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

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

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"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

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"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

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

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

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Lead us not into temptation ...

LOST.  In this episode we learn that as a child, Mr. Eko was faced with a horrible choice.  It brings to mind the similar dilemma faced by the main character in Sophie's Choice.  These are the kinds of miserable situations where the pressure is on, the heart is torn, and the right thing is not clear.  To be spared such difficulty is a special mercy, and that, it seems to me, is the point of the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "lead us not into temptation."  God knows just the kind of circumstance where I will cave in, blunder, and lose my way.  He also knows how much damage I would do to myself and others.  He also knows how merrily I will trip along, heedless of the danger just ahead.  

I'd like to see somebody make a really good movie thriller based on something like this.

It's one thing when girls want to join the military to be like boys.  It's another thing when the girls who get into the military want the boys there not to behave like boys.  

I'm unreasonably fond of this photo which shows the capitol tower reflected in a car's rear window and trunk.  Or maybe that's the front windshield and hood.  (It was dark.)

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January 11

People don't remember sermons.  I think that's not as bad as it sounds.  

What was the sermon about at your church last week?  What were the three points?  See, if the sermon were just a straight-up teaching event, then not remembering the sermon would be a real problem for the church.  

But the sermon is not just a delivery of content and theology.  It is about the obedience of faith.  As I listen, I'm not supposed be tucking the knowledge bits into my brain for reference, I'm supposed to be listening to Jesus calling his church to follow him and saying "amen" from the heart.  

What do you want: a church where everybody's notebook has all the sermon outlines for the past year and they can quote the content accurately? or a church where the people hear the shepherd's voice and know it and follow him?

I walk by the State Capitol building every day when I walk to work, that is, when walk to work, if that makes sense.  And I always look.  I've lived in Lincoln practically my whole life, and I never get tired of the U.S.A.'s most distinctive statehouse, and Nebraska's most-photographed building.  (If you don't count Memorial Stadium; and properly speaking the photos there are not really of the building ...).     Anyway, I have a mind to make a set of some of my capitol pix; as an exercise.  Nobody has to look.  

Speaking of famous pixels, the Internet Monk saw my photo of the abandoned church near Milford and asked to use it in a web page design he's working on.  I've enjoyed looking at his blog from time to time.  He's a kindred spirit in many important ways.  I wonder if he'll end up using the photo ...

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January 09

New Blogther.  Boniface House is a blog I mean to check regularly now. Sean Brandt is a fellow member of Heartland Presbytery with whom I hobnob thrice a year at our conclaves.  I like his inspiration for the blog name:

St. Boniface was an 8th century English monk (also known as Wynfrith) who was called to serve as a missionary in pagan Saxony (present day Germany). As the story is told, after ministering among the people for some time, one day Boniface interrupted a holy convocation around the Sacred Oak of Thor, and with a couple of swings of his axe and some help from the Lord Thor’s Oak came crashing down, and was subsequently used to build a chapel. Many were converted when they saw that no lightning bolts were forthcoming from Thor, who had been shown to be weak and impotent. So may all the Lord’s enemies perish.

While we're talking about blogs, I'm of a mind again to see about using an actual blog service like blogger which would handle things like archives and comments that are either clunky (archives) or nonexistent (comments) here at the Presbyteer. But I'm both fussy and lazy.  I want some graphic control over the look of the blog (I'm not exactly satisfied to use one of the off-the-shelf templates), but I'm too lazy to figure out how to really take control of the look.  (How does Garver do it at Sacra Doctrina?)

How you view the weakest and least able tells a lot about your theology.  What do you do with the infants, handicapped, and senile?  Does your God love them and want them numbered among his people?  Does he have a calling for them, even with their reduced capacity?

Here are some good thoughts along these lines.

Happy I was to make the trip to Grand Island yesterday to fill the pulpit at our PCA church there while their pastor lolls on a sunny vacation beach somewhere.  By my count, Psalm 91 is one of 16 "red letter" Psalms, by which I mean that God has some first-person speech that would be printed in red ink if the publishers who printed red-letter Bibles were consistent.  We don't usually think of Psalms as being "Thus says the Lord" scripture, but there it is.

On the way home, I stopped at the Milford exit again, but this time to poke around at an abandoned church building visible from the interstate.  The inside is a real dump: old appliances, lumber, ... whatever.  But it was a photo op for me and I put a few pix up in a new Flickr set.  Milford Abandoned Church.

I love it with volunteers volunteer.  I had just the 3-year-old class in need of a teacher for this quarter, and two, count them two, couples contacted me in response to the note in the hot sheet.  

