john stewart and brian williams

earthquake

Last night there was an earthquake in England at almost 1.00 AM. I had gotten in bed shortly before but was still awake when it happened. The whole place rocked and rattled for a good 15 or 20 seconds. It was a really bizarre feeling. At first it felt like someone had grabbed my bed and was shaking it real hard. I turned on my light and it was moving too. It all ended before I could get out of bed. To try to figure out how violent it was, I grabbed my bed and shook it really hard. My bed is steel. I could not move it at all. I suddenly realized that the motion of the earth was not exaggerated by my bed. The feeling I got was like when I laid in my bunk bed when I lived in Bragaw and someone came and shook the bed, or Will would bounce around on the bottom bunk and I would rock and sway. Except this time I was bolted to the floor, so it was the floor doing all that rocking and swaying.


It was a disconcerting feeling to say the least once I realized what had happened. This morning as I sat eating my breakfast, I was reflecting on the feeling and of course my mind went crazy with it.

I've been reading John (as anyone who regularly reads this blog knows), and today I was studying chapter 16. This was after the earthquake and before breakfast. Jesus says in verse 33 "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." I act like I need some security other than Christ. Walking through life I desperately grasp at all kinds of things in the world to give me peace, but all of them leave me really empty. I do this everyday. Jesus says in the first part of verse 33, "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace." But I get this mixed up. I forget or something.

Verse 33 really sums up Jesus' message for me. I know the foremost thing that I hear is "Be a Christian and go to heaven," but Christ's teaching is more like "Follow me and realize a fulfilled life." The beauty of coming to Christ for me is that life makes sense. There is no other way to make sense of the universe, from physics to genetics to personal experience and joy, except through the lens of Christ's work and God's love. The point of Christianity is what happens in our lives. We are not supposed to defer all the goodness of Christ to after our deaths. Our eternal life begins now, not when we die. If I was to take a lot of the teaching that I've heard seriously, I would ask Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins then kill myself. Jesus is in the business of life, abundant life.

My life is only found in Him. All the stuff on earth that I get distracted by is unstable and ultimately not fulfilling. This is where the earthquake comes in. As if to reinforce the tenuous condition of all earthly things, last night the earth itself shook. I don't think I've ever really thought about the possibility of the ground not being solid. Sure I've stood on cliffs or slipped down a hill on mud and stuff, but this time the middle of the flatland that I live in shook. A parking lot was not longer stable. To me the only way the ground can be unstable is through something on the surface condition -- it's slick from oil or sandy and soft or something like that. Now it was all coming undone.

My perception of security was shattered. I wasn't really scared at that moment, but think about the implications. Imagine walking outside onto the sidewalk which you always assume is solid or into a field and it suddenly falls away, shifts, slides. It is no longer worthy of trust. For about 20 seconds last night everything my life, cities, buildings, and highways are anchored in was unstable. That foundation we take for granted was questioned. So it's not that the things of earth are temporary or transient and can't bring me peace (they are but...). It's the earth itself that is temporary, capable of shifting and shaking at any time. If I forget all of the emotional, relational, abstract things that I grab onto, which I usually think of as temporary, and try to ground myself into something physical and natural, like the earth, it too is only temporary. When you really think about it, the dirt in the ground is no more substantial than some passing relationship with a girl (or boy if you're a girl).

My world is becoming unhinged. The only peace to be found is in Christ. I can shut myself off from all relationships and technology which I see as distracting and move into the wilderness, but there I will trust in nature instead of God. My situation has not improved. The natural world is temporary and unstable, unable to bring peace.

"In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

on the banks of the blue ridge parkway

by Thomas Costello

Summer came
and brought a cloudless simmering pulse.
You went
And took with you
some of the things I needed.

If you look up "hot" in the dictionary
there is a North Carolina summer
burning up the pages
wrinkled with humidity.
It is so hot that everyone leaks sticky drops
that hang suspended in the air
and cling to your skin when you take out the trash.
Everyone pants with their mouths open
so the breeze smells like beer and fruit salad.

At the park
next to our house
chickens listlessly round the bases
waddling like weekend warriors
kicking up boiling infield dust
while outside the fence
the mariachi block party
which is held solely for mariachis and their proud families
is letting loose a blaring polka opus
en español.
And despite the trumpet players' struggle
to grip their instruments with slippery salted hands
or to play with shut eyes to avoid the horns' brassy reflection
the symphony is hailed as a critical success
by the pasty reporter
under an umbrella
eyeing his moles.
The children tend to the tamales
whose scent soaks the air
and travels into my window
so that my sweat tastes like chipotle pollen.
I went to rinse it off
but you took the tub.

