Archive for January, 2006

The Waiting Game

Posted in Uncategorized on 01/31/2006 09:42 am by Michael

As may be the case with this blog for the immediate future, most of my ruminations come from what I am studying that day. Today, therefore, is no different. My John Milton class meets tonight, and this week we have been reading through a sampling of his Sonnets. I must admit, as I have heard others say this week, I am not the biggest Milton’s-Sonnets-fan, but I have been searching for something redeeming in them to latch onto and give myself motivation and justification for paying a thousand dollars to take this course……and I think I finally have.

The last selection for this week’s reading was Sonnet XIX, “When I Consider…” Redemption has come through Milton’s apparent introspection and wrestling with his unique calling as a follower of Christ.

The part that grabbed my attention reads:

“God doth not need
either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

These last months have been a gentle reminder of this principle in many ways. I have been involved in a job and a church that, by their actions, value “posting o’er Land and Ocean without rest”, but I have been confronted with the reality that work does not always equal serving. Perhaps that is poor wording, but the point is plainly seen.

Need we always exhaust ourselves in our service to the Lord? Can he not call us to wait? This is the tricky part, though. How does one, in trying to wait faithfully, keep from slothfulness and disobedience? I can easily see myself sliding down the slippery slope of laziness, where I discard church attendance, offerings, and service of any type, all under the guise of waiting. I know my tendencies, but this seems an inner-battle worth raging. The alternative is to live under the tyranny of legalism and slave-labor to the church.

As always, I invite your comments or different intpretations of the text.

 

Just Ask Texas Cattle Ranchers

Posted in Uncategorized on 01/27/2006 08:41 am by Michael


If there is a lesson for all of America, and the known world for that mattter, to learn it is that you should not mess around with Oprah. Ask cattle ranchers from a few years ago, and ask this guy, James Frey (right). Like the Wicked Witch of the West, who sends out her hord of flying monkeys to wreak havoc, so too has Oprah dispatched her minions to effectually discredit and utterly destroy an author.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that she is wrong to do this. In fact, I see the validity of her argument. She has become some sort of suburban-housewife’s-beacon-of-hope-and-truth, and the trust that these followers have placed in her has been violated. Winfrey claimed that she was daily receiving emails from viewers who were inspired by the story of an addict struggling to get clean. She was hurt and embarrassed that these same viewers, due to some detective work from Smoking Gun, found out that Frey was in fact lying about large portions of his story.

This has caused me to think of two things:

1. Oprah has changed the face of reading in America – With her God-like powers she has somehow made reading cool and exciting to those that would probably not otherwise think so. For that I can never fault her. Who could have known that her book club would become this popular and have the power to both launch new authors into celebrities with her praise and destroy others by her ire. For this I have to admire her.

2. Truth has changed - There is a book I read in college called Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be. The book really has no direct correlation to the present subject, but the title keeps rolling about in my mind. Memoirs are by defintion something liking to the truth, but perhaps not anymore. Frey makes the argument that he can bend the truth to fit into the package of himself that he wants others to see. Perception becoming reality and truth. This is every philosopher’s dream and every theologian’s nightmare.

Let me share some clips from Oprah’s interview with the author that were posted on CNN.com.


And even while Frey admitted altering information that he presented as facts, he maintained his book is a memoir.

“I don’t think it’s a novel. I still think it’s a memoir,” he said. “I don’t feel like I conned you. I still think the book is about drug addiction and alcoholism and no one is disputing that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and it’s about the battle to overcome that.”

Among the facts he admitted to embellishing: he was jailed for only a few hours, not 87 days; and each character in the book wasn’t wholly represented.

“Every one of the people in the book existed. I altered things about all of them,” he said.

“And you altered things about yourself,” Winfrey said.

“In order to get through the experience of an addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was, badder than I was. It helped me cope. When I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.”

I’ve been excited about this story all morning. Oprah is waging epistemological warfare and it’s happening right before our eyes. Every news organization around is arguing what the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and others have been arguing for centuries.


 

Distorted Heroes

Posted in Uncategorized on 01/26/2006 12:31 pm by Michael

This picture, which consequentely was probably taken illegally from some honest artist’s website, reminded me of a the distorted nature of heroes. Much of my musings lately have come from the novels that I have been studying. Most recently I have finished (actually I have 9 pages I need to finish when my students leave the room, but it’s all just filler towards the end anyway) reading Nickolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. (side note: I’m in a 19th Century Russian novel class….I know, you’ve all been there, right?)

The proclaimed hero of the novel appears at first to be something akin to a used-car-salesman, but he then takes on an almost charming quality that puts the reader under the same spell that as those characters in the novel themselves. By the end he is shown to be exactly who you assumed he was in the beginning. His redemptive qualities vanish, and he is shown for what he really is; he is ugly, flawed, degenerate, and yes, the hero.

