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Sunday, March 16, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
What happened today...
Slept in!
Swept and washed (as needed) the whole first floor of the house!
Had a nap.
Read the latest Sports Illustrated, lots of steroid reporting.
Played with the boys.
Drove to Barrie.
Decided not to buy from Giant Carpet today.
Decided End of the Roll might be an option.
Drove to Orillia.
Played outside with the boys.
Played ball inside with the boys.
Ate a delicious supper courtesy of my dear mother-in-law.
Talked a long time with my father-in-law about life, responsibility and mortgages.
Went for a long walk with my wife in Walmart and Home Depot.
Didn't win anything from Timmy's Roll up the Rim. (Yesterday, Sabrina and I both won on the same trip to Timmy's, I told her earlier that it would be thirty years before that ever happened.)
Got notification from the Ontario College of Teachers that my application had been accepted!
Surfed the internet looking at all kinds of things like the Ministry of Education, Facebook and Earth Hour.
Posted this and tried to get to bed before tomorrow.
See Brenda, not deep at all!
Swept and washed (as needed) the whole first floor of the house!
Had a nap.
Read the latest Sports Illustrated, lots of steroid reporting.
Played with the boys.
Drove to Barrie.
Decided not to buy from Giant Carpet today.
Decided End of the Roll might be an option.
Drove to Orillia.
Played outside with the boys.
Played ball inside with the boys.
Ate a delicious supper courtesy of my dear mother-in-law.
Talked a long time with my father-in-law about life, responsibility and mortgages.
Went for a long walk with my wife in Walmart and Home Depot.
Didn't win anything from Timmy's Roll up the Rim. (Yesterday, Sabrina and I both won on the same trip to Timmy's, I told her earlier that it would be thirty years before that ever happened.)
Got notification from the Ontario College of Teachers that my application had been accepted!
Surfed the internet looking at all kinds of things like the Ministry of Education, Facebook and Earth Hour.
Posted this and tried to get to bed before tomorrow.
See Brenda, not deep at all!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Looking at life through the eyes of Martian Child
What is at the heart of love? This deep question floats just below the cute, heart-wrenching movie that is Martian Child.
He lives in a world where people just, “disappear”. That’s why he’s afraid he’ll just float away and wears a weight belt to keep him earthbound. We all want to be well grounded, yet, we are also the Martian child, in the world but not of it, trying to rise above the common, and at the same time wondering why we don’t fit in?
Martian Child is the story of a grieving widower who decides he’s going to open up his heart and home to a very needy boy who claims to be from Mars. The movie does an admirable job of setting up the question of “Is he really from Mars?”, another K-Pax, this time with a child at the root of the question.
Here are a few thoughts raised by the movie:
a) Son: “Is it good to be like everyone else?”
Dad: “That’s a really good question,… that’s usually what adults say when they don’t know the answer.”
b) Publisher (to writer, Dad): “Why can’t you just be what we want you to be?”
c) Writer (Dad): Sometimes we forget that the children have only just arrived on the earth, they are a little bit like aliens, trying to fit in.
d) Little girl in group home: “He’s a weirdo, he doesn’t have any friends.”
No comment needed.
Here’s my favourite line though, deep in its irony. It is uttered by the same little girl as mentioned above, telling the literal physical position of the little Martian. “He’s in the box.” Is he really in the box, or is he way outside the box? Here’s a little one, struggling to understand the world, everyone he knows and has tried to care about has walked out on him. His adoptive dad calls those people, “the stupidest people in the universe.”
That part of the movie is touching enough, that we all struggle in some way to find our place on this planet. That theme though is pretty common, lots of people have told that story. The other, more pressing side of the movie, the part that strikes me closer to home has to do with adoption. Not many people talk about that.
“Nice talk.”
The Martian child utters these simple words to his new dad when the two share a non-verbal few moments, Dad trying to understand son by just being with and like him.
“Most people spend more time thinking about how to raise tomatoes than how to raise their own kids.” No comment.
“I understand not wanting to bring a child into the world, but what’s wrong with loving one that’s already here?” Wow, I’ve heard people say, “Why would you want to bring children into this world?” And sometimes I understand that question. But here, we have presented to us, an even more pressing question, since at its heart what we have here is a challenge not just to parenting and adoption, but selfishness. How can you answer that question without it sounding like an excuse?
Hey, you, “What’s wrong with loving one that’s already here?”
(said looking into mirror)
He lives in a world where people just, “disappear”. That’s why he’s afraid he’ll just float away and wears a weight belt to keep him earthbound. We all want to be well grounded, yet, we are also the Martian child, in the world but not of it, trying to rise above the common, and at the same time wondering why we don’t fit in?
Martian Child is the story of a grieving widower who decides he’s going to open up his heart and home to a very needy boy who claims to be from Mars. The movie does an admirable job of setting up the question of “Is he really from Mars?”, another K-Pax, this time with a child at the root of the question.
Here are a few thoughts raised by the movie:
a) Son: “Is it good to be like everyone else?”
Dad: “That’s a really good question,… that’s usually what adults say when they don’t know the answer.”
b) Publisher (to writer, Dad): “Why can’t you just be what we want you to be?”
c) Writer (Dad): Sometimes we forget that the children have only just arrived on the earth, they are a little bit like aliens, trying to fit in.
d) Little girl in group home: “He’s a weirdo, he doesn’t have any friends.”
No comment needed.
Here’s my favourite line though, deep in its irony. It is uttered by the same little girl as mentioned above, telling the literal physical position of the little Martian. “He’s in the box.” Is he really in the box, or is he way outside the box? Here’s a little one, struggling to understand the world, everyone he knows and has tried to care about has walked out on him. His adoptive dad calls those people, “the stupidest people in the universe.”
That part of the movie is touching enough, that we all struggle in some way to find our place on this planet. That theme though is pretty common, lots of people have told that story. The other, more pressing side of the movie, the part that strikes me closer to home has to do with adoption. Not many people talk about that.
“Nice talk.”
The Martian child utters these simple words to his new dad when the two share a non-verbal few moments, Dad trying to understand son by just being with and like him.
“Most people spend more time thinking about how to raise tomatoes than how to raise their own kids.” No comment.
“I understand not wanting to bring a child into the world, but what’s wrong with loving one that’s already here?” Wow, I’ve heard people say, “Why would you want to bring children into this world?” And sometimes I understand that question. But here, we have presented to us, an even more pressing question, since at its heart what we have here is a challenge not just to parenting and adoption, but selfishness. How can you answer that question without it sounding like an excuse?
Hey, you, “What’s wrong with loving one that’s already here?”
(said looking into mirror)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Cult of celebrity set in the 1800’s.
The phrase about Robert Ford being a coward strikes me as odd. Everyone in this movie is paranoid. I don’t know if that makes them cowards or not, but every shoulder is being looked over, every person is suspecting and suspected. Paranoia is the key word to the whole world portrayed here. Paranoia and obsession, though what the difference is between those two is hard to decipher. Paranoia is one part of the larger category of obsession. When I prop this movie up beside All About Eve, a classic we just watched last week, I can’t help but notice the fear that many are faced with, 'whether to keep their celebrity or to keep their life'. What do I cling to, to the point of paranoia? Is that only for those in high places?
This “true” story of the murder of Jesse James, tells us that society’s infatuation with crime and criminals is not new. The movie does not really portray Robert Ford to be a coward, I don’t think. He’s more portrayed as an obsessed fan, a glory hound who wants to be someone, anyone.
The word “assassination” is used in the title, and though the word is used to mean killing of a ranking person, here it’s used for the killing of a killer. This was not an accident as the public outcry is also demonstrated to be as though they mourned for a friend, not an uncommon robber and murderer. Robert Ford is not portrayed as much more honourable, but Jesse James turns his back, surrendering life like a coward and lets Ford take him out the “easy way”. Ford gets the label, James the glory.
I was reading in 2 Timothy this week, Paul’s last letter in the New Testament. He is not clinging to his position, he is not holding onto his power, his glory. He desperately wants others to carry the truth on of what he was saying, to the point of even getting Timothy ready for the end of his life to ensure that he was giving to other faithful people the message and ensuring that they all took its continuation as seriously as Paul himself did. And there’s the rub. Holding onto something bigger than “me” keep us from an unnatural fear of everyone is out to get us.
The phrase about Robert Ford being a coward strikes me as odd. Everyone in this movie is paranoid. I don’t know if that makes them cowards or not, but every shoulder is being looked over, every person is suspecting and suspected. Paranoia is the key word to the whole world portrayed here. Paranoia and obsession, though what the difference is between those two is hard to decipher. Paranoia is one part of the larger category of obsession. When I prop this movie up beside All About Eve, a classic we just watched last week, I can’t help but notice the fear that many are faced with, 'whether to keep their celebrity or to keep their life'. What do I cling to, to the point of paranoia? Is that only for those in high places?
This “true” story of the murder of Jesse James, tells us that society’s infatuation with crime and criminals is not new. The movie does not really portray Robert Ford to be a coward, I don’t think. He’s more portrayed as an obsessed fan, a glory hound who wants to be someone, anyone.
The word “assassination” is used in the title, and though the word is used to mean killing of a ranking person, here it’s used for the killing of a killer. This was not an accident as the public outcry is also demonstrated to be as though they mourned for a friend, not an uncommon robber and murderer. Robert Ford is not portrayed as much more honourable, but Jesse James turns his back, surrendering life like a coward and lets Ford take him out the “easy way”. Ford gets the label, James the glory.
I was reading in 2 Timothy this week, Paul’s last letter in the New Testament. He is not clinging to his position, he is not holding onto his power, his glory. He desperately wants others to carry the truth on of what he was saying, to the point of even getting Timothy ready for the end of his life to ensure that he was giving to other faithful people the message and ensuring that they all took its continuation as seriously as Paul himself did. And there’s the rub. Holding onto something bigger than “me” keep us from an unnatural fear of everyone is out to get us.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
What's hidden deep in Pan's Labyrinth?
Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia, a young girl who's mother marries an unlovable (meaning: evil) man after the death of her father. She and her mother move to the front line, where her stepfather serves as an army leader, sorry, I forget the rank! But there is more to the story, it seems that Ofelia is not of this world!
She comes from:
-Land where there is no pain or lying.
-Comes to another world, where she does not fit in.
-She does not live with her real father.
-She communicates with the other world.
