A funny from the always excellent but sometimes unfathomable xkcd, coinciding nicely with listening again this week to the thought-provoking story of Carlton Pearson in the Heretics episode of This American Life.
Archive for the ‘Faith’ Category
Book Burning
Saturday, June 12th, 2010Stars – Switchfoot
Saturday, June 12th, 2010After a week of highs and lows, tonight is definitely a ‘Stars‘ night.
…Stars lookin at our planet watching entropy and pain
And maybe start to wonder how the chaos in our lives could pass as sane
I’ve been thinking bout the meaning of resistance, of a hope beyond my own
And suddenly the infinite and penitent begin to look like home…
Godincidence?
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
A quick post for no other reason than to share a nice true story.
- Yesterday, I grabbed a burger and fries with a young guy from church and chatted through some stuff he’s got on his mind.
- This morning, walking to the college bus with my daughter, the young guy finds $120 in crisp new notes in the street.
- They call me on my cellphone for advice and I say keep it safe and hand it in to the police station as soon as possible.
- The young guy passes the money to my daughter as she’ll be able to get there sooner.
- After school, she goes to the police and they ask her to check with the three local banks before they take the money into safekeeping.
- The banks all say no-one has reported the loss to them so she signs it over to the police. They say that if it isn’t claimed in 90 days, the $120 bucks will go to the young guy.
- Meanwhile, the young guy’s mum is waiting for her lodger to return from work and pay the rent.
- The sad lodger returns home to report that although he drew the rent money out of ATM this morning but has somehow lost it during the day.
- The young guy overhears and gets to deliver the ‘happy ever after’ punchline to the story.
- They call us to say they’re heading to the police station first thing in the morning.
As Hannibal Smith used to say, ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’
[edited as ecto swallowed the text of the original post somehow]
Bob Goff’s Upside Down Charity
Monday, June 7th, 2010
In Bob Goff Turns the Idea of Charity Upside Down, a guest post on Donald Miller’s blog, Justin Zoradi gives us cause to reflect on our attitude to giving and charity. Subverting the usual story of us giving to them, the post describes how former child soldiers in Uganda decided to donate some of the profits of their project to benefit Miller’s The Mentoring Project. After reading the short post and checking out the project’s website, take a few minutes to think about how this challenges our fundamental view of ourselves as donors and the effects of our charitable giving.
Simple Church
Sunday, June 6th, 2010It’s exactly a month since my last post. I have been doing a lot of reading and a similar amount of thinking about many things including my faith and how that is expressed in my life.
I heard a story today about a boy who struggles to read and write but really enjoys reading Bible stories. For various reasons, the boy only gets to do this when he visits his grandfather during the school holidays and for this reason he describes himself as only ‘half Christian’.
Some days, I’d say that’d be a pretty accurate label for me. I struggle with mainstream denominational church and what the Christianity ‘brand’ seems to represent. Likewise, I feel uncomfortable with the literalism and selective interpretation of much that is presented to those who attend church.
Rather than being put off by these aspects as I would in the past, I have been trying to look for ways in which I can connect with God in a way that has more meaning, less baggage and make a positive impact on others.
In reading what others have written on their own search for a more authentic church experience, I found a good many references to house churches, simple churches and their like. After a enjoyable workday lunch hour spent browsing pre-loved books in Evermore Books, I came away with a book called Simply Church. Written by Tony & Felicity Dale, the book provides a good introduction to house church movement.
Slim enough to read in one day, the book basically covers the scriptural foundations for house churches and covers the increasing number of simple church and house church networks around the world. The premise of a simple home-based church modeled on the meals and meetings of the New Testament Apostles seems more authentic than the denominational services I have been to and a more direct way to engage with God. Certainly something I shall be reading and praying on more in the weeks to come. You can read more on these types of churches at House2House and Simply Church.
While in Evermore, I also picked up an old copy of the Good News Bible. I remembered the logo from my childhood and as I flicked through the pages I was delighted to rediscover the wonderfully evocative illustrations of Swiss artist Annie Vallotton. Since than and via the Amazon Marketplace, I have also scooped up a copy of Priority, the English translation of Valloton’s 1969 French language book, Priorité. This book is a simple retelling of Jesus’ life in sixty drawings with selected scriptures.
