Up, lummox!

OUT HERE THE ONLY WINDBREAK IS THE NORTH STAR

2006-05-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

A brief update on Dave and Becca’s adventures in the last several days:

1. Iowa City, Iowa, with Dave’s friends Grant and Aly. Deliiiicious dinner courtesy of Aly (chicken with mushrooms, prosciutto, and marsala sauce plus polenta and red wine), and then some QT spent laughing and talking and discussing fantasy baseball. (Er, that was just Grant and Dave.) Saturday we slept in and grabbed a quick bite to eat at a local diner and then split for parts west, sad we couldn’t stay longer. Grant is apparently hosting an enormous party in June with a friend named “Anton,” which appropriately will be dubbed “Granton.” Sigh.

2. Kansas City, MO, with Zach Walker and Zach’s friend Kevin. It’s a solid 8 hours from Iowa City to KC, but let’s be honest—once you’ve spent 15 hours in the cold cold belly of I-80, 8 hours in the car seems pretty easy. The cold grey raininess had followed us from Chicago to Iowa, and followed us again as we drove southwest to KC, finally giving way to some sunlight in Missouri.

We hung out with old friend Zach and new friend Kevin, went for a run, were the recipients of awesome hour-long massages from Zach (well, only Becca), and most importantly, took in some INCREDIBLE barbecue with Zach. (Zach was really excited by the glass wall between the barbecue restaurant and the liquor store next door, which provided an exciting view of, you guessed it, dudes buying liquor.) Then he gave us a first-class tour of downtown KC, c0mplete with a tour of the city’s 1,000,000 fountains, 88% of which Zach has illegally bathed in. Dave and Zach also spent some QT with Ben Franklin.

3. KC to Denver, CO. Another solid 8 hour drive: 650 miles. Dave had breakfast at McDonalds, an annual indulgence that initially made him feel very happy but also listless and cranky for the rest of the morning as Egg McMuffin wended its way through his body. Kansas City’s location straddling the border between Kansas and Missouri provided lots of entertaining opportunities to play the punch-your-partner-when-you-see-an-out-of-state-license-plate game. Geographic ignorance also reared its ugly head again, with Becca seemingly uncertain if we’d already driven through Indiana, or if we had yet to do so. Sigh.

We’ll be honest: we’ve driven through more interesting states than Kansas. While we were in Chicago, we had the following conversation with Dave’s friend Dale, a Kansas native:

Us: so, is there anything interesting to do when you’re driving through Kansas on I-70?
Dale: Umm….
Us: …?
Dale: …um, no.
Us: Really?
Dale: Yeah. Once you get west of Salina, it’s just flat.
Us: (disappointed) Oh.
Dale: possibly the world’s largest ball of twine.

Even “Prairie Dog Town,” home of the world’s largest prairie dog, which Becca had been excited about since KC, disappointed her by being closed.

But we made it to Denver pretty quickly, delighted by the sudden arrival of serious mountains on the horizon. The great plains don’t end naturally when they hit the Rockies, they just kind of abruptly end, like your little cousin Lester interrupted in mid-sentence by an enormous belch. To our delight, we had time to run over to the amaaaaazing Red Rocks and run around and gawk at the natural beauty. Dave, raised in the Midwest, was brought up believing that mountains were mythical creatures like dragons and the abominable snowman. Actually seeing them made him very happy.

4. Denver to Salt Lake City. “Out here the only windbreak is the north star,” wrote poet Carl Sandburg about the Midwest. He might as well have been writing about Wyoming, an extremely unattractive state we’ve been stuck in since—well, since about 11 this morning. Here’s what you see if you look out the window in Wyoming; rock formations, covered with ugly green-brown grass and little tufts of vegetation, wooden fences, power lines, and dudes driving pick-ups. We stopped in at a UPS store in Laramie and a dude there was really mad because he couldn’t ship a RIFLE. “You’ll have to go to the main UPS office downtown,” they told him, and he stalked off, muttering angrily—which was a little frightening, considering he was shipping a rifle.

In short, an exciting and fun couple of days. Many more gaaawjus photos available HERE , and more stories to come.

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF OUR TWO HEROES’ VEHICULAR ADVENTURES ACROSS FIVE STATES (or, the pros and cons of Ohio)

2006-05-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

So, hopefully, by the time you read this, Becca and I will be safely ensconced in the Bruner family residence in Oak Park, IL, just west of Chicago. We got there (we really hope we got there) after leaving Princeton at 9.15 AM and enduring a grueling at-least-14-hour-day spent almost entirely on I-80.

Our schedule went something like this:
9.15: leave Princeton
10.15: get on I-80
11.15: still on I-80
12.15: still on I-80.
1.30: I-80 merges with I-90. Continue to follow I-80.
3.30: begin secretly to resent I-80
5.30: begin to plan to secretly leave I-80 for a more fulfilling relationship with another expressway.
…9.14 PM: Still on I-80.

At this point, we’re somewhere in western Ohio (on what is euphemistically known as the “James B. Shockney Turnpike,” perhaps the most bombastic name for an expressway EVER) treading down the miles between us and Indiana.

Behind us there are numerous fearsome obstacles: New Jersey; New Jersey’s drivers; the state of Pennsylvania (sorry, Gary and Abby, it’s a BEAST to drive through); geographical ignorance (Becca: we’re driving through Ohio?); the Rutherford B. Hays presidential museum (I didn’t get to stop….AGAIN); and not least, Ohio state troopers.

Yes, folks, we got our inaugural ticket tonight in Ohio: Becca got nabbed doing 79 in a 65. I’m not going to disclose how much this unfortunate occurance will cost young Ms. Sanders, but let’s just say it rhymes with ‘ninety-one dollars.’ But “Manhattan” Sanders took it with her usual unflappable personality (she did pop a few Sour Patch Kids, but that’s it). She didn’t even break down and cry for her Grammy, like the last time I did when I got a ticket.

Right now the betting pool has us arriving at Mom and Dad’s place between midnight and one and then collapsing into a gelatinous heap on the floor. No, wait. We’ll collapse into our beds, where we (meaning “I”) will presumably sleep until 10 or 11 tomorrow. Tomorrow, thank heaven, hold nothing more formidable than farting around all day and then going out to dinner with the assembled Bruners. God willing, we’ll wind down tomorrow watching a goofy movie in the basement and drinking beers (she says “Son in Law,” I say “Dodgeball”).

Highlights: playing Tetris with our possessions and successfully squeezing it into my Civic; our first (and overly-delayed) 20-oz. cup of coffee at 9 AM; crossing the Delaware Water Gap; rocking out to both “Great Adventure” by Stephen Curtis Chapman and “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper (both part of a sublime mix Becca made); gorgeous farm country in Pennsylvania and Ohio, illuminated by a setting sun and clouds; a pick-up pulling a trailer holding an enormous sign that said “PALM READING, $5”; being done with school.

Prayers: No more allergies/migraines for Becca; plenty of sleep & relaxation in Chicago. Thanksgiving for getting us home safe.

Question for Readers: If an Ohio State Trooper pulls you over and says (as he did to Becca), “Do you know why I pulled you over?”, what would be the WORST answer you could give?

Want to see more pictures? Go here.

GEORGE HUNSINGER SERMON ON TORTURE

2006-05-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

I commend to you the excellent words of my teacher, Prof. George Hunsinger.

SERMON

2006-03-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

Texts: Num. 21.4-9; Eph. 2.1-10; John 3.14-21.
4th Sunday in Lent

I.
Grace to you, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus. Amen.

A long time ago. Before cell phones; before the internet; before PlayStation. Before cars, before electricity. Before Martin Luther. Before Pastor Jim was the pastor here at St. Paul’s—which really was a long time ago. Way before all that, there were the people of Israel.

The people of Israel, led by Moses, wandering in the wilderness, halfway between the prison land of Egypt and the promised land of Canaan. The people of Israel, wandering for, oh, quite a while now in the wilderness, still not quite making it to the promised land. The people of Israel, beginning to murmur and complain. “The people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses: why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” It’s not a new complaint, of course; Moses first heard it way back at the Red Sea, when it looked like the waters would not part and the Egyptian army would catch up with them. ‘Why did you bring us out in the wilderness?’ The people spoke against God.

And then the Israelites start to get bitten by poisonous snakes. Lots of them. So they go to Moses, appropriately chastened, and ask him for his help. And Moses prays about it, and does a strange thing: he builds a serpent out of bronze and puts it on top of a pole. And when anyone is bitten by a snake, Moses raises up the bronze serpent over his head, and the person is cured.

God’s response to the Israelites may strike us as a bit harsh. Most of us try our best to be kind and forgiving to other people, and to not lash out at them when they criticize us or complain about us. But here God seems to be behaving differently. What could Scripture be trying to teach us by telling us this story?

Part of the answer, I think, is the radicality of God’s response to sin. Israel’s hearts have begun to turn against God; they’re starting to doubt God’s care and guidance for them. They’re starting to pine for Egypt, for the very slavery that God worked so hard to liberate them from. And God’s response to this sin is not proportional. God’s not interested in playing tit-for-tat with the children of Israel, getting back at them when they do something wrong. God’s response is radical: God wants to get to the root of the matter. God is saying, in effect, look, this is how bad sin really is. You guys are sick. You need medicine.

It must have been a painful diagnosis. Sin, like snakebite, is poisonous—to our hearts, to our lives together as Christians, and to our love of God and neighbor. And the ones who need the medicine are not only those Israelites then, who clustered around the bronze serpent, but all of us. All of us are snakebit, ever since that first serpent bit our parents in the garden so long ago.

II.
A long time ago—not, I should add, in a galaxy far, far, away, but it might feel like it. This scene takes place not in the wilderness but in the promised land of Israel, and its protagonist is not Moses but Jesus. Jesus is having a friendly midnight chat with Nicodemus. And in his discussion with him, Jesus weaves in some imagery from the Old Testament: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Nicodemus wants to know who Jesus is. And Jesus tells him: If you want to know who I am, look at the bronze serpent. What am I about? I’m about healing. I’m about saving. I am the antidote for everyone who has been poisoned by this sick and sinful world. To some, the Old Testament story seems to portray an angry or wrathful God. But it’s worth noting that the image the New Testament appropriates from that story is not one about God’s wrath, but one about God’s healing. I did not come into the world to condemn the world, Jesus says, but in order that the world might be saved.

We’re past the halfway point in Lent right now, and we’re closing in on the finish line of Holy Week. Lent isn’t exactly the most popular season of the church year. Ash Wednesday is popular: people line up around the block to get ashes on their forehead. But then a lot of them disappear until Easter. It’s hard to know what do with Lent. Lent is supposed to be a solemn season of repentance—but I seem to spend a lot of my time asking myself if I’m measuring up to Lent. Am I giving up something for Lent? Is what I’m giving up big enough? Should I give up something bigger? Am I feeling solemn and repentful? Should I be feeling differently? Am I doing it right?

If I’m thinking like that, though, I’ve already lost my way. It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing on what we are or aren’t doing for Lent, but what Lent is really about is focusing on what God has already done. Lent is a time for us to sit with the reality of how costly God’s love is. When Jesus says that he will be lifted up like the bronze serpent, he not only looks backward in time to healing, but forward to suffering. Jesus shows us not only his desire to heal, but his commitment to that desire—a commitment even unto death. The God we see revealed in Jesus is nothing but love—but it is a resolute, determined love, a costly love, a love as hard as flint.

III. A long time ago, only about 50 or 60 years after Jesus’ talk with Nicodemus. The author of Ephesians is tossing off a letter to the church there, trying to keep those rambunctious Ephesian Christians in line. And his words are a brilliant summary of the Gospel message: “By grace, you have been saved through faith,” he writes. “This is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Sin is the sickness; Jesus is the medicine. And the medicine is free. This is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God.

As some of you know, I went to college at Yale. And as my parents never tire of reminding me, Yale is not a cheap place to attend college. And while I was at college I met someone who had an amazing story about how it became possible for him to attend Yale. This guy was brilliant, a straight-A student, bright and personable, just the kind of person Yale wanted. Yale was his first-choice school, and so he was delighted when Yale let him in. But he was less than delighted when he received his letter from the financial aid office. The financial aid they offered him simply wasn’t enough to get him over the hump; even putting it together with his family’s pretty limited resources, he still fell short by about $10,000 a year, or $40,000 total. He reluctantly started making alternate plans.

And then an amazing thing happened: he received an anonymous $40,000 donation. To this day he doesn’t know who it was from. How do you live when you’ve received a gift like that? How do you act? What do you think?

My friend only thought two things: first, he could go to Yale, and second, he could go to Yale because someone else had sacrificed $40,000 for him. The door that was shut had flown open again. And for the next four years, he lived like a man whose life is made possible by someone else’s costly generosity. He threw himself into his education: he could never say school wasn’t that important, or that what he did with his life didn’t matter, or that he’d made it there by himself. I find that people like him, who are where they are because of someone else’s great and costly gift, live strangely purposeful and humble lives.

A long time ago, God gave us all such a gift. God gave us healing for our sin and reconciliation with himself; it cost God everything, but it costs us nothing. Let us live like people who know the value of this gift, and how much it cost the one who gave it. Amen.

SERMON, MK. 9.2-9

2006-02-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

Grace to you, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus. Amen.

Recently, the father of a good friend of mine met Prince Charles. Y’know, Charles. The prince of Wales; the future king of England? That guy. I was pretty impressed.

My friend is English—or at least half-English. His mom was born in the UK. So he’s got all kinds of relatives on his mom’s side over across the pond, some of whom are very British: high-tea, stiff-upper-lip, hail-Britannia type people. And you know how these things work: one of them, apparently, knew someone who knew someone…yadda yadda yadda, long story short: my friend’s dad and mom both got invited to a reception with Prince Charles. The prince would be there; they would have a chance to meet him and make conversation with him for a while. They were pretty excited.

Once the excitement died down, however, my friend’s dad realized that he was actually facing a bit of a dilemma. He was going to get to meet Prince Charles—but then he would have to figure out what to say to him. He was meeting the one person with whom it would be just about impossible to make ordinary small talk. He’d never met royalty; what do you say? “Hey, hiya doing, Chuck. So, I understand you’re a prince….I’m in marketing…” The more he thought about it, the more worried he got.

When I heard about this guy’s dilemma, I sympathized immediately. All of us dream about meeting a really big wheel: someone famous, someone important. But sometimes when you come face-to-face with them, you just don’t know what to do or say.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel reading, the Transfiguration. The disciples in this passage, Peter, James, and John, were in the same situation as my friend’s dad. What do you do when you meet God? What do you do when you see Jesus light up like a Roman candle? What do you do when you see Moses and Elijah, the two greatest Israelite leaders and prophets, walking alongside him? I’ll tell you what you do: you freak out! (You say something along the lines of what Peter said: heeeey….Jesus. It is good for us to be here! Let’s build you guys three tents.) The Gospel puts it very appropriately: “He did not know what to say…they were [all] terrified.”

Of course, who wouldn’t be terrified after something like the Transfiguration? This is more than just a simple laser-light show: Jesus undergoes a profound and dramatic physical change. The Gospel says his clothes were shining like nothing the disciples had ever seen, like no bleach or washing machine could ever match. If you look up ‘transfiguration’ in the dictionary, this is what it says: “a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.” That’s what happened to Jesus. Jesus was changed, altered, and the disciples are brought face-to-face with the reality that Jesus is the son of God. And, of course, one thing you see over and over again in Scripture is that people who have a close encounter with the reality of God wind up pretty freaked out.

Now, I don’t know about you, but nothing like the Transfiguration has ever happened to me. And to be honest, I don’t expect it to. My life has been pretty short on supernatural experiences, unless you count the Cubs making the playoffs a few years ago, and even that didn’t end too well. And if you’re anything like me, you struggle sometimes with scriptural stories like this one. The Jesus depicted by the Transfiguration is blatantly supernatural, and he’s also pretty intimidating. When I open up my Bible, I want ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’; I’m not sure I want a Jesus that shines more brightly than the sun; I’m not sure I want a Jesus that is terrifying.

But there he is, in front of the disciples and on the pages of Scripture. And if we press past whatever initial discomfort or skepticism we may feel with this passage, it has a ton to teach us about exactly who this Jesus is. During the Transfiguration, the disciples hear God’s voice saying: “This is my son, the beloved.” This isn’t the first time those words are used in the Gospel of Mark—God also speaks them to Jesus on the occasion of his baptism: “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” At the transfiguration, God uses the same words, but alters the script a bit: “This is my son, the beloved, listen to him!” Listen to him. The same man who is God’s beloved son is also the Lord we must hear and obey. The Transfiguration makes clear that Jesus is one with God, and that he speaks and acts and teaches with the same authority as God himself.

OK, fine. Jesus has the same authority as God himself. But is that it? Is that all we can take away from the Transfiguration? Well, maybe, but I don’t think so. After the Transfiguration is over, after Jesus has been unplugged from the electrical socket, and Moses and Elijah have disappeared, a funny thing happens. The disciples are left alone again with Jesus. Mark puts it simply: “Suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” Superman is gone and Clark Kent is back in his place.

The Transfiguration reminds us of one of those curious and sometimes frustrating facts of the Christian life: some of us encounter God in more dramatic ways than others. Some of us are like Peter, James, and John: every once in a while, God invites us up on the mountain and does something amazing, something that really knocks our socks off. And some of you are more like me, and some of the other disciples: down at the bottom of the mountain, taking care of things, setting up the tents, making dinner, being faithful to the daily tasks of following Jesus. And every once in a while maybe we look up at the twinkling lights at the top of the mountain and feel a twinge of curiosity or even jealousy—or maybe we just look up there and breathe a big sigh of relief. Maybe you’re somewhere in between.