-She performs miracles (though not through her own power).
There is one use of Jesus’ name that normally we’d consider blasphemous, but I wonder if it wasn’t intentionally referring to Ofelia as Jesus...
Now Pan's Labyrinth is not a child's tale. This is not a nice easy fairy tale. You have to cringe at times as death is meted out to innocent victims. This is also not a straight allegory. Ofelia's father is the king of the underworld, a little backward from tradition! Pan, from Greek or was that Roman, mythology, was where we get our modern idea of Satan with horns and hooves, I believe.
A story is told within the movie of a rose on the mountain top which holds eternal life but the poison in the thorns were too dangerous for people to risk pursuing the flower. The movie puts it this way the people "always talked of their fear of pain and death but never of the promise of eternal life”
You may have heard this one before too..."Don’t eat the food"… she eats the fruit and an evil creature wakes up.
In the end, Ofelia dies because she won’t sacrifice an innocent baby, she dies for a helpless creature in other words. And, in the end, she is accepted as the king’s daughter, back in the underworld where she came from.
Some might say that the whole thing is just modern fairy tale... modern meaning set in 1940's Spain, but I think there is more to this thing. Perhaps there is a twisted version of the gospel here, Pan at times is portrayed as a very frightening creature, "not a tame lion" and certainly not Mr Tumnus! The Spanish title in the movie was The Labyrinth of the Faun, perhaps signifying that the original intent was more fairy tale then Greek Mythology or even Satanic sub-plot!
However, intentional or not, the good news is everywhere, an innocent died so we don't have to and today, He's accepted for us, Easter is coming, see if you don't hear the story of Pan's Labyrinth in the next couple of weeks.
She comes from:
-Land where there is no pain or lying.
-Comes to another world, where she does not fit in.
-She does not live with her real father.
-She communicates with the other world.
-She performs miracles (though not through her own power).
There is one use of Jesus’ name that normally we’d consider blasphemous, but I wonder if it wasn’t intentionally referring to Ofelia as Jesus...
Now Pan's Labyrinth is not a child's tale. This is not a nice easy fairy tale. You have to cringe at times as death is meted out to innocent victims. This is also not a straight allegory. Ofelia's father is the king of the underworld, a little backward from tradition! Pan, from Greek or was that Roman, mythology, was where we get our modern idea of Satan with horns and hooves, I believe.
A story is told within the movie of a rose on the mountain top which holds eternal life but the poison in the thorns were too dangerous for people to risk pursuing the flower. The movie puts it this way the people "always talked of their fear of pain and death but never of the promise of eternal life”
You may have heard this one before too..."Don’t eat the food"… she eats the fruit and an evil creature wakes up.
In the end, Ofelia dies because she won’t sacrifice an innocent baby, she dies for a helpless creature in other words. And, in the end, she is accepted as the king’s daughter, back in the underworld where she came from.
Some might say that the whole thing is just modern fairy tale... modern meaning set in 1940's Spain, but I think there is more to this thing. Perhaps there is a twisted version of the gospel here, Pan at times is portrayed as a very frightening creature, "not a tame lion" and certainly not Mr Tumnus! The Spanish title in the movie was The Labyrinth of the Faun, perhaps signifying that the original intent was more fairy tale then Greek Mythology or even Satanic sub-plot!
However, intentional or not, the good news is everywhere, an innocent died so we don't have to and today, He's accepted for us, Easter is coming, see if you don't hear the story of Pan's Labyrinth in the next couple of weeks.
Larry Norman
We lost a revolutionary member of the family a couple of weeks ago when Larry Norman passed away. He was 61. Like many of those with lots to say, he went too soon.
Heart ailments had severely slowed Larry Norman down over the past few years, but some would likely say that it may have been overused in the early days of his pioneering records, (those are big black cds, kids) which bridged Christ with the hippy culture of the late 1960's.
Love or just barely like him, Larry Norman did a lot for the sake of Christ, and like the rest of us, he did a lot to hurt it too.
He exposed our great propensity for kicking our wounded.
He exposed our hypocrisy.
He made bad business deals with fellow brothers and sisters.
He challenged many of us with his blunt lyrics.
Larry Norman was as human as Peter and as spiritual as Paul. For years, I was among his worst critics. I repent of that now. I truly believe that Larry was doing his best for the King and Kingdom, though health issues did not allow him to either follow through on promises made, or didn't let him remember things the way others did. Many of the people whom I took offense for (Randy Stonehill, Daniel Amos, Steve Scott...etc.) Have had the opportunity to forgive and forget with Larry. (http://www.servantsheart.net/cs01pho17.htm) Its the least any of the rest can do with him too.
Which leads me on to something more than just Christian celebrity issues. Are we harboring? Have we let the ship of bitterness sail in and we've put it in dry dock? Well, spring is coming, get that thing back in the water and bid that frail ship, "Bon Voyage!" It may be too late soon. You might just log onto the internet some day soon and say, hey that Easton guy is dead! And then you'll just have to live with regret that we never got around to making things right. So make it right with me or whoever it is you need to do that with! I've got a short list myself to start dealing with, and no, I don't think they are reading this.
God bless.
Heart ailments had severely slowed Larry Norman down over the past few years, but some would likely say that it may have been overused in the early days of his pioneering records, (those are big black cds, kids) which bridged Christ with the hippy culture of the late 1960's.
Love or just barely like him, Larry Norman did a lot for the sake of Christ, and like the rest of us, he did a lot to hurt it too.
He exposed our great propensity for kicking our wounded.
He exposed our hypocrisy.
He made bad business deals with fellow brothers and sisters.
He challenged many of us with his blunt lyrics.
Larry Norman was as human as Peter and as spiritual as Paul. For years, I was among his worst critics. I repent of that now. I truly believe that Larry was doing his best for the King and Kingdom, though health issues did not allow him to either follow through on promises made, or didn't let him remember things the way others did. Many of the people whom I took offense for (Randy Stonehill, Daniel Amos, Steve Scott...etc.) Have had the opportunity to forgive and forget with Larry. (http://www.servantsheart.net/cs01pho17.htm) Its the least any of the rest can do with him too.
Which leads me on to something more than just Christian celebrity issues. Are we harboring? Have we let the ship of bitterness sail in and we've put it in dry dock? Well, spring is coming, get that thing back in the water and bid that frail ship, "Bon Voyage!" It may be too late soon. You might just log onto the internet some day soon and say, hey that Easton guy is dead! And then you'll just have to live with regret that we never got around to making things right. So make it right with me or whoever it is you need to do that with! I've got a short list myself to start dealing with, and no, I don't think they are reading this.
God bless.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Ron Wyatt, the Chariot Wheel guy
This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog regarding Ron Wyatt and his archeological claims. You're going to find that some are very pro Ron Wyatt and others are very skeptical.
Ron Wyatt was an Seventh Day Adventist amateurarchaeologist who died in the past few years, after publishing many "discoveries". The veracity of these discoveries and his claims about them are up for public debate all over the internet. 169 000 hits were listed on Google when I put in his name.
The following articles are anti-Ron Wyatt.
-read before other tentmaker article
http://www.tentmaker.org/Dew/Dew7/D7-AGreatChristianScam.html
read this article after the first from tentmaker http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/
Ron Wyatt was an Seventh Day Adventist amateurarchaeologist who died in the past few years, after publishing many "discoveries". The veracity of these discoveries and his claims about them are up for public debate all over the internet. 169 000 hits were listed on Google when I put in his name.
The following articles are anti-Ron Wyatt.
-read before other tentmaker article
http://www.tentmaker.org/Dew/Dew7/D7-AGreatChristianScam.html
read this article after the first from tentmaker http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/
This article says that an organization as big as snopes.com is still researching to see whether his claims are true. http://www.snopes.com/religion/redsea.asp
This article is a pro Ron Wyatt one, though the more I read, the less it made me believe him. http://www.biblerevelations.org/ronwyatt/in_defense_of_ron_wyatt.htm
http://www.ldolphin.org/wyatt.html is a site with some pointed questions for those who are pushing wyatt's discoveries.
Answers in Genesis is a pretty well respected organization I think. Ken Hamm is the leader. I think at one time they even worked with Ron Wyatt and later had to recant their belief in his work.
So my summary is that, a) I wish the things this guy claims to be true are true.
b) I don't trust him.
c) test all things.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Hoax emails
Okay, so like, November 4th, 2003, Jim Valverdi of Sacramento, California, spontaneously combusted with a crowd of nearly 200 people standing near by. Look for the video on YouTube! This was the most witnesses ever for a spontaneous combustion, according to renowned scientific researcher, Dr. Sven Karlson of Cambridge University. Sacramento coroner Richard Windberg says that many of the people who witnessed the event have asked that no one contact them with regard to the event, as the trauma was too great to recall for the satisfaction of a few prying inquirers.
What we have here is my own, off the cuff, made up scenario to hopefully show a pattern. Anyone can make up stuff. Many people do. I teach Grade 7 and 8, I'm sure many of my students, if they thought about it, could come up with something far better than my feeble attempt at the top of this post and would have far more reason to, the chance to get their email sent around the word and laugh and giggle that they were able to deceive people.
I made up names, I made up a fantastic scenario, I added a little data to make it look it was based on facts. I added a suggestion to look up the video on YouTube, so people would think, "why would he say to look it up if it wasn't there."
I copied and pasted this from here and though I didn't research to see that this was a real interview, it makes a valid point!
(Rich) Buhler (founder of truthorfiction.com): There's one of the ingredients of an e-rumor. An e-rumor always has what I call the Wow Factor. "Wow, this is interesting," "Wow, this is funny," "Wow, this is important," "Wow, this is just what I thought Bill and Hillary would do," or whatever the Wow is that I want. So even though that rumor is really ludicrous, you can see where somebody who has the Wow Factor as a vegetarian would want it to be true and would use it as something to spread to their non-vegetarian friends, "Hey lookee here!" That's one of the key ingredients of an e-rumor.
www.truthorfiction.com
http://snopes.com/
Just a couple of places to look if you're wondering.
And, you know the people who send you anything. I try to tell my students, just don't pass it on. Try to just avoid the fact that it says, if you don't do this within 22 seconds your computer will fail, your teeth will fall out and you will never get married. This is really hard for some people to do, but it is possible!
I'm doing some research right now on Ron Wyatt from the email I got today regarding Chariot Wheels in the Red Sea. He seems to be a bit of a fraud, but it doesn't mean the pictures or story is false, I'll keep looking!
