My friend L. L. Barkat FINALLY discovered the beauty of Texas this past week at Laity Lodge. She also challenged Jim Martin and me to post something we had written while we were there. [UPDATE: my friend, Tod Bolsinger joined the game too, and here's a link to his post.]
L. L. posted about the stairs. For me, Laity is more about ascending cliffs than climbing stairs. So I worked on this old poem I wrote about circle bluff–and my mixed emotions about the way we rush out to nature to get a quick fix, then rush back to our busy lives.
The poem isn’t really finished. It’s the end of a sonnet, but I haven’t written the last 6 lines yet. Maybe I never will. But I did record a reading of it because I believe poetry is essentially oral. So here’s the front-half octave of a sonnet with no title.
(Don’t complain. It’s free poetry. Beggars can’t be choosers. You want the real thing? Go subscribe to 32 Poems.)
A limestone cliff shows the end of the climb
though most never notice the gradual incline
that leads us here. Each step feels more or less
normal, doesn’t wind us or try us. We pass
boulders without stopping and mossy logs,
perfect resting spots. When our tired legs caught
on tree roots or loose rocks, we blamed terrain.
On top, we snap shots, check watches, descend again.
Just a reminder of what many of us have in common (from the English hymn by Timothy Dudley-Smith):
Fill your hearts with joy and gladness,
peace and plenty crown your days;
love his laws, declare his judgments,
walk in all his words and ways;
he the Lord and we his children–
praise the Lord, all people, praise!
Now you can sing those words to yourself while you watch along with Beaker.
This year, I have enjoyed the best desktop calendar ever. It’s the Schott’s Almanac calendar from Workman. Totally awesome. Here are some fun things I pulled from last month:
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. - J. R. R. Tolkein
There are no ugly women, only lazy ones - Helena Rubinstein (applies to men as well)
Baby crocodiles are called “crocklets.” Baby sharks are called “cubs.” Baby partridges are called “cheepers.” Who knew?
We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice. - Isaac Bashevis Singer
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you. - attributed to Bert Leston Taylor.
(Bloggers who do this are boring too.)
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. - Samuel Butler
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. - Carl Sagan
Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another. - Tom Robbins
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That’s why he makes so many of them. - Abraham Lincoln
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them, the rest of us could not succeed. - Mark Twain
(So if I’m not succeeding, should I try, try again? Or resign myself as a fool?)
Success if the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill
(I suppose that approach to work could become foolish at some point as well.)
Headaches can be cured by wearing the rattles from a rattlesnake inside your hat, according to archaic animal lore. Also, dogs pretty much always foretell death–whether they’re digging holes, burying sticks, crossing bridges, or rolling in the grass beneath a window. I’ve got two dogs, so our lives are rich with omens.
Finally, did you know that each apostle has a gem emblem?
Andrew is sapphire.
Bartholomew is carnelian.
James is chalcedony.
James the Less is topaz.
John is emerald.
Matthew is amethyst (also the birth stone for August).
Matthias (after Judas) is chrysolite.
Peter is jasper.
Philip is sardonyx.
Simeon is hyacinth.
Thaddeus is chrysoprase.
Thomas is beryl.
I’ve never heard of half of those gems, and to be honest, I’d forgotten the names of half of those apostles.
First, a reminder of my standard disclaimer. The views expressed here do not necessarily express the views of my employer or the publications I help edit.
But I promised this post for Mark, who left a comment addressed to me and Eric over at the Radiolab blog.
Radiolab is the best audio show I have ever heard. Ever. My wife hates audio shows, but she loves Radiolab. I’m a heel for not having made a donation to them yet. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m still highly loyal to Escape Pod and the whole Escape Artist brand.)
Don’t believe me about Radiolab? Go listen to Emergence. Or Laughter. Or Deception. After I heard the episode on Deception, I had to sit in my car in a parking garage and collect myself before I could reenter the world. The show had a profound impact on me.
Radiolab airs on National Public Radio stations, but the Podcast version of Radiolab includes extra bits, like the speech they posted last week called Tell Me a Story. In that extra, Robert Krulwich delivers a fire and brimstone commencement address at CalTech encouraging scientists to fight for their stories. For better or worse, he also uses some pretty incendiary language about Creationists.
