other

The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to the east. But it has had an importance out of all proportion to its size. Empires have fought over it. Every forty-four years out of the last four thousand, on average, an army has marched through it, whether to conquer it, to rescue it from someone else, to use it as a neutral battleground on which to fight a different enemy, or to take advantage of it as the natural route for getting somewhere else to fight there instead. There are many places which, once beautiful, are now battered and mangled with the legacies of war. And yet it has remained a beautiful land, still producing grapes and figs, milk and honey.
The New Testament has not been around as long as the land of Israel, but in other ways there are remarkable parallels. […] There are many places whose fragile beauty has been trampled on by heavy-footed exegetes in search of a Greek root, a quick sermon, or a political slogan. And yet it has remained a powerful and evocative book, full of delicacy and majesty, tears and laughter.

-N.T. Wright in The New Testament and the People of God

N.T. Wright’s series about the origins of Christianity are the easiest to read hard-to-read books I’ve read. This is the first of the series and the third one for me to read (..yeah). It’s work getting through these books, but the only good beer is beer won, not conceded; good things are earned, thankfully. He says that in writing this book he’s a fascinated amateur not an explaining expert..not sure I completely buy it, but I see where he’s coming from. I think that’ll actually help, make the book more readable. His “expert” work, the tome about the life of Jesus, definitely has a clearly expert tone. It is very dense, takes a lot of time to read, the bibliography is enormous, and at the end one is left awestruck.

ideas

Angry men shouldn’t be pastors

motorcycle

Motorcycle wrenching fun, motorcycle flying fun, motorcycle from here to there and back fun

The best motorcycle for the one is the worst motorcycle for the other is the alright motorcycle for the other.

Cliché solution #1: the best motorcycle is the one that you are riding
Cliché solution #2: the best motorcycle is the one that makes you think about God

ideas

Take a look at the first before you read this second one,
http://wp.me/p14q4r-Rx

Also, I’m not sure whether or not I think the word god, as used here, should be capitalized or not. Thankfully the word Christian is a straight up syntax question without baggage, so it stays normal.

I don’t like to write something that’s not a story; I’m not very good at it and it feels stuffy.That said, here she goes.

The churches here in Guatemala have given me some problems, of them there’s one whopper. They made me realize something: I feel that god is for people who have good education and read lots of good books. If you don’t wonder deeply about redemption and covenant and all that and then go have a scotch and cigar and talk about all that with another  well educated book reader, if you don’t ponder infinity or make philosophical jokes about god…I feel you’re pretty much screwed.

When I first arrived here I first noticed that the churches are loud–the one across the street from my house is unfortunately very exemplary. They sing a lot of songs that sound much like what I imagine pagan chants sound like. They don’t sing the worship songs I know, like and am moved by. Then, when I began to visit churches and hear radio sermons, I noticed that they always preach very topically*. That’s not all, the topic almost every time hits hard on prosperity doctrine. Also, when someone prays it does not sound to me like a boy talking to his father or a woman to her mentor, what I feel prayer should be closest to. Instead it sounds like a screenplay being exagerated by an unskilled actor.

All these things together in my mind made for a single mental swing of ego and judgement: “wait-all these people are fake Christians. What’s all that   about?” If you want to duke it out with me for having thought that thought, take your best shot and see what happens.
So I notice all these things that are so different, and I am really bothered. I think to myself that I’m not like them. The next thing I think is “why?”

Why am I not like them?

I’ve come to the place I am at with respect to god by four things: (1) praying, (2) arguing about god and man, (3) thinking and (4) reading. So then I think to myself “of these four things, what makes me not like them?”

They pray here; they pray really differently, but prayer is such a complicated and peculiar thing I’m just going to leave it at “they pray here,” and so rule out number one. I’ll smoosh 2 into 3: arguing about god and man only counted when the arguement made me think, and what counted was the thinking, not the arguing. I know that the major part of how I think came from my studies at the university, and I know that very few here have had an education like mine. I’ll keep number three, with smooshed-in 2, and rename it “education.” Lastly there is reading. I’ve simply read more substantial books than the majority of churchgoers here. Through these books I’ve seen so many crazy different ideas and wild created worlds. Without doubt what I’ve read is key to how I think and a not-insignificant part of how I’ve come to where I am with respect to god. So I’ll keep number four.

