here's to a sweet two weeks for you in the Bronx...
Merry Christmas, one and all!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
gutsy guilt.
To the fallen saint, who knows the darkness is self-inflicted and feels the futility of looking for hope from a frowning Judge, the Bible gives a shocking example of gutsy guilt. It pictures God’s failed prophet beneath a righteous frown, bearing his chastisement with broken-hearted boldness. "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light" (Micah 7:8-9).
This is courageous contrition. Gutsy guilt. The saint has fallen. The darkness of God’s indignation is on him. He does not blow it off, but waits. And he throws in the face of his accuser the confidence that his indignant Judge will plead his cause and execute justice for (not against) him. This is the application of justification to the fallen saint. Broken-hearted, gutsy guilt.
(john piper. here.)
This is courageous contrition. Gutsy guilt. The saint has fallen. The darkness of God’s indignation is on him. He does not blow it off, but waits. And he throws in the face of his accuser the confidence that his indignant Judge will plead his cause and execute justice for (not against) him. This is the application of justification to the fallen saint. Broken-hearted, gutsy guilt.
(john piper. here.)
Monday, December 07, 2009
The Bills We Post.
James Thurber, in 'Let Your Mind Alone' :
"I remember that, as a boy of eight, I thought 'Post No Bills' meant that the walls on which it appeared belonged to one Post No Bill, a man of the same heroic proportions as Buffalo Bill. Some suspicious-minded investigator cleared this up for me, and a part of the glamour of life was gone."
*******************************************
The other day, I was Christmas-cleaning -- a good and healthy thing for one to do, scrubbing things all day, aerating dingy corners and swiping layers of yuck off baseboard after baseboard. A song came on, one from a little animated film, a song that once swept me up in childish transport, and I suddenly realized that now, by a series of quite delightful events and encounters, it happens that I actually know the person behind one of the voices in that song. She is very famous, as a voice, and it's an honor to know her, and she is most marvelous... and, funnily enough, I know her.
My worlds of higher-than-me myth and daily meetings have intertwined. The untouchable world of movies and music and swirling story that shaped my imaginings as a child... now I actually know people from it.
Starstruckness is long-dispelled from a mind that's been called to more important things and harsh realities; still, still it curled a brainstring and made me laugh in incredulity to think 'I know that voice! I know that woman.'
When do we make this transition? When do we have to step out of the role of rider-of-winged-Pegasus ( , soaring in the realms of sweep-you-up mythology, ) and into the realm of practical adulthood? Some people never do. Never start thinking critically about what comes out, about what they see: some stay immersed in roleplaying universes for decades, bleary-eyed dwarves occasionally forced to emerge into the bright lights of grocery stores and bookshops, returning as soon as possible to wield invisible swords in dark caverns of computerlight. Some of us wanted very much to become critical thinkers, s t r a i n e d our brains again and again to try to be un-enchanted, when we were children. I remember trying. Trying to understand "People made this!" Watching behind-the-scenes bits and being almost hurt to see how inorganic 'creative' atmospheres could really be. How very unlike the familial story-birthings I thought they were.
I wanted to be free from the spells movie magazines would seek to cast, wanted to be able to look at the truth of things. I'd practice. I'd try to make myself awake. And one bright day, I guess, it must have worked. I don't think it was by my own doing. But I find that I now realize that I will never live in the world of 'White Christmas,' though as I child I took the film somehow as an intimation of things to come--the world ahead, the United States, adulthood, something. ...
Not all I've met had to make this trip. It seems that some always saw stories, films and music as trinkets, as side-items. Take-'em-or-leave-'em. But for those of us with imaginations tuned to some particular height of frequency, it's a jolt we have to trip through.
I've been thinking about this off and on lately, just in sudden clips of nostalgia, wonderment -- I watched 'Finian's Rainbow' with a dear friend who'd never seen it before; I didn't envy her being an adult when she got to see it for the first time. If I'd waited till adulthood, the ochres of those hillsides would not be an indelible part of my mind's eye, my heart's palette.
And I wondered, when does it end, the viewing of things with such intensity? You remember every line of the illustrations in that book you had as a child. The particular blue of that elephant, the richness of the fruit on that painted table. You can recall, if you try for just a moment, every expression on the villains' faces in that old movie, or every look of warmth between Big Bird and the little Chinese girl in that television special. (so dear!)