I love this church.

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January 07

New Flickr Set: Zion Men-U

Church growth is determined by many things, and people who are in small churches sometimes get defensive about their lack of growth, because they often carry around a feeling that it their fault.  

So.  Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.  I'm not pointing fingers or apportioning blame.  And since I speak in generalities, there will obviously be exceptions etc. etc. etc. and I'm more than ready to grant that the reason this or that specific church is small has nothing to do with what I describe here.

Anyway, the other day I was thinking again about the possibility that I might make a full-time switch someday and pastor a church somewhere.  One of the things I would try to find out as I visited a congregation is "do these people actually like each other?"   Because there are churches out there, most of them small, where one of the main limiting factors is that they just don't love one another.  So when a visitor drops by, he gets no sense that this is the kind of circle he'd like to join, because these are not the kind of people he would want to have as friends.  Because they don't even like each other.  

The church is like a family and in a small church that is true in spades.  Everyone knows way too much about everyone else.  And if you know one another that well, and if you don't at the same time love one another without reserve, then your family or your fellowship will radiate long psychic spikes that share your pain with every one outside who begins to get close.    Oh, you may have perfect doctrine and great preaching, but without actual love, you lose.

And you can love the other rats in your nest only if you have understood the love that works in the gospel of Christ whereby you yourself are the object of God's love.  He knows all the secrets of your heart and loves you anyway.  So actually, the place where the love of God can be most clearly copied is in the small church with its long history of mutual offense and conflict.  

Little children, love one another.

Wow.  A movie about the 9/11 heroes of Flight 93.  Hollywood has an infinite capacity to mess things up, but The trailer is excellent.  

I

Next episode 2006 01 11

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January 06

If you never been to despair.com, you need to visit at least once.  These are the people who make a whole series of beautiful "motivational" posters thick with dark humor, such as 

CONFORMITY
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Well, these guys now also sell a hardcover book of faux management philosophy, which really nails the faddish management gurus out there.  If you have suffered under professional corporate managers, you will get it.

AND they now have series of short video spots that are hysterical.  If Christopher Guest had been to Harvard Business School, this is what he'd be doing.

There's a reality factor that separates movie violence from movie sex. When a movie shows somebody getting blown away violently, everybody watching knows that the actor playing the story victim didn't really get killed. But when a woman goes naked in a movie, the actress is really naked and she violates standards of shame and modesty in real ways. And any physical sexual contact she has with another actor involves actual sinful acts which are real in a way that movie violence is not real.  When an actress is considered for a part, she is told that this part requires partial nudity, and she is given the chance to opt out.  If she takes the part, the actress really has to expose herself.  But they never tell an actor that this part requires you getting chopped up or blown to bits, and give him a chance to opt out, because those things don't actually happen to the actor.

This observation is certainly not the whole story, but it's an important part of it. By the way, actors know this instinctively. On stage if a guy "shoots" another guy, or rages at him with words, they never apologize for it back stage. ("Are you okay? Hope I didn't hurt your feelings in that scene ...") But if a woman slaps a man, the actors regularly talk about it to see if it was "okay" -- "Was that slap too hard? Sorry." When some physical price is paid by the actor (a slap, a shameful nudity, a sexual act), everyone knows that a line has been crossed and now something personal is involved. I recently watched the special features on the DVD of Mel Gibson's Hamlet. In one scene, Gibson's Hamlet roughly throws Helena Bonham Carter's Ophelia against a wall. The making-of feature shows how carefully and gently Gibson planned those actions, and Bonham Carter commented on how gentlemanly Gibson was.

The fact that actors "know" that personal physical contact requires special handling in a way that simulated violence does not is an important clue to the difference between movie violence and movie sex.

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January 05

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing 
compared to love in dreams.
Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action,
rapidly performed and in the sight of all."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  

A disciple asked his master how he could find God.  The master led him to a river, pushed his head under the water, and held it there until he fought his way to the surface for air.  The master told him, "When you want God as much as you then wanted air, you will find him very quickly."

I like to say that I flunked Sermon Outlining in seminary.  (Isn't that witty?)  Well, this is just embarrassing:

Sermon Text: Psalm 91
Title: Lest You Strike Your Foot Against a Stone

1. Faith's Cry: Be Safe in God's Care (vv1-2)
2. Life's Trials: Be Secure in God's Care (vv. 3-13)
3. God's Answer: Be Certain of God's Care (vv 14-15)

It all seems so artificial and forced.  Why can't we just talk about the Bible?  Did Chysostom use three-pointers?  Did Paul?  Did Isaiah.  

