imby

Handmade Poetry Book

2012-01-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Of course you can read all my poetry on my blog, but why would you want to do that, when you can have this cool handmade book delivered to your door for reading whenever you want, even when the power goes out?

I'm home-printing this book of 32 pages, and hand-binding it with a Japanese side stitch binding. The cover will have an image like the ones at left. I'll choose one for you.

$20 will get you a book, shipping included. If you're close enough to me that I don't have to ship it, 20 bucks gets you the book and coffee with the poet.

Buy through PayPal with a credit card (no PP account needed) by hitting the button below, or let me know if you want to pay by check, cash, or cupcakes.

I Speak Smoke

2012-01-08T22:49:00.000-08:00

I speak
smoke.
Not cloud, or other vapors
inconsistent;
nor of incense,
tithed in poverty,
and lit in holy moments only.

But I speak the stifle
and alarm of distant fire,
about which you might wonder
before you die -
whether it's better
to succumb to fog or flame?
To blinded eye, or burning limb?

I stand in the reign and summon
the rolling billow, and reveal
the obscuring choke.
I preach the stoking passion,
teach mystical inspiration,
and perform mid-life
cremations.

Will we be burned, or languish
in fire-retardent shacks?
Will we bow to the pillar,
or bend to the stacks --
submit to the furnace or sit
with the hacks who roll their own
between phlegmatic coughing fits?

If only because we burn,
and can recall the ash
that flame left after all was made,
we're given to wear the cloak
and speak the plume
of creation's hidden, holy,
fragrant fume.

You Are Running Out of Time

2011-12-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

Images culled from the pages of the Wall Street Journal over a single week.

The Year In Collage

2011-12-15T17:59:00.000-08:00

A series of collages from the past year. A couple weeks ago, I got to show a number of these pieces at the Rock Hop (at the Art Boutiki in San Jose). There was also a collage bar at the event which was exceptionally fun ... great bands playing while a bunch of people chopped up magazines and made their own holiday cards. Fun.

Gallery

Macbook Air gets dressed up

2011-12-01T19:24:00.001-08:00

In honor of a recent refurb ... little dress up party for my MBA.

Alien abduction ... or origin story?

theater

2011-09-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

From a journal entry a couple years ago ....

"My wife and I were wandering in San Francisco last Saturday night and found ourselves outside of an old Episcopal church ten minutes before their Latin Chant Mass began. We decided to join them for worship. It was pretty cool: nice old building, plenty of aromatic smoke (I heard an apology from the man who forgot to open the window in the back), and mysterious liturgy. Three great things that go great together.

"Afterwords, we sipped prosecco in a small room next to the church and visited. One gentleman said to me, with a kind of grin, "I think of this service like a kind of magic."

I asked, does he mean "'magic' like C.S. Lewis describes of Narnia: Deep Magic from Before the Dawn of Time?"

"Like a hidden goodness?"

"Like an exciting promise of things turning out unexpectedly good?"

"No. He meant, he said, 'Like theater.' Like, pretend. A trick."

I remember that when I finished my undergraduate work in the theater--which I took very seriously--and decided to attend four years of seminary, that I got a lot of blank stares. Most of those stares resolved into a knowing look. "Oh," people would say, "Makes sense. Church is a lot like theater." And by that they meant, at best, make believe. At worst, they meant hypocrisy, which is the way Jesus referred to the theater of his day, where the actors merely pretended to live lives of meaning on stage. (Jesus might have some words for our teary prime-time televangelists.) My friends would go on to suggest that my theater training would come in handy in the pulpit. I always tried to explain that I thought it was the other way around, that I thought my faith came in handy on stage. I tried to manifest the truth in my acting, and any less, any hypocrisy, made for crappy theater.

I kind of hate it when people compare church to the theater, because I know that 99% of the time they mean to say that church (like theater) is a pretty lie. The other 1% of the comparisons are when I do it, and I tend to hate it then too, because I get the same blank stares when I say that theater (like church) is meant to be a powerful truth.

Happy Place

2011-08-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

A collage session from about a year ago (all the images moved around quite a bit more before finding their places in a finished piece)

Under The Nest (updated)

2011-08-08T19:26:00.001-07:00

Under the nest,
a broken shell.
Small crust
of a world
that learned
great things
too soon.

From above,
a sister,
left over,
when pressed
to lose the last
downy comforts
from her wings,

discovers the egg,
allowed to rest
below her bed,
not hidden
or hurried away;
the curriculum
mundane ...

the awful test
of life and death,
between the nest
and bone-white shell -
both empty now
and open
to the sky.

My Poetry Gets So Much Better

2011-07-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Last year, our poetry cabal staged a reading at the Red Rock in Mountain View, backed by (=improved by) the deeply satisfying sounds of Organamatronic, a couple who create music live in front of audiences with percussion and wires.

They post a lot of stuff for free on their site, but it took them a while to push the cabal performance up, so I only found the link.

I read several of my pieces during the performance and it was like candy to be able to be a part of a live, improvised music performance. Here's me reading a couple, followed by Kelsey Toy (warning, links directly to large mp3 file):

Org_RR_20100528_2.mp3

And the rest are at: http://organamatronic.org/music/ under May 28, 2010

On their site, they write about the performance, "The fun was in having the poets come up on stage and say things to us off-mike like 'I want you to try to make the audience's stomachs feel off.'" That was me, and I agree. What could be more fun than having that kind of on-the-fly creative freedom to let your weirdness loose in a room. Credit Michael and Delaney for being pro enough to never bat an eye.

Functional 3D Collage

2011-05-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

A collage from found stuff that does things and sounds neat.

This is a home-brew, low-tech iPhone amp made of PVC pipe and an old bike horn. It adds a little oomph, without powered amplification. It works well, tho it amplifies some frequencies better than others (like vocals).

The bike horn (with it's noise maker removed) had just the right amount of threading on the end to screw into the soft plastic hole, and be flush with the inside of the PVC. It sits directly in front of the tiny mono speaker. Leaving the ends of the pipe open allows for a more expansive sound and lets more treble escape. The weight of the horn keeps the phone from tipping back.

I love that this re-purposes something that has been sitting around my house as a pretty object (the horn, not the iPhone). It has real functional purpose too, if we want to listen to a little music while sitting outside with a cup of coffee, for example.

Moving Pictures

2011-03-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

Macro shots of old 8mm films of my mother, Becky.

Past the Waves (updated)

2011-03-25T22:08:00.001-07:00

The lifeguard says
the waves are terrible,
tossing, a tumbling torture.
He says that sand
gets in your pants,
and salt water tears
your poor frightened eyes
wide open.

Double the trouble
for him: he's turning
over and over, under
the foaming edge of chaos,
and dragging bathers out,
only to watch them
dive back in.

Do lifeguards hate the sea,
and fear the open water?
Swim farther than
the farthest point
they've been: nothing
they can do
but watch.

But good swimmers know
the only escape from
the trouble of the waves
is to keep kicking and leave
the beach behind. Because
you might not need a lifeguard
on land, but in the sand there is
no swimming.

the years don't wash

2011-01-24T18:56:00.000-08:00

The years don't wash
away so much as swoosh,
like water in the family tub,
when influenced by the shifting
of conflicting planetary plates
(earth by waves inflicting).

