___

"I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right."

___

"You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
Gandalf to Frodo, 
LOTR i.2

___

"Oh, miracle -- thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!"
Diary of a Country Priest

___

"This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."
Knightly to Emma

___

My writing is like Shakespeare's.  At lease in the sense that I use many of the same words.

___

Tennis: what I lack in control, I make up for by over-hitting.

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"Okay, you abort all your babies while we baptize all our babies, and in forty years, we'll vote again."

One of the DVD's that came to our house with Christmas was the 1981 BBC production of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I remember it fondly from watching it as a mini series on PBS on our little black and white Sears TV in the early 80's.  

And it has aged pretty well. The BBC did it on a budget and once you get used to that idea, their creative use of sets and effects is actually part of the charm.

On of the strongest memories I have, and one of the best points as I watched it again, is the performance of the emcee character at Milliway's.  His jaded style is in direct lineage from the Joel Grey character in Cabaret, and evokes the same creepy fascination with the debauched.

• Girlie man churches...

• Scared of Santa: 43 pictures of kids who are not happy.

Another computer battle at home.  The "Juno Computer", which is used by everyone, was showing signs of collapse.  There was no mystery about the problem: it had a 2 gigabyte hard drive that was 99% full, what with Windows 98, several applications, plus a growing pile of Juno email.  A drive that is 99% full doesn't work well at all.  The system really needs some free space as it moves things around.  If it doesn't have the free space it wants, it gives errors when you try to print, because there's no place to spool the print job.  It give errors when you have new mail, because Juno has one single-minded philosophy: to keep all your mail in the same folder as the program files.

I spent part of Christmas day trying to get everything copied to a larger drive; which was not easy because a system doesn't like to copy itself while it's running, and it holds many files "open" that it's not really using.  But once I was satisfied that the larger drive had everything it really needed, I tried making the switch: to make the larger drive the boot drive.  From that point on, it was nothing but trouble.  The BIOS setup stopped recognizing any of the drives I was using.  No matter which configuration I tried of Master / Slave, primary / secondary, jumpers on and off, it just quit working.

So yesterday I went to Office Depot and bought the cheapest desktop box they had.  Windows XP, 60 gigabyte drive 256 Mb RAM ... a dream compared that that old 98 box.  I tell you, Windows has come a long ways.  It's sort of like gouging yourself in the eye with a pointy stick: it feels so good when it stops.  Well, this Windows XP box doesn't even *have* a BIOS setup --- it recognizes your drives without asking.  And XP doesn't need to be told about your DSL connection.  If the cable is plugged in, it sees the network and you're on.  It finds the printer, and gets the model name and all the drivers automatically.  

In short, the Juno computer (W98) is dead.  Long live the Juno computer (XP).

By the way, I went to Best Buy first -- and what a mob -- and the blue shirt whose attention I finally captured went over to the register to write up my order and then let himself be interrupted by two other customers, both of whom he stopped to help.  So when he disappeared down the aisle with a high school kid who was looking for a thing the store didn't have, I disappeared out the front door.

Ours is one of the millions of U. S. homes where a Harry Potter 3 DVD appeared on Christmas morning.  As we watched it again, I was confirmed in my opinion that it is the least satisfying of the movies so far.  

Among the extra features are some interesting interviews; one in particular involves both the director and J. K. Rowling.  I was disheartened to hear Rowling say that she though the director's additional elements, such as the talking shrunken head in the bus, were clever, and the kind of thing she would have included herself, if only she had thought of them.

Too bad.  That kind of remark lowers my expectations for the rest of the series significantly.  

I Wish I Had Thought to Say

I've been on the Zion schedule for some time to preach Luke's account of the shepherds this Sunday.  So when I was invited to preach last Sunday in Omaha, I cleverly chose the same text.  There's nothing like actually preaching a sermon to help you suddenly realize what you wish you had said.  

So in theory, this week's Zion re-run will be much better, no?  Well, possibly, yes -- one certainly hopes.  But the I Wish I Had Thought to Say rule applies every time.  So after preaching the same text again, there will still be things I will wish I had thought to say.