Different Christians have different gifts and different experiences. But at the end of the day, even Peter, James, and John are left only with Jesus. We may be mystics, we may mundanes, or we may be a mixture, but in any case all we are left with is Jesus. For many of us, there will be Transfiguration moments: moments when Jesus looks divine, filled with God’s beauty and power, ready to take on the world. But the Transfiguration is the exception, not the rule, and for all of us, there will be post-Transfiguration moments, moments when Jesus will look the way he looked after the Transfiguration: human, normal, not particularly powerful, maybe a bit shabby or unimpressive. And those are the moments that really give birth to our Christian faith.

This very same point comes up on the way down the mountain. Jesus tells his disciples: don’t tell anybody about this until after I’ve risen from the dead. And we might wonder why Jesus insists on all this secrecy, until we view it in light of the cross.

Jesus asks his disciples to keep a lid on what happened on the mountain, not because he doesn’t want people to know who he is, but because he does. Jesus is waiting for the definitive, clearest revelation of his identity. That revelation will happen not on the mountain of transfiguration but on the hill of Calvary. No one can really understand the transfiguration unless you view it through the lens of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

When I was researching this sermon, I consulted a couple commentaries, and I stumbled across some words by St. Jerome, an early church father. He helped translate the Bible into Latin from its original languages. This is what he has to say about the Transfiguration: “O Peter, even though you have ascended the mountain, even though you see Jesus transfigured, even though his garments are white; nevertheless, because Christ has not yet suffered for you, you are still unable to know the truth.” Unless you view the Transfiguration through the lens of the crucifixion, you won’t get the picture.

Most of us approach the Bible by asking it questions. What does this mean? What does this biblical text say? What is a ‘cubit’? Are we supposed to take this text literally, or is this just a metaphor? And asking questions of the Bible is extremely important; that’s what got me into my current line of work. But I think Scripture speaks just as powerfully when we let it ask questions of us. And the Transfiguration is a part of the Bible that’s really good at asking questions:

What would I have said or done if I was with Jesus up on the mountain that day? How would I have reacted? Would I be afraid, like Peter? Shocked, unable to speak? Overjoyed? Would I be skeptical, looking for the mickey in my drink or the hidden power cable? How would I respond to the reality that Jesus is the son of God? Do I believe that Jesus has the kind of power that the Transfiguration tells us he has?

What have the mountaintop experiences been in my life? What have been the times when I have encountered God in a surprising or powerful way? What about in my daily life?—how do I encounter Jesus there, in the midst of mortgages and marriages and laundry? Am I open to encountering God in a surprising and unexpected way, either on the mountaintop or in the still, small voice?

And lastly, do I view the Transfiguration through the lens of the crucifixion? Do I believe that the God whose glory was disclosed in the transfiguration is the same God who went all the way to the cross—for me, for you, for all of us? Am I willing, as best as I can, to imitate that costly love?

Use your imagination. Let the Transfiguration ask you some questions. One day all of us are going to meet a member of the royal family. This is your chance to think of something to say. Amen.

TRUE STORIES (v)

2005-10-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

By the flattering invitation of Mr. Kellen Plaxco of Fear and Trembling, you will find the fifth installment of "True Stories" at his blog here. It's all part of his 'blogiversary,' for which he has put together quite a blogschrift for himself. Anyway, read and enjoy.

HALLELUJAH

2005-09-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

This article is one of the many reasons why I admire Bono as a person (and as a Christian) and love his band's music. As Stanley is fond of saying, "No ethics without example." Bono is a marvelous, invigorating, challenging, inspiring example of what it means to take the Gospel seriously. Bono says of his quest to get western nations to make a determined effort to fight aids, forgive debt, and eradicate poverty: "They [political leaders in the West] keep saying, 'We're spending this much, and it's this much of a share of world spending,' " he told me the next morning. "I want them to say: 'Malaria just can't be allowed. We're going to get rid of malaria.'" Preach it, brother.

SINCE YOU BEEN GONE

2005-09-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the longish absence. Chicago, Princeton, Oswego, Princeton, LA, Princeton, school: it's been a busy coupla weeks. But now I'm back, school is in session, and I'm sitting at the feet of the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology. Life is good. More posts to come.

ER ADMITS

2005-08-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to do from time to time is to check the list of ER admittees and see what their presenting complaint was when they walk in. They run the gamut from the tragic to the ridiculous. There's the prosaic: cut finger, high creatine count, fell down escalators, neck pain, severe cramping, the omnipresent chest pains (or CP), the omnipresent shortness of breath (or SOB [an acronym, I might add, that caused me no small amount of confusion until I figured it out]), toenail injury, medical evaluation due to chemical exposure, "might be danger to others," migraine. There's the tragic, the more severe the condition the more terse the description: MVC (motor vehicle collision), GSW (gun shot wound), or simply 'trauma.'

Then there are the ones we chaplains like: the ridiculous ones. Somebody walks in, the secretary or charge nurse asks them what the problem is, and they reply, and their reply, sometimes verbatim, sometimes subject to the staffer's interpretation is inscribed in the hospital database forever. These ones are, well, creative: fell on butt, bit by badger, someone named "stryder aragorn" complaining of mental status changes, insect bites, 'anxious,' cat bite, anxiety, testicular discomfort, and--since we're in that vein--my personal all-time favorite, "my stuff is messed up." Finally, of course, there's the catch-all: 'I feel bad." Ladies and gentlemen, human ingenuity.

SICK BAY (pt ii)

2005-08-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

She has no arms, and she has no legs. It’s an awful, awful story.

26, married, just had a new baby. Walking through her backyard in California one day and steps on a rusty, sharp piece of metal. Does bad things to her foot. Does worse things to her blood, which becomes infected. She goes to see the doctor; the doctor says to go to the hospital. She gets worse, then she gets a lot worse. In the end she gets a severe blood infection, which necessitates amputating all four of her limbs—the arms just below the elbow, both legs just above the knees. She’s in Chicago for a tour of duty at our rehab hospital, which has the rep of being the best in the country.

It’s so awful you can’t really take it in. I had a conversation with her nurse one day in the hallway, and I struggled to find the words to describe it: “I can’t believe it….my jaw just hits the floor. I don’t know how she’s finding….I mean, I don’t know how she gets up in the morning.” Her flinty reply: “I’d rather be dead.”

She’s focused on her kids right now. It’s something you see in the hospital: how strong the parenting instinct is, how often people cling to life for the sake of their children. Whatever grief or despair or shock or rage or bewilderment troubles this patient’s spirit, she’s pushed it away to the far recesses, locked it in some closet somewhere to be visited at a time when her 7-year old and her 4-month old aren’t living with their grandparents in Fresno. Some time when their mother can actually mother them.

I admire her. But here, again, the stunning reality of what’s happened to her. How can she mother now? Imagine it. How do you breast-feed your child with no hands? How do you diaper, dress, groom, bathe, cook? How do you run your hands through their hair, whisper reassurances in their ears when they skin their knees or fall off their bikes? How do you pick them up from school? Sign their report cards? Spank them?

She has to learn how to do everything again. She might as well be an infant. The formidable people at the rehab hospital will do their best—and their best, I know, is damn good. But from now on, she and her family bear two burdens: first, the burden of the simple awfulness of what has happened to her. Second, the burden of trying to learn to live with no limbs.

Her husband is around all the time. I wonder why at first and then realize it’s because he has to do absolutely everything for her. Her turns her to face me when I come in the room. He’s probably the one who’s shaving her armpits or shampooing her delicate hair. He’s doing it all. It’s too big. It’s too big. I keep slipping—I try my best, but I can’t help it. I talk about ‘getting a foot in the door.’ I offer to bring her and her husband some cards to pass the time. I bring her a Bible and then wonder how she’ll read it to herself.

She’s got a beautiful face, and I imagine she must have been quite a catch back in the day. But now she’s not the woman her husband married. Nobody’s wants to ask the $64,000 question—can they still have sex, and is he still attracted to her enough to do so?—but it’s in the air.

I keep looking at her husband and wondering: OK, what are you thinking, buddy?

I keep looking at her husband. Big, beefy guy. His UNLV t-shirt and jocky demeanor give me the impression of a guy who’s spent some quality time standing around a keg. His wife welcomes me, prays with me. He’s a bit more standoffish; sometimes he prays, sometimes he watches ESPN, sometimes he naps. At first I’m a tiny bit off-put. But after a couple days of his quiet presence, I start to warm up to him. He might be a bit sullen or out of it, but dammit, he’s here.

I read an interview—it was with Morton Kondracke, of all people, and whatever you think of his politics it's a great read-—where he discussed how husbands respond when their wives are diagnosed with Parkinson's. Once it becomes clear that at some point down the road—decades hopefully, years possibly—that their wife will no longer be able to care for herself or perform ordinary daily activities, a huge proportion of them split. Half, to be exact. Just left their wives. Said “screw this, this wasn’t what I signed on for.” 50%? It's a number high enough to make you believe in original sin.

Is some part of him, way down deep or right under the surface, thinking: I cannot do this. I cannot do this. I want to find some way to find out what he’s feeling and give him a big hug and tell him how awful this is and that God’s going to help them both get through this and help him do the right thing. But there’s no access point, no way to get in touch with that side of him. Maybe he’s a stand-up guy, and those feelings aren’t there at all. Or maybe they are—the flip-side of what his wife is going through—and he simply can’t spend any time with them yet, because his wife needs to be turned, or helped to go to the bathroom, or to sign her own name.

I don’t know how to pray with them. One of my fellow chaplains—a man who never wants for a long, lengthy, beautiful prayer—went to go see her the other day and was stunned into silence. He stood there, dumbfounded, for a long while before he could think of what to pray. Which is probably for the best—better to bow in reverence before the awfulness of this, the awe-fullness of this, than to fill a holy and redemptive silence with shallow words, easy words, dumb words. They don’t need those, and they don’t have time for those.

So I don’t lift up the grief, I don’t lift up the healing. I don’t say, “Dear God, show us how to go on in the face of something this horrible.” Those feelings are either on hold for a while, or I don’t get to see them—and in either case I understand. Instead we pray for the small things: that she’d get her heart murmur taken care of so she can go back to the rehab hospital. That her pain would go away. That she’d complete her rehab tour of duty in time to go back with her husband to California by the end of this month like she’d planned. That their children would be alright. I give them a Bible and tell them I’ll see them tomorrow.

She is wearing her wedding ring, on a chain, around her neck. I am praying for them.

"PONDER NOTHING EARTHLY-MINDED"

2005-08-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

From the "songs stuck in my head during on-call department":

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand
Ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary, as of old on earth he stood
Lord of lords in human vesture, in the body and the blood
He will give to all the faithful his own self for heav'nly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven spreads it vanguard on the way
As the Light of light descending, from the realms of endless day,
Comes the powers of hell to vanquish, as the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph, cherubim with sleepless eye
Veil their faces to the presence, as with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia, Lord most high!

ACTUAL VOICE MAIL FROM A.Y.T.

2005-08-14T19:11:00.000-07:00

"Dave, it's Dan. If you're trying to fool me into thinking that you have a social life by not answering your phone, it's not working. Gimme a call." (After I missed two of his phone calls this weekend.)

THE BACKSTROKE OF THE WEST

2005-08-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Do you like funny things? Do you especially like funny things related to Star Wars? Read this and die laughing.

"RABBI EINSTEIN"

2005-07-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Interesting article from NY Times Magazine about an orthodox rabbi who makes his living fundraising for Israel using American evangelical Christians as his target market.

KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS COMING!

2005-07-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

I do another on-call night at the hospital tomorrow (Friday), and my fifth one the following Sunday. Please support me in your prayers, think warm fuzzy thoughts, and call/email to check in. Thanks as always.

LINKAGE

2005-07-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

First, an article from the New Yorker on Patrick Henry College, a most unusual liberal arts college aimed at evangelical Christians who have been homeschooled. Provoked more than a few sighs from yours truly; as Verbum Ipsum pointed out, Christians on this model seem to combine a radical suspicion of "the world" with a radical trust for government--a combination that doesn't seem quite rational to me.

Second, an article from Rolling Stone on 'the new virginity.' All I have to say about this one is: hmmmmmmmmmm. Via the always thought-provoking Get Religion.

SICK BAY

2005-07-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

One:

He’s Latino, 50-ish. Five days growth of beard. He’s got heart and circulation problems. In December, he had one of his legs amputated at the knee.

I stop by to see his nurse before I go in to see him. She sighs. He wants drugs. Specifically, IV pain meds—opiates. When he was up in the ICU, a few days ago, he kept asking to see the doctor, telling how much pain he was in, asking him if there wasn’t anything he could do. After a while, he was getting IV pain meds every three hours. A while after that, they caught on and stopped giving him IV pain meds entirely. Now he gets pain meds alright, but orally—everything via pill. He’ll ask you, she says.

I go in, and sure enough, she’s right. He tells me that he’s in a lot of pain, that these people at the hospital won’t give him any medication, that he’s in a hell of a jam. “This is piss-poor,” he says. He says that he trusted the hospital—he let them operate on him, amputate one of his legs, didn’t he—but now they don’t trust him. They must think he’s some kind of dope fiend, which is crazy: he’s never touched that shit in his life. They gave him plenty of pain meds when he was all paid up with his account, but now that he’s behind, they’re giving him trouble. Medicine is a business, he tells me; it’s a business.

His eyes are blue, like a clear blue sky on a very cold day. He eats cracker-jack in big stuck-together chunks, pushing it around in his mouth with his fingers until he can break it in two with his teeth. He watches TV for the duration of our interview, pausing only occasionally to look me in the eyes. He asks me to change the channel for him, twice.

Two:

He’s Jewish, in his 60s. He’s got prostate cancer, and is undergoing chemo—which explains the rather drastic (yet stylish) chrome-dome job he’s got going on up top. One of the chemo drugs was messing with him a bit, all kinds of crazy symptoms—hence the hospital. He doesn’t recall asking to see a chaplain, but he’s happy to talk.

He tells me all this while he’s on the phone, trying to get the kitchen to send him up a big meal, one containing rice pudding. I smile: rice pudding! A kindred spirit! We talk for a while. His father was a rabbi, he tells me. His family were rabbis going back 10 generations. This line of work you’ve picked, he tells me, it’s not so easy. I nod and smile. Nope, I say. His son is a rabbi, he tells me, and he’s very unhappy. He lives in Israel, and to help make ends meet, he’s an electrician in his spare time.

He was a social-work student back at the University of Chicago in the 60s, when Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was there. He watched her interview a dying woman through a one-way mirror. When she was done, she came in and asked the students, how did we know that woman was dying? She hadn’t come right out and said it herself, and none of the students knew. She looked at them and said, because she’s stopped taking care of herself. He smiles. You’ll notice that I’m still taking care of myself, he says, and it’s true: he’s got his watch on, his hair and beard are well-groomed. He looks sharp, except for the hospital scrubs. Yes, he says, still taking care of myself. I want to live, he says, and then he starts crying.

And then his nurse comes in. Most of the chaplains are past irritation at being interrupted by other hospital staff, myself included. It helps that I like this guy’s nurse: big Latino lady in her 50s, smart, funny, and with that peculiar mix of toughness and kindness you see in nurses. She sees his tears and hands him a tissue. She takes some vitals. And she goes over his meds with him: this one is baby aspirin, this one is for iron, this one is this… A big smile, and she’s gone.

I prepare to pick up where we left off. And then, instead of a conversation about how much he wants to live, he starts talking to me about Islam. In his train of thought, he says, he went from thinking about how much he wants to live to how crazy it is for anyone to want to kill themselves and take others with them. You have to be prepared for this in your career, he says. You have to know your enemy. These people are crazy: even Nazis, they killed, they murdered, they raped, they destroyed, but they never blew themselves up. He commends to me the work of Bernard Lewis at Princeton, as well as a work called the Arab Mind, which, he says, details the brutal way Arabs raise their children. He tells me that “Palestine” is a fiction; that “Palestinia” was invented by the Romans as an alternative to “Israel,” which had proved to be such a troublesome province to them. So-called Palestinians, he says, are really Arabs. You cannot even begin to understand the goddamn lies these people tell.

Three:

He’s getting over hives, which means I have to put on mask, gloves, and gown before I go into his room, lest I get or give some infection. I gown up awkwardly in the hallway, bright yellow gown billowing behind me as I peek tentatively into his room.

He’s got Crohn’s disease, and he’s been in the hospital with one thing or another since late September of 2004. He was in the ICU twice: liver problems, heart problems, yadda yadda. He had a stem cell transplant on Valentine's Day. He hopes to go home—hopefully for a while this time—tomorrow or the next day. He has a 9-year old daughter.

He has very short hair and an East-European accent. I’m thrown for a bit at the start of our talk by his flat demeanor: his eyes rarely blink, he doesn’t frown, his eyebrows rarely move, he smiles only when we talk about his daughter. He’s projecting a strange mix of boredom, loneliness, numbness, and sadness—which, when I think about it, makes perfect sense for him.

We talk about the difference between Lutheranism and Catholicism, about Poland, Italy, and Europe, about his daughter, about how he hopes he can go home soon, about his religious beliefs. His face rarely changes. Mostly, he says several times, he just wants to go home. It’s a common refrain in the hospital: please, God, just let me go home.

We pray together, and I lift up the image of Noah standing on the deck of the ark after the flood. Every day the water went down a little bit more, and he must surely have known that someday, dry land would return. But oh, the waiting! Can you imagine? How their hearts must have lurched in their chests as they waited: trees! Grass! Plants! But every day, for such a long time, only water. The bird returns with nothing in its mouth.

We pray together, and ask that God would both hasten the day that dry land comes again, and give all of us the patience to endure until that day comes.

SIGH

2005-07-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dutch doctors propose criteria for euthanizing babies in New England Journal of Medicine.

Thoughts?

AESTHETIC VS. MORAL JUDGMENT

2005-07-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

Dan (aka America's Young Theologian) is on to something with this post. (Err, rather, L. Greg Jones is on to something. Given that he's the dean of this place, I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising.)