At times the years lap up
against our face as gentle
memories; sometimes as traces
of darker days returned from deeper places;
a tsunami to assault the village of
our maturity.

But on many days the laughter
of a child is heard, who after
violent protests of cleanliness,
relents to the humiliation of the bath,
and makes the action of his or her
own earthquake with big splashes,
to the giggled admonishments
of moms and dads recalling
their own childhood passions.

Then, time seems to ride the waves
of our own making: we lord
over sea battles, and sailing boats.
And God? Content to save
the quaking of the continents,
while we with soap repent, and the host
attends to raise our village up on posts.

Haikus

2011-01-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

Several Haikus. I've been playing with this form, and currently am really drawn to it. I like the constraint, in fact, and the rules I guess. The first two are counted by syllable; 5, 7, 5. The last four are not so rigid though: I did not want to count by syllable, and so I counted by a softer measure, beats, or some other rhythmic measure that only exists in my mind.

Carefully laid bricks

Will never stop the grass, small

Blades unsheathed in praise

Stratification

Mother, daughter, father, son

Mounds of laundry grow

Devices by our coffee

Occasionally we look up to see. What?

Computers everywhere, and envy

Outside, bright autumn sun

Coffee and crusty bread, cold meat

Pause. Just long enough

Bright sun, beautiful day

Many pretty things to see

My screen bright enough?

Gauzy mat (square) of cloud

High above yellow-green leaves

Scattered sun, hot, cold

Sacraments of the Natural

2010-05-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

[A week ago we ended a six week creativity learning lab, hosted by me and Michael Toy and led by the great Mark Scandrette of ReIMAGINE. We threw an art event to showcase the work of the 18 artists who went through the course. As Mark led us through exercises to tap into our God-given creativity, we explored our connection to the natural world, as a way of giving time to a part of ourselves that is often neglected in our tech-heavy society. Below are words (by Michael and me) from three signs that greeted guests on the way into the event.]

Awakening Creativity

We have shaken ourselves awake
to find ourselves in a place, reserved for us
since time began to tick,
as partners in play, creation, stewardship,
holding gifts meant to be shared with the world.

Over the last six weeks we have followed the story of Jesus as he awoke to his destiny and creatively discovered and pursued his calling to beauty and sacrifice.

What is the result of our pursuit?

New insights into our own journey and destiny,
and several objects of art that remind us of God's love for us
and of our heritage as part of a beautiful creation,
and as people with our own calling to both eat the dust and breathe life into it.

Shadows and visions of our future selves

At the turning point there is a side of us that faces back, and a side that faces forward. We are learning to raise a stone, to mark the moment when we turn: at that point we see all sides, all choices, and we take note.

When light passes through a forest,
each tree is drawn twice
once, outlined in light
and once, etched in shadow.

We also stood in this light, letting the camera catch an image of our shadows and the illumination of our future self, in a moment of hope. For both portraits we had to stand in the light. ... The shadow portrait exploring the artificial, the superficial, technological, commodified and conforming; the future portrait exploring the uniqueness and the authenticity of who God made us to be, our natural, organic, beloved selves.

Marking life’s waypoints in wood, water, earth, and stone

In our creative explorations, we have tried to get as close to nature as possible. Our goal in this moment is to let go of the tech-heavy, mass-produced, homogeneous culture of ownership and to explore elements of the earth in a form as unprocessed as possible. This means we favor natural materials in the selecting of objects of meaning, and we do projects that require more from our hands and feet than from our keyboard and mouse.

We aren't rejecting the culture we are born into: some of us are able to pay our bills because of our work in the tech industry, and most of us use our computers daily to communicate for work, family, and social connections. But the rise of technology has not reduced our need for a connection to creation. Sacraments of the Natural is our exploration and celebration of the “Land of our Fathers and Mothers”, presented through a collection of meaningful objects: sacraments that speak to us--and we hope to you--about the goodness of God, and the wonder that is our lives.

Profit

2010-05-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

[circa 1990]

A grand despair.
Standing alone
In a valley of dry bones;
The dead and dusty landscape
Of a dreamy nightmare vision.
And a question comes on me
From beyond my mortality,
"Prophet, child of Cain!
Can these bones come back,
Stand erect again?"

Out of ashes, the adam,
First sojourner, while still one,
Wandered from the elements
To life: called by You.
"You made me human,
Who would walk away,
And welcomed me!
Can these bones come back?
Have eyes again to see?
Great God of bones
And dust! You know what
The mystery is worth.
Only You know the profit
Of putting breath back in earth."

Ghost Words

2010-05-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

Could use a kind word
About now, a velvet touch,
To grout the cracks, to stem
The flow, arrest the oral
Entropy of seemly weak
Community. Right about now.
The spirit won't cooperate,
Or can't. Instead, the bleed
Increases, and hungry death
Encamps.

Wraith-like words emerge--
Slimy, demonic under-words,
Unfriendly, to wake old enemies,
Which warlike bend against
The sun on my behalf.
A whole, wide virgin field
Is cleared, and battle lines
Are drawn.
But before it starts,
It's done. The end is the beginning.

Drained and grinning. One helpful
Ghost is left, and groaning
With me, in me, softly sends
Me, through me, words
Which love-like, split the
Seams that isolate my hopes,
My fears, my dreams.

On the nascent science of geoengineering

2010-04-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm no scientist. I'm just a guy. But I heard a scientist talking about geoengineering on the radio the other day, and I'd like to say for the record that I do not agree. Geoengineering refers to proposals to manipulate the planet's climate in order to counteract global warming. An example: spraying chemicals in clouds to make them more reflective thereby bouncing the sun's rays away from the earth. Another example: sucking carbon dioxide into big holes in the ground. Hmm.

Now, I like tools well enough. I appreciate well-thought-out and well-crafted technological solutions. Take hammers. Hammers are cool. Hammers do their job really well, and you can choose from a number of different designs depending on your work-style and end-purpose. Hammer designers have been working on better hammer designs for a long time, and at this stage, we'd have to say that hammer design and technology is pretty mature. And yet, we occasionally smash these modern, well-designed hammers into our thumbs and create problems for ourselves. Nobody can design all the risk out of our tools.

So my question is, how worried should we be that well-meaning scientists, as smart as they may be, are talking about designing planet-sized hammers to solve a global problem? Even if I believed that Scientists (that group of people who totally agree all the time on how things work ... right?) could understand all of the large-scale mechanisms at work in global climate patterns, which I don't really believe, I'm not sure I would want them trying their hand at a global solution. What if the hammer slips? We're not talking about a big toe here. We're talking about the Earth.

Bright Sadness

2010-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

10 years ago, I wrote a devotional for Lent, drawing on the rich expression of the Christian faith in churches more traditional, and Eastern, than my own. That devotional has been online ever since, and gets a lot of visitors every year, and every year I get requests for the materials to be used in communities around the world. It has also been used and appreciated in my own Vineyard church here in California ... a church not very Eastern, and not very traditional.

