Bye, Bye Constantine

I just watched American Idol from tonight and my jaw literally dropped and hung open for a good 15 seconds. Although, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy Constantine is gone (I'm sorry ladies and girls and guys who thought he was cool but I couldn't stand the guy).

But the real question is this: why does America have such an obsession with a blonde guy from the Ukraine named Anthony who sings Celine Dion songs as-flat-as-can-be AND an ex-woman abuser named Scott who seems to sing even worse than the previous week, every time, every new week, guaranteed!??? Is it because, like my co-worker pointed out, we want the normal, average one to win out?

Wake up America! Let's stop voting for the ones that suck just to be funny. This is serious! This is a not a joke. This is not some insignificant childhood talent contest. This is American Idol!

Madeleine L'Engle has a new book!!!

I know I can't buy it right now because I'm trying to save some money, but you can bet your pretty socks and old school shirt I'll be buying "The Ordering of Love" by Madeleine L'Engle (published this past March) as soon as I can.

Maybe I'll have to wait 'till summer, but I'll get it.

The Warrior vs. The Gardener

The other day in class I heard a wonderful suggestion from one of my classmates (who was quoting some famous other I think): instead of Christians thinking of themselves as warriors, a better example would be to think of themselves as gardeners. Now, at first I thought "that probably isn't very attractive to too many people," but the young man went on.

Gardeners know when to be patient and went to prune. Gardeners know when you've had enough food and water, and know when you're all dried up and in need of some life. A good gardener removes the weeds that could potentially choke the plant. And most importantly, they don't treat a 10 year old plant the way they treat a 10 month old one.

I like thinking of Christians as being gardeners rather than warriors. Having worked at a greenhouse all throughout high school, it seems like it takes much more dedication to be a gardener Christian than it does being a warrior Christian. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not undermining the whole warrior mentality---I'm just trying to point out that perhaps being warrior-ready may not be the kind of person were supposed to be. After all, what happens when you've been a warrior-Christian your whole life, only to realize your biggest roadblock in living and sharing the gospel out was the way you were to others and the way you were to yourself? Each person, each Christian is different. And we'd be silly to think that one "method" or "approach" would work for everyone.

A Wrinkle in the Rye

Imagination is a pretty wonderful thing.

This afternoon, as I was enjoying a beautifully breezy walk down 18th street, I started thinking about some really good books and specifically, the really good characters from these really good books. Still, undoubtedly one of the greatest adolescent characters in all of literature is probably Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." But what about a female counterpart? Although my reading in literature is relatively narrow, I think Meg Murry from the "A Wrinkle In Time" book series is a lovely choice to counter Holden's cynical, sarcastic and dry-tempered dispositioin. So good in fact, I got to thinking how they might even get along (should they ever find their way out of their own pages and into the other person's world). Holden and Meg, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G...etc, etc. Holden would hate that I'm saying this about him and so would Meg for that matter. Which is why maybe, things would work out between the two of them. I imagine a first date at the most expensive hotel bar/restaurant in NYC, with Meg being their right on time and Holden coming 10-15 minutes, casually late. The conversation goes something like this.

HOLDEN: Sorry, I'm late. I like your glasses (he's lying of course).
MEG: That's OK. Thank you!
HOLDEN: You want something to drink? I'm having a Coke. With a little rum of course. What'll you have?
MEG: That sounds good. I've never tasted Rum before. Mrs. Whatsit likes it though.
HOLDEN: You like to dance (he pulls out a cigarette)?
MEG: Um, yeah. But I've only danced before with Charles Wallace.
HOLDEN: Who?
MEG: Charles Wallace. He's my younger brother.
HOLDEN: Well, will it kill you to dance with someone other than your brother?
MEG: Hey! Don't make fun of me!
HOLDEN: I wasn't.
MEG: Yes you were. You're just like the kids at school, aren't you? Just another one of THEM!
HOLDEN: You know something? You make a guy wanna be way the hell away from you.
MEG: You're pathetic. I thought you were one of the smarter boys at school.
HOLDEN: I'm way the hell smarter than you are.
MEG: I don't have time for this.
HOLDEN: No kidding. This kills me.
MEG: What does?
HOLDEN: Nothing.

Okay, so maybe things wouldn't work out after all. It sounded good at first.

Dogma Saved Dogville!

Essentially, these three movies on grace (and faith) came to mind yesterday, as I thought about the infamous 4/20, and the Columbine shootings from 1999. Also in 1999, "Dogma" came to us, with its Catholic Kevin Smith spinning the Buddy Jesus and a foul-mouthed cast onto the screen. Oh, and Alanis Morisette as God...yes, grace exists indeed. Then there's "Saved!", the 2004 faith-comedy that gets better and better on repeated viewings. However, there may be no need for a repeated viewing of "Dogville" necessary, seeing how it's three hours of how a woman named Grace is constantly abused, used, manipulated, and taken for granted throughout. All three of these movies are about grace, and much more; and like grace, it isn't always pleasant to see the way humans respond to this undeserved gift.

