Oh Boy...

Really, it was just a matter of time before something like this turned up.

Yeah, text message your pastor during the sermon. I try to save my cutting remarks and high praise for when I shake the guy's hand at the end of the Divine Service. But, hey. People have short memories and even shorter patience these days.

The pastor of this church likes it: "It becomes much more of a dialogue."
Yes, synergism in action, the modern American church.

I'm thinking: why not take it a step further? Cut the pastor out of the equation, paste a "Sermon Topic" up on the big screen in front, and let the congregation text message their ideas and input for all to enjoy. It would give final expression to what people really want: Everybody A Pastor. That's what The Priesthood of All Believers means, doesn't it??


HT: Get Religion

East Of Eden

I read Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN while on vacation in the jungle. My son Jeremy had been asking me to read it for a few years. It was a bit of an anacolouthon, reading John Steinbeck's amazing tale of the Salinas valley and the lives intertwined there, and then looking up to gaze at a banana tree, a coconut tree. Part of the richness of the story is its dealing in lifetimes, which is always poignant. But Steinbeck dabbles in sin and grace throughout the book, and this is its grand feature.

But here, some juicy tidbits.

"You can see how this book has reached a great boundary that was called 1900. Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be--more rich and meaningful the farther back it was. In the books of some memories it was the best time that ever sloshed over the world--the old time, the gay time, sweet and simple, as though time were young and fearless. Old men who didn't know whether they were going to stagger over the boundary of the century looked forward to it with distaste. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost--good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies any more, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word."

And that was 1900. Distracted as we were by the .com bubble, we forgot to notice, when a new century boundary was recently crossed, that, yes, the world was changing, and sweetness had gone missing, and virtue too. A man's word could no longer be trusted. The themes Steinbeck proposes at the end of the nineteenth century were in some way the themes at the end of the twenthieth: loss of virtue, unremitting change for its own sake. And the ladies, well, weren't ladies anymore. Progress--as the old men would distastefully look at it.

E of E introduces two memorable characters. When I was done reading the book, I immediately began to miss them. The first is Samuel Hamilton, Irish pater of a large, varied family that fills a large part of the book. The second is the Chinese manservant, Lee. As was the wont--for the sake of survival--of the Chinese of the day, they spoke to their American wards in pidgin English. The following quote is where Sam Hamilton flushes Lee out on the subject:

"What's your name?" Samuel asked pleasantly.
"Lee. Got more name. Lee papa family name. Call Lee."
"I've read quite a lot about China. You born in China?"
"No. Born here."
Samuel was silent for quite a long time while the buggy lurched down the wheel track toward the dusty valley. "Lee," he said at last, "I mean no disrespect, but I've never been able to figure why you people still talk pidgin when an illiterate baboon from the black bogs of Ireland, with a head full of Gaelic and a tongue like a potato, learns to talk a poor grade of English in ten years."
Lee grinned. "Me talkee Chinese talk," he said.
"Well, I guess you have your reasons, And it's not my affair. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't believe it, Lee."
Lee looked at him and the brown eyes under their rounded upper lids seemed to open and deepen until they weren't foreign any more, but man's eyes, warm and understanding. Lee chuckled. "It's more than a convenience," he said. "It's even more than self-protection. Mostly we have to use it to be understood at all."
Samuel showed no sign of having observed any change. "I can understand the first two," he said thoughtfully, "but the third escapes me."
Lee said, "I know it's hard to believe, but it has happened so often to me and to my friends that we take it for granted. If I should go up to a lady or a gentleman, for instance, and speak as I am doing now, I wouldn't be understood."
"Why not?"
"Pidgin they expect, and pidgin they'll listen to. But English from me they don't listen to, and so they don't understand it."
"Can that be possible? How do I understand you?"
"That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect."...
" ...Don't you ever make a mistake? I mean, break into English?"
"No, I don't. I think it's a matter of what is expected. You look at a man's eyes, you see that he expects pidgin and a shuffle, so you speak pidgin and shuffle."

And now for Christian vocation:(bold print mine)

Samuel bit into a sandwich. "I was shuffling over half a hundred questions. What you said brings the brightest one up. You don't mind?"...
...I think I can guess what your next question is."
"What?
"Why am I content to be a servant?"
"How in the world did you know?"
"It seemed to follow."
"Do you resent the question?"
"Not from you. There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension. I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of the philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can't understand why more intelligent people don't take it up as a career--learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master's kindness, but because of habit and indolence. It's a hard thing for a man to change spices or lay out his own socks. He'll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will. If I had wished I could have robbed, stripped,and beaten anyone I've worked for and come away with thanks. Finally, in my circumstances I am unprotected. My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does no work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don't know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompentents and where excellence is so rare."