I've just taken a leap and revised the material for a print edition, which I'm very happy about: I like being able to hold a physical book. It's available now at lulu.com. (If you are against holding dead trees in your hand, there is a half-price download for your reader.)

Though the devotional will remain online, the book has updated content, some extra woodcuts by Spyros Vassiliou, and doesn't require batteries. Nice!

It's for sale for $10. Check it out.

Outside the Piano Store

2010-01-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

(Insert caption here)

Collage "Sketches"

2010-01-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Pages from a small notebook that I fill with 'sketches' in collage: usually, two or three images stuck together when I can't get my brain going for larger, more complicated pieces. Sometimes simply a place to put the too-small collage. But I love a lot of what happens in this little book.

Collage Sketchbook

New Collages

2010-01-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

New Collages, from late 2009

If you are interested in purchasing an original of any of these collages, drop me a line.

Imb ...

2009-11-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

The name of my website, which always needs explaining, is imby.net, and is a play off the acronym, NIMBY. "NIMBY" means Not In My Back Yard, and is basically a "No" vote for anything we feel doesn't belong in our neighborhood, be it a nuclear power plant or a person of another color. IMBY is the "Yes" vote, when it comes to people and community (not necessarily Nuclear power plants). IMBY is also a four-letter domain name that I purchased back when short domain names were disappearing. Sometimes I think it's too "cute" sounding and I want to dump it for something hipper-sounding or web-savvy like "maddale.na", but I still like what imby stands for.

And, once, I looked up "imb" words in the dictionary, and found that there are very few of them, and the ones that are there tell a kind of interesting story. Here's that list (originally posted on imby.net back in the bronze age of the webernet) The list brings to mind the party game where a player has to form a sentence from a list of terms. And ... begin!

Imbalance
the state of being out of equilibrium or out of proportion

Imbecile
a mentally deficient person; especially: a feeble-minded person having a mental age of three to seven years and requiring supervision in the performance of routine daily tasks of self-care

Imbibe
to drink alcohol (and one dictionary has this strange usage note: "formal often humorous"); to receive into the mind and retain (imbibe moral principles)

Imbroglio
a confused mass; an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel); an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding

Imbrute
to sink to the level of a brute

Imbue
to permeate or influence as if by dyeing

Drying Its Wings

2009-10-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

All the dreams of caterpillars
Seem impractical.
Foolish hairy creeps.
Inconsiderate visionaries
Painting airy portraits
For themselves, invisible
To the hive. "Why so shy?
Look to the flowers, grumpy!
Have some nector, honey!
Show some self-respect,
Insect!" Shamed to see
All the winged productivity,
As if the burden of beauty
Were too great, the beast
Takes its own bait
And slinks away to think awhile
about its purpose, and to die.

Now, blind to what's transpired,
And suspicious of a sudden quiet,
It dries its wings in the sun,
And gazes out upon the flowers,
Which bow in its direction.
The butterfly hears a far
Vibration, and wonders
Why, and where the bees did fly.

On every worm, that plows the waste
Of better beasts, the life of trees
Depend. In every creepy caterpillar,
Dreams of beauty brew
Invisible, but not unknowable,
Nor untrue.

Neighbor Love

2009-09-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

If you can't see yourself in your neighbor, see Christ in them.

We know we're supposed to Love our neighbor. That principle is one of the anchor ideas in the Bible. Let's assume we agree that it's a good thing to do. But, it's obvious that it is a great struggle for most everyone on the planet to do well. So, how do you love your neighbor? There's two answers to be found, each in the same Bible.

Love your neighbor as yourself, reads the command (Mark 12.31).

To do this, at the most basic level, you need to see your neighbor like you see yourself (we also remind ourselves that we need to have a basic love for ourselves for this to work ... but the principle is powerful no matter what, because everybody - even the self-haters - function in a selfish mode). So, in whatever way you love and care for yourself, even if very basic, you can and should do that for others ... see that they're fed, clothed, cared for. Compassion and gracious love are possible when we 'put ourselves in their shoes'. God identified with us in this way, by condescending to live in our skin, to put himself in our shoes. This is one way of describing the arrival of Jesus Christ. He's the great high priest who lived the very same life that we do.

But, what if we can't at all see ourselves in our neighbor? What if we have one color skin and our neighbor has another? What if our bank account is one size and theirs is another? What if we buy our clothes off this rack and they buy theirs off that rack? What if our home looks like this and their home looks like that? Hear what I'm saying?

There will always be a kind of person who's shoes we wouldn't want to get into! If that's true of us, are we off the hook? Not at all.

"Then [Jesus] will also say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, accursed ones ..., for I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in; naked and you did not clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me ...'" (Mt. 25.41f)

When the unhappy audience at this talk protested and asked, "When did we fail to do these things?", Jesus said, in essence, 'every time you didn't do it for the person least like you, you failed to do it for me.' How is this so? because Jesus is there in that moment. Jesus is present with the other, especially the suffering, the poor, the weak, the hungry, and the just plain funky. Jesus is present in the very moment we encounter others who are very unlike us -- he's pulling for us, just as he is fighting for them.

So, when we can't identify with our neighbors (near or far), when we can't imagine what it's like in their shoes (because we'd never be caught dead in those shoes) ... when we simply can't see ourselves in our neighbors ... that is when it's really important to see Christ in them.

Fixit Garage

2009-09-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

all the ways we teach

2009-09-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Everything teaches. That is to say that people learn lessons on so many levels, not just from things that are intentionally taught. Parents say, "Do as I say, not as I do!" because 1. our actions often clash with our stated principles, 2. children learn by imitation, and 3. we would like to control what our children learn (but not change our behavior). Forget it.

We need to learn that teaching happens at many levels, not only the verbal/intellectual level. That is to say, content is only one level of teaching. The way we talk (and listen) and the context we create also communicate important truths. For example, if you look at at a normal church gathering, you'll see multiple levels of information transmission going on ... multiple levels of learning taking place.

For starters, at a top level (a conscious level), there is the spoken content, an intentional lesson communicated for intellectual assent. It will include ideas the speaker wants to communicate, a reason for the gathering, and maybe goals for the future. Vision is transmitted, truth is communicated, and boundaries are laid for behavior or discussion. In a sermon given in a church on a Sunday morning, this would be the idea you hope the listeners would leave wrestling with, even the truth you hope they'd grasp.

At a slightly deeper level, the listener will learn values by how the lesson is communicated. Does the speaker sit apart from the listeners? Is there time for discussion? Questions? Is the whole talk manuscripted, or is the speaker willing to adjust the talk based on who is present? Each of these questions gets at how the speaker values the community that has come to hear the talk. In a church context, encouraging discussion (vs lecturing, or "speeching", as Doug Pagitt calls it) teaches the value that the whole community has the capacity to contribute ideas of merit. In the same way, priority given to prayer would communicate a value that God's voice is of (at least!) equal importance to the voice of the speaker. To fail to give time to prayer and listening would communicate a disregard for God's voice, or worse, that only the speaker can hear God's voice, leaving all others dependent). Similarly, the type of language used in a talk may indirectly communicate attitudes of sexism, racism, or other isms, attitudes, or values that may be reproduced in the lives of the hearers.