So I couldn’t resist. I popped over to the Radiolab site and left this comment:
Inspiring speech. Interesting comments. I noted the antagonism toward creationists, too, especially since I listened to this podcast on the way home from the evangelical retreat center where I work.
But I’m no creationist. I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with folks like John Medina and Francis Collins through our retreat center. Both of them encouraged me to be much more vocal in defending science and evolution. I wouldn’t say I’m at war with creationists, but I’ve stopped sitting quietly when people assume I believe the world is 6000 years old.
I am not often out at the retreat center, so it’s a little misleading to say I “work there,” but I was trying to give a concise comment. As an editor for TheHighCalling.org and FaithInTheWorkplace.com, I defend the vision entrusted to me–without trying to insert my own opinion and philosophy. (Though that happens from time to time because I’m only human.)
At the time I wrote the comment, I thought about linking to my interviews with John Medina and Francis Collins, but I hesitate to link to my own stuff like that.
Still, I was thinking about what John Medina told me 2 years ago:
You see, science is just one way of knowing. It is actually a fairly small sandbox. Every Christian needs to memorize Emmanuel Kant. Over 200 years ago, he said that if something is physical in nature, you may utilize the tools of this great sandbox called natural philosophy—the scientific method.
The instant something is not physical in nature, those tools collapse because you have introduced an uncontrollable variable. Not an uncontrolled variable. An uncontrollable one. That’s key.
And what Francis Collins told me last year:
One of the great tragedies of our current era is that evolution is being portrayed as a threat to God. If science is God’s gift to us, along with the intelligence to explore his world, God could hardly be threatened by what we discover. It’s all his creation. The truth is the truth, and it’s all God’s truth. I reach out as much as I can to my Christian brothers and sisters and try to make a case that this is an unnecessary battle. We can embrace evolution as God’s plan and worship him in the process, without feeling anxious or apologetic.
So here I am posting this unapologetically. If you’re a regular here, it’s probably not much of a surprise. And don’t misunderstand. I’m not picking a fight or looking to have a point by point argument over various readings of Genesis.
What I am doing is trying to find a way to talk about this issue without people yelling and calling names. And inviting Mark and Eric (the commenters from Radiolab) to talk with me here if they want to.
(Mark and Eric, we can also have a private conversation if you like. Just email me at Marcus [at symbol] HighCallingBlogs.com.)
Yup. We’re off. We borrowed a van, scrimped for gas, and headed out for a tour of the south with stops in Galveston Island (aunt and uncle), Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Starkville (grandma), Mississippi; and Ruston (brother), Louisiana.
High gas prices, you say? Pshaw.
No piddly increase in the cost of gas can stop the tradition of American Road Trips!
Here’s the craziest part. I’m not taking a computer. No internet. No hyper-connectivity on my phone. Nada. Just me and the wife and the kids and the open road.
Update: First leg in Galveston went well. New Orleans is fun. A little over 18 in places we learned, but we plan to avoid all of that for the next two days.
Second, DragonLight
While I’m gone, I’m missing the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.
I don’t know the answer to that question. I really don’t.
Normally, I stay out of politics stuff. I don’t know where you stand on Obama. I don’t know where I stand, either. I’d rather talk about my daughter’s response to the second Harry Potter. Or my son’s poisonous frogs. (He’s four. Am I a bad father?)
But I had to share what I read in The Atlantic this morning. It’s a little political. It’s a little social media. The implications are pretty interesting.
What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog—also with comments—would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.
I don’t know about you, but that paragraph stunned me. Weekly YouTube updates from the President of the United States? A White House blog–with comments turned on (and presumably moderated at least)? Social Media peer review of government legislation? Funding transparency that uses google algorithms?
I can’t decide what to think of this.
Is the office of the president going to start getting distracted by Twitter? Is this what good leaders do? If leaders should engage the web 2.0 crowd–and that argument seems more and more plausible–how in the world can the leader of the free world stay on top of basic time management without creating a Twitter ghost, an Obama comments ghost, maybe even a Wag the Dog Obama Youtube ghost?
I met Andre Yee about two years ago when I was just getting into blogging. He still blogs over at Every Square Inch about “Conversations on the Glory of Christ in Business and Culture,” and he’s really good.
