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We also watched Johnny English last week.  I have to admit that I like Rowan Atkinson.  I first became acquainted with Atkinson when I saw some of the Mr. Bean episodes  imported from England.  He also has an unforgettable cameo as a clueless clergyman performing a wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral.  He endeared himself to me permanently for his mouth-numbing inability to pronounce the groom's surname "Saint John" as "sinjin" (those odd British aristocratic pronunciations) after being corrected during the ceremony.  He is a pure clown who has found exactly what he can do to be funny, and he sticks to it.  If you find him tiresome, well, you will find him consistently tiresome.  But if you like his bumbling, you will like Johnny English.  

Ebert is probably right that the James Bond spoof has been done and re-done too many times, but he is wrong for preferring Mike Meyers and Austin Powers.  Meyers is just so crass and vulgar.  Atkinson manages to be funny without stooping so low.  (I see from imdb that Atkinson was the voice of Zazu in The Lion King.  Which one was Zazu?  The baboon/prophet?)

Recent movies: 

Man on Fire: Denzel Washington as an ex-Marine/CIA something (he has a killing past he drinks to forget) hired as a bodyguard to a cute 10-year-old girl in Mexico City, where organized crime has kidnapping and ransom down to a science.  You've got corrupt gangsters fighting against the corrupt wealthy and the corrupt cops ... and in the middle is this sweet kid who asked for none of it.  Denzel does some man on a mission stuff in the tradition of Walking Tall and The Vigilante, not only with terrible skill, but also with a self-sacrificial awareness that makes this movie better than it might otherwise be.  But mine was the only thumb up in the room; everyone else found it unbelievable, over the top, and unjustifiable.  Some also objected to the intrusive, gimmicky visual style.

Okay, I didn't say it was a great movie.

Babe: Pig in the City.  We liked the original Babe movie and finally got around to the sequel.  This movie is a lot of fun, especially for the colorful and surreal city setting.  Mrs. Hoggett misses her connecting flight on the way to show Babe at a Fair, and so they are stranded in a city, where the only hotel that will take a pig is also home to a menagerie of other strange characters and animals.  A number of silly complications are completely self-consistent with the gentle, whimsical tone of the story and seem entirely reasonable in the sort of cartoon logic of that city.  Okay, it's about talking animals, so if you're just too grown-up to enjoy that kind of thing, well, that's your loss.

Pro-"choice" usually isn't

Robert Hart, one of the contributing editors at Touchstone magazine points out that the "woman's choice" is typically not really hers:

I have done some sidewalk counseling outside of abortion "clinics"- though not as much as I probably should have done. But, I have seen enough to be certain that "a woman's right to choose" is one of the most dishonest phrases in human history. It was obvious to me that almost every woman or girl who was headed into the abortion mill was either being dragged in by family, or by a boyfriend.

There was no evidence of "choice" or even of free will in the overwhelming majority of cases. To attempt to speak to them always meant getting past their self appointed dominator/ body guard. If anyone was advocating a free choice, it was those of us who were trying to give them information on why they may want to let their babies live; but usually the people who were protecting their own interests in having an inconvenient baby killed managed to prevail in dominating and manipulating the pregnant woman.

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We watched Hidalgo last night.  A mix of thumbs, both up and down.  Mine was down.  Things I didn't like: (1) Aragorn incoherently mumbles his way through the movie as blankly as possible.  He does so little in his character, you end up knowing nothing about this man except he loves his brother/horse and doesn't like to see Indians slaughtered.  (2)  Revisionist storytelling.  Yet another cheap Hollywood shot at American guilt for our treatment of the wise and noble native Americans (yawn), combined with a sympathetic treatment of Islamic society.  The only person who is identified as a Christian is the wicked Lady Awful.  (3)  The Self-Serious Tone.  This movie just might have worked if it had adopted an Indiana Jones type of winking humor, telling a ripping adventure tale for the pure joy of it.  But it has no such heart.  (4) And as daughter Bess remarked  "A 1000-mile race across the desert ... and a photo-finish!"

