on courage

I was reminded of this quote while listening to an NPR story this morning about fears of a terrorist attack via a nuclear device. The admonition still stands today.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented; and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways . . . It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists had added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance but a certainty . . . Let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

- C.S. Lewis, writing on the atomic bomb (citation forthcoming)

He came here

Last night we hosted a light-hearted post-Christmas party for our student ministry leaders at New Hope. Before they came I tried to think of a few short words to say: something on how our time spent seeking out students seems weak and foolish, yet it contains the magnificent secret of God's gracious love that seeks us out and is with us in Christ. After everyone left and I was washing dishes, I remembered this quote I ran across recently from Karl Barth:

“At this point everything becomes clear or unclear, bright or dark. For here we are standing at the centre. And however high and mysterious and difficult everything we want to know might seem to us, yet we may also say that this is just where everything becomes quite simple, quite straightforward, quite childlike. Right here in this centre, in which as a Professor of Systematic Theology I must call to you, ‘Look! This is the point now! Either knowledge, or the greatest folly!’—here I am in front of you, like a teacher in Sunday school facing his kiddies, who has something to say which a mere four-year-old can really understand. ‘The world was lost, but Christ was born, rejoice, O Christendom!’… ‘God became man for thy good, O man. ‘Tis God’s own Child that binds Himself to thine own blood.’”

It brought much joy to me last night: may it do the same for you as well.
(HT: More Than 95 Theses)

the great exchange

"Let us then rejoice in this grace ... for what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the Son of man, so that human beings might in their turn become children and heirs of God? Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace."
-Augustine

a piece of my mind

I just have to share with you this passage from a textbook for my class next week:

"We have seen that postcoloninal criticism is often impaled on the horns of the following dilemma: whether to align itself with humanist notions of an autonomous, sovereign subject and so run the risk of subsuming heterogeneous identities and histories in to an abstract essentialism, or of embracing a post-structuralist antihumanism and so denying any universal moral platform from which to contest the material and epistemic violence of the colonial encounter. Gayatri Spivak has suggested a ‘strategic essentialism’ as a way of resolving this dilemma: that while theory recognizes only the dispersal of ‘subject-effects,’ emancipatory practice requires us to adopt and essentialist stance toward the colonized self. "

It is just me, or the lateness of the hour, or my punchiness due to caffeine and late-night study – but is this not just hilarious? Have a look at those words, and say them with a straight face and serious tone … do I hear you giggle?

The strange fact is that if you read enough of this, you actually begin to understand it. The book is called Subverting Global Myths and it is actually quite remarkable. But this paragraph left me grinning and just begged to be shared.

holy laughter

Yesterday I was listening to something Erwin said in November about how we always associate the "Sacred" with the boring, mundane, old, (yawn) ... you get the picture. And he asked: why can't we learn to think of the sacred and holy in the same breath as laughter, joy, pleasure, praise? It made me think of two hilarious episodes I have recently enjoyed in our family.

One: right before our Thanksgiving Trip to Virginia, I was tucking the kids in bed when Michael randomly announced that he would make a following declaration out loud at the Thanksgiving Meal. "Down with Spuds!" he cried out in a loud voice, and immediately cracked himself up. He laughed so hard I thought I would have to get him off the top bunk just to get some control. I swear the whole bedframe was shaking as he convulsed in peal after peal of belly laughter. The girls went around saying it for days.

Two: On Sunday I made lemonade out of some Meyer lemons we bought off someone at church. It was delicious, but strong stuff. In fact, so strong that I told Caroline (who was politely sipping through a grimace) that it would "put hair on your chest." She lost it. She laughed hysterically. Meanwhile Michael lifted his shirt and examined his chest for hair, and Ela nearly burst into tears telling Mommy she never wanted to have hair on her chest. Robin calmly assured her there was nothing to fear. But Caroline only laughed harder with those silent, shaking heaves that leave you gasping for air. She literally fell off her chair, slipping bonelessly off the seat and ended up flat on her back on the floor. I was howling at the whole thing. Now the girls toast each other and talk about how strong drinks put hair on their chests.

Holy laughter indeed. And we needed it today: we found out that our sweet, 10-year old dog Emma is just shot through with cancer. All five of us are resolved to enjoy the time we have left. There's holiness there as well.

on cooking

Most of you know that I love to cook. I've recently been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (oddly enough as research for a theology paper), and I wanted to share with you a long quote from this simply marvelous little book. Enjoy!

"As cook in your kitchen you enjoy an omniscience about your food that no amount of supermarket study or label reading could hope to match. Having retaken control of the meal from the food scientists and processors, you know exactly what is and is not in it: there are no questions about high-fructose corn syrup, or ethoxylated digliycerides, or partially hydrogenated soy oil, for the simple reason that you didn't ethoxylate or partially hydrogenate anything, nor did you add any additives. (Unless, that is, you're the kind of cook who starts with can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, in which case all bets are off.) To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts."

