01.31.08
We Are All Shameless Voyeurs
We as a society are not new to being voyeurs.
It was always front page news to watch the moral decline of a high profile figure like evangelical Ted Haggard, athlete O.J. Simpson, ENRON execs, Presidents like Bill Clinton, or any pedophile Catholic Priest.
Last night I watched “Moment of Truth” on FOX. It’s a shameless game show of voyeurism, and I loved it. In fact, 23 million others loved it as well. “Participants” endure a barrage of personal and revealing questions in front of family, friends, and a national audience. All they need to do to win up to $500,000 is simply tell the truth as determined by a polygraph.
According to John Powers, NPR’s Critic At Large, from Top 10 Cultural Trends of 2007, this is the epitome of what he refers to as the TMZing of America. This defiant blurring of the line between the public and private sectors of our lives has become quite lucrative. Journalists such as TMZ—”the official site for celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and Hollywood rumors”, capitalize upon this celebrity “dirt.”
As pointed out by Powers, even the most trivial detail of a person’s life are now out in the glitzy wide open, and along with it is their share of human drama—the not-so-glam side. America watches with gaping stare as celebrities like Brittany Spears come unraveled. Read the rest of this entry »
01.30.08
Pencil Drawings Moving at Mach 1.5 (a dogfight of aesthetics)
Sometimes doing something that you love loses it’s magic. Now is the time to rekindle that something . . . even if it is ordinary . . . even if no one else cares.
When I was 10, I started drawing. I had a pad of unlined paper, a pencil and a collection of odd rulers. I was never a very risky by trying anything free-hand. None-the-less, it was quite imaginative. I was careful and meticulous with lines and angles and measurements, and I traced around a nickel or a dime to make the wheels. The page always got a horizontal line to start with. That was the ground. Nearly every time I would draw, it became a concept car of the future.
Often, my car drawings had elements of old and new cars combined, and some original ideas that may or may not have served any real purpose other than aesthetics.
When our class would go to the library, I would check out books on fighter jets with lots of pictures. Then, my drawings were half car and half jet—incorporating aerodynamic ideas that I got from picture books on fighter jets and rockets.
Some of my drawings after that wouldn’t start with a horizontal line. Instead, while employing a little more risk and imagination, all of the lines and razor sharp angels were flying at mach 1.5 and had a tail of flame.
Once or twice, I would have more than one jet on a page. They were engaged in a type of dogfight, but somehow almost humanly impossible, all of which took place at mach 1.5 and all of which fit on a single page of drawing paper.
I had the same routine before starting another drawing. I would thumb slowly though my previous drawings, partly to admire them, and partly to find the next fresh page.
One day, I suddenly lost my sense of imagination. I was smitten. As I thumbed through all of my previous drawings, I kept seeing the same thing. I only knew how to draw one thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Plastic Windsheilds
When I was 9, I had a collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox vehicles. Some were models of actual cars and some were concept cars or cars of the future. I kept each one like new in their original box or in a plastic sandwich baggie. If they were being kept in their original box, they were only opened on one side so that I could slip the car in and out without completely tearing the plastic from the paper. They were all housed in a shoebox.
When I pulled out my collection, each car was carefully selected, taken out of their covering and placed on make believe streets. The cars’ drivers were probably very reckless, because all of my cars seemed to always travel on very treacherous roads at exceptionally high rates of speed. Every time my cars were driving, they were inevitably crashing. I would hunch down and crane my neck to look from behind the car that I was steering, to get a driver’s seat perspective. Some cars had clear plastic windshields for me to peer through if I squinted and kept one eye closed. The car I was driving always crashed, often repeatedly, into obstacles or other cars in such a way that absolutely no one inside could survive. Each crash was complete with its own sound effects and slow motion replay.
It’s no wonder that TV shows like A Team and movies like 007 always managed to include not one, but several vehicle collisions. The writers of those shows must have had a collection of cars and an imagination like mine. There were occasions, though, when I thought that the cars were mere inanimate objects. There were days when I would pull out the shoebox and imagination was lacking. I would even take a few of my favorite cars out of their cocoon only to replace them with complete disenchantment.
Maybe I was getting older. No one was telling me that older boys stop playing with toy cars. I wasn’t saying that to myself either. If anything, I was convincing myself that I was completely normal for coveting my car fetish. But the cars themselves were lifeless. They were telling me that they were old. They were tired. On one occasion, I began to set up an elaborate chase. But before the first crash, the cars simply were not fun anymore. Read the rest of this entry »
01.29.08
We Are All Plagiarists
Knowledge is nauseating.