I know many people probably hated one or more of these movies, but I'm getting to the point where it's okay to recommend something if you feel something is worthy to be seen there, even if others don't necessarily agree.

Happy Thursday. Remember grace.

What Are You Looking For?

Okay, I've been compiling and mentally noting "great, stand-alone" chapters from books I've read over the past few years and one keeps coming up again and again. So, instead of waiting for me to publish my illegal book which would include all these random chapters, why don't you just go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com or go to someone who already has it, and read this chapter for yourself.

The book is called, "A Stone for a Pillow", by Madeleine L'Engle and it is the second book in her "Genesis Trilogy". The chapter I'm referring to is called "What Are You Looking For" I believe.

Here's ways to get the book: for Taylor folks, Nate Shorb has it; for Fuller folks, I have it; for Michigan folks and everyone else, well...you might just have to buy it.

L.A. Beauty on a Saturday Night

Most people see L.A. as some big, disturbed, and God-awful place. Some people see this also, but choose to see the diamonds in the rough amidst all the smog and 7th-grade-work ethics and the force that is the film industry. Last Saturday, I saw more of the first and tried my best to see the latter---but it wasn't easy.

The whole concept of bars and dance clubs and bars within dance clubs seems to mirror most of what's wrong with human existence. Occasionally, you'll go to a place like "A Clockwork Orange" on Hollywood Blvd., and believe there is still hope for the world of dance clubs after all. But most of the time, should you be such a person to visit these places even on occasion, you will see hundreds and hundreds of people trying their best to connect with someone. At the club I visited with some friends Saturday night, I had never seen such an overtly "I want you, do you want me?" atmosphere. It was in 99% of people's eyes and half the time I was freaked out by it, while the other half I couldn't help but giggle at the entire ridiculousness of it. But it should be noted that generally, Christians and the Church don't pay close enough attention to what's going on at these places and that, in some sense, is unfortunate. As I looked across the room last Saturday night, with nearly everyone holding at least one drink (some people had two--one in each hand) and with nearly everyone making wicked glances and lame passes throughout the crowd, I couldn't help but think of how relevant Jesus' whole emphasis on sharing wine and sharing bread in community really was. Here, we have a community of people made up of individual people trying to connect to other individual people for one night, and perhaps two at best. So, if and when they "hook up" with some perfect stranger, they experience a small taste of this promise of Christ; they experience how it feels to temporarily fill this human need that craves intimacy with others. For one night, they are no longer alone, no longer lost in the sea of L.A. faces. They believe they matter and believe they are now valued, and in some sense, they believe someone is loving and approving of the real them.

Now, I'm not trying to sound humble or anything, but at that moment on Saturday night---when all of this came flooding into my head---I actually felt grateful NOT to be one of the more attractve people in the room (possibly for the first time in my life). I actually was content with being OK looking physically because frankly, it seemed like all the really attractive people just had too many people wanting their attention and no one who really wanted them for anything more than how they looked under the dim, trancy lights. And I thought of how most of the time, we think the most beautiful people have the luckiest role in the world, and of how we all gawk over magazine covers and sexiest-person-of-the-year stories as if that's all that mattered. But really, I don't know if I'd want to be them---not even for a Saturday night. I have a hard enough time letting people love the whole me. I can't imagine what it must be like to have this distractingly beautiful physical self that would prevent people from ever wanting to even get to know the real me. This is why I think it must be hard to be so pretty.

So to all those people I saw on Saturday night---now safely at home in their own world of thoughts and inhibitions and fears and frustrations---I think maybe, it's not so bad just being me. I have enough problems to sort out in me without wishing I was somebody I'm not.

Over the Hill Hour

For those of you who read this blog in hopes of seeing how I'm really doing...I am sorry. As I look back over the last few weeks especially, I feel my blog is turning into sad happenings and depressing thoughts even though this doesn't really communicate how I am completely. Does that make sense? I guess I'm just picturing a friend's mother reading it and going, "oh dear! what's wrong with neville now?!?" I assure you that for the past few weeks life here has been fairly wonderful. Do you ever get into those moods where you know you're enjoying life and you know you're experiencing it and you know you're not in one of those funk moods of dismal depression? Well, that's how I feel right now and although I can empathize with those who don't feel like this right now, I'm rejoicing in the small fact that I am--genuinely and almost quite literally--happy.

