Still crash the waves

at Tintagal

‘gainst cold black shine

that spills moonlight

‘cross the sea

craven foam strays high

lands corpse-like on sill

 

goes past

one hundred

one thousand

ten thousand

years

 

Tintagal dark stands sharp

no lighthouse to the ships

no warning nigh

but a shrill sentinel

watching deep and uncaring

 

whose bones are housed

in those bleak halls

whose breath still echoes

off stone-white walls

 

Tintagal’s sharp tooth

spears sky

no heart dare beat

in sight of cragged spire

nor foot ever fall

near obsidian gate

 

save one lone resident

cursed to roam

no Fate’s thread to bind

but quiet walks the harvester

to what but home

 

pass the teeth

shadowed rider

on pale horse

and the halls groan forth

with soul’s weight

and the world’s gone

save one shadow cast

by dreadful Tintagal

 

and the wind will

howl howl howl

ceaseless lifeless lullaby

singing homage

to dreadful Tintagal

Some of you know that I am a pathological researcher and I feel as though my next subject for a while will be trying to track these early Scottish and Irish settlers and figure out what happened to them – where they went etc.  I think I will bring the kids for an educational tour of the cemetary and try to visit some Mennonite cemetaries. There’s also an Icelandic cemetary not far from here as well.

So it’s been a wonderful and educational day.

 

i know there are

the crowded quiet times

and these

 

are few

 

and far between

 

mostly there are

the quiet crowded times

where friends become shadows

and shadows become gray shades

washing into the distance

 

i know

 

i have seen the many

become the few

become the one

 

who steals away

and leaves you

best friends with your self?

 

i know

 

there are alone times

’cause their sirens are drawing

dancing them away and away

 

i know

 

so spill into the lives

of the endless

of the other

draw near and become

the one who stays

to the ones who are left

there is joy in it

there is life together

 

i know

 

those quiet crowded times

like silence in a full elevator

 

un-natural

un-welcome

un-comfortable

 

drawn near

and

you will be drawn near

 

i know

 

 

I would wear these. Check out http://www.randomshirts.com/.

 

 

 

As I was walking home from work this afternoon I had one of those moments. You know, a moment where you are transported to a different time. A different place.

 

I was walking and I was praying. Just conversing with God about stuff that the days and weeks have brought. It was a casual conversation and God is patient ’cause I tend to do all the talking. The sun is a brilliant bright white-yellow and the wind is strong but not cold. The streets were dry and dusty and suddenly it was 1974 and I was walking home from school.

 

You know I walked home pretty much every day and it felt like a long walk but then maybe it was the rambling, half-searching kind of walking I would do that made it feel that way. Every so often I would stop along the way and dam up some run-off stream to see how big a lake I could make. Sometimes I would pause along the train tracks and tug at the odd spike to see if I could get lucky. The whole time I would be praying.

 

I didn’t know I was praying. No one ever spent a lot of time with me saying that you could pray to God. You should pray to God. He wants you to pray to Him. It was just something I did to pass the time.

 

We’d converse mostly about stuff going on around me. The weather was good and I’d thank Him for that. I’d pray for things that a six-year-old prays for telling Him it would be nice to find some detonating caps along the tracks I could blow up or maybe a new bike to make the trip go by faster between school and home. Some days it would just be a rambling kind of talk letting Him know how the day went and what I had been up to. As if He didn’t know.

 

There was never any question about whether He heard me or listened. I took it for granted that He did and that was good enough. Then – when I got home the praying stopped and I went inside. I didn’t pray much inside except at bed. Maybe it was easy to pray outside in the summer sun because the inside was dark and the walls were close and the ceiling seemed ominous in our small home. Like God needed me outside in "His" world to really hear me.

 

I don’t know. All I know is my conversation with God dried up as I got older the way a summer friendship dries up in the cold of autumn. Friends move on, they turn to memories and memories to myth and eventually there’s just a space and dust where the one you loved used to be.

 

So today I’m walking home in the sun and the wind and I’m six-years-old again and I’m talkin’ to God and I know He’s listening. My prayers have not changed much since then…I still ramble on and on, sometimes about nothing at all just wanting to keep the line open as long as I can like a love-struck kid who calls his long distance girlfriend at 1 am and lets her fall asleep on the phone because that’s ok – he knows they’re connected over the line and that’s all that matters. She’s still there breathing softly at the other end.

 

So there I am walking.

 

There I am talking.

 

And I still ask for stuff I shouldn’t and I still pray for people I’d rather not pray for but know He wants me to so I do (and I know He can hear the grudging tone in my voice like Jonah in the desert).

 

I’m just talking to God and walking along and asking for foolishness and wisdom and praying that He will separate the two and give me what’s good.

 

And there’s the sun shining and wind blowing and the streets are dusty in a good way and there’s nobody there but me and God and I wish it would never end.

 

I was just interviewed by CKMW about our experience with the 30-hour famine. If any of you hear it let me know what it was like. After you do something like an interview you immediately forget what you said and the stuff you do remember you wish you hadn’t said.

 

Overall I think it was a good interview.

 

Of course Rob Bell is another one of those rediculously talented individuals whose book is a great mesh of poetic prose that betrays the deep research that he has done. Here are a couple of quotes that have stuck out for me so far:

 

 

 

 

Can you believe it? 34 years after his death J.R.R. Tolkien has published another book. Actually his son Christopher has spent the last 30 years or so editing together the material his father had written. The story takes place 6,000 years before the tale of the Ring and is decidedly darker in tone and tenor.

 

According to the news reports aside from a small transitional phrase here and there the book is entirely the words of Tolkien. Early reports suggest it is very good.

 

For those of you who have read The Silmarillian (my favorite Tolkien book) you will recognize the title because a much shorter version of the tale is encapsulated within that work.