At a deeper level still the format of a gathering, the experience of coming together, teaches a worldview. What does the speaker (or organizer) feel about community? What is true about this particular group, and how will the structure of the meeting reinforce or compete with that truth? Will they sit and listen and then go home? Do they participate passively? Is the goal of a meeting only to answer questions, agree on some facts, or achieve consensus? What if the organizer was intentional about the experience of the meeting? The venue, style, formality, process, and rythms all "teach" a member of the community what it means to be a member of the community. In a church, our gatherings should have a flavor of heaven. How do you organize that? If we believe that the church is the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, then our meetings probably should not look like a meeting of local business leaders. If we believe that Jesus is the Head of the body which is the church, then do we think that each meeting should be the same as the last one? There is a reason why heaven is popularly pictured as boredom among the clouds.

Church leaders (I include myself in this category) say a lot from behind the microphone about heaven that doesn't exactly align with the experience of our gatherings. What we teach at the top level is not the same as what is being learned at other levels. Do we really want to be caught saying to the people we serve, "Do as we say, not as we do" ...?

ambition is recession-proof

2009-09-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

9-Grain Jesus

2009-08-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

Many thanks in a pretty blue box,
And a cellophane promise
of near eternal shelf-life.
Body of Christ, O.T.C.
(just add Welches - sweet
Purple blood in a bottle). Bland
Doctors of the modern church
Prescribe a Saltine pill
The size of a TicTac -
Without the salt,
Without the sweet -
Once-a-week to guarantee
Community, chased with that blood
That causes cavities.

And here come the Whole Food
Faithful, organo-hippie
Holistics, who Feel For You.
9-Grain Jesus, the Whole
Body of Christ and a glass of
Cabernet. Tipsy, taste and see
That the Lord is ... ooh,
Is that a little seed in there?
Little kingdoms inside
My half-pound loaf.
I could plant this bread
And start a garden,
Or write a folk song
Expounding on the meaning.
Or is it just the wine talking?

Is there need for the bread to tell
A new story, or the wine to sing
A new song? Isn't the story
That was the seed, the song
That made the kingdom
Sing, aren't they big enough
To be contained
In one Eucharistic Chicklet
and some grape juice?

The Warrior / Priest

2009-06-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

This is a woodcut made by my wife's grandfather: Spyros Vassiliou was (until his death in 1984) a great artist, and was a part of an important community of Greek painters in the middle of the 20th century. He also designed sets and costumes for the theater, which is how he met my father-in-law, a playwright from Yale who ended up marrying the painter's daughter. My wife was the first child of that union, and met me in the theater department at Bennington College. And that's pretty much how I came to be in possession of the above woodcut.

I love Spyros' paintings, but I love his woodcuts even more. The artist turned to wood during World War II, when painting supplies were scarce, and during a time when the Germans occupied Greece (the German military had, in fact, a kind of base of operations in the old house that became my wife's family's home).

The woodcuts are simple and display big symbolic themes (freedom, hope, peace, etc), as you'd expect from a war-time body of work. But the woodcut above is entirely unique in the collection.

It shows a Greek ship in a storm, which itself is not unique in a maritime culture. What is unique is that the ship is covered with devils who are threatening to tear the ship to bits, as if the storm was not enough of a threat. Also surprising is that the picture-story is not about brave Greek sailors fighting to save the ship, but about an old priest who stands in the scene praying. Now, I understood this artist to be, like most Greeks, only culturally Christian, even though he was commissioned to paint the interiors of several orthodox churches: there is little sign in his work (or in his family line, I'm sorry to say) of a vibrant faith. But what am I to make of this picture? This is a picture that betrays a faithful vision.

Where did this painter get the idea that priests are warriors? Let's not focus unfairly on Greece, or on the orthodox countries: in no country do priests or pastors tend to reveal themselves to be more than quiet and somewhat harmless participants in society, who know their place. I'm not aware of any stories of bravery among the Greek priesthood during the war, and anyway, this is not that kind of militant courage. It takes a different kind of vision to see the true occupation of the priest-who-is-also-a-warrior.

The ship in the image is a symbol for the church, of course, and this priest is not just fighting the only fight that a priest is suited for, but the only real fight there is. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesian Christians that, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the ... world forces of ... darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." This woodcut is a really cool depiction of the hidden power of the priest.

What is equally exciting to me, is that this artist, great-grandfather to my son and daughter, seems to understand that the church is more than capable of surviving rough water ... and that the wise priest sees, with the eyes of the spirit, that the danger to a ship is never really the storm itself, but those forces that threaten to reduce the seaworthiness of the vessel.

Why so Surprised?

2009-04-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

The Christ-like life is full of radical surprises that shouldn't surprise anyone. ... Like how scripture is built of a long series of radical surprises that are only surprising if you no longer believe any of what you read the day before. This is to say that God is full of predictable surprises.

Hope almost takes the fun out of God's surprises. And this is to say, hope almost takes the surprise out of God's surprises. But it is so sweet when God does his thing, that even though we believed, we rejoice when we dig up the treasure we were pretty sure was there all along.

The French language, modern art, and the truth that is hidden until we resolve to find it

2009-01-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

When I hear someone speaking in french, I know enough to recognize that they are not speaking gibberish, though I admit, I have to take it on faith, as I would not be able to tell you if two french-speakers suddenly decided to mock my ignorance by babbling nonsense in a french accent. Though I can't recognize the meaning in their conversation, I know they are speaking a language they both understand, and so I assume there is meaning there. Even if I can't understand it.

Modern art museums are great places to see the opposite assumption at play. It should be obvious that the whimsical, obscure, or simply bizarre creations that fill modern art museums are there because some kind of conversation is going on. The artist speaks the same language as certain patrons-of-the-arts, and seems to have something of significance to say ... or we could assume their art would not be hanging in a building you had to pay to enter. And yet, some people still walk around modern art galleries and mutter things like ... "I just don't get it"; "My 3 year old could do that"; "That is so stupid" ... or other expressions of frustration at what appears to the commentator to be a meaningless communication ... nonsense spoken in an elitist accent.

Why can't we treat art as a family of foreign languages and trust that there is a conversation going on, even if we can't penetrate the dialect? There must be meaning, even if it is obscure to us. An adult wouldn't tolerate a conversation if their dialog partner began to speak like a 3 year old.

Now, it must be true in art, as in language, that some communications merely play at intelligence, mimicking sophistication. We've all heard adolescents talk like adults: it may sound sophisticated, but that doesn't make it so. But some hearers will be fooled, maybe because they are not so intelligent. So with art, just because it is hanging on a wall it doesn't follow that the art-maker and the art-lover are having an intelligent conversation.

But it remains an exciting possibility that so much art that is obscure to us may become a rich conversation that we can participate in, if we just learn the language. I can learn french and listen in to conversations that were once unintelligible to me. I can even participate by speaking into those conversations, breaking free of passive, aural voyeurism. I can also and in the same way, learn the language of modern art and intelligently critique the various expressions I find in museums, breaking free of passive (aggressive) voyeurism.

