Taking Off and Landing
Pimp This Blog
2 Comments
Another friend has started blogging. This could be really good.
If you love me, you’ll check it out.
Ask and Ye Shall Get It In Truckloads
Leave a Comment
Today effectively ends my summer, for all practical purposes. Yes, there’s after 5 p.m. stuff, and weekend stuff to be done, and more adventures to be had, but the days of waking up at 9 a.m. and lounging in my chair til noon are done with. Tomorrow, I start my new job working for Baylor Press doing whatever they tell me to do. I imagine that the summer will be mostly getting me up to speed, learning their catalog, their way of doing things, how Carey Newman likes his coffee, and the like.
Thursday, I’ll be out at the farm. I’ve been anticipating this for two months, and still haven’t done hardly anything to get ready for it. I bought a pair of work boots and sunscreen today, but other than that, I’ll assume that it’s nothing more complicated than working a shovel.
So, we’ll see. As of tomorrow, multiple new things launch into my life. I should be more excited, I suppose, but more than anything, I’ll be glad to be freed from the endless rotation of days with only a different book title to demark the days. A little total bummery is good, but after about a week, I get too fidgety. Be careful about asking for change; it’ll come until you’re on your back begging for mercy.
John Barber Is Alive
1 Comment
About two weeks ago, I suggested that you take a look at Janna Barber’s stuff. Her husband’s a pretty dandy writer as well, and I expect over the next few months as he gets up to speed that you’ll see the John Barber that we know and love to emerge in full daddy strength.
Check it.
Don’t Get Sentimental
9 Comments
File another one under “Religious Tomfoolery”.
“Tomfoolery”, by the way, is an arcane word that needs to be brought back around. Just like “arcane”.
***
Most days, I love where I live. Most days. Other days I think I need a complete and total change of pace. Maybe this will be abated by a move to the farm next week; maybe living on the farm with the bare necessities and an ocean of sweat will only amplify this itch. Does anyone else get in a total rut? Does anyone else want to grow wings, a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless? Does anyone else feel like screaming out of your window until someone answers?
I’ve done it, and frankly, it doesn’t do much good. A story:
My first year in Waco, I fell for a girl. I fell like I’d not fallen since the last time, and the time before that. I find that each time I lose my footing for a woman, it’s worse than the time before, so that hopefully, I’ll fall so hard one day, I won’t ever get up. After falling for said girl, I went to the UK for the summer, and came back to find that said girl was hanging out with another guy, and that the Counting Crows tickets I’d bought in vain were now painful reminders of where I couldn’t be.
So, I gave away the tickets to a friend, and drove off down into an abandoned section of town that’s now become an intramural field. Parking the car in the August heat, I locked up, walked about 100 feet into the dark, and out of the depth of my soul, something between a scream and a bellow erupted. It’s happened a few times, and I usually try to find an empty field to have them in, for no other reason than they tend to get really nasty, honest, saying the things to God that I’m usually not brave enough to say–or foolish enough to remember. I kept hoping that my skin wasn’t going to turn green or that the sky wasn’t going to open up and God begin lecturing me about the foundations of the world. Frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for either. It’s an odd feeling, yelling when no one’s listening; even there, I was paranoid about being heard, that maybe someone was witnessing this outburst of frustration and anger.
Or maybe I was hoping that someone did hear me, and that someone could see me acting ridiculous. I can name the people who have seen me being this kind of ridiculous, and count them friends, not because they saw these displays, but because these displays are part of what I do. They are the deep veins.
I stood in that field and screamed and cried for a good twenty minutes until I was sure that either God had heard me, or that he hadn’t and never would. I got back in the car, and drove towards a local Catholic church. In the UK, the church was always open for prayer, even in the middle of the night, but this was not rural Scotland; this was urban Waco. Checking the third door, I found someone asleep on the steps. He asked for food. I got him a burger. And then, I went home, having realized that there are worse things than frustration, feeling very sheepish and wondering how in the world Job could have mistaken a thunderclap for a pair of glazed-over, whiskey-driven eyes.