Why?  Why?  Why?

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January 04

This is really cool.  Every year since 1976, this family has taken an annual headshot of each member.  Line up the photos for quite an effect.  

The Arrow of Time

Rich Bledsoe doesn't post every day, but when he does, watch out.  Recently he drew connections between the inability of doubters to rejoice and observed that Americans generally don't do well with Christmas:

... If one lives life at a level of doubt and loss, and this is all so deep as to be subconscious, then one is going to be subject to the inevitable result of ungrieved loss. One is going to be depressed. We live, I believe, at subliminal level with civilization-wide depression. It is the inevitable outworking of a civilization that begins with doubt, and not belief. Joy is a result of hope and faith. Christmas is the time of hope and joy. Rejoicing is not something that doubters are capable of. A whole season of rejoicing becomes intolerable. Family dysfunction all comes to the surface. ...

Last month I started paying many of my bills with online payments.  Save stamps.  Don't write checks.  And don't worry about if the check arrives before the due date.  It was nice.  The only problem was, every company I pay has a different online payment system and I ended up with a bunch of different user ID's and passwords.  So this month I registered each company in my Wells Fargo online banking.  Add each company to your bill pay list, identify your account number, and then chose an amount to pay and the date to make the payment.  Voila.  And the service is free with the checking account I have.

Of course when the computers all crash and the Big System Goes Down, I won't be able to pay online, but then again, when the computers all crash, my creditors won't know that I owe them anything, will they?

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January 03

I'm afraid that daughter Kate, living in France this year, has gone native on us.  Next she will be requesting a complete set of Jerry Lewis movies.  She sent me a DVD for Christmas of a 1981 French movie called La Soupe aux Choux ("Cabbage Soup").  In French, no subtitles.  Not even in a Region 1 DVD format, so we huddled around the Juno computer and watched it on its 17-inch monitor.

Actually, it was kinda fun.  Two old men live in little tumble-down houses near a rural village.  They garden.  They quarrel.  They enjoy wine.  They wear wooden shoes.  They bicycle to town once in a while.  They are broadly drawn, eccentric comic characters.  One of them makes a remarkable cabbage soup.  An alien lands a small flying saucer in their garden and makes it known to one of them ("Le Claude") that he is hungry.  Claude gives him some cabbage soup from the big pot on the stove and the alien is ecstatic.  He returns night after night for more soup and becomes famous on his planet for bringing the soup back with him.  In gratitude, he wants to do something nice for Le Claude and hits on the idea of bringing his dead wife back to life.  But she returns in her beautiful (strong-headed) youth, so old Le Claude is not as happy with her as one might expect.  She leaves him for Paris to get a job.  The alien also gives Le Claude a substantial pile of gold coins, copied from the one valuable old coin Claude had saved.  But the times they are a changin' in the village, where the Mayor has been successful in managing a great economic expansion, and the new housing developments completely over-run the simple country life the two men love.  So Claude sends all his gold coins to his wife in Paris and the two men get into the flying saucer with the alien, who scoops up the big chunk of earth including their two houses, and away they go.  

Now that's entertainment.

Merci, La Kate.

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January 02

Son Sam returns to duty in Japan today.  

He introduced us to My Neighbors the Yamadas last night.  This is a collection of charming short animations (not in the Japanese "anime" style) based on a popular Japanese comic strip.  It almost has the feeling of a Charlie Brown special.  Worth checking out sometime if you get the chance.

While he was home, Sam showed me how to find Camp Zama on the satellite maps at Google Earth  If you know how to use Google Earth, you can see Sam's barracks at Camp Zama at N35 degrees 29' 54.50", and E 139degrees 24' 03.89". Or just look at this: Zama.jpg

The tiny blue box labeled "Zama" is in the woods across the street North and a bit West of his barracks. His building is the white horizontal rectangle backed up against a blob of trees to the south. Follow that street East and you get to some very dense Japanese urban areas. Follow that street West to the other Army buildings. When Sam runs, he runs all the way around the golf course to the North. The track / football field West of the golf course is the base High School where Sam teaches a few trumpet students.

While we were waiting for Sam's flight, we were approached by a card sharp who evidently prowls the Lincoln Airport preying on folks who think they can play Crazy Eights.  Daughter Anne was able collect evidence of sharp dealing with the burst mode on my Pentax.

I preached Psalm 90 in Grand Island yesterday.  Psalm 91 next week.  On the way home I stopped at the Eastbound rest area near Seward where there is a park area along a creek of sorts.  I put a few shots on my Flickr page.

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