Grove of Giants

My Religious Views

2009-01-24T20:47:00.000-08:00

I recently joined facebook, and it wanted me to say something about my religious views. I always do what facebook asks me to do, so I thought it over and wrote a little something. Only it turns out that facebook didn't want that much answer. Just a few words please. Preferably a label like "Baptist" that we can match to other people with the same label. So I said thepoetic. Ha! Just try to match that one, facebook! Who is in a box now!

But you guys are special, so I'll tell you the truth.

i see the seated deity
sitting on His throne

the universe is His throne
the earth is where He sets His feet

and the church in which we meet
cannot contain His beauty

Holiday Letters

2008-12-27T10:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa

How are you? I am fine. I hope you had a very good year. I have been very good all year long, even though my brother is bad. It’s easy to be good when I think of how mean he is. In the summer, he put Ned the bunny in the refrigerator. Ned was very cold even though he has fur, because he isn’t from the North pole like you are. Do the raindeer live outside, or do you let them in? They don’t have much fur. In case you forgot about my first letter, I want a phone that plays music and has all the letters for texting. I’m in 4th grade now, and I don’t like kid stuff any more. I’m sure that I will be very happy with what you brought, because it is going to be even better than Jills phone.

Anastasia

P.S. These cookies and milk are for you. I made them myself. The cut up apple is for the raindeer. It’s a golden deliscious.

My Sweet, Tender Child

Oh my! What a gracious and well-written note. 4th grade, indeed! You seem so grown up that I thought for a minute that I was in the wrong house. Once I had peeked at you while you slept, of course, I was very relieved. You are every bit as plump as I was led to believe, and your bed is certainly tall enough for anyone who might wish to live underneath it. Anyone such as myself. Allow me to make the introduction: I am your new guest; the Goblin who Lives Under the Bed.

Don’t worry, I won’t eat you tonight.

You see, I am still full from my last meal, as well as tired from the move over here. I’m glad you have such a roomy closet for napping in! I was even more glad for the cookies and milk you left me, although I later discovered that they were, in fact, not for me. Ah well, what’s done is done. I’m afraid I did finish off the milk, but since I only took one bite of the cookies, I shall leave the rest for the esteemed S. Claus. Are these apples? How grotesque.

Do not fear, scrumptious one. I shall not be an intrusive roommate. In fact, you may never even see me, and certainly not during the day. I do not intend to cause you any undue terror. After all, terror will only make you thin. So relax, eat these cookies yourself, and try not to get too much exercise.

I shall be watching you.

Your G. Under Bed

Hey Kid
You might want to have a talk with your pops about stealing. It looks like he got to the milk and cookies before I did. It also looks like he didn’t care much for the cookies, so you might want to have a talk with your mom about taking cookies out of the oven before they turn to stone. But listen, the reindeer really appreciate the apple. Not many kids think of them.

Merry Christmas, and all that.
Santa

P.S. I just saw the note from Goblin. That’s a tough one, kid. I‘m sorry to hear about it. There’s not much I can do, since you didn’t wish to be rid of him for Christmas. But your brother did wish for a Buck knife and karate lessons, so maybe he can help you out. If your brother hasn’t taken care of it by Easter, try leaving some salad and a note for Bunny. Maybe he can leave you some special eggs. Of course, there’s always next Christmas, but I get the feeling that this will be all over by then. One way or another.

Christmas Hope

2008-12-24T15:59:00.000-08:00

It’s Christmas.

We just had this thing called an election, in which we elected a man who promised hope. Hope. Hope that comes from change and involvement.

The economy stinks. Not as bad as some people think, but bad enough. And it will get worse sooner rather than later, because an economy based on luxury and debt might wobble back to its feet, but it won't stand for long.

What a season.

I know we get a little heavy around here, and that’s part of why I don’t post every day. But today, I want to put something on the internets about true hope in the holiday season. It’s one of my favorite Christmas passages.

Isaiah 9:6b

And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.

Recognize it? If you go to church you might hear it around the holidays. It makes a great Christmas sermon, because each name is so comforting. They fit so well with warm, candle-lit scenes of stables, trees and holiday cider, and families coming together for celebration and renewal. But this isn’t my favorite part of the passage. I like the part that surrounds it.

Isaiah 9:6-7

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Still recognize it? It’s amazing what a little bit of context can do to change the face of a passage. The government will be on his shoulders! Of the increase of his government there will be no end! He will uphold justice, and rule with peace! FOREVER! I can hardly believe it. After all, justice and peace are not the world’s way to maintain power. But this messiah is not a president or prime minister like any we have known.

This Christmas, it’s a little hard for me to stay with the baby Jesus in the manger. I want to read ahead. I’m anxious for him to grow into the man he was set to be. I’m anxious for him to Die and Rise, because only after that can he Return. And the Return is what I really hope for.