The cliche-spouting art-critic who says, "My three year old could do that!" doesn't understand the language of modern art. If they understood the language, they would understand the conversation that an artist is participating in, and in this way they may even come to understand the artist's point. They still might not like what they see on the walls, but they wouldn't talk about it as if it were made by morons.

Can we trust that a conversation is meaningful, even if we don't speak the language? Can a piece of art have meaning, even if we don't have the language to engage it meaningfully? Can anything have meaning apart from our capacity (or willingness) to appreciate it? The question, in fact, is can we hope to hear or see the meaning behind mysteries? One alternative is to determine that those around us who appear to be engaged in meaningless transactions are in fact, idiots. That would be sad because there are so many conversations from which we could derive so much benefit. There are of course conversations that can change lives. Some of them are spoken in strange tongues.

The Christian conversation is one of these mysterious dialogs. It often has qualities that immediately alienate those within earshot. Something in the dialect that smacks of arrogance ... intolerance, or worse: immaturity and stupidity. Christians should pay attention to critics who complain that our dialect is repellent or hard to penetrate. But too much of the critique of Christianity sounds like the complaining of rubes who walk through a modern art museum imagining that the artists are the childish ones.

portraits in collage

2008-10-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

A series of character studies in collage from the last part of this year.

Portraits in Collage

communion

2008-10-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

Gold fades to black
as if the baker slept and burnt the bread
and then, if that weren't bad enough,
the fire went dead.

And while the dark and cold
of loneliness crests
and froths tsunami-like
above his village,
He sits down to eat with friends,
Nero-like in disquieting
self-conscious annihilation.

He tears at bread. "I'm torn
between you
and me."
He rips at the loaf that's warm and hollow
enough for a tap
to reveal it was finished.
The empty in-between defines
the shape of things.
The rising golden warmth says
you're home at any hearth.

Then he drains the skin, the heart
about spent, emptied, divided
and walked between.
He says his thanks, and pours a drink,
reminding the cup of it's purpose:
to be full and always
to be emptied--the perfect
pregnant surface
offered to the thing that breaks it.

"I'm giving me to taking you.
Your hungry bowl, my angry cup;
your cup of wine, my empty bowl.
My wine delayed
until my home
is warmed again".
This bowl of time stopped
at the rim
and quivering;
its surface holding history back--
not like glass, which keeps us from
the things we're looking at,
but like wine, which is like blood,
which they say is thicker than water,
which could tell you a thing or two
about tension.

waiting,
for a tilt of the planet
towards tomorrow.
Remembering,
to hold the wave aloft.
Waiting
for the bread to rise,
and the cup to fill and
hoping, remembering ...
that home is where the hearth is,
and if that weren't good enough,
the fire still has life in it.
And the meal calls us back to the table.

New Collages

2008-10-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

Some new works, including new notebook covers. Other recent works were inspired by the lyrics of a musician friend, Nick Bartunek of Picture Atlantic.

2008 collages ...

The Thing

2008-01-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

The Thing, the Golem, and what's at the heart of the stone

If you go to adherents.com you can learn many interesting things related to religious practice in the world, including the religious affiliation of any famous person. One of my favorite pages on this site is the list of super heroes and comic book characters. Yes, this is the place to learn that Marvel's Elektra is Greek Orthodox, Superman is Methodist/Kryptonian, X-Man Sabretooth was an atheist who saw the light ...

"... Wolverine attends the funeral of [his arch-rival] Sabretooth, and learns that Sabretooth became a devout "born-again" Christian. Sabretooth's funeral was attended by scores of people who testified about how Sabretooth had touched their lives and had been an inspiration to them."

Other facts obvious (Super Bahai Girl is ... Bahai) and less obvious (the character Wiccan, from the Young Avengers, is not a fan of Harry Potter, but a reformed Jew) abound.

One of my favorite comic characters is The Thing (not really the slightly stupid-looking movie character from recent films, but the Jack Kirby creation). The Thing, one of the Fantastic Four, was turned to stone by some kind of space-radiation. There is something iconic in this hulking rock-man that makes me think of humankind in general (made from earth and bound by our "hearts of stone"). On The Thing's page, Adherents quotes a story about the issue where his Jewish faith is revealed ...

... Bending over the fallen [Jewish pawn broker] Sheckerberg, The Thing prays the traditional "Sh'ma Yisrael," the Hebrew confession at death. Sheckerberg survives and asks Grimm the question on many readers' minds: "All these years in the news, they never mention you're Jewish. I thought maybe you were ashamed of it a little." Grimm explains that, to the contrary, he did not want to bring shame on the Jewish community. "Figure there's enough trouble in this world without people thinkin' Jews are all monsters like me." When Grimm tries to return the stolen Star of David, the pawnbroker refuses it, likening Grimm to the Golem--the legendary living statue said to have protected Prague's persecuted Jews."

Once my young son and I were trolling in our local Target: he'd saved up a few dollars and wanted to buy a toy. We saw a Thing action figure. I thought it was pretty cool and pointed it out to him. He shrugged his approval and kept looking. He had trouble making up his mind, and I kept asking him, hey what about this Thing doll? He got as firm as a six year-old can get and said that he didn't really want that one. Then I realized ... I wanted it. Hey, I have six dollars! Timo bought the giant green-foam Hulk Punching Fists with Realistic Roaring Sounds, and I bought The Thing, who still stands over my computer.

Timo was stuck with me in my office one summer day, and I gave him the doll, showed him how he could push him flat against a piece of paper and draw his outline, crime-scene style. The resulting images were inspiring (to me ...), and I expanded the project. Without realizing what we were doing, and without being aware of Benjamin Grimm's Jewish story at the start, we created a kind of Old Testament Review of characters, even evoking the story of the Golem, the earth monster with a heart that is at the root of the Frankenstein story (another story with surprising theological implications). The project, as it stands, contains the original 'outlines', a freehand sketch by Timo, and a couple of the collages I've made that feature Ben Grimm.

[Gallery]

Religious Propaganda and the anti-tract

2007-10-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago, a few of us in my church were working together to think of ways to get the gospel out in our community when the subject of tracts came up. These are the little bound pamphlets which tell a simple story and invite the reader to make a commitment to Jesus. I do not like tracts. We agreed that most people in our community do not like the way they boil down the good news into easily swallowed, bite-size morsels. This is just stating a fact about us, not stating a fact about the value of this method of communication. They may be just the trick in another place (or time). One or two of our group were going to write some for themselves, reasoning that we could do a more personal job of communicating the gospel to our people.

I woke up one night stressing about this, thinking, "Oh, man, are we really going to hand out little brochures about God?" I was so distracted by this, and concerned over whether we would be attracting people to the Kingdom or scaring them away, that I resolved to try and write something myself. "If I had to hand out a piece of paper, what would I want it to say?"

So begins my experiment with the anti-tract. These projects reflect my ambivalence about this method of communicating faith. There is a healthy "anti" component here. But there is also some "pro" that surprised me a bit. I think this ambivalence will be clear in the self-consciousness of the pieces. Follow the link to see the works.