 

If you buy it let me know what you think.

 

 

I just finished Alistair McGrath’s book – Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith. It’s a very structured book which will make for a nice topical sermon outline I think. I would ideally divide it into three parts and build the sermon around them…each with it’s own foundational scripture to work from.

McGrath is an apologist and so his book reads much like one would expect from an apologist – the argument is presented in the form of a challenge or thesis and then systematically the challenge is broken down. McGrath adds a preacher’s sense of metaphor and personal story to the text for which I am thanlful. It is a quick read and not too difficult.

Books like this are often picked up by people looking for miracle cures to their own issues with doubt. Just like the Prayer of Jabez might often be read by someone looking for God as the lamp genie who, if rubbed the right way, will grant you whatever wish you desire. Such a read will be highly disappointed in this book because it essentially directs the reader to develop their spiritual disciplines as a way of succeeding in the battle against doubt.

All in all a very good book and I highly recommend it.

MOVIE – I saw the movie End of the Spear and all I can say is – go out and rent it! What a spectacular movie. Very powerful. I was surpised frankly but I will definitely watch it again.

I picked up Rob Bell’s latest book Sex God (no, it’s not a biography…). I have a rule that if I have two unconnected people recommend the same thing I will check it out. In this case it was originally recommended by another local pastor and so while I was in Chapters a couple of weeks ago I quickly browsed it. My initial feeling was that it fits that new mode of writing where it appears the author’s skull splits open and his whole thought on a particular theme spills out onto the paper in a fairly non-linear, mix of formed and half-formed ideas. Very stream of consciousness, very post-modern (whatever that is).

Really that is the English major in me who is used to a modernist, classical linear approach to my non-fiction where there is a nice easy to identify thesis followed by an intro, a body and a conclusion. There’s soooooooo much less interpretive work involved in reading that.

So all that to say I put it back on the shelf despite the catch brown, pink and blue pastel cover (I am a sucker for covers). Than last night L. was over hanging out and she recomended it. That old rule of mine kicked in and I picked it up at Chapters today. As a youth and young adult pastor I don’t think there’s a limit to how much you should read about sex anyhow so we’ll consider it professional development.

I’ll keep you, oh faithful reader, posted on the content.

NOTEWORTHY: I am pleased to note that the author of a book on my Amazon Wishlist (insert shameless plug for free books here) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road won the prize this year. I have not read it. I have not even bought it. So anybody out there who has read it – please pass on some comments here.

Ciao for now.

 

I don’t spend a great deal of time in consideration of the atheist religion for obvious reasons. It is easy to ignore the redicule of Richard Dawkins simply because he is as petty, childish and mean-spirited in his attacks as he claims Christians are.  But it seems that the atheists are on the march as popularity in their ideas is growing again in direct response to the increasing interest in spirituality of all forms. They are like some form of cultural counter-weight.

 

This week’s Maclean’s has a provocative cover titled "Is God Poison?" followed inside by a feature article looking at this new rise of old atheism. After briefly and dismissivly talking about Dawkins and his popularity the article focuses most of its energies on Christopher Hitchens and the ideas of his forthcoming book – God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I will not, at this time, go into pointing out that confusing religion with God has been one of the primary mistakes atheists have made since there were atheists. Suffice to say I will quote Tolstoy (as I have in the past) who once said "do not judge the path by how poorly I walk it…".

 

As atheism’s popularity rises no doubt apologetics will also rise to meet the challenge head-on. The old apologists are still out there like a vanguard ever watchful. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis continue to speak from the grave. Ravi Zacharias, Alistair McGrath and to a lesser extent Josh MacDowell continue to offer defense in the way seasoned veterans continue to take up arms in defense of their nation. Keep an eye on the next generation of apologists like Brit – Joe Boot, who heads Ravi Zacharias Ministries in Canada. Check his bio out at http://www.rzim.org/team/?personid=33 .

 

I’m convinced that mature Christians do not read enough books that attack the faith. I say this because it is difficult to defend against an attack if one has not bothered to study the tactics of the agressor. A thougtless response like "’cuz the Bible says so" simply has no effect on one who sees no difference between the Bible and the local McDonald’s menu. All this approach does is serve to fuel the impression that Christians are dumb, couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag and need faith as a crutch. Whether you care or not what other people think, the fostering of the idea that Christians are stupid does not serve the cause of Christ well – particularly in following the great commission.

 

Of course we are aware that Paul was quick to point out that his preaching was not with wise words but plain and simple – but this is not a euphemism for stupid…simply for an economy of thought. Afterall it was Christ who said that we should not "babble on" in our prayers but get to the point – so it must be with our apologetic.

 

Further to this the Bible clearly states that "the Gospel (good news of Jesus Christ) is foolishness to the Greeks (the non-believer). Paul himself valued an intelligent apologetic otherwise he would never have been invited to preach in Athens from Mars Hill – the place where the philosophers held court and presented their ideas to the Athenians.

 

Still, in the end we must recognize that, as Andy Stanley says, we (the faithful) are in the business of creating environments that are conducive to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people. We do not save people. We do not save ourselves. We do nothing. God saves, it is His work and His alone. Apologetics is a recognition that God for some unfathomable reason, has decided that we can take part in this work. That we can allow Him to use us as tools. An intelligent apologetic will never save, but it can create an environment conducive to the work of the Holy Spirit in the mind of the one who doubts.

 

In the end belief will come through the hearing of God’s Word but apologetics, like a hearing aid, can help to remove the spiritual deafness that increasingly pervades our world and allow the Word to penetrate.

 

All that to say I will likely read Hitchen’s book much the same way the Allies read intercepted messages from the Axis – I only hope my enigma machine is working well.