Our network at HighCallingBlogs.com is quickly approaching 200 members. L.L. Barkat of Seedlings In Stone has been with the network almost from the beginning.
More importantly, L.L. understands what we’re trying to do there. L.L. caught the vision.
And that vision is expressed beautifully in her recent book Stone Crossings. The subtitle is “Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places.” Which makes me wonder. Where has God shown you grace today?
For example, L.L. finds grace in doubt.
When Peter is faced with the reality that Jesus will die a criminal’s death, doubt assails him. The truth is too difficult, too bloody, too dirty to hold… When we see Jesus in a new unexpected way that fails to meet expectations, we are tempted to falter and say: This is hard; who can accept it?
As an example, L.L. tells the story of a former professor, “David D.” He was “an excellent customer service representative,” she explains. “The attendant who goes beyond the company script, who makes you feel you are a person with read needs and concerns.” When L.L. went to his office with doubts about God’s mere existence, David didn’t flinch.
She writes, “An unquestioned faith is questionable… Covering doubt and demanding unexamined allegiance holds its own special dangers.”
So true.
Maybe that’s why I sometimes feel compelled to post crazy doubts and reveal unorthodox allegiances. Thank you to readers here for sticking with me. If I can’t be myself here, I’m in trouble.
Because I’m not one of those people who can put up a special marketing-niche facade.
So. I’ll leave the comments here open on this one. But I wrote a longer review of L.L.’s book over at HighCallingBlogs.com, and I hope you click through to read what she has to say about daily work and sacrifice.
In keeping with the 1980s nostalgia that has captured some bloggers, I started thinking about one of my all time favorite movies: Joe vs. the Volcano.
And I wondered, how many people go to work and feel like the guy in our featured video over at HighCallingBlogs.com?
Poor Joe. He works in a medical accessories factory. They manufacture devices that sound really uncomfortable. I’ll just leave it at that.
And his job looks like hell. I’m being literal. Bad lights that suck the life out of people. Bad bosses that bark inane orders into the phone. Electric hums. Muddy parking lots.
In our GodblogCon.com conversation with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) last week, we talked about life streaming. That’s something a lot of people on the front of technology are predicting will become more common.
As more and more devices connect online, it is easier and easier to turn a series of text messages into a micro-blog (Twitter) or a series of phone messages into a podcast (Skype + Podomatic).
That got me thinking during my web 2.0 time today. First, I logged into Facebook to think about social networks as a location where someone might start life streaming.
Well, you know. Done enough for the kids to play in at any rate. This seems like the sort of thing that could be tweaked and accessorized indefinitely. Here are some pics for fun. Continue reading →
Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk with Andrew Jones of TallSkinnyKiwi.com in preparation for GodblogCon and BlogWorld in Las Vegas next month. I’m proud to say that TheHighCalling.org is one of the event sponsors this year!
Andrew has been blogging since the mid 1990s, back when other folks were still trying to get on board with email. He’s also a key player in the best parts of the emergent movement–which is to say he understands the movement’s roots in the science of emergence, rather than in goatees, candles, and neo-denominationalism. That said, I wouldn’t really consider myself emergent. I’m just a guy following Jesus, nurturing a marriage, raising my kids, doing a job, and playing around with technology and poetry and stuff.
(And I’m not even sure what “neo-denominationalism” is. I just made that up for fun.)
Definitely listen to the audio if you get a chance. You can download it to your ipod, stream it online, or whatever.
Remember: It’s not too late to register for GodblogCon! Let me know in the comments if you’ll be there.
That’s the joke in my house anyway. Other guys grab a beer, sit on the couch, flip on the TV and respond to every question with grunts:
“Uhhnnnhhh Uhhnnnhhh.”
I grab a beer, sit on the couch, flip open a book of poetry and respond with grunts:
“Uhhnnnhhh Uhhnnnhhh.”
The stack of books on my nightstand is getting rather large, but I got my friend John Poch’s new book the other day. It won a big national prize. So of course, I dropped everything to read it–and grunt at my family. (The truth is I read at night in a cave of covers with a book light while my wife sleeps. Like a kid in middle school or something.)
John’s book Two Men Fighting with a Knife is my kind of poetry. (Here’s the book direct from the publisher.) Like all books of poetry, I only marked half of the poems on the first read. Some I marked “FUN!” Others “sad…” One “wow.” And lots of underlined phrases like this one about the speaker’s father:
A god some nights, he carried me up our stairs,
my feet bumping the wallpapered halls, my prayers
let slide for murmurs. He laid the angel’s shields
over me and let them glisten as I slept.
He woke me for chores, for school. Later, he left.
It kind of chokes me up to read it, you know? That’s from “The Angel on the Lamp.” There’s also an astounding sonnet crown dedicated to his surgeon. My favorite poem in the book, though, is a fun sonnet about swatting mosquitoes while on vacation in Mexico (among other things).
Lots of sonnets in the book. John specializes in structured verse, particular forms with rigid rules of rhyme and meter and argument. You can see hints of that in the excerpt above “stairs/prayers,” “slept/left.”
I know the book is good because as soon as I finished I wrote a poem. Good poetry has that effect on me. It’s beautiful and finely crafted, but also inspiring and empowering. In short, John Poch is a master of sprezzatura. So here’s the poem I wrote (which you can hear me read in a new podcast episode):
Shutting Down for John Poch
I hear a cricket in my room, chirping
in time to the flashing cable modem light.
My ears fight the sound, the constant insect flirting
with my mind to take flight together tonight.
Not quite in my room, though, I think it’s outside
our window back on the porch–behind the grill
or underneath or even, God forbid, inside
on the cold, dirty rack where meat and rust still
decay. Like the day in my mind disintegrates
into static from scratching legs or electronic
squeaks from data packages arriving too late.
The monitor’s glow motivates me with chronic
cricket cries to mouse clicks. Shut down. Window’s
symphonic sigh brings silence I suppose.
Last night my daughter and I played Disney’s Pirates Online for fun. It’s a chaperone only activity. A little edgy, but you can see from these pictures that ONE of us was having too much fun.
My daughter sailing while I dance a jig:
My daughter sailing while I wave at the “camera”:
My daughter looking too cool for her dad (who is flexing his muscles):
Chris Cree just posted one of the most thought-provoking posts about blog networks that I’ve read in a long time. In addition to providing some pretty incredible links, he asks some pertinent questions for the people participating in HighCallingBlogs.com. Chris says,
I am curious to hear your opinions on advertising in general, and internet advertising in particular.
How do you feel when you see ads on faith-oriented web sites?
Do you feel faith based non-profits should look at ways to be self supporting or should they rely on donation support?
Even if you’re not interested in all the details of Chris’ post, I’d love to hear your responses over at HighCallingBlogs.com. In fact, I’m turning the comments off here, so you have to go there to comment. Please do. Your input on this issue is really important to me–especially if you’re part of HighCallingBlogs.com.
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.