Miracles

2008-11-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

Dr. Bob Niedorf: Right. Name as many mammals as you can in 60 seconds. Ready? Go. [Starts stopwatch]

George Malley: Hmm. 60 seconds. Well, how would you like that? How about alphabetical? Aardvark, baboon, caribou, dolphin, eohippus, fox, gorilla, hyena, ibex, jackal, kangaroo, lion, marmoset, Newfoundland, ocelot, panda, rat, sloth, tiger, unicorn, varmint, whale, yak, zebra. Now "varmint" is a stretch; so is "Newfoundland" (that's a dog breed); "unicorn" is mythical; "eohippus" is prehistoric. But you weren't being very specific, now, were you, Bob?

That's from the 1996 movie Phenomenon. Not a memorable movie, my friends tell me, but I thought it was phenomenal. And you should know that it was phenomenated for 7 awards, and won 7 others. None from the academy, but still.

OK, so maybe it wasn't the best movie of the decade but that scene made an impression on me. In case you don't remember the film, it's about George seeing the light. Well, it's about what happens after he sees a light. A bright one. In the sky.

He passes out and wakes up doing miracles.

First he does a home improvement project and introduces his friends to each other. Then he catches a rabbit in his garden. Next thing you know he's reading books and spinning some dude's sunglasses around on the table. Well, at that point things have gone a little too far for the authorities to ignore. He's detained for medical study. The mammal naming miracle is the climactic point at which the doctor administering the IQ test is so disturbed by George's power that he almost forgets to stop his stopwatch. ALMOST FORGETS THE STOPWATCH. You've got to know you can't keep a guy like this locked up. He escapes the clutches of the authorities and makes love to the woman he's been wooing. Then he dies from the tumor in his brain. Along the way he has managed to teach the townsfolk that he has no special insight into life. Nobody does. There are no special insights. Just be a laid-back person and you'll be fine.

The movie broke my heart a little, you know? This is a miracle? Reading some books? This is wisdom? Just be cool? What's the use in that? It kills me to live in a culture so lazy and unintelligent that listing some animals in alphabetical order is the big shock. And it kills me that we have so small a concept of power and wisdom. 'Cause it's the Jesus story, you know? George alone has seen the light; he does miracles, and teaches the townsfolk; he's persecuted by the authorities and escapes their justice. He dies. Just like Jesus. Except George's miracles and wisdom are empty. Jesus should do more than catch a rabbit and chill with his girl.

Jesus shouldn't just see a flash of light, he should be light. He should shine out in this dark life, seen by everyone. He should call religious leaders out of that darkness, and marginalized, scandalous women should chat with him in broad daylight, thirsty to be his disciples. The hungry masses should walk days to hear him teach, even though his teachings are hard to understand. Knowing that they are hungry for more than bread and sermons, he should offer his own life as sustenance for their souls. He should give sight to the blind, and make blind everyone arrogant enough to think they see clearly. He should call out to the excommunicated and the dead, and they should know his voice and live.

Why am I bringing up a 12 year old film, you ask? It's not just because I'm stuck in the 90's, or that I haven't voluntarily watched a film since then. It's the living that's got me thinking about this old movie. You see, a friend of mine has recently had a nice, big tumor pulled out of her brain. She's in her 20's, so you gotta know we're all in a little shock. I tease her, because that's what I do. "Can you do miracles?" She can't, but I sure wish I could.

I would do a miracle on her, and one on my dad, who has Parkinson's, and one on my grandfather who has Alzheimer's, and one on my co-conspirator in the church, who has breast cancer. But I'm not Jesus, and I can't do those miracles. I'm not even George.

Instead, I think we're the excommunicated and dead, called to life. But how did Lazarus live on in a body that had already given up and died? How did the excommunicated man live on in a city that had turned against him? How do we live, sharing these bodies and relationships with so much death? I don't know. But I have heard the story of Jesus, and I can see him has walking step by step up a mountain to torture and death. I can see him rising up to the Life that comes after.

Breakfast Sestina

2008-11-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

Words drip
from my fingers
like thick, lumpy oatmeal mixed
with ink. These gooey blotches are
for you.

Chivalry is Not Dead, and the Civil Rights Movement Marches On

2008-10-15T11:21:00.001-07:00

It was the kind of conversation you can only have when you've been in the car together for over an hour, and you know you have at least another hour to go.

We're driving past a Deja Vu, when he asks if I've ever been in one. I hadn't, although some coworkers tried really hard to get me to go on my 18th birthday. That was back when I lived in Bakersfield.

Ha! Yeah, it's that kind of place. A place for 18 year olds. You lived in Bakersfield, man? My cousins live down there, and that's the first strip club I ever went to. Crazy huh? I've only been a few times; it's not worth it, man. It's a juice bar, you know. So you can't get a real drink to loosen up and have fun. Then you go home and you're just frustrated, blue ball's and all that. It's no satisfaction, it's just a big tease.

Bakersfield is a fucked up place, man. Everybody's so ignorant down there, racist and all.

