more madness, please

"[Mark 10:42-45] is a kind of managerial madness that is the very foolishness of the kingdom of God, which Jesus demonstrated in his own life … the good news deconstruction bears to the church is to provide the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God. The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable, any one of which is toxic to the kingdom of God ...
But what, then, is the kingdom of God? Where is it found? It is found every time an offense is forgiven, every time a stranger is made welcome, every time an enemy is embraced, every time the least among us is lifted up, every time the law is made to serve justice, every time a prophetic voice is raise against injustice, every time the law and the prophets are summed up by love. From time to time the figure of Jesus, or fragments of his figure, appear here or there in individual lives, showing up sometimes in people who burn with a prophetic passion, sometimes in people of inordinate compassion and forgiveness. When this happens, we are likely to mistake such people as made or weak, which in a sense they are – mad with the follow of the cross, weak with the weakness of God."
-- John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 138.

Here’s to more madness is my life – in our lives – in 2010.

the 2009 booklist

As the year winds down, I thought I’d share a list of what I’ve been reading. Once again, it’s heavy on books for Fuller coursework (though that period of my life has officially come to an end: the diploma arrived in today’s mail). I realized I never published last year’s list, so a few of these might stretch back to the fall of ’08 Here they are, in no apparent order, and apologies for the ones I’ve forgotten:

Rick Bragg: All Over But the Shoutin’
John Caputo: Philosophy and Theology
John Caputo: What Would Jesus Deconstruct?
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
Jurgen Moltmann: The Crucified God
Wilfred Thesiger: Arabian Sands
Christopher Moore: Lamb: the gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal
Margaret Feinberg: Scouting the Divine
Francis Chan: Forgotten God
Malcolm Gladwell: Outlier
Karl Barth: Dogmatics in Outline
J. Beilby& T. Eddy, ed: the Nature of the Atonement: Four Views
Thomas Oden : The Word of Life (Systematic Theology vol 2)
T.F. Torrance: The Mediation of Christ
Peter Rollins: How (not) to Speak of God
Craig Detweiler: Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century
Tim Keller: Prodigal God
Megan Whalen Turner: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, the King of Attolia
K. Barth & E. Brunner: Natural Theology
Vinoth Ramachandra: Subverting Global Myths
Gustav Aulen: Christus Victor
Patricia Wilson-Kastner: Faith, Feminism, and the Christ
Sam van Eman: On Earth, as it is in Advertising
Jeff Arthurs: Preaching with Variety: How to Re-create the Dynamics of Biblical Genres.
John Calvin: 2/5 of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (in process this year)
Peter Kreeft: Between Heaven and Hell
The Shack: William P Young
Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food
Clark Pinnock: Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit
Paul Fiddes: Participating in God
Graham Buxton: Dancing in the Dark
Henri J. M. Nouwen: The Return of the Prodigal Son
Miroslav Volf: The End of Memory
David Augsberger: Hate Work
Gordon Oliver: Holy Bible, Human Bible
Andy Stanley: Communicating for Change
N. T. Wright: Surprised by Hope
James K.A. Smith: the Devil Reads Derrida
Henry David Thoreau: On Walden

Favorites?
1) John Caputo’s Philosophy and Theology – eminently readable, a delight, and a compelling case for the “and” in the title. I’ll be recommending this for some time to come …
2) Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ – freeing, beautiful, dense yet rich, draws you deeper into the heart of Christ’s incarnation and atonement. But I can say the same about Moltmann's shocking The Crucified God.
3) Neal Stephenson’s Anathem – a sprawling voyage into an alternate universe with enough math, philosophy, and adventure to please.

Resolutions for 2010? More fiction and poetry, as my diet has been a bit one-sided. And please, do share your own favorites!

Into the Wild

Over the last few days I sat down to watch Into the Wild. I'd read the book years ago, and coming on the heels of some things this week, the film got me thinking and I wrote some things down, Here they are, for what it's worth.
--
This past week I watched the film Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007). If you are unfamiliar, it’s taken from Jon Krakauer’s book which tells the true story of the young Chris McCandless. After college, Christ renounces his life, renames himself Alexander Supertramp, and journeys into the wilderness (in all senses) and an eventual, tragic death at 24. I got into a discussion at work about it, with comments of “how selfish, what a waste, senseless” etc. Yes and no. Even if we allow that it’s a selfish waste, I can still admire the struggle, still sense the challenge it presents to our own lives and world. In Alex’s case, I can’t help but think that his struggle was just off-course enough to mean an endless beating against the wind, a tack into its teeth. Sure, the art of elimination knifes off all the stuff and junk that clutter and cloud our inner worlds – call it society, people, money and materialism, idols, desires, careers, what have you. But when everything is stripped away in the name of truth, what’s left?

In the end, truth can be as merciless a tyrant as any other, leaving you weak, pale, pitiful, and cold. It, too, demands your death, but it remains to be seen whether your death will bring any life. Or will it be just the final, too-familiar flameout of a once-brilliant torch? Closer to the heart of things, I think that the very part of us that has to be better, be right, be moral, alone be strong, alone be true – that part has to die as well. If it doesn’t, it becomes another petty god, a sham-idol in the jam-packed temple of humanity. And idols don’t give life.