The Social Media Prophet
Andre was one of the first bloggers we hired to write for TheHighCalling.org. (You can read his two articles here.) But lately I think he’s been too busy with his nonprofit start up to write for us!
Andre Yee is like some kind of Social Media Prophet. I’m not joking here. He’s a wiki Moses. The church has has been captive for too long, and he’s leading us into the wilderness of the net. I’m not talking about a series of brochure ware nonsense. Or clumsy facebook groups. Or even webzines.
Andre knows where the wind is blowing–and he’s raised the sail.
Marshall McLuhen warned that the medium is the message. A lot of folks have used McLuhen’s cliche to warn us about how easily computers dehumanize us. Take that thinking to its logical end and we all become obese spacemen in floating chairs waiting for Wall-E to wake us up.
But Andre understands the gospel message is more powerful than any medium.
Andre says that nearly 60% of all evangelicals worldwide are in the areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. “But they suffer from a lack of biblically sound teaching material.” He goes on to explain that the current model of translation is expensive and limited in its reach. “Few books ever reach worldwide audiences, and some language groups never qualify for any translations at all.”
But you don’t need to read what Andre says. You can see it yourself. He’s been on me for months now to catch this vision with him. Sorry, Andre, I just didn’t get it. My faith is weak, I guess.
But this video helped me see what he’s talking about. It literally opened my eyes. Now I get it.
If you’re like me, you need to watch the video. Watch it. Then think about how you can help.
If you’re like me, you can’t be one of the translators. But you can help promote Andre’s vision. The Wiki Moses needs us! We can help “proclaim the gospel to all peoples in all languages to the glory of God.”
How You Can Help
I’m not talking about a big investment here. I’m talking about simple word of mouth.
Share the video on Facebook. Just click here. (I did!)
Tell others. Do it. I’ll make a social media press release here in a minute that has all of the tools in one spot to make this easy. (Update: here’s a link to the social media press release.)
And if you still haven’t watched that video, here it is:
Recently, my daughter and I have begun to pray by personalizing the scriptures. I say one line, and she repeats it after me. (She’s seven.) Every so often, I ask her if she wants to lead the prayer. She’s still a little shy about that, though.
The exercise is a good challenge to me to memorize more. But it helps her memorize, too.
I remembered all of this when I was looking at the 22 Words post yesterday. (I like that blog because Abraham Piper is a web content editor. Like me.)
He talks about teaching his so to pray as if he is just “talking to Jesus.” Like the old hymn I grew up with. “Have a little talk with Jesus.”
Several years ago when I tried this approach with my daughter. She has always been shy about prayer. It’s a failing of mine as well. So I explained that prayer was just like “talking to God.”
Man, she called me on it. “Dad,” she said. “God isn’t here.”
I stammered through a theological explanation that God IS here. Jesus lives in our hearts. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
But I couldn’t shake the honesty of her response.
Because no matter how much rhetoric we use, we can’t talk to God in the same way that we talk to people because God doesn’t talk back in the same way.
I don’t know what to with that thought. I don’t know where it takes me. I don’t know where it takes you. So let’s just watch the Oak Ridge Boys sing with butterfly collars and afros. Seriously, you have to watch this. They go totally nuts at the end.
I’m pretty excited about GodBlogCon.com 2008. You never know what’s going to happen there. I went to GodBlogCon.com 2007 with Mark D. Roberts and ended up on a Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
Here’s what’s even better. Laity Lodge and TheHighCalling.org are sponsoring this year’s event. That means 10% of the proceeds from registrations through our affiliate link will be donated back to our programs. What’s not to love?
It’s the day we celebrate our country–and frankly, I feel a bit like dancing with the world today. This guy named Matt beat me to it. (And 4,000,000 other people beat me to the youtube clip, but I’m sharing it here anyway; hat tip to Karl Edwards for sharing this with me on Facebook.)
(Go to Youtube and click under the video to watch in high quality.)
Or if Matt dancing is too not American enough for you, try the muppets. Can’t go wrong with that. (Hat tip to Steve McCoy and Slashfilm.)
My friend L. L. Barkat FINALLY discovered the beauty of Texas this past week at Laity Lodge. She also challenged Jim Martin and me to post something we had written while we were there. [UPDATE: my friend, Tod Bolsinger joined the game too, and here's a link to his post.]
