultivating than the Gospel. Our focus must be on the Gospel and its power to bring lost, spiritually dead, doomed people to a saving relationship with the Messiah. I hope you all are keeping up with Wade's blog and with Marty Duren as well, and that you are praying that God's peace will reign in the hearts of every believer caught up in the dispute, and that the Enemy's schemes for division would be utterly thwarted in the face of a renewed commitment to the Gospel. That, brothers and sisters, would be a beautiful thing.

Let Spurgeon teach us from across the years:

I do not know whether all our missionaries have caught the idea of Christ “Go ye and teach all nations,” but many of them have, and these have been honored with many conversions.

The more fully they have been simple teachers, not philosophers of the Western philosophy, not eager disputants concerning some English dogma, I say the more plainly they have gone forth as teachers sent from God to teach the world, the more successful have they been.

“Go ye, therefore, and teach.” Some may think, perhaps, there is less difficulty in teaching the learned than in teaching the uncivilized and barbarous. There is the same duty to the one as to the other: “Go and teach.”

“But they brandish the tomahawk.” Teach them, and lie down and sleep in their hut, and they shall marvel at your fearlessness and spare your life.

“But they feed on the blood of their fellows, they make a bloody feast about the cauldron in which a man’s body is the horrible viand.” Teach them and they shall empty their war-kettle, and they shall bury their swords, and bow before you, and acknowledge King Jesus.

“But they are brutalised, they have scarce a language — a few clicking sounds make up all that they can say.” Teach them, and they shall speak the language of Canaan, and sing the songs of heaven.

The fact has been proved, brethren, that there are no nations incapable of being taught, nay, that there are no nations incapable afterwards of teaching others. The Negro slave has perished under the lash, rather than dishonor his Master.

The Esquimaux has climbed his barren steeps, and borne his toil, while he has recollected the burden which Jesus bore. The Hindoo has patiently submitted to the loss of all things, because he loved Christ better than all. Feeble Malagasay women have been prepared to suffer and to die, and have taken joyfully suffering for Christ’s sake. There has been heroism in every land for Christ; men of every color and of every race have died for him; upon his altar has been found the blood of all kindreds that be upon the face of the earth.

Oh! tell me not they cannot be taught. Sirs, they can be taught to die for Christ; and this is more than some of you have learned. They can rehearse the very highest lesson of the Christian religion — that self sacrifice which knows not itself but gives up all for him.

At this day there are Karen missionaries preaching among the Karens with as fervid an eloquence as ever was known by Whitfield, there are Chinese teaching in Borneo, Sumatra, and Australia, with as much earnestness as Morison or Milne first taught in China. There are Hindoo evangelists who are not ashamed to have given up the Brahminical thread, and to eat with the Pariah, and to preach with him the riches of Christ. There have been men found of every class and kind, not only able to be taught, but able to become teachers themselves, and the most mighty teachers too, of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well was that command warranted by future facts, when Christ said, “Go ye, teach all nations.”


Excerpt from "NO. 383
A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING,
APRIL 21ST, 1861,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON"

A sermon preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon 145 years ago today.

4.19.2006

From "Long Ago In Oregon"

by Claudia Lewis

The Nelsons

I

In the early mornings
Mr. Nelson passed our house
on his walk,
in his neat dark suit
and coat, open and
flying a bit;
white hair,
sideburns,
stepping along
swinging umbrella for a cane.
When Mr. Nelson walked,
he walked,
enjoying the air
and the morning

Everyone knew
his big store
was the best in town
Always at Christmas
a Santa there
had gifts for children

When I was very small
we lived close by
Mrs. Nelson, plump and cozy
like a grandma,
would invite us in on days
when she made marshmallows.
Marshmallows! Not like
the puffs we bought in boxes
but trembling, glistening white,
arranged in fragile pieces
on a tray.

And her grown-up boys
and girls would play with us,
swing and toss us
in the yard
all around the snowball tree.

Far in the back of my mind
as time passed
I remembered once in a while--
almost not at all--
that the Nelsons were Catholics.
Mother had told us
any church in town
was all right for us--
except the Catholic.
"Why not the Catholic?"
"...Well, in that church
they worship images."

What did this have to do
with the snowball tree
with cozy marshmallow grandma,
and the jaunty man--
the gentleman--
who walked in the morning?

I never even tried
to fit these pieces together.

II
One day I realized
I hadn't seen him lately,
passing by.
"Mother, where is Mr. Nelson?"

"Oh, I meant to tell you.
We won't see him anymore--
He was old, very old,
...He has died..."

(Meant to tell me?
I don't think you did.)

Died--
I glimpse a great darkness
in spite of angels.

Dying?
I've heard snatches
of sad talk.
Now I know--

Death
is Mr. Nelson
striding along
alone
in the morning
toward something black and far
in the night.

4.02.2006

Cultivate Beauty

In honor of Kill Your TV / Cultivate Beauty / National Poetry Month, I'll be posting some original poems (eek!) and some by my favorite poets throughout the month. To start things off right, settle into a metaphysical mindset (or mind/bodyset) and enjoy this delectable offering from one of my favorite poets, Li-Young Lee, an Indonesian-born Chinese-American poet. His writing is so gorgeous that it hurts my brain. Enjoy.


A Story

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.

-- Li-Young Lee