The Perils of Prayer

I admire those eighteenth-century Hasids who understood the risk of prayer. Rabbi Uri of Strelisk took sorrowful leave of his household every morning because he was setting off to his prayers. He told his family how to dispose of his manuscripts if praying should kill him. A ritual slaughterer, similarly, every morning bade goodbye to wife and children and wept as if he would never see them again. His friend asked him why. Because, he answered, when I begin I call out to the Lord. Then I pray, "Have mercy on us." Who knows what the Lord's power will do to me in that moment after I have invoked it and before I beg for mercy?

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

The Perils of Work

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.

Thoreau

Alas, a good description of the vigor and at-large unrealism of my early days as a woodworker. There was nothing I could not eventually do, given time and the right materials. "Time and love have branded me with its claws," wrote Bob Dylan. Craftsmanship is like this, I think. If you don't start with passion and a vision completely out of sorts with what is possible, you don't end up accomplishing anything. Yet the irony is, what you accomplish is so out of sorts with that original vision, it is difficult to consider it anything but a woodshed. So it goes.

CHARACTER

Ashenden sighed, for the water was no longer quite so hot; he could not reach the tap with his hand nor could he turn it with his toes (as every properly regulated tap should turn) and if he got up enough to add more hot water he might just as well get out altogether. On the other hand he could not pull out the plug with his foot in order to empty the bath and so force himself to get out, nor could he find in himself the will-power to step out of it like a man. He had often heard people tell him that he possessed character and he reflected that people judge hastily in the affairs of life because they judge on insufficient evidence; they had never seen him in a hot, but diminishingly hot, bath...

W. Somerset Maugham, ASHENDEN

KLEINIG on SASSE

"...I still remember it graphically...it was such a significant point in my life. I still remember, Sasse was there, after a lecture, he had a big pile of books--he always carried a big pile of books into lectures, he never opened them, he knew it all by heart, he'd just have them along just in case...

I said, 'Dr. Sasse, do you have a moment?'

And he said [using a low gruff voice], "Yes?" Ah, ah, very abrupt.

'Yes, what do you want Kleinig?'

And I said, 'Ah, look, Dr. Sasse, I've got a spiritual problem."

And Sasse stopped walking, and he faced me, and he lifted his finger and he said,

'Good!'"

John Kleinig, Lectures On Spirituality, 10a

John Bunyan

From today's TREASURY OF DAILY PRAYER reading:

I find to this day seven abominations in my heart:

1) An inclination to unbelief.

2) Suddenly forgetting the love and mercy that Christ shows us.

3) A leaning to the works of the Law.

4) Wanderings and coldness in prayer.

5) Forgetting to watch for that which I have prayed for.

6) A tendency to murmur because I have no more, and yet a willingness to abuse what I have.

7) I can do none of those things which God commands me, but my corruptions will thrust themselves upon me so that "When I would do good, evil is present with me."

These things I continually see and feel and am afflicted and oppressed with; yet the wisdom of God orders them for my good.

1) They make me abhor myself.

2) They keep me from trusting my heart.

3) They convince me of the insufficiency of all inherent righteousness.

4) They show me the necessity of flying to Jesus.

5) They press me to pray to God.

6) They show me the need I have to watch and be sober.

7) And they provoke me to look to God, through Christ, to help me and carry me though this world.

Amen.

-John Bunyan

Such an old fashioned geezer, Bunyan. So obviously out of step with modern wisdom and psychology. The guy obviously needed therapy.

And golly, he was so much like me.

It is interesting to me that when we think of God's grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, we naturally think of God's Goodies: his peace, love, charity, salvation. We don't naturally associate the things Bunyan writes about: tentatio, a dying to ourselves, a profound awareness of our sinfulness; our shortcomings. Naturally we flee from these things, or else go into therapy (I've always flinched at the idea personally. I'd rather fix or outwait my own problems, or ignore them altogether). And honestly, this particular spiritual reality does not market well. It isn't on the outreach agenda. Unless you're reading John Kleinig or Senkbeil and their ilk, you have to go back to Bunyan to find it conveyed. And yet, it is a mark of sanctification, or being made holy. Who would have thought that Romans 7 was just about that very thing?

Some Recent Work

About fifteen years ago, I built the library for the common room of Lutheran Church of the Living Christ. Here is half of it:

About five years after that, a member asked me to build a sort of library/entertainment center for his home, inspired by my work at the church. Here it is:

About four years after that, I was asked by another member of that church, who saw the library/entertainment center I built for the other member of the church, to build him an 8' x8' wall library for his home office. Here it is:

A year later, a co-worker of the wife of the guy who had me build his home office wall library called, asking for a wall library of their own. Here are pics of that:

So, here, to date, is my family tree of wall units, serial recommendations over a 15 year period. But wait. The granddaddy of them all was a suite of furniture I produced for an old friend, a NYC attorney who now resides in California. His was the most ambitious:

Finally, I also finished, a Prie Dieux I have been working at for about a year (mostly just staring at it and wondering when I'd get it done). I had a very patient client:

There. That brings us up to date. I feel a lot better now...

Sim City and Real Life

I'm catching up on a few back issues of FIRST THINGS magazine. Even after the death of long-time editor Richard John Neuhaus, I almost always turn first to the While We're At It section at the back---the section Neuhaus always wrote himself and which is now handled by Joseph Bottum. Here's an interesting take:

"'I'm a feminist graduate of an all-women's college who has vowed to never change my name or end my career to raise children full time--though I would never undervalue the work that many women do in their home,' Monica Potts assures us in the American Prospect, but, to her horror, in all of her virtual reality games (and kudos to her for admitting how many virtual reality games she plays) she chooses conservatively.

'My Sims are conservative,' she admits. 'I'm in complete control of them, but for some reason their lives aren't anything like the life I consider ideal in the real world...My Sims rarely remain single long into adulthood. My wives always take their husbands' last names. They don't just have children; they bear lots of them. And they leave their careers to take on the lion's share of care-giving duties.'

It gets worse, or better, depending on your point of view: An expert on Sim City, she reports that 'things function much more smoothly if taxes are low and city government caters to corporate interests,' while 'wind energy is fine in theory, but old-fashioned petroleum and coal facilities really make them run.'

Potts blames the parameters of the game; they just make it so much easier to be a conservative: 'Having children has the added bonus of extending game time in The Sims, because I get to continue to play the same family as the generations roll by. Maternity leave is mandatory for pregnant Sim women because of a long-standing technical issue within the game..."

FT April 2011 issue; P 69

Art--or virtual reality--imitating life.

I don't know: if I'm going to dabble in virtual reality games, I suppose I'd try living out a life different from my own. So that may explain this puzzling phenomena. You can't forever blame the parameters of a game. If you know them as well as this lady knows her game, you'd eventually find a way to game the system. But there is a winsomeness to the realization that, if your wives have many children, you get to play "longer." Sweet.