Daughter Bess was kinder in her appraisal, comparing the story to the delightful TinTin adventures.  And that is the best that can be said for it.  Although TinTin also doesn't take itself this seriously, presuming to Make A Point about Social Issues and all.

Pastor Tim Gallant, a man of very large brain who puts all those scholarly Greek musings on his Rabbi Saul blog, reveals his keen wit with this riff on our times:

http://www.testimonium.org/humility-driven/ 

I keep hoping he'll marry one of my daughters, but I suspect he's too poor for the bride-price I demand.

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Why the news is important

The person who tells the story defines the world.  In Israel, the man who had the task of recording history was a prophet.  All the Kings and Chronicles material is the product of men who held a prophetic office.  The chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah are specifically attributed to the work of men who functioned as court prophets:

the Chronicles of Samuel the seer,
the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet
the Chronicles of Gad the seer, 
the history of Nathan the prophet
the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite
the visions of Iddo the seer 
the chronicles of Shemaiah the prophet 
-- and of Iddo the seer
the story of the prophet Iddo. 
the chronicles of Jehu the son of Hanani
the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz
the Chronicles of the Seers

This should teach us to see the events around us as a product of what God is doing and how the people are responding -- either in the obedience of faith unto blessing, or in disbelief and unfaithfulness unto judgment.  ('The rules of the game are given in Lev 26 and Dt 28).

This should also teach us that the guy who tells the story will inevitably tell it from his god's point of view, whether his god is the God of Israel, or an idol of his own making.  When the idolater tells the story, he of course gets it all wrong, because in his idolatry, he is blind to the way the world really works.  The bias of today's mainstream media is especially galling as it becomes more pronounced, but remember, these men and women are blinded by the gods they serve, and they truly cannot see their bias.

It also suggests a news-reporting, history-telling project for the church.  We should think about how to train generations of story tellers who can give the news and record our history with a self-conscious prophetic faithfulness.  Tell the truth as one who stands in the presence of God and is bound to serve in his calling, even when the king burns the records strip by strip.

One Level of Complexity

The Dan Rather lapse illustrates an interesting fact of public life.  I propose this observation as a rule: The public can be expected to handle only one level of complexity per issue.  On the forged memo issue, the primary message is "CBS failed in a big way to check its sources and betrayed a too-eager bias against Bush in its reporting."  

At the next level of complexity, we find that they guy who handed the bogus documents to CBS is Bill Burkett, who is, not surprisingly, politically hostile to Bush AND has ties to the Kerry campaign.  

That's as much complexity as most Americans will get or feel they really need to know.

Sure, there are more levels to the story that will explain things more clearly, but according to my "One Level of Complexity" rule, they will neither help nor hinder nor effect in any way the public's understanding of the event, which is defined by the primary message plus one level of complexity.  So did Burkett give the documents to CBS only on the condition that someone at CBS would arrange for someone in Kerry's campaign to contact Burkett?  Maybe so, but it probably doesn't matter.  You are now past the first level of complexity, and the general population won't follow you any further.

So my advice: if you're going to get into a scandal, arrange for the first level of complexity to make you look good.

Bumper Stickers we'd Like to See

Keep your hands off my kid!
I'm pro-choice on school choice

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Undeniably not denied

I want to be the first to report the rumor that Al Franken plans to revise his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them in order to include a chapter on Dan Rather.  It is *very significant* that neither Franken nor Rather have denied that this is a rumor.  So.

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More than you need to know about tennis

I've been playing quite a bit of tennis recently.  We have a new employee at work who likes to play, and he's always suggesting times.  It's good for me and I enjoy it.  