What we have here is my own, off the cuff, made up scenario to hopefully show a pattern. Anyone can make up stuff. Many people do. I teach Grade 7 and 8, I'm sure many of my students, if they thought about it, could come up with something far better than my feeble attempt at the top of this post and would have far more reason to, the chance to get their email sent around the word and laugh and giggle that they were able to deceive people.
I made up names, I made up a fantastic scenario, I added a little data to make it look it was based on facts. I added a suggestion to look up the video on YouTube, so people would think, "why would he say to look it up if it wasn't there."
I copied and pasted this from here and though I didn't research to see that this was a real interview, it makes a valid point!
(Rich) Buhler (founder of truthorfiction.com): There's one of the ingredients of an e-rumor. An e-rumor always has what I call the Wow Factor. "Wow, this is interesting," "Wow, this is funny," "Wow, this is important," "Wow, this is just what I thought Bill and Hillary would do," or whatever the Wow is that I want. So even though that rumor is really ludicrous, you can see where somebody who has the Wow Factor as a vegetarian would want it to be true and would use it as something to spread to their non-vegetarian friends, "Hey lookee here!" That's one of the key ingredients of an e-rumor.
www.truthorfiction.com
http://snopes.com/
Just a couple of places to look if you're wondering.
And, you know the people who send you anything. I try to tell my students, just don't pass it on. Try to just avoid the fact that it says, if you don't do this within 22 seconds your computer will fail, your teeth will fall out and you will never get married. This is really hard for some people to do, but it is possible!
I'm doing some research right now on Ron Wyatt from the email I got today regarding Chariot Wheels in the Red Sea. He seems to be a bit of a fraud, but it doesn't mean the pictures or story is false, I'll keep looking!
Monday, February 25, 2008
God loves me, now what?
1 John Chapter 3:10 says that if we do not love our brothers, we are not of God, that’s setting the standard high and setting it early. In fact, these verses even say that we demonstrate that we are the children of God by our love, and, conversely that we are the children of the devil by our lack of the same.
Verse 11 says that we have seen from the beginning that we are to love, that the story of Cain and Able demonstrates to us that love for our brother is something that should be automatic, that fratricide, murder of your own brother is shocking and obviously from Satan.
This verse also says that we see into the heart of Cain by this action, his deeds were evil and he was even motivated to kill because his brother’s deeds were righteous. It seems hard to believe that that would motivate murder, but when we think about it, murder happens for a lot less reasons than that.
Verse 12 then says that we see that when the world hates us, it should not be shocking, as Cain hating Able should not be.
We need to take joy in knowing that when we have love in our hearts for our fellow believers, that in itself demonstrates that we are part of the family of God.
I’ve heard people say in the past, “I love Jesus, I just can’t stand his wife.” Or, “I like what Jesus stands for, it’s just that I can’t stand being around Christians”. This is a cynical attitude that just can not be a part of our thinking. If we apply that to any of our relationships, we can surely see that that relationship is going to end in a permanent parting. If we give ourselves wholeheartedly to that relationship, knowing that it is worth salvaging, we can have hope in seeing it survive, and rejoice in knowing that we are demonstrating that our faith is real. The same holds true with our relationship with our brothers and sisters within the church. We need to give ourselves wholeheartedly to that relationship.
Well, how do we know what this love looks like? Verse 16 says that we are laying down our lives for the brethren. We are to look like our Father, this morning we looked at the love God has for us. We must take that love and pass it on.
Verse 17 cuts right to the heart of the matter, offering up a practical situation. We have
the ability to meet a genuine need, and we refuse to, and not even because we don’t have time or don’t notice, but because we don’t feel any compassion in our hearts. In fact the verse goes farther saying that we close the door of our hearts on them. They have come knocking, and we’ve looked out the upper window, closed the blinds and pretended we’re not home. Now I do that on Halloween, but I don’t think too many people are in need of candy. If I do it for true needs, I prove that the love of Christ has not really made it into my life.
Notice what it is that we are being asked to give up, “this world’s goods” – stuff. Stuff we can’t take with us we are being asked to give away in order to prove that the eternal “stuff” really works.
Verse 18 calls us on a human trait that I feel is too prevalent. We claim our love, and we don’t demonstrate it. Words are too easy. Actions speak louder.
Chapter 4:7-16 gives us an interesting idea, the way the world gets to see God is through our reflection of His love.
Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Remember this is agape love.
The opposite is also true according to verse 8.
Verse 11 says then that we need to love as He loved us. This is not God’s expectation, instead it is a natural response based on understanding that we have been loved.
Verse 12 says that we demonstrate God’s love by our love for one another. I wonder what the world sees; I wonder what they would say about our love? Are we selfless, selfish, or inconsistent?
Verse 20 calls it as it is. These are not my words, I would never say this, how could I? How could any human? 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? This tells us somewhat what we base our love on, interactions.
Verse 21
And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Must.
Now what? We can’t sit and debate the merits of the word “must”. We just have to obey. We must go out and make right, we must go out and live peaceably. “As much as it is within you, live peaceably with all men”
Many of us think we have no opportunity to serve as missionaries, we lament our timid personality, we regret our stammering tongues, our slow mind our poor grasp of scripture, but, one consolation we can get from the Scripture is that we are told that “they will no we are Christians if we have love for one another. God is giving us a way to shine light in our dark world we were thinking about his morning by simply living in love.
Verse 11 says that we have seen from the beginning that we are to love, that the story of Cain and Able demonstrates to us that love for our brother is something that should be automatic, that fratricide, murder of your own brother is shocking and obviously from Satan.
This verse also says that we see into the heart of Cain by this action, his deeds were evil and he was even motivated to kill because his brother’s deeds were righteous. It seems hard to believe that that would motivate murder, but when we think about it, murder happens for a lot less reasons than that.
Verse 12 then says that we see that when the world hates us, it should not be shocking, as Cain hating Able should not be.
We need to take joy in knowing that when we have love in our hearts for our fellow believers, that in itself demonstrates that we are part of the family of God.
I’ve heard people say in the past, “I love Jesus, I just can’t stand his wife.” Or, “I like what Jesus stands for, it’s just that I can’t stand being around Christians”. This is a cynical attitude that just can not be a part of our thinking. If we apply that to any of our relationships, we can surely see that that relationship is going to end in a permanent parting. If we give ourselves wholeheartedly to that relationship, knowing that it is worth salvaging, we can have hope in seeing it survive, and rejoice in knowing that we are demonstrating that our faith is real. The same holds true with our relationship with our brothers and sisters within the church. We need to give ourselves wholeheartedly to that relationship.
Well, how do we know what this love looks like? Verse 16 says that we are laying down our lives for the brethren. We are to look like our Father, this morning we looked at the love God has for us. We must take that love and pass it on.
Verse 17 cuts right to the heart of the matter, offering up a practical situation. We have
the ability to meet a genuine need, and we refuse to, and not even because we don’t have time or don’t notice, but because we don’t feel any compassion in our hearts. In fact the verse goes farther saying that we close the door of our hearts on them. They have come knocking, and we’ve looked out the upper window, closed the blinds and pretended we’re not home. Now I do that on Halloween, but I don’t think too many people are in need of candy. If I do it for true needs, I prove that the love of Christ has not really made it into my life.
Notice what it is that we are being asked to give up, “this world’s goods” – stuff. Stuff we can’t take with us we are being asked to give away in order to prove that the eternal “stuff” really works.
Verse 18 calls us on a human trait that I feel is too prevalent. We claim our love, and we don’t demonstrate it. Words are too easy. Actions speak louder.
Chapter 4:7-16 gives us an interesting idea, the way the world gets to see God is through our reflection of His love.
Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Remember this is agape love.
The opposite is also true according to verse 8.
Verse 11 says then that we need to love as He loved us. This is not God’s expectation, instead it is a natural response based on understanding that we have been loved.
Verse 12 says that we demonstrate God’s love by our love for one another. I wonder what the world sees; I wonder what they would say about our love? Are we selfless, selfish, or inconsistent?
Verse 20 calls it as it is. These are not my words, I would never say this, how could I? How could any human? 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? This tells us somewhat what we base our love on, interactions.
Verse 21
And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Must.
Now what? We can’t sit and debate the merits of the word “must”. We just have to obey. We must go out and make right, we must go out and live peaceably. “As much as it is within you, live peaceably with all men”
Many of us think we have no opportunity to serve as missionaries, we lament our timid personality, we regret our stammering tongues, our slow mind our poor grasp of scripture, but, one consolation we can get from the Scripture is that we are told that “they will no we are Christians if we have love for one another. God is giving us a way to shine light in our dark world we were thinking about his morning by simply living in love.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
God loves you, He really does
Here are a few notes I typed up getting ready to preach last Sunday. I thought I'd just throw them out here, unedited, so enjoy or endure as the case may be. I'll add Sunday night's later.
We’ve just passed through Valentine’s Day. For many of us, it’s the time when duty demands we do something, anything! For others it’s a commercialized event to be avoided. For others it’s a painful reminder of what was or might have been. For others its great fun and candy and hearts, but most of the people who feel that way are under the age of 12 and are downstairs this morning. For all of us, however, it surely makes us stop and think of love.
For me, the review of love began a few weeks before Valentine’s Day and was not related to the day. As for many men, my wife got me thinking about it. She was the one who thought we needed some work in our relationship. Guys, if your wife says you need work in your relationship, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, we need to listen. Usually four weeks later I realize that something’s broken or missing, she’s noticed when the crack first developed. I remember sitting down recently, trying to plan something special for Sabrina during a time when we were not seeing eye-to-eye on who knows what. The absurdity of being at odds with the one that I only wanted to do good things for really challenged my heart to rise above the petty selfishness in my heart, the part of me that makes me want to fight back, to react with such childishness.
I turned to the scripture to see what love was all about. And eventually found my way to 1 John, so please turn with me this morning to that book and chapter 3.
The first thing we observe from these chapters is that God reveals his love to us by making us his children. Now, many people are children in the world, and most of us were children at some point, very few are so old that there is no one around to confirm this fact! But being a child and being blessed because we are a child is a different matter. Not all children today are glad to be here. None of asks to be born, and sadly some wish they never had been.
