Those who earnestly seek invite equally earnest dismissal.

Has it ever happened to you that you become excited about something, but no one is excited for you? So you wonder if your excitement is silly, and eventually you turn to something else, or set it aside for later, or drop it altogether, as though it’s tainted.

 

I’ve had it happen a lot. I’m sure you have too. For me it’s been writing, radio, and Jesus. In the past, this usually came in the form of a paternal nod from someone significantly older lending unsolicited advice about how different the world is than the one I think I’m in. Now that I’m older, it comes with a youthful nod from someone significantly younger thinking I’m an addled with age.

 

Those who earnestly seek invite equally earnest dismissal. I’m often tempted to blame that for the troughs that punctuate my spiritual journey, but that would be like blaming a series of red traffic lights for making me late for work.

[2013-09-25]

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"The most frustrating part of dealing with people that are horribly wrong is enduring their insistence that they are right.:

--Clarence 0ddbody, upon watching this video of the debate between Hank Hanegraaff and Mark Hitchcock on the date of the book of Revelation; IMHO Hitchcock won if only by virtue of Hanegraaff’s indignant piety.

 

[2013-09-24]

Feeling sorry for the slothful servant. (Can you lose your salvation?)

This is an interesting coincidence: I heard the Parable of Talents mentioned on the same Sunday by three preachers who I'm pretty sure don't know each other:

* Pastor Nicholas Mullen, St Matthew Lutheran Church, Ada, MI (where I was in the pew)
* Pastor Doug Bergsma at Res Life Rockford, MI (where I was in the foyer)
* Pastor Jim Storey at Bethel Baptist Church, Erie, PA (in a podcast)

Perhaps the parable is in a liturgical calendar? I have limited understanding of this but I know many churches observe some parts of it. (All Christians observe Christmas and Easter, but there are daily observations that go back many hundreds of years).

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I recently had a conversation with a friend about losing our salvation.

 

Since coming to the conclusion that we can, I’ve become tuned to hear things a bit differently, like the conclusion of the parable of the slothful servant[1]:

 

“But his lord answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn't sow, and gather where I didn't scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn't have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

- Matthew 25:24-30, World English Bible

 

If this is a metaphor for how one gains or loses eternal life, my Baptist friends will say the slothful servant wasn't really saved in the first place (Baptists believe in eternal security - once saved, always saved). But the parable doesn't support that reading. All the servants start out the same, and one is singled out for special punishment.

 

Click to enlarge: The Last Judgment, by Stefan Lochner. Learn more about “Doom paintings” and see examples here >

In what sort of place might there be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”? Hell, or Purgatory, possibly. It’s not heaven, is it?

Since childhood, I’ve felt this parable is a bit harsh.

 

The servant was scared of the master and did his best to guard what had been entrusted to him. We are so far removed from ancient sensibilities, I’m sure I’m not responding to it the way the original audience did. I know this will sound disrespectful to some, but if Jesus were with us in human form today, I suspect he’d present it a bit differently.

One of the wonderful things about parables, of course, is that they are open to a wide variety of interpretations since they are delivered as invented stories with moral lessons. Debate is often pointless since there’s no agreed-upon place you can draw a line and say “we won’t dissect this any more finely to find a modern application.”

[2013-09-04]

 

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[1]

How this might be described in an internally coherent manner is beyond my interest or ability. I believe it has scriptural, traditional, and practical support.

BTW, this “tuning” phenomena is familiar to all of us in a different way. We will sometimes go through a day and suddenly become aware that we’ve heard a unique phrase three or four times and wonder at the coincidence. We likely hear multiples like this often but are not tuned to detect them.

 

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Ignorance is practical.

Click to enlarge: A three-legged stool. A stool can provide stability with 3 legs, 4, 5, 6, or more. Three works just fine, weighs less, and takes fewer resources and labor to manufacture, but in the absence of any criteria besides "what keeps you from tipping over," there is no right number.

I’ve come to a point in my spiritual (and secular) journey where I am amazed how cavalierly many educated and intelligent people say "X ought not to be that way" when a group of folks may have happily been practicing X that way for a dozen or a hundred or a thousand years.

If you know me, you know I am what you might call a moderate progressive (>), which means, in part, I don’t have to agree with the way groups of people do things, but I do grant them the right to continue doing it without my interference, so long as they don’t interfere with my right to live my life the way I think I ought[1].

And that’s not always easy, because there are a lot of things I disagree with that are legal. I don’t like my taxes funding abortion and war, but I can’t earmark my tax dollars for the causes I personally like.

Click to enlarge: A formal place setting. There’s no reason why I can’t eat my entire meal with an oyster fork and slurp my soup from the bowl. It would make any place setting much more practical, if a little boring. But in the absence of any other etiquette besides “whatever gets it to my mouth,” there is no right way to set a table. (The image is from WhatWouldJackieDo.wordpress.com)

Some group practices cross over into hurt, I know that, but for the most part, if a group says, for example, “only men should be preachers,” well, by golly, it's their club and their rules. Lots of folks have started their own clubs on this very issue.

