From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601:
"...Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em"
(Malvolio)
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand, but we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.
We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well the minute we understand it we are obliged to act accordingly. "My God", you will say, "if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How will I ever get on in the world"?
Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the church’s prodigious invention against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible becoming too close.
Oh, priceless scholarship, what we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the Living God. Yes it is even dreadful to spend time alone with the New Testament.
Soren Kiekergaard.
After a big month of much stretching...people...events...conversations... thinking and more, a quote from William Channing helps me gain perspective on the big and small.‘To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy not respectable, and wealthy, not rich. To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with an open heart. To bear all thankfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconcious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony!’
- William Channing
Life is full of the common, yet our take on the small and large of life, can turn the daily into a symphony or into a torture chamber.
Reminders that encourage me to be thrilled by the leaves flickering from the winter sun, tempted by the sound of a loved one whispering not much, the pound of the footpath heavy under legs that can still walk or the caramel of sugar dissapearing through the foam of a chai latte.
Appreciating the small, to increase the size of my heart. That my friend is the timing and notation of my current symphony...
A
If you've never heard some of John Stott's prolific and wide-ranging corpus, then it could be time to get going. Here's a guy whose life has been characterised by faithfulness, industry, endeavour and the pursuit of truth. There's a whole lot that's worthy of imitation about Stott, here's but a wee slice of the gold that he has mined:Our neighbour is neither a body-less soul that we should love only his soul, nor a soul-less body that we should care for its welfare alone. Nor even a body-soul isolated from society. God created man who is my neighbour; a body-soul in community. Therefore, if we love our neighbour as God made him, we must inevitably be concerned for his total welfare: the good of his soul, his body and his community.
What therefore is our task today? Shall I answer: “faith, hope and love”? That sounds beautiful, but I would say – courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth.
Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack today is not psychology or literature, we lack a holy rage, the recklessness that comes from a knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the street, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth. A holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children die of hunger while the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction “peace”. To rage against complacency, to restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until is conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.
Prayer of Kaj Munk, Danish pastor before he was killed by the Gestapo, January, 1944.
Just turned over this quote in a book I'm re-reading:Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do.
- Mencius
Thoughts?
William Shakespeare writes about opportunity in Julius Caesar. Brutus is urging his comrades to seize a fleeting opportunity in an armed conflict and is given these lines:There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea as we are now afloat;
And we must not take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk:On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
Thoughts?
You'll find a whole lot to sigh deeply about in this article but there's a notion that's interesting to ponder at the same time: our search for meaning and our desire for a cause. Is there truth within the diatribe? Where do followers of Jesus fit within the dialogue? And what does it reveal about human-kind, circa 2007?"Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth."
- Ray Evans, Author of Nine Facts About Climate Change
“You don’t have to be in the business of integrity to know the impact of strong character. Every time you interact with someone, your personal ‘integrometer’ is quietly probing the situation for evidence of personal convictions.”*
Even though ‘integrometer’ isn’t a real word, I’ll let it slide, because I like the concept. I like it and I don’t. It’s challenging but daunting to know that people around us are silently taking notes on us, measuring our integrity — to some extent regardless of whatever image we try to project because our real selves usually exude out of us or at least spill out at some point. And that unconsciously, we engage in the same practice of measuring others.
The guy who coined the term, Ben Ortlip, suggests thinking about these four things when measuring your own integrity:
1) Do you avoid certain people?
2) Do you struggle with insecurity?
3) What do people say about you?
4) What do you say about people?
I thought it was interesting that he saw struggling with insecurity as an indication that work could be done in the integrity department. I guess he figures that if you’re insecure about yourself, there’s probably a reason you are and that reason is that you are lacking in an area of your character that you shouldn’t be. Tough love Ortlip.
It’s worth thinking about anyway — what score do you think you’d get on an integrometer if such an instrument existed?
*Excerpt from Catalyst Magazine, 2006, written by Ben Ortlip.
Free at last.One man come in the name of love
- Bono
One man come and go
One man come, he to justify
One man to overthrow
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed on an empty beach.
One man betrayed with a kiss
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
(nobody like you...)
Early morning, april 4
Shot rings out in the memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love...
A young pastor from Zimbabwe on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. He was later martyred for his faith...The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made - I'm a disciple of His. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I'm finished with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colourless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. I no longer need preeminence, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognised, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, depend on His presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labour with power.
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet –– Frederick Buechner
Thoughts?
Everything is like a symphony, if you think about it. Birds are perfect, and crickets come out of the wet woods like a choir.
And this is another accident, that we have ears to hear, and that nature itself works perfectly to calm the soul, and wind from a tornado has that perfect pitch of fear, that train rumble of death, and music, music, if it is an accident, may be one of the greatest miracles of them all, as beautiful as romance or colour or the power of water.
from Through Painted Deserts - Light, God and Beauty on the Open Road, Donald Miller
Last week I heard someone speaking on the subject, 'Why Sing?' . One of their memorable points was this: some things can only be expressed in the poetic. We can write through reams of paper (or countless pages in a Moleskine), or get our theology on, or preach our heads off, and yet still only skim the surface of the succinct, captivating truth of 'Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me' or 'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so'.
I was thumbing through a book yesterday and re-discovered this superlative poem by a dominator in the metaphysical realm: George Herbert. And I remembered all over again, that there are some sentiments that can only be expressed through the richness of the poetic. From around 400 years ago...take it away, George:Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
-- George Herbert
Steve Turner is a British journalist and author. He's written books on Jack Kerouac, Johnny Cash, and Sir Cliff Richard. He's partial to U2 (co-authored Rattle and Hum), which will appeal to some Cacophonites, he's a poet and he can be seriously satirical.
Creed
by Steve Turner
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors.
And the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.
There's a whole lot about journey on the way...
"What quickens my pulse now is the stretch ahead rather than the one behind, and it is mainly for some clue to where I am going that I search through where I have been, for some hint of who I am becoming or failing to become that I delve into what used to be."
– Frederick Buechner
A prayer by Saint Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred . . . let me sow love
Where there is injury . . . pardon
Where there is doubt . . . faith
Where there is despair . . . hope
Where there is darkness . . . light
Where there is sadness . . . joy
Divine Master, grant that i may not so much seek
To be consoled . . . as to console
To be understood . . . as to understand,
To be loved . . . as to love
For it is in giving . . . that we receive,
It is in pardoning,
that we are pardoned,
It is in dying . . . that we are born to eternal life
I was listening to a podcast by Rob Bell while running this morning and he began quoting some fragments from an old song by Robert Robertson. While he was clearly afflicted by his parents to inherit such a repetitive name, Bob cast off the shackles and came up with some gold.
Sure, along the way he managed to utlise those oft forgotten words, Ebenezer and Hither and sure, he managed to incorporate 'interposed' within a song, but the gold is still there to be mined.
Come thou Fount of every blessing;
Tune my heart to sing thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above,
Praise the mount; I'm fixed upon it:
Mount of thy redeeming love.
Here I raise my Ebenezer,
Hither by thy help I'm come
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home,
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love,
Here's my heart. O take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wand'ring from the fold of God,
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed his precious blood,
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let they goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart. O take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.
Big kudos to Mr Cohen.
Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in
*from Anthem.
