Greenwood Street

Gravel

2007-08-18T22:11:00.000-04:00

Greenwood Street was unpaved when I lived on it. Since it was in the city limits, the city was responsible for maintaining it. This amounted to running a road grader over it once a year, and respreading the gravel over it evenly. Of course, this need to be done to keep deep ruts from forming in the roadbed, and to eliminate pot holes.

For me on my bike, this was always a difficult time, because riding a bicycle on a street with gravel ranging in size from peas to baseballs can be a real challenge, I never looked forward to the visit of the road grader. However, after a week or so, car traffice would push the larger stones to the side or the middle, forming smoother tracks that would were better for biking, and all was well in the universe again.

Sometimes God runs a road grader through our lives, disrupting the routine, making it hard for us to ride our bikes the way we're used to. But those disruptions can keep the tracks from becoming ruts.

Shadows, Part Deux

2007-03-29T21:39:00.000-04:00

When is the church not the people? In once sense, if the people we're talking about are Christians, they are always the church. It's just that, sometimes we aren't the church in the sense we think we are.

What, then, is the church, and what is it not? Luke tells us in Acts that the church is what God adds his people to. It's a God thing, that's important.

I'm going to make some bold statements now—at least they're bold for me—without any of the softening comments that I am tempted to add.

- The church is not a human institution; it is a divine one.

- The church cannot be reformed or restored by humans. In other words, if restoration is needed, it is the humans that need restoring.

- Humans do not determine who is and who is not one of God's children; God does, and while he is just, he is also more gracious and merciful than we tend to be.

- In battle, turning on and attacking members of one's own army is treason.

C.S. Lewis said that we live in a land of shadows; this is not the ultimate reality. We shouldn't fight each other over shadows, but should urge each other on to the light. The church is people who belong to God, and who are leaving the shadows and walking toward the Light.

Shadows

2007-03-01T13:20:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ by Robert Pirisg in audio form in my car. Yea, I know I'm about three decades behind on this one, but I still haven't read _War and Peace_ yet, either. I have read Aeschylus, Aristotle, Chesterton, Conrad, Khayyam, Thoreau, and Wilde, though, so I have at least a little literary edumacation. Oh, and Twain, lots of Twain.

Anyway, about a third of the way in, the author has an interesting analysis of what a university really is, in the context of a state legislature's attempt to both control what is being taught and "dumb down" academic standards to allow anyone to have a college degree. He distinguishes between the university as an institution rooted in the Western history as opposed to the university as a state-funded institution that owns buildings and pays professors.

He starts with an illustration of a former Catholic church building that is now used as a bar, complete with neon beer sign over the doorway. Locals are outraged because of the perceived desecration, but the Catholic official on the spot tells them they've completely misunderstood what the church is. It is not the building, and that particular building is no longer used by the church. There is no desecration involved—at least not in the sense people think.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering? ("I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?")

I grew up hearing that "the church is not the building, the church is the people." Of course, this doesn't really stand up to linguistic analysis, as English is not Greek, "church" is not really a one-for-one translation of "ekklesia", and language evolves anyway. But the point is a valid one, I think, even if we don't take it far enough.

The fact is, sometimes the people aren't the church, either. Now, I have to figure out what I mean by that. More later.

P.S. I love the title "Shadows", it sounds so deep.

Do You Know Where You're Going (To)?

2007-02-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

The song "Do You Know Where You're Going To" has always annoyed me because of it's bad grammar. But, it asks a question Mom might have asked as I headed out the door on Greenwood Street. Where are you going, who will you be with, and when will you be home? She wouldn't let me go some places, or do some things. She was sometimes incredibly mean, and I love her for it.

Mike Cope has great thoughts along these lines on his blog.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do

2007-01-12T14:33:00.000-05:00

Joe Walsh knew what he was singing about. In Exodus, over and over again the Israelites complain. They complain about the food, about the living conditions, about Moses and Aaron. Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses. Never mind what wonders they had seen God do: the plagues, the release from slavery, the parting of the Red Sea, manna. Never mind that God had blessed them with the riches of their Egyptian neighbors.

This isn't limited to the ancient Israelites. What is it about humans that makes us want to complain? Why do we miss what God us done for us? Maybe Philippians 4 is where we need to spend more time.