David Eagleman’s Ineffable
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
The content of Radio Lab’s podcast rarely fails to interest or entertain and, while it was slow to grip me, the recent ‘Afterlife’ episode contained some absolute gems. It was comprised of eleven different ideas, views and suppositions around the concept of an afterlife and included a number of contributions by neuroscientist David Eagleman taken from his collection of short fiction pieces Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlife.
‘Ineffable’ is one of these and, as someone currently involved in winding up a large proportion of a business and facing redundancy, it certainly struck a chord as I drove to work this morning. I found myself nodding in recognition as I heard the metaphors in the first paragraph, the assertion that death is for everything and the observation that things have a past. Elsewhere, I liked the notion that we might be grieved by the atoms from which we are made and the fancy that they might mourn the time they spend together as part of us.
When soldiers part ways at war’s end, the breakup of the platoon triggers the same emotion as the death of a person–it is the final bloodless death of the war. This same mood haunts actors on the drop of the final curtain: after months of working together, something greater than themselves has just died. After a store closes its doors on its final evening, or a congress wraps its final session, the participants amble away, feeling that they were part of something larger than themselves, something they intuit had a life even though they can’t quite put a finger on it.
In this way, death is not only for humans but for everything that existed.
And it turns out that anything which enjoys life enjoys an afterlife. Platoons and plays and stores and congresses do not end–they simply move on to a different dimension. They are things that were created and existed for a time, and therefore by the cosmic rules they continue to exist in a different realm.
Although it is difficult for us to imagine how these beings interact, they enjoy a delicious afterlife together, exchanging stories of their adventures. They laugh about good times and often, just like humans, lament the brevity of life. The people who constituted them are not included in their stories. In truth, they have as little understanding of you as you have of them; they generally have no idea you existed.
It may seem mysterious to you that these organizations can live on without the people who composed them. but the underlying principle is simple: the afterlife is made of spirits. After all, you do not bring your kidney and liver and heart to the afterlife with you–instead, you gain independence from the pieces that make you up.
A consequence of this cosmic scheme may surprise you: when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed. They hung together for years, whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen. With your death they do not die. Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.
Ineffable by David Eagleman
It is intriguing to note that the book has received critical acclaim from people of faith and atheists alike, so I have requested the book through my local library and look forward to reading more of Eagleman’s forty tales.
Catch up
Sunday, March 7th, 2010Life has been busy since my last post and I have had a fair amount to occupy my time. Consequently, blogging has taken second place to real life but, in the fashion of my good chum David, here’s a quick visual catch up.
Home made Cornish Pasties
SWMBO is a great if somewhat reluctant cook and regularly surpasses herself in serving up just the right dish at the right time. In recent weeks, we have been treated to a few dishes and flavours that recalled memories of our life in England. One of these greeted my nostrils when I arrived home one evening recently. A great and enticing smell wafting from the kitchen heralded a great supper of homemade Cornish Pasties which tasted as good as they looked.
Homemade goodies were supplemented with a few bits and bobs from the shops. On a recent trip to Countdown, our local chain supermarket, she picked up some English Marmite which, in my opinion and those of most other UK folk I know here, is far superior to the Aussie and Kiwi varieties. However, even this tasty surprise was trumped by a lovely chunk of Tuxford & Tebbutt Cheshire cheese. While the Kiwis make some good cheeses, I do miss the drier, crumblier and saltier British cheeses like my Dad’s favourite, Wensleydale.
Fush without chups
We headed into our local pet store a couple of weeks ago to check a few things out, little knowing that they were having an open day. Having successfully deflected pleadings for another kitten or puppy, we left an hour later with a starter cold water aquarium but no fish.
The instructions from the very helpful fish lass in the store was that we set this up in the family room for a week, filling and treating the water so it could get a good stock of healthy bacteria in it before we introduced this fish.