In Africa, the projection is that there will be 18 million orphaned children by the year 2010, their parents dead from AIDS, in some countries they tote machine guns like our children carry backpacks, 200 million are malnourished. Some places they have to live with the regret of touching mines that were never meant for them, dealing with the loss of limbs or scarring.
Here in Canada, they find our twelve year olds lying in the woods, they live lives of silent torture and sadness neglected by busy or abusive parents. But here, in 1 John 3:1, we have a vivid picture of why these other scenarios, on an earth racked by wrong, are so angering to us, so worthy of righteous indignation. We have an expectation of what it should be like to be a child. We have an ideal of how we want our children to grow up. Best of all worlds for our children is for them to be able to say, “God is my Father.”
Here we have the ideal father: involved, all knowing, all powerful, limitless resources, caring, perfect. Truly, the scripture should say, “behold what manner of love the Father has for us!”
Verses 16 and 17 tell us that we know how to put love into action because God first demonstrated his love for us by dying, sacrificing, laying down his life for us.
I recently read a new book from Annie Dillard, The Maytrees. In it, she writes of a couple who struggle to know if they are or ever were in love. Do we ever wonder about our own level of love? I’m not speaking of romantic love even here. I’m talking about our love that we have in us from the Father for our brothers and sisters. Do we wonder if we are showing our love? What is love? Am I in love? Was I ever in love? Have I fallen out of love? The answer to those questions must be filtered through the truest example of the love of God we know. Jesus gave up his life for us. We are shown the true love of God, and therefore true love, by seeing, thinking about, understanding more fully what Jesus did when he gave up his life for us. It seems as though “Jesus love me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” stands as true today as it did back in Sunday School.
Chapter 4:7 takes us to another level. Notice that love is of God, that God is love as seen in verse 8. Anything less, anything false, anything trying to disguise itself as love, but really is for personal gain, is not from God, is not God at work in our lives. Self needs to be eliminated from our relationships. What must rise to the top is service, sacrifice, true love. You will notice so many times through scripture the phrase “one another”. Serve one another, pray for one another, bear one another’s burdens, confess your sins to one another, love one another. Allowing yourself, allowing ourselves, to live for others, frees them up to live for us.
Verse 9 tells us that God’s love is shown to us by Jesus coming to the earth and trading his life for ours, giving us eternal life in exchange for our old existence. Notice that the verse even implies that we had no life before Jesus. And spiritually that is true. The scripture says that we are dead, outside of the blood of Jesus paying the penalty of our sin. We must have the punishment we are owed taken on by Jesus in order to open up the opportunity for us to get to heaven and eternal life. In fact, verse 15 and 16 even says that we prove that we know that God loves us by believing Jesus died for us. We have to stop paying lip service, and act, we must stop saying we know God loves us and prove it.
Verse 19 says that we love Him because He first loved us. This is true of genuine demonstrations of love anywhere. True acts of love, though often too hard to believe that they are true, will lead to loving acts in return. When we realize that God loves us, we can only react with genuine love. If we don’t respond to Him with love, it is because we don’t believe that what we are seeing from God is love.
Tonight we are going to look at the other part of love that is covered in these chapters. How the love we have for one another is played out, how the love of God is to play out in our lives, as we reflect him.
We’ve just passed through Valentine’s Day. For many of us, it’s the time when duty demands we do something, anything! For others it’s a commercialized event to be avoided. For others it’s a painful reminder of what was or might have been. For others its great fun and candy and hearts, but most of the people who feel that way are under the age of 12 and are downstairs this morning. For all of us, however, it surely makes us stop and think of love.
For me, the review of love began a few weeks before Valentine’s Day and was not related to the day. As for many men, my wife got me thinking about it. She was the one who thought we needed some work in our relationship. Guys, if your wife says you need work in your relationship, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, we need to listen. Usually four weeks later I realize that something’s broken or missing, she’s noticed when the crack first developed. I remember sitting down recently, trying to plan something special for Sabrina during a time when we were not seeing eye-to-eye on who knows what. The absurdity of being at odds with the one that I only wanted to do good things for really challenged my heart to rise above the petty selfishness in my heart, the part of me that makes me want to fight back, to react with such childishness.
I turned to the scripture to see what love was all about. And eventually found my way to 1 John, so please turn with me this morning to that book and chapter 3.
The first thing we observe from these chapters is that God reveals his love to us by making us his children. Now, many people are children in the world, and most of us were children at some point, very few are so old that there is no one around to confirm this fact! But being a child and being blessed because we are a child is a different matter. Not all children today are glad to be here. None of asks to be born, and sadly some wish they never had been.
In Africa, the projection is that there will be 18 million orphaned children by the year 2010, their parents dead from AIDS, in some countries they tote machine guns like our children carry backpacks, 200 million are malnourished. Some places they have to live with the regret of touching mines that were never meant for them, dealing with the loss of limbs or scarring.
Here in Canada, they find our twelve year olds lying in the woods, they live lives of silent torture and sadness neglected by busy or abusive parents. But here, in 1 John 3:1, we have a vivid picture of why these other scenarios, on an earth racked by wrong, are so angering to us, so worthy of righteous indignation. We have an expectation of what it should be like to be a child. We have an ideal of how we want our children to grow up. Best of all worlds for our children is for them to be able to say, “God is my Father.”
Here we have the ideal father: involved, all knowing, all powerful, limitless resources, caring, perfect. Truly, the scripture should say, “behold what manner of love the Father has for us!”
Verses 16 and 17 tell us that we know how to put love into action because God first demonstrated his love for us by dying, sacrificing, laying down his life for us.
I recently read a new book from Annie Dillard, The Maytrees. In it, she writes of a couple who struggle to know if they are or ever were in love. Do we ever wonder about our own level of love? I’m not speaking of romantic love even here. I’m talking about our love that we have in us from the Father for our brothers and sisters. Do we wonder if we are showing our love? What is love? Am I in love? Was I ever in love? Have I fallen out of love? The answer to those questions must be filtered through the truest example of the love of God we know. Jesus gave up his life for us. We are shown the true love of God, and therefore true love, by seeing, thinking about, understanding more fully what Jesus did when he gave up his life for us. It seems as though “Jesus love me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” stands as true today as it did back in Sunday School.
Chapter 4:7 takes us to another level. Notice that love is of God, that God is love as seen in verse 8. Anything less, anything false, anything trying to disguise itself as love, but really is for personal gain, is not from God, is not God at work in our lives. Self needs to be eliminated from our relationships. What must rise to the top is service, sacrifice, true love. You will notice so many times through scripture the phrase “one another”. Serve one another, pray for one another, bear one another’s burdens, confess your sins to one another, love one another. Allowing yourself, allowing ourselves, to live for others, frees them up to live for us.
Verse 9 tells us that God’s love is shown to us by Jesus coming to the earth and trading his life for ours, giving us eternal life in exchange for our old existence. Notice that the verse even implies that we had no life before Jesus. And spiritually that is true. The scripture says that we are dead, outside of the blood of Jesus paying the penalty of our sin. We must have the punishment we are owed taken on by Jesus in order to open up the opportunity for us to get to heaven and eternal life. In fact, verse 15 and 16 even says that we prove that we know that God loves us by believing Jesus died for us. We have to stop paying lip service, and act, we must stop saying we know God loves us and prove it.
Verse 19 says that we love Him because He first loved us. This is true of genuine demonstrations of love anywhere. True acts of love, though often too hard to believe that they are true, will lead to loving acts in return. When we realize that God loves us, we can only react with genuine love. If we don’t respond to Him with love, it is because we don’t believe that what we are seeing from God is love.
Tonight we are going to look at the other part of love that is covered in these chapters. How the love we have for one another is played out, how the love of God is to play out in our lives, as we reflect him.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
LOST
I've just sat through yet another amazing episode of LOST. TV can't get any better than this. If you haven't watched the show, turn away now, this is bound to become the babbling of a rabid man.
I've only ever really been addicted to tv once, I think. Back about ten years ago, Jimmy Smits character was slowly dying of cancer on NYPD Blue, for about a month, I couldn't miss it, had to know how things would turn out.
LOST is a totally different thing though. The characters are great. I find the back history of them to be as interesting as the events playing out on the desert island. But that's not all. Character driven literature and movies and apparently tv are the most intriguing type to me. The characters here might just do it on their own. But its not what keeps me coming back. The layers and the themes and the double crossing and the mysteries and the new characters with new information all add up to an awesome combination.
Most important to me though is the spirituality. Man of Science, Man of Faith was the name of an episode in the second season I believe. It pitted Jack Shepherd (his dad is named Christian Shepherd, no "hidden" meaning there) a doctor forced to be the leader after the crash of Oceanic flight 815, against John Locke (originally a British philospher/political thinker) a former box company employee who was in a wheelchair before the plane crashed. He believes that the island has healed him of his paralysis. Jack believes nothing of the sort, though Locke tells no one of his wheelchair past besides Walt a 10 year old boy... come to think of it, why don't people remember that he was in a wheelchair before the plane crashed... hmmm... Now in the fourth season, John and Jack (same name, could this come into play later???) are still facing off. One wants off the island, Jack, and the other feels he must stay, Locke.
Locke shows the zeal of many spiritual people by being willing to do nearly anything, even murder to keep his island "as is". He knows that something special is happening, though no one seems to know everything, no one we've met anyway.
This season we've met at least one guy named Abbadon, a name often referring to Satan, the word itself meaning "deceiver".
Redemption is a very important part of this show, thinking specifically of Charlie's death last season, but seen also over and over with many characters. The notion of a "list" keeps coming up, that some people are chosen and some are not, that some are good and others are corrupted... all these things and many other small moments add up to a thought provoking, fun, engaging television show.
It's not for the faint of heart. There are lives lost, people live very human existences, experience all the good and bad that humans do. Then again, you get to enjoy Sawyer's nicknames and Hurleys humour.
Anyway, I thought I needed to post why I'm "obsessed" with LOST. There is more, its late, but I have to get it out.
I've only ever really been addicted to tv once, I think. Back about ten years ago, Jimmy Smits character was slowly dying of cancer on NYPD Blue, for about a month, I couldn't miss it, had to know how things would turn out.
LOST is a totally different thing though. The characters are great. I find the back history of them to be as interesting as the events playing out on the desert island. But that's not all. Character driven literature and movies and apparently tv are the most intriguing type to me. The characters here might just do it on their own. But its not what keeps me coming back. The layers and the themes and the double crossing and the mysteries and the new characters with new information all add up to an awesome combination.