We wander, as children, unwittingly, under the illusion that something in the world -- not everything, but something -- is as it should be. That someone is in charge of all the decisions. It is the misted perspective that says that people, Some People, know exactly what they're doing, that there are some sort of all-wise, brilliant Shapers, unfallen adults, somewhere in the world ... Even storefront signs, I was thinking the other day... we look at them as children and think, 'that store is supposed to be there. This is the way the world is. Someone wiser than I decided that.' Someone wiser than I.
Now, granted, there are so many wiser than I (especially in the area of setting up stores). But the strange, unspoken certainty of a child that everyone was doing things The Best Possible Way, doing them in the way that I was supposed to learn... is well-dispelled.
How does this happen in other cultures ? It would be interesting to know which realms of life make appearances in this transition from fullbodied trust to hopeful skepticism. Is it an innocent trust in how your village is ordered? Or in your father's stories?
It's a little scary to realize you're part of the adults now, to realize that there's no stable How-it's-Supposed-to-be, but only an invitation to come participate in forming what Is.
(Ah, but we who know the One who created things as they were supposed to be, who made things good, who made good things....
we know that there is a How-it's-Supposed-to-be. Here in this world, it may not show up everywhere yet; it may not be all around us, in every facet of life's aesthetics and organization. But we can go to the Book and see, see and hear, so much about the How-it's-Supposed-to-be.
And we, we're being made how we're supposed to be, every day a little more. )
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. --2Corinthians4:17-18.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. --Romans12:2.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. The myths that helped shape my dictionary definitions of beautiful, exciting, love, adventure, fearful... these old garments served a purpose, for a time. As they've been put aside, as they've grown shabby, threadbare, right before my eyes, the Story of all Stories has welled up big and loud all inside me. By the grace of its Author, who wrote Himself on my heart!
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? 'Nothing,' he says, 'but weariness of spirit.' ... if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face." (Charles Spurgeon. dec. 2's evening.)
No, the pattern for perfect is not to be found in the fabric this world generates. The real stars, the real authorities, the real to-be-trusted are all in Christ. All the shimmering hints of glory in the myths are not to be compared with the golden, glorious Lamb at the center of the throne.
Never again will they thirst
who come make their home in him. !
***********************************************
Just found and am looking forward to reading: The Christian Imagination
Interested in (books): The Power of Words and the Wonder of God ; The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth; The Children's Culture Reader; Children's Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory ; Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children; The Gutenberg Elegies ...
But probably won't get to them all, not yet, or to all the ruminations on 'media ecology' (happy gift of a term to twine some things together... ) I'd like to undertake. So enough to say, for now,
take very seriously the responsibility you have to any child you meet; they are in the midst of a delicate process; they are soft clay, developing film, canvases-in-progress.... pray for the children. The media are vanity by their own power. The True message is anything but, and what joy to redeem the media a bit by melding them with most perfect message, as wisely as we're enabled to do.
"I remember that, as a boy of eight, I thought 'Post No Bills' meant that the walls on which it appeared belonged to one Post No Bill, a man of the same heroic proportions as Buffalo Bill. Some suspicious-minded investigator cleared this up for me, and a part of the glamour of life was gone."
*******************************************
The other day, I was Christmas-cleaning -- a good and healthy thing for one to do, scrubbing things all day, aerating dingy corners and swiping layers of yuck off baseboard after baseboard. A song came on, one from a little animated film, a song that once swept me up in childish transport, and I suddenly realized that now, by a series of quite delightful events and encounters, it happens that I actually know the person behind one of the voices in that song. She is very famous, as a voice, and it's an honor to know her, and she is most marvelous... and, funnily enough, I know her.
My worlds of higher-than-me myth and daily meetings have intertwined. The untouchable world of movies and music and swirling story that shaped my imaginings as a child... now I actually know people from it.
Starstruckness is long-dispelled from a mind that's been called to more important things and harsh realities; still, still it curled a brainstring and made me laugh in incredulity to think 'I know that voice! I know that woman.'
When do we make this transition? When do we have to step out of the role of rider-of-winged-Pegasus ( , soaring in the realms of sweep-you-up mythology, ) and into the realm of practical adulthood? Some people never do. Never start thinking critically about what comes out, about what they see: some stay immersed in roleplaying universes for decades, bleary-eyed dwarves occasionally forced to emerge into the bright lights of grocery stores and bookshops, returning as soon as possible to wield invisible swords in dark caverns of computerlight. Some of us wanted very much to become critical thinkers, s t r a i n e d our brains again and again to try to be un-enchanted, when we were children. I remember trying. Trying to understand "People made this!" Watching behind-the-scenes bits and being almost hurt to see how inorganic 'creative' atmospheres could really be. How very unlike the familial story-birthings I thought they were.