I’ve had only one other time like that since then, over another girl. Like I say, eventually these will stop, but for the moment, I find a throat-wrenching scream pretty much the only appropriate response some days. I’m careful when I bang my fist on my desk over Kathy doing the same damn thing over and over; I don’t want to dump the coffee on the carpet. I’m cautious when I pray out loud in the kitchen; my roommates may already think that I’m crazy. Is it a problem that the best I can find to scream about these days is sheer boredom? Boredom’s such a great one-liner, reminding me that one man’s “living the dream” is another man’s “starving to death”. At the bottom, I think the scream I suppress is one at myself, for accepting too little and expecting too soon.
So, in the end sum, don’t bother with the scream. Just do something different.
Double Sigh
2 Comments
When will we stop listening to Pat Robertson?
Apparently, now, he’s claiming to have leg pressed 2,000 pounds. That’s right: Pat Robertson leg-pressed my car and then some.
I think we’ve crossed over from religious malignancy to garden-variety delirium. I gots to find out what kind of medication he’s on and get me some.
New Music
Leave a Comment
Looking for a ridiculous amount of exposure to new, quality music?
Go here. I think I’ve just found another daily read.
Jesus and Politics: God in the World
10 Comments
Now that the season finale of LOST is done, I can get back to what I need to be doing, like figuring out how I’m going to read this stack of books before I head to the farm in a week.
I’ve been reading Dupuis’ Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, an emminently readable introduction to how Christian theology might play nice with world religions. I’m only in the first few chapters, but thus far, it takes the problem a whole lot more seriously than either of the classical options of a) saying that Christianity and other religions are really just saying the same thing or b) saying that there is nothing compatible between Christian faith and other faiths. To be fair, there’s actually a good bit that can be had between, say, Islam and Christianity. Both came from the same region of the world; both claim Abraham’s bosom; both confess monotheism. This is not to say that Jesus and who he was doesn’t create a chasm between them at this point, but in terms of what Scripture has to say about righteous pagans, there’s no reason, Dupuis argues, to write off other religions in toto just because they are another religion.
What he offers as one possible solution to inter-faith cooperation is a little less helpful: the old “we’re doing common work for the good of humankind” option. While I completely believe that part of the Gospel work is one of enacting humanity’s benefit on its behalf, I’m a little less certain that the correlary to this is that if one does the work of the Gospel, then one must be committed to the Gospel. The argument that, because in the life of the Christian, belief and action are inseparably connected, that one may appear prior to the other in either order, hasn’t totally convinced me yet. For one, if you allow what a visible work is to take priority over how one arrives at this work, it makes religious commitment ultimately unnecessary, and thus, the whole question of inter-religious dialogue unneccesary. Second, what one faith hopes to accomplish in a work may be different than what I hope for it. As Christians, we profess that while we are called to be witness in the world, what we witness to is hope, not finality of the present. No work in and of itself may ever be rightly called a finished product if we hope that what is coming will ultimately outstrip it.
Objections aside, Dupuis argues, and I agree, that God is at work providentially in world religions, that there is a place for them, and that there is always more than meets the eye. This is not to say that I would encourage a Muslim to be a better Muslim or a pagan to be a better pagan, but to say that everything’s not lost, and that the faith of Abraham was ultimately in God and the promises of God. So, though we might find ourselves committed to different ends by the same means, Christians should find those common means and continue to witness to that hope which has found us. Open your hands to whatever God brings and receive it with thanks, as a partner in the sharing of the new life.
You’ll Know Where You Are With
7 Comments
It’s an understatement to say that it’s early.
It’s been about four years since I’ve been able to really sleep through the night. Blame it on too much school, an overactive mind, whatever. Regardless, about two hours after nodding off, I’ll wind up staring at the wall for a while before nodding off again. In those times, a lot comes to me that can only be described as the tangible presence of God. Maybe it’s that things get so quiet then that, all the distractions having subsided, God’s pervasive voice can come through loud and clear, but it seems that the middle of the night is prime time for the speaking of God. Eli, Joshua, Abraham, Nicodemus–I could be crazy, but there seems to be some precedent for this.
