Have yourself a real little Christmas!

 

We are approaching Christmas, perhaps the refrain of a familiar carol still echoes in your heart: “Comfort and Joy, Comfort and Joy,” yeah, perfect!  Or maybe not, words and ideas tend to change over time, or rather what a certain word or idea means in a certain cultural context.  God doesn’t change, neither does the meaning of His words, but sometimes our ambient culture makes it a little hard to understand for those of now ‘late in time who behold Him come’ (yes, another carol reference!).  That famous chorus from God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is a great example, even the title is odd to our modern ears, do these chronic party attenders need a nap?  Merry in this context means not only happy or delighted but also strong, great, mighty (like Robin Hood’s Merry Men), making the full title to mean something like ‘may God grant you rest, delight, and strength in Himself,’ which makes a bit more sense.

But what of comfort and joy?  Yeah, American comfort or rather comfortable: free of stress, trouble, annoyance, or discomfort is not the idea here.  Going back to the KJV and Handel’s Messiah, think Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people.  A lessening of sorrow, a hope in darkest night, an assurance that all is not eternally lost though mortal life is bitter and fleeting.  ‘They that sit in darkness have seen a great light!’  And Joy?  Not temporal, momentary, ephemeral, fleeting happiness as is the American ideal, but abiding, unabating Joy no matter our current circumstances.  Joy enough to willingly climb Golgotha’s Hill and bear the sins of all the world.

And that’s just one song, how about all of Scripture?  Here are a couple meme worthy verses I’m sure we all cling to or spout on occasion:

 

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11 Plans to be kidnapped by fleeing exiles and die a torturous death in a foreign land, plans to be reviled and ignored and threatened and imprisoned by those he was sent to help?  Not really the American ideal of that verse!

 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28. But further on Paul proclaims: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. 8:36”. But throughout he’s also talking about how NOTHING can separate us from God’s love and our future glory even though life throws some pretty nasty curve balls our way.  But we don’t like thinking (or reading) about that sort of thing, that’s not what God really means is it?  How can He expect modern Americans to trust Him if this is His idea of love, glory, comfort, hope and joy?  Darkness, death, disease, sin, sorrow, misery, hardship, poverty, struggle, trial, malice, slander…ugh!  Comfort and Joy!  Let’s have another chorus, anybody?

 

Many people hate Christmas, or at least the saccharine, Hallmark movie extravaganza our culture makes of it.  Because nobody has that sort of life, except superficially, but we all think we want it so drive ourselves nuts trying to attain it or give up in despair that we are undeserving of it.  Modern Christmas music about santa and snow and stars and glitter and peace and sweaters and hippopotami clashes as badly with reality as anything worn to an ugly sweater party and that’s why we hate it.  We know it isn’t real, it isn’t deep, but we all don our fake smiles and grin at one another while stewing alone in our private sorrows and fears telling everyone, even ourselves, we are fine, when we most certainly aren’t.

But real Christmas music, real Christmas, isn’t that way at all.  All the old hymns are written in a sad, mysterious minor key while all the modern drivel is in a bold, happy major, there’s room in those old hymns for all the woes and fears of real life with joy and hope besides, but there isn’t any room in a ‘merry little christmas’ for anything but false ideals.  If we delve into those archaic words we find spears and sorrow and nails and sin and gloom and death, the very stuff we are dealing with daily, the very stuff Christ came to overthrow after wading through it Himself, the very reason He came at all.  We don’t like it, we don’t like to acknowledge it, we want to be happy now, we want to be comfortable Now, can’t He just make it all go away?  Can’t we live the Hallmark movie instead of this epic drama He’s trying to make of our life story?  We want a comfy, cozy hometown little flick and He’s sending us off to Rivendell with little hope of a ‘there and back again,’ a hundred mile journey on foot with no paved roads or state patrol or McDonalds or Holiday Inn while you’re eight months pregnant.

 

But that is how we know Scripture is true and God is real, when we instinctively know all the sugar coated garbage we culturally associate with Christmas only causes indigestion and cavities but imbibe it still yet shrink from the depth and scope and wonder of the Truth.  How about all those ‘heroes’ of the faith recorded in Hebrews or whom we celebrate in Sunday School?  Real, fallible, unwilling, foot dragging people with foibles galore but God still used them to accomplish His will and He can and will still use each of us, for His glory and our good, but we need to listen and obey, not run off to Tarshish when God sends us to Ninevah, like silly Jonah who thought he was smarter than God.  He delights in taking the foolish things of the world and using them to overthrow the wise, popular, respected, cool, and strong things of this benighted world.  A shepherd overthrows a giant and becomes King, a penniless child will overthrow sin and death forever, what can’t He do?

 

But we’ve got to let Him.  God pointed at Moses and Moses says send Aaron.  Gideon keeps making excuses and testing God.  Jonah thinks he can outrun God in a boat.  The demons believe and shudder but don’t change their ways.  Sarah and Zechariah both laugh at the thought of the elderly becoming biological parents.  What impossibilities have we laughed at, run from, shrugged off, ignored or reinterpreted?  It is the original lie, straight from the serpent, “did God really say?”  Yes, yes He did!  We don’t have to like it, or agree with it, but if God said it, He means it, and it doesn’t change or fade with time or culture or distance or popularity for God Himself is unchanging.

 

We must accept it as Truth, for that is what it is, despite our personal feelings or failings on the matter, or reject it, we can’t alter it, distort it, ignore it, reword it, reinterpret it to comply with our opinions and preferences or those of our culture.  Well we can, people have been doing that for as long as there have been tongues to lie or words to twist, but we can’t do that and truly call ourselves Christians.  For what is a Christian: a true follower of Christ.  Not a fan, not an expert, but a follower, one who gets off their butt and follows, an active pursuit of Jesus, not just a comfy seat and mental acknowledgement, we’ve already admitted the demons do the same and they certainly aren’t His!  

 

And what does Jesus say is required to follow Him: They will know we are Christians by our Love.  Love God, Love Neighbor, even love your enemies!  If you love Me you will keep my commandments.  Love is probably the most abused word in the English language.  I’ve heard it said the Inuit have 200 words for snow, true or not, we only have one word to describe everything from our feelings for food, sports teams, activities, our romantic interest, good friends, pets, kids, distant relations, books whatever, certainly pizza and grandma are not on the same footing in your mind, or so I can only hope, but such is our limited vocabulary.

When God says Love, He means doing the best for the beloved, no matter the cost or convenience to the lover and no matter what the beloved thinks about it, it may be downright unpleasant to both but love is costly, sacrificial, if it doesn’t cost you anything it ain’t real love.  We as a culture are very fond of niceness, but true, heartfelt, charitable kindness is rare.  Nice is just fake love, sort of like a Hallmark movie being thought an epic on the scale of Lord of the Rings.  It makes us feel good about ourselves and that’s what matters, we really don’t care about that other person at all, just how they make us feel about ourselves.  Real Love asks how can I benefit that person even though it will cost me something and probably be of no material benefit to myself.

Yeah, it is hard, but it is also real!  You want real peace, real joy, real comfort, you need to get off the couch and follow, not just like it on Facebook or say all the right things to all the right people.  We need to lose this cultural mentality of ‘have it your way.’  If your idea of god complies with all your wishes and whims, it doesn’t require anything of you but to be content and happy, it’s an idol and if you look closely you might even discover that it is actually you you are worshipping, and you’ve reinvented Jesus to justify your own preferences and opinions. Whereas the real God made you, not you Him, He has revealed Himself to us in a certain way and anything that contradicts that is wrong, false, and heretical.  We are made in the image of God, not He in our image, though we’ve been trying to reimagine Him since Eden.

But He came into this broken story and lived a man Himself, He not only made us and everything else, but He has personally redeemed all creation, including you!  You don’t have to like what He says or agree with it, but if you truly want to follow Him, you have to do it.  His ways are not our ways, and happily so, else we’d be living a shallow hallmark movie rather than a grand epic.  That’s why we hate Christmas, and good gospel preaching, it reminds us of the things that truly matter, the things we don’t want to embrace or even think about, like taking up our own cross, daily!, and following Him, but we know in the end it is the best way, the right way, the only way that is worth walking, no matter how painful or scary or tedious it might turn out to be.

But we’d rather dither and drag our feet and admit Jesus is a nice guy and we like and admire him and maybe we’ll follow someday, like we’ll eventually go to the gym or call that old friend, someday.  But Today is the day of salvation and no other!  Are you in or out?  If you are going to follow, then get going, and if not, then at least be honest with yourself and God and say it isn’t for me and get out of the way that others may pass and you not cause a traffic jam.  In the end it is His will that will triumph and in submitting our own to His, so too shall we, but we will never win in pitting our wills against His, the question is will we make that decision, one way or the other, or just float along through life, vexed and uneasy but never finding resolution or knowing quite why.  The Christian life isn’t easy or comfortable, but in the end it is the life truly worth living, all else is mere existence.