I suppose in theory, I could keep preaching the same text week after week for the rest of my life, and still be discovering a better way to say it and more things I wish I had thought to say.  Although one would hope that after five or ten years, I would have something like a pretty good sermon. 

This is where the infinite depth of God's word meets the hard limits of a man's heart and brain.

The one place I don't want to go with my preaching is described nicely here:

In a great many churches what passes for the sermon is the sort of stale, lumpy pabulum that gives no evidence of serious study or thought, or of an engaged spiritual life. It coddles when it should offend, delivers platitudes in the place of wisdom, shows confidence where reticence is called for, and would rather die than say, "thus saith the Lord."

Which article has some honest observations on the problems with preaching.  Including this:

The price of being able to call the elders (or a house of Bishops) a brood of vipers is, quite frankly, a single life sustained by locusts and wild honey.

Son Joe has been in Chirstm--, er, Holiday concerts at LHS the past couple of evenings.  Monday night the bands.  Tuesday night the vocal groups.  I wonder why the bands are so much better.  

My first idea is that the kids in band actually have instruments, while most of the kids in the vocal groups have not physically "grown into" their instruments yet. A 16-year-old kid with a trumpet has a better chance of making a decent sound than that same 16-year old kid with his recently-changed voice.  Son Sam points out, however, that the kids in the band have spent some years learning about a thing called "practice", while the kids in the vocal groups never work on a song outside of class.  

When I was a kid, there was a Lincoln Boys Choir sponsored by the Lincoln Public Schools, directed by Hugh Rangeler.  It was a classy, high quality organization.  I knew some boys who were in it, and it was cool.  After I saw Disney's Almost Angels, I really wanted to be in it.  They took trips and stuff.  In more recent years, somebody took a run at having a Lincoln chapter of Pueri Cantores.  And now I read that the Shriners are trying to sponsor a boy's choir.  

Well, it's the churches that have reason to sing.  It's good to see the Deo Gratias choirs gaining some momentum.  Maybe there will come another day when boys in Lincoln train to sing with as much focus and discipline as they now apply to video games.

Doug Wilson makes me giggle: Santa Claus at Nicea.

Once a year I try to make time to watch the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol.  We watched it last night.  It is the best version.  I like it because it takes every character seriously.  Scott plays Scrooge as a tough old s.o.b. rather than one of the silly, fussy, clownish Scrooges you sometimes get.  David Warner's Bob Cratchitt is done tenderly, not foolishly, and Roger Rees does nephew Fred Holywell with a plain sincerity that always breaks my heart with its simple, determined goodness.  Even Fezziwig, a character that begs for caricature, is done with respect and truth.  It's hard to take a story that is so familiar and has such a high cheese potential and tell it with conviction and honesty.  If you can watch it to the end and endure the scene Christmas morning at Fred's house without being affected, well, maybe you need some ghostly visitors in your own turn.

Luke 2:8 says that the shepherds were "keeping watch over their flocks by night."  This is a place where Luke uses a word doubling that doesn't show up in English translations.  The "keeping watch" is really something like "guarding guard" or " watching watch." This kind of doubling has roots in Hebrew idiom where it is pretty common, but I don't think it is "good Greek."  That is, Greek writers don't normally double words like this, unless of course they are writing the New Testament and want to evoke some Hebrew / Old Testament connections.  

Sometimes Hebrew word doubling is emphatic: "dying you shall die" (usually in English "you shall surely die").  Sometimes it is merely handy "... every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."  Dt. 6:17 has a "guarding guard" pair:  "Keeping you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God..."

The question is, "so what?"  Is there something intentional that Luke has put here to alert us to some OT connections.  (Luke uses yet another doubling in the very next verse: "they were frightened with fear", usually translated they were "filled with fear" or "sore afraid.")

My hunch is that Luke is calling to mind all the shepherds of the Old Testament (David surely; Moses at the burning bush, ...), and perhaps especially the Shepherds of Ezekiel 34 -- the religious leaders who had failed their duty and were actually ravening wolves dressed in the wool of the flock (Matthew 7:15).  I think there's a nice divine irony here: the Shepherds of Israel, who are *supposed* to be guarding guard at night, are asleep on the job.  So God sends his angel to some country shepherds who actually *are* awake and guarding guard at night. 