I wanted to be free from the spells movie magazines would seek to cast, wanted to be able to look at the truth of things. I'd practice. I'd try to make myself awake. And one bright day, I guess, it must have worked. I don't think it was by my own doing. But I find that I now realize that I will never live in the world of 'White Christmas,' though as I child I took the film somehow as an intimation of things to come--the world ahead, the United States, adulthood, something. ...
Not all I've met had to make this trip. It seems that some always saw stories, films and music as trinkets, as side-items. Take-'em-or-leave-'em. But for those of us with imaginations tuned to some particular height of frequency, it's a jolt we have to trip through.
I've been thinking about this off and on lately, just in sudden clips of nostalgia, wonderment -- I watched 'Finian's Rainbow' with a dear friend who'd never seen it before; I didn't envy her being an adult when she got to see it for the first time. If I'd waited till adulthood, the ochres of those hillsides would not be an indelible part of my mind's eye, my heart's palette.
And I wondered, when does it end, the viewing of things with such intensity? You remember every line of the illustrations in that book you had as a child. The particular blue of that elephant, the richness of the fruit on that painted table. You can recall, if you try for just a moment, every expression on the villains' faces in that old movie, or every look of warmth between Big Bird and the little Chinese girl in that television special. (so dear!)
We wander, as children, unwittingly, under the illusion that something in the world -- not everything, but something -- is as it should be. That someone is in charge of all the decisions. It is the misted perspective that says that people, Some People, know exactly what they're doing, that there are some sort of all-wise, brilliant Shapers, unfallen adults, somewhere in the world ... Even storefront signs, I was thinking the other day... we look at them as children and think, 'that store is supposed to be there. This is the way the world is. Someone wiser than I decided that.' Someone wiser than I.
Now, granted, there are so many wiser than I (especially in the area of setting up stores). But the strange, unspoken certainty of a child that everyone was doing things The Best Possible Way, doing them in the way that I was supposed to learn... is well-dispelled.
How does this happen in other cultures ? It would be interesting to know which realms of life make appearances in this transition from fullbodied trust to hopeful skepticism. Is it an innocent trust in how your village is ordered? Or in your father's stories?
It's a little scary to realize you're part of the adults now, to realize that there's no stable How-it's-Supposed-to-be, but only an invitation to come participate in forming what Is.
(Ah, but we who know the One who created things as they were supposed to be, who made things good, who made good things....
we know that there is a How-it's-Supposed-to-be. Here in this world, it may not show up everywhere yet; it may not be all around us, in every facet of life's aesthetics and organization. But we can go to the Book and see, see and hear, so much about the How-it's-Supposed-to-be.
And we, we're being made how we're supposed to be, every day a little more. )
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. --2Corinthians4:17-18.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. --Romans12:2.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. The myths that helped shape my dictionary definitions of beautiful, exciting, love, adventure, fearful... these old garments served a purpose, for a time. As they've been put aside, as they've grown shabby, threadbare, right before my eyes, the Story of all Stories has welled up big and loud all inside me. By the grace of its Author, who wrote Himself on my heart!
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? 'Nothing,' he says, 'but weariness of spirit.' ... if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face." (Charles Spurgeon. dec. 2's evening.)
No, the pattern for perfect is not to be found in the fabric this world generates. The real stars, the real authorities, the real to-be-trusted are all in Christ. All the shimmering hints of glory in the myths are not to be compared with the golden, glorious Lamb at the center of the throne.
Never again will they thirst
who come make their home in him. !
***********************************************
Just found and am looking forward to reading: The Christian Imagination
Interested in (books): The Power of Words and the Wonder of God ; The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth; The Children's Culture Reader; Children's Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory ; Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children; The Gutenberg Elegies ...
But probably won't get to them all, not yet, or to all the ruminations on 'media ecology' (happy gift of a term to twine some things together... ) I'd like to undertake. So enough to say, for now,
take very seriously the responsibility you have to any child you meet; they are in the midst of a delicate process; they are soft clay, developing film, canvases-in-progress.... pray for the children. The media are vanity by their own power. The True message is anything but, and what joy to redeem the media a bit by melding them with most perfect message, as wisely as we're enabled to do.
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