I especially like Jones' point that a renewal of theological aesthetics (i.e., appreciating the role of beauty in Christian life) offers us a way beyond the legalism of both right and left. I can't help but wonder if this is connected in some way to the decline in significance of worship of many mainline Protestant churches. When was the last time you went to a church service where something--besides the sermon--made you sit up and say, holy crap, that's so beautiful. Beauty, I think, breeds generosity of spirit--something that is sorely lacking within the church right now. Furthermore, it seems to me that renewing the beauty of worship might go a long ways towards re-creating the mystery, solemnity, and awe-fulness that ought to characterize it also.

SCENES FROM AN ON-CALL

2005-07-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

I wrote about this week's on-call at the Princeton CPE blog. Check it out.

PRAYER REQUEST (AGAIN)

2005-06-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

If you have a moment, please say a prayer for me tomorrow afternoon/evening as I do my second (of six) on-calls at the hospital. The on-call chaplain usually spends the night at the hospital, and is responsible for taking care of any pastoral emergencies that arise overnight. My last overnight was relatively quiet, but they can be a bit hairy. Please pray that I'll have courage, strength, and words to say to people who are suffering. (Note to atheists, agnostics, and the Lurie family: warm fuzzy supportive thoughts are always accepted in lieu of prayers.)

Thank you so much.

WEDDING WORDS

2005-06-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hi, kids. Sorry I've been so AWOL lately: first a weekend in Little Rock, Arkansas, for my friends David and Maggie's wedding, then a brief visit in Chi-town from The Girl That I Like, and amidst it all, CPE. Whew. Color me tired.

Below, you'll find the speech I gave at David and Maggie's wedding, which I hope you will enjoy. (Yes, yes, I know, we have the same name. It is a bit annoying. But after a certain number of phone calls that began, "Dave? It's Dave," I stopped noticing, and I'm sure you will too.)

Hi, I’m David. I’m a friend of David's from college; David asked me to say a few words about marriage, and I’m glad to do so.

I’d like to begin by saying what I will NOT do. I will not abuse the bully pulpit I have been given, an opportunity to speak at David’s wedding, by using it to embarrass him. I will not do that. I frankly think such idle chatter is beneath the dignity of the august institution of marriage, and it belittles the solemnity of this occasion for anyone to embarrass the bride or groom before or after the ceremony.

So, for instance, I definitely will not share with you any embarrassing stories about David. will not share with you the time that an obviously hung-over David stumbled into my bedroom at 6.30 in the morning quite certain it was in fact the bathroom. Or how disaster was only narrowly avoided. Nor will I share with you sordid tale of a kimono-clad David, more than a bit blotto, breaking his own shower rod while attempting to bathe. And I will definitely NOT share with you tales of David hallucinating while driving during a cross-country road trip, the total number of times he showered during his freshman year of college, his excessive and indeed rather alarming misuse of NyQuil, his abortive efforts to compose rap songs, his disturbing obsession with Stevie Nicks, or the time he tried to fly to Fayetteville, Arkansas and wound up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. None of those are going to come up.

Nor will I state how happy we all are for both Maggie and David. I think that it goes without saying that all of us are filled with joy at their love for one another and their new life together.

Instead of those things, I would like to begin by stating the obvious: in no way am I competent to offer reflections on the significance of marriage. I’m not married; I’m not a marriage counselor; I don’t read self-help books on marriage. I don’t even watch “Dr. Phil”; I actually think he’s kinda creepy. But David asked me to speak about marriage. So I did what I usually do when I am called upon to bloviate upon a topic about which I know very little: I turned to the Internet. Through the magic of Google, Wikipedia, and a handy little site called “Stay Married 4-Ever.com,” I was able to learn basically everything you need to know about marriage in five minutes. I spent the rest of my allotted research time reading blogs, managing my stock portfolio, and signing up members of the wedding party to receive promotional mailings from the Church of Scientology.

But then it occurred to me that I might need something more substantial than all that, so I really started thinking. And when I began to reflect about the significance of marriage, the first person I thought of was my Uncle Bob. My uncle Bob is a great guy, and in 1976 he finally got married and settled down. He and his wife went on their honeymoon, moved into their home, and began their new life together. And around this time, my mother called him and asked him how married life was treating him. And what he told my mother has stuck in my memory ever since. “I’ve never been so happy,” he said, “and I’ve never worked so hard.”

David and Maggie, marriage is an opportunity both for unparalled happiness and unparalled difficulty. I talked to a lot of married people when I was researching this speech—and when I say a lot, I mean “four or five”—and virtually every married person I talked to agreed marriage is a very good thing. But they all also agreed: marriage is not for sissies. It requires a ton of work: humility, strength, compassion. I think it was Yoda who said that marriage requires the deepest commitment and the most serious mind. Or maybe he was talking about something else. Either way, the point is this: David and Maggie, after today, you do not belong to yourselves any more, if you ever did. You belong to one another. I pray that thought will be both joyful and a little humbling to you on this day.

Jerry Seinfeld has a wonderful line about relationships. “I always love it what people say about relationships: “we love each other, but it’s a tough relationship, and we’re trying to make it work. I’ve got news for you people: they don’t work! Relationships don’t work! Coffee makers work, light switches work, computers work. Relationships: they don’t work!” Stanley Hauerwas, a theology professor who teaches at Duke University, expresses the same sentiment a different way in what he calls Hauerwas’ Law. It goes like this: you always marry the wrong person. What he means, I think, is not that it doesn’t matter who you marry, but that even if you marry a wonderful person—and both of you are—your marriage will still bring you both good times and hard times, to the days when you get to come home to your spouse and the days when you have to go home to your spouse, to both the moments of love and passion and happiness and the tougher moments of duty and faithfulness.

David and Maggie, today you guys are putting a down payment on your marriage. (Of course, I mean that metaphorically, since if anyone here feels like they put an actual down payment on anything, it’s your parents!) You are putting a metaphorical down-payment on your marriage: you’re taking a big chunk of emotional and spiritual energy, gathering all your friends and relatives, and publicly making a life-long commitment to each other. And each and every one of us rejoices with you. But please remember: this beautiful day, your day, is only the down payment. From this point on, you start actually paying the mortgage. And you’ll pay it, not in money, but in time, attention, communication, love, and in intentional commitment to making your marriage succeed. Sometimes sitting down and writing the monthly mortgage check may sometimes be tedious—but it’s definitely better than the alternative.

David and Maggie, please be prepared for what a counter-cultural activity you are embarking on by marrying one another. I think it was GK Chesterton who said that in the world in which we live, behaving virtuously has all the transgressive thrill of behaving badly. Maybe that’s not completely true, but I think he’s on to something. If you’ll permit me a sweeping generalization, I’d like to suggest that contemporary America doesn’t do a very good job of nurturing healthy marriages. Everybody loves weddings, of course, and rightly so. Everybody loves getting dressed up and looking good, inviting everyone, getting presents, and walking down the aisle, having a few drinks. (Perhaps several drinks.) But a lot of times we struggle to love our marriages. And that makes sense, too, I suppose: it is difficult to love the quiet, patient, humble, sometimes tedious, work of sustaining a marriage. But make no mistake: there are forces out there will try to make your marriage your hobby instead of your marriage. The pressures of life will stretch you the same way they stretch all of us. They will whisper in your ears that you need to do more: work more, accomplish more, have more, be more. More more more. (I’m not sure, but I’ve heard that these kinds of pressures can be particularly prevalent for those of us who work in the music industry.) But you know what? None of us can say yes to everything. And at some point, if each of you wants to keep saying yes to your marriage, you will have to be prepared to say no to something else: work, your own plans and goals, even a beloved friend or relative. And I hope if and when the time comes to do that, you’ll have the strength and wisdom to separate what is essential from what is non-essential.

David and Maggie, 30 years from now, you will have absolutely no idea what I said in this speech. And that’s OK. But please remember this: everyone here loves you very much, and everyone here is in your corner, ready to help you and support you in your new life together, and everything that is best and brightest, holiest and happiest, is what we wish for you and your marriage. I’d like to close by quoting two writers whose thoughts express much better than my own what I’m trying to get that. The first quotation is from the Bible, from 1st John chapter 4: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” And the second is from the great theologian Ogden Nash, who said this: “To keep your marriage brimming/with love from the wedding cup/whenever you’re wrong, admit it/and whenever you’re right, shut up.” God bless you guys as you begin your life together.

AMERICA'S YOUNG THEOLOGIAN

2005-06-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

My good friend (and frequent commentor on this blog) Dan Morehead has finally cracked under the pressure and started a blog. It's titled "America's Young Theologian," a phrase I'm proud to say that I suggested. (Dan and I attended church in my home town recently, and afterward the minister pounced on us, since it's not often you see two guys in their 20s in church. She asked us what we did and where we were from, and I explained that I was in seminary, that I was doing CPE in Chicago that summer, etc., etc. And then she looked at Dan and said, "Well, what about you?" and Dan hesitated for a moment, and finally said "Well, I'm a young theologian. And..." And a huge running gag/nickname/blog title was born.)

Anyway: read it. It's gonna be hot. Dan, like his mentor Stanley Hauerwas, has taken it upon himself to kinda be a provocateur for the theological world, which as far as I'm concerned is a great idea. If you're into theology, postmodern critical theory, indie rock, Karl Barth, or relentlessly checking the Facebook over and over again for no reason, definitely check out Dan's blog. Thanks.

PRAYER REQUEST

2005-06-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

If you have a moment over the coming weeks and months, please pray for me. On Monday, I'm going to start a summer internship at Northwestern Memorial Hospital as a chaplain. While I'm definitely excited about the next 11 weeks (moreso than I thought I would be at this stage of the game), I'm also pretty freaked out. Please pray that I'll do OK the first couple of weeks, that I'll learn what God wants me to learn this summer, and that I'll be worthy of the great responsibility of attending people during their illness and death.

Thank you all so much.

TRUE STORIES (iv, part three: what the me of now says to the me of then)

2005-06-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

If I had to write a letter to 17-year old Dave during the time when I was seriously beginning to question my faith in God, this is what I would say:

Peace, be still. God will never leave you or forsake you.

You are seeking a God who gives signs, who incontrovertibly demonstrates that he’s real, and that he’s active. I am sorry to say that you are barking up the wrong tree. The God we worship simply does not work that way; as Auden (a poet you will not encounter until college) wrote about God, “All proofs of his existence he returns/unopened to the sender.” There is no knowing for certain that God exists the way you know that you have ten fingers on your hand, or that two plus two equals four. What God wants is not our certainty but our trust, our radiant, vulnerable willingness to go on with life not knowing (at least sometimes) for certain that he’s there. Life is that way: we write songs, we preach sermons, vote, express opinions, marry, and do all kinds of incredibly important things without knowing for certain that we’re right. That’s what faith is. As Dostoyevsky so eloquently wrote in the Brothers Karamazov (a work you will not encounter until college), “You cannot know, but it is possible to be convinced.”

You are convinced that because your practice of Christian Science has not resulted in a physical healing for you that you cannot ‘know for sure’ that Christian Science is true. You are convinced that this is a problem. I suggest you have it backwards: that the fact that you cannot ‘know for sure’ that Christian Science is true, that God answers prayer, even that God exists at all, is not the end of your faith but rather the beginning of it. These pains—this searing, scalding crisis of faith—are the birth-pangs of your mature Christian faith. If there is no not-knowing, there is no risk; if there is no risk, there is no faith. If there is no faith, there is no Christianity, only a mechanistic spiritual determinism, a clockwork religion.

I am aware that what I’m saying to you now must seem impossibly unsatisfying. You want answers. You want clarity. I cannot offer those things. You want to know why God isn’t answering your prayers. That’s a damn good question. Ask him; yell at him if you have to. Let him have it; he can take it. But always remember that it is God you are yelling at.

You’re right, though: our God has a troubling tendency to leave prayers unanswered at moments when you would really, really, really like him to answer them. He also has a tendency to answer prayers you’d long since stopped hoping for, had written off for dead, to swoop in suddenly and change your life when you’re least expecting it, and to answer prayers in such a way that, through your laughter, you see what an idiot you were to even pray them in the first place. He’s quirky like that; God’s got a great sense of humor.

You are terrified that you are lost, that God has abandoned you. You are not lost. Or perhaps you are: what a wonderful fate! Our God has a wonderful penchant for the lost; he likes them perhaps most of all. Think of yourself what you must: despise yourself for your lack of faith, for your inability to pray up miracles out of nowhere, for your confusion, for the daunting unanswered questions. These will come back to haunt you—but cling to them if you must. But be confident of God’s character. God is never closer than to the lost, to the confused, and to the broken. God relentlessly pursues them, will never let them go, indeed, in some ineffable, incomprehensible way, sacrificed himself to make clear the depth and breadth of his unending love for them. If you join such motley company now, count yourself fortunate. Much bitterer indeed will be the lot of those who can never call themselves lost, broken, or confused.

Indeed I suspect that your own brokenness at this time is part of God’s larger plan for your life, or at least that God will work through your doubt and brokenness in unexpected ways. You will find that you possess a strange penchant for getting into long conversations with skeptical people and that you are open to their questions in a way they find refreshing.

You are terrified that you are lost, that God has abandoned you, or that God does not exist at all. My beloved child, nothing I can say to you now will push those questions away permanently. With them, one only wrestles and is wounded, like Jacob at Peniel. But come and walk with me. Visit the garden of Gethsemane.

Look there, and see your savior. See how he kneels; see how he weeps; see how he prays and cries out with great groaning and sighs. Look at the way he sweats, like a man locked in a deadly wrestle. See how alone he is, abandoned even by his friends! Look on him, and let your burden be light. You are afraid you are alone now, and perhaps you are. But remember always that our Lord was alone too, and know that in even your aloneness there is a companion, one who was himself alone, a long, long time ago. Offer up to him your own grief, your own bitter tears in this moment. Perhaps through them you keep vigil with Jesus there in the garden.

If it’s possible, take your own sorrows with a grain of salt. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Stanley Hauerwas (who you will not read seriously until you move to New York) calls God “a God of surprise.” He’s right; God is a tricky bastard. This story’s not over.

You are convinced now that your faith lies in a tomb, and perhaps it does. A few days from now, however, you may find that that tomb is empty, and that the faith you thought was dead is mysteriously, and for no apparent reason, alive again in your heart.

Do not be afraid.

TRUE STORIES (iv, part two: how it happened)

2005-05-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

When I was 17, I lost my faith. Here’s how it happened.

Sometime in the fall of my junior year of high school, I got ringworm. Ringworm is a small red rash that’ll usually go away within a week with the proper topical medication. It showed up on my neck, pretty visible to anyone who cared to see. After about two weeks, when it had been around for a while and was clear it wasn’t going anywhere soon, it started to bother me something fierce. I tried to treat it through Christian Science—-that is, by praying about it and trying to understand myself not as a mortal human person subject to physical illness, but as God’s child, created in God’s image, not subject to the vagaries of rashes or skin problems or whatever. It didn’t work, which made me scared, so I just prayed harder. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It was a shitty, shitty couple of months. I was striving to practice Christian Science by bringing my thoughts and emotions in line with the truth reflected by my faith, but it didn’t really work. No matter how much I told myself, “I am not Mortal Man, subject to illness and disease,” or “I am God’s child, created perfect,” the rash still obstinately remained on my neck. This intensified the way I tried to regulate my thoughts, which meant that I agonized over every thought and emotion. My integrity wound up working against me—-the more Christian Science failed to heal me, the harder I tried, and the harder I tried, the more frustrated, hurt, and ashamed I felt when there was no healing. I alternated between fits of idealistic fervor and despair. I tried to avoid looking in the mirror so I wouldn’t see what was happening on my neck.

Now, I should be clear here that in some ways I wasn't doing a very good job of practicing Christian Science. CS teachings are a lot more nuanced than 'think the right thoughts and you'll be healed physically.' But there is an element of that to it, and obviously I got pretty caught up in it, to the point where I was experiencing some real hurt over my inability to put my faith into practice.

Friends started asking me about my condition, forcing me to decide if I was just going to try to play it off (Oh, it’s nothing, just a rash…) or come clean about my religious convictions (well, it’s a rash, but I’m not going to a doctor about it, because, y’see…). I remember calling a Christian Science practitioner—-someone who is kind of a professional pray-er, who practices spiritual healing for a living--to ask for help. At 17, it was first call to a practitioner I’d made on my own, and I think in retrospect it was a pretty good sign of the depth of my own concern. I don’t remember much of what the practitioner said, except that he told me he’d pray for me, and to remember that God does not mark us in any way. I appreciated his words, but it was a losing cause by then. I’d had the stupid rash for too long, and I was too scared.

Recently, when I was talking with a friend of mine, I surprised myself. “There are two kinds of courage,” I said. “One kind is the kind of courage you need when you’re on a diving board, and you walk way out to the tip of the diving board, and you’re scared to jump off. And you know that you want to do it, but you’re scared. But the only thing you can do (unless you’re willing to turn around and climb back off, which you’re not) is jump off. Jumping off is the only way off the diving board; all you can do is just freakin’ do it.” At that point in my journey, I think I’d crawled pretty far out on the diving board; all that was left for me now was to jump off it.

I got the rash in October or November of my junior year of high school. Finally, sometime in February, I stopped asking God to heal the rash on my neck. I went to a doctor who, after he gave me a weird look and asked me why it had taken me four months to come in about the rash on my neck, gave me some topical medication. It went away within a week.

Some time after that, I stopped asking God to help me demonstrate the truth of Christian Science, and started asking God to help me decide if He wanted me to be a Christian Scientist or not. This was by far the most painful part of the whole ordeal. I didn’t want to do what I wanted to do, I wanted to do what God wanted me to do. But that was exactly what I couldn’t determine. God, what do you want me to do? I asked in prayer, over and over and over again. And the answer was always the same: my own thoughts and emotions, a small wind, and silence. That was really what wrecked me: figuring out what God’s will was just seemed impossible.

Around this time, I called a friend of mine in tears. Our conversation went like this:

Friend: Hey.
Me: Hi.
Friend: How are you?
Me (crying): Not so good.
Friend: Hmm. Is there anything I can do for you?
Me: Tell me something that will make me laugh.
Friend: OK. OK. I have a goat.
Me (confused): You do?
(pause)
Friend: No. I just told you that to make you laugh.