Sobering

2006-12-06T10:44:00.000-05:00

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Flower Patterns

2006-11-19T18:41:00.000-05:00

A child offers her father a flower to show her love for him, and the father punishes her for not following the pattern of showing love that he hid in a document. I forget whose illustration that is, but it's good. This one is mine: two children offer their father flowers. One gives a daisy, the other a violet, and he punishes them for disunity.

We would rightly say that such a father had serious problems, and his family was dysfunctional. Why, then, do we think God works that way? Why do we think he is looking for technicalities to keep us out of Heaven? After all, this is the God who sacrificed his beloved, one and only Son to save us.

My ear was blistered last night by a brother who told me, rather violently, by phone, that I and others with me have strayed away from the pattern of the early church--and are risking judgment--by having worship services that are not identical. When I challenged him to show me the pattern that he asserted existed in the Jerusalem church in Acts, he hung up. It made me sad for him, as he's missing the point of the story.

God wants our worship, not our obsessive-compulsive searches for hidden codes of conduct.

Virtual Theology

2006-11-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

I've been playing with Second Life lately, trying to figure out the virtual world's potentials, seeing how closely it matches Neil Stevenson's and William Gibson's visions.

I found a Christian church, and walked up to the front door. There were people in side, or, at least, avatars. And they were in a fervent discussion. I drew near enough to be able to "hear" the discussion. It was about the necessity of baptism for salvation.

Cartesian Wells

2006-11-07T08:32:00.000-05:00

"... and it appeared to me that, in order to ascertain the real opinions of such, I ought rather to take cognizance of what they practised than of what they said, not only because, in the corruption of our manners, there are few disposed to speak exactly as they believe, but also because very many are not aware of what it is that they really believe; for, as the act of mind by which a thing is believed is different from that by which we know that we believe it, the one act is often found without the other"

— René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth

Culture clash

2006-10-25T22:57:00.000-04:00

This struck me tonight:
"Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything.
Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was
at a loss.  She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a
picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but
even aggressively in drawing.  Trompe-l'oeil--there was no other
word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure
under the trampling feet of the horse.  What was she to think,
what was she to say?  Her orientations were gone.  One could
admire representationalism in the Old Masters.  Obviously.  But
in a modern...?  At eighteen she might have done so.  But now,
after five years of schooling among the best judges, her
instinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation
was contempt--an outburst of laughing disparagement.  What could
Gombauld be up to?  She had felt so safe in admiring his work
before.  But now--she didn't know what to think.  It was very
difficult, very difficult."

-- Aldous Huxley, Crom Yellow

Forgetting to let go

2006-10-15T20:19:00.000-04:00

The creek ran under a bridge on Irene Avenue , around the edges of the block, and under another bridge on Greenwood Street. Each bridge was concrete, with a concrete bed, and with a curb about eight inches high with no railing. Where the water poured out of each bridge, it formed a pool. The one on the avenue was the larger.

One day, when I was maybe eight, several of us were throwing large rocks into the pool, trying to see who could make the biggest splash. One boy, who had recently moved into the neighborhood picked up a stone smaller than his fist, stood on the curb, and threw. He threw very hard, trying to control the speed and direction of the rock, but neglected to open his fist and let go. Given the nature of the structure of the human body, his fist traveled with the rock, his arm traveled with the fist, and the rest of his body traveled with the arm, into the pool of water. Fortunately, he suffered nothing more than a thorough wetting.

The rest of that week, all the kids in the neighborhood laughed about the kid who forgot to let go when he threw a rock.

Do we ever forget to let go?

Turmoil

2006-10-11T15:10:00.000-04:00

Stasis no more. The answer was S. Only, it turns out there were more than one question.

Call it what you want: turmoil, tipping-point, state-change, it can certainly make the ride wild. Most people don't like too much change, and some people don't want any change, but change is inevitable.

Turmoil isn't all bad. In the kitchen blender, it turns separate ingredients into something good. The persecution after Stephen's martyrdom, and the Jerusalem conference in Acts 15 show this. Change that moves us closer to God is good change, and any change can be used by God to further the kingdom. Indeed, God is all about changing people.

But turmoil scares people, and when people are scared, they react in predictably unpredictable ways. Sometimes people deal with it by lashing out at others, sometimes by withdrawing and turning inward. I believe God calls us to trust him, and reach out to others.

Buckle up, hold on tight, and love each other no matter what.