Having said that, I pulled my first official all-nighter last night since I came to Fuller last Fall but let me tell you..it wasn't one of those happy college all-nighters where you pull an all-nighter by talking to friends about life, life, and life until the wee hours of the morning. No, this was me and a computer and Mr. John Wesley. I was trying to write out his doctrine of salvation and once 5:44 a.m. rolled around, I could quietly exhale and rest in the thought that I was done. The sun was just about to rise and I thought, "I can pretend I am just waking up! That's it!" So I did. And I brushed my teeth. And I took a shower. And I yawned and squinted into the bathroom mirror as if I wish I could go back to sleeping (even though I didn't even get to sleep) and for the first hour or so, I think I had more energy this morning than I have in the past 5 mornings combined.

And now, my 40th hour of being awake has just come as I feel like I've lived very very very much this past day and a half. I feel like I've done so much and yet, time is still inching along. Maybe that's why we need sleep. Because if we didn't have it, we'd all go crazy because none of us would ever say again, "time flies when you're having fun," because time, to us, would never be flying---it'd be dragging.

Bon soir mes aimees.

It's just a game.

I turned on the TV for 5 minutes today while I was grabbing a quick bite to eat in the middle of writing this very tiring paper on John Wesley's doctrine of salvation, and of course the headline news story at noon was very disturbing.

Apparently, a 13-year-old kid from Palmdale, California was killed last night by another 13-year-old because he was being teased about losing a baseball game. The angry boy couldn't take the post-game teasing anymore, and so, picked up a bat, swung it to the boys side, then to his neck and then to his head. One of the coaches saw and said, "When I heard and saw the blow to the head, I knew the boy was going to die."

And so, this shocking news brings me out of justification talk and sanctification talk and most other post-reformation theological terms that seem to be flooding around in the brain at the moment and I wonder how this boy's parents must feel today. Last night, there son was playing baseball. And yet, before he has time to walk out of the park, he is dead.

Is this what it looks like when we abuse the will and are blind to grace?

Picking up the Pieces

I go back and forth on my own free will. Some days I believe life is what I do with it; other days I believe life is what happens to me. But either way life seems to take me or I seem to take it, I try to remember we all are not yet whole; not quite fully human.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Arrange whatever pieces come your way." I wonder how many pieces come my way that I don't see. Or I wonder how many pieces come that I don't recognize as pieces, and how I see them only as obstacles that lie in my way. I know I'm the type of person to play it safe, and I know I tend to think of my movie friends and my real-life friends as sort of guideposts to better living (did I just say that?)...but really, as I listened in church today I was struck by the amazing amount of ways a person can screw up their life. I wonder if God really thought this through good and hard or if it was one of those spur of the moment decisions like going to Taco Bell to eat or running to Wal-Mart for deodorant. I know God is God and God is grace and love and so much more than I can even put into words, but you have to wonder.

I used to see God as angry judge, righteous fire-thrower, and eye-squinting-crazed dictator, but I don't think a God who gave us so many ways to screw up our lives could be THAT angry of a God. A God like that could not have the patience and mercy necessary for such repeated tolerance. Constantly hearing prayers of lament and sorrow and pleas for forgiveness and then, only to hear the very same thing again 2 hours later from the same people. Multiply that a couple billion times and there you have it: God everywhere, taking in every complaint and every step toward self-centeredness that we humans take and holding them all on the tip of his thumb, staring at them tiredly no doubt saying to himself, "yeah...I guess I can forgive them again--they're worth it in the long run."

And Love, yet again, keeps going.

Time

Time seems to be a theme popping up in so much of my life right now.

Finally, after years of putting it off, I'm reading Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," which is giving me even more reason to consider L'Engle my now official favorite author. Other dimensions such as space and time are dealt with in incredibly adventurous ways and remind me how time is so constraining and limiting for humans.

Last night, a group of Fuller students and I talked briefly about universal salvation and tossed around ideas of God bringing all creation back to himself eventually--in His time perhaps.

Today at work, a co-worker and I discussed the Catholic and Protestant traditions, and wondered together how much we owe to our faith tradition' ancestors, and how time--while people change through it--really seems to repeat the same thing and produce the same kind of problems again and again (which makes me think of Ecclesiastes, as I'm reminded there is a time for everything and that there is nothing new under the sun).

Tonight, my sister Blakeley called me to tell me she had talked to an old friend we grew up with back in South Carolina and then sent me some recent pictures of the guy...and I couldn't believe it. I've never experienced time really standing still, although I can imagine what it must feel like because after I saw that picture something clicked: it was the icing on the cake of coincidences, and I suddenly realized how fast time was moving and how all of us are affected by it.