So the result is that I threw out number one (prayer), smooshed number two (talking) into number three (thinking), and kept number four (reading). Education and books. So I look at these people and think to myself, they are spiritually fake and I am the real deal because of a degree I earned and the weekends and evenings I’ve whittled away reading books.

And worst of all, I have neither scotch nor cigar nor another “educated” book-reader to go argue, banter and joke about this with.

…maybe for now that’s best.

The end

———-

PS:
I implicitly cursed once. If you spotted it on the first pass, come visit me and I will make you a complex three course meal in 2 minutes flat and then give it to you.

*If you’re not familiar with preaching, there are two general ways to make a sermon. Exegesis is exposition using something resembling the “when did who say what to whom, where were they, and so why they say it like that at that moment?” It’s like this: imagine you were my boss’s coworker and needed to completely understand a very quickly-written incomplete email I’d written to him. You’d first need some knowledge of me and my job. You’d need some feel for the context of the email: was I pointing out a problem, clarifying a detail of an in-progress design job or maybe poking fun at the CEO with an inside joke? This is a good way to preach: good exegesis leaves little room for subjective error. Obviously there must still be a personal element-a preacher can’t just spew facts. But without the presence of rigorous reason and fact, sermons are at best lukewarm and at worst extremely decieving. Topical preaching is exactly what it sounds like: an arbitrary topic and an arbitrary batch of bible verses, almost always clipped out of context, that “talk” about it, where the definition of “talk” is up to the preacher’s whim. It is, at the core, the preacher expressing an idea or viewpoint in terms of phrases from the bible. If the idea or viewpoint is good, then often no harm is done.
ideas

I love stories–I love to tell them, to hear them, to think about them. Huge bonus points for stories told around a campfire or while having beers with good friends. That’s the majority of what goes up here on my blog, stories.

To me, storytelling is a pure and unique thing. It’s an act, but really it’s not acting at all; all stories are always stretched, but yet somehow within nearly every story is more truth than a old veteran mathematician can shake a stick at.

This isn’t storytelling though, this is a personal note; there won’t be a “this may or may not be” statements at the end.

A few quick and relevant facts:
-I believe in god; to label myself, “christian” fits best. Important note: Jesus wasn’t a Christian! Oh snap.
-If my faith was just a little bit less puny, I could tell a tree to walk and it would. I could probably levitate, too. Yeah-huh, levitate. But my faith is really, really really small, so I can’t do that stuff–but I think that’s ok for now.
-Jesus is important regardless of what one thinks of what he said. He changed the entire world for all foreseeable time in less time than Obama will have for his first term.

Note 1
Why the do we Christians always pray for bad things to not happen? From all I’ve seen and known, we predominately pray for bad things to not happen. Sure, we pray for good things, for safe travels and…wait…that’s actually praying for a bad thing to not happen. How about for financial stability–oh nevermind, that too. Dear god in heaven above, I pray that you would help my marriage continue strong and health–oh yup, there it is again. What about cancer? We always pray for cancer to be cured. Same thing again…but who am I to look at a man in the middle of life’s journey and tell him it’s silly to pray that his wife doesn’t die this weekend? I’m confused.

What’s a good thing to pray for then? What’s an honest and good thing to talk to god about?

Where’s my treasure, and where’s yours?

That’s what I’m going to pray for, for now.

Note #2 coming shortly.

stories

We people like to remember stuff about our big accomplishments, especially lasts. I had a cool job last summer; I was given a big project and got to drive around a cool car. That’s a good feeling. I don’t recall my first day on the job, but I do very well recall my last day. I had some final stuff to do: tie up loose ends in my company email account, finish a final status report for my supervisor to use, get all my company equipment together, clean out the aforementioned cool car, et cetera. But that is not all. That last day is forever etched deep into my heart. My friend died.