It’s not the wild that kills the devil in me – but I think Alex/Chris knew that. It might reveal it, make me face it, but merely being in extremis doesn’t bring liberation. The real liberation comes when all our strivings only further tighten the cords further and we realize that we have to die in order to live. The truth is, someone has died for me and that alone gives me the power to die to myself and live for others. Without love, truth – however piercing, however beautiful – is only so much noise. Someone far wiser than I wrote that truth is not known unless it is loved. I think of some of Alex’/Chris’ final words: “in God’s name someone help me please …” In God’s name, someone has helped us, someone has loved us – and showed us the fullest extent of that love. God help us all.

(cross-posted at Facebook)

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

Christmastime is here!

You know how I know that? Because I seriously just put a million Christmas cards into the hands of our friendly postal worker. It's got to be some kind of record in that the cards were not even in my house for 24 hours. UPS brought them at lunch yesterday and they were gone this morning. I can't take any of the credit for the speedy turnaround; it's all the kids. They have been anticipating the card assembly process for weeks (why, I don't know). So yesterday afternoon I was frantically sorting through Outlook, trying to export a long list of people to a document of labels in Word (yes, I printed labels and trust me, the USPS is thanking me for that one!), during which process I somehow ended up with about ten Word windows open (Dear MS: honestly, printing labels from one of your programs in another one really shouldn't be all that hard, and I'm actually considered to be fairly computer savvy, so if I struggled with it?), but I finally emerged victorious over the process. The assembly line was rockin', too. And if you suddenly realized that you moved this year and didn't give me a new address, I hope the USPS is forwarding your mail. And please do give me your new address because I'd like to know that I can rely on my address book.

Actually, I have really been looking forward to the cards this year as well, because I had fun designing them, and my heart almost melted when I opened the box and saw how well they turned out. It didn't hurt that they have three of the cutest children ever on them.

I was going to make this post the 2009 update post, especially since I've done so badly with that this year, but since I've gone on a crazy ramble already, I'll just post some of the outtakes from our Christmas pictures (note the new dog, Judah). If you already saw these over on my own website, well, then, you saw them.

On Cooking: #3 in 50

I see we should be around day 15 of 50, but alas – it is only day 3. So I’ll just list the new things made in the meantime – delicious things, but things that I got too busy to blog about: rabbit stew with homemade dumplings, sautéed chicken with porcini sauce, broccoli with buerre blanc, braised lentils, the ever-present frittata combos in our house, a sweet potato/Israeli couscous dish I will never repeat, oriecchette with mushrooms, and oven-roasted beef tenderloin (new method for Thanksgiving). That brings us to …

White Chicken Chili. I love this dish, but have never been satisfied with my attempts at it. So I reached for the Jan/07 recipe in Cooks Illustrated (my cooking education and companion). Highly recommended.

As in war and armies, you go to cook with the ingredients you’ve got. I had only boneless/skinless thighs instead of 3# whole breasts (which meant so skin for browning or bones for stock). I also dropped the anaheim/poblano/jalapeno chili combo quantity by 1/3 (after all, I have children to think of) and subbed in 4 tomatillos. Since I was short on chicken I dropped in one length of andouille sausage for that optional kick. After making it a day ahead to blend flavors, I served it with the following toppings: scallions, limes, cilantro, minced jalapeno, and sour cream.

We ate almost the entire pot (plus some cornmeal biscuits). Michael’s response – “woo-hoo-chakalaka-boom-boom!”

love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at Facebook)

On Cooking: #2 in 50

So I am a week late, but here we are. As a reminder, my goal is 50 new recipes over 50 weeks to expand the ol’ home repertoire. Sound easy? try it sometime. Week #2 was Baked Lamb Shanks (also via Cook with Jamie, p. 162). Lamb shanks, sage, thyme, butter, garlic, salt, pepper – all piled on top of finely sliced carrots, onions, and leeks, then wrap in foil, tip in a glass of wine, and cook for 2.5 hours. Witness the raw ingredients:


(props to Ela for taking the picture for her dad: my hands were filthy, and we can work on her focus).

So what was so fun about this recipe:

1) It’s lamb! I love it, but this is the only the second time I cooked it. I couldn’t resist the noise: “what’s this bleating of sheep in my ears?”

2) It’s meat. Ok, I love meat: all the Cornetts do. But we, like most Americans, eat too much of it, so I’ve been cutting down our portions. The two times I’ve cooked meatless, I’ve endured long, mournful glances from the children before one of them gets up the courage to ask, lips trembling, “Dad, what happened to the meat?” Lamb shanks don’t give you a ton of meat, but just enough.

3) It’s the first time I frenched a bone: something I’ve wanted to do, but never really had the excuse. This was fun, and not as hard as I expected.

The end result was delicious: I tucked in with a good will, and I think the others all tried some. But let’s just say it’s not a meal fit for a sweltering August night in south Florida. Think early December, up north, with cold winds outside and steaming potatoes alongside the toasty packages on a platter.

In other cooking news, let me share two recent developments. After a hearty dinner of a homemade Tuscan Bean Stew, Michael pushed back has half-eaten bowl and said: “Dad, can’t we just have canned soup next time? I mean – can’t we just trust Publix?” Oh, Michael – you don’t want to trust canned soups. Second, I have decided that my current guilty pleasure in cooking is pancetta. Expensive? Salty? Fatty? Yes. Delectable? Oh yes. In small amounts – omelettes, pastas, arugula salads, and more – it’s both worthwhile and economical.

Love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at Facebook)