Why the Name?

Some of you may be wondering what's with the name of my blog. It is from a song. Here it is:

In your manger cold
Fingers feel like stone
Mama wraps her shawl around your skin

Finally find your rest
On your mother’s breast
Mother of God Mother of Man

So sleep now my friend
Warm with the love of your kin
The love of your new found kin

Adam’s day is done
The two in the One
Father wraps the Son around our skin

So sing now my friends
Warm with the love of your kin
The love of your new found kin

The song is about the Incarnation. The beautiful truth that God unites humanity to himself by uniting His nature and human nature in the person of His Son. Suddenly God is not far off, but "with us." The Son, eternally existing with the Father and the Spirit, suddenly finds Himself in a new family. "Remaining what He was (divine), He became what He was not (human)." On the flip side, humanity suddenly has a new kin. But this relationship is not automatic. Now there is an "old man" and a "new man." To be "in Christ" is to be a part of this "new humanity." We are "included in Christ" when we hear the word of truth, the gospel, and believe it. Just makes you wanna sing, don't it?

Neato!

Jon referred to this in a comment below. I thought it was worth posting for this simple reason:
In this video you will see four men all of whom have advanced degrees, who are articulate in their reasoning and speech, and who are pastors. These men have said "Theology, thinking, and reasoning are important, not just for me, not just for my professors, not just for seminary students, but for all of the flock of God."

Fatherly Advice

"For when the thing that we love is near us, it is a matter of course that it should bring delight with it. And if you pass beyond this delight, and make it a means to that which you are permanently to rest in, you are using it, and it is an abuse of language to say that you enjoy it. But if you cling to it, and rest in it, finding your happiness complete in it, then you may be truly and properly said to enjoy it. And this we must never do except in the case of the Blessed Trinity, who is the Supreme and Unchangeable Good." -Augustine On Christian Doctrine 1.33

My paraphrase: "When you love something, it gives you joy. But if that joy is simply a means to a greater, more permanent joy, then you're not "enjoying" it per se, you're using it. But if you cling to it, and rest in it, enjoying it for what it is--not what it leads to, then you really are enjoying it. And this we must never do except in the case of the Blessed Trinity, who is the Supreme and Unchangeable Good."

God is to be enjoyed. Everything/Everyone else is to be used.

Brotherly Wisdom

"God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.

God comes right out and tells us why He gives us more money than we need. It's not so we can find more ways to spend it. It's not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It's not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God's provision. It's so we can give--generously.

When God provides more money we often think, This is a blessing. Well, yes, but it would be just as scriptural to think, This is a test." -Randy Alcorn The Treasure Principle p.75

Fatherly Advice

For the way of all those who see is single and upward, illumined by the heavenly light, but the ways of those who do not see are many, dark and divergent; the one leads to the kingdom of heaven, uniting man to God, while the others lead down to death, separating man from God.
-Irenaeus of Lyons On the Apostolic Preaching

I love the language of salvation, not as an everlasting living in a place (heaven), but an eternal union with God. It is also interesting that he claims that the primary distinction between Christianity and all other "ways" is that our way is singular...this apparent rigidity would seem at variance with presentations of the faith that call for us to "flex" or "repaint" our faith to fit new and emerging cultures.

Brotherly Wisdom

"The Church is not simply an institution. She is a "mode of existence," a way of being. The mystery of the Church, even in its institutional dimension, is deeply bound to the being of man, to the being of the world and to the very being of God." -John D. Zizioulas Being as Communion p. 15.

This quote seems to be a stumbling block, both for those with a disdain for anything institutional in the Church, and for those who would view the Church as merely a social club or spiritualized corporation.

Brotherly Wisdom

"Prayer is God's appointed way to fullness of joy because it is the vent of the inward burnings of our heart for Christ. If we had no vent, if we could not commune with Him in response to His Word, we would be miserable indeed." -John Piper Desiring God p. 176

This, alongside "Fatherly Advice" (a daily post of patristic insight), will become a regular quote by a contemporary author. Warning: May contain numerous Piper quotes.