 

The long awaited review of The Boy Who Lived

 I tried to jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon back in college, half a lifetime ago, I got halfway through book 6 and gave up, not because it was a difficult read or I wasn’t used to reading long books (hello Wheel of Time, gave up that one too after about 9 books!), but rather I found it depressing and not all that interesting.  Lately I was staying with friends and had nothing to read, she had the series so I gave it another go.  The first three books are okay, but obviously the first work of a young writer, Rowling hits her stride in book 4 and never looks back.  She has great characters in almost everybody but the title character!  After all that time traipsing around in Harry’s head I don’t know much more about him than that he’s a generic angsty teenager, which I already have plenty of experience with in my own kids except they have a personality too, it is a sad day when Neville is more personable than Harry! The plot sort of meanders hither and yon, while there are some unique plot points, many feel trite or completely random, and ironically the characters themselves admit that most of it is luck.  The world building is intriguing but shallow, sort of like the scenery for a play, cool at a distance but no actual depth.  And the whole series the mood is very depressing and angsty, moody and uncertain, it is always November and never May!  Can’t we see Harry have even a happy couple of months, maybe one uneventful game of quidditch?  But my biggest issue with the series is its indifferent metaphysics, what the heck drives the characters, powers the world, does anything mean anything?  Star Wars has the force, Lord of the Rings and Narnia are Christian spinoffs, Wheel of Time has a complex dualistic Ferris wheel, Spider-Man has pseudoscience, but what drives Harry Potter, teenage angst?, dumb luck?, the modern bureaucracy? 

It is one thing to write a silly little story with no depth or deeper meaning and leave the philosophy, religion, and metaphysics well out of it, but it is quite another to delve into life and death, morality and ethics, the soul, the supernatural, etc with no thought or direction at all given to the underlying worldview.  But it is secular post modernism you proclaim, no it is not, we have right and wrong, good and evil, where does that come from?  Professor Umbridge and the Dursleys are secular post modernists, they define their own reality, but outside the bureaucracy everybody else seems to have set ideas about an external right and wrong.  While we have a few mentions of churches, a couple bits of scripture, and celebrate Christmas and Easter, this is not a Christian book, the only mention of any sort of deity is surprised ejaculations referencing the first person of the Trinity without any sort of belief or reverence.  You can’t be a secularist and admit you have a soul (major theme in the last book).  But you can’t be a deist and have no idea who or what your god is.  If you are going to deal with serious topics, you should do it in a serious way, but there is no depth, no meaning, no purpose, no reason to keep going, which is why I gave it up in the first place.  The mood is so bleak because we are depending on luck to get us through, there is no hope, no purpose, no reason we should expect things to get better, no point in living even if they do.  No, I was not happy with this series, it is trying to be Lord of the Rings, but instead of echoing the gospel and the Hope therein, rather we have something based upon the gospel according to modern, post Christian man, a superficially happy mishmash of cultural relativism but with no meat and no depth and no meaning.  While many are ravenous for real depth, they rave about these books thinking they are the real thing, little knowing it is diet soda masquerading as the real thing.  But so shallow is our cultural understanding of anything, few are those who realize splashing in the shallows doesn’t mean you understand the ocean’s depths; their feet are wet so they must be expert seamen.

The Modern Vision of Music

 It has often baffled me how Taylor Swift can be the voice of our culture and multiple generations, but then I went to a junior high choir concert the other day, the band played a song apparently written by someone with mental health issues and meant to inspire people against suicide, which was sadly appropriate as after the song selections for the choir I was feeling rather depressed and nihilistic.  I remember singing one or two such songs back in my own early choir years of similar persuasion but this time it was every...single...song!  We at least had a few Disney or show tune pieces in there, my elementary aged daughter has an upcoming concert with several painful (but chipper) childish ditties, but why was the junior high selection so extremely awful?!  The better question is what does one sing about when the whole point of our existence is pointless?  We are a culture and society happily building legos on the deck of the capsizing Titanic!

Music throughout time and history, culture and place has been a language, an art, an expression of feelings, sentiments, events, myth, legend, history, story, notions, and the essence of being far beyond what simple words can say.  But like real art, Modern Music has replaced music as it should be.  Now it is a discipline without rules, without borders, without meaning, a banana duck taped to the wall of life!  The hum of my fan has more meaning than any random song of modern selection.  I can understand why the kids weren't enthused to be singing (not that they are enthused about anything not of their own choosing!) about looking into their own souls for meaning (if they have one), finding all their future in dreams and hopes centered on a chaotic, meaningless universe, and finding all their purpose inside themselves and in their own visions.  Ye can be gods!  Yes, and what petty, miserable gods we be!  No wonder a vocal artist with mediocre talents who mostly whines/sings about her pointless life and relationships is the epitome of our culture.

Some guy calling himself 'The Preacher' wrote about this a couple thousand years ago, and his book is still a best seller, so it isn't just a modern phenomenon, but something that wrings the heart of every mortal under heaven.  John Lennon's 'Imagine' is the grand hymn to this worldview, and just as despair inducing as any of the lesser songs presented by our local student vocalists.  We don't need to imagine, we live, as functional materialists, in a world where we assume 'there is no Heaven and no Hell,' but the problem is, nothing means anything in such a world!  Our whole existence is based on the random fluctuations of subatomic particles set off at the explosion that began Stuff, (did you know hard core secularists are Calvinists!?) and nothing means anything because there is no meaning, point, or purpose, yet some deep part of ourselves demands there must be.  So either the secular realists are wrong or some deep part of our being is.  Back before the heady days of advanced scientific discovery, The Preacher remarked, 'God has set eternity in the hearts of mankind,' now obviously he didn't understand astrophysics or subatomic particles so what can he know?

But then what do all these all knowing scientific philosophers know?  How is it Order arose from Chaos, or Something from Nothing, why isn't Chaos increasing to the point of Vacuum instead of being held in check that Order and Life can exist?  Why does my deepest yearning turn towards Something, Meaning, Purpose like a compass needle to the North Pole?  Why am I discontent in the 'Son of Man' revealed in Phil Collins' "Tarzan" soundtrack (catchy music, but if you actually dissect the lyrics there's nothing there!) but find boundless hope, desire, and interest in an itinerant Jewish carpenter of the same title who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey some two millennia ago?  The crowds that hailed Him as King wanted the same things we brilliant moderns demand: I want it my way.  They killed Him a week later because He  said that wasn't the point of life at all, ironically fulfilling the entire point of this reality!

But our songs are still about nothing, as are our sad little lives, but they don't have to be.  I am in no way saying that music is in any way artistically good or bad based on the meaning or contents, but rather that it can be intrinsically pathetic, even with the most catchy beat in the known universe, if it doesn't mean anything.  I will be the first to tell you that there are some (lots actually) of really horrible Christian attempts at music out there, but I'd rather sing a 45 minute chorus of the worst Christian song I can think of than listen to 2 minutes of the inane drivel that passes for modern music (okay, maybe a little longer if it is Bon Jovi but only if you are working out to it and not really contemplating the lyrics), just like I don't own any modern art pieces, unless you count where the kids have left marks on the wall.  But I'll leave you to choose the soundtrack to your own life, be it 'Amazing Grace,' or 'Imagine,' and your workout will proceed accordingly!

Two Visions of Womanhood: Louisa May Alcott and Taylor Swift

 I'm not sure who, in all the grand expanse of time and space, will have the greater influence upon the hearts and minds of ensuing generations of blossoming young ladies.  Alcott wrote 'Little Women' back in the aftermath of the civil war and it has endured as a classic novel and in a variety of modern movie/TV adaptations to the present day.  Swift is everywhere, physically and audibly and electronically, you literally can't get away from her (love it or hate it) unless you go Amish.  The pair doesn't have much in common, save as a potential voice and guide to present and future generations of girls deciding who and what they want to be when they grow up.  And most modern gals are more than a little bold in proclaiming their favor, perhaps worship, of one far more than the other!  The vision of what each poet, even be they prosy, casts upon the waters is a stark contrast of what it is to be a woman, in any age of the world.

I will be honest and upfront, I know little of either's history, character, or life and have certainly never met either!  I have never liked Taylor Swift, even back in her country days when she was crying on her guitar, I dubbed her 'whiny teenager girl' and that opinion has not changed in two decades.  All I know about her is her lyrics, the same for Alcott, I've read Little Women a few times and really tried to read Little Men but got bored and gave it up, and that's the extent of my expertise in either genre!  What is it to be a woman (and no, we are not going to get into the gender debate here, though Jo in the book is mad she isn't a boy, so there you go!), now or ever?  I don't believe Swift presents a reasonable version of womanhood, but rather basic, base humanity (sex or gender doesn't matter): what it is to be a basic, human individual in a self-obsessed culture.  This is why she resonates with so many in this modern age: she speaks their language, she's preaching to the choir.  The only difference is she's a mega-star, a modern god, and they aren't, but they could be, right?  She gives them a perceived voice and a hope that they can be like her, a sort of modern Jesus.