 

However, I encourage anyone to consider that just maybe something that looks out of step but has lasted a long time may have some merit, and there is merit in a practice that provides stability and comfort apart from the practice itself; ignorance is not only blissful, it can be practical.

Are there exceptions? Sure. Consider slavery, universal suffrage, child labor, fair housing laws, etc. Institutionalized marginalization is a bad thing; defining it and doing a risk/benefit analysis can be presumptuous, but it can also be essential.

I’m only thinking of benign practices here.

And yes, we’ll disagree on those, but there are some things we can shrug at and move along, right?

[2013-02-22]

 

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[1]
Note that when I say “I,” I am not saying “Clarence’s rules,” but that Clarence (and you) has the right to choose which value system to abide by - Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc - or none at all, which is impossible, but if you want to try, I can’t stop you.

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Dean and Jerry and a 12” portable B&W TV set.

I sometimes feel I've been reincarnated. I’ve heard others say the same thing, so I know I’m not alone.

I heard Dean Martin singing on the ROK Classic Radio Network and couldn't help but drift a little, like a bobber on a windless lake, but tugged suddenly back by images of the frenetic and vapid Emmys the night before.[1]

Something's broken and careening wildly out of control.

My brother Tom and I used to stay up late in our upstairs bedroom and watch old Martin and Lewis movies. We put a 12” black-and-white portable TV on the floor between our beds and transformed the space into our own little theater.

We turned the volume up just loud enough to hear, and sometimes laughed so hard at Jerry’s antics we had to cover our mouths to avoid being discovered by Mom and Dad asleep downstairs.

We were maybe 7 and 8 years old, and a portable TV for a working class family of five was no small luxury, and to have it occasionally in our room was a rare treat.

I’m sure my nostalgic connection to Dean Martin‘s voice is partly due to having heard him sing so many years ago in our bedroom theater with my chin on the carpet and nose no more than a foot from the screen. My brain smells musical memories, like wisps of smoke from burning leaves recall the piles we built and scattered each fall.

Sailor Beware Before the Fight

(One of the most famous scenes Lewis ever did and very funny.)

Dean Martin singing "Never Before" from Sailor Beware

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis - Sailor Beware (1952)

(Watch the entire film.)

[2013-09-23]

 

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[1]

Pumpkin FM’s American Comedy Channel is on the ROK Classic Radio Network here >

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My Opinion on the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

Watching the Emmys was like being invited to a party by accident and no one saw me arrive or leave.

[2013-09-22]

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Click to enlarge: Josephine Baker, at one time the most successful American entertainer in France and "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw," according to Ernest Hemingway.

"Some moments take decades to understand."

(A beautiful turn of phrase in an NPR story on Black history in Paris.)

[2013-09-02]

 

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“If you remember only one thing I ever tell you, remember to observe.”
--Gary Locke, my 6th grade science teacher at Vernondale Elementary School in Millcreek, PA.

Mr Locke, if you’re still with us, I haven't forgotten. That advice has served me well for nearly 40 years. I think of it often, and of you saying it.

[2013-01-22]

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The dumbest thing Microsoft ever did.

The dumbest thing Microsoft ever did was remove the "Organize" feature in Outlook and use "Conditional Formatting" to accomplish the same thing.

What happened to the organize feature? >

To be perfectly honest, it never belonged under "Organize," either. Coloring an email should be a filter, just like marking it read, unread, important, unimportant, etc.

So this is a double cluster.

It takes five clicks in three different windows just to get to the place where I can begin to define the condition to color an email subject line.

What's so hard about letting me right-click and choose to color by subject, sender, etc?

I don't want to move it or forward it or categorize it, I just want to color it, which just about every other installed email client lets you do.

[2013-09-13]

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Free Awesomeness

Did you know you can edit PDFs with the free/open source LibreOffice?

Lots of online forms (especially government) require you to use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, but the free reader won’t let you save your edits. You can’t fill forms with LibreOffice, but you can edit and save them.

Learn how to edit PDF documents with LibreOffice Draw >

Get the free LibreOffice >

(a MS-compatible alternative to Microsoft Office)

Another option is to fill out the form, screen capture your scrolling window, then OCR the image.

Or you can pay $279 at Amazon for it. So much for the liberation promised by a cross-platform portable document format.

[2013-09-13]

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What I used to be able to get at McDonalds for $5 even.

Click to enlarge: I used to get two quarter pounders with cheese, two large fries, and a large drink at McDonalds for exactly $5.

Every Wednesday after work, I used to get two double cheeseburgers, two large fries, and a large orange drink for exactly five dollars. I'd arrive home just in time to watch Quincy, ME at 10pm, one of my favorite TV shows from those days. I’d eat my dinner in front of the TV and then do my high school homework.

That would have been 1980, when I was working for Loblaws in Millcreek Mall. The McDonalds I stopped at was near the foot of Zuck Road in Erie, PA. There’s an auto dealership there now.

Click to enlarge: Bonnell's Auto Sales in Erie PA. There used to be a McDonalds here, near the intersection of 26th and Zuck.