We are all only plagiarists.
Even what intellect we have stolen is most likely not from an original source. It was information adapted and made a composite—much like a museum curator—all of which finding its source in the Father of Truth or the Father of Lie. Rob Bell writes, “God has spoken. The rest is commentary.” Even the knowledge we have stolen is not in its pure form anymore. We have adulterated it to suit ourselves—to better represent and reproduce our way of thinking. Why, then, do we boast as though the power were ours? Read the rest of this entry »
Can Authentic Community Even Exist
The self is a gravity, a motivation of selfishness and personal agenda. We reason and we observe from our self-centeredness. There is no possible way for us to avoid this. It is a body which has its own gravitational pull. It is a very strong gravitational pull. I believe that our deepest need is community with God and others. As we are motivated and driven by illicit passion toward this end, we in fact, create its opposite—a deep solitude. Read the rest of this entry »
Absurdity and Process Thinking
There exists within Modern Philosophy an unmistakable affinity to Process Thinking, which over the last 30 years has been the infatuation of western thought. It is widely embraced, protected, and used to prosecute biblical Christianity by our most highly regarded Universities and other institutions of higher learning.
I don’t feel threatened by Process concepts as they pertain to a non-biblical paradigm as much as within.
For within, Christians are dualist. We are engaged in a struggle with self. We are able to choose good or evil. If we allow Jesus, we can be coached, or encouraged to choose good. If this happens more often than the opposite, than we become more good. We continue in a process of RATIONALITY (sounds like “gnosis” or “Knowledge”) to free ourselves from the flesh. However, not until we die, will we be rid of the material and fleshly existence. Read the rest of this entry »
The Problem of Sin
The Problem of Sin
Stephen C. Allen
Postulate 1:
God’s most central attribute is that of His Glory, and all other attributes; love, mercy, grace, etc. are an outflow from that. To not give Him the glory that He alone deserves, is the truest definition of sin—to substitute the glory of God for the glory of self. Read the rest of this entry »
National Crisis of Faith
“Your love is teaching me how to kneel.”
–U2 “Vertigo”
This is not time to speculate on the direction God is taking His church. This is not the nation to be doing the speculating. If there were a nation called upon to do the leading into the era that we are currently approaching, ours is not it. Ours is a society that discriminates, boasts, builds, dominates, and overpowers its environment. Ours is a society of self-pleasure, self-help, self-sufficient, self-assured, self-righteous, self-centered, self-made and self-confident. Ours is a society that does not value the individual, body or spirit. Ours is a society that does not celebrate the mystery. Read the rest of this entry »
Thank God, It’s Tuesday.
Something has gone wrong.
“Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.”
“Chronic or life-long (endogenous) depression is caused by trauma in childhood which includes: emotional, physical or sexual abuse; yelling or threats of abuse; neglect (even two parents working); criticism; inappropriate or unclear expectations; maternal separation; conflict in the family; divorce; family addiction; violence in the family, neighborhood or TV; racism and poverty.”
“Depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020 — and studies show depression is a contributory factor to fatal coronary disease.”
Where does the depression come from?
“Physiological problems, plus learned beliefs and behaviors, make functional decisions difficult, and the results reinforce the depression in a vicious cycle.” Read the rest of this entry »
Graffiti Station, Next Stop, Home
Nobody talks while riding a New York City Subway. Me? I talk to anyone. I own New York and the trains that tie it together underneath. I’d tell ‘em that I had just returned from the ancient city of Rome-I had just conquered the world. New York was not as big anymore.
It’s a long ride from Kennedy to the GWB. I’m traveling backwards. My seat faces the other commuters. Yesterday, I was in Rome. Last night, I looked through the window of Alitalia flight 7604 and saw our moon painting pastel blue light on the snowcaps of the Swiss Alps. It’s August.
Platform 9-B: To Trains
Two days ago, I danced in a bus terminal in Milano with a homeless drunk who speaks only Italian. Today, an ocean away, I ride beside him on the train in New York-except he doesn’t speak at all. I had conquered civilizations, eras, oceans, mountains, deserts, languages, cities, cultures, climates, and currencies, all at the age of 20.
This journey would have been impossible before May 21, 1927. The whole experience of leaving Europe by sea was long and often life-threatening one century ago. In the sum of human history, our time here is unnoticed and silent, but we feel immortal and without limits.