I tell him I know what he means, and has he read The Grapes of Wrath? He kind of looks at me out of the corner of his eye.

I was in the Deja Vu there with my cousins one time, and there was this beautiful black girl dancing. Only time I ever saw a black girl in there. But nobody was watching her dance. I'm not even exaggerating, man. Every guy in the place was watching this blond, and she was good looking, too, but it was crowded over there. It wasn't right, you know?

So me and my cousins went over there and watched the black girl. She was a good dancer, too. We watched her and got loud about her. 'Cause we wanted her to know that she was beautiful, and we wanted the other guys to hear about it, too. We tipped her real good, and I bought a lap dance for my little cousin. It just wasn't right the way they were treating her. Just because she's black? She was beautiful, too.

Chatyr Dag

2008-09-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Chatyr Dag stands crisp
against Crimea’s warm sky.
I stand on Chatyr Dag,
buffeted by winds from
sea and steppe.
On Chatyr Dag stands
a stone
covered in graffiti or calligraphy
in three languages
and four shades of chalk.
The words translate like this:
“If you’ve climbed this high
pray for peace over Crimea.”
Under the chalk inscription stand
a chalk cross,
a chalk star of David,
a chalk crescent moon.
Now I hunch in the lee
Of that stone and wonder who
else has stood or squatted here
resting, praying, wishing
they could decipher the Cyrillic.
And I wonder who
stood wielding that chalk,
stretching up and up,
leaning against the wind
to make the letters large enough
to outlast our momentary trouble?

Old Words in New Word-Skins?

2008-08-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Words shift. They wiggle and slide and flow. But they do it slowly, so that you might not even notice them moving at all. Then one day you're 65 and the kids are wearing shirts with slogans about flying monkeys, and you're sure they've ever seen the Wizard of Oz, and you don't know what the monkeys mean to them. And they use the word "respect," and you do know what that means, but they certainly don't seem to. And, for some reason, they don't understand Mark Twain.

The words have shifted. The flying monkey's habitat went neglected, so they moved to a new habitat and evolved new meanings for their old word-skins.

Over the past couple of hundred years or so (We'll call that time period "modernity" for convenience.) the definitions of most words in English have shifted some. Some very important terms in religion and science have shifted a great deal. And now words are shifting faster than they have since the early 1800's, and we're caught in this in-between place where many people still mean the words like moderns used to, and many other are searching for new habitats for our favorite words.

I thought I would spend some time on words that I think are shifting significantly, and explain them in their new contexts. I don't have good definitions for all of them yet, so I'll come back to this periodically and fill in the blanks as best I can.

Modern:

Post-modern:

Theology: In modernity, they simply called this "The study of God," as if that said it all. And it did, because the word "study" in modernity was pretty well loaded, and because there was only one thing to study about God: Does He exist? So, let me add to the four words. When Moderns said "Theology," they meant: The attempt to scientifically and logically explain the existence of God, so that the hearer would understand and agree.

Theopoetics: I know what you're thinking, but I really didn't make this up. I first read it in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, which is a excellent look at each book of the NT. It's huge, but toward the end Hayes (that's the author) calls Revelation "theopoetic." This word rocks, trust me. It's sort of the post-modern counterpart of theology, because--well, you'll see. It's the attempt to artistically and imaginatively describe God, so that the reader will see him in the world. Cool stuff, huh?

Truth

Meaning

History

Red and Mistrust

2008-08-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about the new Missile Deal? The US and Poland have a new missile treaty. Not the good kind of treaty, in which nations decide not to arm themselves with weapon of terror and mass destruction. No, this is the kind of treaty in which nations get together to help each other make more weapons. Russia is displeased. Americans are uninformed. It's all dressed up in the vague political rhetoric we expect. We aren't trying to hurt anyone, we just want to protect ourselves from "them." Who are they again? The real reason is the same as it has always been, we want the power to controll our relationships with others.

What a broken world.

The world is a place of distrust in which people push out against each other and against God, creating distances we hope no one will cross. We have lost our senses. We do not hear what is spoken, or see what is illuminated.

You see, we are like Cain, who walked away from God and built a city in Nod. Like Cain, we're all a little apprehensive about what others hold. We've heard that God will protect us, but we don't believe. After all, look at how God is protecting them--those pitiful ones we fear to think too much about. The poor, the suffering, the victims. Abel. God doesn't fit into our blood-soaked world view now that we know our own power. Our own weakness. We can kill; we can be killed. We think little of the promise of a God who could not even protect his favorite. Full of our own power and fear, we mistrust God and each other. And those whom we mistrust, we also mis-hear.

Like Cain, we walk away and try to build our own safe place. A city in the Land of Wandering, a paradox we believe we control. Missiles for peace.

For the Goyim

2008-08-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was found by those who didn’t call for me
close to folks who weren’t searching

I said Here I am Here I am
with my arms spread out
and nails in my hands

for folks who walk a winding road

(Isaiah 65)