I just received in the mail today three of the most boring books I have ever owned in my life: Robert’s Rules of Order 10th Edition (guide to parliamentary procedure), Robert’s Rules of Order in Brief; and The Imperfect Board Member by Jim Brown.

 

Why, you ask, if they are soooooooo boring, did I order them in the first place. Well, frankly, in my role on a particular board, I really am required to have some basic understanding of this stuff. So – this is my effort to educate myself and do the due diligence as chairperson. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get through a single page without falling asleep but you never know…perhaps God will gift me with insomnia for a while.

 

So we were at Walmart today and as always I went to the electronics section to drool for a while. Just as we were getting ready to leave I noticed Rainbow Six Vegas (Xbox 360 game) for only $18. I thought this was a pretty good deal so I picked it up. Then – when I got to the counter there was an additional $10 discount so in the end it was a pretty sweeeet deal.

 

We also bought a Persian Lime tree for the sun room. We had one of these trees in our front yard in Florida and they are ever-bearing, meaning they bear fruit all year. It’ll be nice to have fresh limes again.

 

Little pink plush pig

perches lost upon my desk

an orphan of my darling daughter

staring expectantly

 

waiting

          waiting

                    waiting

 

for something

or someone

 

"I know"

 

             I say

 

"but sitting there won’t do you any good

you’ve gotta move

get up and make life your own

don’t wait for salvation to walk by

reach out and take it"

 

pig just stares

silent sentinal sitting

aptly

in a stack of ignored papers

while I go back to work

 

 

Today is a day of random thoughts.

 

Preaching: There are many fantastic, well thought observations on preaching. Let me add my own humble comment to the mix.

 

Preaching is the Spirit of God acting on the Word of God forming a message delivered through the filter of the Preacher who exists within the context of the community, that is, the body of Christ. The quality of the preaching is directly impacted by the balance of these four factors – Spirit, Word, Preacher, Community. The Spirit is the catalyst acting upon the two key components – community and the Word, synthesizing them into something new and the preacher is the delivery system for this new creation.

 

If you remove or diminish any of the four components you harm preaching. If you have the Word, the Spirit and the Community but lack the preacher, you lack an effective delivery system and risk haphazard distribution of truth out of context.

 

If you remove the Spirit you have dead words that might be relevant but will transform no one.

 

If you remove community (the body of Christ) you have an aescetic monk who grows alone and dries up.

 

If you remove the Word you have a charismatic preacher and congregation seeking greater and greater emotional peaks as substitute for the truth and risk catastrophic collapse and deadly disappointment.

 

A further note on the preacher who exists within the context of community. Such a preacher delivers the Spirit inspired Word of God shaped by the context of the community they exist within and serve. When the Word of God is delivered into the life of the community by one who is in passionate relationship with that community it is as if Christ Himself is speaking. The Word is fresh, relevant, contextual and spoken out of relationship.

 

This is why it can be difficult for the preacher to speak into a community they have no relationship with. The Words, although true, may not be relevant to the context of the community. It is as if Christ were to deliver the sermon on the mount when confronted with the disciples fear n the storm-tossed boat…His words are true…but they make no sense. These thoughts serve to remind me of how critical it is for the pastor to be connected in deep relationship with the community in which they serve. To be a pastor without a relationship to the congregation is to be like Christ in a crowd…powerful but irrelevant. Christ is never simply in a crowd, Christ is in love with the crowd, and this makes all the difference.

 

Some Quotes: Today in our worship preparation meeting pastor C. was asked to pray. This reminded her of a quote she had recently read from the life of Henri Nouwen when one of his spiritual mentors prayed for him –

The Nouwen quote reminded me of another quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together when he is speaking of the Christian attitude in community and prayer:

 

 

A travelling Bible salesman stopped by the other day (how often does that happen?) and I bought some stuff from him. One of the things I bought was a copy of WTL Publication’s The Bible which is distributed by the International Bible Society and Tyndale Publishing. I REALLY like this Bible. WTL and editor Kieth White have put a load of thought into its development. The translation used is New International (Reader’s) Version which flows very nicely. They put a lot of thought into the layout and illustrations as well. The narrative sections are laid out as you would find any modern novel – single column format. When you encounter non-narrative sections such as poetry, history, etc. the layout moves to a two-column format. This means that, should you want, you can read through the entire narrative portion of the Bible alone which is a great idea because it is always good to have a new and creative way to approach it.

 

I said I liked the illustrations – this is an understatement. I think the illustrations in this publication are really fantastic. They are simple but not simplistic. They leave room for imagination and interpretation. The best part is the publishers did not skimp on production and have reproduced the images in full colour. The artist who created the illustrations is a fellow by the name of Andy Bisgrove of Essex, England. The only other comprehensive set of Biblical illustrations I have appreciated as much are from the Good News Bible done primarily by Annie Vallotton and the much older 19th century Biblical illustrations/engravings done by Gustav Dore. This edition of The Bible would be significantly diminished without Bisgrove’s work.

 

Other features of note that make this an excellent edition to own include its nioce weight. It feels substantial but not too heavy. It’s printed on what appears to be a somewhat thicker onion skin type paper and has a nice binding that is between hard cover and soft cover…think of it as a flexible hard cover. The spine and three-quarters inch of the front and back cover are a deep sky blue separated from the tan of the rest of the cover by a thin brown line. The cover has an understated grey reproduction of one of Bisgrove’s works while the spine has the same work, smaller and in colour.