Most important to me though is the spirituality. Man of Science, Man of Faith was the name of an episode in the second season I believe. It pitted Jack Shepherd (his dad is named Christian Shepherd, no "hidden" meaning there) a doctor forced to be the leader after the crash of Oceanic flight 815, against John Locke (originally a British philospher/political thinker) a former box company employee who was in a wheelchair before the plane crashed. He believes that the island has healed him of his paralysis. Jack believes nothing of the sort, though Locke tells no one of his wheelchair past besides Walt a 10 year old boy... come to think of it, why don't people remember that he was in a wheelchair before the plane crashed... hmmm... Now in the fourth season, John and Jack (same name, could this come into play later???) are still facing off. One wants off the island, Jack, and the other feels he must stay, Locke.
Locke shows the zeal of many spiritual people by being willing to do nearly anything, even murder to keep his island "as is". He knows that something special is happening, though no one seems to know everything, no one we've met anyway.
This season we've met at least one guy named Abbadon, a name often referring to Satan, the word itself meaning "deceiver".
Redemption is a very important part of this show, thinking specifically of Charlie's death last season, but seen also over and over with many characters. The notion of a "list" keeps coming up, that some people are chosen and some are not, that some are good and others are corrupted... all these things and many other small moments add up to a thought provoking, fun, engaging television show.
It's not for the faint of heart. There are lives lost, people live very human existences, experience all the good and bad that humans do. Then again, you get to enjoy Sawyer's nicknames and Hurleys humour.
Anyway, I thought I needed to post why I'm "obsessed" with LOST. There is more, its late, but I have to get it out.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
I'm free
But I won't make an official post yet.
This is just a little way for me to waste a little time and say that I'm done report cards, done exams, done other major things like um, well house stuff and uh, well, the weekend is coming (PA day tomorrow) and Sabrina and I are going to get a chance to get away for a day. Feels good, I'm crashing and the sleep is going to be good!
This is just a little way for me to waste a little time and say that I'm done report cards, done exams, done other major things like um, well house stuff and uh, well, the weekend is coming (PA day tomorrow) and Sabrina and I are going to get a chance to get away for a day. Feels good, I'm crashing and the sleep is going to be good!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Follow up on Grandpa's story, Part 1
Mom says she has a hard time getting the comment box to come up sometimes, so she passes this along...
apparently the verse was something along the lines of "your children cast out demons even more readily than you can" (or something, definitely Easton paraphrase there...) anyway, Aunt Donna remembers Grandpa coming in to talk to her when she was around 8 and asking her how to be a Christian. Mom remembers him coming in from the barn one Sunday morning when everyone else was at church. Mom was home sick that morning and she remembers him coming in and showing her that verse and saying he was saved. She remembers not knowing what he was seeing in that verse that she wasn't, but putting it with Aunt Donna's story, maybe there's something there.
Anyway. All that to say that I still don't know the reference, I tried looking up a verse that says that, and I'm confused as to what she's talking about, so maybe when she looks it up, we can talk about it again!!!
More than anything else though, the whole thing makes me glad that it is God who works, not we frail humans with our poor excuse for thinking. He works through all situations, and even a little child can lead us! God's Spirit doesn't need logic to work. Doesn't that make you glad that He's in charge not me...or you?
apparently the verse was something along the lines of "your children cast out demons even more readily than you can" (or something, definitely Easton paraphrase there...) anyway, Aunt Donna remembers Grandpa coming in to talk to her when she was around 8 and asking her how to be a Christian. Mom remembers him coming in from the barn one Sunday morning when everyone else was at church. Mom was home sick that morning and she remembers him coming in and showing her that verse and saying he was saved. She remembers not knowing what he was seeing in that verse that she wasn't, but putting it with Aunt Donna's story, maybe there's something there.
Anyway. All that to say that I still don't know the reference, I tried looking up a verse that says that, and I'm confused as to what she's talking about, so maybe when she looks it up, we can talk about it again!!!
More than anything else though, the whole thing makes me glad that it is God who works, not we frail humans with our poor excuse for thinking. He works through all situations, and even a little child can lead us! God's Spirit doesn't need logic to work. Doesn't that make you glad that He's in charge not me...or you?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Chagall Guevara
Chagall Guevara is one of those bands, among many no doubt in the history of modern music, who have been offered a sip from the Fountain of Youth only to have it torn from their hands just before it reached their lips. (Their MySpace page is called MCAkilledus, I believe, implying that their big label did nothing to help them along)The members included Lynn Nichols, Dave Perkins, Steve Taylor, Wade Jaynes, and Mike Mead. Steve Taylor is well known in some circles for his witty, scathing lyrics. (Perhaps soon to be even better known as the director of an up and coming movie based loosely on Blue Like Jazz) When you place him in a band with Chagall Guevara’s distribution, outside of the “Christian ghetto” he is able to take on society’s ills without worrying about offending people. His ability to see comparisons and word play, while taking deep aim at our conscience was never better than in Chagall.
I have lots of their lyrics from their one and only cd pass through my head and heart many times. The earlier quote a few weeks back about the boa unhitching its jaws is one of those, but big business and its ills are not really too high on my list of issues.
Other lines like “Hey, don’t I know you from some other life/You were wide-eyed and green, and a little bit taller/ And you didn’t look away/When spoken to,” do speak to me, personally and add a little empathy toward others.
One of my favourite saddest lyrics ever also comes from Chagall, a young boy speaking of his father says, “Every other week on visiting day
I get tolerated by his new wife
I swear, if he ever really held me
they'd have to pry me off with the jaws of life
“Dad's not talking at all
everything's making him mad
I used to come running to him
Now I’m learning to crawl”
Those lines bring tears even now, thinking of the real pain of real children in this very real world and wonder what I’m doing about it. What does a boy see in his daddy, when he turns out not to be the man he thought he was, where are the real heroes today?
The same song uses the line, “Daddy’s gone AWOL, absent without leaving.” I take that as a personal challenge, a slap in the face to modern fatherhood. Don’t be that guy.
Here are a few more, some fun, some witty, some darts to the heart.
Up's down, down is out, out is in
stairways circle back to where you've been
And my mind is like a whetstone now
sharpening things to throw
I think you've been blinded
by your own light
And I don't believe it's the way you were raised
or the cards you were dealt
or a poor self-image
I think you love yourself too much
'74 I left my neighborhood
looking for a Buffalo gal
everyone was gone when I got back home
and I think I like it better now
you'd be surprised what you can get used to
when your only other choice is...Houston
Well, I'm sorry, I've got the wrong George then, I guess
If misery loves...more
then why am I crying alone?
Genetic drifter
quarantined in my own dimension
Hey look!
It smokes, it drinks,it philosophizes!
it's loving this new attention
We apologize
but the status quota's already met
and if you reapply
you'll need a written excuse from your...vet.
I have lots of their lyrics from their one and only cd pass through my head and heart many times. The earlier quote a few weeks back about the boa unhitching its jaws is one of those, but big business and its ills are not really too high on my list of issues.
Other lines like “Hey, don’t I know you from some other life/You were wide-eyed and green, and a little bit taller/ And you didn’t look away/When spoken to,” do speak to me, personally and add a little empathy toward others.
One of my favourite saddest lyrics ever also comes from Chagall, a young boy speaking of his father says, “Every other week on visiting day
I get tolerated by his new wife
I swear, if he ever really held me
they'd have to pry me off with the jaws of life
“Dad's not talking at all
everything's making him mad
I used to come running to him
Now I’m learning to crawl”
Those lines bring tears even now, thinking of the real pain of real children in this very real world and wonder what I’m doing about it. What does a boy see in his daddy, when he turns out not to be the man he thought he was, where are the real heroes today?
The same song uses the line, “Daddy’s gone AWOL, absent without leaving.” I take that as a personal challenge, a slap in the face to modern fatherhood. Don’t be that guy.
Here are a few more, some fun, some witty, some darts to the heart.
Up's down, down is out, out is in
stairways circle back to where you've been
And my mind is like a whetstone now
sharpening things to throw
I think you've been blinded
by your own light
And I don't believe it's the way you were raised
or the cards you were dealt
or a poor self-image
I think you love yourself too much
'74 I left my neighborhood
looking for a Buffalo gal
everyone was gone when I got back home
and I think I like it better now
you'd be surprised what you can get used to
when your only other choice is...Houston
Well, I'm sorry, I've got the wrong George then, I guess
If misery loves...more
then why am I crying alone?
Genetic drifter
quarantined in my own dimension
Hey look!
It smokes, it drinks,it philosophizes!
it's loving this new attention
We apologize
but the status quota's already met
and if you reapply
you'll need a written excuse from your...vet.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A thought or two
I've been thinking about negative attitudes.
The Samaritan leper comes back to thank Jesus, but nine of his buddies run off to the priest. Why? What did he say to them when he turned back? Did he assume that the others would be doing the same thing? Did he tell them what he was doing, but they just stared dumbfoundedly at him as he turned around and ran away? What went through their heads as they watched him disappear over the horizon? "Huh, why's he doing that?" It is puzzling to me and I can't imagine what the exchange must have been like. Why did only one come back?
I wonder who it says more about, the one or the nine? Do their statistics expand into the rest of the world, are ten percent of us aware of what God is doing in our life? Do ten percent of us give glory to God? Do ten percent of us think of Him first, our own benefits further down the list? Do ten percent of us see Him at work to bring glory to Himself, ahead of seeing Him as a cosmic Santa Claus handing out things to keep us happy?
The likelihood of me being in the 10 percent stands at roughly, oh, 1:10.
Second thought...
If all things work together for the good of those who love God, then I need to stop complaining. If I persist in these sniviling whines, then either: a) I don't believe that verse, b) I think God is a liar, c) I don't understand the word "all", d) I don't love God, e) I've been to the future, and I lose, or, f) I think "good" means financial, health, (ie temporary things).
Since "I'm a complicated guy, sweetheart" ( to quote Sawyer from 'LOST') its likely a pretty good combination of some of the above. I guess now I must do something about this knowledge.
The Samaritan leper comes back to thank Jesus, but nine of his buddies run off to the priest. Why? What did he say to them when he turned back? Did he assume that the others would be doing the same thing? Did he tell them what he was doing, but they just stared dumbfoundedly at him as he turned around and ran away? What went through their heads as they watched him disappear over the horizon? "Huh, why's he doing that?" It is puzzling to me and I can't imagine what the exchange must have been like. Why did only one come back?