Alcott presents a stark difference.  Her novel is also very basically human, and she too focuses on the self, but in a starkly different way.  While Swift elevates selfishness, personal feelings and opinions, and individual desires to the level of holy writ, Alcott presents us with a vision of those same traits controlled, conquered, subjected to the individual's will for the good of self and others.  There is suffering and darkness in both visions, Swift vociferously fights against everything that says she can't be who and what she wants to be, Alcott gently teaches self-control, patience, discipline, forgiveness, mercy, grace, perseverance, and kindness.  Swift is angry and bold, Alcott sad and gentle, but both are passionate in their view of womanhood and what they see as the true meaning and purpose of life and what, in the end, truly makes us happy.

In one of her songs, Swift scorns the 'Sarahs' and 'Elizabeths' of her day, who she claims sit in the pews judging her.  This is just bad storytelling!  Sarah, the wife of the Biblical Abraham, was pretty patient with her lot through many tragic and strange tales, and was barren for 90 years to boot.  Elizabeth certainly deserves no such scorn, the mother of John the Baptist, she too childless most of her life and scorned by her neighbors because of it, but she likewise showed patience and endurance with her grievous lot.  Swift utterly misses the simple fact that a true Sarah or Elizabeth would never scorn her as they themselves have been scorned, they might be grieved by her choices and apparent unhappiness with her life, but these gentle, patient, caring women would never judge her for it (this is not to say that there are not some who do and would, but that is not the nature of the women she chooses to mock).  Rather, it is more likely Swift's own conscience or some deep inner voice that is uneasy with her choices and this uneasiness makes her want to mock that which is good, right, or traditional because it makes her unhappy to have such a standard.  But should we throw out traditions and standards just because they make us unhappy or should we ask why we are unhappy and why the standard or tradition is there in the first place?

This is what Alcott does, she presents a family of four teenage daughters and their mother struggling with war, poverty, an absent father, personal suffering and tragedy, and their own personal hopes, wishes, and desires.  Each daughter is an individual who grows, fails, struggles, and progresses through life, her choices impacting the lives of all those around her as well as her own self.  This is also what Swift misses, in her world, she alone matters, but in reality and in Alcott's book, our personal actions and ideas impact others and the world we call home.  It isn't just about my happiness, but rather for the good of others, and therein, at least so Alcott deeply implies, lies my own happiness as well.

In the book, the daughter Amy is rather selfish and vain, thinking only of her own wants and desires, completely blind to the sacrifice and suffering of others.  As the book progresses, she learns some of these virtues, never perfectly but she is a happier and better creature because of it.  Swift is much like poor Amy at the beginning of the book, but unlike the character, she has yet to progress beyond that meager starting point.  Alcott's vision of true womanhood isn't about being happy or rich or popular or having a boyfriend but rather of truly loving those in your life, growing as an individual, working and sacrificing for the good of others as well as yourself, putting your own opinions, wants, and desires on the back burner to the needs and good of others and submitting humbly to reality and truth, persevering patiently when things don't go your way rather than berating the system.  And these poor, overlooked, overworked little women discover true happiness.  There is even a rich neighbor and a rich aunt, who look into this happy little nest and wonder at their own unhappiness when they have so much more stuff but so little real love.

Swift wants sacrificial love from others but doesn't understand that it is impossible to receive if one is not willing also to give it, for love can only be given away, it can never be demanded or forced, and the more you give, the more you have!  She has all the influence of Jesus, but none of His love or teachings, but then He wasn't very popular with the Swifties of His own time either and their gospel hasn't changed, neither has His!

Tales from the perilous realm: An overlooked bit of Tolkien

 While many LOTR fans are silently dying inside thanks to such catastrophes as Rings of Power and The Hobbit, they have always had the classic books to fall back upon.  I've finally decided to read the Silmarillion (on the library wait list!) but whilst searching for that book, I ran across a collection of short stories and poems by the infamous author.  While I didn't make it through Roverandom, some of the other bits of story and nonsense are pretty good, though I almost felt I was reading George MacDonald at times. I haven't finished yet, but certainly an interesting bit of side salad for Tolkien fans discouraged by modern interpretations.  It also gives a primordial writerling hope, that if one considered a master of the craft can publish such stuff, perhaps there is hope for the least of us as well.  But what is even more interesting is the subject of all these little stories: mere mortal glimpses of Faerie, something hardly noticed in the epic seriousness of the great tomes, but with all the flitting and impish mischief of fairy children playing hide and seek amid the garden flowers but all the mystery and splendor of the mountain heights wrapped in shadow and snow and mist in the dawning.  And it is the same glimpse one finds in MacDonald, Lewis, Chesterton, and L.M. Montgomery: humor and mystery and sorrow and awe and wonder and joy.  The very heart of a Child of the Kingdom.

It is the something missing in this age of mere information, much of it wrong.  We only want to know the what of the moment, having no time for the why or the how thereof.  Information scans through our brains like data through google and we skim what we like, discarding it almost as soon as we notice it, never finding 'the answer' but merely fretting ourselves sick with what we might not know or in knowing it a moment too late.  We don't know how 'to be still and know.'  We gorge like pigs at a trough, uncaring of what we swill down, only that we must get our share.  But these pretty little books are a journey, a slow unveiling, a call away from the hustle and bustle and nonstop busyness and 'in the know' of our daily grind.  A call from the Shepherd to go out into the hills and be.  To watch the sun set and hear the birds sing, to contemplate the ocean's breadth and wonder what might dwell in its hidden depths.  To ask what lurks on the far side of the moon and what it would be like to dance among the stars.

We want to be our own gods, the source of all things, to define reality as we would have it, but we are fooling ourselves and making our lives miserable for no gain: mice running on a wheel, no better off for running harder, longer, or faster, for you always end where you begin.  But Faerie is calling, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, to step off the highway of modern life into the forgotten, misty lanes that run 'East of the Moon, West of the Sun.'  For 'not all who wander are lost,' for they are on a Journey indeed.  Forget everything modern and shiny and new, seek out the twilight, the shadows, the wooded edge of the meadow, the misty fields and silent stars, fireflies and mountains and Saturn and the dappled green of a spring morning under shining leaves.  Be still and know, Know as ye have ever been Known.  When the Deep cries out to your Deep, will you hear its resounding cry?  For to such belong the Kingdom!

Another not so joyous ride through the apocalypse

 I just finished reading 'Vivian Applie and the End of the World,' and the one thing I will say for it is that I actually stuck around til the end.  I've really tried to read modern books the last few years but most just sputter out in the first quarter or so.  There are a few exceptions, this one I kept waiting for something to happen, mostly they just drive around and mope, and then the book ends without really getting anywhere.  It is doing an excellent job for the genre though, Left Behind did a great job of making an entire book about nothing so you'd have to read three or four to actually have some semblance of a bad plot.  The premise was an interesting one: some mega-cult that seems like a cross between the Mormons and the worst of the prosperity gospel televangelists with a hearty dose of patriotic deism has pretty much taken over American culture promising an imminent rapture while weird climactic shifts are playing havoc with the weather setting the stage for a seemingly pointless road trip across post-rapture America.  This was written a long time pre-covid and was first published in the UK.  Having survived that minor apocalypse, I had a hard time believing the US economy could function as it does in this frivolous tale, how does a burger chain stay supplied or gas stations stay open?  How do you reliably get gas or cash to pay for it?  How do you still have cell service?  Why does a US teenager sound like a Brit?  Have you really driven across South Dakota in May?  Where is the rest of the world in the middle of this global but local crisis?  What is the point of this book?

I don't like most of the characters, the ones with promise have far too short a role or are left in a drug induced coma for the majority of the book.  There is plenty of death and danger and emotional angst but it's as easy to forget as driving over the next hill.  Nobody has a heart or feelings or any attachment to anybody or anything.  While we are shown the dangers of fundamentalist belief, secular nihilism isn't shown to be any more useful or comforting, nothing means anything so why should we care about any of it?  There is only a small dusting of plot near the end and then it just ends, there is a sequel but I don't really care at this point.  I kept reading hoping there would be a point, unless the point is to show me there is no point?  There's a little humor but way too much circling the drain and pointless drama.  The author makes a point of not stereotyping people but most of the characters are sadly stereotypes with no depth or interest or complexity, maybe it is a silent commentary on the plight of the modern soul, but this book is certainly lacking one.