I'll cheat and give you his rules of thumb: "Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not too much." Breathtakingly simple, and profoundly wonderful. All the best things usually are. Into the subversion!

UPDATE on 9.6.08 - I planted some plants. I think they are growing. Of course - the goal would be to eat them, or rather, eat what they produce. I give myself a 53% chance of it working ...

hebrews 10.25b

I had a gift this weekend. I was on the Winter Retreat with our High Schoolers up at Southwind, and my task was the teaching for our students plus those of two other churches. My aim was to retell the story of Jonah in three episodes: run, rescue, and response(s), and I had worked hard for the last month on the content that might best show the intersection between Jonah’s story, God’s story, and our own stories. The problem was … I felt I was totally failing. Sometimes I’m not the best at creating connections with groups I speak to, but I was trying hard … and sensing nothing – nothing Saturday morning, nothing Saturday night. I was missing the mark with them. I talked to some of our students and leaders about it, and sure, they all managed to explain it away. But I was down.

It felt a little better after Sunday morning, but I was still dispirited about the whole thing. Then at lunch, Will (the camp manager for Young Life) told me that he thought I had done a really great job with the students that morning. That was a huge encouragement to me, but I confessed I’d felt a failure the whole weekend. He tried to reassure me by saying that as an 11-yr veteran of teaching English to high school kids, he could really tell when the connection was there and the students were responding. I was humble and grateful. It meant so much, coming when (and from whom) it did. It encouraged me; it literally gave me heart. So Will – thanks. It was enough for that day. And may we do it for each other, each day – and all the more as that Day is coming.

two things

I had two happy moments this week and wanted to share them with you. Both were unexpected; both were thrilling in their own ways. One was hoped for, the other one was just a taste of grace.

1. hoped for: last Sunday, I cleared the table for breakfast, which meant putting away my laptop. I had been working on pictures from a shoot on Friday (ooh, doesn't that sound impressive) and saved a couple to my new, pretty, sleek Sony USB drive (I call it my geek stick) to transfer to the desktop for presentation. For clearing the table, I put the laptop in its case and the geek stick in my pocket. As I walked around, I thought to myself, I ought to put this up by the big computer for safekeeping and then promptly forgot all about it... until I put my hand in my pocket at lunchtime. The stick wasn't there. Maybe I did put it in a safe place. Don't remember doing it, but I have been known to do something and then forget that it's been done. I have lost my mind before. Maybe it is safe at home. We got home and I promptly started tearing the place apart. Anywhere I could reasonably have put it, I searched. No luck. Monday, after Michael and I did school, I packed up the kids and headed back to church. Looked in the bathroom (took the kids there after church). Had a secretary let me into the auditorium and scoured the floor in there. Left secretary with my phone number and a promise to call me if it turned up. Drove to the restaurant where we had lunch. Not there. Asked in Trader Joe's. Also not there. Started to feel very sad and depressed. Not that anything on there was irreplaceable--I had everything on one computer or the other anyway--but I had my photography on there, pictures of a family, and nothing to identify me. I let it go for the rest of the week (no, really!) and then started asking around again this morning at church. Once again, no luck... until I realized (sorry, during the service) that I was sitting in front of at least six guys busy working on computers (doing slides and sound mixing and who knows what else). Maybe, just maybe, someone picked it up and thought, Wow, this pretty thing looks like it belongs to a computer. Hey, there are computers right there! I might leave it where the computers go! So I timidly approached the Tech Guys and said, "I know you are not the Lost and Found, but you have computers and I lost a computer item and has anyone given you a USB drive?" The answer was yes! My little drive and I were reunited! Truly a bright spot in my week. And there is now a small text file on the drive with my name and phone number in case we are ever separated again.

2. taste of grace: We went to Manhattan Beach yesterday (think Fort Myers Beach but bigger and on a hill), which meant that we had to drive home on the 110, which ends in Pasadena. There is no straight way to get home from there, so I generally turn whenever it's convenient (this is thanks to Caroline, whose infant screaming in the car urged me to take the fastest way home, meaning whichever way had the green light). Yesterday, I turned on Del Mar and was greeted with unexpected beauty. There is about a mile long stretch (give or take) of street lined with huge jacarandas. I think that's what they are; if they're not, they sure look like them. The trees are in full bloom right now and the street is lined with this beautiful purple procession. It was so unexpected, so breathtaking, such a thing to give thanks for. If you are in the area, take a drive, or better yet, take a walk or a bike ride, along Del Mar. Better hurry because the blossoms are already falling. I wonder if my jacaranda sapling back home has blossomed this year.

Boxes are beginning to pile up.