I wonder who it says more about, the one or the nine? Do their statistics expand into the rest of the world, are ten percent of us aware of what God is doing in our life? Do ten percent of us give glory to God? Do ten percent of us think of Him first, our own benefits further down the list? Do ten percent of us see Him at work to bring glory to Himself, ahead of seeing Him as a cosmic Santa Claus handing out things to keep us happy?
The likelihood of me being in the 10 percent stands at roughly, oh, 1:10.
Second thought...
If all things work together for the good of those who love God, then I need to stop complaining. If I persist in these sniviling whines, then either: a) I don't believe that verse, b) I think God is a liar, c) I don't understand the word "all", d) I don't love God, e) I've been to the future, and I lose, or, f) I think "good" means financial, health, (ie temporary things).
Since "I'm a complicated guy, sweetheart" ( to quote Sawyer from 'LOST') its likely a pretty good combination of some of the above. I guess now I must do something about this knowledge.
Monday, January 14, 2008
A Posting to explain several of my last movie posts.
I came across an article I'd read a couple of years ago and thought how applicable it was to some of my latest posts regarding movies.
A couple weeks ago I was speaking Sunday evening at Hillside in Orillia and mentioned an old movie, North by Northwest. The blank faces and looks of indifference helped me to remember that for many, movies still hold many taboos.
Hollywood has earned its bad reputation, Sabrina and I are struggling through an old movie right now, Love in the Afternoon, from 1960. So far, and we're only half way through it, it has shown no redeeming qualities. I doubt I'll be able to post about the life lessons we can learn or be reminded of from this one. However, as one person has accurately put it, sometimes, the most scandalous book in the Christian bookstore is the Bible. We forget that God has given us lessons to learn. He sets standards and demonstrates those standards and their rewards and consequences through those gritty tales from both Testaments. Movies are a part of modern literature. We might as well get used to it. Just like there is good literature and bad literature, there are good movies and bad movies. Likewise, what is a classic novel to some is seen as trashy or a time waster by someone else.
Anyway, I re-read this article and thought, hmmm, isn't that about where I'm at these last few months. We can see the Creator through all kinds of creativity. I'll say that I don't agree with everything here, but for the most part I do. The part that strikes me the hardest is the part at the end about the Christian tailor. Too true. Without further ado, I'll copy and paste it here. This is copied from http://www.danielamos.com/ , they have it because the writer is Terry Taylor from Daniel Amos. The original article comes from http://www.worshipleader.com/
My Dinner with Bambi :
How I Was Able To Find God at the Movies
by Terry Scott Taylor
Worship Leader Fall 2001
Terry Scott Taylor has been a musician, producer, and songwriter for most of his adult life and is the found-ing member of the band Daniel Amos. He is current-ly writing a non-fiction book due for release next year. Mr.Taylor may be contacted at danielamos.com.
A couple weeks ago I was speaking Sunday evening at Hillside in Orillia and mentioned an old movie, North by Northwest. The blank faces and looks of indifference helped me to remember that for many, movies still hold many taboos.
Hollywood has earned its bad reputation, Sabrina and I are struggling through an old movie right now, Love in the Afternoon, from 1960. So far, and we're only half way through it, it has shown no redeeming qualities. I doubt I'll be able to post about the life lessons we can learn or be reminded of from this one. However, as one person has accurately put it, sometimes, the most scandalous book in the Christian bookstore is the Bible. We forget that God has given us lessons to learn. He sets standards and demonstrates those standards and their rewards and consequences through those gritty tales from both Testaments. Movies are a part of modern literature. We might as well get used to it. Just like there is good literature and bad literature, there are good movies and bad movies. Likewise, what is a classic novel to some is seen as trashy or a time waster by someone else.
Anyway, I re-read this article and thought, hmmm, isn't that about where I'm at these last few months. We can see the Creator through all kinds of creativity. I'll say that I don't agree with everything here, but for the most part I do. The part that strikes me the hardest is the part at the end about the Christian tailor. Too true. Without further ado, I'll copy and paste it here. This is copied from http://www.danielamos.com/ , they have it because the writer is Terry Taylor from Daniel Amos. The original article comes from http://www.worshipleader.com/
My Dinner with Bambi :
How I Was Able To Find God at the Movies
by Terry Scott Taylor
Worship Leader Fall 2001
It is my contention that Walt Disney's Bambi is quite possibly one of the great horror films of all time. Before you split your garments in two and cry "blasphemer," let me attempt to explain myself. Talking deer, adorable bunnies, and cute and cuddly skunks aside, this beau-tiful yet insidiously morbid little animated classic (only some 69 minutes in length) managed in 1958 to strike a lasting fear into my young heart in a way that no other film had done before and few have since. While Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho instilled in me a short-lived fear of showers, Alien cured me of my desire to be an astronaut, and Jaws sent me to the shallow end of the pool, it was dear little Bambi that drove a spike of dread and apprehension into the soul of my inno-cence that dogged me psychologically, per-haps for the entirety of my childhood.
In all fairness, my current opinion of the film (admittedly subjective) is a mixed one. I won't deny its particular charms, nor do I question its status as a well-crafted and timeless classic, but since Bambi takes place in the forest, it is only fitting that we are able, as they say, to see the forest for the trees. What initially comes on with an over-abundance of "warm fuzzies" artfully designed to gently lure the unsuspecting child down a primrose lane of animated naturalistic beauty lined with a plethora of adorable talking animals soon turns down-right mean and dirty. Bambi takes a fiery plunge in its closing moments that essen-tially dive bombs the "youngins" into what may be the most profoundly disturbing, heart-wrenching possibility an innocent child can possibly face in his or her life. I refer specifically to the loss of a parent or parents.
Of course, children will not react to the film with emotional uniformity (I was an overly sensitive kid anyway) and a good many of them, while appropriately sad-dened by the death of Bambi's mother, may in the end be absolutely delighted by what Walt Disney himself called his "favorite." I get the feeling that some of you have been shaking your heads all along and muttering "Hey dude, lighten up. It's just a cartoon!" Well…obviously I'm not so sure.
TRANSFORMING EPIPHANY
When in 1958 my mother dropped me off at the curb of the local movie house early so that I could be one of the first among my peers to experience the re-release of the 1942 classic, she was assum-ing, for good reason, that Bambi was a safe haven for a child's carefree imaginative romp in the kid-friendly playground known as "Disney." How could she have known that bright Saturday afternoon that I would be traumatized by the experience?
Numbed into silence by the film's shock-ing implications and my youthful inability to articulate my inner strivings, I didn't say a word when she picked me up, but instead feigned a smile and nodded in the affirmative when asked if I had enjoyed the movie. Had I been able to express some-thing of the pain I felt then, I am certain that mom would have taken the time to address my fears, alleviate my apprehen-sions, and perhaps help me to recognize the positive aspects of what I had just seen. In my mind's eye I might have been per-suaded by my mother's caring input to see the remnants of beauty still scattered about the charred fields of my personal vision of Bambiland. After all, winter turns to spring, mothers tend to be around for a long long time, and most kids are relative-ly safe from fire.
To be fair, Bambi is at heart a coming of age tale, rich with lessons of love, loss, courage and friendship, but I would definitely think twice before recom-mending it to just any child, or plopping my own children down in front of the tele-vision screen with the assumed confidence that the kids are automatically in the good, gentle hands (hooves?) of Bambi and Uncle Walt. While Bambi can certainly be consid-ered a family movie, it is no more a "Christian" film than is Apocalypse Now, and, depending on the child, can be every bit as incendiery as Coppola's masterpiece. As a parent I urge others to walk softly and carry a big stick when it comes to the viewing habits of our kids. There just may be a poisonous snake lurking there in the luscious green grass, even if the grass is animated.
Bambi shares this characteristic with a good number of films: there are booby-traps hidden among the flowers. If we are wise parents, teachers, pastors and youth pastors, we will not deny ourselves or our kids an uplifting stroll through the garden, but we will take the time to lov-ingly guide our youngsters through it, directing their attention to its many splen-dors, yet always being cautious, alert and ever vigilant to steer them clear of hidden dangers. Jesus Himself prayed "I do not ask thee to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one."
CINEMATIC EPIPHANY
While it is true that Bambi's dark underbelly managed to disturb and haunt me since that fateful afternoon in 1958, the film conversely contributed greatly to my love of the art of film. When I became a Christian many years later I struggled to learn how my newfound faith in Christ specifically impacted my love of the movies. I was eager to please the Lord and to live a pure life; so was I being "worldly" if I still attended movies? Certainly putting my love of film above my love of God would be an idolatrous exercise, but was I required to give up all movies that didn't "glorify the Lord?"
For years I remained somewhat ambivalent on the issue. For me, film fell into a kind of gray area, and while I didn't get the specific impression that the Lord was necessarily displeased by my movie going, I at least understood that He wanted me to be wise in my choices. It wasn't until 1981, inside a cramped little art film movie house in San Jose, Calif., that a full epiphany finally came. It was there that God's still small voice whispered to me something of His sovereignty, and through the most unexpected source deepened my love and intimacy with Him. My Dinner With Andre was not a "Christian" film, but it was God who didn't seem to mind at all.
A kind of spiritual thriller, "My Dinner with Andre" almost entirely takes place in a New York restaurant and is really little more than a conversation—albeit a staggeringly poignant one—between two friends. While both Andre Gregory and his friend Wally Shawn are playwrights and actors, one is a fairly contented agnostic, while the other is a passionate yet ulti-mately disenchanted seeker of religious mystical experiences. The fun for the view-er lies in the confrontational juxtaposition of these two points of view. In Andre and Shawn we are exposed to our own duality as we explore a world of contrasting sup-positions concerning love, death, art, and man's ongoing quest to find fulfillment in this life.
What to me is essential about My Dinner with Andre is the more personal epiphany I eluded too earlier. Even as the credits rolled and I wiped tears from my eyes on that transcendent night, the ques-tion began to form in my mind: was it pos-sible for a "secular" film to be a source of God's grace? It was my heart that answered in the affirmative. Suddenly I knew that God was "bigger" than I had supposed. Through this move, the Lord had provoked my faith, challenged me in innumerable and profound ways, stirred up my love for mankind in all its heartbreaking fallenness, and essentially given back to me a new love for film transformed by the very real prospect that a sovereign God can speak through whatever means He chooses to speak. God wasn't even bound by the movie ratings system. I wasn't serving a "G" rated God. I was serving the Lord of the Universe.