Is it trying to be the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, That Hideous Strength, the anti-Left Behind, a secular dystopian Jane Austen, or what?  It does a great job of showing the futility of extreme cult groups, hippie communes, and secular nihilism but it gives you nothing to cling to, no hope in a maelstrom of meaninglessness.  If it is a social commentary it is lacking in comment or clarity or I'm not bright enough to discern it.  If it is humor, it is of a morbid and vapid sort.  If it is high adventure or youthful frivolity it is certainly frivolous but rather drab in quest and scope.  If it is about character and personal growth, sadly the main character's suicide or tragic death might have been preferred.  If it is to show the insipidity and heartless individualism of modern Americans, then the climate change tsunami cannot wash away our sins too soon, for we are all of us deplorable beyond reach of redemption or forgiveness.  If it is to warn about the dangers of fanaticism for any cause, it was a clarion call that went unheeded, for the pandemic was a far better teacher.  

I did appreciate the book's minor attempts to respect religious belief in non-fanatical cult situations, but it was sort of a ho-hum half hearted attempt, as was everything in this tale.  I really was left wondering what the point of any of it was, maybe the point is there is no point?  The point was to point out the futility of everything in modern life?  If this is modern life without a firm belief in anything, then I could not write a better argument for true and abiding faith.  There are little hints and tidbits that the main character longs for just that, but her own cynicism blinds her to anything and everything, even her own deepest feelings and longings.  This book does a great job pointing out the futility of everything but it leaves you with nothing to fill that gaping hole in your heart, which a far wiser writer once said is eternity placed within the hearts of men, a thing we cannot fill with temporal and transient what-nots, a thing that can only be filled with something bigger still, or rather Someone.  

That's what this book is looking for, it is a search for belonging, for True Love, for real redemption and purpose and meaning, a yearning for Home and Peace and real Joy.  But every discovery, every relationship, every new mile only yields disappointment and discouragement, for we're looking for love in all the wrong places, nay we have mis-defined love.  Love is doing what is best for the beloved, no matter the cost to oneself whether the beloved likes it or not.  Perhaps that is the point of this book: that longing, that search, the futility of it all in chasing after the wind.  It is a modern Ecclesiastes perhaps?  I'd stick with the original, at least that will point you towards the Answer rather than just heaping up the questions.

A Tale of Two Novels and the cure for both: The Worm Ouroboros and The Once and Future King

 I just finished the Worm Ouroboros and as it is a big, epic book, it put me in the mood for more tales of yore, namely rereading The Once and Future King (and if you've seen Camelot or Disney's The Sword in the Stone, you have actually sampled a section of this curious work!).  I called the Worm Ouroboros a christianized myth as it were, not Christian in the sense that it is anything like Narnia or Tolkien's epic, but rather that it is the result of an education founded in the christianized classical thought that resulted when Rome fell and the myths spouted by a collection of Galilean fishermen took hold of popular thought and culture.  Perhaps it is more a medieval epic than it is an odyssey, but what struck me as just plain wrong was the end.  Throughout the book is an epic struggle of mythic proportions against the powers of darkness, the cost to the seeming demigod heroes is immense but even more is the utter wickedness borne by those of common birth, who die in their thousands unnamed and unmourned, with only a little side note on their utter misery at the hands of the villains.  When finally the good has conquered, rather than rejoice that peace has been won, and little thinking that another great evil will no doubt arise from some corner unlooked for, our heroes mope about that their playmates have been overthrown and thus has all glory ended, and when given the chance, they happily renew their age old pledge of violence against their now eternal foes, never blinking an eye to ask what the common farmer, whose sons will die nameless on sea or land, while his daughters and wife are ravished, his holdings burned, and he himself brutally murdered, will think upon the matter, as long as these great ones can have their eternal glory.

Enter the modern Arthurian saga that dares to rethink the ancient tale, exploring in full the idea that Might does not make Right, that glory for its own sake is wrong.  That Men are the only species that routinely goes to war against itself for no better reason than that they don't agree over some silly matter none can remember once the blood starts flying.  Neither of these books are written from an orthodox Christian perspective, indeed, Once and Future makes plenty of sly jabs at religion and God while still stealing from its ideals to make its point.  Worm glories in Man's quest for personal glory whereas Once and Future bemoans his fallen and selfish nature somehow hoping some earthly king, himself a fallen man, can overcome it.  The cure to both is a good dose of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton who all wrote and lived during the same era, namely during and after the two world wars.

Worm envisions a bloody and dark future wherein death and destruction and evil is borne by all men for the glory of a few.  Once and Future ponders over what life might be like could man but overcome his inherently selfish nature, finding no satisfactory answer but 'maybe tomorrow!'  Both inevitably sad pictures of humanity serving or saving itself.  Both an endless and meaningless cycle of personal ambition and trying to overcome it, only to fail and raise up a new sort of tyrant instead, the futile fulfillment of the hopeless worm eating his own tail.

The myths of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton are the cure for this dismal miasma, this stark gray utopia that is neither morning nor evening but always a bitter November day.  We need not a circle but a cross!  The dragon is not content to eat his own tail but rather wishes to consume the whole world and all reality besides.  There is an everlasting glory but it is not found in our personally vanquishing the worm but rather in following the only King Who can, and we die not nameless minions, unmourned, uncounted, rather has He our names graven upon His very heart, his very hand, and it is He that died in our stead, not a glorious Captain in war but rather an innocent criminal in shame.  And when He brings His promised peace, it will not be boring or pointless, but will grow from glory to glory, forever, for His glory is to be our own!  We can neither save ourselves or win eternal glory to ourselves that last more than a sunrise, nor match even the glory of a simple flower that fades within a day.  But He who wrought both Day and Night, lilies and Men, has glory to spare, for He is the true master of the Serpent that has for a while proclaimed himself King, and of the mean little potentates of all the ages that likewise think they rule the world, but are merely gnats in all the long ages to come.

Both books are interesting and intriguing and thought provoking, but neither gets it right when it comes to true glory and the source thereof.  Tolkien's great epic pushes back the darkness at great cost and most certainly never wishes for its return, though he has characters enough that wish for glory for its own sake, rather it is his noble vision of a lasting glory from beyond the world's shores that makes this epic so beloved and remembered when the other books are becoming almost obscure, though no less epic in scale or excellent in execution, it just happens that Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton's tales happen to be true, and in our heart of hearts, this is indeed what we desire, no matter what our lesser thoughts tell us at any given moment.  Forego despair and never ending darkness, embrace the True Light of the World and never again fall into abject and utter night, or worse, an unending gloom with never a star to light again the way!

Sitting here eating licorice

Dear Internet,

Yes, the title of this piece isn't all that snazzy or exciting, unless you know the context.  But who needs context when there's the next video, the next meme, the next whatever, just a constant scroll of information and you might be missing out.  Well you are, not because you aren't scrolling fast enough or long enough but because you aren't sitting there pondering the depth and breadth of whatever it is that has caught your eye in that particular nanosecond.  This is why your life and personality and happiness are about as deep as the average Facebook post and perhaps why civilization itself is about to collapse.  All the ancients looked to the aged for wisdom while in western society all the elders are mimicking the antics of those whose biggest life struggles are acne and being ghosted by that cute guy in third hour chemistry, which is why 'whiny teenager girl' is our national spokes-person (that was my name for this mediocre musician twenty years ago, but sadly she hasn't changed much and the appellation still applies).

Still here?  Wow, see, miracles do happen!  And that is why, lame title not withstanding, I am even writing this today.  If you have any familiarity with my life and habits you may be aware that I can't eat wheat or ten thousand other things.  Licorice happens to contain wheat.  And despite my valiant efforts and fruitless internet searches, you can't make decent gluten free licorice at home, it is just taffy with the wrong name, corn starch will never replace wheat in a decent piece of real licorice, sadly one of my favorite candies and one I haven't eaten in years.  But it isn't just that, it isn't celiac where I can skip the gluten and live my life happily ever after.  It is a symptom of an invidious, insidious, and pervasive condition without name or treatment or cure.  I have no energy.  I eat the wrong thing I'm in gastronomical agony and everything hurts for three days.  I can't eat in restaurants or at people's homes.  I have to make all my own food from scratch and have about 5 things I can eat (gets very boring).  I can manage it but I'm still sick, and then there is the emotional and social burden you carry.

People think you are lazy or selfish or uncaring.  You can't hold down a job or play with your kids.  The flowerbed is a mess because it hasn't been weeded in three years.  You feel guilty, ashamed, terrified all the time.  People with cancer and heart disease can be publicly acknowledged and allowed to be ill, but you don't even have a name for it, you bear it alone along with society's scorn.  This has been going on for 15 years, a third of my life, over half my adult life.  I hide it as best I can so many people don't even know I'm sick, just can't eat a pizza or something.

