Bicycle riding.

A few people here in Illinois have joined me in my love for bicycle riding. Recently I've been hearing a lot of stories from my friends in Indiana about them getting hit or yelled at or even hitting pedestrians. In order for all of us to be a little bit safer, here's a link to the Illinois bicycle laws. Please read these. And please wear a helmet.

And if you're wondering, that's almost my bicycle. I bought mine used so I'm not sure the exact make and model but by looks, that's pretty close (except mine's black with yellow writing and the writing's a bit different, too).

I think this is cool!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209726/Single-molecule-million-times-smaller-grain-sand-pictured-time.html

Relational Parents

Last weekend I went on a bike ride with a few friends. After peddling for a while in our commuter community, I intentionally gazed down at the semi-solid petroleum beneath me in order to pay special respect to the hard work accomplished by trade unions. Even today, these men and women still band together (in part) because of people like Samuel Gompers. Continued reflection while peddling led me only to think more about the amusing history of the American Federation of Labor, Jon Knowles, and the subsequent spawning of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

During a mid-bike-back-porch sit, a motion was made to snag some ingredients and make dinner. After gathering our foodstuffs from Morton's infamous Walmart, we cruised back to the unincorporated municipality known as Groveland. While my friends (Micah & Kim) went into la cocina, I went out onto the back deck to shuck the sweet corn. I also attempted to help the others grill some turkey burgers, which only lead to me questioning our contingency on food especially as it relates to the industrial revolution and also the domestication of animals.

After about an hour or so of preparation, the meal was finally ready. As I sat in my chair, I warmly received good conversations and inside jokes that made me giggle.

My experiences that day were great, however, I doubt I would have written any of this had it not been for the timely conversation that I had with one of my friends' mom, which involved a considerable amount of venting about my upbringing, homeschooling, and the Peoria Fencing Academy.

She put me through the gamut of standard questions about my own life goals, aspirations, job situation, etc., but thankfully the conversation took a more serious turn. As our discussions progressed, I was quickly engaged with real dialogue that, to me, seemed much more meaningful. This was refreshing and I could tell that she wanted to hear my story and entered into it with unashamed sincerity. She gave me advice, and for a change, I actually listened because I experienced a certain feeling of joy that enabled me to reciprocate her actions. (How meaningful it truly is to have another human explore and join with us in our struggles.) Even though this process is not always perfect and humans do not typically understand or know how to relate to others, the welcoming effort is such a blessing.

Thank you, Rosy Larson, for welcoming me into substantive conversation and a Christianity that resonates with the biblical narrative.

Forgive & Forget?

Interesting.

The Beatific Vision in Sunshine

This week I watched the movie Sunshine, a science fiction film in which the sun is slowly dying and, consequently, the earth is cooling down. To save all life on earth, humanity sends a spaceship toward the sun with a massive payload of “all the fissile material left on the planet” in order to jump start the sun. As the crew of the ship, aptly christened Icarus, approaches the sun, some members of the ship's crew become entranced with the giant ball of fire lies directly ahead of them. The Icarus's doctor spends his off-hours staring into the sun on the observation deck, mesmerized with its beauty and power. He keeps lowering the polarization on the filter through which he has to look, increasing the intensity of the sun's rays to the point that he risks permanent eye damage.

The culmination of the film's consideration of the sun's immense beauty (before the movie descended into the lower genre of space-horror) came as two crew members were spacewalking outside of the ship to repair its heat shield. At a critical point in the repairs, Icarus has to turn it shield back toward the sun to avoid damage, threatening to expose the crew outside the ship to the direct rays of the sun. While one of the crew escapes and returns to safety behind the ship's heat shield, the ship's captain stays in an attempt to complete the repairs. When the captain completes his work, he has the option of turning back toward the heat shield and making a dash to safety. But he does not retreat. Instead, he turns toward the sun and stares into its dawning light. There he stays, mesmerized by the sheer intensity of the sun's unmediated brilliance. As the captain begins to be consumed by the sun's rays, the ship's doctor screams through the radio, “What do you see, Captain, what do you see?”