TEACH US TO DISCERN
Seeing film with the eyes of faith is essential if we are to find, often in spite of the directors intent, its deeper meaning and implications for us as Christians. A film doesn't need to be a "Christian" film—in the narrowest sense of the term—in order for us to discover its relevancy to our lives. Some of us have a measure of faith that gives us a liberty in our viewing habits that, while tempered by wisdom and con-strained by discernment, encompasses a wide range and variety of film. Others may be more easily "stumbled" by certain films or perhaps even repelled by the whole idea of going to the movies. Whatever our measure of faith, the fact is that film exists. It is my personal belief that we as pastors, youth leaders and parents must not ask our young people to simply ignore film, nor narrow their choices down to a paltry few we consider "safe," nor separate movies into neat little categories marked "secular" and "Christian."To do so would only be a vain attempt at placing limits on a sovereign God while at the same time depriving our kids of an enriching film experience by means of excessive restriction. I have often gone to see a film first before I allowed my children to see it. I have also found that viewing and then discussing film with my children can be an insightful, as well as an exciting and enriching experience for us all.
Let me say at this point that in regard to our Christian young people, the Church community has been scandalously lax in encouraging them in the area of the arts. We are no doubt the poorer for it. Who knows? Perhaps seated in our pews right now is a young man or woman who just might be, with the proper encouragement and support, the next truly great director. Imagine a Christian film director with the craftsmanship of a Spielberg or a Scorcese who not only knows the Lord, but also desires to serve and honor Him through the medium of film? Will we encourage that person or debilitate them with faith-less and pious restrictions that serve only to boost pride in our own supposed virtue? God forbid.The very least we owe them, as well as to all our young people, is the dis-tinctive difference between good and bad film. Bambi, for instance, isn't better than Pokemon, the Movie because it's more "Christian" in content, but because Bambi's artistic vision and craftsmanship shows up Pokemon for what it truly is: a cheaply ren-dered, extended plug solely created to cash in on a passing fad.
It's extremely important that we teach our young people the difference, and that we equally point out to them the difference between the "art" of Disney and that of a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh. To be great we must be inspired to greatness. I cannot be a great artist if I can't draw the distinction between say a film like the original Rocky and the recent Carman film attempt The Heart of a Champion, which is basically a pal-try imitation of Stallone's great movie that, fortunately or unfortunately (depending how you look at it), took the big nose dive at box office despite it being a "Christian" film. If the Christian young person desires to be a filmmaker, then he or she is impelled to study a wide variety of film, especially those that are universally esteemed.
CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTERS OF THE MISGUIDED KIND
I'll never forget the outcry in some Church circles over the "nudity" in anoth-er Steven Spielberg classic, Schindler's List.I was absolutely stunned by what can only be described as a knee jerk reaction by well meaning but blindly sanctimonious brethren. When we as God's people cannot draw a distinction between the heart wrenching, utterly devastating kind of nudity depicted in Spielberg's masterpiece and the common pornographic nudity found in many modern films, then we have lost not only our heads, but our hearts as well. If Spielberg's historically accurate portrayal of Nazi cruelties doesn't break the Christian's heart to bits and cause him to bow his head in shame at man's inhuman-ity to man (which includes his own inhu-manity) then he has no right to wonder why the world will not listen to us when we speal about such things.
Such attitudes are more lewd than the crudest pornography, and to offer them to the world as a fruit of righteousness is to degrade not only ourselves, but also the memories of those who suffered through those very humiliations. This distorted sense of Christian 'decorum', which is nothing more than the sin of pride, is essentially what Jesus was referring to when He said, "you strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."
Great films like Schindler's List some-times require that we courageously look into the abyss of our own nature. The Christian, of all people can do so with great courage, because this is what he has been saved from. Film reminds him that we must, even as Christians, fight with all dili-gence "the good fight" because our natur-al propensities, like all of mankind, is to commit great evil in the world. Film is a reminder to me that I am indeed in the world but not of it…in the culture but not of it.
To ignore film is to essentially ignore our culture. We as Christians must speak to our world with the authoritative voice of relevance, and I believe that viewing film is one way in which we can be fully equipped to do so. The few "Christian" films that exist—those made specifically by Christians—are essentially poorly written, directed and acted because all that we may require of them is that they "present the Gospel message." I would equate this atti-tude with that of a Christian tailor who sells poorly-constructed suits but sews a label into the collars of his suits that have John 3:16 printed on them. The result of his actions will be lots of returns and com-plaints, zero clientele in the end, and a tai-lor considered by those in the know to be little more than a third rate hack.
Of course having faithfully sown his "Christian witness" into the collar of the suit, our tailor will be convinced of his own piety and will conclude that the com-plaints and loss of his customers means he is suffering for his faith. A Christian fish placed on a junk pile doesn't transform a garbage heap into a mountain of gold. The present spate of "Christian" films like Omega Code and Left Behind are a sub-par sci-fi flick with questionable "end-times" theology— the cinematic version of the junk pile with the Christian fish. I understand that many in the Christian church are excited over it. The producers claim it's the flagship that is going to rescue the movies from "those pagans in Hollywood." Lord save us from ourselves.
GOD'S FINGERPRINTS
The truly great movie possesses the power to stir our imaginations, give us hope, challenge us, inspire us to greatness, inform, amaze and bedazzle us beyond our own expectations. Because they are made by fallen people, film can also effect us in countless unbeneficial ways celebrating as they do both the sublime and the ridicu-lous. To be honest, most film has the nutri-tional value of junk food, which may be fine from time to time, but it can also cause clogged arteries and heart failure if con-sumed without restriction. While the occa-sional candy bar can't hurt, we must be determined to steer our kids, as well as ourselves, away from its addictive allure and eat a well-balanced meal whenever possible. Great cinema can be such a meal.
Of course I believe that "one man's meat is another man's poison" which brings us back our dear little talking faun. Despite my initially negative childhood experience, I believe that even Bambi, just like My Dinner With Andre, can speak to the human heart something of the truth about love, death, and art and can articulate to us something of who we are and of Who God is as well. In the sense that all men and women have a buried likeness to their Creator, that we are all dressed in a kind of tattered glory and wear, as it were, "rags of light," that image is manifested in the work and art of all of us. The great directors, while often embracing man's depravity, cannot override the Christian's uniquely heightened sense of discernment or negate their spiritual sensibilities. "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." Christian moviegoers must not resist the liberating Spirit of Christ within them, which allows them to see film through the eyes of their faith. Both Bambi and My Dinner with Andre are essentially stories of redemp-tion pointing, however subtly, to the One who is both the writer and director of the greatest act of Redemption ever performed on the human stage.
So go ahead if you have a mind to, enjoy Uncle Walt's favorite.Who am I to tell you what meals to eat or where the wind of the Spirit may blow? Bambi may in fact be your epiphany. If the liberty God has given you allows you to delight in the movies, then you will know that they are truly a gift from the One who promised His children an abundant life: "Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves" (Romans 14:22). Just remember to choose well and look for the finger-prints of God on the screen the next time you attend the movies. Listen for that still small voice whispering between the lines spoken by its actors.You never know what, or Who, you might find.
Terry Scott Taylor has been a musician, producer, and songwriter for most of his adult life and is the found-ing member of the band Daniel Amos. He is current-ly writing a non-fiction book due for release next year. Mr.Taylor may be contacted at danielamos.com.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Since Mom brought up Grandpa Harry.
It’s Grandpa’s birthday Mom reminds me. When I think of Grandpa, I think of stories, of a man who lived a life that was worth reminiscing about. He would have loved this internet thing, a whole new audience to turn his stories out to.
Today he would have been 109. He lived to 96 as it was, so we can’t lament a short life! I don’t know how many times I think of him in the course of a week, likely once or twice. Sometimes it’s pictures, sometimes it’s a story, sometimes it’s standing with my hands behind my back.
I don’t ever remember him driving. It was always Granny. He used to say, “Whenever I take my eyes off the road you start heading for the ditch!”
I guess Grandpa was always old, to me. I know he was young once, I heard lots of those stories from him, but he was 72 when I was born and likely at least 76 or 77 by the time I remember him.
My favourite Grandpa story was one that I never heard from him. The story of how he would sneak his Bible out to the barn to do some business with God. This was before he really knew what a relationship with Him, through Jesus was about. He was able to find himself in the Gospels and come to know the Saviour. This was around the age of 45, Mom will have to let me/us know what the odd verse was that the Lord used to bring him to Himself.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa. I know you’re busy today, enjoying heaven, bird watching if they do that there. Either that or sitting on a bench reminiscing. If he’s 85 in heaven, that is.
Today he would have been 109. He lived to 96 as it was, so we can’t lament a short life! I don’t know how many times I think of him in the course of a week, likely once or twice. Sometimes it’s pictures, sometimes it’s a story, sometimes it’s standing with my hands behind my back.
I don’t ever remember him driving. It was always Granny. He used to say, “Whenever I take my eyes off the road you start heading for the ditch!”
I guess Grandpa was always old, to me. I know he was young once, I heard lots of those stories from him, but he was 72 when I was born and likely at least 76 or 77 by the time I remember him.
My favourite Grandpa story was one that I never heard from him. The story of how he would sneak his Bible out to the barn to do some business with God. This was before he really knew what a relationship with Him, through Jesus was about. He was able to find himself in the Gospels and come to know the Saviour. This was around the age of 45, Mom will have to let me/us know what the odd verse was that the Lord used to bring him to Himself.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa. I know you’re busy today, enjoying heaven, bird watching if they do that there. Either that or sitting on a bench reminiscing. If he’s 85 in heaven, that is.
A follow up to the hungry post
Some say it's insatiable
Some say it just unhooks its jaws
And then it swallows most anything it wants
Even a full grown fat man
This posting is in response to my post from a few days ago, about the song lyric and what it meant to me.
Well, Patti had a really great idea, pride... That would be really close to home in the metaphysical use of the word "home". I was using the word home a little more literally.
The lyric refers to...
our littlest boy. Man that lad can eat. Sorry it wasn't any deeper than that:(
The song itself refers to greed especially the greed of big business as it swallows up the little people and companies around it. The insatiable appetite belongs to a "big long boa" (greed) which swallows even the big fat man who represents the over-indulgent corporate world.