When I first started playing in 1997, in my initial "tennis nut" phase, I became fascinated with racquets of all kinds.  I started with some cheap K-mart aluminum models, but dropped them all immediately the first time I tried a graphite racquet.  Aluminum vibrates; graphite feels incredibly solid.  I worked my way through several models, starting out with the idea that "stiff, light, and long" would be right for me.  But after some horrible tennis elbow, I changed to the "flexible, heavy, and standard-length" philosophy  (and I also fixed my backhand mechanics, which was the real problem.)  My current favorite racquet is a Pro Kennex 5g.  The designers here decided to put some "kinetic mass" in the hollow chambers of the racquet frame.  What that means is that if you shake the racquet next to your ear, you can just hear the little beads inside, like a baby's rattle.  For the physics involved, imagine a pickup truck with about 100 croquet balls in the bed.  When the truck gets going, all the balls roll back against the tailgate.  When the truck stops suddenly, the balls all slam against the front of the bed.  Thus, in the tennis racquet, when you start your swing, and all the little beads are at the back of the frame.  When you hit the ball, they all slam against the front of the frame.  Now, there's not a lot of mass involved with these little beads, so the main effect is just to counter vibration.  The more shock and vibration the frame absorbs, the less travels up your arm to distress your elbow.  Of course the best way to reduce shock and vibration is to hit right in the center of the strings.  But for some reason, I have trouble doing that consistently.

Last night I broke a string in the third set.  It costs $20-plus to have a racquet strung at the shop.  During my tennis nut phase 5 or 6 years ago, I played all the time and broke a lot of strings.  I did the arithmetic and realized it would be less expensive to buy a cheap, manual stringing machine.  So for about $130 I got a simple drop-weight stringer, which lives on the corner of the basement workbench, waiting for me and my 5g tonight.

The president of CBS called Dan Rather into his office.  "Dan, I want to bring you up to speed on what the directors have been saying.  First, we all want you to know that we're all behind you 100 percent. 'Fake, but Accurate' is a great newsroom motto, by the way.  We love it.  Second, we've decided to move your show to the Comedy Channel."

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We watched Chaplin's The Kid.  As many Chaplin pieces as I've seen, I don't think I've ever seen The Kid all the way through.  It's typical in many ways; the funny stuff is creative and funny; the sentimental stuff is self-indulgent.  Jackie Coogan was one of the best child actors of all time.  His tearful scene in the back of the orphanage van is really remarkable.

One of my favorite sources of Chaplin material is the TV documentary The Unknown Chaplin (1983) narrated by James Mason.  It's like a good director's commentary on Chaplin's entire career.  One interesting thing I learned on that program is that Chaplin shot many of his interior scenes on outdoor sets.  They built each set outdoors and then had a big white tent ceiling to block the sun and diffuse the light.  It worked very well, though one problem that they did have was wind.  The documentary shows some unusable footage where props blow over and costumes flap.  I noticed some wind in The Kid in the scene where Edna Purviance comes to pick up the boy at the police station.  Her hair blows (unusual for indoors), and a notice tacked to the wall behind her flutters a bit.

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All that's left of the broken tree:

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Does anyone else think that we just have too many "issue ribbons"?  Every cause wants to pin another ribbon to your shirt.  

Every time I walk past St. Mary's Church ("The Old Cathedral") at 14th & K, I look up to see the owl.

It's actually a scarecrow, or rather a scarepigeon, and I wonder if it really keeps the bird bombers away from the front steps directly below.  (The steps do appear clean.)

It's a bit fuzzy in this picture, but it sure is cute in real life.  Though if I were a pigeon, I would be very afraid. Click here to see the whole steeple.

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I finished Diary of a Country Priest (being not a little dismayed at how long it took me).  I guess I haven't had many sustained reading sessions.  I tend to read at bedtime and put the book down when I realize my eyes have been closed for a while and I'm thinking of something else entirely, but I'm not sure what.

I'm impressed this time through with how uninteresting are Bernanos' excursions that treat the peculiarities of French society and political philosophy of 80 years ago.  I get the feeling that Bernanos has something to say on a matter and so he puts his priest in a scene with a character who runs off on a long clever monolog that makes some point, for which I, ignorant of the local debating points, have no handle.