Is this who I am as a Christian? When those “redemptive” qualities in me, the ones that I try so hard to display, are stripped away I am nothing more than a distorted image of something true. My goodness is mixed with evil, my purity with filth, my love with hate. I am a mass of contradictions and flaws, but can I still be what God has called me to be? Can the hero be this confused?  Posted by Picasa

 

The Four-Sided Stone

Posted in Uncategorized on 01/24/2006 01:15 pm by Michael

I suppose I can thank Will Norvell (www.norvellthree.blogspot.com) for pushing me over the proverbial edge by answering a series of questions and asking for my response.

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. The Buckle – That’s right, the trendy store full of people that I don’t think I could even hold a conversation with anymore. My first college-job….I thought it was the coolest.
2. Youth Intern – Many of the responsibilities of a full-fledged youth minister, but this way they can pay you somewhere around minimum wage.
3. Starbucks Barista – I sold my soul to the Great Satan long ago and now I can’t go back.
4. Song-Guy @ Sky Ranch – By far, the most miserable job of the lot. By about week 3 out of 12 every counselor at that camp hated the sight of me due to the endless barrage of “Pharoah, Pharoah” that I was forced to play. Let’s be honest….by week 6 or so even I hated me.

Four movies I’d watch on repeat:

1. Rounders – I saw this again last weekend, and I don’t think I will ever get tired of it.
2. Bottle Rocket – I must thank Will for this gem. I had my first Bottle Rocket experience in Sherman, TX, and my life is now forever changed. I now believe in “second blessings”.
3. That Thing You Do – Granted, it’s corny, but what wannabe musician doesn’t love that story.
4. Dead Man on Campus – I believe I actually get dumber each time I watch this, but I still laugh my arse off everytime. Jim and I have watched this a thousand times I bet.
5. Without Limts – I know I said four, but Jim and I have watched this probably more than the last one.

Four TV shows I love:

1. West Wing – Liberal bias, schriberal-bias…I don’t care. I love it.
2. Family Guy – It makes me laugh like a little girl.
3. TNT’s Inside the NBA – The only thing better than the Thursday night games is Charles Barkley’s commentary afterward.
4.

Four vacation spots I’d love to frequent:

1. Colorado – It doesn’t matter where. Just give me mountains, snow, and cold air.
2. Ruidoso, NM – It has been somewhat of a second home-town for me growing up, and I think I could just about move there.
3. Paint Rock, TX – I know what you’re thinking: “Where?” That’s the point. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and that feeling of isolation really appeals to me. My cell phone won’t even work out there.
4. Europe – My exposure has been somewhat limited to this point, but I’m hoping to change that very soon.

Four websites I visit daily:

1. SI.com – I’m a bit of a sports-junky.
2. Fliptophead.com – my brother’s blog-site
3. Hotmail.com – I have this uncontrollable desire to check my email ever 30 seconds. It’s bordering on OCD at this point.
4. Blogs, blogs, blogs – Will’s, Erin’s…etc. I even hit the Random button when I’m bored. The whole blog-world is fascinating and strange.

Four foods I lust for

1. Taco Bell bean and cheese burritos. I don’t know if I’ve gone more than a few days without one of these since Jr. High.
2. Big Deal breakfast combo with cheese – You Crane-born Americans will understand. Heaven with have a Big Deal Burrito Hut if there is a God.
3. Jimi’s Pizza – This is a place that has helped our school out, and I’m convinced they put nicotine or something in their pizza, becuase I can’t eat any other kind anymore.
4. Coffee – Technically this is not a food, but I would go without food before I would go without coffee. (Side-note – I coach basketball, and I stopped the other night on the way to our game, which we were potentially late for, and I made one of my players go into Starbucks and buy me a cup of coffee….the problem is getting worse)

Four changes to my house:

1. Foundation – The cracks in our walls are starting to get cracks in them.
2. Neighborhood – It’s not the worst, but it’s not exactly Mayberry.
3. Functional Sprinkler System – I have spent countless hours trying to get that piece of crap to work, but it’s of no use. Once I fix one spot another malfunctions. I finally rebelled against the lawn and stopped watering it. I was “that neighbor” that didn’t care what his yard looked like.
4. Functional Plumbing System – The only thing I have spent more time on than the sprinkler system is the plumbing. I believe this to be my “thorn in the flesh”.

Four beers I like:

1. Becks Dark – The Germans know what they are doing.
2. Guiness Stout – Apparantly the Irish aren’t bad either. Funny story – I had a Guiness with the great-grandson of Arthur Guiness, who is a noted scholar and theologian. It was a cool experience.
3. Shiner Bock – As far as cheap beer goes, it is pretty not bad. If they don’t serve the previous two, this is a reliable stand-by.
4. As my friend Todd says, “I like the beer the other man is buying.”

Four books you would recommend:

1. Plato’s Republic – Even if you don’t study philosophy, this is like an intro course to Greek thought.
2. Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling -It’s a Christian debate worth having.
3. Milan Kundera’s Life is Elsewhere or The Unbearable Lightness of Being: I can’t say enough good things about either of these. They are worth every minute of your reading-time.
4. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground – I am a recent Dostoevsky convert, but this is brilliant.

Four tags (which apparently is where I pawn this off on some other suckers):

1. Jim
2. Julie
3. Abbey
4. Debby