I hope that was worth the wait, I know it wasn't what you were looking for, but maybe it will make me post something more about Chagall Guevara ...
Some say it just unhooks its jaws
And then it swallows most anything it wants
Even a full grown fat man
This posting is in response to my post from a few days ago, about the song lyric and what it meant to me.
Well, Patti had a really great idea, pride... That would be really close to home in the metaphysical use of the word "home". I was using the word home a little more literally.
The lyric refers to...
our littlest boy. Man that lad can eat. Sorry it wasn't any deeper than that:(
The song itself refers to greed especially the greed of big business as it swallows up the little people and companies around it. The insatiable appetite belongs to a "big long boa" (greed) which swallows even the big fat man who represents the over-indulgent corporate world.
I hope that was worth the wait, I know it wasn't what you were looking for, but maybe it will make me post something more about Chagall Guevara ...
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Just a video test
This is following a succesful leap off yon roof. An a test to see what this blog thing will do, don't miss the post right below this one, as I added two in a row...
Ted Hall Orillia Canada on vocals.
Life Lessons from The Maytrees
Well, I just finished yet another classic from Annie Dillard.
The Maytrees is her second novel, the first since 1991 I think. She is better known for her reflections on science and day to day observances. The Maytrees combines her best points from say, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with a well built novel sith three dimensional characters, (as best as they will let us know them) and active, insightful description.
What is The Maytrees about though? Well, reading further could spoil the story for you. If you are reading it for more than the love story, feel free to read on, if you doubt you'll ever read it, read on. If you want to read it for the story alone, better quit, rent, borrow or buy it, and come back here later....
There, now that no one has gone away, lets continue!
Maytree is the last name of the main couple in the book. They embark on a quirky marital relationship and pay attention (as likely all of us do) too litte to what the nature of their love or just love in itself, is.
The main plotline in the story is that Mr Maytree, after 14 years and one son have come along, runs off with Mrs Maytree's best friend. No lead up to this really, just a few hours notice and he's gone. The rest of the book is Mrs Maytree's attempt to not let her loss get her or her son into a place of bitterness. She had seen her mother go through a similar situation and watched her live out her life in bitterness.
The beauty of the story, at times unbelievable, is that when 20 years has gone by, Mr Maytree, his new(er) wife move back in with the original Mrs Maytree so she can take care of them. Dillard goes through great pains to build up the possibility for us to believe that someone would actually do this ahead of time, without really letting us in on the whole secret.
Two observances for now, I'm going to re-read this book, so I'll have more observances later, say a month or three:
1) Christ loved the church just like this and it breaks my heart to think of it. God loves Israel like this and it breaks my heart to think of it. Israel is the wayward husband, the church is the new wife, that drew Israel away from the First Love. God, through Christ welcomes us back with open arms, without any explanation, just love.
2) Annie Dillard is Lou Maytree. I think.
The Maytrees is her second novel, the first since 1991 I think. She is better known for her reflections on science and day to day observances. The Maytrees combines her best points from say, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with a well built novel sith three dimensional characters, (as best as they will let us know them) and active, insightful description.
What is The Maytrees about though? Well, reading further could spoil the story for you. If you are reading it for more than the love story, feel free to read on, if you doubt you'll ever read it, read on. If you want to read it for the story alone, better quit, rent, borrow or buy it, and come back here later....
There, now that no one has gone away, lets continue!
Maytree is the last name of the main couple in the book. They embark on a quirky marital relationship and pay attention (as likely all of us do) too litte to what the nature of their love or just love in itself, is.
The main plotline in the story is that Mr Maytree, after 14 years and one son have come along, runs off with Mrs Maytree's best friend. No lead up to this really, just a few hours notice and he's gone. The rest of the book is Mrs Maytree's attempt to not let her loss get her or her son into a place of bitterness. She had seen her mother go through a similar situation and watched her live out her life in bitterness.
The beauty of the story, at times unbelievable, is that when 20 years has gone by, Mr Maytree, his new(er) wife move back in with the original Mrs Maytree so she can take care of them. Dillard goes through great pains to build up the possibility for us to believe that someone would actually do this ahead of time, without really letting us in on the whole secret.
Two observances for now, I'm going to re-read this book, so I'll have more observances later, say a month or three:
1) Christ loved the church just like this and it breaks my heart to think of it. God loves Israel like this and it breaks my heart to think of it. Israel is the wayward husband, the church is the new wife, that drew Israel away from the First Love. God, through Christ welcomes us back with open arms, without any explanation, just love.
2) Annie Dillard is Lou Maytree. I think.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Release it and let it go.
So I've had this song lyric in my head over the past few days. As a quiz, who can tell me who this is about, in my mind and life, not as the lyricist originally intended... Sabrina can't guess, cause I already told her... I think... Feel free to google it... though it won't help. It will likely lead me to post more on this and a related feature later
Some say it's insatiable
Some say it just unhooks its jaws
And then it swallows most anything it wants
Even a full grown fat man
Some say it's insatiable
Some say it just unhooks its jaws
And then it swallows most anything it wants
Even a full grown fat man
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Life Lessons from Big Fish
Life Lessons from Big Fish
Well, it’s a Tim Burton movie. If that means anything to you, you know what you’re in for. Now I only have experience with Edward Scissorhands and a few glimpses at Sleepy Hollow and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but for some reason, it just says Tim Burton. To top it off, it is creative and well scripted.
What is to be learned or gleaned from this quirky little fantasy movie for adults?
“A dangerous path is made much worse by darkness.” This line reminds us that not only is the road to destruction a road with a doomed destination, sometimes we are blind to the fact we are on that path.
“Most things you consider evil or wicked are lonely or lacking in social niceties.” Though some things which are evil we tend to look at as being quaint, there is some truth to the quote. We criticize what we don’t understand to quote the old song. We look into what is different from us and decide it is wrong, evil.
“Truth is I’ve been thirsty my whole life, I just don’t know why.” What a telling line for those searching for God. Dead, but not knowing what would give the life they are looking for.
The movie does have a few instances of artistic license that some may find objectionable, but all in all, it is a very fun, confusing, thoughtful movie.
Well, it’s a Tim Burton movie. If that means anything to you, you know what you’re in for. Now I only have experience with Edward Scissorhands and a few glimpses at Sleepy Hollow and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but for some reason, it just says Tim Burton. To top it off, it is creative and well scripted.
What is to be learned or gleaned from this quirky little fantasy movie for adults?
“A dangerous path is made much worse by darkness.” This line reminds us that not only is the road to destruction a road with a doomed destination, sometimes we are blind to the fact we are on that path.
“Most things you consider evil or wicked are lonely or lacking in social niceties.” Though some things which are evil we tend to look at as being quaint, there is some truth to the quote. We criticize what we don’t understand to quote the old song. We look into what is different from us and decide it is wrong, evil.
“Truth is I’ve been thirsty my whole life, I just don’t know why.” What a telling line for those searching for God. Dead, but not knowing what would give the life they are looking for.
The movie does have a few instances of artistic license that some may find objectionable, but all in all, it is a very fun, confusing, thoughtful movie.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Life lessons from White Christmas
White Christmas is a classic. It can't help it. It has Bing Crosby singing, Danny Kaye mugging for the camera, Rosemary Clooney's temper outbursts and "choreography".
Basically its a romance and a comedy and a musical and a Christmas movie all in one, you can enjoy it for whichever or all of those if you wish. Our eleven year old watches it over and over, all year long, Christmas being a sidebar to the whole movie's plot.
Honour is a great theme of this movie. Honouring soldiers, or being honourable in our behaviour. Oh, and honouring those we hold debts too as well, Danny Kaye would remind us!
I don't know what else to say here. Maybe there is no life lesson here, just a reminder of what following some things that we already know may look like if we try.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Basically its a romance and a comedy and a musical and a Christmas movie all in one, you can enjoy it for whichever or all of those if you wish. Our eleven year old watches it over and over, all year long, Christmas being a sidebar to the whole movie's plot.
Honour is a great theme of this movie. Honouring soldiers, or being honourable in our behaviour. Oh, and honouring those we hold debts too as well, Danny Kaye would remind us!
I don't know what else to say here. Maybe there is no life lesson here, just a reminder of what following some things that we already know may look like if we try.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Life lessons from Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands. It sounds like a horror movie, and in some senses it is pretty horrific. It shows the pressures to conform and their terrible effects. Visually it is an intriguing piece of art.
Edward Scissorhands shows that the perfect suburban life is not always the perfect suburban life. It shows what one woman in her naivete is able to do with one poor outcast. It shows how we as humans have an idea of how we are to be but how we often sell out. Similar to Its a Wonderful Life I suppose, but George Bailey sells out his own dreams to help others realize his own. In Ed.Sc. the pressure on Edward is to see a "doctor who could likely help him".
The most remarkable about the movie as art to me is the contrast between Edward's personality and his physical appearance. When matched up with the physical appearance of suburban life, in all its pastel "beauty", Edward's pale, punk appearance with metal hands that keep people at arms length and then some offers a stark reminder that you can't judge a book by its cover.
It is easy to find yourself in both camps. Edwardian backwardness, holding back because of fear. Angry because we're not like everyone else. Then again, I'm suburban, I want to be "normal", to blend in, to be socially acceptable. Why? So that people will accept my Jesus? Or, so that people will not notice him???
Edward Scissorhands shows that the perfect suburban life is not always the perfect suburban life. It shows what one woman in her naivete is able to do with one poor outcast. It shows how we as humans have an idea of how we are to be but how we often sell out. Similar to Its a Wonderful Life I suppose, but George Bailey sells out his own dreams to help others realize his own. In Ed.Sc. the pressure on Edward is to see a "doctor who could likely help him".
The most remarkable about the movie as art to me is the contrast between Edward's personality and his physical appearance. When matched up with the physical appearance of suburban life, in all its pastel "beauty", Edward's pale, punk appearance with metal hands that keep people at arms length and then some offers a stark reminder that you can't judge a book by its cover.
It is easy to find yourself in both camps. Edwardian backwardness, holding back because of fear. Angry because we're not like everyone else. Then again, I'm suburban, I want to be "normal", to blend in, to be socially acceptable. Why? So that people will accept my Jesus? Or, so that people will not notice him???
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