Platform 8-A: To Busses and Taxi
I am fourth of six siblings-raised in government subsidized housing in economically-depressed upstate New York. It seems to me that I’ve climbed to the crest of the known world, taken my picture, and now I was going to get swallowed up again into average life. Where do go once you leave Catanzaro Lido? Last week, I ate a dark chocolate-covered coffee ice cream on a stick while watching a pizza-colored moon rise above the Mediterranean Sea. I had become new friends with Franco, Franco, and a most-affectionate Simon Pietro. We shared wine, pasta, and watermelon. I had mixed mortar in their arid summer sun and sat beneath a single orange porch light in the evening rain. None of us had any money, and it would seem we were better off for it.
I stood reverently in St. Peter’s Cathedral two days ago. Suddenly, I am whisked away at breakneck speed through congested and dirty airport customs, to train, and then to bus. I’m still in the same clothes. Sand from the ancient city is still in the tread of my boots. Use to being out under God’s canopy of stars, I pull out a fresh shirt from my duffle and change.
No one notices.
Someone has cast a terrible hex on the city. I’m gone 8 weeks and everyone’s become zombies. Am I alive nor dead? I own the city. It was all running smoothly just for me-right on schedule. Everyone played his or her roles just for me-to land, to travel, to eat. I even felt patriotic seeing Lady Liberty from the plane window. I was glad to be home, but terrified that such a godless place not only exists, but also had become my home. Do I belong here?
Afraid of what I may have become, I grabbed my notebook and listed all of the ways that I was not like my surroundings. In a crisis of identity, I scribbled what I am by naming what I am not.
Platform 19-A: No Pedestrians Beyond This Point
My back slides left and right against the seatback and my shoulder bumps the graffiti scratched into the Plexiglas window every couple of seconds-rocking with the city beat around imaginary street corners. Our express train takes center lanes at full speed through stand-still stations. This passing sends strobe lights on my page like I were a flying insect in a thundercloud-all of it moving at terrible speeds. Sometimes the rate of the strobes would double as a southbound train passed us traveling the opposite direction, missing us by inches.
I feel frail. I feel mortal again. I don’t believe I can conquer this city, or any other city, anymore. In fact, I am the city. I didn’t rise to the top of the world. I am the sand of ancient cultures stuck in the tread of someone else’s sole. Not only am I just another silent commuter on the A Train, I am invisible. This machine operates independent of me, back and forth over the same iron rails, regardless of whether I am even on board. The city does not run for me. I am a mere observer, a participant, a supporting cast member at most-maybe an extra.
Stoic and zombie-like, I looked again at the list of words that I had just written- identifiers that I had just made. The qualities that define my surrounding were suppose to set me apart from them. I must know myself, independent of where I am. Instead, however, it was like reading an exact description of myself. It was as though I were trying to look through the Plexiglas subway window, but because of the darkness outside, I only saw a reflection of my own face-”frail,” “frightened,” “alone,” “invisible,” and “moving at breakneck speed.”
The sum of my life is seemingly immortal and without limits. Instead, my time here is unnoticed and silent.
The 3 Biggest Sins of Pastors
The truth of elusive peace lies not only with laymen, but clergy as well.
When initiating a covenant relationship with His redeemed people, God says to them, “Have no other gods before Me” or, loosely translated, “don’t sleep around.”
Tragically, shepherds lead their flocks with three destructive thinking patterns. 1. Serve as though the ministry were about their name, 2. Serve as though it were a competition with other Christian churches, and 3. Operate as though we were offering a service for the hurting rather than offering to serve the hurting.
“Home”
Today, I was walking with Miss Betty. She was sitting in her wheelchair and I was walking her wheelchair along a small path that leads around a pair of duck ponds. We talked about her long life and we threw a few pieces of bread out to the baby ducks we found along the bank. When we came back inside and got some water to drink, “the topic” came up.
This is one topic that I anticipated would be come up. It is quite possibly the most popular topic among residents of a nursing home. Sometimes, we are caught off guard and we walk right into it. While we were drinking some water, Miss Betty was grabbing the counter beside the wheelchair and pulling herself along. This is when the “topic” came up.
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Home.”
It was her automatic response.
It didn’t even require any thought. It was a reflex. It was something that was so prevalent in her lifelong existence that it casts its shadow onto every other enterprise. It is the simple admission that although the weather was great, most our physical needs are met, and even some of our social, something calls us from the other side. “I want to go home.”