Last week, SWMBO returned with the smallest of our four to choose the occupants and came home with a bug-eyed black eyed fish and a white and orange bug-eyed fish (the proper names elude me). These were joined a few days back by the last of the additions to our menagerie, a skinny golden algae eater who vacuums the glass and stones free of algae. There was a mild panic earlier today when this little fellow went missing. Presumed eaten by the other, he was eventually traced to the interior of the tiny amphora we had picked up for a dollar and sunk in the tank. Hopefully, he’ll come out before he grows too big to do so.
Never say never
With redundancy a real prospect later this year, I have started to be a little more intentional about seeking alternative work. I have a few avenues to explore including a secondment that will see me working in a different area of my field in a very different environment.
To aid me in this and keep things neatly divided, I have grabbed up an HP Mini 210 netbook running Windows 7. This is my first purchase of a personal computer running Windows in about 7 years. I like the form factor with the 10″ screen being a good compromise between the 7″ of my Eeepc’s and my iMac’s whopping 24″ screen.
It is early days yet but Windows 7 is also proving to be more user-friendly than the XP of my employer-supplied Omnibook or the Vista machines that friends moan about. I am also trying to keep the apps to a minimum and use web-based stuff where possible, keeping the reasonable resources freed up for document writing, PDF work and the multi-tabbed browsing of desktop research.
The Agile Three
After church, SWMBO and I took our youngest to Scruffs, a local fun dog show. We got there pretty late but had enough time to enter our Jack Russell/Maltese Terrier cross Abby into the scruffiest dog competition and give her a run out around the agility course. In two clear runs around the course, Abby managed to reduce her time from 45 seconds to a very creditable 39 seconds, giving all three of us humans a brief but energetic workout at the same time.
We rounded off the day at a friend’s place, eating barbecue and salad whilst catching up on news and swapping offspring horror stories.
Dear Kristine Elizabeth Hoffman
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Dear Kristine Elizabeth Hoffman
I love the occasional and unintended glimpses of other people’s lives that I find in the second hand books I read. I have been idly wondering about how many degrees, in this internet-connected global village of ours, separate two complete strangers whose only connection is a paperback book. For instance, take the book above, Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. It was one of three I received as a birthday gift a few weeks back, purchased by my wife in New Zealand over the internet from a secondhand bookseller in the US via the Amazon website and shipped via a friend’s address in the UK.
Why am I telling you this? Because earlier today, halfway through chapter twelve, I came across a Delta boarding pass with your name on it. This, together with the window sticker that dropped from between the last few pages when I first opened the book a week or so ago, is the just sort of happenstance that intrigues me. Are you a die-hard Lamott fan or a first time reader? Are you strong in your faith or working through years of stuff like me? Do you ever wonder who else reads the books you read?
I’m no Sherlock Holmes but from the boarding pass it would seem that in late June. last year or the year before – the boarding pass is not yellowed or overly faded – you flew Delta between Salt Lake City and Atlanta. Did you fly as a crew member on standby? The pass is marked ‘NRSA’ which, Google tells me, stands for Non Revenue Space Available and means free seating for airline personnel and their family members. As for the ‘Montana Native’ sticker, who knows? Maybe you’re a native Montanan flight attendant who deadheaded out of Helena down to the Atlanta hub via Utah after an early summer family reunion.
Oh, I almost forgot to ask – do you wear Vera Wang perfume? I only ask because, when I checked the other two books, I found a ‘Bouquet’ perfume tester card wedged a third of the way through Grace (Eventually). There again, there is every chance that book is part of an entirely different person’s story.
Blessings and happy reading!
bnug
Messiah in the mall!
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Most days, my early morning prayers include the hope that I might see Jesus during the day to come. Most days, I either don’t look hard enough or I look in the wrong place. Yesterday, I found Him in the mall – albeit not quite in the manner or place I expected -yet He was undeniably there.
Jesus? A choking hazard?
Messianic medicials, Batman!
Next time I’m there, I think I’m going to get me a Jesus for my dashboard and a Jesus for my glovebox.
A work in progress
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
As mentioned elsewhere, I have been reading Matthew Paul Turner’s blog and enjoying his tweets for a while but I have never got around to checking out his books. That all changed yesterday, when we went shopping for soccer kit for our resident goalkeeper and then dropped into a bookstore nearby. There, I found the very last copy of Turner’s Churched on the shelf.