I wonder if this has been revised and updated:

And only 39 cents.

Bede's History of the English Church and People is still on my nightstand, and I still read at it when I'm not sleepy yet.  This thing was written in 731 A.D. and is one of the primary sources of information about English history in the early Christian era.  Bede's report of the earliest centuries isn't bad -- you can make allowances that he didn't have a whole lot to work with in the way of sources.  Then when he gets to the year 600 or so, he suddenly has lots of stories available and the narrative becomes much less useful.  England was a patchwork of small kingdoms (a.k.a. "gangs"), and Bede's report gives the account of King This, who received the faith and was baptized, but was killed in battle with the wicked King That, but such was the virture and merit of King This, that when the sick came upon the spot in the field where he fell, they were healed, and his body was buried at such a spot, and people took the dirt from his grave and used it as medicine with great profit, and some time later when his body was dug up and moved to the new church nearby, it was seen to be miraculously preserved without corruption.  

Okay, okay, I'm asleep now.  The writing of history has come a long way.

My Penguin Classics paperback provides a map in the front of ancient English places, but of course the places that actually get mentioned repeatedly in the book are not to be found on the map.  

The church itself was afflicted with quite a bit of sub-orthodox teaching.  For instance, Bede reports an angelic vision experienced by one Fursey, (III.19) who was held in high esteem as a holy man.  In the vision, Fursey is taken up high above the earth and looking down sees four great fires burning, which are explained to be Falsehood, Covetousness, Discord, and Cruelty.  Fursey is afraid of the fires when they come near, but the angel tells him he won't be burned because he is free from these sinful desires.  The angel concludes,

For as every man's body is set on fire by unlawful desire, so when death frees him from the body, he must make due atonement for his sins by fire.

Ya gotta be careful about those angels in the visions you get, don't you?  Sometimes they just don't get it right.

(Holy Cow: I just noticed in linking to the online text that the online translation is quite different than my Penguine.  The online version renders the angel's speech

for as a man burns in the body through unlawful pleasure, so, when set free from the body, he shall burn by the punishment which he has deserved.

Is the Latin really that difficult?)

Star Trek (the original series) Christmas Episode:

Humor ripped off directly from National Lampoon.  The others in their list of "least successful holiday specials" don't come close to this:  

I get great enjoyment out of reading Jon Barlow's blog.  He's a brainy young Ph.D. student in St. Louis with a wife (Annie) and young children.  I've never met him personally, but he frequents an email forum that I follow, and I'm always interested in his contributions to those theological discussions.  In addition, his blog gives me a peek into his family life in a way that lets me wax nostalgic on the homely joys of a house with small children.  This bathtime story is a good one:.

A House of Many Mansions (and secret passageways)

Recent blog additions: CACOETHES SCRIBENDI is by Jeff Meyers, pastor at Providence PCA in St. Louis. The Japery, which is the blog side of The New Pantagurel, the online mag edited by Clay Johnson, a PCA M.Div. candidate at Covenant Seminary whom I see at Heartland Presbytery meetings from time to time.  And I now list Mere Comments separately; it's the blog side of the online Touchstone magazine.

"Talitha, Qumi."

Jesus goes to a house where a girl has died.  He takes only a few into the room with him.  He goes to the dead girl's bedside.  He takes her by the hand.  He says simply, "Talitha, Qumi."  She opens her eyes, sees him, and rises from the dead.

For the benefit of his non-Aramaic speaking readers, Mark translates "Talitha, Qumi" as "Little girl, I say to you arise."  But the expression here is much more personal and tender.  Something more like "Lambkin, arise."

And it makes me think of a morning to come when my Savior will call me by my name, personally, with affection, and tell me to get up.  And I will open my eyes and see him and rise.

This is pretty funny: link ...