I still remember how I laughed when she said all that, how good it felt to just be silly and stupid and take a break, if only for a moment, from the unrelenting seriousness of my spiritual life. It was like a cold breeze, the kind that makes you sit up a bit on a hot day and say, yeah, well, I suppose I should mow the lawn/go pick up the kids/go balance the checkbook/stop sitting here on the porch doing nothing. I don’t remember much else my friend said; I think she told me that questioning one’s religious beliefs was an ordinary part of growing up, and that whatever I decided was a good person. It probably didn’t help much, but she’d already done her part by then. Humor and friendship: so simple, yet they have been my salvation more times than I can count.

Sometime after that, I stopped asking God whether he wanted me to be a Christian Scientist or a Christian, and started asking God if he was real or not. If God couldn’t be bothered to answer my prayers about whether or not I should be a Christian Scientist, was I sure that God existed at all? Was ‘God’ just some concept I’d made up on my own? Was it just the sum total of the voices of my parents and Sunday school teachers and friends? Was the dialogue I assumed rather a monologue? What the fuck was happening?

Asking these questions is terrifying at any age. To really ask these questions-—that is, to ask them in such a way that you are open to whatever the answer is—-is pretty high-risk because the answer obviously matters a great deal. In my own case, I had to open myself up to the possibility I’d been wrong about the faith that I built my life around. Had it been a benevolent misconception, some childish artifact, like Santa Claus, best set aside with the other relics of my youth? I had a friend suggest this to me in college: “Doesn’t everyone lose their faith at some point in their teens?” She was right, in a way, which didn’t stop me from being incensed with her for failing to really pay attention to the particulars of my own story. (I was (sinfully) gratified when she subsequently used her Ivy League degree—-this is true-—to dance, along with her twin sister (!), in an act in a strip club (!!).)

Or was my faith, more frighteningly, a malevolent lie, something that had been holding me back, blinding me, keeping me from seeing the way the world really worked?

It was a strange, strange couple of months. You wake up in the morning and pray, OK, God, if you’re real, I really, really, need you to tell me whether or not I should remain a Christian Scientist. Or if I should become a Christian like my dad. Or if I should become a secular humanist. Thank you. And then you’re off to school and you’re working on the school paper and getting your homework done and rehearsing for the play and whatnot. The prosaic details of life never stop, of course.

When I was talking with Becca, I said the first type of courage was the type of courage needed to jump off the diving board when you’ve walked way out on it. The second kind of courage, I continued, is the kind of courage you need when you’re confronted with two different options-—two doors, say-—and you need to try to figure out which door is the best door, which door is the right door to walk through. This second situation was the one I found myself in. I had jumped off the diving board of Christian Science; the new question was, what the hell am I going to believe now? “Regular” Christianity (which seemed decidedly new and unfamiliar to me then)? Did I even believe in God anymore? If not, what did I believe in? Nothing?

Interestingly, however, if you hesitate long enough in a ‘picking a door’-type situation, eventually it becomes a ‘jumping off the diving board’-type situation. That is, if you delay making a decision long enough because you really can’t tell which decision is the right one to make, eventually you find yourself in a place where you have to make some kind of decision because, hey, life has to go on. It’s a situation I’ve found myself in more than once, and it was certainly the situation at that moment in my life. I remember sitting on the big easy chair in my room at home, night after night, thinking about my situation, and desperately begging God to give me some kind of signal. Nothing came. And eventually, I thought to myself, well, I have to make some kind of decision, even if it’s just me making my best guess about what to do. And I held my breath and made one.

It’s easy to melodramaticize what I went through. (Er, assuming I haven’t done so already.) Thousands of religious teens and young people question and lose their faith every year (yes, my friend was right, although she was an Ivy League stripper, so whatever). I suppose it’s par for the course; one might even suggest that it’s hard to have a very mature religious faith if you haven’t questioned or examined it on some level. Furthermore, I suppose by the standards of any objective evaluation of reality my struggles were relatively small. I had friends in high school whose parents got divorced, who came out as gay, who were clinically depressed, who flirted with suicide, who had drug and alcohol problems, who suffered through (and triumphed over) sexual abuse. Losing your faith….eh. Not so huge on some levels. Perhaps I was a bit too willing to cue the sad violin music for myself. I dunno. Other Christian Scientists might have gone through my experience and just said, eh, you win some and you lose some. No big deal.

But for better or for worse, I could not. My experiences closed that door in my heart.

I told my family and friends I had stopped being a Christian Scientist. I stopped going to church for a while. I took a deep breath. I continued to flirt with atheism. I did the best I could.

TRUE STORIES (iv, part one: some 'splaining to do)

2005-05-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

I grew up, along with my sister, as a Christian Scientist. Ours was a blended household of faith: my Mom, the Christian Scientist, and my Dad, the Presbyterian. (Actually, my dad would now describe himself as an ‘ecumenical orthodox Protestant,’ and currently worships at an American Baptist congregation, a complex description all too typical for my family, but I digress.) My parents did a good job of creating parental unity out of denominational diversity. They both agreed that going to church would be non-optional, but that they wouldn’t pressure either me or my sister to go to church with one parent or the other. It would be our choice. Both my sister and I wound up throwing our lot in with the Church of Christ, Scientist, largely out of laziness; as I recall, Sunday school at the CS church started an hour later than the Disciples of Christ church, which meant, hey, there we were.

I remember well my Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Moorhead. From the time I was in 7th grade on or so, I was the only student in her Sunday school class, and for an hour every week we’d meet and hash out the particulars of whatever it was we were going through. We worked through a big chunk of the Bible—we started with Genesis when I was in junior high, and worked through the entire Old Testament and had gotten well into the Gospels by the time I was driving. I think it was a huge gift to me—an opportunity to have a serious, consistent relationship with an older faith mentor. And it lasted forever!—a totally glacial kind of relationship, one that exerts its influence not only through intensity but through consistency over time. I still think about her—her intensity, the way she would push things, they way she always asked the hard questions. She had a big influence on me. By the time I was 17, I was a fairly devout Christian Scientist, a good kid: no drinking, no smoking, no sex, no drugs. The only thing that saved me from being a huge nerd was that I spent most of my early teens playing Dungeons and Dragons. (Oh, wait, no, that doesn’t prove my point at all. Um. Next paragraph.)

Christian Science is an unusual religion. Here’s how it breaks down as I see it today. (I should add the caveat that Christian Science, like any religion, is best studied at first on its own terms, and the best person to provide such an explanation is a practicing Christian Scientist. They have a wonderful website at spirituality.com, which I urge you to check out if you’re interested in what CSers say about their own faith. The always-delightful Wikipedia also has a helpful article on Christian Science. I should also add that since I haven’t been a practicing Christian Scientist in 8 years, my own memory on its precise teachings is a bit fuzzy and I’m happy to be corrected if I get things wrong.)

One of the central touchstones of my Sunday school education was from Genesis 1: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Christian Science advocates a very straightforward version of creation: God is perfect, and God’s creations are perfect, therefore humanity is perfect. Traditional Christian conceptions of humanity as being fundamentally in bondage to sin get re-worked here. Humanity is seen as sinless, and sin, disease, and death are all seen ultimately as illusory—not really reflective of human identity.

Christian Science teaches that every person is the child of God, and that since God is perfect, every person, rightly understood in the light of Christian Science, is—in an oft-used phrase—“God’s perfect child.” Sin, sickness, imperfection—all are illusory distortions of the character of divinely-created humanity, which is without imperfection. Christian Science, beginning with its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, has insisted that if this knowledge is rightly clung to mentally and spiritually, it will effect healing—healing of sinful behaviors, problems, and even physical illness. This practice of healing is pretty central to Christian Science faith and practice—their Wednesday night church services, for example, always contain some time for testimonies of healing. (I should also add here that I am not by any means skeptical of the claims of many Christian Scientists that they have experienced physical healing through their faith. I know of many such dramatic examples, including some within my own family.) Christian Scientists who are attempting to practice spiritual healing of health problems in their own lives usually refrain from seeking medical treatment for them, since that seems to contradict CS' assertion that health problems are not just healable but actually illusory.

It's this last point--refraining from medical treatment--that's probably the part about Christian Science you’ve heard the most about, due mostly to some sad stories that have made the media. A couple of times over the past few decades, CS parents with a seriously ill child chose spiritual healing over medical treatment for their child, the treatment did not bear fruit, and the child died. In some cases this has resulted in lawsuits or criminal action against the parents for neglect. I’ve no doubt that this kind of treatment did go on (I pray it doesn’t go on anymore), but in my experience it’s a sad distortion of the way most Christian Scientists utilize spiritual healing. Most of the Christian Scientists I knew (and know) weren't scary anti-medicine fascists who would glare at you if you went to a doctor; they were just humble, kind people who really believed that God brought healing into your life if you practiced Christian Science. (Indeed, in some of her writings, Mary Baker Eddy specifically exhorts Christian Scientists to seek medical attention if their spiritual practice isn't working.) This was especially the case in my own family life, where the only pressure to 'not go to doctors' was the pressure I put on myself.

Which was kind of the problem. When you take the strong commitment of Christian Scientists to practicing spiritual healing, especially over against traditional medical care, and you add my deepening commitment to Christian Science, plus the extreme earnestness and intensity of a teenager, it’s a pretty heady mix. In my case it was kind of a preparation for spiritual crisis, which hit me something fierce in my teens.

AN OPEN LETTER TO STARBUCKS AND BORDERS

2005-05-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hi, it’s me, Dave. I’m the guy who spends a ton of time in both of your fine establishments—drinking coffee, reading books, studying, doing whatever. I’m in your places all the time.

Here’s the deal: you have to stop playing the same music. It’s KILLING me. Maybe it’s fine for people who just occasionally go to Borders and/or Starbucks, y’know, once a week or twice a month. But not for me, OK? I go to your freaking establishments all the dang time. (Why? Because they’re not my house. Now be quiet.) Do you know how bothersome it is to be in Borders and hear Gillian Welch and then go to Starbucks the next day and hear the VERY SAME song? Do you know how annoying it is to be in Starbucks and hear that album of jazz ballads—you know, that one! With “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and “Between the Bars” on it! You know the one!—that I heard two weeks before in Borders? In Jersey?

Please. Please. For the sake of us quasi-employed 20 and 30 somethings who spend all our ‘spare’ time in your fine establishments: diversify your music! Break out of your focus-groupified demographically rooted playlists of what will rock our worlds! Just please, for God’s sake, play something DIFFERENT!

Ah, man. I’ve heard this song before.

LINKAGE

2005-05-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

Three interesting articles I noticed from last week that I wanted to make sure to link to. Two are from the NY Times: first, a profile of Senator Rick Santorum. Seems like a reasonably fair-handed treatment of the guy, which is a feat since he's a controversial guy and very, very deeply detested in some quarters. I'll say this: if he does have the social conscience that this article portrays him as having, I might have to raise my respect-o-meter on him from "raving insane raving lunatic" to "bad." Second, an article on evangelical outreach programs at Brown University. And from the Washington Post, an article on Philip Johnson, a man at the lead of the intelligent design movement, which some Christians think is challenge to Darwinianism as it's traditionally understood that actually has decent scientific backing, and others think is just kooky creationism in scientific garb.

Read them all and reflect on blue-state America's gentle, fumbling efforts to understand the strange and varied beast called American Christianity.

BACK! FROM OUTER SPACE!

2005-05-29T21:40:00.000-07:00

After a dizzying week of running around enjoying the company of friends, I've settled back in at my parents place again. Stay tuned for stories of my adventures with Gary, D. Roger Morehead (AKA "America's Young Theologian,") and the long-awaited next installment of True Stories. Also, I hate my life. Fortunate, my ass.

IMAGINARY EXAM QUESTION

2005-05-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

"Friendship is a long, slow, painful process of giving up your own autonomy." Discuss with specific reference to friendship and the life of the church.

IDYLLICA

2005-05-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

I sit in my the back yard of my parents home, enjoying unexpectedly free Wi-Fi and the sound of the kids next door playing. It's a Mayish 70 degrees, and the fading sunlight is glinting off the green grass, green bushes, and green trees in an entirely delighting way. My evening schedule involves a rigorous round of doing nothing--perhaps some journalling, coffee-consuming, or song-writing--perhaps followed by a pro bono screening of the Empire Strikes Back. (Yes, I did see that other installment in the Star Wars series; no, I wasn't blown away by it, but I didn't want to kill Lucas afterward either, so we'll call it even.)

It feels so incredible to be able to sleep as much (or nearly as much) as I want to. I've slept between 9-10 hours each of the past 4 nights, and it's been awesome. (Sorry, Dean.) The super-sleeper abilities I developed at seminary--where my constant exhaustion led me to do amazing things like, say, fall asleep during a movie for the first time ever in my whole life--have promptly disappeared in the wake of some decent rest. My only question now is: am I going to top off on sleep at some point? Is the nozzle going to stop pumping on sleep once the dispenser hits, say, 12 hours? Or do I drive a sleep SUV, the kind that needs to be filled and filled and refilled constantly? (And where on earth did I get this gas/sleep metaphor from? Sheesh...)

House-sitting for my parents while they're on vacation. Both cool and a little strange. More than one friend has noted the absence of parents and my total control over the house and jokingly suggested that I have a kegger. I'm not going to do that--I wasn't a kegger kind of guy even when keggers were the thing--but I've half a mind to throw a dinner party or something just to bring some people into the house. Going from my life at seminary--where I can't eat dinner or take a pee without running into someone I know--to this, where, unless I call a friend or take a train into the city, I can see absolutely no one I know for several days on end is a bit strange.

And yet--I still treasure the solitude and free time. Reading, writing, journalling, praying--I'm still not the expert I should be at making my free time what it should be instead of just fooling around. But I'm working at it, and it feels good to try.

CHICAGO

2005-05-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

Back home in the city of big shoulders. Today's itinerary:

6.45 AM: Wake up.
7.15-8.45: Frantically pack.
8.45-9: Purchase coffee, bananas, carrots, yogurt, sausage biscuit. Consume.
9 AM: Enter car (with Becca) to drive to Chicago.
10.15 AM- 1.15 PM: Drive to Chicago. Consume two containers of dried mango.
1.16 - 10.25 PM: Finish all dried mango. Lose will to live.
10.30: See possible parking spot, almost get in accident while trying to get into it, get honked at by cop car, perform illegal three-point turn. Magically obtain better, legal parking place.
10.30-11.44: Glass of wine, sour jelly beans, small talk with Becca and new friend Katie.
11.45: Feel heart break. Cry out in despair.

AAAAALMOST THERE.....

2005-05-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry yours truly has been flaky lately. It's finals: I don't shave, I rarely brush my teeth, and it's always a constant struggle to balance showering and sleep. (Yes, I am 25. It's a good thing to know my 'living life like a grownup' skills have developed since I was, y'know, 18.) Blogging occasionally gets short shrift as well.

Anyway: this Friday marks the end of finals. After the brutally thorough James Howell Moorhead ("long-distance" walks, Dr. Moorhead? Don't most people say "hikes"?) and Elsie Ann McKee have their way with me, I will collapse onto the ground and weep tears of joy. Whoops, no. I will go to the Princeton Battlefield state park with a bunch of buddies and max and relax all afternoon--after which I will begin blogging again, I promise. Look for more True Stories. In the meantime...well...almost there.

MOST DISTURBING MUSIC VIDEO FEATURING MR. T EVER.

2005-04-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Mr. T...uh, sings? raps? wears camo shorts that are alarming? Draw your own conclusions.

THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE PERSON OF NICK VAN SANTEN

2005-04-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

(That's Nick, aka "Chewbacca," on the left.) Yours truly is the one being groped on the right.

Nick has already been the recipient of one tribute from this blog; he is now the recipient of an unprecedented second tribute, in honor of his 23rd birthday, this past Saturday.

Nick, when I met your friend Nathan when he was here visiting, I didn’t have much time to talk, so I just pointed at you and said: “Nick’s a big monkey.” And I thought for a moment I’d said something awkward, until Nathan looked right back at me and simply nodded. “Yes,” he said, “he is.” Nick: you are a big, big monkey. Sometimes you don’t shower. Sometimes you don’t shave. Sometimes your body emits strange odors. Sometimes you unexpectedly hug me, for protracted periods of time that border on the awkward. Sometimes, rather than get up and walk the 10 feet from your room to the bathroom, you pee in a Nalgene bottle and store it until it’s full.

Sometimes you grope my nipples. Sometimes you go into Josh’s room at 10.30 at night to give him a ‘tuck-in,’ wherein you tuck in the fully-grown 26-year old Josh into his bed and pat his head before leaving. Sometimes you bust into Gary’s room at 1 AM, waking the clearly groggy, mildly irritated Gary with this question: “Dude, are you sleeping? Dude. I MISS you!” You refer to your car (a Subaru, naturally) as having “all-wheel sex appeal.”

You and I have odd, and oddly one-sided, conversations. They go like this:

Me: Hey.
Nick: BRUNER!
Me: Hey.
(pause)
Nick: Dude. You’re so LUTHERAN right now!!!! (hugs me)

We all still talk like you. This joke has not gotten old since I blogged about it in November. It’s perfectly acceptable to approach any member of the seminary community—well, not Iain Torrance, but almost anybody—and massage their arm, and say, “Hey, dude, are we cool?” Odds are, they’ll get the joke.

Nick. We (and I do mean we, an inclusive we, all of us here, who live with you, eat with you, study with you, and make fun of you, because of all of those other things) are so, so grateful for you. We’re grateful for your gifts of humor and intelligence, enthusiasm and compassion, and your loyal friendship. We miss you when you’re not around. You add a desperately needed dose of West-Coast-evangelical loving to this place. You are gifted, and we are gifted by you.

Happy birthday, homeslice.