Out-of-towners might imagine that it is more temperate in the mountains.
I wonder where the hell they go that idea.
By the second week in July
the asphalt melts and
the roads are a swampy petroleum mess.
The Blue Ridge Parkway turns into a tar river.
Everyone builds rafts
out of old doors and empty propane tanks
and every year
on the first Sunday in August
there's a tar-raft regatta.
And every year
for at least the last ten
Sam Simon, a retired Highway Patrolman from Brevard
wins by a long shot.
I had thought about entering
but I remembered that you took the broom
so I just watched from the tar river banks
without an oar
as the old sergeant surfed to another victory
and another year of fitful sleep
under the gaze of the taxidermied squirrel trophy
dreaming of next August.

It was much easier to deal with the heat last year.
We shared summer duties.
I would fill one hundred glasses of water
and put them around the house
so we could always have a drink.
You oiled the fan
which squawked like a mockingbird
with a speech impediment
so that we could sleep.
I pointed a speaker out the window
and played Tumbling Dice
so that the trees would be inspired to grow bigger
and we could fit in the shade.
You shaved the cats.
I made frozen lemonade.
You cut the sleeves off my t-shirts
while I blew on your damp forehead.
And I remember
how you would tuck the sides of your skirt
in the bottom of your underwear
to cool your crispy legs.
I took out the photo box
so I could remember this a little better
but you had cut out all the you's
and taken them.
But I still remembered
that you took all the glasses
so I poured myself a bowl of water
used all the fan oil on the clippers
and set to shaving the cats.

Now summer is gone.
I no longer have to swim
through the thick southern air
or smell the collective pant
of tainted slaw.
The mariachi band is on Late Night
(gracias a nuestras madres)
and the chickens are in the tamales.
Most of the rafts were pulled out of the parkway
although some are stuck
left by teenagers or alcoholics
when the pavement cooled
causing some minor traffic accidents for the October leaf gawkers.
The cats are stubbly
and I've managed to sew my sleeves back on
although some of the left ones are missing.
It's made official
when the weatherman has called for the first frost
and as everyone rushes to the store
to buy bread and milk.
I think about chopping some wood
when I remember
you took the axe.

jesus wept

Go get your Bible right now.

Ok, now turn to John 11 and read it. Go ahead. It'll just take you a few minutes.

Did you see that? It was amazing, and I think you missed it. I missed it for the first 21 years of my life.

What did I miss? I missed Jesus' passionate love for Lazarus and the compassion and sorrow and grief he felt for Mary and Martha. But I must be an idiot right? How could I miss that? That's the point of the story, right? Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave to show His love for Lazarus. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I've been missing the most beautiful part of this story for more than 21 years

I will explain because perhaps you are as bewildered as I was. I've been reading the book of John very slowly while I've been in England allowing each chapter to really sink in over several days of reading. I had read John 11 twice before anything revolutionary hit me. And then came then.

We start at the beginning. Lazarus is sick, and Jesus is sent for. Jesus' response to this news? "This sickness will not end in death, but for the glory of God." Note this. Jesus apparently has a firm grip on the future, and as readers we interpret this as meaning that Jesus knows that He will raise Lazarus. I think this is a correct reading, and this is confirmed in verse 11 when Jesus says, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep." This is clear enough. Jesus knows exactly what is going to happen. He is going to go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from the dead.

So we have all this build up. Being thousands of years in the future, we are hurrying to the part where Lazarus walks out of the tomb bound hand and foot. Jesus has been saying the whole time that He is going to raise Lazarus. He tells Mary and Martha that their brother will live again. Go to verse 34. Jesus asks to be taken to the tomb. What does he do there? Verse 35: "Jesus wept."

Wait...

What?

Jesus wept?

I've known this verse my entire churched life. It's one of those great jokes in Sunday School. Q: "What's the shortest verse in the Bible?" A: "John 11:35 'Jesus wept.'" I know Jesus weeps. I've even heard lessons and lectures and sermons about it. "Jesus weeps, therefore we know He was human." "Jesus experienced the full realm of human emotion." Blah blah blah. We've heard all this before. But what does this mean?

Jesus wept.

We've established that Jesus knows that Lazarus is coming back, so why does He start crying just before the big show? I do not cry when someone goes away if I know that they will be back in just a few minutes. Here is Jesus -- one with God, all powerful and all knowing -- weeping because His friend has died and He knows that He'll be able to talk to His friend in just a couple of minutes. Can you see what is amazing about this story? This is what I've missed for 21 years. None of this seems to make any sense. Here is where the revolution is for me. Jesus was so moved by grief and death that he wept even when He knew he was going to end it.

I think there were two reasons for Jesus' tears both of which profoundly influence my daily life.