I added a movie to my movies page.  Shall We Dance.  (The 1997 Japanese version).   It's in the "Also Recommended" category.  We don't own a copy, but it is much liked all around the circle.  The American remake by the same name of the past year certainly misses the whole point.  The Japanese social structure and cultural manners play a big part in the emotional movement of the story.  There's no possible counterpart in the American retelling.

What do you mean by "immediately?"

I'm reading Mark's gospel and have paused to think about his characteristic use of "immediately" (Greek "euthews").  I have heard people say Mark uses it because he is presenting an abbreviated, action-packed story for an impatient Roman readership.  I have heard other people say that Mark just wasn't a very sophisticated writer and didn't realize (or just didn't care) that he was over-using his favorite adverb (seven times in the first 28 verses).

I suspect there's more to it.  First, it is an adverb form of the adjective "straight", thus "straightly" or "straightway."  And notice it's first uses:

John's ministry is to make the Lord's paths straight 1:3
Jesus straightway sees the spirit descending at his baptism 1:10
The sprit leads him straightway into the wilderness to be tempted. 1:12

It all has to do with the direct coming of the Lord as Isaiah prophesied.  Furthermore, the sprit/voice paired with the enemy/opposition pairing in 1:10 and 1:12 seem to have echoes in several later pairings.  (But I'm not quite clear on the patterns yet.)

And finally, it strikes me that Mark's last instance is at Peter's denial, which provides a stark contrast to the first instance.  In 1:10/1:12 the Father testifies "this is my son," a dove descends, and the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.  In 14:72/15;1 Peter denies "I never knew him", a rooster crows, and the officials lead Jesus to Pilate to be crucified.  

It's all part of the way God has now burst into history and is coming down the highway straightway.  So either repent and be baptized, or take counsel how to destroy him, but you're going to have to do something.

Having loved the novel for some time, I got a chance last night to watch the 1951 film version of A Diary of a Country Priest. (in French with subtitles) The filmmaker Robert Bresson is famous for his minimalist style and his extreme auteur's control over every detail.  (He didn't use professional actors: he used amateur "models" whom he placed and moved according to a precise plan.)

I was surprised and pleased at how much I enjoyed it.  The style is not intrusive or annoying.  The film adaptation follows the book very faithfully, though it makes me want to go back and check the book on some details -- ("did I miss that, or did Bresson change something?").  Overall, however, the film does not communicate the humanity of the priest like the book does.  I finish the book loving that guy like a brother.  But I finish the movie and think, "my, what an odd, troubled little priest."    

Can People Change?

Ralph Smith, Presbyterian missionary extraordinaire in Japan, lectures on Shakespeare as part of the berith.org school there.  I finally got to the last of the MP3 lectures he has posted, and I'm absolutely delighted.  

At one point, Ralph engages the Shakespeare critic Harold Blum who asserts that Shakespeare's heroes change in and by themselves.  In other words, Blum says the Shakespearean character changes himself according to his own wishes. (Blum's larger point is that that Shakespeare invented the modern idea of "personality.")

Smith knocks this idea flat with the neat observation that Shakespeare's characters actually change because they are in relationship with other characters: Fallstaff changes through his relationship with prince Hal, Kate changes through her relationship with Petruchio, and so on.  And Smith grounds this observation in the Christian view that "people are what they are in relationship with others; especially in relation to God himself."  Further, this true of all men, because it is true of God in whose image we are created.  God is who he is because of the eternal triune relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.  And the way God redeems mankind is by creating a new relationship between fallen man and the incarnate Son.

Wonderful stuff.  And it is instructive: people who are stuck in unchanging patterns of sin are not helped just by getting some new idea or teaching or theory; they are helped when the door opens and in walks somebody who begins a relationship that does not let them not change.

It's all about relationship.  Community.  The church.  Outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

From Thomas Sowell's column:

A couple of readers in Michigan ask: Since death is defined by the cessation of brain waves, why shouldn't life be defined by the beginning of brain waves?