So what has God been saying at 3:15 on Sunday morning? Not quite sure. I feel like being awake is a sure sign that, despite whatever sins that I commit, I have not gone to sleep completely, as it were; being able to be awake precedes being able to know that one is awake and not dead yet. It could be the fish I had for dinner; I’m not much for seafood, and as great as it was–and it was pretty amazing–my body could be wide awake with wonder and awe at the marine dish in my belly.
I’m hoping that this is God speaking, and that the noisy A/C will not drown out the voice.
**
The gift of repentance is a paradox, because being able to repent, to turn and follow at all, is spoken of in Scripture as a gift in and of itself. We repent because God enables us to do so. Not repenting doesn’t mean that the Spirit is not speaking or that the person who doesn’t turn and follow has not been bushwacked by God–only that they haven’t responded, and thus, in some sense, they haven’t really heard. God’s movement in our life precedes our thinking about it, or responding to it, or being grateful for it.
And by that, I am comforted. I am comforted knowing that turning the ship around is not a matter of me knowing the way home so much as knowing that the currents home are already there, and that the boat has been made strong enough to take me. Repenting is believing that when I turn the wheel, the wheel in some mysterious way has been turning for me, and accepting that the new course is a much better one than the one I was steering.
If this sounds like giving up on human initiative, it’s only giving up on an initiative that doesn’t have God’s empowering and God’s design on it. To say that anything we do is a mustering up of some force that we created is a mistake, whether you call it “creative initiative” or “divine mandate”. Call it providence, call it mystery, but do not call it something that we are doomed to make up out of our own goods. This world–in all of its twists and breaks–is God’s, held together and preserved, and to live in it rightly, we have to acknowledge that living in any other way than as a beloved creature in God’s world is an illusion. The call of the Christian is to live in rebellion to evil, to live in accordance with the deep magic of the world, and to follow the one who is already making all things new.
It’s 3:30, and I’m awake. And awake, I can sleep.
A Life in Coffee: Only In Dreams
2 Comments
I’ve nearly given up on trying to find a good cup of coffee in Waco. For a long while, I was frequenting a local coffee shop, and though it’s good to go to for the atmosphere in the summer after the undergrads clear out, after six years I’ve brought myself to the point where I’m strong enough to say….that the coffee sucks. It’s really a shame, because the vibe is good most of the time, and there’s really not that many places to go that don’t scream “CORPORATE CONGLOMERATE”.
I mean, seriously, I like Starbucks, but last time I went in, upon approaching the bar to order a cup of tea, the blonde-haired barrista yelled in my face, “CORPORATE CONGLOMERATE!!!! YAAAAAHHHH!!!”. This was right before she steam-cleaned the cashier and ran out the door babbling about unborn chickens or something. Kinda bizarre.
Anyway, I’ve concluded that my little French press pot makes a whole mess of good coffee, dare I say, better than most of what I’ve paid for in town. I mean, ain’t nothing like leaving little nibbles and bits of beans in your drink to let you know that what you’re drinking is the real thing. The oil is in it; it tastes like something that just came off a campfire, minus the ashes and lighter fluid.
I give you the top 5 coffee of Waco, TX:
5) Panera Bread Co.–not the highest quality, but unlimited refills. Therein lies its ability to scale into the top 5.
4) Texas Tea and Coffee–technically, it’s in McGregor, TX. Thus, it gets bumped down the list. That, and I’ve only had it once or twice. But on the whole, not a bad little drink.
3) Cafe Cappucino–little breakfast place that has yet to allow me to see the bottom of my cup. Seriously. I don’t think it has one, or if it does, it must contain the secrets of the universe. Hence, they never let me see the bottom of it.
2) World Cup Cafe–started by Mission Waco about a year ago, four blocks from the house. When I’m staring at an abandoned building out their front window, nothing comforts my soul more than a cup of their mud.
1) Olive Branch Cafe–my short-lived and ill-fated foray into the world of food service doesn’t deter me from saying that, yes, they do in fact have the best coffee you can buy in town. Walk in, grab a pastry, and sit with a good cup for an hour or so. It’s the same stuff as another place in town, but unlike the other place, this place knows that burned coffee does not equal good coffee.