The relationship between Hamilton and Lee deepens to the end of Hamilton's life, and is the basis for understanding much about Lee that happens much later. While all of the other characters--as interesting as they are--are preoccupied with more shallow things, these two are the wisdom characters of the book.

Read and enjoy. This is a book worth reading several times. Even in the jungle.

The Dogs of Ek Balam

Oops. And a couple of piglets.

Yucutan

Back from ten days in the jungles of Mexico. We stayed in the house shown above, and yes, swam for hours in that delicious pool. The Mayan ruin of Ek Balam was about half a mile away. This retreat is in a small puebla of about 400 souls, amazingly poor folk who have generally managed to find a level of living that sustains but would be very foreign to Americans.

Lots of dogs.


Lots of hungry dogs.



And one hungry bird...



And, of course, the lovely ocean...

Heard Today on a Madison Radio Station

Talking Head #1: "Palin talks about community organizers. Let me tell you something. Jesus was a community organizer! And Pontius Pilate was the Governor."

Talking Head #2: "Whoa. You've really got the knives out this morning!"

Talking Head #1: "And Lieberman is Judas."





No, there's no Messiah Complex out there.

Colin's Krazy Korean Klass

Our son Colin has been teaching at Korean schools in or near Seoul for the past two years. Watch a video from his blog to see just what sort of teaching he actually is doing. ANIMALS!

The Launching of Second Son

Rocky Mountain National Park

A long drive to Denver to drop Jeremy at college--UC Denver. The drive was highlighted by XM radio (Top Hits kept us busy across Nebraska) and a great, cottonwood-lined golf course in North Platte. I beat the kid, too.
This is the launching of a second child into the world of academia, and certain patterns are developing. The distance to Denver is almost exactly the same as the distance to Charlottesville, where Colin went to grad school. The night before returning featured in both cases a visit to a rather expensive Italian restaurant for a farewell meal, complete with wine and dessert. And the drive home involved time mulling milestones and the sadness of really major life changes. Jeremy for his part was completely excited about his new school, the honors program he's been accepted into, his new roommates--everything except a certain shortness of cash that he'll have to address. It is always a good thing when a college student has his back slightly up against the wall, financially. Keep that in mind.


I drove from Denver to Boulder to visit an old friend, Christian Kopff (for you classical educators, he is the author of THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN, a great read.) at the Boulder campus. I managed to arrive in time to insert myself into a junior faculty discussion group on the founding fathers. This was part of larger effort, a two week seminar of visiting history and political science profs who are of a conservative bent (many a Christian in the group), whose goal is to strengthen ties between these folks and create a network of conservative faculty around the country.
What a beautiful city and campus is Boulder! And lunch and conversation with Christian was wonderful. He is the best conversationalist in the whole world.

By evening of Friday I was in Estes Park, playing golf on a little par three. It rained for awhile and I found dry solace in a shelter. When I walked to the seventh tee I was greeted by an elk cow, grazing twenty feet away. So, Estes Park.

The next mornin: breakfast at Molly's, and then up into the park. This drive takes one up above twelve thousand feet--high enough to really feel queasy from the lack of oxygen. The first pic above is at about eleven thousand feet; the second is looking down from twelve thousand feet. Crazy people ride bicycles up there. This is tundra-land, where snow lingers all Summer long. It was cold. I spied a pica--a small rabbit-like creature that gathers and dries leaves for its winter food, and a few fat and lazy marmots. I watched a few ravens pick their way across the tundra, and wondered what their lives were like.

So here was my Saturday: leave Estes Park, drive the length of the national park, cut back northward across a huge plain surrounded by mountains to Laramie, Wyoming. I played eighteen holes of golf in the afternoon, climbed in the Malibu and drove across southern Wyoming, into Nebraska, into the night, finally arriving at Lincoln at 1 am, where I crashed at a cheap motel. That was a bit of a long day. You begin, covering that much ground, to feel like you could drive for days, all over the country.

But I didn't. I got home to an overworked wife (a double shift one night as an RN, ugh), a delighted daughter just back from a church trip to the Cinncinati Creation Museum, and a very sick cat, Pippen, who is residing at the vets trying to recover from severe blockage of his digestive system. Cats.