And then that something is gone.  I'm a medical professional and I have no explanation that any of you practical atheists will believe.  Many will scoff and say I was never that sick to begin with.  Others will say it was the body healing naturally after years of careful living.  Others will ask what supplement finally did the trick, which essential oil redeemed my life?  All I can say is that it was a miracle.  Now we'll have the spiritual healing whackos coming out of the weeds and asking what was said or done or what prayer lifted the curse or how did my faith become strong enough or what powerful shaman did the trick or how many days of fasting and prayer or which crystal or amulet worked the charm or who straightened my chakra or how did I become virtuous enough to be healed?  And it was none of those things.  It was a simple, biblical service with a little bit of scripture on the real biblical truth about divine healing. No intensifying music, no amens and hallelujahs, no outstanding faith or virtue, no big name healing diva, just a simple acknowledgement about what God says about healing.

Signs and wonders should accompany the preaching of the gospel, which is a really freaky thought to this modern western church that likes the idea of Jesus but is a little leery about encountering the supernatural. We want to make it about us, a big show, and if it doesn't work, well Joe didn't have enough faith.  But really, God says He may or may not heal you, it has nothing to do with you, the healer, anyone's faith or virtue, and isn't available upon request.  He can and will say no or wait.  He told Paul 'My grace is sufficient.'  And that was that.  It is for His glory alone, and all the awesome music and chanting amens in the world won't change that, in fact I doubt He would deign to heal many in such an atmosphere since it is for someone else's glory.

And this service was just that.  We had a brief teaching session then broke into small groups of 3-5 and prayed for one another.  There was no lighting or fireworks, the blind man did not suddenly see.  I felt encouraged and like I had just drunk some Mountain Dew and had a really weird craving for stuffed crust pizza (a big no no!) and that was it.  Two days later we picked up a pizza on the way home and I had a slice.  The next day I ate other stuff on my don't eat ever list and so forth for almost a week now.  I also feel like I haven't felt in 15 years, I'm better at forty something than I was at thirty, energy wise.  A miracle, pure and simple!

And no, it wasn't a gradual healing.  I ate some cheese (like a bite) a few weeks ago, just wondering if my severe sensitivity had lessened after 5 years of no dairy, and I definitely felt that one in the morning.  A few crumbs of wheat bread in my jelly left by an unwitting guest was enough to make me ill.  I've tried various supplements and dietary changes and doctors and tests and nothing works.  I can manage but that's about it, I'm not living just surviving.  Until now.  God flipped the switch and shut it down, that is all there is to it.  And no, He didn't heal everything, just my gut/inflammatory issues, my joints are still shot, I have a cold, etc.

He's real, He's in control, He wants to help you, but He isn't a nicey-nice grandpa who just wants the kids to be happy and thinks they should be nice to each other.  He has rules, expectations, and we need to come to Him His way.  We can't just reimagine Him into our own image and think things will somehow work out, they won't.  That lie is as old as Eden: 'Did God really say?' 'Be your own god!' 'What is he hiding, trying to keep you from having fun?'  'A loving god wouldn't do that!'

He's been patient, ever so patient, letting us live as we please, destroying one another and His world to boot.  But He's still there, very much alive and real, and He's moving and active, even in this material age. He has opened the door, will you walk through or keep trying to cut a window through a stone wall with a toothpick?

Soli Deo Gloria!

Of all men, most to be pitied

 I was just reading about 'of all men, most to be pitied,' this morning, it was Paul talking about the sad plight of true Christians if there was no resurrection from the dead, but in our enlightened modern age, I think this applies most to the complacent, comfortable, country club church wherein Nice Jesus sits idly by and smiles benignly at all and sundry, sort of like those creepy Ronald McDonald statues that used to sit in a booth at the iconic restaurant.  But then again, Nice Jesus didn't rise from the dead, he came preaching love and tolerance and niceness, acceptance of everything and everyone, that everybody should be happy and always get along, or at least pretend to.  He wears sandals and maybe sunglasses, has a perfect smile and long hair, maybe even a tie-dye shirt and he is most definitely an upper middle class white guy, probably a younger, hipper version of Santa Claus.

There is no grunge, no offense, no blood, no righteous judgement, no hatred of sin, no poverty or hunger or exhaustion, no suffering or grief, nothing real or gritty or relatable except to the socially comfortable with their own inane grins and social media perfect lives, as vapid as their facial expressions.  If Nice Jesus was a true friend of sinners, but he's only a Facebook friend, he'd want to help them out of the quagmire of their sin, but he's more of a drug dealer or a shallow acquaintance who doesn't want to be bothered by someone else's problems: he'd rather pretend everything is okay and enable you in your wretchedness.  We'll just change our perception of the reality, though nothing actually changes, we just all think the Emperor has some nifty clothes.

But the culture is dumping Jesus altogether, be he Nice or Real.  You can't be a comfortable Christian any longer, individuals and whole churches need to decide who they are going to follow, what they are going to believe.  Nice Jesus isn't culturally acceptable anymore, Real Jesus has never been.  So if you are going to suffer for the Name, it had better be for the Real thing, otherwise you most certainly deserve pity because Nice Jesus isn't going to save anybody, but the Real Jesus came precisely for that.  He came into our mess, our disaster, our sin and death, grief and sorrow, and He embraced it fully, God became Man, became Flesh, for us!  He doesn't want to smile benignly while we destroy ourselves and His creation with our rampant sin and selfishness, rather He invites us to embrace His cross, our own destruction, that we ourselves and the world might be saved through Him, rather than smiling benignly as we rush joyously into eternal destruction.  Nice Jesus will sit there smiling benignly as you burn, whereas Real Jesus stands in the fire with those that are truly His.  The cultural fire is heating up, who are you going to choose?

The Requisite Christmas Song Post (with another pirate guest blogger)!

 So someone else beat me to the punch this year, but happily he didn't write about the musicality of the season.  Check out his article on the storied ghosts of Christmas here, much recommended!  I know Charlie Brown really tried to get the true meaning of Christmas, but it's depressing.  I know the Grinch hinted at it, but the roast beast just doesn't cut it.  Even my local Christian radio station seems to be missing the boat, literally playing things like "Let it snow' and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" endlessly but ignoring the many great sacred classics save an occasional instrumental nod from the Trans-Siberian Light Orchestra, at least there's no Santa Baby, that's a plus, right?  It sounds more like a seasonal mall sound track than anything else, especially a Christian station at Christmas!  While I don't mind that stuff, sadly, like Charlie Brown, I am more than a little frustrated with our whole culture focusing on the tinsel and the glitz and ignoring the glaring ache that this season entails for many.  It seems we can either be insipidly happy or alone in our grief which often manifests as anger towards the season in its entirety.

But if you hate Christmas because you hurt, you aren't alone!  It is a problem native to all humanity, not just the modern post-christian west, our problem is the same as the ancient pre-christian east or even the insipidly pseudo-christian America of our nostalgic recollection.  While Charlie Brown thinks he hankers after that nostalgic, idyllic ghost of Christmases past, there is no such history, no such reality, because that has never been what Christmas has been about nor is it the ache that haunts his heart like Marley in Ebenezor's bed chamber.

Many of the secular Christmas haters are happy to proclaim that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th and that we're simply recycling an old pagan holiday, and I'm most happy to agree with them, and their point is?  Men have always been religious, keenly interested and much afeared of the supernatural, at least until our materialistic modern age with its electric lights to forever drive off the dark of superstition and the utter night of ignorance, thinking we are quite something, as if we invented the physics behind the phenomenon, content in our assumption that it 'just happened,' and never questioning the Light behind our light and little realizing that by blinding their own eyes thereby, they are now the ignorant!  That is why we demand a Light in the darkness, and celebrate its coming at the darkest time of the year, not because we know Jesus was born on that particular day but rather that His coming at the appointed time relieved the spiritual darkness in which the whole world languished and we celebrate the fact as his first coming at the darkest time of the year.

But our problem is we forget why we celebrate His coming, yay a baby, a light of the world, but why is that significant?  His birth, while miraculous and marvelous and bright, is nothing, does nothing, rather it is His sinless life, His atoning death, and His conquering of death and darkness and sin forever by rising again to new life that we can sing and rejoice and make merry this time of year and all the year long!  But we'd rather sit with our glitz and jingle, aching inside, making merry without, and wondering why we can't be happy when everybody else seems to be as well.

This is where the great sacred Christmas hymns come in, look past the first well known verse or chorus or the haunting instrumental and delve into the depth, the mystery, the sorrow, the joy, the meaning of this babe's incarnation, the very word made flesh.  Only therein can we find meaning and true joy in this paradoxical season of utmost joy and aching loneliness and unrelenting sorrow, only in Him can all find their true 'comfort and joy.'  Santa and Grinches are fine and fun, but let us not forget the true meaning behind it all!