Fatherly Advice

I know we are as though making a great voyage on a raft,

or hastening towards the starry sky upon small wings,

when, with such poems, mind has moved to exhibit the Godhead

(which transcends the power of heavenly beings to worship as is due),

or the great Godhead's statutes, and the universe's helm.

- Gregory of Nazianzus Poem 1.1.1 De Patre

Gregory always begins his lengthier discussions of God by showing how inadequate we are for the task of discussing God. In his Theological Orations he goes on for pages about the mysteries of the natural world. The point being, "If we don't get this stuff, from this fallen world, why do we think we know so much about God?" In this introduction to a poem about God, he draws a picture of a tiny raft (the human mind) that can barely support the weight of it's own helm (the universe). Good stuff.

Shed Project

You can see here that I basically extended the deck and put the shed on the extended deck.




Had to paint as I went because it sits inches from the house.





It got dark.

A Depressing Time of Year

I remember last year feeling this same feeling coming off a high-energy, fun summer, and looking head-long into a long, cold off-season. Of course, this is the nature of camping ministry, but being prepared for it in no way lessens the burn. I miss the sounds of TAG Team downstairs doing dishes (yes, you can normally hear them upstairs). I miss the hype before chapel, and the energy we try to sustain throughout. I miss the quiet lull of cabin time and the roar of activities in the afternoon. By way of consolation, our fall schedule is filling fast--a welcome change from last year.

Thanksgiving...Puritan Style

I've recently been asked to lead worship at my church for the Sundays before and after Thanksgiving. Naturally I was asked to select songs about giving thanks. I consulted the topical index in the back of my collection of Isaac Watts hymns, and it had only one hymn listed.

How can I sink with such a prop
As my eternal God
Who bears the earth's huge pillars up
And spreads the heavens abroad?
How can I die while Jesus lives
Who rose and left the dead?
Pardon and grace my soul receives
From mine exalted Head.
All that I am and all I have
Shall be for ever thine
Whate'er my duty bids me give
My cheerful hands resign
Yet if I might make some reserve
And duty did not call
I love my God with zeal so great
That I should give him all

It seems Isaac simply had very little to say about the things God had given him. That is, Watts sees in God Himself more than his meager soul could ever begin to thank. And until God is duly thanked, His gifts must wait.

Gorgeous

We took some pictures on the camp tire swing (known to most as the Puke-o-whirl). Before Ben arrived, I snapped a few of my bride...gorgeous.

On Promenade

As I've pondered throughout the months returning to my neglected, starving, dying blog I resolved to make my grand return a review of On Promenade. Now it should be stated that I planned my return much closer to the release date in October of 2007. The factors that have prevented this review have been fear--fear of the responsibility of maintaining regular posting habits--and shame--embarrassment that my last post still has me writing my thesis. (For those curious, I finished.) Perhaps a third deterrent is the daunting task of putting into words the rushing current of emotion and thought that overwhelm the album's unsuspecting listener. But here goes.