PROPHETIC VOICES

2005-04-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

I am opposed to slavery, not because it enslaves the black man, but because it enslaves man. And were all the slaveholders in this land men of color, and the slaves white men, I would be as thorough and uncompromising an abolitionist as I now am; for whatever and whenever I may see a being in the form of a man, enslaved by his fellowman, without respect to his complexion, I shall lift my voice to plead his cause, against all the claims of his proud oppressor; and I shall do it not merely from the sympathy which man feels towards suffering man, but because God, the living God, whom I dare not disobey, has commanded me to open my mouth for the dumb, and to plead the cause of the oppressed.

Bishop Daniel Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1839.

Citation from God of the Oppressed, by James Cone.

I COMMAND RESPECT IN ALL I DO...

2005-04-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

...is my entry in the caption contest for this photo. Please contribute.

BASEBALL RETURNS TODAY

2005-04-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Thank heaven.

This is the year. Really. Go Cubs!

TRUE STORIES (iii)

2005-03-26T17:31:00.000-08:00

When I was in fifth grade, they made us run a mile in P.E. class. Since you already know that I was a little bit pudgy, and not exactly given to physical activity, I’m sure you can imagine how well the call to run vigorously around the track several times went over with me. It went over like an atom bomb. I’m pretty sure they told us a couple days in advance— maybe they expected that kids would stay after school and run laps just for fun, to prepare!—and I definitely remember the day before coming home and thinking to myself: crap.

It took me sixteen minutes to run one mile. If you’re not acquainted with running speeds, taking sixteen minutes to run one mile falls somewhere between ‘exceptionally slow’ and ‘not actually moving.’ Nowadays, I do a mile in about 9.5 minutes; fleet-footed seminarian Zach can do a mile in about 7 minutes, if he wants to break a sweat. But it took me sixteen, agonizing, huffing and puffing minutes. My friend Tyler, a very fast runner, lapped me sometime between minutes 5 and 7. He may have actually screamed “MEEP MEEP” as he passed me.

Grade school is a ruthless introduction to social Darwinism. The weak stay with their own kind; the strong prey upon the weak; the weak prey upon the weaker. I was one of two fat kids in my fifth grade class; the other one was a girl. I don’t remember which one of us finished the mile first—I’m sure we were both towards the back of the pack—but I remember thinking, “OK. David. You’re going to do really terribly at this run. But you can at least beat the other fat kid!” When you know you can’t really excel, you try to compensate by making sure the few people further down the ladder than you at least know their place.

One of my parents’ favorite verses of Scripture is Philippians 4:13, “For I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I’d been grousing about having to run this mile to my mother earlier that week, and I’m pretty sure that she quoted it to me, probably encouraging me to remember that God was with me even in PE class. (Which, in retrospect, was probably a pretty important move pastorally; I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only person who’s ever despaired of God’s existence while attempting to climb a rope ladder or run a mile.) And I did quote it to myself, out loud, through increasingly short breaths, as I ran: “I can do all things (gasp) through Christ (gasp) who strengthens me. I can do all things (gasp) through Christ (gasp) who strengthens me.”

I’m not sure what I expected to accomplish by quoting that Scripture to myself. I don't know if I had the most reasonable expectations: would the run seem shorter? Would I move faster? Would teacher, miraculously, wave his hands in the air and say, “ah, forget it, just stop running!” None of these things happened. I still a pudgy nerd-child running laps, only now I was quoting Scripture to myself. So, as was (is) my wont in times of frustration or stress, I started swearing. “Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Shitfuck. Fuckshit. Fuckfuckfuck.”

Only I didn’t want to just swear, and cease preaching Scripture to myself. So, in an interesting adaptation of the text, I mixed my curses in with Paul’s own words: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Shitfuck. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Shitfuck. Fuck. I can do all things…” I said that to myself over and over again for the last few minutes of my sixteen-minute odyssey, until I crossed the finish line and collapsed into a breathless nerd-heap.

Story of my life.

Many are the long miles I’ve run, in one way or another, while clinging to the reality of God’s presence and power and love for me. Sometimes, Paul’s promise—that God is alive and at work in me and through me, helping me grow and overcome obstacles I never thought possible—seems incredibly real and powerful and persuasive. And sometimes there’s just the sound of me huffing and puffing and cursing out loud.

And sometimes—maybe most of the time—there are both sounds at once, like two different conversations going on in my head. My prayers and my longing for God and my desire for peace and my frustration and anger and my embarrassment and my skeptical, questioning heart are all mixed up together like some bizarro spiritual milkshake.

I think for a long time my attitude about life’s challenges was: I hate this, but I’ll get through it. And when I’m done with it, I’ll thank God for helping me get through with it. But I’m discovering more these days that that’s a fool’s errand.

I once asked my mother what giving birth was like. She said, “Well, it’s like at soccer practice, when they make you run laps around the park. And you run three, and you think that you’re done, only when you get back, they tell you that you have to run another one. And then another one. And then another one.” Birth may be like that; my life definitely is like that. I'm always amused by my sense of entitlement in life; it's like I expect God to have set the overall level of difficulty for my life to 'medium' instead of 'hard.' But it doesn't work like that. In real life, as in birth, there's always another lap.

And I guess I’ve finally realized that unless I learn to be grateful for the good things that the challenges bring out—even, in some perverse way, to be grateful for the challenges themselves, to say, “I have to run a mile! Thank God!”—I’ll always be stuck waiting. Waiting for the day when I don’t have to run a mile, drag my ass out of bed, work for a living, have fights with friends, feel stressed out about one thing or another, feel confused, feel inadequate. That day is not coming. That day is not coming. All there is to do is run your mile as best you can, and learn, however slowly, to rejoice in the running.

YESSSSSS!

2005-03-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

After months of cajoling, persuading, arguing, joking, subtle and not-so-subtle hints, and straight-out arm-twisting, it's finally happened. Becca Sanders has cracked and started a blog, Groping for God. I invite you to check it out; she's already attempted to justify the rather salacious name of her blog, and engaged in some pretty deep reflections on Psalm 88 and the art of lamenting. I expect great things from a woman so reflective a reader of Scripture, so skilled a comment-writer, and so deep a lover of Smores. (mmmm...smores....) Go, check it out.

JESUS FILMS

2005-03-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

Wow. These are amazing. Check 'em out. The third one, which was probably just intended to be goofy, is actually a pretty brilliant satire about some important themes.

Via Cleave, who got them from Dean.

CREEPY RABBITS

2005-03-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

Here. My gosh. Also, here is a picture of a baby photoshopped to look like a famous fascist dictator, which I inexplicably found very funny. Both via Screenhead.

TRUE STORIES (ii)

2005-03-15T17:31:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid—I don’t remember how old, maybe in kindergarten, maybe second grade—I was a bit chubby. I was a big kid. My favorite thing to eat when I was a child was anything that had been deep-fried and slathered with ketchup; come to think of it, I still don’t mind that type of food nowadays, although mercifully I eat much less of it.

Obviously, however, getting by on fried food and Taco Bell (another childhood favorite…Burrito Supremes…yum) is not a healthy diet for a young kid. And at some point, my pediatrician expressed concern that I might have high blood pressure. She recommended that I go over to the hospital in our area and have some blood drawn, just so they could double-check my blood pressure and make sure there wasn’t anything unusual going on.

In addition to being a bit of a tubbo, I was also very, very squeamish about needles as a child. Pretty much every time I’d go to the doctor as a kid and would need a shot, I’d freak out—crying, screaming, the whole bit. (Seeing a pattern here?) Ditto for every time I needed to have a cavity filled: there would usually be one knock-down, drag-out, rage-filled tantrum before I finally put myself in the car and went. I think it took me a while to grasp what was happening to me; it’s entirely possible my parents told me about getting blood drawn a week in advance and I just forgot or didn’t really listen. But needless to say, when we arrived at the hospital, and dad started talking about needles going in and the blood coming out, I flipped my shit.

I absolutely flipped my shit. Right there in the waiting room at the hospital. Crying, screaming, ranting, raving. I used every single childhood rhetorical strategy (and, come to think of it, passed through every step in the stages of dying): denial (“No! No! No!”), anger (“I hate you! I HATE YOU SO MUCH!”), bargaining (“Can’t we come back in a week and do this?”), plucking the heartstrings (“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t make me do this”), depression (“[sobs]”). But my dad, in his quiet, utterly implacable way, would not be moved.

He told me several years later that, numerous times during our 90 minutes in the waiting room, the hospital nurses came up to him and said, “Look, this sorta thing happens all the time. Why don’t we just take him and hold him down and get it over with? You can be outta here in ten minutes.” But he said no.

My father is not a perfect man, but he does have some great strengths. Among them I count the fact that he is good at being quite firm in a very loving way. He was that way on that day. He may have been frustrated, he may have raised his voice a bit. But he did not give me the third degree, or grab me by the arm and drag me into the nurse’s office. He just looked at me, talked to me, listened to me, and insisted: we need to do this. And if we’re going to do it, we need to do it now. So let’s get it over with.

He kept saying, over and over again: David, you have courage. You can do this. You have courage. It seemed like a novel idea, because I was certainly not feeling very brave at the time. Actually, the mere idea that I possessed courage seemed preposterous right then, given that I was probably wiping away the rivulets of snot running down my face because I’d been crying so hard, because the bad nurse-lady wanted to stick a big-ass needle in my arm. But he kept at it: David, you have courage. You can do this. I will be right with you, and so will God. You can do this.

I marvel at my good fortune sometimes. It wasn’t simply that I had good parents. It was that both my parents not only embodied love themselves, but pointed to the God who is love, whose love for me was real, strong, concrete, just like theirs—yet transcended anything I could imagine, ask, or think. That day, and throughout my childhood, Dad insisted—quietly, patiently, but firmly and persistently—that, though I might be afraid, terrified, shivering with hurt or resentment or loneliness, that none of those things were the final word. God was the final word.

Of course, I eventually got the blood drawn. Five-year old me vs. my dad in a contest of wills was like your uncle Lester playing Deep Blue. After 90 minutes (if it was that little) in the waiting room with me, I finally capitulated. Dad and I walked hand in hand into the nurse’s office, where she tied a small rubber cord around my upper arm. I closed my eyes, and dad and I began to pray, together, the Lord’s Prayer. We said it together: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come…

Somewhere around “thy will be done,” I hissed to dad, through closed eyes, “When is she going to stick it in?” And dad said, “David, they’re almost done.” The whole thing was over, with a minimum of fuss, ten seconds later. There was a vial full of my blood to prove it.

Emotionally spent as I was, I would have been happy to just climb back into the station wagon and go home. But Dad wouldn’t let the moment go by without making sure I’d gotten the point. “David,” Dad said, “you had courage.” It is typical of my dad that after all the work he’d done, convincing his stubborn, scaredy-cat son to suck it up and do what needed to be done—that he allowed the moment to feel like my triumph. You should feel free to let your imagination roam a little bit when imagining the influence such an event, and such fatherly praise, can have on a little boy.

I marvel at my good fortune sometimes. I came home that day with the biggest bandage I’d ever had on my arm, with a small piece of gauze right where they’d drawn blood. I swelled with pride when I showed my mother. It sat on my arm like a medal on my chest, or a scar earned fighting in a good cause.

WORST. WAY TO WAKE UP. EVER.

2005-03-14T04:32:00.000-08:00

I'll take "painful charlie horse on a day when you have a midterm after having gotten only five hours of sleep" for $1000, Alex.

TRUE STORIES (i)

2005-03-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, my mother enrolled me in pre-school. The first day of classes arrived, and she took me off to school. Once I understood that she was going to leave me in this strange place, by myself, for several hours, I immediately flipped out. Screaming. Crying. Hitting. Kicking. Eventually mom had to promise me she would see me in a few hours, give me a kiss on the cheek, and bolt for the doors, leaving me in the arms of my pre-school teachers. She presumably spent several hours at home wondering if she’d traumatized me for life (Dave’s future therapist: “So, you feel abandoned by your mother?”).

Much greater the irony, then, when she arrived at pre-school to pick me up to find a perfectly content David, screwing around with Legos or reading a story or playing with blocks or doing whatever. I had settled in quite nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I was actually rather reluctant to go. Intransigent. Irritable. Well, angry, actually. Crying. Screaming. And, finally, in a display of recalcitrance that I find both impressive and embarrassing, actually clinging to the doorframe, screaming “No! No!” as my mother attempted to pry me off it so she could get me in the station wagon and take me home and feed me applesauce.

Many are the good things in my life I have been dragged into kicking and screaming.

NERDERY

2005-03-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

For those of you who aren't fond of the OC, here's the new Star Wars III trailer. (Click on the button that says 'trailers.') Via Zach, whose nerdacious fondness for Star Wars rivals even my own.

THINGS IT HURTS TO DO

2005-03-03T23:28:00.000-08:00

When you've gone weight-lifting with Nick, and now your triceps are KILLING you:

Brush your teeth. Put food in your mouth. Take your backpack on or off. Type. Roll over in bed. Wave to people. Put a bagel in the toaster. Reach for the soap, shampoo, or conditioner in the shower. Towel yourself off. Take or remove books from your bookshelf. Get yourself coffee.

Heal, stupid muscles!

MY NEW BEST FRIEND

2005-02-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Google maps. Holy. Crap. So. Good. (EDITED TO ADD: Link now works. Sorry.)

MUSIC QUIZ ANSWERS

2005-02-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everybody who chimed in. The hands-down winner here is Seminarian Zach, who, despite stooping to GOOGLING a few of the answers (for shame!) still knew an astonishing 10+ of them off the top of his head, garnering him the winner's wreathe. More quizzes to come, easier next time.

1. I belong/in the service of a queen/i belong/anywhere but in-between.
ANSWER: "Rain King," Counting Crows

2. you are/18 year old girl/who live in small city in japan.
ANSWER: "Across the Sea," Weezer (from my new favorite album)

3. It was 20 years ago today...
ANSWER: "St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band," the Beatles

4. i can't find my way without following you/i can't find my way without following you
ANSWER: "Nation of Slaves," Joseph Arthur

5. we've always been out of our minds.
ANSWER: "Rain Dogs," Tom Waits

6. freedom looks like too many choices.
ANSWER: "New York, " U2

7. there are things we cannot know/invisible hands that guide the show/from up above.
ANSWER: "Invisible Hands," Joseph Arthur

8. you been taking it hard/i know it's hard/i'm not lying, sure, it seems like i'm trying to get back at you...
ANSWER: "Say You Miss Me," Wilco

9,. the body of venus, with arms!
ANSWER: "Touch Too Much," Best Rock Band Ever

10. i'm old enough to know that peopl waiting on some big sign/should quit their waiting on the divine/divine is what's in your mind.
ANSWER: "Walking To Do," Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

11. gonna drive down to atlanta/live out this fanta-sy....
ANSWER: "Look at Miss Ohio," Gillian Welch

12. the train came in/it had to leave again/and romeo pulled away.
ANSWER: "Romeo and the Lonely Girl," Thin Lizzy

13. i'd tell all my friends but they'd never believe me/they'd think that i'd finally lost it completely
ANSWER: "Subterranean Homesick Alien," Radiohead

14. i have cursed thy rod and staff/they no longer comfort me.
ANSWER: "Love Rescue Me," U2

15. i got a hunger and i can't seem to get full.
ANSWER: "Lover I Don't Have to Love," Bright Eyes

16. i saw judas iscariot carrying john wilkes booth.
ANSWER: "Down There By the Train," Johnny Cash (written by Tom Waits)

17. got slicked-back hair/skin-tight jeans/cadillac car and teenage dreams!
ANSWER: "Rocker," AC/DC

18. these are the days that i've been missing/give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.
ANSWER: "These Are the Days," Jamie Cullum

19. i gotta know tonight/are you alone tonight?
ANSWER: "Hysteria," Def Leppard (hey! it came up on iTunes!)

20. now some say he's doing the obituary mambo/now some say he's hanging on the wall/perhaps this yarn is the only thing that holds this man together/perhaps he was never here at all.
ANSWER: "Swordfishtrombone," Tom Waits

RECIPE FOR DISASTER (?)

2005-02-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

Saturday night, the plan: 1. A trip for good (bad) Mexican food, with Andrea and Zach. 2. A Blockbuster run, with the aim of renting the worst (best) movie possible. Said movie to be screened accompanied by Sour Patch Kids and a libation or two.

Might not qualify as "BEST. NIGHT. EVER." But still a pretty fun way to pass an evening. Andrea, Zach, and I eventually narrowed down our choices for Worst Movie in Blockbuster to two: "Vampire vs. Zombie," (IMDB user comments: "deceitful garbage," "three thumbs down," and "pile of steaming feces") and the eventual winner, "Boa vs. Python." (IMDB user comments: "It's scary...that this movie got made," "I like to think that someone got fired over this movie.") We were a bit nervous about our selections; while they both looked genuinely terrible, and therefore potentially enjoyable, we were keenly aware that it's only one small step from "terrible but enjoyable to make fun of" to "just terrible." (My sister's comment: "Bad food + bad movies = recipe for disaster.") We eventually chose "Boa Vs. Python" after being unable to read the description on the back of the DVD box without breaking into hysterics.

Despite our anxiety, Boa Vs. Python produced a lot of unintentional comedy, featuring the titular CGI boa and python, *terrible* acting, lots of guys with flamethrowers, a guy who attempts to kill a giant snake with a crossbow, *completely* superfluous nudity (of course), and a ton of characters who, when introduced, prompted comments of "oh yeah, that guy's definitely going to die." Also, quality acting work from such leading lights as David Hewlett and Kirk B.R. Woller (he was 'Comanche Pilot' in Hulk!).

As you might be able to tell, my first homework-free Lenten sabbath passed relatively easily. I hope to do a little bit more with these Sabbaths than watch computer-generated super-snakes kill each other while my Grilled Stuffed Burrito gurgles in my stomach, but everything has to start somewhere.