I didn't write this, but should have! Pirate guest blogger returns!

 Just go read it!

A modern classic?

 I have a very hard time finding new books, especially by modern authors.  Usually the stories are utterly predictable, the characters forgettable, the dialogue unremarkable, the humor vapid, the writing wan, and the moral of the tale nonexistent.  Or worse, it's a literary depiction of things best left behind closed doors solely betwixt those involved, who knew Jane Austen's heirs would stray so far from the fold, ugh!  But as I was browsing through the never ending Pinterest feed, I came across a '15 hilarious books for your book club' post, not being a huge fan of book sites, for some reason I gave it a chance.  I looked each one up in our virtual library app to see what they had.  I had already seen the movie for the first book, and it wasn't bad.  Bridget Jones made the list and I detest the movie, so I was starting to get antsy but I persisted and found a couple likely and available prospects.  I checked out 'Eleanor Oliphant is Fine' and began to read.  It is more than a little eerie when you are reading about a fictional person's life and all you can think is that it's your own!

That's one reason I really like the Blue Castle by LM. Montgomery, as I readily identify with its stifled little mouse of a heroine.  Now there's Eleanor with her Tolkien-esque last name and the socially prescribed adjective.  I like a book that can handle delicate and terrible social issues with both charity, patience, understanding, and humor without wallowing in either despair or the grotesque while still taking a swing at various overlooked social and cultural ills/trends that we either take for granted or ignore entirely.  This book is heart wrenching but also gut-wrenchingly funny, with a very arch Austen sort of wit, not much really 'happens' but you can't put it down because it unfurls little by little, as a good book aught, until you are left hopeful and smiling with a tear in your eye.  The characters aren't really much to look at or read about, they aren't beautiful or handsome or rich or witty, they are just everyday people with everyday tragedies struggling through an indifferent and hostile world, save the golden threads of kindness found unexpectedly in the strangest souls and oddest places.  A glowing reminder that humanity has not completely lost its heart even if society has lost its head and in that we can still find hope.  But we need real human interaction and relationship to do it.

As a survivor of a twisted and cruel mother who portrays the perfect parent to the world, I can say the character of Eleanor was written so well that I wonder how the author came to know so much about so forbidden a topic in a world and culture that is quick to blame the child in such an instance.  My situation was hardly as horrific as Eleanor's but sadly it might be even more tragic, because no one knows what is going on, even the afflicted, few are those that escape from this dreadful sort of 'normal.'  We are fine, we are fed and clothed, and we are fine, but we aren't.  The despair, the self-hatred, the utter loneliness, the wish to both punish yourself for simply existing and the wish for the suffering to end makes self-harm and suicide very real dangers.  The author tackled these issues with a dexterous and master hand.  The overriding commentary about widespread loneliness in society and that there is something we can do about it is also a welcome voice in the wilderness.  Overall a well written and well handled modern novel, well worthy of the classic writers the author obviously enjoys.  Finally a modern book about what it means, at least in part, to be human!

A tale worth the telling, unwitting guest blogger episode 437

 Ever feel like you're living in a satire movie, a spoof of your own life?  Check out this enlightening little article!

Good enough for her!

 I just realized I have a problem.  I needed some decent muffin pans, but that was only a symptom.  Just for the heck of it I checked out nordic ware, I have a bundt and specialty bread pan (both acquired second hand for mere dollars) that I absolutely love and wondered if they had anything affordable.  It appears they are having a clearance sale on their Treat line of baking accessories and all their pans are a very decent price and you get free shipping if you spend $50.  Instead of a single muffin pan, I ended up with two (12 muffins each too!) plus a cookie sheet, a loaf pan, and two 9" cake pans for $50!  I actually bought some high quality bakeware and am really excited about it.  What's the problem?  I guess I'd call it 'good enough for her' syndrome.

I have been married 17 years, I am an avid baker, I am on a special diet that requires I bake all my own bread and everything else and since it is gluten free, it can be fussy and unappetizing, good quality pans make all the difference for certain recipes and I have literally been using bakeware like my great grandmother's cookie sheets, a couple cheap aluminum cake pans from the thrift store, a couple pyrex glass loaf pans that were a wedding gift, and a set of silicone muffin cups for years.  It worked, why spend extra money we don't have on something I don't absolutely need?  When for $50 I can basically outfit my entire kitchen!  Yes, buying a $59 bundt pan with little hearts all over it would be ridiculous but a $10 heavy duty cookie sheet I'll use twice a week for three decades?

I had the same problem when I was first diagnosed with severe food sensitivities.  I spent a year paralyzed with fear and despair, eating I'm not sure what and still feeling sick.  I never even thought to try gluten free baking or anything else, thinking it wasn't worth it, that I wasn't worth it, or maybe that I didn't deserve it.  It wasn't until my son came down with a wheat intolerance that I started playing with it for his sake and discovered just how much I missed baking and that it was most definitely worth my while to learn to take care of myself.  But even after that lesson, I still struggled on with a chronic though usually subclinical case of 'good enough for her.'

I caught it from my family of origin, where I was more an intruder or a burden than a child.  I had my corner to sleep in (literally a single bed lower bunk in a room with my sister though neither of us was allowed any personal space beyond our bed, the rest of the room was Hers (my mother)), I had food to eat and clothes to wear and that was all I needed so I should just shut up, be quiet, and don't get in the way or embarrass people by existing, and if I even thought about complaining about anything, she'd happily threaten to make me live in the street, which did wonders for my sense of security in the family!  Every Christmas and Birthday were the same, everyone bought me collectible dolls that she enjoyed and immediately took possession of, and if I questioned it, I was called selfish and ungrateful.  Why couldn't I just sit on the couch and shut up while my cousins and brother played with their toys and ate their candy; what was wrong with me?  I quickly learned to stay out of sight, to cope with my own problems, to live without any sort of resources or support, to think my own needs selfish, and to highly undervalue my own accomplishments.

My mother should have sold questionable used cars or timeshares or something, she really could spin to the world that she's a great mother and if anything is lacking in the children, well it is their fault and they undoubtedly deserve it.  My sister-in-law is still convinced it wasn't abuse because I was fed regularly, knowing her background, I understand her perspective, but she's fully imbibed my mother's spiked kool-aid and she thinks I'm awful because I don't appreciate my childhood.  Probably the best example of my mother's cunning is the curious case of the precious pans fiasco.  When I went to grad school and finally got my own ghetto apartment, she gave me all the odds and ends and junk cookware that can usually be scrounged from various female relations, including my recently deceased great grandmother, whose cookie sheets I am still using!  And while I appreciate her outfitting my barebones kitchen, she didn't spend a penny on anything new or used for me or part with anything she even remotely liked, but it was a great excuse to update her own cookware, and I was perfectly okay with that.

I could use those old beat up pans just fine on my old beat up stove to make macaroni and cheese or to boil eggs.  She got them as a wedding gift, so they were 20+ years old, stuff tended to burn to the bottom no matter how much you stirred or used oil or extra liquid, the handles were falling off, some lids were missing, the bottoms weren't flat, and they were a bear to clean, but it worked for a broke college student who wasn't a culinary genius.  Then came Christmas and both my uncle and my brother congratulated me most heartily on the wonderful gift bequeathed me by my mother.  I was speechless for a good five minutes wondering what they were smoking or if I was dreaming, because I really couldn't place what they were talking about.  Those pans, those fabulous pans!  I must look like an ungrateful wretch to them because when I finally figured out they were exuberant over my mom's old junk pans she was eager to update, I really couldn't say they were all that great but they were better than nothing.  What a silver tongue that woman must have!  Those pans, those fabulous pans are certainly 'good enough for her' and she made moral bank even in getting rid of something she knew to be junk.

This is the woman who owns three expensive quilting machines and has never made a quilt.  She's the chick who owns an expensive car she never drives.  To her it is all about perception, most especially controlling other people's reality.  Including telling her own daughter she is worthless, horrible, ungrateful, stupid, an embarrassment, selfish, and uncouth.  And bless my childish little heart, part of me still believes her!  Our whole culture preaches nothing but 'buy X because you are worth it' or 'buy Y and you will be amazing' but I knew innately that nothing would ever make me worthwhile, deserving of anything but the dregs of life and I hated myself for it.  But it was all a lie, just like the persistent advertising.

Then I met this crazy person that said I was not only an intrinsically valuable person simply for being a human being, but that I was also a princess, an heiress to galaxies, a veritable child of God.  When my own earthly family treated me like an intruder, an outcast, a stranger, here was the most important Being ever that's like, 'don't mess with my kid!'  And having gone through the adoption process, I appreciate how painful, tedious, and messy it can be, and here was God, telling me He wanted to adopt me, me!  I still struggle with 'good enough for her' syndrome, as it has been hammered into my soul from the earliest age, but I'm learning what a true, good Father is like, what it is to be a valued member of a family, to be safe and accepted and loved for who I am not despised for what I'm not.  So bring on the pans, or whatever else I need but am ignorant of, a true blessing from my beloved Father to His very astonished little girl!