There I sat in the small music venue in Deep Ellum, Dallas, TX. The crowd was small but loyal. Of the seven in the crowd, two faces were familiar--regulars at this venue. This particular show is a "songwriters-in-the-round,"--a song-swap between three artists. The second in the trio, Doug Burr, is my reason for attendance. He sits in a chair heaving a jumbo-body Larrivee onto his knee. The cedar top on this enormous guitar delivers a boomy, bassy sound as the songwriter begins a slow country strum accenting the bass note. The lyrics tell of a girl watching trains roll through town wishing she could hop one and leave town. One particular night a "black train" picks up speed and barrels toward a town of sleeping citizens. The lyrics move to a refrain of warning--"Wake up baby a train is coming..." We in the audience can feel it picking up steam as Dougs strumming picks up speed and intensity. Just when Burr is screaming and guitar strings teeter on the verge of snapping the beat quickly dies...(as do the citizens of Graniteville?) The ending is left open and the audience left speechless. Prior to that moment I had been a fan, but that song made me a believer. From that point I hounded Doug after shows, "When is a new album coming out?" "Will it have Graniteville on it?"
A career change and a move meant I caught fewer Doug Burr performances but the anticipation grew for an album wherein Graniteville would be showcased. When Doug pre-released four songs on his myspace page I knew this album would be more than just Graniteville + other songs. Still that fear that you get when you sit to watch a comedy and you fear the only five funny scenes were already shown in the over-played preview began to set in. A year later when the album came out all fears ceased. This time I found myself in another small venue, this time packed with eager fans--the CD release show. I bought my copy early in the night. Clutching it and toying with it throughout the show. If Graniteville was stirring in a solo act it quaked with a full band. "Whippoorwill" was haunting but hopeful. "In the Garden" was driving and despondent. When the night was over I maintained a quick pace to my car, parked on a dark backstreet off Lower Greenville, my fingernails finding the seams in the cellophane and peeling it off impatiently. I popped it in the player in my car and, as it is my habit to listen to an album start to finish at least 5 times before I skip to songs I like, I started at the beginning.
Slow Southern Home is an ideal opener. Doug's vocals invite the listener into the story. The drone of the organ beckoning the same. This 11 song story begins with the story-tellers dream of an "ancient house," his "slow southern home." The idyllic language allows the listener to insert his/her own idea of home into this "dream." From here Doug moves into a droned-bass fingerpicking slightly more optimistic in its tone, but as soon as we find "gold in the hills" we are assured that "there is a darkness hanging o'er the West here in the land of progress." Whether the West is Gold Rush California or the New World America's, the optimism is misplaced. Nevertheless the song ends with a playful chorus of shakers and Doug's alyrical crooning. The third track is none other than Graniteville. Burr's version of fire-and-brimstone, this song is an allegory for sin and it's consequences. Whippoorwill at the same time praises the Whippoorwill for her song and bemoans her audiences ability to sing a song in every language. He covets the bird's "song and it's reason to sing." He wishes he could "call to you/You? from the tops of these trees, and when the winter comes we'd flap our wings and leave." The end of the song finds the singer asking his companions to lay aside their voices and instruments presumably due to the relative inadequacy of their songs to do what the Whippoorwill does. The next two songs are linked musically and thematically. The first is a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo wherein he speaks of "love even unreturned." The hum of the electric guitar and Wurlitzer bridge the seam between "How Can the Lark" and "Should've Known"--an "I told you so" to the grandson of Theo Van Gogh, killed for his film exposing Muslim abuses of women, who should've learned the bloody lessons of his great-uncle. You may get the sense from my description and from the above artwork of the ominous character holding a guitar in a darkened wood, that this is a dark album. On the whole your senses are not failing you, but music can do strange things to the senses. Burr can drag you through the slough because he is ever keeping before you the golden meadow on the other side. "In the Garden" is a perfect example. One might suspect Doug is following up his gospel concept album, "The Sickle and the Sheaves" with his own arrangement of the 20th Century hymn. On the contrary the slightly distorted, bassy intro is consummated with the opening line, "Devils thorns and gears, Been that way for years." One's mind quickly shifts from the garden where "He walks with me and He talks with me" to something cold, harsh, and industrial. In the background, Burr suggests, you can "hear somebody laughing." Burr is less than comforting when he confesses, "I have a sinking feeling it gets worse, worse before better better." However, as he finishes the last chorus which is meant to build into the bridge, the instruments are backed out slightly and the lyrics take center stage as Burr observes, "I hear somebody weeping in the garden." The biblical imagery has moved from Eden to Gethsemane. The laughing serpent is replaced by a weeping Savior. This theme is repeated in "Thing About Trouble." Hear the listener is placed in a river gorge. The beauty around her is deceiving and she is encouraged instead to keep moving ahead, waiting for "the day." Despair and hope sway and spin as one, but ruin gives way to resurrection as the listener is assure that a flood is coming, but that "everything that sinks one day it will rise, eyes, tooth, and tongue." "Last Promenade" is one of the most beautifully arranged songs on the album, opening with pert and airy fingerpicking which quickly falls among the steady hums of the organ and accordion. The imagery is thick and elusive, and whatever the details may signify, what begins as a party is crashed and left to the dogs and the singer is left standing on a promenade with no ticket as a train barrels by. "Always Travel Light" is the proverbial "you can't take it with you" warning delivered, as promised, with the lightest touch. The last song of the album moves in slow with steel guitar and organ gently lulling. Burr's vocal sound downcast as he sings of a figure "dressed in white moving through the dark." As bleak as the song may feel the message remains hopeful as the closing line claims, "I have cut you, I have kissed you, Blood runs down, runs downhill."
Without the prospect of a Slow Southern Home, I wonder if anyone would bear with Burr the wallows of tragedy, love lost, and gardens overrun with thorns. Would you wade the slough with no portension of golden meadows? And yet, Burr does not leave us in thorny Eden, or deceptively beautiful gorges. He takes us to Gethsemane, he tells us of the coming flood. He brings us to Golgotha where we lay dead or dying at the foot of a hill, blood flowing from the crags of the rocks over our wounded flesh. There sunken eyes, broken teeth, crooked tongues find the promise, the hope, of resurrection. There everything that sinks is to one day rise.