I had a church friend from those days, Ron Renner, who was managing a McDonalds and making very good money right out of high school. I think by the time I left for college, he had franchised one, or was thinking of it.

[2013-09-15]

 

 

 

 

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[2013-08-24]

 

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My opinion on Art Prize in Grand Rapids

When we get to the point where we can enjoy a Literature Prize or Math Prize or Music Prize as much as an Art Prize (which is a good thing, BTW), we will have arrived someplace special where we also find that along the way we’ve solved war and hunger and homelessness and other painful unnecessary things.

You can’t reveal the sublime without enduring the wretched.

Art Prize in Grand Rapids >

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Is it true? Is it kind? Is it helpful?

I just learned of this:
The Three Sieves of Socrates >

Plato is often called the “most Christian” pre-Christian philosopher. I had to rethink that upon discovering this wonderful advice from Socrates. But Plato was of course Socrates’ student. If I’m going to extend the analogy, I guess that casts Socrates in the role of John the Baptist.

(Relax. It’s an analogy.)

[2013-09-17]

 

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Writers live at the confluence of a million possibilities. (The difference between the sun and a sunrise.)

I recently heard a writer on NPR say they write novels because they'd like to be a magician and change the world. Presumably, writing in this case is a cathartic response to injustice. The interviewer was somewhat nonplussed by this.

My own opinion is that even though that’s a fine reason to write, it’s not among the best reasons. It would be like teaching because you like kids and not because you like the classroom, or cooking because you like to eat, not because you like to work with food, or preaching because you love to talk, not because you love God.

None those are bad reasons, but they are not very good reasons.

Just my 2¢. I’ll never have the readers this writer has or be interviewed by NPR, so take it for what it’s worth.

This writer did say something very interesting at the end of the interview: "I feel better when I finish."

So do I, but never as fulfilled as when I'm in the middle of a sentence, that’s where the writer is most happy, at the confluence of a million possibilities.

The end of the matter is short-lived. We must write some more. And more. and more.

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What are good reasons to write?

Because you struggle to find an adequate description of your relationship with words that’s not laced with sexual connotations. (Supply your own. Any will do.)

 

Because if words were chocolate you’d weigh 800 lbs

Because there are no bad words, only words that hurt people.

Because words are music and the utter joy of conducting them is more important than what they mean.

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Most writers that get paid to write are tone deaf.

I’m not thinking of the writer I heard interviewed. I haven’t read her work. Just most of what you’ll find on a stroll through Barnes & Noble.

Can you make a living making music and be tone deaf? Sure. Watch some MTV.

(I could have said “turn on the radio,” but some of you don’t know you can still find music there.)

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Note that I didn’t criticize any writers or the pleasure we take in them, nor do I want to.

 

There is enormous value in storytelling. The world would be less interesting without JK Rowling or Dan Brown. But it would be less beautiful without Truman Capote or Carl Sandburg.

And that’s the difference I’m writing about here. It’s the difference between the sun and a sunrise.

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If I were approached by someone who was thinking of becoming a Baptist….

… and they asked if I’d take a moment to talk with them, I would drop everything and take as much time as that person needed.

I would have very good things to say about what it means to be Baptist, the church I grew up in, and especially the people in the church I grew up in. And I’d be honest about why I am not a Baptist today, even though there is a GARB church a few miles away.

Baptists spend their lives trying to live a life pleasing to the Lord and looking forward to seeing Jesus and departed loved ones. Everything they do revolves around that. Monday thru Sunday, morning to evening. From work to play to dinner to TV to music and movies and books.

What’s wrong with that? They give more than a day’s work for a day’s wages. They pay their taxes. They vote and go to PTA meetings and support local police and charities. They give their children square meals and teach them to say please and thank you and you’re welcome. They get vaccines and play sports to try to win and lose graciously and are kind to animals and children and the elderly and the homeless and hungry and infirm.

And they pray their hearts out when others are suffering.

Good Baptists are the finest people you will ever meet. My recent worship choices are based on some ideas being more right than others, not some ideas being wrong.

If you want to be a Baptist, you will find no better people to worship with.

Why am I writing this?

Over the past few years, I’ve asked some others about their faith who were, or had been, deeply steeped in it; these were not “Oh, by the way” conversations; I’d asked to sit down with them with the understanding I was inquiring about their faith. However, I didn’t get the same response I would have gotten from a Baptist. Some were too busy, others had left the church, some were indifferent.

(I have on some occasions been pleased with the response, so please don’t read yourself into this if you’re among those I’ve talked to or exchanged email with. And please don’t assume Baptists are always interested in talking about their faith and everyone else isn’t. I did, however, detect a pattern.)

If you believe what you believe is critical down here and in the hereafter, others will know it; and if you don’t, they’ll figure that out too. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but most folks aren't going to work to get it out of you.

 

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The GARB grew out of a schism with the American Baptists. "The Baptist Bible Union (BBU) ... was the forerunner to the GARBC. The final meeting of the BBU in 1932 in Chicago was the first meeting of the GARBC." Source >

Comparative summary of baptism traditions >

[2013-09-13]

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