Rise of the Lukewarm Materialists

 While the world seems to trumpet the decline of Christianity in the modern west, I'd argue it is merely the decline of 'christianity' or as C.S. Lewis would put it, the decline of 'christianity and...' or perhaps the endangerment and extinction of the lukewarm lutheran.  I don't think America was ever truly a Christian nation, was it founded on Christian thought, morals, and philosophy, certainly, but I don't know if it has ever been a 'christian nation' and it really doesn't matter, because the Kingdom of Heaven has never been and will never be of this world, it wasn't when old Rome was at its height nor America in its decline or even Israel at any time in history.  The idea that any temporal nation can equate with or compete with the eternal and incorruptible Kingdom of God is ridiculous.  Should christians work to make their communities and countries a better, more 'christian' environment and culture, certainly, but to mourn the death of something that never existed is ridiculous or to despair because we now live in a more culturally secular age is preposterous, such has been the state of the earthly church since its inception: we are outcasts, pariahs, laughingstocks, those who believe in things unseen and rejoice in the foolish things of the world, lunatics, strangers, aliens, and foreigners to the world and culture of our birth.  The first disciples were accused of turning the world upside down, but rather they were setting it right side up.  The church will always be upside down and backwards to the prevailing earthly culture, no matter where or when, that is its very nature.  Christ would not have come from outside our reality to save us if salvation could be contrived from within by human efforts, ergo His kingdom will also be something outside our current understanding of what a country is.

Until the end of the 1990s or perhaps the early 2000s it was still culturally okay to identify as culturally Christian, most people did so just to blend in or find cultural acceptance or because they weren't Hindu or Jewish or because grandma was, no matter their personal beliefs or practices.  It didn't mean anything then and it doesn't mean anything now, the only difference is that now it isn't safe or acceptable to identify as Christian.  Instead, the conformists are migrating over to other causes, trends, movements, and organizations.  The heart of christian belief and practice hasn't changed in 2000 years but our current culture has moved on from identifying such as 'normal' or 'acceptable' rather now identifying that same belief and practice as 'fundamental extremism' or 'whatever-phobic' or 'myopic and dangerous.'  The church hasn't changed, rather society's perception thereof has done a complete 180.  Society finally figured out that this horse wasn't going to get them where they wanted to go, so they dismounted and found a new ride.  Any other cause can be used as a means to an end, to get you wherever you want to end up, but the true church will never be a means to an end, that doesn't mean people won't try, but eventually they'll figure out it is an express train going somewhere very particular not a horse one can whip and kick and rein around to suit one's own whims.

So all those mediocre, lip-service 'christians' have jumped ship.  Proclaiming themselves 'nones' or whatever and the world rejoices at this sudden decline in the church, only it really isn't a real decline.  We're losing dead weight, the people that were only here for themselves and their personal endeavors not for the good of others or the kingdom of God.  The people who contributed nothing and demanded everything be done exactly their way and who caused 95% of the problems.  If I was the world, I wouldn't be celebrating this mass migration but rather dreading it ending up weighing down any and every other cause, trend, or organization.  These same folks are going to be joining ranks with the rainbow alphabet and the climate change enthusiasts among many another cause or belief or organization.  They'll demand attention and resources and that everything be done their way or they'll make a fuss about it and cause strife within the ranks.  Good riddance!

The church is getting into fighting trim, the fetters are falling off and the labyrinth of people pleasing has fallen down.  While public opinion is against us, at least there will be less squabbling amongst ourselves!  In Revelation Jesus warns people to be hot or cold towards Himself, not lukewarm, lest He spit them out of His mouth and that's exactly what is happening.  And all these loafers, hangers-on, and parasites are going to be seeking something else to fill that void.  World beware, they are coming your way! 'Rejoice O Heavens and ye who dwell in them, but woe to you oh earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great wrath for he knows his time is short...'

AI and what it is to be human

 Poetry, metaphor, humor, aesthetics, the metaphysical, the creation and appreciation of true beauty, these are things it will be very hard for a computer or artificial intelligence ever to truly comprehend.  I stole a couple quotes from classic poetry just to see what would happen, the results are gorgeous, but especially in the case of the second picture, the computer really didn't get what was going on.  I used Leonardo.ai to produce the following unedited pics:

The first is from Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale:" "magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn"

The second is from Noyes' "The Highwayman:" "The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor..."

Certainly gorgeous, but both have their faults, particularly the purple galleon!  The crazy thing is these images depend on millions of individual human contributions to culture and art and it takes a human to appreciate them and humans to edit them and give them meaning.  We were created to be creators, yes we can create things that can help us create, but without a driving human influence behind a given production it means nothing, it is nothing.  Only the Creator can call something out of nothing, only one created in His image can give meaning to nonsense.

The AI Apocalypse?

 AI has certainly been making headlines lately, as have the predications of a dawning utopia or impending robotic apocalypse resulting therefrom, but no matter how terrifying or exciting, one must remember that AI, like fire or electricity or anything else is a tool, while it may revolutionize the way we live, do business, and communicate, and if implemented hastily or in a foolish manner may have drastic and unforeseen consequences, but it is still a tool.  Genetic modification is also a tool and with it we can feed billions or create a monster virus that can wipe out a civilization.  It is what we do with it and why that makes all the difference.

In one of the Star Wars prequels, Obi-wan says, "if droids could think there would be none of us here."  And I've always loved that line, so simple yet so profound.  Yes our tech can 'learn' and 'know' and 'do' all sorts of neat stuff, much of it yet undreamt, but it can't think, create, or give meaning to anything.  Our Creator made us in His image and breathed into us life, and being, and purpose.  But a computer can no more appreciate a rainbow or a sunset or a sonata than your pet goldfish or sofa.  We can't create that for ourselves, how much less for our tech?  It had to be created in us by an outside source, we are incapable of passing it on to our own creations or creating it out of nothing.  No matter how amazing, AI will never produce real art.

Yes, it can produce amazing images, I've just been playing with it, but it requires human input to create those images, human taste to select and manipulate the images, and a human eye to appreciate the final product.  My camera can produce great images but it requires me to select the content of said image.  The camera doesn't care what image it produces, but I do.  The AI image generator produced some rather good and some rather grotesque and some completely baffling images.  I needed to change my prompts or edit the resulting image or change the filters and parameters to get what I wanted, it meant nothing to the computer.

Can we use AI for terrible things, yes!  As we can fire or money or nuclear weapons.  No matter how much our tech changes, our hearts do not nor does what it means to be human.  Yes, tech may get really good at solving medical problems or doing your taxes or whatever but it will never replace humanity, instead it is meant to serve humanity, but it will only be as beneficial as the purposes and intent of those overseeing it.  Will it change things, certainly, but will it replace us, no!  Should we use it wisely, by all means.  Will we?  If history is any indicator, I wouldn't bet on it.  Should we despair?  Certainly not, for the same One who bequeathed us our own intelligence still oversees our world and lives and has a plan and a purpose in all things.  We can certainly make robots in our own image but we'd be far wiser taking very seriously the commands of our own Designer, in this as well as in all things!  There may not ever be an AI apocalypse but we most certainly know the tale of this world will one day be at an end and then we must each give an account of our lives to the Author, so maybe that's the apocalypse we should be most concerned about, at least if we aren't currently His!

Another unwitting guest blogger!

 There and back again, we've heard it a hundred thousand times before, but this is a wonderful article featuring 'The Hobbit' and incorporating it into your life's journey!

The great longing and why everyone, even the cynics, grinches, and scrooges want to celebrate Christmas (even if they won't admit it to themselves)

I was just perusing lists of 'best' and 'worst' Christmas songs, and strangely the same songs seemed to be on both lists, depending who the lister was!  Which put me in mind of an article a few weeks ago about Christmas music, which I can't now find otherwise I'd link to it, that was an intriguing reflection by the author on his former disgust of the secular world and their determination to make off with an obviously Christian holiday and the eventual softening of his heart towards the lost, wandering, and lonely.  Here's an article that beautifully captures that very longing felt by everyone born of woman.  Of course none of the songs on those lists were even remotely Christian and barely dealt with any of the 'religious' trappings of the season, but I find it fascinating that we'd put so much effort into creating a secular hymnal for this particular season.  Nobody does that for Easter.  Why Christmas?  What is it about this babe in the manger two millennia ago that has we moderns trying desperately to cook up something just as wonderful but centered in the materialistic world?