The best stuff is still about the priest's willingness to serve in simplicity and obscure failure.  The priest's blunt recognition of his lack of anything to offer endears him to me.  He can't find the right words in response to the local physician's struggle with unbelief:

Others perhaps might then be able to find the right words to appease and persuade.  I don't know such words.  True pain coming out of a man belongs primarily to God, it seems to me.  I try and take it humbly to my heart, just as it is.  I endeavor to make it mine -- to love it ...

In the one real work he is able to accomplish, he confronts the squire's wife about the bitterness at the center of her life and guides her to true understanding and repentance.  But even there, his mind is full of self-doubt:

For some time now I have had the impression that my mere presence will draw sin out, summon it up to the surface, into the eyes, the lips, the voice .... as though the enemy scorned to hide himself from such a puny adversary, as though he came to defy me openly, laugh in my face.

Later, when he reflects with some wonder at what happened in that interview, he says:

'Be at peace,' I told her.  And she had knelt to receive this peace.  May she keep it forever.  It will be I that give it to her.  Oh, miracle -- thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!

And that's why I love this book, for all it's awkwardness.  "Sweet miracle of our empty hands."

 Big wind storm last night.  Many branches down.

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On the walk to work I passed a crew working on some power lines where a tree had fallen on the lines, cracking the nearby pole.  (Click the picture for full resolution)

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Last night was the first night of the fall session at Woods tennis. I paid for the fall session and bought a Winter pass, which provides reduced rates for October to April.  We'll count this as my birthday present.

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Anne bought the DVD set for Freaks and Geeks, which ran one season in 1999.  Since it's cancellation, the show has found an appreciative audience.  I've seen only an episode and a half, but I can see why people like it. 

My FTP connection to my internet account has been on the blink.  And that has made it more difficult to get anything posted.

I was telling a friend about our church the other day; this guy is from South America, and it is interesting how I immediately feel apologetic as I try to describe the chaos of the church in the the U.S.A.  At one point I told him that historically the three marks of a faithful church are Word, Sacrament, and Discipline.  (These three, by the way, are represented by the things Israel kept in the ark of the covenant: the tablets of the law, the pot of manna, and Aaron's rod, which budded.)  A faithful church holds to the authority of Scripture, practices baptism and the Eucharist, and does not let the sinner continue in her midst without rebuke; and ultimately excommunication.  I said that many churches in the U.S. fail on the third point and effectively make no pretense of discipline.  As a Presbyterian, I'm familiar with the failings in our history, but every group has a similar story.  Those Other Presbyterians, the PC(USA), for example, refused to discipline a minister in the 1920's who preached a sermon against The Fundamentals.  In his sermon he explicitly denied (1) the inerrancy of Scripture (2) The virgin birth, (3) Christ's blood atonement (4) Christ's physical resurrection, and (5) the reality of Jesus' miracles.  (By the way, these five provide the historical origin of the term "fundamentalist")  By refusing to draw the line in 1923, the PC(USA) effectively abdicated, and today you see the fruit here in Lincoln: the city's only abortion doctor is not only a member in good standing in one of PC(USA) churches, but has also served as an Elder.  

Well, my friend has a Catholic background, and he immediately recognized the three elements.  He said that he turned away from his involvement in the Roman Catholic church because of some of the corruption he saw.  

Discipline has been much on my mind.  After months and months, our Session has come to the sad end of a disciplinary process.  And yet we hope that it is not the end, and there will yet be a turning and a repentance and a restoration.  

A Modest Proposal for Sermon Preparation

 My brain is a slow cooker.  I am not very good in immediate give and take conversations.  It's usually a few days later when I finally think of what I should have said.