View Propaganda

cover me

2007-09-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

I've been covering my notebooks for years. I started by scratching out brand names and logos on otherwise undecorated journals. The habit progressed from simple stickers or fabric, to various other art attacks, collage, and occasional carving (as at left). It started simple, and it's gotten to be a regular ritual, one that is a really satisfying, encouraging, and freeing. View the gallery.

Made and Unmade

2006-07-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

We live in a world full of things that are made, that have a beginning and an end. Some of these things are made by the hand of God, some are made by human hands. There is also a thing that is unmade, without beginning or end. That thing is the first Maker-of-Things. That thing, that entity is God. One entity without beginning or end. A world of things that are made and had a beginning, many of which will end some day .... And we mix it all up. The made and the unmade. We treat the Unmade as if it once was, but isn't now, and we treat the Made Things as if they are eternal. God is the eternal thing, but we forget he exists, and his creation --we creatures-- we are like a blink of an eye, but we think we have the wisdom and power of eternity naturally within us. This is similar to our habit of giving God the credit for evil ("Why would God do this to me?") and giving the created world the credit for goodness, beauty, and power. Idol worship today has this distinguishing quality, for we don't worship wooden statues, but we regularly ascribe value to things which don't deserve it.

In The Image Of

2006-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

We say, "We are made in the image of God, and must allow God to act on us, opening our minds and hearts to be changed". And occasionally we honor this understanding. But it has also become a cliche to say that for most of our history we have tried to make God in our image, and we say this with unqualified condemnation.

Isn't it, though, the essence of the grace of God that he not only indulges this frequent mistake on our part, but actually allows--allows!--us to "change his heart and mind". Isn't the whole Gospel the story of God not only being moved by us creatures, but of God being made in our image?

Jesus fully reveals God (John 1.18), yes. He is the "image of the invisible God" (Col 1.15), yes again. But of much more significance to the church, he is the image of me.

I read in Philippians 1.7 that Jesus let me make him in my image: "He was made in the likeness of men". God could have used various means to disabuse us of our confusion about who the creator and who the creature is. But he let us, instead, make him in our image. We by our selfishness, pride, gluttony, fury, violence--what the bible calls sin--are perpetually and eternally cut off from our good God. But I read in 2 Corinthians 5.21 that God made Jesus into me: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf".

Jesus, by becoming me--by becoming sinful humankind (a second Adam, as it is said)--and being truly cut off from God, from life, on the cross, allows me to become like God again. I become "the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5.21 again). I die with Christ on the cross, because he dies in full identification with me. Until I die with Christ (my image bearer), I cannot again bear the image of the holy God.

Or to put it in simpler terms, God let us make God in our image, so that we might have God's image restored to us.

Didn't our hearts burn within us?

2006-02-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

In the beginning (of the bible) God said, "let there be light!" and it was so ... "Let there be life!" and it was so. God's words appear to have creative power. But do we believe that God can make things with words? We might ask, "Is this language to be understood as poetic?" And if we ask this, do we mean, "Not to be taken seriously?" Does poetic language have less a claim to legitimacy? Is poetic language less true? No that can't be so.

Because the bible is full of non-trivial challenges to our logical analysis of reality, we tend to call it a great book full of dramatic stories whose writers certainly took a little poetic license. And then we dismiss it as an illegitimate discourse on reality.

But this isn't fair to poetry, nor to God. Do we regard Shakespeare with less seriousness, because he wrote poetry? No, in fact we are thankful that there is a way of writing that encompasses the huge emotions that the great writer of love poetry felt. And so poetry might do a better job of capturing huge love than prose. And so, what better way to communicate the greatest love story ever told? To put it another way, we can be thankful that the Bible is not full of stories told in pedestrian, scientific language. Because to just hear the facts is not to hear the story.

Got a little religion, got a little politics

2005-12-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

There are people who are naturally religious--or should I say tend to be religious. Such people get the worst press. In fact I think most people (except religious people) don't trust those who are very or habitually religious (can I pick a single modifier?).

But when someone who is not normally religious has a religious experience because they have been hanging around people of real and significant faith, or because they've been reading the holy scriptures (without a history of doing so ... this is key), then we say that this person has in some way, got religion. And, I think, we are more inclined to pay attention to such a person. We do trust them more. Maybe it's because we think they are in a religious way for the right reasons (experience), instead of the wrong reasons (personality, upbringing, habit).

I think politics is like this in a way. Someone who is naturally political makes me nervous. The person who tends to get involved in the political discussion doesn't really inspire me to join in. But can there be a person who we say got politics--in the same way it happens with religion-- because they have had some kind of experience which draws them in? I would trust this person more: they are involved because of what they have seen and heard on the street (where politics ends and begins), not because they 'always have been'. They are not into politics because of upbringing, personality, or habit. They are involved because they experienced something personal, an event which changed them. And from that day on, a response was required.

Now what if the two were combined: religion and politics I mean (I know that I am not the first to suggest it, and I shudder). What if Jesus people started going out on the street more, and spending time with the kind of people Jesus spent time with? People who do this might see things that few politicians ever see. If we do this, if we go ... having got religion, we might just get politics.

Narnia the Movie

2005-12-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

I remember a friend saying that the beginning of Lord of the Rings brought tears to his eyes because he saw up on screen the world that had meant so much to him in the reading.

Because I've read the Narnia books, to myself twice (once as a teen, once last year), and to my kids twice (yes all of them), I spent the first minutes of the Narnia movie crying silently in the theater because I really go along for the ride with these stories. And I knew what was coming! But then I was disappointed. Reviews I've read focus their praise on the film's childlike fantasy and escapism. But for me the power of the books isn't just escape or a childlike view. The power is in the appearance of Christ in Aslan and the way he effects those he encounters, no question.

And I realized that when I read Lewis' written account of Christ (which, I guess, I know can't really approximate the reality), I am free to supply the sound and the image with my own imagination ... i.e. my internal experience of Christ supplies the 'effects' when I read. So I was always very moved when reading the books. But the film overwhelmed my imagination and it wasn't better.

I'm only talking about Aslan really, because I spend a lot of time thinking about Christ. And I guess if I'm honest, the White Witch couldn't compete with my understanding of Jadis (who fills in for Satan in the books, another character I spend time considering).

But I don't really ever think about fauns. The faun was nice ....

Dream of The Created World

2005-11-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

Flashlights under the covers,
playing like cavers, diving
deep into giddy infancy.
Though a proud dream-stag
might poke you out of slumber,
drift, spelunker, underground lover--
begged blessings hover
like a funky patchwork raft
you're riding under. The light
and lethe comforter is the night--
the world turns in, turns to forgetting,
creeping easter, "Flashlights on!"
No hope in rising! Who craves and hunkers
down to wait? ... World turns,
God pulls the covers up.
You fight to not forget, while
revelers stall, stealing light
from above: stay sharp, heads up.
Each work of day rolls over,
above and of the surface,
and yet the earth careers to
other rhythms, finally cloaked
and orthodox ... asleep, unseen
where youth are left to rise,
and plunge towards the center,
under the covers, where motion
is never felt.

one leper in ten

2005-10-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

When John Wimber, late leader of the Vineyard, decided to pray for healing (because Jesus in scripture tells us to), he had to keep reminding himself to "teach the scriptures, not his experience". Because as he led his church into unfamiliar territory, no one was healed, many got sicker, and half of his people left. But one day, the story goes, after praying for a woman who was terribly sick in bed, he turned to her husband to give his well-rehearsed speech on how God doesn't always heal, and was completely surprised when the woman got up and got dressed--she had been totally restored to health.