Taking this as a nudge and having read a great sample chapter online, I bought the book and returned home to enjoy an afternoon siesta with a cup of bush tea in one hand and the book in another. The first few chapters of the book explore the impressions of a young Turner as his parents leave the Methodist church of his early years to help plant a fundamentalist Baptist church. Whether he’s describing the pastor’s wife – a piano-playing, hymn-singing Farrah Fawcett double – or getting his first ‘Jesus’ haircut from the unbeliever Mr Harry, Turner neatly sketches the claustrophobic world of church, law and eternal damnation through the eyes of a boy looking for straight answers to his questions.
The similarity of his descriptions of early church attendance – right down to the clip-on tie and Sunday-best shoes – made me think back to my Sunday school days at the Quaker meeting for worship I attended. I have the utmost respect for Quakers and their theology but for those with excitable butterfly minds and single-digit ages, the traditional hour-long silent meetings for worship seems like an eternity. With a whole world of fun, adventure and Sunday morning television cartoons just beyond the walls, it was impossible for me to understand why we were all sitting in silence, looking for God and the Spirit inside each of us.
Turner’s early religious experiences and teaching left him with distinct impressions of a hellfire and brimstone God of dos and don’ts whose return was to be eagerly but fearfully anticipated. Mine simply left me bemused and adrift, unable to join the dots between the Jesus of the Sunday school stories and the quiet inner journey of the Quakers sitting silently in meeting.
Each meeting I attended as a youngster seemed like some alternative reality where time stood still. Not matter my good intentions at the start of meeting, all too soon I would be scuffing my sandals on the pew in front and looking around for distractions. The slow ticking of the old wall clock, drifting dust motes in the sunlight and the radiant calm of the worshipping faces all provided momentary interest but inevitably I would end up staring at the clock, incredulous that we had only been seated for barely 10 minutes and not the 59 I had carefully judged to have passed.
This realisation would mean that there was at least another 35 minutes to go before one or more of the Friends might (though only might, mind you) feel moved by the Spirit to speak to those present about some matter of import. Such sharing would often be concerned with issues of peace or social justice, both of which are central in the beliefs of Friends. With some embarrassment now, I can almost see myself innocently rolling my eyes and mouthing the word ‘Bo-o-ring!’ whilst concerned Friends spoke to the acts of despots, the dispossession of indigenous peoples and any number of bloody sectarian wars.
The alternative to sitting through meeting was to trot across the small courtyard to the Sunday school class in the adjacent hall. To the best of my recollection, these would invariably be presided over by well-meaning women in tweed suits and sensible shoes. I can almost taste the musty tang of that hall, feel the splintery roughness of the tables and smell the industrial-grade disinfectant all over again.
The hall was so cold in winter that no amount of frantic scribbling on the colouring templates of Jesus healing the sick could make the wax crayons to give up any colour to the butcher’s paper. During the short British summers, we’d occasionally play a game in the courtyard, doing so very quietly so as not to disturb those in meeting. More often than not though, we’d simply sit and listen to the deadpan delivery of another parable or Bible story, read from a book as old as Gutenberg. While the faithful listened intently, I would conduct clandestine raids into the steamy fug of the the adjoining kitchen in search of biscuits, keen to locate and consume any chocolate ones lurking amongst the plain ones on the chipped plates along the counter. Soon enough, I’d be found out, given a disappointed look and shooed back to the parting of the Red Sea or recounting of how our missionaries were doing in Africa.
That said, I am truly grateful for my Quaker upbringing and experience of meeting for they have worked on and in me for years, helping to form my values, mould my opinions and prick my conscience along the way. Indeed, amid the flurry of the last week of the summer holidays and the frenetic back-to-school preparations of four daughters, I can at last begin to appreciate the wonder and wisdom of spending an hour in silent contemplation and communion in the company of like-minded folk. As I have just discussed with a good friend over lunch, it often hard to see the learning close up and so it is only with the passage of time and the accumulation of experience that we begin to understand and start to develop wisdom. I remain very much a work in progress.