It is written that the Lord our God is a consuming fire. No one can see him and live. At the same time, he exists as beauty itself. Therein lies a paradox. To look upon God is to die, but it is also to see his beauty directly. There is something in all of us that longs for this Beatific Vision, but we know that we cannot experience it and live. Bonaventure responds to this paradox in his Journey of the Mind to God. In this short book, Bonaventure takes his readers on an ascension toward God, up seven steps to God himself. Here is the final passage of the book, inspired by Exodus 33, as the reader completes the final steps of his journey to God. He speaks of the consuming fire:

This fire is God, and the furnace of this fire leadeth to Jerusalem; and Christ the man kindles it in the fervor of His burning Passion, which he alone truly perceives, who says, "My soul rather chooseth hanging and my bones death". He who chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true: "Man shall not see me and live".

Let us then die and pass over into darkness; let us impose silence on cares, concupiscence, and phantasms; let us pass over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father, so that when the Father is shown to us we may say with Philip, "It is enough for us"; let us hear with Paul, "My grace is sufficient for thee"; let us exult with David, saying, "For Thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away; Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion forever. . . . Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say: So be it, so be it". AMEN.

It is a beautiful thing to be consumed.

Thank you Justin.

An Evangelical Who Doesn’t Like Sarah Palin

by Jim Wallis 07-27-2009

I was doing a workout anyway, so I decided to watch Sarah Palin’s farewell address while pumping away on the elliptical machine. The first thing I heard was CNN’s senior political correspondent Candy Crowley say that “evangelicals” just love Sarah Palin, even though most other groups (even her own Republicans) have steadily soured on the now-former Governor of Alaska. Crowley is a good political analyst who normally has intelligent things to say; but I am tired of the stereotype.

There are a lot of evangelicals, like me (and especially younger evangelicals), who are just embarrassed by Sarah Palin.

The speech was vintage Palin—absolutely awful. After some frenzied patriotism, that the United States was the BESTGREATESTEVER country in the history of the world, and that those who have any questions about any of that are just, you know, the absolutely wrong kind of people, she went on to an endless extolling of OUR MILITARY. Now, I feel a lot of pain and respect for the kids who have been put in harm’s way by the stupid decisions of the last administration, and are still there trying to fight their way out of their leader’s mistakes, but again, blind allegiance to the military and all their wars has not been one of our best national characteristics.

Then she talked about how bad the government always is, in everything, and that HOLLYWOOD STARLETS want to come up to Alaska to take OUR GUNS. So she wanted to remind America that support for the Second Amendment to bear arms comes from a deep northern tradition of WE EAT SO WE HUNT.

And finally, she got into some theology, which I guess is what Candy Crowley thinks warms evangelical hearts. She spoke of “God’s grace helping those who help themselves.” And once again, the vice-presidential candidate who continually startled Americans with an amazing lack of intellectual grasp on so many issues showed that she is also biblically illiterate. God’s “grace” is for “those who help themselves?” I wonder where Sarah thinks that text is found in the Bible. Actually, Sarah, the special love of God seems to be for those who have the hardest time helping themselves—hence they need some help from those of us who can help ourselves. In Sarah’s version of Mathew 25 it must say, “As you have done to those who can best help themselves, you have done to me.”

So from Sarah Palin today, I heard rampant super-patriotism, an uncritical support for everything military, a scurrilous attack on any notion of how government might serve the common good, an effusive defense of guns, and a completely backwards biblical theology of the haves and have-nots. So why, as an evangelical Christian, am I supposed to like her?

When I listen to Sarah Palin, I go back and forth between thinking this person is just not smart enough to be president (and our recent experience of that has been scary enough) to thinking that she is indeed smart enough to be a very effective demagogue — stoking the fears and myths of the American people to build a frightening political future. Either way, I hope she stays retired from politics. So here is one big evangelical dissent from those who reportedly like Sarah Palin. She makes me wince, grimace, roll my eyes, and even worry a little about the future.

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/07/27/an-evangelical-who-doesn%E2%80%99t-like-sarah-palin/

I'd really like to help the poor, but...