It's with the same shock and amazement that I hung up the phone today after a conversation with a struggling woman that our church had helped get into a room. What was so shocking? For the four years I've been on staff at my church we have struggled to help the poor. We've tried to practice biblical compassion and generosity, but like Jesus who looks back over his ministry and bemoans the fact that in many places where he did miracles people hadn't changed, I look back on four years of giving money to the poor, think of all the times the recipients of our money promised to come to church and told us how this was going to help them turn a corner and not a single one has come back. That's not entirely true: many come back for more money. I'm no fool: I know that there are a lot of needs on the street and that our one-time gifts don't mean the end of trouble for the poor. It just seems that we become a money store, not a church full of people trying to help. But today was different.

This woman, just out of jail (after serving 15 years of a 30 year sentence), called the office. I hesitated to pick up the phone, imagining that I would have to give my practiced speech on how we really can only help with big gifts once and that we just didn't have any more money to give her ... I'm not proud of it, but I assumed she was just going to list a bunch more needs.

I picked up the phone and was instantly shamed. All she wanted to say was thank you. And she'd gone out of her way to say it.

She said how thankful she was to get our check and she was in her room and how great it was and how thankful she was and ... just thank you. That's all. Thank you. That's all she wanted to say. But that wasn't the end of our talk ... we talked for a long time, because I didn't want the conversation to end-- she was like the leper in the bible story: ten are healed by Jesus, but only one comes back to say thank you.

She didn't talk about her needs (she has plenty), just all the ways that God was meeting them, one by one, and that she wasn't worried. At one point I was listening to her and she started to sound like some of the grand faithful women in our church, reverent, mature. Beautiful.

I can't begin to describe the sense of privilege I feel to have gotten this call.

"Thing" as Theology

2005-10-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

As drawn by Timo, age 7

Barefoot Burned Again

2005-10-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Balking, buck naked, and a bit
Too high above the ground, I
Bend into myself and
Bury me against transparency--
Barely believing I could be
A big man or even a
Bold man. ... But

Before I break, the brothers
Breach the boundaries to
Bold me, beginner
That I am; and then I
Bend myself straight, and go
Back to the bush to be
Barefoot burned again

Icon of The Other

2005-10-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

From our Pentecost service in 2005, "Stations of Pentecost": this station was about interacting with the "other" in our midst (the station included a "Phrasebook", like you'd use to get around a foreign country).

ICON OF THE OTHER

"When we encounter others, we are painfully aware of the effects of our fall from grace -- sin is ever before us. We choose not to speak because we are afraid of causing offense or being misunderstood. We read judgment or anger or impatience in their faces, whether it is there or not.

We have always believed that the Holy Spirit can help us know what to say, at the right time. Do we also believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in the other, translating our imperfect words into words of life?"

The Phrasebook had little spurs to conversation like, "Say what you're thinking -- God has been working on your thoughts", and "Don't be afraid of what you think a person thinks (you're probably wrong)", and, "Ask an honest question about them ... you might get an honest answer". The book also had room for people to write their own thoughts about the conversation.

What kind of Angels?

2005-10-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

My wife is pastor over all the children's ministries at our church: her work often contrasts with mine (I pastor grown-ups). One Saturday night, as I was sweating some last-minute inspiration for a sermon I was going to deliver the next day, she came to me with our Metro canister vacuum and asked how she could strap it onto one of her workers so that he could pretend to be a scuba diver. I remember wishing that I could skip my talk and go hear hers.

This week she's reviewing Christmas plays, and one of the titles on the pile is "The Fumbly-Bumbly Angels". This is exceptionally cute, but caused my wires to cross several times leading up to last Saturday. My father had invited us to watch the Navy's Blue Angels fly over San Francisco During the Bay Area's Fleet Week festivities. So I've got a little war going on in my head between the angels, blue and fumbly-bumbly. I've got the "God loves and uses every helper, even the Fumbly Bumbly ones" thing in there, and I've got the "world's-greatest, military-precision, aerobatic demonstration team" image screaming around there too, threatening to dominate the fumbly-bumbly angels with the overwhelming force of the F-18 fighter.

Adults love power. It's hard to argue with the power and precision of the Blue Angels as a display of technological glory matched to a person's ability to master it. But once again, my wife's world trumps my adult world: I'd choose the fumbly-bumbly angels as models for my job any day.

Daddy Time

2005-10-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Daddies draw distractedly down
Main Street, abstractly annoyed with ...
Directing diminutive teams of future
Producers in essential skills:
The Importance of a Full Plate;
How to Hate Family Time;
Giving Mommy Space ....
She, cold and conquering, fit
To be tried, uncovered in ball cap,
Flocked in vests of polar tech, V-8
Insulation against the weak and the wait,
Commands by a power
She doesn't understand.

Judgment

2005-10-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

We Christians are not to worry about judgment (aargh! But we want to!). It will be taken care of ... it is the territory of God the father, the son to whom it is given (but who also did not concern himself with it while he was here), and the Spirit who reveals by recalling the words, works and wonder of Jesus. Matthew 11.20 records an interesting perspective on this: Jesus "began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent." ... Jesus doesn't look back wishing he'd taught more on sin: he knows his presence was enough to reveal (to judge) the clear difference between good and evil, and the many simply failed to respond. Contrast Peter in Luke 5 (s v.8), who does respond to the miracle of Jesus with a new awareness of his sin.

Jesus lets his words (John 12.47) and his works (Matt 11) be the standard, the plumb line by which we are judged. He is not concerned with naming our failures (unless we are part of the arrogant class who teach lies in the name of God): he is concerned with meeting us and throwing his arms open. We accept or reject this miracle.

Case Insensitive

2005-10-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

The God and gods of this generation.

In the computer world, programs that don't distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters are said to be case-insensitive. For example, Web browsers don't care whether an address is written with capitals or not. WWW.CAPS.COM will get you to the same place as www.caps.com. During the dotcom boom we saw companies play around with capitals as if no rules applied. Names more often had capitals within them than at the beginning. Some names of companies had no capitals at all. If the above title were the name of a dotcom it may read, "caseInsensitive" or caseinsensitive.com". It is no coincidence that this generation also embraces the impersonal, case insensitive god and gods of a relative society.

While Web browsers don't distinguish between capital and lower case letters, The difference between God and god is certainly more important than the Internet generation is likely to discern. Though religion in the Internet age continues to be case insensitive, God is what God is, and that is not mere god.

Ask anyone what they think of capital-g God and they will likely respond as though you meant god: "you have yours and I have mine", or "I have my own religion", or finally, "don't impose your view of god on me". This last is a conversation-killer, as if my God is of my own making, or as if my "view" has an impact on the reality of my God. What else can I say if my god is a product of my own delirium? I wouldn't want to follow a figment of my imagination either.