LENTEN DEVOTION (pt. II)

2005-02-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Adam, who was inspired by Amy, my Lenten devotion will be this: taking a Sabbath from homework every Saturday. It might seem wussy to those of you not caught in the iron grip of 5.5 classes (oh, Langdon Gilkey! I hardly knew ye!), but I think it's significant enough to feel like a good observance. And, per many suggestions, I think it'll both draw me into community and be meaningful in light of Easter. (That's the connection between feast and fast that commenter DRM [a troublemaker if there ever was one] talked about.)

Anyway, thanks for ideas.

THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF ROCK MUSIC

2005-02-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

And while I'm quizzing you, check out #10 in the music quiz: "I'm old enough to know that people waiting on some big sign/should quit their waiting on the divine./Divine is what's in your mind."

Great line, from an artist I greatly admire (whose identity will remain shrouded in mystery, until such time as my apparently woefully musically illiterate readership guesses his/her/its identity).

But here's my question: what do we think of that line as a theological or spiritual assertion? *Should* we quit waiting for some big sign? Without wanting to tip my own hand too much at this point, I think this line works as a work of poetry, and I think it's a provocative, thought-provoking assertion, but I'm not sure I totally agree with it 100%. But I want to hear what you think--hit me up.

LENTEN DEVOTION

2005-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Dear blog-readers:

Can anyone help me think of a suitable Lenten devotion? I'm hard-up, beyond the usual ideas relating to food (give up coffee, meat, sugar, etc.). Any other good ideas--either just general ideas which are good, or ideas that might be well-suited to me? (NOTE: 'giving up being a nerd' is not an option, nor is 'giving up being messy.' Sorry.)

Thanks.

MUSIC QUIZ

2005-02-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

Did one of these last year. Now that I have an iPod, I can actually do it, as opposed to just picking out random songs that I've been listening to.

The first 20 songs that randomly came up on my iPod (well, actually on iTunes, but same thing). Selected lyric from each song. Some of these are first lines of songs, others are not. Winner gets a prize. Prize probably = big hug. But play anyway.

1. I belong/in the service of a queen/i belong/anywhere but in-between.

2. you are/18 year old girl/who live in small city in japan.

3. It was 20 years ago today...

4. i can't find my way without following you/i can't find my way without following you

5. we've always been out of our minds.

6. freedom looks like too many choices.

7. there are things we cannot know/invisible hands that guide the show/from up above.

8. you been taking it hard/i know it's hard/i'm not lying, sure, it seems like i'm trying to get back at you...

9,. the body of venus, with arms!

10. i'm old enough to know that peopl waiting on some big sign/should quit their waiting on the divine/divine is what's in your mind.

11. gonna drive down to atlanta/live out this fanta-sy....

12. the train came in/it had to leave again/and romeo pulled away.

13. i'd tell all my friends but they'd never believe me/they'd think that i'd finally lost it completely

14. i have cursed thy rod and staff/they no longer comfort me.

15. i got a hunger and i can't seem to get full.

16. i saw judas iscariot carrying john wilkes booth.

17. got slicked-back hair/skin-tight jeans/cadillac car and teenage dreams!

18. these are the days that i've been missing/give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.

19. i gotta know tonight/are you alone tonight?

20. now some say he's doing the obituary mambo/now some say he's hanging on the wall/perhaps this yarn is the only thing that holds this man together/perhaps he was never here at all.

BACK

2005-02-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry about that. Especially if your name rhymes with "Pack" and you've been bothering me a lot about how I don't blog anymore.

CAFFEINE SUCKS

2005-01-26T14:41:00.000-08:00

After my heavy caffeine use a few weeks ago, I'm finding it difficult to scale back down to a more modest level of caffeine use. I spent this afternoon with a mild headache, while wandering around slightly disoriented. I gotta tell you--those 20 oz. containers of Diet Pepsi in the dining hall are looking miiiighty attractive right now....

Oh, oh, coffee: what a harsh mistress you are!

ON GLACIERS AND GARDENS

2005-01-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

Two metaphors I've been working with lately to think about spirituality are glaciers and gardening.

Glaciers are enormous mountains of ice which moved across the primeval countryside millenia ago, carving out valleys and plains and squishing together terrain to make mountains. All of this seems like a quite dramatic and speedy process to us now, looking back, but at the time it took hundreds (if not thousands) of years for all of it to happen. Each glacier, if I recall correctly, moved something like an inch a year. Your Rocky Mountains are the result, not of a cataclysmic overnight glacier mash-up, but of many thousands of years of slow movement. Like Red says in one of my favorite movies : geology is just the study of pressure and time.

Spirituality is the same way. Our spiritual journeys happen....very....slowly. And they happen on their own timetable, not ours. At times, our interior lives may seem to be static, unchanging--but change is always occurring, even though it may happen at a speed we perceive only with difficulty. Yet we must not underestimate the significance of this subtle but powerful momentum--our spiritual and interior lives shape who we are and how we live our lives in powerful ways. The sudden moment of realization--our unexpected temper, our surprising selfishness, or the unexpected wellspring of gratitude, serenity, peace--may seem to come out of the blue, but many times they are the spiritual equivalent of the Rockies. Pressure, and time.

Gardens: same idea, different metaphor. If somebody came to you and said, "Hey, I want to grow a garden," and you said, "Well, I can lend you some seed, and a hose," and they said, "No, no, I want to grow a GARDEN," you'd look at them funny. Because while the seed and the hose are not the garden, they are the implements you'd use to cultivate one.

Now, in the real world, if the person didn't have any time, they might run off to Jimmy's Green Thumb and just buy some whatever to plant in the garden tomorrow afternoon. This is where spirituality differs from gardening: you can't buy a sense of God's presence at Jimmy's Green Thumb. There is no substitute for the hose and the seed here--for the slow, patient, sometimes boring or seemingly inconsequential process of prayer, reflection, and spiritual discipline that cultivates one's inner life. Like gardening, it may seem not to bear fruit for a while; like gardening, it is a process which is in many ways out of our control. Yet this process of cultivation is the only one we've got.

And we all know how powerful plants can be. Carl Sandburg expressed this sentiment in more poetic words than I:

"Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives."

IT"S OFFICIAL:

2005-01-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

I'm not interested in hiding it anymore.

I hate Jackson Browne's music. I feel about him the way the Dude felt about the Eagles. It's terrible. It's wretched. It's miserable. It gives me the shingles. It's just very, very, very poor in quality. I hate his voice; I hate his stupid, jangly, hey-look-i-can-play-the-guitar melodies. OK, I'll admit: "She Must Be Somebody's Baby," is a decent song. It's got a hummable chorus. But let me tell you, Mr. Imaginary Interlocutor, all the hummable choruses of the world will never, ever make up for all the nights when I've been out driving, scanning the radio for something to listen to on the drive home, something decent, please, like Zeppelin or the Stones or maybe even Pearl Jam, even, and ALL THERE IS is "Running on Empty." AGAIN.

I hate what he did to Warren Zevon's fine song "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" when he covered it. Jackson Browne's cover of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" should be called "Poor Poor Pitiful Jackson Browne". And don't get me started about that stupid 'e' at the end of his last name.

Even looking at that stupid picture of him from the link above, (or this one, which judging from the url seems to have been taken at a WINERY, or this one, where he appears to be attempting to determine if the music award he's just received does, in fact, contain any money) just makes me want to stride up to him, punch him in the face, and say, "Take that, Jackson Brown, crappy music-maker!"

Rant concluded.

UP, STOMACHACHE!

2005-01-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

Today's life lessons:

Lesson 1: Do not purchase Sour Jacks thinking they are 'just the same' as Sour Patch Kids (AKA The World's Greatest Confection). THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. They are far inferior.

Lesson 2: Do not eat most of a ginormous container of them.

Lesson 3: Do not chase them with a liter of water.

Lesson 4: Do not do any of 1, 2, or 3 while watching Rushmore with Adam Cleaveland.

FINALS: THE AFTERMATH

2005-01-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

NAME MY CAR!

2005-01-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the administration of "Up, lummox!" hereby announces a contest:

NAME DAVE'S NEW CAR

While I was home for Christmas/New Years, I purchased a car. It's a 2002 Honda Civic, silver in color, which I am planning to drive into the ground over the next five years or so.

This car needs a nickname. Help me out here. Photos are currently unavailable, but might be within reach in a week or so if it would help with the inspiration process.

Sincere thanks,

Up, lummox! management

DONE!

2005-01-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

God be praised. More later.

IN THE STUDY CAVE

2005-01-04T18:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas break has regrettably expired, in a flurry of packing, travelling, and joyous returning to Princeton. My joy, however, will not be complete until we get our gosh-dang finals out of the way. (YES, we have not taken finals yet; NO, we are NOT pleased about it.) Please expect radio silence on this end until at LEAST 1/12; anything between now and then will probably just be me venting my spleen about how busy I am. In the meantime, uh, there's always the paper of record.

RHETORICAL QUESTION

2004-12-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

Why, oh why, couldn't I have purchased this album instead of this album when I was in 11th grade?

My life would be totally different.

R-I-S-K

2004-12-28T21:33:00.000-08:00

Look, said the Old Fart, do you believe in God or not?

The Old Fart is a friend of mine. (He’s making his debut appearance on my blog; he works at a profession in which he is required to make stabs at respectability from time to time, hence the pseudonym.) We were discussing whether or not I was going to do C.P.E. this coming summer. CPE, for those not in the know, stands for ‘Clinical Pastoral Education.’ In CPE one interns, usually for a summer, at a hospital or clinic while working as a chaplain. It’s supposed to help teach pastoral skills, caring for people, knowing how to be helpful in a crisis, etc. It also is excellent for scaring the piss out of aspiring ministers.

Princeton Seminary, where I am a student, doesn’t require M.Div students to do CPE. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which I am a member, does require its prospective clergy to do so. Usually, they do it right after their first year of seminary, which for me will be this coming summer. I just found this out a couple of months ago, and, as usual, didn’t act on this information for quite a while. Finally, right before Christmas break, I got it together, put together some applications, and mailed them out to several hospitals in Chicago with the intention of interviewing with them over Christmas break.

I did just that last week. I interviewed at three major hospitals for CPE positions. And it finally hit me: you mean I (me, myself) will probably be doing CPE this summer? I’m not sure I’m prepared to do CPE this summer! Holy balls!

It was a combination of failure to really explore what CPE meant, and a failure to really meditate on the reality that I was actually going to do CPE—ignorance combined with denial, always a powerful force to reckon with. At one hospital I interviewed at, a chaplain-in-residence took me on a tour of the facility, a sprawling hospital spread across several buildings. We did the whole nine yards: emergency room (quiet at 3 PM on a Tuesday), pre-surgery anesthesia room (people on stretchers, tubes all over, moaning and groaning), maternity and delivery. Neo-natal intensive care: tiny, tiny red-skinned babies in big plastic containers to keep them warm and safe. I met a female chaplain who was assigned to that unit mostly-full time; I marvel at the courage required to work in such a place on a daily basis. Surgical intensive care (chaplain tour guide: “a lot of people die in here.”)

As a CPE chaplain, you do on-call work similar to what a doctor does: you spend the night at the hospital and if anybody needs your attention at 3 AM, they haul you out of bed. Regarding on-call nights, my tour guide and I had the following exchange:

Me: so, if someone calls you at 3 in the morning, what is it about, usually?
Him: Eh. Deaths, usually.
Me: (freaking out)

Each place I interviewed at seemed eager to have me, which was great—only I was pretty daunted by the idea of actually working there.

It’s been a long time since anyone close to me has died, or since I’ve attended a loved one in hospital. I remember visiting my ailing grandpa in the hospital when I was in 7th or 8th grade, but that was a long time ago. Just working in a hospital as an orderly or peon would be pretty challenging for me; blood, screaming, tubes, bed-pans, all of these are new and unfamiliar.

Working as clergy would also be new; there’s no youth ministry in my background, no preaching to the high school kids, no assisting in worship. I’m definitely still ‘in discernment’ about whether or not this whole ordained ministry thing is for me, and of late I’ve been leaning towards ‘no.’ Any job where I step into a clerical role would be a challenge. Much more challenging, then, the task of combining those two roles, of stepping into a hospital situation as clergy, as the spiritual vanguard, as someone who’s willing to stand up, examine closely the bedpans, tubes, scars, screams, and seizures, and say “Yes, God exists, and yes, God is working in this situation.”

Scary. Still scary several days after my interview. Probably scary for most people, which helps.

Which brings us to the Old Fart. Old Fart and I have a congenially contentious relationship, and when I expressed some of my worries about doing CPE, he pushed me to take a closer look at what assumptions my fear bespoke. Look, he said, peering at me through a cloud of cigarette smoke and coffee steam, do you believe in God or not? Do you, in fact, believe that God will even take care of schmucks like you? Do you believe that God is present even when people are screaming, crying their eyes out, in severe pain, wetting the bed? Because if you believe in God at all, then you must believe that God is present and working in those situations as well, as much as they give you the screaming heebie-jeebies. (The Fart being a truculent sort, I’m sure he threw in several four-letter words as well, but you get the gist of it.)

It was good advice. Summer CPE could be a good experience. I’m still extremely leery of the whole thing—and I want to do want to be careful about biting off more than I can chew. I’ll definitely be shadowing some chaplains at Princeton General this semester. But I keep thinking about what a quotation my brilliant friend Matt once shared with me, I think from John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Church: “How do you spell faith? R-I-S-K.” That willingness to climb out on a limb a little bit, to take a prayerfully considered leap into the unknown, is what faith is all about—at least if it’s a faith that’s distinguishable from good bourgeois manners and nice thoughts—and it’s a willingness I want to work at cultivating.

AN OPEN LETTER TO STARBUCKS:

2004-12-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

Stop it. Just STOP IT. STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT.

STOP playing music that I really like. You are making feel OLD. I know you are not trying to hurt my feelings, but that is not the point. I am only 25, and I do NOT have to put up with feeling like an old person, just because you want to play the music I like.

I can handle hearing my favorite music in, say, a small, independent coffee shop, where the bathroom is not clean and the employees have spiky hair and tattoos. But not in STARBUCKS. Yet just today you played a run of songs ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "I Still Miss Someone," "Dear Someone," "Red-Headed Stranger,") that I would have been delighted to hear pop up on iTunes on my computer. Are you trying to drive me insane?

Starbucks. I'm serious. Please, please, stop.

Sincerely,
Dave

RHETORICAL QUESTION:

2004-12-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

Why wasn't I told sooner about this? It combines virtually all my interests in one place.

A LONG FACE IS NOT A MORAL DISINFECTANT

2004-12-19T22:51:00.000-08:00

(This title quote is from C.S. Lewis.)

It has taken me quite a while to begin to distinguish between the virtue of being convicted of one’s sinfulness and the sin of disliking oneself. I am finally starting to get the hang of it a tiny bit.

I used to take for granted the fact that I felt myself very inadequate in a number of areas of my life meant that I understood that I was a sinner. After all, I disliked any number of things about myself: the way I looked. My sensitivity to criticism. The fact that I’m easily frustrated sometimes. My inability to beat Dragon Warrior for the NES. My occasional poor planning and organization. These things so frustrated me, even enraged me, that they were difficult to bear. I took a kind of solace in the fact that, even though I was horribly flawed, at least I understood that I was horribly flawed and I could ask for God’s help. It took me a long time to realize that not only did my disliking myself for these traits not constitute awareness of being a sinner, but it actually functioned as a cunning smokescreen for realizing what my actual sins were. It’s a pretty savvy defense, actually: look! I feel shitty about myself! Therefore, how can you be mad at me for being (selfish, lazy, irritable, critical, etc.).

Lewis, in the title quote, nails it: a long face is not a moral disinfectant. In my case, not only did feeling bad about myself prevent me from taking effective action to try to be a better person, I think it actually prevented me from even realizing some of the ways I did behave badly. It’s taken me a lot of thinking the past few years to see the ways that my sense of inadequacy failed to protect me from acting hurtfully or selfishly towards those I love, and doing all kinds of other dumb things. I’m grateful for some of the modest ways I’ve glimpsed that my disliking myself actually hinders my being loving, using my gifts, and following God.

A few years ago, I befriended a person who I believed to be much cooler than I was. I was actually a little surprised that this person would have anything to do with me at all, but they seemed to like me, so we hung out. And once I got past the initial stages of self-criticism (‘this person is so out of my league…what the hell are you thinking, dumbass?’) and self-congratulation (‘hey! They like you! You’re pretty hip after all!’), I immediately moved onto a third stage: suspicion. I started to question why this person was hanging out with me. ‘This person isn’t very hip after all,’ I said to myself. ‘They’re actually pretty lame in a number of ways.’ Soon I had downgraded this person several notches in my mental databank of hipness. (Yes, I do have one, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.) It was a small incident, but when I reflected on it, it spoke powerfully to me. It was easier for me to accept that the ‘hip’ person was actually a loser because they hung out with me than it was to accept that my low self-esteem might be off-base. It took me a while to figure that one out, and when I did, it was kind of a “whoa” moment.

Self-hatred and egotism are twin fruits of the same plant. In both cases, the self is still where all the attention goes. My flaws were so distressing to me, in part, because I had such ridiculously high standards for myself, standards that bespoke an unwillingness to accept myself as a flawed, imperfect human being—which is just what accepting your sinfulness is.

There is, of course, a theological tension between Christian notions of human sinfulness and psychological notions of mental health and self-esteem. The first says, “Despite my very best efforts, I can do nothing on my own to please God. I am inadequate.” The second says, “I’m an OK person. I do my best, and that is good enough.” I don’t believe these notions are fundamentally at odds, but it is true that in the Christian view self-esteem is not an absolute value. At times it can and must be challenged by the reality that we all fall short of what God intends us to be. Someone who marches into an encounter with Christianity with a very self-satisfied take on themselves (“I’m a great, upstanding, moral person; I do all the right things, and God likes me because I do the right things,”) is liable to wind up feeling a little bit inadequate at the end of the day—and that’s probably for the best. The real question, of course, is what the Christian conviction that everybody is a sinner means for how we esteem ourselves. The best answer I have come up with is that a) we must strive to see and accept ourselves accurately, just as we are, with both flaws and virtues intact, sinning neither by pride, which makes us out to be more than we are, nor by making ourselves out to be less than we are, which pridefully refuses to use the gifts God has given us; and b) we must strive to see ourselves through the eyes of God’s love, which is utterly accepting of us as we are, and utterly relentless in its striving to get us to be more than we are.

