No Nie-jerk reaction

Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the
institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel.

... H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), The Kingdom of God in
     America [1959]

My proposed epitaph.

"We can not have all things to please us,
no matter how we try.
Until we've all gone to Jesus,
we can only wonder why."

-- Gillian Welch

This is an important point to remember.

"The Kingdom of Heaven is not for the well-meaning:
it is for the desperate."

--James Denney, D.D. (1856-1917), Scottish theologian and preacher.

Are you truly desperate (sinfully so), or are you comfortably desperate (theologically so)?  It makes a very big difference.

Single Malt Whiskey

"TEN" does indeed indicate that this is a 10 year old bottling. Nose shows damp earth, rot, ripe persimmon, cheap apple juice, peat smoke, seaweed, kelp beginning to rot on a beach. Less integrated than older Ardbegs. Palate shows strong earthy notes along with phenols, tar, old books, lavender, and peat. The finish shows tar, pine pitch, vintage port sediment. An excellent and highly recommended bottling.

http://www.mcgees.org/malts/ardbegten.html

What's not to like? It's on my shopping list.

Gentleman, choose your weapon.

Following up on the previous post, perhaps a change in implements is the intended course of action.

Perhaps I should consider less of this "driving the plough" approach...


...and more of this "gardening can" method. Soaking prayer as opposed to grinding labor.

The Dust Bowl

Yesterday, while in prayer with others, this is the image that was given to me about my evangelism efforts based at my home church. Dry fields, rocks, and just a few sprigs that soon wither for lack of water, while I relentlessly push a plow over the same empty furrows time and time again. Sisyphus meets the Dust Bowl.

Whereas the Romans plowed salt into the fields of Carthage so that the Carthaginians could never again feed themselves, this field seems to have had spiritual pride plowed into the soil. Spiritual pride is a desiccant that draws all the moisture and nutrients out of the soil, and causes the refreshing rain to simply run-off instead of soaking in.

The field is not without harvest, but the harvest comes from the far edges of the field, from the edges that are closer to other fields.

This was a disturbing image placed into my heart. Was it placed by the enemy as a discouragement? Or was it placed as a sign to shake the dust of this field off my feet? I'll be unpacking this visual metaphor for a while, and prayerfully seek guidance.

Meanwhile, its Sunday morning, and I have a harness to put on.

Matthew 11:29-30

Vision care is a matter of life and death.

Proverbs 29:18

No apologies for Tex-Mex in the NY Times.

Two foreign phrases popular with Conservative Christians you won't find in the Bible (and for good reason).

Laissez-faire.

Status quo.



P.S. I'm not calling out Liberal Christians here because they just claim to find stuff in the Bible to suit their purposes... whether it's there or not..

Miller Time.

The Great Disappointment occurred on this day in 1843. It's my favorite Religious Commemoration (remembering Karl Barth's observation that authentic Christianity is not a religion).

Celebrate The Disappointment today!

We have other priorities.

The World is burning before our eyes. The smoke brings tears.

In response to the rising smoke, we (the churches of man) are adjusting the water temperature as we prepare our comfortable baptismal baths, in lieu (we think) of our coming baptism of fire.

"Jesus come. Burn the whole thing down."
-- Over The Rhine, Changes Come

"I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You're not cold, you're not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You're stale. You're stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, 'I'm rich, I've got it made, I need nothing from anyone,' oblivious that in fact you're a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.
-- Revelation 3:15-17 (The Message)

Who am I?

Who am I? They often tell me

I stepped from my cell’s confinement

Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,

Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me

I used to speak to my warders

Freely and friendly and clearly,

As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I bore the days of misfortune

Equally, smilingly, proudly,

Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?

Or am I only what I myself know of myself?

Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,

Struggling for breath, as though hands were

compressing my throat,

Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,

Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,

Tossing in expectation of great events,

Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,

Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,

Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

Dietrich Bonehoeffer

March 4,1946

The Wisdom of Willimon.

Though I could not have known it at the time, a momentous event in my faith journey occurred on a Sunday evening in 1963 in Greenville, South Carolina, when, in defiance of the state’s archaic Blue Laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us -- regular attenders at the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church -- made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.

Only lately have I come to see how that evening symbolizes a watershed in the history of Christianity in the United States. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina -- the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world -- gave in and served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. If Christians were going to be made in Greenville, then the church must do it alone.

There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head-to-head with the church to see who would provide ultimate values for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.

from Making Christians in a Secular World

by William Willimon

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
- Gordon R. Dickson


A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
- GK Chesterton

A note to the Building Committee...

"Let all our chapels be built plain and decent; but not more expensively than is absolutely unavoidable: otherwise the necessity of raising money will make rich men necessary to us. But if so, we must be dependent upon them, yea, and governed by them. And then farewell to the Methodist-discipline, if not doctrine too."

-- John Wesley, from his instructions to American Methodist churches.

Letter to Lockhart

Bad salt and bad leaven.

The underlying problem with the Episcopal Church is simply that there are so few real Christians in the denomination (sad, but true). Between the Liberals (who are really Unitarians in Drag) and the Conservatives (Republicans with Liturgy), there is almost no commitment to the life-changing aspects of the Gospel.

One of the reasons that the African and 2/3rds World Primates have been unwilling to leap to the Conservatives side more than they have, is a concern that the Conservative Episcopalians are more like the Pharisees of Jesus' time than like the Disciples of Paul's time (this was told to me by an African bishop). Too much love of mammon (including bricks and stained glass), and too little love for the lost and suffering.

Ignore this.

Too important not to repeat.

Instead of always being one of the chief bastions of the social status quo, the Church is to develop a Christian counter-culture with its own distinctive goals, values, standards, and lifestyle--a realistic alternative to the contemporary technocracy which is marked by bondage, materialism, self-centeredness, and greed.

Christ's call to obedience is a call to be different, not conformist. Such a Church--joyful, obedient, loving, and free--will do more than please God: it will attract the world. It is when the Church evidently is the Church, and is living a supernatural life of love by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the world will believe.

John R. W. Stott (b.1921),
"Obeying Christ in a Changing World"

Poetry, in both kinds.

The sun has riz,

the sun has set,

and here I iz,

in Texas yet.

It takes one and a quarter hours per pound to smoke a brisket. You do the math.