Thesis Update

I just got the readers copy of my rough draft back last week. When you hand in your two copies, one goes to your two readers who mark it for content and form, and one copy goes to a PhD student whose sole task it is to mark for form. However, when your readers are Bingham and Kreider, your readers will no doubt mark way more on form than your form reader. The results were encouraging. I have a lot of form to correct, but very little content. Yea! Almost done!

Caution: Chunks May Be Blown

Sometimes I see things that make me nauseated. This video is a case in point.

Sufjan's a Stinkin' Genius

Sufjan Stevens is a creative genius. His latest venture is a Christmas song contest. Here's the scoop: His fans write and record a Christmas song, send it to him, and the one he likes the most wins. The grand prize is a song swap. He gets the rights to your song, but he then writes a Christmas song just for you, and you get the rights to it. Granted, he's going to get more money for your song than you will for his, but art isn't about money, it's about saying, "Sufjan picked my song, chumps!!"
I just entered a song I wrote last year about this time. Needless to say, we needn't expect to see "Sleep Now" on any upcoming Sufjan Stevens projects.

Jon, what have you done to me?

Have you ever had one of those dreams from which you awaken thrilled because you've just received great news only to find out it was the deceptive product of your subconscious?
Some background:
As I've worked on my thesis I've received a great deal of insight and encouragement from my friend Jon Kever, who has recently completed the rigorous process. In his retelling of his own story he related a dream he had had wherein he received a scathing review from Dr. Kreider telling him he had too may footnotes.
Last night I dreamed that upon reading my first two chapters, Dr. Bingham, excited to be in the presence of true genius, replied that he loved the work, but that his only improvement would be that I use the word "is" in its various forms more often in my footnotes. His explanation was that this would somehow make the footnotes (to be) more gender inclusive.
Needless to say this was a huge relief...a sense of relief that would be irreparably rent asunder by the bone-chilling sound of the alarm clock.
Jon, what have you done to me?

Memories

I write this from one of my favorite places in the world--camp. I've found that "camp" has special meaning to everyone whether you grew up going to a woodsy retreat with log style cabins, ziplines, and go carts; or your camp was a patch of rolling grass-covered hills cut into the rich agricultural lanscape of middle America. Regardless of the amenities, camp is a place full of tradition and strong relationships. As I write, people are walking through this assembly room planing how to "get back" at others who have pulled a prank on them. A male staff member walks by with his hair up in braids. Nicknames abound and the sound of screaming kids seems almost like white noise filling the air creating that perfect(?) camp ambience. Ahhh. It's good to be back.

A Sad State of Affairs

This blog has hit rock bottom. It's been idle so long all of the comments were deleted. And, no this is not a promise to redeem it. I can promise no such thing. All I can do is mourn it's sorry condition, and hope for a better future.

Psalm 139 and Birth Control

A coworker and friend of mine, whose anonymity I shall maintain, has raised some interesting questions about the normative usage of Psalm 139 in arguments against abortion--that if they are true would they not also preclude birth control. I left my gut-shot answers, but the guy's got me thinking. They are some good questions. I'm most interested in the historical viewpoint on the subject. Check him out.