Knowing this, I have made it a goal that, if I ever pastor full-time, I will build some slow-cook time into my sermon preparation.  The idea is that I have the next four sermons on my desk all the time.  So in a given week's 15 hours of sermon preparation, I spend an hour or two with an initial translation and grammatical analysis of my text for 3 weeks away.  And I spend 2-3 hours on reference reading and background work for the sermon 2 weeks away.  And I spend 2--3 hours working on the outline and applications for next week's sermon.  And I spend 8 hours on the final manuscript for this week's sermon.  And the idea is that during the four weeks when I have a text floating around in the back of my brain, I will think what I should have said even before it's time to say it the first time.

There's no reason in the world that it can't work just that way.

We watched Stand and Deliver the other night.  I somehow expected better.  It is an inspiring, true story of a math teacher in East L. A. who pushes his barrio kids to excel against all expectations.  I was puzzled by the understated way Edward Olmos played the math teacher.  Apart from sporting the nerdiest comb-over I have ever seen, he seemed to be playing for a real-life imitation of the teacher's mannerisms.  I'm usually a fan of as much faithfulness to the original material as possible, but this movie seemed to want a stronger, more inspiring central character.  It's not as though he's playing a well-known national figure, and everyone will say "no, no, Ronald Reagan was nothing like that."  

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I filled in for Mike Hsu at Grace Chapel on Sunday.  Mike was in Haiti on a missions trip a couple of weeks ago and may have picked up something.  On Friday he was in the hospital overnight with sever abdominal pain.  He phoned me Saturday to ask if I had something ready.  He kidded, "You got something on Matthew 7?"  Actually, "it just so happened" that I did 7:13-23 last January at Zion; the very passage that was already printed in Mike's bulletin.  Mike was well enough to be in church and he served communion.  This was their last Sunday with one service.  It's their fourth anniversary as a church, and they have grown from about 40 in the core group to 250 a week ago.  It's a real happenin' place.  Mike is a good man.  

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It's my mother's 85th birthday today.  ("Hi, Mom!")  She is famous in the world of quilting.  Every so often I meet someone and when they hear that I'm a Ghormley, they ask, "Oh, are you related to Mary Ghormley?"  And then I am pleased to listen to their stories about mom.  Search [mary campbell ghormley] or [mary ghormley quilts] on Google.  She not only quilts herself, she is also a collector with a specialty in doll quilts.  She still gives programs and lends her quilts to galleries here and there from time to time.  She and dad (who will be 86 in November) want to borrow our van in December to drive a collection to Kentucky for a show.  Pretty amazing.  

"Grace is Everywhere"

I have picked up Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest again.  This is one of my all-time favorites.  A sickly French priest in a rural parish in the 1930's.  

I had already started it when we happened to watch Au Revoir Les Enfants the other night.  Definitely a thumbs up movie about a Catholic boys school in France, 1944 under Nazi occupation.  The most interesting thing for me was the setting of the school itself.  The dormitory was one large room with rows of beds.  The boys were rowdy and not especially nice to one another, while the teachers and priests enforced only a general kind of order.  And by all accounts, it's all pretty close to the personal experience of Louis Malle, the film maker.  That's one of the neat things about the movies: show me what life is like in places and times I will never otherwise visit.

So back to the Country Priest.  This from the first page:

My parish is bored stiff; no other word for it. Like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom, and we can't do anything about it. Some day perhaps we shall catch it ourselves-become aware of the cancerous growth within us. You can keep going a long time with that in you.

Cancer plays a role later in the book, by the way.  As he regards his village in the cold mist of a growing evening

I thought of the cattle which I could hear coughing somewhere in the mist, and of the little lad on his way back from school clutching his satchel, who would soon be leading them over sodden fields to a warm sweet-smelling byre.... And my parish, my village seemed to be waiting too-without much hope after so many nights in the mud-for a master to follow towards some undreamed-of, improbable shelter.

Yow.  Catch that?  "... a master to follow towards some undreamed-of, improbable shelter"?

... I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay.

I don't think this kind of book makes the lists among the Christian Booksellers.  American Protestants don't like to read about the kind of poverty of spirit and call to suffering that the best Catholic writers see and understand.  For some reason, we'd rather be purpose driven.

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