Navigating with a Place-mat

” What came first, the music or the misery?” — High Fidelity

So many things have warning labels. Today it was clear that an album I listened too need a label, possibly several. Perhaps “Warning, album contains good songs” or “Listening may deepen sadness” or “Song writer has grown up and this album contains a few poignant songs”. I guess I will have to revise my previous low opinion of the musician.

And even now

When I’m alone 

I’ve always known 

With you 

I am home 

“Did you have fun with Mr. Andrew?”

(Immediately) “Yes!”  — Zach (His twin was busy eating bread so she didn’t comment on the question)

Having gotten results from google based on random bashing of the keyboard, I posted elsewhere, and will post here, the challenge of finding the shortest combination of letters (no numbers) that produce no results.  Nat came up with the first 8 then 7 letter results and I have found one 6 letter combination.  To preserved the integrity of the contest, I will validate entries before approving comments since this is clearly a self destroying challenge.  My entry was “zqazqv”.  Can you find a 5 or 4 letter string that produces no hits?

As appropriate for this blog, see this.

The excitement is tempered by the fact that it is already released in Germany.  (Granted I have several songs from it I recorded live to tide me over, but still…)

“You’re the only person I know who’s had an actual rock star do a private concert in his apartment.” — Branson
“Oh the stories your walls could tell the next occupants” — Branson

My apartment was mentioned briefly in Cristianity Today for the afore mentioned concert (Thanks to Kyle for sending the link, you have to search some for the reference).

From the concert:

Your body is a song
You sing it every day
Singing my whole life long
And here we walk a narrow way
between the sacred and profane
I am not ashamed
I am not ashamed
It’s not in the clean life
and I know it’s not in fear
you strung yourself up for love
and washed away the tears

Somewhere around me reality is rushing on.  I think.

Somewhere the days and nights wax and wane.  Or so I’m told.

Somewhere deadlines and timelines crest and ebb.  Crest and ebb.

With the rising tide of hope comes dangerous outflows of despair, deadly rip currents of melancholy and apathy.

At the mercy of this ocean I am.  Surviving somewhere below the surface, away from the violent surface.  A small piece of me protecting itself in a bubble as the depths press relentlessly.  My body and spirit slowly being crushed by the pressure of this refuge.  Here is quiet but here is disconnection.  Events, people, places, time, thoughts, pleasures, pains, all drift by, sometimes quickly sometimes not as the currents choose.  All is muted, it is a disconnected existence.

__________________________________________

oh my god
what have I done
chasing some mirage in my Mojave sun
don’t say every chance is lost
please don’t say anything at all

lead me now
I understand
faith is both the prison and the open hand
bells on low on high
will you ring for Augustine tonight

–”Augustine”, Vienna Teng (unpublished as of yet)

“The  power of an invitation is that it breaks down barriers.  It says, ‘you are welcome,’ to those who did not know they were welcome before.  It says, ‘there is hope,’ to the hopeless. … The authority of an invitation is the power to break down the barriers in life that close off and shut down life.”  -Tim Bossenbroek, sermon,  8/28/2008

(post title Vienna Teng, My Media, Warm Strangers)

To absent friends, in memory still bright.

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Last week I had an interesting conversation.

I was told that my current project was sufficient to graduate (once filled out far more than the current paper).

I was told my current paper will be really hard to write .

I was told it should be a really good paper.

I would need two projects like this if I wanted to go into acedemia.

And my favorite part, my hoped for graduation date was laughed at.

The question was:

What has allowed you to stand firm in your faith in Christ during your time in grad school, college, or both?

Why am I asking this question? Because so many people who enter higher education professing Christ are swept away from their beliefs. I want to know more about the flip side.

And this is my response. I post it here because some people wanted to reference it.

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I think there is a large factor of self determination that happens when people enter college. They must now choose to go to church, whereas before if they were coming from a Christian family they would have had to choose not to go to church. So in effect is part of the issue that they are freed from family and social pressures for the first time?Second, to what extent does the person’s upbringing and understanding of the relationship between God and nature affect the pulling away? Will a person when confronted with ideas, theories, and systems take a literalistic-infallible approach or realize that all truth comes from God. That is, in their studies, will they see God or see an absence of God? I fear than many of the people you are referring to come from backgrounds that will put them in opposition to observation and well founded theories. This leaves them three choices: reject one, reject the other, or form a more complex understanding of the world and God’s action in it than they were brought up with. I know people in gradIV that have each chosen differently from those options.

Speaking for myself, I can say that higher education has forced me to reconcile many things I’ve learned with the often naive or misinformed opinions I had. However, although I grew up in a PCA church (and PCA is know for being rather conservative), I had parents who were quite ecumenical. I think having been exposed to several flavors of Christianity (I was confirmed in a Lutheran church, I went to a Catholic high school, most major days in the church calendar we went to an Episcopal church (i.e. Easter Vigil, the Christ Mass, etc)) kept me flexible enough that I could approach learning from a stand point of recognizing and appreciating God’s work rather than a standpoint of trying to pit existing beliefs against what I was being exposed to and seeing which one came out ahead.

So I guess my summary of this would be that people are not being brought up to appreciate that all truth comes from God. They have instilled in them a rigid belief that either must stand or crumble completely. The very process of learning about human nature, history, societies, persons, nature, math, etc should be some thing that churchs should prepare young people for.

We should not be like Joshua who, when approached by an angel of the Lord, could only think of two options: “Are you for us or for our enemies?”. The angel’s response was “neither”, but he carried a message of truth for Joshua. Let us not approach things as pitting our faith against the other, but recognize truth and the pursuit of truth no matter the source and be in wonder of God’s creation or despair at the results of the fall. The commander of the army of God was not for or against God’s chosen people. Let us not be so conceited (as Joshua was) as to assume that we are waging the important battles for God. Let us prepare young people for the truths they will encounter and to love and be humble.

Maybe then, maybe if we don’t draw battle lines but love those who persecute us, maybe if we really seek truth and not just affirmation of what we believe, maybe if we learn humility, maybe if we learn to question ourselves and learn discernment (Jesus was constantly tweaking the beliefs of the Pharisees (who seem to have so much in common with certain approaches to Christianity)), we can grow in our faith and train and encourage those younger (no matter their stage of learning) to become mature and complete. And perhaps without forming a battle, their faith won’t be on the line when they hit college.