ALAS, WARDLEY! WE HARDLY KNEW YE!

2004-12-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

R.I.P., Wardley the Fish.
December 2nd-December 14th, 2004.

Shit.

Despite my best efforts to provide de-chlorinated water, smart, clever, and winsomely-personalitied Wardley croaked sometime after 1.15 AM EST last night. Sigh.

At least it answers the question of what to do with my fish over winter break...

ALAS, PEDRO! WE HARDLY KNEW YE!

2004-12-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

R.I.P., Pedro the Fish.
December 2nd, 2004-December 12th, 2004.

We had a very solemn memorial service last night, in the men's bathroom here on the 4th floor of Hodge Hall. Music was unavailable, although I did hum a few bars of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" before flushing poor Pete. I offered the following funeral oration: "Dear Pedro: you were a good fish. Now you're dead. I hope you enjoy fishy heaven."

Frankly, I'm not too torn up about this. Pedro was definitely the larger, dumber, and less winsome of the two. However, if little Wardley croaks in the next 8 hours, before I have a chance to give him fresh (and freshly de-chlorinated) water, I will be irked.

A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER HAS GIVEN ME FISH.

2004-12-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

A mysterious stranger has given me fish. Two days ago, I walked out of my dorm room to go to dinner, and there on my doorstep was a small plastic fishtank with two goldfish in it. There was also a note. In its entirety, it reads thusly: "I'm Wardley and this is Pedro. Please feed us. Our lives are in your hands." (I appreciated the reference to the Best Movie Ever. Attached to the note is a photo of the Pope...also a nice touch.)

In the words of my friend Jeremy, what am I supposed to do with that? I guess I'm a goldfish parent now. I mean, I suppose in the world of "pets randomly being dropped off on your doorstep before mealtime," I'm lucky it was two goldfish and not, say, a lemur or a zebra, but still. I'm nervous. How often are you supposed to change their water? Feed them? What's the deal, here? I'd feel like a failure if my goldfish croaked within the first week or so.

I have my suspicious about who did it. And when I say "suspicions," I mean "the guilty parties cracked like an egg." (The deed-doers: this one and this one.) Despite my bluster, however, I'm grateful...when you've been spending too much time writing about Julian of Norwich and not enough time cleaning your room, exercising, or praying, having an encounter with the bizarre or silly can feel restorative. Big ups to that....and Abby and Reno, watch out for guinea pigs.

ANNIVERSARY TALK

2004-12-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

This man is desperate for your attention. In particular, for your visiting his site.

Reno's been running Far Country Tell for a month now. If you visited his site (thought-provoking, fascinating, disturbing), he'd love it, because it'd drive up his hit numbers. You should feel free to just go to the site from four or five different computers to boost his ego. But you'd be letting yourself off too easy if you didn't stick around to read his passionate ramblings on Woody Guthrie, Che Guevara, brandy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Check it out.

TODAY, LUNCHTIME

2004-11-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

Me: Dude, this week is going to be impossible. Terrible.
Reno: Yes.
Me. Dude. This week is like...getting into the ring against Mike Tyson, and then finding a pack of wild dingoes waiting for you.
Reno: (laughing)

THANKSGIVING IN TWO ACTS

2004-11-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

Act One: Wednesday in Chicago was pretty gross: big winds, two inches of snow. (It was actually the year’s first snowfall.) I set out in my parents’ car to drive downtown. I’m off to visit a friend (let’s call her Alice). Alice and I go way back, all the way to junior high.

I set off driving, and it is snowing like crazy. I leave at an hour which might have given me enough time had it been 70 degrees and sunny; in the snowy rush hour madness, I know I’m going to be late almost right away. It’s a long drive into the city from where my parents live: North Avenue in all the way to Kedzie, and then north to Logan Square. Traffic is bad. I’m stressed.

But I drive. I’m making progress. AC/DC comes on the radio; I crank it and play air guitar in the car. I pump my fist so excitedly, I knock the garage-door opener off the little flip-down thing in the car, and it breaks loose from its little hanger-device. (Later, I anxiously piece it back together. Whew.) I reach my destination. I am a solid half-hour late, stressed, driving a strange car, and rocking out to classic rock. I’m looking for a place to park.

Of course, I get in an accident. Just a little one: I’m turning back onto one of the main drags for the third or fourth time, having passed up at least five passable parking places because I’m a terrible parallel parker. Some guy (or girl) in a sedan—Oldsmobile? Caddy? Pontiac?—is coming out of a parking lot, moving between several lanes of traffic which have parted to let him out. I’m rolling right along, approaching the intersection. I’m not sure what happens next—either I get by him but he guns his engine too soon and clips me (charitable interpretation), or I misjudge how fast he’s moving and move right in front of him, and he clips me (dispassionate interpretation).

Either interpretation is acceptable, because then the offending car then promptly lights out of there faster than you can say Jack Robinson. My first response, is, of course, “FUCK.” Then “NOOOOOOOOOO.” But I think I stuck with four-letter words, mostly. I pull into an alley, hop out into the blinding snow, and look at a brand-new two foot scratch on the side of my parents’ car, utterly dejected.

I call the rents and let them know the bad news. I feel like a total jackass. All my efforts to show them I’m responsible grown-up? You can put those on hold for a while. I know, I know—in the grand scheme of car accidents, very small potatoes. But still no fun.

I am now an hour late to meet my friend Alice. Not only am I a crappy driver, I’m a bad friend, too. I find a place to park the car (finally) and march off through the snow. I show up covered in snow.

Act Two: I arrive at Alice’s place; the nightstand is covered with books on babies.

Alice is in the middle of an unplanned pregnancy. She’s about 10 weeks along: she hasn’t started to show yet, but she’s got insane morning sickness and is experiencing all the other weird “my-body-the-science-experiment” hallmarks of the early stages of pregnancy.

Alice isn’t married. Her boyfriend (his name is, oh, Frodo) and her—that’s a whole other question. They’ve been dating for a while now—two years. They were starting to have conversations along the lines of “hey, maybe we should maybe sometime think about getting married” before all this came along. But as you can imagine, getting pregnant puts a whole new spin on things. They still don’t know whether or not they’ll get married. They’ve got to make up their mind sometime, but…

Her parents, on the other hand, are dead-set on having a married daughter by the time they become grandparents. Her dad’s a pastor, which has a lot to do with it. Her whole extended family, in fact, are missionaries, which has an awful lot to do with it, too. We’ve spoken before about her frustration with her extended family, most of whom she hasn’t told yet. She knows that once she tells them, she’s in for a lot of support, emotional and financial, which she desperately needs right now. But she also knows she’s in for a lot of labored sighing, tsk-tsking, probing questions about the state of her soul, and self-righteous name-calling. Which she does not need.

Alice is 24, and works for a non-profit that does art therapy for the disabled. You can imagine how much money she makes, and how much less than that she has socked away. Her apartment is tiny: kitchen, bathroom, combination bedroom/living room. She makes passing reference to how difficult it is to imagine a whole other person living there with her. I sigh in sympathy.

Alice and I talk about things for a while. We talk about churches; she’s having a hard time finding one she likes. We talk about the physiological changes she’s going through. We talk about strange cravings. We talk about potential names for her child (they already have candidates identified). We talk about her obstetrician (she likes him).

I don’t approve of Alice and Frodo’s decision to get it on prior to marriage, but that seems beside the point right now. The burden they bear is the burden they bear, and all I can do is help them in whatever small way I’m able to carry it. I’m flattered by the fact that they told me—their level of trust in me—and heartbroken by the strain I know they’re going through, and will continue to go through. It’s one thing to go through, say, a nine-month bout of the flu. It would suck. You’d need people’s help. But it would go away at the end. This is totally different—at the end of this crazy nine-month marathon of morning sickness and changing bodies and sleepless nights and shotgun marriages—there’s going to be an infant, a helpless, dependent child, that’s going to need to be fed and loved and diapered ALL THE TIME. Alice’s life is going to change—I hate the cliché, but it’s the best way of expressing it—in ways I can’t imagine.

And suddenly I am humbled. Here I am, so dejected about my parents’ car and hung up on the stresses and strains of graduate life, worrying about whether or not I’m going to get a B or a C on my midterm. And here’s Alice with a baby in her belly. God, God, help me have perspective. Reset my frame of reference.

Later, when it’s time for me to leave, it occurs to me I should ask Alice if she wants to pray with me. This is pretty unusual for me, and for a variety of reasons, I’m uncomfortable with it. I start to get that feeling I get when I’ve had a good idea, but I’m too chicken to actually act on it.

Then I surprise myself by asking (“Hey, uh, I know this is weird, but…do you want to pray?”). And she surprises me too, by instantly saying, “Yeah, that would be great.” So she, Frodo, and I bow our heads and hold hands and pray. We forget to turn the music off, so our whole prayer was accompanied by Frodo’s Buena-Vista-Social-Club-knockoff tunes on the stereo.

I ask them what we ought to pray about. They tell me. Then, Alice looks at me and says, “What about you?” I’m caught off-guard by the rightness of this question. But I tell them: ask God to give me perspective, to not get caught up in the pressure and BS of what goes on at school. Ask God to help me focus on what’s important.

So we pray, hands in one another’s hands: for Alice and Frodo, for their life together, for courage and strength to tell their relatives who don’t know yet, for wisdom and discernment about whether or not to get married, for an appropriate church community for Alice, for continued health insurance coverage for Alice. For enough money to pay the bills. For patience, wisdom, strength, endurance, faith. And for me, too: that I’d never be so busy learning about God that I forget walking with God, actually serving God. It feels so damn good to pray these things, to say them out loud, to lay them at the feet of God, to feel our burdens lightened.

I leave shortly afterward. When I arrive home, it is Thanksgiving Day.

JUST SO YOU KNOW

2004-11-25T20:03:00.000-08:00

The German word for "runway" is: "Takeoffundlandbahn."

Fun fact via the Technology.

POETRY WEDNESDAY

2004-11-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

For some reason, this poem popped into my head while showering this morning. An old favorite.

God's Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared
with toil;
And wear's man's smudge, and shares man's smell;
The soil
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast, and with ah! bright
wings.

Happy thanksgiving.

CHICAGO IN NOVEMBER

2004-11-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday: Princeton, New Jersey. Temperatures in the upper 40s/lower 50s; sunlight, a brisk fall breeze. Today: Chicago, IL. Temperatures in the 30s, and a stinging precipitation which is charmingly oscillating between snow and rain. Oh--and, lest I forget--winds up to 30 MILES AN HOUR.

Strangely, Chicago's foul weather kind of makes me smile. It's like an ugly relative--your ugly Uncle Lester or Cousin Job or whoever--yeah, maybe it's not nice, but if things improved you'd miss it. I like relying on the fact that the weather in Chicago will usually, if not always, be several degrees worse than wherever else I am. I like pulling out the thick winter coat when it's time to go home for the holidays. I told Gary yesterday: man, this weather here in Jersey is nothing. Jersey is like a little playful cougar cub; you've got to pay attention to it, but it's basically not that dangerous. Chicago, on the other hand, is like an enormous, enraged saber-toothed tiger. You must pay it constant, respectful, terrified attention, or you'll find yourself walking home from the El at 2 in the morning without your long-johns on, and you'll get hypothermia. Or, as I did, waiting in line this afternoon for a Chicago-style Italian beef and getting soaked in the process.

MORE BAD NEWS FROM IRAQ

2004-11-18T15:49:00.000-08:00

President Torrance mentioned this incident in chapel this morning; it was the first I'd heard of it. Disturbing.

THIS MAN IS THE AUTHOR OF MY GREEK TEXTBOOK.

2004-11-17T19:37:00.000-08:00

Oh, how I curse you, N. Clayton Croy!

INKAGE-LAY

2004-11-16T15:49:00.000-08:00

Up to my eyeteeth in work, but here's something to sustain you all until I can go back to ruminating about Scripture:

Part the first: Camassia is right on--checking out Telford Work's FAQ regarding the historicity of the Bible is a good idea. Well worth your time if you're interested in Biblical authority or the historicity of Scripture.

Speaking of Telford, here's a conversation I had back in September he probably would have appreciated:

Me: So, where'd you go to college?
PTS Girl: Westmont.
Me: Ah! Did you know a prof there named Telford Work?
PTS Girl: Yeah....how did you hear about him?
Me: Ah, he's got a blog I like. What did you think of him?
PTS Girl: His courses were hard.

Part the second: Keith at Among the Ruins also went to last week's Cornel West lecture here at the Seminary, and has posted some interesting reflections. Go read them here. I don't have the time to respond to them appropriately now, but suffice it to say that Keith's comments hit pretty close to home for me, and are indeed quite troubling. Go, read.

JOSHUA 6 (pt ii)

2004-11-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

Thought #2:

If you read Joshua 6 you discovered verse 21, which is in my opinion quite chilling: “And they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys.” The Hebrew word here for ‘devote to destruction’ is ‘kherem,’ which usually is translated as ‘banned’ or ‘cursed’; in this context, it just means to totally destroy the city. Wipe out everything there.

(Incidentally, Joshua 6 is far from the only example of this in the OT, of course. This idea of ‘kherem’ is present throughout the Israelite conquest of Canaan in Joshua and in Deuteronomy. It’s just one instance that I happen to have stumbled across recently. For another example, see Moses’ instructions to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7: “When you enter that land…you must utterly destroy them”! Thanks for making that clear, Moses. We were gonna let the women and children go, but hey, now it’s time to kill them too! Boo-yah!)

There are two really freaky questions that come up here: first, does my God work through violence? As troubling as the questions about this passage’s historicity are, the ones provoked by its violent nature bother me even more.

As a Christian, I’ve had it hammered into my head for decades, from Sunday school on, that Christians are not about violence. Violence, retribution, hatred: these are not God’s way. Yes, just warfare and all that—sometimes Christians have to use violence to preserve justice or protect the innocent. But we never want to use violence. And we certainly never delight in it, or pretend that it’s something that is morally exemplary.

This passage takes an enormous battering ram to that attitude. (I wonder, incidentally, how the brutality of this passage escaped my notice my previous 24 years of life.) How are we NOT to see God as encouraging in this kind of wanton slaughter? The passage certainly sees it that way. Is this the God I worship?

The second question springs from the first: does God’s putative presence “on the side of” Israel in these battles mean that God associates Himself with nations and peoples and intervenes on their side militarily?

Take a contemporary example: if someone says that God is on the side of the United States in its military struggles, I cringe. Honestly. I think this is an extremely dangerous way to think, one that identifies the purposes of our nation-state with God’s purposes. At best, I think, the United States can hope that it is on God’s side, not the other way around. But given the biblical witness, how can I totally reject this point of view? It seems pretty clear that, even if God is not currently on America’s ‘side,’ that God was on Israel’s side, up to and including through military events. Maybe all we need to do as a nation is get God back on our side again.

It is at this point, I suspect, that numerous Christian scholars begin to find the potentially ahistorical nature of this passage to be something of a relief rather than a worry. There are plenty of things in Scripture, and many in the Old Testament, that some Christians would be happy to have not be true/historical. Most liberal OT interpreters discuss Joshua 6 and say, well, look, this is Israel’s historical remembering of this particular battle. It was probably not this bad. God’s issuing a command to destroy everything in Jericho is something that Israel threw in there. It may be reflective of their sense that their victory in the battle was completely a result of God’s intervening on their behalf, and not something that happened because of their own efforts. But God actually saying, “Go on, boys, wipe them all out!” is not something that actually happened.

I’m willing to grant that that seems possible or even likely. But yet—even if we see Joshua 6 as not-quite-historically-accurate, if we want to hold on to some semblance of the biblical narrative and not just throw it out completely (“there was never any military conquest of Canaan; the Israelites were just Canaanites who were having a bad day”), we have to say that God was in some way working through the Israelite conquest of Canaan, right? How else can we explain the seemingly clear and persistent memory of Israel that not only was God present in their lives, but present in their battles? How else can we explain God’s constant promises to Abraham, Jacob, Joseph to give them this land? Doesn’t adhering to that narrative, accepting that, in some way, God was with Israel, working to give them the land, require accepting that God worked through violence? And if that's the case, how does the self-sacrificial death of Jesus make any sense? Why does God do a 180?

I realize I'm not exactly inventing the wheel by asking these questions; share wisdom if you've got it. Thanks.

PRAYER REQUEST

2004-11-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

Please pray for a close friend of mine (not anyone here at the seminary) who is experiencing an unwanted pregnancy. She's not married, and she's in for a lot of grief from her family. Thanks for your support.

BLOGS-A-POPPIN'

2004-11-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

Please allow me to give a long, long overdue shoutout and blog-rolling to the emerging PRINCETON BLOG ARMADA:

Adam at Pomomusings, whose penchant for documenting every single aspect of his life with his digital camera keeps me checking it compulsively;

Andrew at Nakedchurch, who is a full-time div student, has a wife and child, a blog, and is also sane;

Nick, who you all know by now;

Reno at Far Country Tell (mama! peanut-butter-chocolate rice krispy treats....SO....GOOD...);

Jenny at the Medieval Bestseller, the first blogger I met at Princeton;

6'8" Dean over at Basileus, who's recently owned up to his poor spelling;

the superbly-named Kellen Plaxco over at Fear and Trembling;

and witty Mary Blacklock.

They all rule, and make me feel less guilty about blogging (!) on a Friday night (!) when I should be studying (!!).

Also, linkage long deferred: the Old Professor is an old friend of mine, who used to be the drummer in a band I was in in college. Some say deepest thoughts to emerge from the state of Kentucky since the invention of bourbon. Also the very fine Scandal of Particularity and Verbum Ipsum. Check 'em out, ya'll.