There once was a guy with an idea.  He started a company called MegaAge.com, with the purpose of selling good sports equipment for cheap.  His whole philosophy (and advertising story) was "it doesn't cost that much to manufacture a graphite tennis racket -- why do companies charge over $100 a piece?"  So he sat down and designed something very very like one of the most popular Wilson racquets, contracted with a factory to make a bunch of them out of "the highest quality Japanese graphite" and sold his two models on the web for $29.95.  I bought one and liked it.

Now, a couple of years later, I check back and discover that MegaAge.com is still selling the same two models

... for $119 each.

Well, that's still in the low end of the price range for "real" racquets (not those that you would get at Target or ShopKo), but not $29, either.  If I'm going to spend $119, then get me a Pro Kennex 5g.

Son Joe marched through downtown Lincoln with the LHS band in the Star City Holiday Parade this morning.  I'm surprised how many people turn out for this kind of thing.  It has a fun, family atmosphere.  

Christmas Giving Ideas ...

Duct Tape Wallet
Solus Christus Hat
Pro Kennex 5g Tennis Racquet

Illiberal Liberals  Yet another example of the political left at it's ugliest in today's OpinionJournal.com: (a survey at Yale University)

"...While some Yalies said that politics either didn't arise in class or caused no problem because they shared the professor's views, others recounted unpleasant experiences. One example:

"My teacher came into class the day after the election proclaiming, 'That's it. This is the death of America.' The rest of the class was eager to agree, and twenty minutes of Bush-bashing ensued. At one point, one student asked our teacher whether she should be so vocal, lest any students be conservatives. She then asked us whether any of us were Republicans. Naturally, no one volunteered that information, whereupon our teacher turned to the inquisitive student and said, 'See? No one in here would be stupid enough to vote for Bush.' "

I'm still giggling.  Son Joe and I went to The Incredibles last night and I really loved it. It is an amazing piece.  I sat there as the credits rolled (... and rolled, and rolled ...) and marveled at what an incredibly complex and sophisticated art form we have here.  (And only in America.  I can't imagine such a thing being produced in any other country with anything that approaches these kinds of production standards.)  The only thing that compares is architecture: from the initial idea, through the group meetings, through the conceptual drawings, through the hard engineering, through the construction, and subcontracting, and finish, and furnish, and  ...

Well, it was enjoyable at many levels.  And it was an example of the way stories all build on other stories.  On our recent trip to Kentucky, I spend some time wearing earphones and listening to Ralph Smith's (the Man in Japan) wonderful series of lectures on Shakespeare.  (a MUST for any Christian college kid who takes a Shakespeare class.)  Ralph does a neat job of explaining how all stories build on other stories as he shows how Shakespeare echoed and adapted many Biblical themes.  Which of course is to say that The Incredibles would be impossible to tell or understand absent a decades-long heritage of spy, detective, and superhero movies.  Part Bond, part Inspector Clouseau, part X-Men, part Spiderman, all Pixar, Disney at its best (all the pacing and humor of The Emperor's New Groove), plus an absolutely delightful musical score.

Just too much fun.

(I liked it.)

OKAY.  Found the cell phone ...

Stanley Kurtz reviews Home Alone America in the National Review Online.  Sounds like a book that would make a good CHRISTMAS PRESENT for somebody.

I remember Victor Walter fondly from my days at Trinity.  I never had him for a class, but he was a, er, *large* presence on campus.  Serenely bemused, he always gave me the impression that he knew what was up, and he would tell you about the ridiculous side if time and circumstances permitted.

My clearest memory of him was the day he led a time of informal sharing during a chapel service.  Several students shared prayer requests or matters for personal thanksgiving.  One student shared the good news that he and his wife had experienced relief from a severe financial difficulty.  They had really been up against the edge, and weren't sure that they would be able to stay in school, but they had suddenly received help from an unexpected source: there was an amount that would meet their immediate needs with a surplus that would carry them for some time ahead.  Dr. Walter smiled pleasantly and without batting an eye responded smoothly, "The school gets the tithe."

And so I hear with some sadness the news of his passing.  S. M. Hutchens (also a Trinity alum from that era) gives a wonderful tribute in the Touchstone blog.

Elephants, indeed.

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