Month: December 2008

And Then There Were – Mice…

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Well – it’s official. We have mice. Fairly brave ones too. This morning as I sat down at the kitchen table to fire up the ol’ coal powered laptop one of the little dark gray beasties strolled along the cupboard at floor level right out in the open in broad daylight. Clearly that can’t be a good sign. We knew Matt had a mouse in his room and I have deployed casual efforts to catch the animal using a live trap. Matt would even stay up sometimes to watch it journey across his room in search of food, once even attempting to drag a sucker back into its intra-wall home.
 
I’m not sure how they got in or where they came from. I don’t recall any coming to the front door for any reason. The kids have a strict no entry rule for strangers and we are not close to any mice to my knowledge.
 
Obviously things have escalated and action must be taken. They are obviously organizing their forces for an assault. The Household Security level is now orange and only the strictest tactics will be used at this point. To paraphrase Churchill we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our home, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
 
Well at this point I think we are all very certain of what our next step has to be:
 
It is clear we must purchase an owl.
 
It’s not going to be pretty. The screeching and flapping will make it difficult to sleep at night but it seems the only thing to do. Not sure what kind to get. A good barn owl makes the most sense but a great horned owl or a snowy owl might go better with our color scheme. We’ll see. I will keep you up to date on the ongoing war…and yes…the post is an official declaration of war. As we send in our troops we pray for low casualties but we are realistic and recognize that in all wars there is a cost.
 
More dispatches from the front as we have time.

Christmas Musings on the end of Religion & Bonhoeffer

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It is Christmas again for the 2008th time (give or take a few years) and the 4th estate (the press) is happily informing us of how atheists and agnostics are antagonizing the world of faith. Signs are springing up next to nativity scenes saying "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds". Posters on buses read – "why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness sake". There is not enough room here to begin to explain the folly of such a sign and I’m not sure of the value in such an exercise anyhow. History has a cyclical nature to it, like an ever looping line moving into the future, so I am careful to avoid making broad sweeping statements like "the end of religion is here" etc. That being said there has been a pretty long standing trend away from religion in the west ever since the enlightenment. Enough of a trend to suspect that religion could very well be on the way out.
 
For those of us in the "business" of religion this can cause one of three reactions:
 
1. Cold sweats and fear that God is losing the battle (and we perhaps our jobs)
2. Joy that this thick and obscuring cloak is finally being removed from Christ
3. Indifference (the most common)
 
If I must land anywhere I would prefer the second option. In many ways Christ was cloaked with religion from the beginning – from prior to his birth with the Jewish messianic expectations that were wildly co-opted by personal desires to see a warrior-king in the fashion of David rather then what we got – which was Christ, the very image of God.
 
In one of his letters from prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on the future of religion and Christianity in a way that makes him increasingly the prophet he appears to have been. As Christmas approaches and religion is increasingly attacked I give to you the following words from Bonhoeffer to reflect upon – he writes on April 30th 1944 from Tegel Prison to his best friend Eberhard Bethge the following:
 
What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience – and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious’.

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the ‘religious a priori’ of mankind. ‘Christianity’ has always been a form – perhaps the true form – of ‘religion’. But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless – and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any ‘religious’ reaction?) – what does that mean for ‘Christianity’? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our ‘Christianity’, and that there remain only a few ‘last survivors of the age of chivalry’, or a few intellectually dishonest people, on whom we can descend as ‘religious’. Are they to be the chosen few? Is it on this dubious group of people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them our goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them?

If we don’t want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – and even this garment has looked very different at different times – then what is a religionless Christianity?

Music is!!!

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I love music.
 
I envy musicians and think that singer/songwriters can be the pinnacle of poets.
 
Music is amazing. When Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion (the background mythology to Middle Earth and my favorite of all his books) he chose to have Illuvator (the Creator) create Middle Earth through music. Music is definitely woven into the character of God and His people.
 
So in short – I like music. All kinds of music. I like rock, punk, rap, screamo, emo, ska, reggae, classical, blues, jazz, dance, pop, hip hop, folk, new wave, world beat, alternative, whatever…I like it all.
 
All that to say I found a couple of more musicians I have decided to like. The first is one I have promoted before but only for one song. The Ting Tings are a British group that have a pretty cool dance sound to them and some creative sounds. They are best known for their song Shut Up and Let Me which was made famous by Apple in an iPod commercial. Anyhow – I thought I would try to avoid the bandwagon by listening to some more of their music and came to realize they are pretty good…in fact I really like them So today’s recommendation is a cool little song by The Ting Tings called – That’s Not My Name. Check it out.
 
Also – in keeping with the British theme I’ve recently (like as of last night) started listening to another quirky Brit by the name of Laura Marling…a kind of folky, lyrically focused singer with an offbeat sound. Hard to really describe. You will have to listen to her. I recommend New Romantic or London Town.
 
As always, if you actually have heard of these or have since listened and formed an opinion (good or bad) let me know.
 
Ciao for now.