I recently heard another Christian making a statement about government policy towards the poor that began with “I'd really like to help the poor,” but abruptly terminated with a qualification that brushed away any real obligation to provide assistance for the poor. It struck me that I have heard the words “I'd really like to help the poor” come from the mouths of Christians many times before, but almost always that phrase prefaces a rant about people taking advantage of the government, perverse economic incentives, the destruction of the family, etc. I have rarely heard many Christians start a sentence with “I'd like to help the poor” and have anything constructive to say after it. Therefore, I would like to challenge a few of the arguments that Christians often use to assuage our buring consciences in regard to the poor, especially those that deal with the role of the government.

1. I only want to help those who deserve to be helped, not those who exploit the system.

This statement presupposes an erroneous distinction between so-called “deserving poor” and those who, for one reason or another, should not be helped. The general definition for the undeserving poor is those who sit at home and watch TV while drawing support from welfare programs. And, granted, there are those who do take advantage of the system. (Although I think their numbers are probably very low compared to those of single mothers working two jobs and trying to raise fatherless children.) However, there is no biblical grounds for letting some “undeserving” poor live in squalor while the “deserving” poor are helped. This idea seems more akin to Social Darwinism, or Benthamite utilitarian social theory, or some perversion of the Puritan work ethic than to a Christian conception of grace. The Bible demands that we help all the poor, without an expectation of a response on their part. Grace does not, thankfully, differentiate between those who deserve it and those who do not.

2. The government should not help poor people, Christians should do it themselves.

This argument is, first of all, impractical. We know very well that Christians do not have the will to help the poor as much as they should, to begin with, and we also know that Christians do not have the resources, or the centralized authority, to effectively fight poverty. Secondly, it ignores the fact that the government is an agent of God, deputized to carry out his will. Paul calls the government God's servant in Romans 13. So it is not somehow “secular” or “non-Christian” for the government to work toward Christian social goals. That is, in fact, what the government is there for.

Objections to the expanded role of the government usually come from a libertarian impulse, very strong in America, that stems from the Enlightenment obsession with individualism and liberty, or from a strong suspicion of government that comes from Anabaptist tradition. The kind of freedom that libertarians advocate is one that must be rejected by Christians, who know that freedom does not come from a mere absence of coercion from outside sources. Christian freedom is direction and purpose and a correct ordering of our desires. And the Anabaptist suspicion of government, while at times valuable in defeating Constantinian alliances between Church and State, can overlook the possibility that government, like the rest of Creation, must be redeemed and utilized by Christians.

There is much more that could be said, but I think I have stirred enough controversy already. There are very many people who will not agree with anything that I wrote here, but I think we must think hard about the kinds of ideas that Christians have bought into when it comes to social policy. Do they come from scripture and an ardent and honest desire to help the poor, or from myths that superficially jive with Christian culture, but do nothing to bring about the social goals of the God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly...filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”?

E.I.

I think a prerequisite for any "application" portion of a Sunday school lesson should be actual applicability and spiritual practicality. Somewhat horizontally-related, yet trivial, activities don't make the cut. Just food for thought. Oh, and my "EQ" is 70.

¡gracias!

Thanks for this invitation. It means so much, really it does. In short, I hope that my input will be helpful and satisfactory to all.

Recent Music Discoveries

I'm always on the prowl for new music. Sometimes I go on a "discovery binge" and download four or five albums/bands at a time. I would say 54% of the material is basically junk, but I really can't support that percentage because I never entirely listen to everything I download. Many songs get lost in the mix and somehow never get played in my itunes. Alas, I seem to find some really great stuff. Some of it is referred to me from people here and there and I much appreciate it, even though inside I wish I had discovered it myself. Well, in no particular order, here are some recent findings/new material that have come my way.


The Tallest Man on Earth - I Won't Be Found
Tarkio - Weight Of The World
Gomez - Airstream Driver
Blitzen Trapper - Furr
We Are Scientists - After Hours
Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band - Nikorette
Annuals - Springtime
Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm
Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard
Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Griffin House - Better Than Love
Editors - Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors
Feist + Ben Gibbard - Train Song
Great Lake Swimmers - Your Rocky Spine
Iron & Wine - Belated Promise Ring
Matt And Kim - Daylight
The Mountain Goats - San Bernardino
Razorlight - Wire To Wire
Seabear - I Sing I Swim
Shearwater - Rooks
Sunset Rubdown - The Mending Of The Gown
Jon Knowles - Horatio Hornblower