 

For me another important factor is price. I paid $13 for my copy but you can get it from IBS for $7 which includes taxes, shipping & handling. I highly recommend it. You can get more information about this edition and view examples of Bisgrove’s illustrations by visiting the WTL website at: http://www.wtlbiblepublications.com/the_illustrations.php

 

 

Well – I have found a new favorite website for the next little while – http://graphjam.com – please go and visit. The first website that’s made me laugh consistently for a while.

 

We stood in fear

while the golden sphere

                   dipped low below the horizon

 

and many a cry

rose to the sky

                   as blackness covered creation

 

but I alone

did not bemoan

                   the dying of the sun

 

for ‘neath the waves

the light that saves

                   can never be undone

 

when bottomless black

will not hold back

                   but threatens to overwhelm

 

the dying sun

a ressurection

                   reclaims the longing realm

 

new arms of life

reach out of strife

                   an adundance beyond scope

 

a reminder when

dark comes again

                   in light remains our hope

 

 

 

Tonight I am restless and thought I would write a bit on a theme. Tonight’s theme is marriage. I think it is important to note that marriage is not easy. This is an understatement – marriage is pretty darn hard at times. Some people are pretty good at hiding the hard things in their life. You know what I mean. We all hide things of one sort or another for one reason or another. We’ve all got secrets.

It’s usually pretty tough to spot the strong marriage from the struggling ones in a crowd because the folks who are struggling pretty much feel like they are the only ones in this situation and so they do their best to hide the pain in public.

Like I said before, marriage is hard. Marriage is an act of becoming. You are two becoming one. You are something old becoming something new. There is great pain in the process of two becoming one. Often there is also a great deal of doubt as well. Sometimes we even forget why we ever got married in the first place and that’s a dangerous place to be.

Jesus talks about marriage in the Bible but only as a result of being questioned about divorce. He was being tested by a teacher of the law. The basic question was “is divorce allowable?” Of course Jesus knew his scripture and told the teacher that divorce was allowable but it was not desirable. It was allowable only because people are stubborn and refuse to look at the alternative. It is not desirable because it is the painful rending of the one new creation that God  has been weaving together through marriage. It is the destruction of community.

There are times in a marriage when one might contemplate divorce. One should consider that the alternative might be worse than what one is in the midst of right now. Of course there are always times when divorce may be the only option – when one’s well-being is being threatened by the other, when a spouse has chosen to unite with another and disrupt/corrupt the sacred bond that already existed between them and their partner.

I know this is a bit of a ramble but there’s been a lot of broken marriages lately and I think I want to encourage people to hold on for dear life if they can. There are always going to be times when you want to throw in the towel. Times when you think the alternative might be better. The reality is that marriage asks us to discard our expectations and mutually sacrifice for the other. It is a very selfless act. More often than not the primary reason that a person has for separation is they have unmet expectations. I hate to say it but at the core what we’re talking about it selfishness.

Marriage requires the sacrifice of the individual’s dreams in exchange for something greater – the new dreams of a new creation. The dreams of the two who have become one. If any one person’s dreams begin to take precedence over the others than bitterness is not far behind. Bitterness can lead to hatred and as has been said before hatred always leads to death. Always. There’s just no avoiding it.

You know what the most ridiculous reason people often have for divorce is? A loss of love. People fall out of love. I say this is ridiculous because God calls us to love everyone…even our enemies. How in the world are we to love our enemies if we lose love for the one we have been most intimate with? Love is always possible. It can be rekindled. Rediscovered. It must be otherwise our Lord is a liar. The interesting thing about love is that it is often found when we serve, sacrifice and pray for the other. It is often lost when we become self-focused. This is why it is said that to love God is to die to oneself. To love we must put the other before ourselves. We must put their needs ahead of our own.

Now having said all that I don’t want you to get the impression that I live in the perfect relationship. None of us does. As long as we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world we will have imperfect relationships. Bear this in mind the next time you feel like it should end because it fails to meet a fairytale expectation.

That’s it for now. I am no expert. These are just some random thoughts written by a guy trying to avoid sleep.

 

I mentioned in my previous post that I liked the music in Origin. Well I found out that the singer of the two songs I liked is a Japanese pop (J-Pop) singer by the name of Kokia. I have hunted down some of her stuff and have decided I REALLY like it. Her vocal range is really incredible. Beautiful music. I have embedded a video of one of her songs on my blog. If you’re reading this in Facebook you won’t see the video – you have to visit my blog at: http://poet.spaces.live.com and look for the video on the upper left.

 

So tonight we had some folks over and watched a new anime movie we picked up about a month ago – Origin: Spirits of the Past. The movie is very good in several ways. The story itself is not especially original at its root. It centres on a world in which humanity becomes the architect of its own destruction via environmental suicide. In an attempt to develop forests that can survive under extremely inhospitable conditions through genetic engineering on the lunar surface something goes wrong and the moon is split when forest explodes from he labs and plummets to the earth raining destruction across the surface. Most of humanity is destroyed and the forest reigns supreme with a sort of intellect. The film is set 300 year later as part of humanity attempts to find a way to live in harmony with the forest while another part seek its destruction the military means (we never learn).

 

The animation is fantastic with some computer animation cell shaded to blend very well with the more traditionally animated majority. I think the music is particularly well done…especially the opening and closing themes although it tends toward the over-dramatic at times. English voice acting is good and offered in Dolby 5.1. The movie has a serious environmental moral along the sam lines of the Miyazaki classic Princess Mononoke and would be better received if Mononoke had never been done. All in all a very enjoyable film and definitely worth seeing.

 

The film was directed by Keniichi Sugiyama in 2006 and produced by Gonzo. I have never heard of Sugiyama before but if this film is any sign he’s got a bright future ahead of him.