First, death is the ultimate perversion of the created order. We were made to live forever in communion with God, but we screwed it up. We aren't in the garden anymore. Death is the punishment for our sin, and death did not exist in the original and perfect world. Death is the great curse on the earth. It is the thing that most clearly and finally reminds us of our sin. Jesus weeps because He understands that. Even though He knows that Lazarus is going to be walking and talking in the very near future, He weeps because of the great perverseness of death. He weeps because all of us have to face it, even though for some of us it will result in our reunification with God. He weeps because He Himself will have to face death, and He will face not only physical death but spiritual death as well to take the punishment for our sins (Eloi, Eloi. Lama Sabachthai?)

Second, Jesus understands grief. Grieving is something that we as modern people do not understand. It is especially something that modern Christians do not understand. Consider this. (I will speak from my own experience but I will use the pronoun "we" because I suspect you have experienced the same thing.) Christians like to make everything very smooth, or at least keep the appearance of smoothness. We do not like the up-and-down path which most of our spiritual lives follow, and we work hard to cover up such fluctuations. Furthermore, most of us interpret these as lack of faith. If someone we are close to dies or is sick or moves away, we have to be "strong" about it. We have to be sure everyone can see how strong our faith is. "I trust God so much that this doesn't bother me." When we are confronted with great evil, we won't get upset because "God is in control" and "works all things together for good." We have all the answers down pat. We crossed our Christian lives with action movies and came out unfeeling.

We think our faith must be weak if we are upset by the evil of the world. This is a lie. Only through faith are our eyes opened to the horrors of the world. This macho facade we put on does not show that we are strong. It shows that we are dispassionate about living. It shows that we are numb. We have lost sight of God, Christ, our Savior. Our lives have become a study in monotony instead of a great epic of love and battle and rescue and romance. I like that my walls are solid colors, but paintings are far more exciting. We are walking around dead inside, and we call it great faith. When did we relate this stoic exterior with spiritual fullness? These two do not belong together.

Christ was passionate. Everything He did was filled with passion. He loved, ate, spoke, died with passion. We have lost it. I know I have. Grief is a symptom of a passionate life. If we cared about things, if we were actually moved by the evil in the world, then we would grieve. Weep over evil. Mourn and cry out to God about the great perversions which we see everyday. If you cannot see that evil, pray that God will give you discernment--that He would unclose your eyes and make you feel again. I need this. My life depends on it.

Pray for and with each other. Read the Gospel and be reminded of Christ's passion. As we begin to understand how much God loves us, our response will be a more passionate life. Burn and burn and burn and burn.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." ~Theodore Roosevelt

"Therefore, prepare you minds for action, be self-controlled, fix your hope fully on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." ~1 Peter 1:13

glovers

I found this on pedlars.co.uk which has lots of cool stuff. It pretty much made my day. I always find stuff on their webstore that I really really want, but I don't have to money to buy it. And I don't really have any need for it. I'm not decorating a house at the moment.

I've been in the Peak District all weekend and just got back to my noisy flat in Manchester. I loved being in rolling green hills which I was free to roam accompanied only by the sound of the birds and the wind and the streams.

I have thoughts brewing which I plan to write about soon, so until then be well.

love and the truth

I was talking to Rachel tonight on AIM, and we were discussing arguing. That is, we were talking about arguing. She observed that Will and I are impossible to argue with because we've never thought that we were wrong. I really think that everyone thinks that they are right. No sane person holds views that they know to be incorrect, but I have a tendency never to give up. I take it a little bit too far. I've been picked on for this trait my entire life, that of knowing that I am right and there is no way that it could be otherwise. But the truth is I'm wrong sometimes. I'm probably wrong a lot more than I admit and probably more than my friends tell me (I have gracious friends, thank you to those people).

I told Rachel the ideal which I am pursuing. "What I'm trying to learn is how to discuss truth with people in a loving way." I think it's amazing how Christ was so blatant in the way he spoke the truth, yet people knew He loved them. They had to know that, or they would not have followed Him. Miracles may have spread the word, but it was times like the woman at the well in Samaria, where there was no miracle only the truth, when we see whole groups of people believe. How is it that I can speak the truth and love people? (Of course I have even greater incentive to love people well because unlike Christ, I might be wrong, and a good way to get people not to like you is to loudly proclaim that which is false.)

So this is my quest. Ephesians 4:15, "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ." Now I just need to work out exactly what that looks like in my everyday life.

Be intoxicated by Christ.

super tuesday

I hope by the time you are reading my blog you will have checked the news to find out the results of yesterday's voting. Nothing solved on the Democratic side, and McCain pulls ahead for the Republicans. I'm still trying to decide if I really like John McCain. I think he handles himself poorly in the televised debates, and I been generally unimpressed by his attitudes and actions. If he and Hillary Clinton end up running against each other, they're going to try to scratch each others' eyes out in the debates. Two women running for president of this country would be terrible. Oh wait... sorry, Mr. McCain. What I don't like is that McCain has a temper. I don't think this is a desirable trait for the President of the United States. Are we just going to bomb countries because he gets all steamed up? I thought it was bad when President Bush pointed his finger at anyone he wanted to and called them the Axis of Evil. McCain won't be that friendly. Just look at the way he's treated other Senators who have disagreed with him. I guess all I can hope is that McCain learns to control his himself if he is chosen to be the face of our country.