NERDERY

2004-11-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

Q: Is anyone else an enormous nerd, like me, and therefore inordinatedly excited by the new Star Wars III trailer?

Just checking.

THE SONG OF NICK

2004-11-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Nick's own fan letter to me, I wrote one to him. It's posted here on his blog. Enjoy.

JOSHUA 6 (pt. 1)

2004-11-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

(Click here to go read Joshua 6.)

So, I wrote a paper about Joshua 6 several weeks ago for my Intro to the Old Testament class. It’s a great course, team-taught by Profs. Patrick Miller and Katherine Sakenfeld, who both know WAY more about the Old Testament than any reasonable person should ever know.

The paper was four pages, tops; I found I could barely contain my thoughts on the topic. I actually ended up leaving out most of what I thought was the ‘important stuff’—i.e., my doubts and frustrations with the passage and its application to the life of the church—out of necessity. But here’s some of the leftover stuff:

So, Joshua 6 depicts this battle of Jericho. The Israelites walk around, blow some trumpets, the walls fall down (‘the walls came tumblin’ down, etc.’), they win. Great. But there seem to be big questions about whether this passage is historical (i.e., whether or not it happened). Seems archaeologists in the 19th/20th centuries (who actually set out to try to verify the biblical story) went out to Jericho and dredged around for a long time, trying to find some evidence that jibes with the biblical narrative. There isn’t any; at least they haven’t found any yet, and they’ve looked pretty carefully. The city’s been around for a long, long time, but the archeological evidence seems to show that the city was tiny and insignificant, rather than a thriving city, during the time period when the Israelites are supposed to have stormed it. There’s no evidence the city was walled when the Israelites would have moved in on it, as per Joshua 6’s description; there’s some question of whether the city was even inhabited round then.

So, thought #1: oh, crap. I hate it when this happens. It’s no fun when the historical bottom drops out of a story you always assumed has been true. Now, I know my seminary professors (as well as some friends) might critique me a little bit about what ‘true’ really means in this context. Does a biblical story have to be totally historical to be true? Or authoritative for the church? Or the word of God?

Yes, yes, I know, there’s “true” and then there’s “true.” I’ve never believed that, say, Genesis 1-2 is a literal account of humanity’s creation, but yet I still find it meaningful and authoritative for Christians. Why should Joshua 6 be any different? To which, my response—probably not all that intellectually worked-out, but still very heartfelt—is: when does it stop?? It’s all well and good to arrive at these conclusions here in the Old Testament; pretty much everybody can deal with the reality that Adam and Noah weren’t real people, or that Joshua isn’t a great historical account of what really happened. But what’s going to happen when we get to the New Testament? What’s going to happen when we get to, say, the difference between John and the rest of the Gospels? What’s going to happen when we hear that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 isn’t present in the earliest scriptural witnesses? (My New English Bible leaves it out entirely.)

What’s going to happen when scholars start nosing around and saying, with all their erudition, “Well…y’know, some of these earliest manuscripts don’t contain the tradition of Jesus’ virgin birth…for instance, Paul doesn’t reference it…it may just be a tradition of the early church”? It’s one thing for my to try to re-frame Joshua 6 in my mind as a tradition of Israel, as a way of their articulating God’s power and protection. It’s quite another for me to deal with the idea that a miraculous truth which I recite in church every week (Apostles’ Creed: “…born of the virgin Mary..”) is seen by some as 'not historically true.' Or, for that matter, the miraculous truth without peer—-the resurrection itself. I know perfectly well that a lot of liberal scholars are quite happy to do away with the miraculous/supernatural nature of the resurrection. "Jesus’ corpse wasn’t actually resuscitated," they’ll say. "But the disciples experienced his presence in a real way. He was with them in a post-Easter way after his death." They’ll probably be wearing clothes from the Gap and reading Elaine Pagels, and I will want to stab them in the eye with a fork.

I’m reminded of St. Flannery’s comment about communion: “If it’s just a metaphor, then to hell with it.” In some ways—in certain ways, not in all—I feel the same way about Scripture. It’s not possible to prove that Christianity is true based on historical evidence, but it is, or ought to be, in my opinion, hypothetically possible to disprove it, to make it intellectually untenable. (I’m not saying Christianity IS intellectually untenable—I’m just saying that I think that’s a possibility.) If there's no reliable historical core to the Old Testament and New Testament, we may still have the Christian faith, but I think it'll be a pretty different faith than what St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther all believed in.

Pt. II on this tomorrow. Really. I promise.

THE VIRTUES OF CRAMMING FOR OLD TESTAMENT MIDTERMS

2004-11-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

"Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of Lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven."
--Deuteronomy 10:16-20

THE BRICK TESTAMENT

2004-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

All I can say is: Whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Via Rilina, via Camassia.

SPIRITUALITY AND BOXING (?)

2004-11-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Huh. Interesting.

Via Godspy. (EDITED TO ADD: Curse you, Blogger! Links should now work.)

FAN MAIL

2004-11-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

OK. So Nick emails me the following letter tonight and begs me--repeatedly and at length--to post it here. Here it is, in what is, I assure you, an almost entirely unexpurgated and unaltered form. (N.B.: "Osborn" is my middle name.)

Dave: A man, a face, a namesake

Now, this is not some epitaph to David Osborne. But I will admit that talking to Dave is like sitting in front of the window on a fall afternoon and watching the rain fall in cold, wet sheets. It is refreshing. It is cold. It is DAVE.

With humor as dry as an Arizonian summer on an August afternoon when the air conditioner has broken.

With a fifth grade picture that screams, “I like Dungeons and Dragons.”

With a personality as large as Goliath and a heart as noble as David.

With a sense of direction that often loses things like cell phones and rented movies

With a charisma that will lead the 21st century church into places it may never really want to go to…

With a smile that often charms and whiles others

Daveism is not simply a way of thought; it’s a way of life.

Keep reading and looking here for more witty, energetic, and yet thoughtful posts by our favorite Princetonian Lutheran—DAVE!

Ladies and gentlemen: Nick. These are his friends.

I HAVE A FOURTH-LEVEL FIGHTER/THIEF, DUDE!

2004-11-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Me at the PTS Halloween Party. I went as "Fourth-Grade Me." Sure, I'm no horrifying Adam Cleaveland costume, but hey.

THAT'S A FLAG ON THAT PLAY

2004-11-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

OK. I think we can agree that blasting any of the following things from your room might be cause for a little irritation when you live in a dormitory: a) rap-rock; b) a Coldplay knockoff (not the very good band themselves, of course; just one of their legion of less-good imitators); c) music sung in French.

But what, WHAT is a reasonable Seminary student to do when someone down the hall is blasting music which is a Satanic hybrid of ALL THREE of these musical influences? It sounded like the bastard child of Linkin Park, Coldplay, and Edith Piaf, and I swear to God, it almost gave me a seizure as I was walking to the john. Sigh.

Right now: midterms. Late nights, early mornings, papers, midterms. For amusement in the meantime, check out Nick's spirited (albeit somewhat factually diminished) defense of the greatness of Delaware.

SCHIZOPHRENIA

2004-11-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

Friday AM: Wake up here. Beautiful Hudson River views. Rampant foliage (e.g., Adam, Nick). Everyone observes "the Great Silence" until after breakfast. Eucharist. Prayer.

Friday Noon: After a hearty lunch, we take our leave of the monks. Pile into Adam's car: me, Adam, Katie, Nick. Katie is the only person in the car without a blog. Within minutes, we are driving very fast with the windows open, blasting music: "Video Killed the Radio Star," and the entirety of the Blue album by Weezer. I freak out the rest of the car by singing along very loudly to all the words of the Blue album. Nick and I stick our heads out the windows and bark like dogs. Fun is had.

Friday evening: Back at PTS. I aid and abet Adam in purchasing this costume (that's him/her second from the right), perhaps the most horrifying thing produced by human ingeneuity in a long time. My own costume is a little more simple: I'm fourth-grade me. Josh assists me in creating a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "I Heart Dungeons & Draqons." Fourth-grade me studies Greek for a while and goes to the Halloween party.

Friday late: the Halloween party. Typical party: loud, sweaty, boozy, dancing, laughs, fun. Nick's got a view on it here. 15 hours after I woke up in a monastery, I am dressed like fourth-grade me, dancing to "Hot in Herre" and "Milkshake" between a man dressed as a woman and a man dressed like Darth Vader. (I later discover that the man dressed as Darth Vader actually is a preceptor for Hebrew classes.) I'm having a great time, but I'm struck by the bizarreness of it all. I keep turning to people, saying: "I woke up in a monastery this morning...?!"

These are the disparate parts of my life; these are my efforts to put them together into a coherent whole. Some days you get a lively, wonderful, vital sense of variety, of the Spirit being present both on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Other days you're shaking your rump next to the Dark Lord of the Sith, and you're thinking, "What the..."

DEVELOPING!

2004-10-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

A quick update on life in seminary since the last time the Lummox spoke:

1. I lost my new cell phone. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. (Incidentally, for those of you who have called me since Saturday at 5 PM--I don't hate you, I've just lost my phone.)

2. Also, I lost my gym membership card, my CD player is broken, and I bought about 5 pairs of nail clippers and lost them all, bought a new one, and then found the old ones again. IRRITATING.

2. Jon Stewart is my new hero. If you haven't seen the video of his appearance on Crossfire, or at least read the transcript, I urge you, urge! you! to do so now. Not only is he one of the funniest comedians in America today, apparently he also has a conscience and a still-functioning sense of moral outrage at how our media in America dumbs down public discourse. Right on, bro.

3. Everything in Adam's room has been turned upside-down. Some say best prank evs. Check out the photos.

4. It's reading week at the Seminary, so I'm sneaking away with some friends--including a large contingent of PTS bloggers (Adam, Nick, Dean) for two nights at Holy Cross Monastery in New York. I'll let you know how it turns out.

GI JOE SHORT FILMS

2004-10-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I blogged about these GI Joe animated shorts available at Ebaumsworld. (For the uninitiated, they took the old GI Joe cartoon PSAs, and dubbed them over with silly voices and bizarre editing.) They are, in my humble opinion, nothing short of unfettered genius. Well, good news: in the interim, they've made several more. Which are also very very good. (EDITED TO ADD: D'OH! Links should now work. Note to self: sign up for remedial link-creating course at Princeton.)

An excellent way of chasing my hourlong precept discussion of Arianism and Christology.

BOSS ME AROUND (or, thoughts about church authority)

2004-10-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

(N.B.: I’ve been musing about this idea for a while. Modifications/alterations/retractions may or may not follow. Thanks for feedback/thoughts.)

In the fantastic collection of Stanley Hauerwas’ essays, the Hauerwas Reader, William Cavanaugh tells a wonderful story about Hauerwas’ encounter with a Methodist minister in South Bend, Indiana.

I think that Stanley, like the proverbial Italian soldier, spent many years looking for someone to whom he could surrender. He developed strong ties to Broadway Methodist (his church in South Bend, Indiana) precisely because his pastor, John Smith, took his ministry seriously enough to boss Stanley around. When Hauerwas expressed his desire to join Broadway Methodist, Smith asked about his membership status in the Methodist Church. Stanley told Smith that he had been ordained a deacon years ago, but wasn’t sure what had happened to his membership in the meantime. Without blinking, Smith told the famous theologian that he wasn’t much of a churchman, and he would have to attend classes at the church for a year. So he did…what Hauerwas continues to teach is that the church must take seriously the authority given it by the Holy Spirit if it is to save people from the tyranny of their own individual wills.

For a lot of reasons, combining ‘authority’ with ‘religion’ makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Usually people (and I include myself) hear ‘authority’ or ‘authority of Scripture’ as shorthand for a wide variety of theological positions: ‘no women in church leadership’ or ‘gay people = bad’ or 'evolution is incompatible with Christianity' or other, mostly conservative, positions that we’re not fond of. And, frankly, much of the time, that’s fair. Christians misused the idea of church authority for a long time, and that abuse continues in many quarters of the church today. (One’s thoughts turn immediately to the Catholic Church, of course, where bishops used their authority as leaders of the church to protect child-molesting priests and shield them from the law.) But, like the church’s views on sex, I think a lot of churches are in reaction to one kind of church—an authoritarian, bossy, judgemental church—and in their reaction throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think some churches (in practice if not in principle) abandon any idea of speaking authoritatively to people at all, and that is disastrous.

I think this problem is most prevalent in liberal mainline churches, but I’d imagine it’s pretty widespread. One of my professors (the awesome John W. Stewart, not to be confused with the other Jon Stewart, who is also awesome) told us a story in lecture last week. He attended a Presbyterian church service at which a deacon was being ordained. They were proceeding with the service, but right before the ordination, the deacon stopped, and turned to address the congregation, and said, “I just want you all to know, I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.” And the minister looked at him, and said, “Well, that’s OK. We accept all kinds of people here.” And they ordained him as a leader in the church.

Setting aside for a moment the obvious illogic of ordaining as a deacon in the church someone who does not believe the central tenet of the church (Welcome to the Springfield Golf Club! What’s that? Hate golf? No problem!). [I’m pretty I borrowed that example from Camassia, though I’m not sure…], my question is: what kind of message is the church sending by doing something like that? The church is more than a voluntary association; it’s more than a place to hang out Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. The church has to stand for something, has to be willing to say, “This is what we, Christians, are about.” Unfortunately, the nature of saying “this is what we’re about” also requires you, at some points, to say “this is what we are not about.” If the church tries to be about everything, it’ll wind up being about nothing.

Saying ‘the church needs set boundaries’ and ‘the church needs to speak authoritatively to people’ does NOT mean that the church needs to be more authoritarian. That’s quite the opposite of what I’m saying. It’s just that, even if the church has a very clear sense of whom it serves and what its hope is in, unless it is willing to correct people, to steer them towards that sense, it doesn’t matter.

As another of my professors (the great Paul Rorem) is fond of saying, the church is an inclusive community (everyone is welcome) with an exclusive creed (Jesus Christ is lord). It’s always a tenuous job to try to keep those in balance, and many times the church has erred on the ‘exclusive creed’ side. But this does not relieve us Christians of the need to demarcate some kind of boundary for the church.

John Stewart again: a couple came to him. They were not Christians. They hadn’t darkened a church door in years. But they were married, and they’d just had a baby and wanted the baby to be baptized. And Stew says to them, well, do you consider yourselves Christians? And they say, well, no. And he thinks about it, and says, look, I’d love to baptize your child, and I want to, but I cannot do so. Not unless you give me some concrete indication that you yourself have some kind of commitment to the church. And, of course, the couple blew up at him and got quite angry.

Now, I suppose someone could look at that story and just see a hard-hearted or controlling minister. Or worse, someone withholding the grace of God from a helpless infant. I’m open to people making those cases if they want to try. But, in my opinion, I think Stew made the right call (or, at least, a call that was well within the range of acceptable responses). Baptism, for Christians, ought not to be just a ‘thanks-see-ya-at-easter-and-christmas’ kind of commitment. Baptism is part of being ‘born again by water and the spirit,’ and for parents of children being baptized, it entails both a confession of Christian faith on their part and a commitment by the parents to educate their child in the Christian faith. By doing things like, oh, I don’t know, bringing them to church? Teaching them to pray? Reading to them from the Bible? None of which those parents were willing to do.

I like that example partly because it re-frames the usual discussions of church authority. The church is feuding within itself, of course, over many issues relating to authority and Biblical authority—on ordination of women, on sex and homosexuality, even (in some quarters of the church) on evolution. These issues are still open wounds, and for many people (myself included) they’re still quite raw. I find examples like the one above helpful because they show that, even outside the quite contentious questions that all of us know about, the issue of the authority of the church remains quite important and worthy of our attention.

Look, I’m a lazy person. One of the central questions I ask myself (sometimes jokingly, other times not) when I visit a church is, “Is this worth getting out of bed for?” Sometimes it feels like a relief to practice a religion that doesn’t make any demands on you, that doesn’t ask you to be different from the way you are now, or the way you believe now, or the way you think now. You get all the good stuff—God exists, God loves you—without any of the hard stuff. But in the long run it feels disappointing. It feels like you’ve invested in a religion that’s just not worth getting out of bed for. The real Christian message is both “God loves you just as you are…” AND “…but not enough to let you stay that way.” Parts of the church (the parts I’ve been in, anyway) need to recover the second half of that message. Maybe other parts need to recover the first. Both are necessary.

SEMINARY LIFE, pt. I

2004-10-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

So, just so everybody knows what a colossal nerd I am:

I suspect I may have pulled a muscle in my back...while studying. I think I sat in a chair at an odd angle for a few too many minutes while studying in Starbucks, and now as a result I feel like Grandpa Simpson.

Comment from one Mr. Reno Lauro: "Dude. That's dangerously close to Tri-Lam territory."

FINALLY

2004-09-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

Someone else has given voice to my own inner thoughts regarding the enormous, encroaching menace that is...comic sans.

Via Jenny

ATTENTION FELLOW CHRISTIANS!

2004-09-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

I have a question for you: what is 'worship'? Why do we do it? How is it different (if it is) from other stuff we do in church? What is its significance, and what has worship meant for you in your life of faith?

Here's why I ask: I don't think I have a very good handle on the answer myself. I 'worship' every Sunday, but I think I do it more a) for a sense of spiritual community, b) to remind myself of my obligations as a believer, c) to hear Scripture read and to take communion, and to hear the truths of Christianity lifted up in a corporate setting. I'm not sure I do it because I wake up and think, "Well, today's the day I get to praise God." But I have the sense that certain people do it less for the kind of reasons I just listed above, and more because they feel a strong need/call to go to a space where they can worship God. I also ask because good friends of mine have had very powerful spiritual experiences in worship, and I'm curious about it.

Thanks for the 411, friends.

(EDITED TO ADD: Both Jason and Brian have weighed in on this topic, with some interesting thoughts on both sides. Thanks for the continuing feedback.)