When I use the name God, I mean it in the most specific, unique sense. God--One who exists outside of me. That in and of itself demands a response. Perhaps the demand is why people rebel against God and choose instead to take any appearance of the one God who makes claims on our independence and reduce it to one of many visions, one case-insensitive option among many. Yet, God is a personal noun, not an impersonal one. God is absolutely case sensitive.

This is very similar to the business/work/life ethic that was the death knell of suits in the office and of capital letters in names. As this generation became more confident in its own abilities, for various reasons, previous generations--their opinions, their behavior, their right to authority--were rejected.

While the absence of capital letters in names of dotcoms probably owes more to the nature of Internet addressing than to an attitude, one sees a parallel between the casual, make-your-own-way, approach to life of the Internet generation, and the way that generation deconstructs the one God into many, smaller, casual-dress gods.

Joshua (successor to Moses) says to the Israelites, "Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

God is one, says the ancient Hebrew Shema (Listen, O Israel, the lord your God is one!)

June 2001

Friendship with God

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We know something of the Cosmic God, Ruler of the Universe. He is the creator, the all powerful: He calls to the heavens, and His voice shakes the mountains. This cosmic deity is the Christ Pantokrator painted up inside the dome in the Orthodox Church. He is a bit angry looking and--compared to the multitude of Biblical characters painted on the plaster walls--He is the furthest from the people.

But how accurate is this cultural/architectural portrayal of God? In the patriarchal societies of the Orthodox traditions, somehow the male Jesus is limited to playing the part of the stern almighty. In churches in Greece, Mary is painted over the door, as if only Jesus' mother has the feminine quality of mercy, necessary to welcome the lost sheep home again.

But this is not true to the Scriptural portrayal of God as our friend. The "cosmic God" is too easy to ignore, too far away to matter. But a God who invites Himself into our living room, shares intimate truths with us, and requires the same transparency in return ... this God is impossible to ignore.

You are my friends if you obey me. I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn't confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. (John 15.14,15 )

If the God of the universe really wants to call me friend, some questions come to mind: When Jesus says, "You are my friends if you obey me", do I want this friendship or not? Does the thought of obedience make me feel more like a friend or a servant? Historically, if the Orthodox traditions are any clue, we are fixated on the 'obedience' and not on the 'friendship'. If the friendship is a reward for obedience, then I may be in trouble. But I believe the truth is subtly different: obedience is a sign of my desire to be a friend to Jesus, a result of my honest desire to be true to Him. I can show myself to be a true friend of Jesus by practicing obedience.

These questions are important to me, because it is the possibility of friendship with God that makes his cosmic stature bearable for me. I believe Jesus desires my friendship. And I want it too, so I am willing to consider obedience to God, though I may avoid it otherwise.

But how does friendship with God work? God is called many things in Scripture. For example, the Hebrew El Shaddai does mean "God Almighty". Next to this, how do we name God "friend"? The following passages help paint the picture.

Psalm 145.18: The LORD is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him sincerely.

James 4.8: Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.

Leviticus 26.12: [God says,] I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.

Exodus 33.11-14: the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. [.] Moses said to the LORD, "You have been telling me, 'Take these people up to the Promised Land.' But you haven't told me whom you will send with me. [.] And the LORD replied, "I will personally go with you, Moses. I will give you rest -- everything will be fine for you."

John 15.12, 13: [Jesus says,] I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you. And here is how to measure it -- the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.

John 15.15: I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn't confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

This God is so driven by his desire for an intimate relationship with his people that not only does he come down from his throne in the dome of the heavens to "walk among us", but as a sign that there is no limit to his love, this God of the cosmos will lay down his life for his friends.

November 1999

The Near Side of Hell

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Hell is always depicted in Gary Larson's comic strip, The Far Side, as a place where doomed souls are herded about by tall goateed men with horns and tridents. In one strip, three devils laugh out loud as they look through the slips of paper deposited in Hell's "Suggestion Box".

This is a fairly common portrayal of Hell. Not the part about the suggestion box, but the appearance of a devil or devils that rule over Hell, dealing out misery to the damned. But this is surely a mistake. Devils, demons, Satan himself are all angels, created beings, who operate on a plane somewhat closer to God for a season, but with no less accountability for their behavior. Satan himself is doomed, along with his rebellious followers, to the same fate promised to all who reject God in this age.

Then the Devil, who betrayed them, was thrown into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (Revelation 20.10)

The Scriptures never suggest that there is any power in Hell. This is one of the terrifying things about it. There is no longer any hope of success. There is no authority, no promotion, no release. All those who resist God to the end, demon and human, will suffer the same fate.

This reality is pictured with terrifying intensity in Auguste Rodin's bronze monument, The Gates of Hell. This pair of 20 foot-tall bronze doors are meant to be more than a picture of the entryway into Hell. They are meant to be a window.

In the sculpture, all is swirling bronze torment: each tiny figure takes turns grasping desperately at another, then being grasped. Each mouth is open, gasping for breath in exhaustion, all thirsting. Each being--devil and human--trades off the roles of tormentor and tormented, neither role satisfying, neither of power, but all of chaos.

16 April 2001

the word in context

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The Word in Context

In the first chapter of the gospel of John, we read about the epic, ordering activity of The Word. We understand this Word to be the same Son of God who appears on Earth in the flesh and takes the name Jesus. He is present at the creation of the world where once there was only chaos. The Word itself brings order and is the stuff of the initiating speech of God when, in the beginning, that one says, "Let there be ...".

We experience the work of the Word in creation. But we experience the Word itself in His coming.

"The Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory ." (John 1.14)

Because we humans fall so short of this glory, His becoming human seems contrary to that power and predisposition of the Word to move things from chaos to order, from darkness to light. But this becoming-like-us has a purpose.

The first words that John records being spoken by the almighty Word signal this purpose. The days of universe making are done for the Word: chaos has been overcome. In his becoming human, that power has been left behind, for a season. The Earth has different problems now, requiring a different language. The Word who-was-in-the-beginning enters fully into the present, and there meets you and me.

After the cosmological drama of the Word in verses 1 through 14, the first words of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John are addressed to two potential disciples who have begun to follow him down the street. He says to them, "What do you want?"

This exceedingly prosaic query hints that the God of the universe has actually come not just as a human, but to be human and meet us humans right where we live. He does not say "Thus saith ." or "Worship me". His first utterance, as recorded, is to ask what we are looking for

We see the same pedestrian concern when God speaks to Elijah on Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19). Elijah has been running for his life and just as he gives up, hoping to die, an angel spurs him on for the forty day journey to Sinai. There, after hiding out in a cave during a windstorm so strong it tears rocks loose from the mountain, and an earthquake and fire (none of which--however mighty--contain God), God speaks in a gentle whisper: "What are you doing here, Elijah?".

These words of God suggest that the mighty works of God--for example the creation and care of the universe--were simply how God set the stage for the more important work of caring for us.

12 October 2001

Donne's Holy Sonnet

2005-10-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.