I have a journal full of thoughts which I want to share with whoever is reading. I have a presentation on Emma tomorrow in class and a paper about literature in the American South due on Friday then I'm heading out of town for a few days. Nevertheless, I hope to be able to write new things soon.

Enjoy life.

the widow

One CD that I listen to a lot is Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest by As Cities Burn. Several of the songs bring me to tears almost every time I listen to it. The songs are honest, brutally so, and are difficult to listen to because of their accurate reflection on the way the world truly is. I get really tired of "Christian music" that is always easy. Worship is not easy; it is sacrifice. The world is not pretty; it is broken. Christ is the completion of my being, but He does not fix all my problems immediately. Indeed, He many times introduces new problems, then He solves them in His own time when He can be most glorified by them not when they are most convenient for me. I love the book of Psalms because it is real worship, not the simple kind but the hard kind. Writers question why God is allowing people to hunt them down with weapons and question His sense of justice. This is where I am. I don't usually feel great about what is going on in my life. I struggle to believe that God really knows what He is doing, and I think that is reflected in the worship of Psalms.

This brings me back to As Cities Burn and particularly the song "The Widow" from their first CD. I always used to skip this song when it came along on my iPod because I always thought it was too graphic and too gross. Lately I have let it go and begun to appreciate the song's reflection on the darkness of the world. Acknowledging that the world is broken is the only sure way to know that we are in need of a Savior. Spurgeon (I think) said that if your sin is small then your Savior will be small, but if your sin is great your Savior will be great also.

The beginning of "The Widow" talks about the singer's father leaving his mother before the singer ever knew him. The second verse follows:

Dead man, is it being high that makes you alive?
It makes you leave behind three boys and a wife in '89
As the track marks inched their way up your arm
My mother taught my brothers and I not to call you daddy
But to call you father

But I believe there is something here to be learnt of grace
'Cause I can't help but love you
Even with a heart that breaks
Like the promises that you made
Like the promises that you made
The promises that you made

My God, what a world you love

He says several times "My God, what a world you love." This theme runs throughout the CD and also follows onto their sophomore release called Come Now Sleep. As Cities Burn is definitely not for everyone, but in their music I have found truth in art. The truth is sometimes brutal and very very dark, but I think we need not to be afraid of that. Christ is the light. Why are we afraid of darkness? Darkness can never overpower light, but light could not be truly understood or appreciated without darkness.

Other CD's that I like for their truth:

The Fires of Life, Wake Up O Sleeper, and The Balancing Act - Cool Hand Luke
A Holiday at the Sea and Sparrows - Anathallo
Come Now Sleep - As Cities Burn
Catch for Us the Foxes and Brother, Sister - mewithoutYou
I See Things Upside Down - Derek Webb
Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child - Norma Jean
The Fiancee - The Chariot

Other CDs are a fine display of truth, but these are the ones that I've been listening to and appreciating lately. Also, these are by slightly less-known bands which I really like, so I thought I'd spread the word.

God, does grace reach to this side of madness?
'Cause I know this can't be
the great peace we all seek.

Come down, heaven.
Won't you come down?
Won't you cut through the clouds?
Won't you come down?

i want to get away

Browsing across the vast number of blogs and news websites which i read frequently, I ran across pictures of this house. (click on the pictures for a bigger version)







I have now spent almost a full month within the confines of a city of 2.5 million people which has a disappointing shortage of parks or outdoor space of any kind to be enjoyed. I'm beginning to need to get outdoors some, or at least to some place that has some relation to the outdoors (like a coffeeshop with big windows that look out over a grassy field). The English winter is not exactly conducive to outdoor activity, but being in the middle of a huge city means that none of the buildings even have any reference to the outdoors in their design. If there are windows they overlook a busy street. Also, my flatmates are particularly noisy and annoying and make it hard to concentrate when I'm in my room.

These are the reasons that this house caught my particular attention right now. I would so love to spend a couple weeks in such a gorgeous landscape in a building designed to bring the outdoors to you. There is no escaping the breathtaking landscape when you are inside this house. I was thinking about getting out of town for a few days this coming week, but I've been slapped with an oral presentation and a 1500 word essay due on Thursday and Friday respectively.

So all you American readers, enjoy the outdoors. Even if all that means is sitting inside and looking at the grass out the window.