Coffee

2006-10-04T16:21:00.000-04:00

I love coffee. Not the cheap stuff made of sawdust and and whatever came to hand at the factory, but real, good coffee. I buy whole beans, and grind them as I need them.

I've done a lot of reading about coffee over the years, and have learned some things.

First, coffee apparently started out in 9th century Ethiopia.

Second, there are two species that are grown commercially: coffea robusta and c. arabica. The first is bitter, but ultimately very inexpensive. Nobody sells pure robusta beans that I'm aware of, as the beverage would be too nasty to drink. Rather, they are used to blend with the more expensive arabica beans to cut the price/increase the profit margin.

Third, and more to the point, the really good coffee is pure arabica, but not all arabicas taste the same. You see, even though they all are the same species, differences of soil, micro-organisms, climate, season, altitude, harvesting, and preparation techniques give different flavors. They're all coffee, all arabica, yet culture makes them somewhat different.

Jesus compared God's message about the kingdom to seed in Matthew 13. If I may employ my coffee metaphor, the coffee bean grows coffee, but the culture causes the flavor of the coffee to vary. The cultural variation doesn't make it not coffee.

Further, if I try to grow coffee in Mexico, and make it exactly the same as coffee in Kona, Hawaii–or 9th century Ethiopia–I'll probably not have good results. At best, I'll have some twisted plant that, with a great deal of effort, only approximates the goal; at worst, I'll have a dead coffee plant with no fruit. If, instead, I plant the bean in Mexico, and cultivate it in the local environment, I'll have a coffee plant that is impacted by that culture, and whose beans have a unique, local flavor. But, it will still be coffee.

Unicycle places.

2006-10-02T23:30:00.000-04:00

When I was small, three or four years old, living in a tropical country south of the equator, there was an empty concrete pad along a path not far from our house. I don't know what it was for. Sometimes I'd pass it on a walk with Mom. I don't know why, but, for some reason, I called it "the unicycle place." Of course, it wasn't that, but I imagined that it was.

Why does this occur to me now, decades later? I don't know. Maybe it's that we sometimes see something we don't understand, and try to supply our own explanation of what it must be. That's a normal thing, until we start becoming adamant that our explanation is the only possible one.

There is a true explanation. That concrete pad did have some reason for existence; I just didn't know it. And then, there are the one's we come up with: "the unicycle place." A discussion of a situation we can only really guess at in Paul's writing. We make it a unicycle place, and argue over whose unicycle place is better, more accurate.

Daughters of the King

2006-09-26T16:09:00.000-04:00

Each day, I pray that God will free his daughters from the artificial limits that we humans, both men and women put on them. Why, after all, cannot God's daughters pass a communion tray, or read a scripture, or say a public prayer during the "holy" hour on Sunday morning? I sometimes lack patience for people's unwillingness to even consider change.

Some people tell me that reason that we in Churches of Christ continue to cling to the traditional limits on women is that we have works-driven rather than grace-centered theology and soteriology. Because we fear that error on even a minor point will be sufficient to keep us out of heaven, we'd rather play it safe. That, of, course, was the logic of the one-talent man, who found, to his regret, that playing it safe is not what his master called or expected him to do.

Maybe there's truth in that analysis; but I hesitate to impugn other people's motives (though I do it anyway, sometimes). I do agree that we should teach grace, and to fail to do so leads us to fall naturally(1) back on our own works. But, I also remember that I have been on a long journey myself, and that I cannot expect people to change overnight if I didn't.

Still, I want to see change now. I'm impatient in my patience. "Father, free your daughters!"

1. Note the etymology of "natural": of one's birth. Maybe I'll write more on this another time.

Stasis

2006-09-21T17:25:00.000-04:00

I feel like things are in stasis. We can't move on A because possibly B. We can't do C because we don't know how D is going to turn out, and D is out of our control. B is unsettled, and partially dependent on C. Meanwhile, I have someone--several someones, really--waiting for some response on A. Did you ever feel like you were running in molasses? Not to complain, though.

Maybe the solution has nothing to do with A-D. Maybe it's S.

Change along the Street

2006-09-16T22:53:00.000-04:00

Greenwood Street was gravel when I lived on it. The last time I was there, it looked both the same, and different. The street has been paved, and the trees were either larger, or, in some cases, gone. Many of the houses have been modified, or are different colors. It serves as a metaphor.

What do you do when you have a commitment to one group, but people important to you are giving up on that group?

Streets change, trees grow or die. God is always the same.