At around 8:30am, I got a call; it was my older brother Jason. I stepped outside.

Hey Jason, what’s up?

Uh–Dave–just…something to pray for…

His voice wavered and was slightly gravely. Something was wrong…something was very, very wrong. A horrid cold fear set in; my mind flew: what happened? The first thing I wondered was what could’ve happened to his girlfriend/fiance, Meggan. I knew they couldn’t have broken up. Fear set harder in my bones; maybe Meggan was injured or worse, dead. Jason spoke again after a brief silence, before I had time to think any more; his voice cracked badly as he spoke.

Joe White died in Afghanistan

There was a silence on both ends. We each knew there was nothing else to say;

OK–bye Jason.

Bye Dave.

I hung up. The horrid fear in my bones, realized, curdled to shock. I forgot to breathe for a bit, then took breaths, slow shallow breaths. I prayed, but I can’t remember what I prayed.

I stood outside the office. I don’t remember hearing any noises from the shop or the yard or the freeway. Nothing. Deathly still. I walked over to a rock wall, set down, and cried and cried and cried; I don’t know how long I cried for. I called a few friends to ask for prayers for Joe’s family, but realized I couldn’t make it through a call like that. I called a few other close friends, but sent text messages to the rest. I sat down again and cried more. All at the same time I could not get my mind around it and it hurt like hell and I was cold and numb. I prayed more as I cried; I don’t recall what I prayed then either.

My friend had died in war serving his country; he left behind his newlywed wife and brothers and sisters and mother and father and many dear friends. He left behind a church and youth group that loved him. He left a gaping hole in countless hearts and knit communities. He died a soldier at war for his country.

Joe, I hope you can see this; today so many of us down here remember you, love you, miss you, and weep for you; I hope you can hear it all, or even just a little bit of it; Joe, I don’t feel worthy to say it, but if you can read this, thank you.

U.S. Army Specialist Joseph V. White was born on July 24th 1988 and killed in action in Afghanistan on September 24th 2009; husband, brother, son, friend, good man, follower of God,  paintball and ultimate frisbee extraordinaire. He was Airborne certified and loved to jump out of planes.

Joseph and Jessica White
ideas, stories

Tuesday May 25 3:30am

Could God be real?

Could love, pain and beauty, true and deep and human, be real?

I sit outside on the last stair down from the back porch to the yard. A light breeze (the type that sets a sailboat to drifting almost-imperceptibly on a glassy-calm bay at night) rustles through the leaves of nearby Cottonwoods. Inhaling deeply I smell a mix of rain, dew, fragrant flowers, and fresh cut grass–it’s May. Looking to the East I can barely make out the faint orange glow of dawn coming, only an hour or so away. Grandma’s gone now, my buddy Joe has been gone for just over 8 months. My oldest brother is joyfully wedded to the love of his life, and my other brother is near there.

Is jesus christ real?

Are love, pain and beauty real?

Storm is wild enough for sailing
Bridge is weak enough to cross
This body frail enough for fighting
I’m home enough to know I’m lost

Land unfit enough for planting
Barren enough to conceive
Poor enough to gain the treasure
Enough a cynic to believe

ideas, stories

Sometimes, I wonder how those guys managed to put so much into this song; it just baffles my mind. That’s art, I guess.

Sometimes I cannot forgive
And these days, mercy cuts so deep
If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep
While I lay, I dream we’re better,
Scales were gone and faces light
When we wake, we hate our brother
We still move to hurt each other
Sometimes I can close my eyes,
And all the fear that keeps me silent falls below my heavy breathing,
What makes me so badly bent?
We all have a chance to murder
We all feel the need for wonder
We still want to be reminded that the pain is worth the thunder

Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven
All the times I thought to reach up
All the times I had to give
Babies underneath their beds
Hospitals that cannot treat all the wounds that money causes,
All the comforts of cathedrals
All the cries of thirsty children – this is our inheritance
All the rage of watching mothers – this is our greatest offense

Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God