Ugly Christmas sweaters, Mariah Carrie, swanky office parties, Hallmark movie marathons, a pantheon of pop culture gods from the Grinch to Rudolph and Frosty, secular carols by the truckload, the school concerts brimming with tunes about snow and bells, over the top cooking, houses lit up like a runway, gifts galore, but nothing seems to satisfy.  Our hyped up secular version of 'peace on earth, goodwill towards men,' feels more like a dinner of cotton candy and Mountain Dew while having to force yourself to smile while putting up with your least favorite great aunt as she talks about her cat for three hours: fake, shallow, all glitz and no glory.  There's no room for grief, sorrow, frustration, impatience, depression, financial trouble, loneliness, physical or mental health issues, loss, disappointment, no wonder everybody sort of secretly loathes this season as well as longs for the fulfillment of all its promises.

But that's only the manmade monster that isn't anything near human, wherein you'll get fired if you don't force enough holiday cheer whilst out in public, rather the real story of Christmas is raw, brutal, cold, lonely, despairing, shameful, and dark, wherein finally a long sought light shineth and lo, there is hope upon the earth.  That's why I love the old hymns, they don't flirt with Santa or moan over an old fling but rather marvel at the wonder of God indwelling flesh, living amongst us, and bringing true Peace upon the earth.  There's room at the manger for death, sorrow, disease, fear, doubt, grief, poverty and every ill that mars creation and He is the cure to them all.  Christmas is big enough for your sorrow, for it hails the advent of the One Who has borne them.  One of my favorite choruses out of the Messiah is the passage out of Isaiah wherein in, 'surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.'  Come real, come broken, no flash or glitter or false joy required, and He shall give you Peace.

The longing is real and so is the Answer, but not liking the answer, the world desires to brew its own cure, which only makes that longing worse, as we feel somehow guilty in not being frivolously jolly this time of year, but you don't have to drink that strange patent medicine or indulge in faux guilt, rather be real, be broken, and seek the wisdom and wonder and glory of ages past and those yet to come.  Have an O Holy Night instead of a Holly Jolly Christmas, celebrate a Silent Night rather than rock around the Christmas tree, instead of crooning Blue Christmas remember what happened in that Little Town of Bethlehem.  Hark the Herald Angels Sing instead of Mariah Carrie or Nat King Cole.  Chestnuts and silver bells and reindeer or the ideal fling aren't going to bring the peace they promise, only the Prince of Peace can do that

There's nothing wrong with all the secular seasonal fun, but it is like cold, hungry kids tired of playing in the snow looking in at the lamplit windows and pretending they are warm and fed and surrounded by love when still outside in the lonely dark and cold.  Open the door child, it isn't locked, step into the Light, truly find Home this Christmas and everyday thereafter!

Hopeless when it comes to Romantics?

 After being held captive by a villainous virus and confined to her comfy chair for weeks on end, the recumbent heroine sought refuge in her local library's ebook empire, and falling prey to extreme boredom and mental fatigue (pronounced fat-ti-gue), she finally gave in and perused a significant number of works vaguely classified as 'christian romance novels,' and her reaction can only be described as curious indeed.

I read a little Georgette Heyer some years back, complaining afterwards that they were all the same book, just with the hero having different colored hair and driving a different number of horses and the heroine having a variable number of siblings to differentiate them.  I also had several bad experiences with Jane Austen spin-off novels, expecting such sequels to be as chaste and classy as Miss Austen herself, oops!  But I had run out of things to read when influenza decided we go on whirlwind courtship, and being barely cognizant, wasn't up for my usual preference for tales like Les Mis, Tale of Two Cities, or anything Austen or Chesterton, I didn't have the mental energy to think so I thought a little Christian romance might be just the thing to wile away the hours, forget my discomfort, and explore a rather foreign genre.  Secular romance novels are downright trashy and nothing I even dare explore.  But apparently modern Christian romance, at least from the several authors I sampled, isn't all that different from Georgette Heyer or anything offered on a classic Hallmark playlist, save perhaps in the time it is set.

The books and stories weren't bad, they just weren't good, being rather boring, predictable, insipid, and had very little of either romance or true Christian faith.  Strangely, any of the classic novels listed above are far more romantic and Christian than anything of modern make I have yet waded through though hardly being classified as Christian romance!  C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are the most modern authors I have found to be both competent storytellers and truly Christian writers.  This modern fluff has all the theological depth of a Joel Olsteen greeting card and the stories all the intrigue of a Hallmark Christmas special or the nineteenth Spiderman movie in as many years.  Is that all modern Americans expect from either faith or literature or even romance?  I knew our country was in hot water but it seems to be willingly drowning in an inch deep pool of insipidity if what I sampled was considered 'good' reading or theology!  Just because something is 'clean' doesn't make it good.  And just because you throw in a few christian fortune cookie one-liners like 'God directs your path' and "He'll turn your problems into blessings,' doesn't a christian text make.  But I guess if you are living that sort of shallow faith or insipid interpersonal relationships or have never delved into serious literature, thinking anything more daunting than the latest Marvel remake is beyond your intellectual abilities, I shouldn't be surprised people love this sort of thing.

Nobody wants to think, especially about their own lives, relationships, and the true meaning of life, the universe and everything, that's why we have an answer (42) but we still can't comprehend what the question is.  It is so much easier to type something into google and accept the first line of text that pops up as the ultimate answer to the pertinent question rather than to ask is it true, is it from a reliable source, what does it actually mean, is it biased, or do I need to delve deeper into this issue?  You wouldn't believe all the people that walk into my office and tell me what is wrong with their pet and what treatment they expect, rather than letting me do my job and figure it out and do what the pet actually needs, everybody is an expert nowadays in everything except the actual experts!  They'd happily take my advice on rewiring their house or replacing the transmission in their car (things I know nothing about but I'm sure YouTube would love to advise me) but when I don't want to treat their dog for distemper (not that there is one) when it is obvious it has liver cancer, well what do I know?

C.S. Lewis got it right when he said, "the world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature."  A vibrant Christian faith will shine through any well written tale even if that book isn't overtly Christian, books like Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings, Les Miserables, A Tale of Two Cities, never (or only rarely or in passing) mention "churchy" stuff but glimmer and gleam with a Christian worldview and doctrine, hope, faith, purpose, and love without ever being preachy or boring, which those modern romance novels tended to be even if they mentioned God a mere half dozen times in the whole tale.  Where is the unrelenting, unremitting, unconquerable Love that drove God to become Man and die in our stead?  Where is Darcy throwing pride to the wind to save the woman who may never return his affections?  Where is Jean val Jean, the hardened, bitter criminal cruelly wronged by society and fate, yet offering forgiveness and kindness though it may doom him?  Where is the faithful Sam that would follow his master into the fires of hell with no hope of rescue or return, but determined to do what is right?  Where is one man willing to die in place of another to spare the sorrow of the woman he loves but will never be his?

We moderns define romance as merely romantic love, but we are as ridiculous as Eowyn riding off to war, seeking relief via death in battle over conquering her disappointment because Aragorn will not look on her with a tender eye.  That is my one complaint about Tolkien, most of his heroines are rather sulky, which I suppose is why Rings of Power needs to portray Galadriel as some sort of Xena wanna-be, which is odd since she is the one strong female character that isn't moping around in the books over thwarted expectations.  But romance is so much more that romantic love, or rather lust as most modern writers have it, it is the very adventure and poetry of life, the substance that makes existence worth enduring, that turns the mundane into the miraculous: sunsets, old jokes, fuzzy blankets, snowball fights, good friends, a crackling hearth, candlelight, spying your first moose, new life, long goodbyes, Spring, the call of geese on the wind, snow days, toddler commentary, good books, gooey cookies and steaming hot chocolate, hearty stew on a bitter night, starlight over snowy fields...none of that requires a love interest, only a child like heart and a sense of wonder, real humility and a readiness to embrace whatever the Author of your own personal romance is going to throw at you.

Don't settle for meek as milk toast modern theology or romance or literature, delve into the old classics, be they books or the songs of the season, forget Santa Baby and actually look at the lyrics of O Come O Come Emmanuel, What Child is This, or Hark the Herald!  Maybe the reason I find modern books so insipid is because Man himself has become so in this world of easy information wherein true wisdom has become scarce.  Nobody wants to be offensive, but the Gospel is offensive, it defies our natural selfishness and challenges us to be better, to live a life of meaning and adventure and purpose, but we'd rather just be a pointless ball of atoms and energy floating along a meaningless but pleasant course until we vanish into oblivion, of no more consequence than any of the numerous stories I just read, as soon forgot as finished, nothing memorable or significant about any of them.  Now is the time to choose your own adventure!  Now there's a genre I should go back and explore as an adult, they were kind of fun as a kid but that's a whole other post!