The movie "Irreversible," which is arguably one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, begins with a quote from some famous philosopher that reads, "time destroys all things." When I first read that after seeing the movie with my friend Tara, we debated later if we agreed with the statement. Essentially, I had trouble with the quote while Tara (the older and wiser of the two of us) saw much truth in it. I didn't like how it seemed to give "time" such power but Tara rightfully recognized the quote for what it was really saying to us all: that even though we try as hard as we can to go against it, and to un-destroy the effects of time, all our efforst are really pure folly and useless and ridiculous.

One of the reasons I admire the writer Madeleine L'Engle so much is that she seems to have one of the best perspectives on time I've yet to come across. She doesn't try to fight time, she just accepts it and let's time do its work while she does her's. It seems so simple of a thing but yet, laying in my bed tonight, thinking of all the events of the past day or so, I couldn't help but realize how bad I am at accepting time's work in my life. How rigid and resisting I am toward time and how more incomplete this makes me at the end of the day. And so I lay there tonight, with my hands folded over my chest and my eyes staring up at the light and fan whooshing around the dust in my room, and I was still---very still---for what felt like eternity. I did nothing but it felt like something terrifying because I was constantly thinking of that friend from South Carolina. I hardly blinked and just kept lying there---in one of those moments where you're totally aware and honestly physically petrafied, and so, your body seems like it's almost afraid to movie. I kept thinking about aging old and being 80 someday and sitting in the same position with the same feelings. And I thought, "it's never going to slow down, is it?---it's only going to go by faster and faster." And this made me (for the first real time perhaps) really fear the thought of growing old.

Now I think I may know what so many other people in the world are always complaining about.

Ruth

I had a wonderful conversation thursday night after class with Ruth, a Hindu woman, who's in the class with me. The class is a study on Lesslie Newbigin and so, considering his widespread Christian influence in India, I was interested in hearing Ruth's comments. Throughout the whole lecture, Ruth kept on getting a troubled, confused and disappointed look on her face until finally, she spoke up.

She questionined the professor about Newbigin (the great Bishop evangelist, who died in 1998) and his personal faith, and explained how through most of her readings of him and in his autobiography, he doesn't talk much about his own personal faith. The professor responded (because he knew Newbigin personally) and defended him claiming, "He was so humble...I think he would've felt odd to share in public writings about his personal faith." This answer did not satisfy Ruth and so after the class, I approached her, introduced myself and began asking what it was she was really trying to get at. I told her how because of Newbigin's stearn British upbringing, it would've been highly unlikely for him to share about his struggles in his own faith and how this is probably moreso why he didn't, but that answer did not satisfy Ruth and so, she brought up a profound, rather disturbing point.

"Yes," she said, "but you don't understand. He has had huge influence on India and the Church there, and the biggest problem with my Hindu people since he came and spread the gospel is that they think doing what looks good and what looks right is what matters because that is all they saw in Newbigin! Social justice and helping the poor are all very good, but if that's all you know, as many of my people do, then how is God's grace truly affecting your life? Because Newbigin never shared his own struggles and was rarely ever vulnerable in public, most of the Hindu Christians in India today have adopted that same mentality and will never speak personally or vulnerably about their own relationship with Jesus."

I listened intently, and suddenly realized I had never thought of it in this light. Ruth was seeing Newbigin's influence as good but also very harmful because in her mind, he didn't present the whole gospel. Where as I was seeing Newbigin as this amazing cultural evangelist, fully-well knowing that even though he doesn't talk about his own personal faith much, I still admire him for what he did, who he stood up to, and all he accomplished in his life. It was a perfect example of how being from a culture and simply commenting on a culture's way of life, is the difference between night and day at times.

Near the end of our talk outside Fuller, with the night sky covering both our heads, I heard Ruth say something else that caused me to think even more: "I am not a Christian, but my Hindu people need to understand the importance of a relationships with Jesus and importance of being vulnerable to one another, to God, and to the Church at large." I had rarely, if ever, heard someone put it quite like that: "I am not a Christian" yet "A relationship with Jesus is what it's all about." I wonder if more believers of the Christian faith will begin dropping the identity title "Christian" and start thinking of themselves in other ways?

When I left Ruth for that evening, as her husband was coming to pick her up, I was encouraged to realize once again that the community of faith---the cloud of believers, followers and children---included Ruth and me, even though our pasts and cultures and ethnicities are so very different. Grace is given to us both and we have both gladly, through struggle and resistence at times, accepted it. And for some reason, the children's sunday school song "Jesus loves me this I know," came to mind just then. And then I realized just how important and essential the phrase "yes, Jesus loves me," is to all those who claim to believe. For we are weak, and He is strong.