Writar Hero

This is good writing. It's about a kid playing Guitar Hero, which is interesting to me, but soon into the reading, I cared less about the subject matter and more about the writing. Good pacing, good build, good finish.

The writer comments on it at his blog. I would have guessed that this was blurted rather than crafted. For one thing, anyone with that much craft is not writing short essays for a gaming site. They're making money at it full time. But it also has an all-at-once feel to it, the kind I haven't had in a long, long time.

Everything I write any more is a work of labor, not of spirit. That's not a complaint -- I like working to succeed. But I also remember when words just fell out of my fingertips onto the keyboard, and people laughed and occasionally cried. I didn't know how I did it; it was as mysterious to me as it was to anyone else. But it was obviously good.

I'm glad to see it happen in front of me, even if I didn't do it.

Light Duty

Last night at the Christmas Eve service, we were greeters and candle passer-outers. The service combined both our congregations, so there were lots of unfamiliar faces. One guy immediately asked where the bathroom was. I showed him, and we went back to handing out candles.

Eventually everybody sat down, and M and I peered through the windows, watching the proceedings start up before going in to join them. The guy reappears.

"So, what's going on here?"

He was a black guy, a little under six feet, broad shouldered, smelled like cigarettes. He had a gray sweatshirt with red embroidery that looked sharp and abstract. I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be something. I had no idea he didn't belong until he asked that bizarro question.

I'm sure there are people in the world who don't know what a Christmas Eve service is. It just never occurred to me that I might meet one of them.

"It's a... well, it's a Christmas Eve service...."

Expectant eyes. "What's going to happen?"

"Well, it's a Brethren in Christ church, which is from the same tradition as the Mennonites or the Amish... there will be readings from the Bible... about the birth of Jesus... you're familiar with the Bible? I don't want to treat you like you're dumb...." Nervous laughter. "So, um... the pastor, Rod White, will speak, and probably some other people too. We'll sing carols, and there will be readings from the Bible about Jesus' birth... nothing will be expected of you. We'll... the audience... just, you know, listen."

"What time is it? I've got to catch the shuttle to the El at a quarter to midnight."

"It's 11:00 now," I said.

"You can leave whenever you want," Meredith offered helpfully.

"Feel free to go in, leave whenever you want," I parroted. "You can leave out this door. We've got it closed right now because people are loud when they come up the stairs, but you can use it to leave. If you need."

He went in and sat down in the back row. We finished up and followed. Less than 10 minutes later, when we all stood up to sing, he's out the door.

"Thanks for coming," I said from among the singing voices. He didn't acknowledge that I spoke.

The guy just wanted to use the bathroom and sit down for a few minutes. I guess he thought he had to pay for it by sitting through some church. I wanted to say to him, "Thanks for coming at all. I don't care if you're here just to use the bathroom and get out of the cold. Thanks for joining us even for a few minutes here at the end of the year, on the night that we make a point to thank God for not leaving us all out in the cold. I'm glad we could be here for you."

That's the church I want to be a part of; that's the God I want to worship. The one who doesn't care why you're here, and is okay with you as you edge toward the door.

A church, a deity, who welcomes you, even if you're just using us. It's okay. You don't have to be separate any more -- God showed up.

Come in from the cold. Merry Christmas.

Shoeing in the Dark

Today, I got to work before I realized I had worn two different shoes.


And apparently, two different pant legs.


We watched A Beautiful Mind last night, and I was thinking on the way to work how much I would like it if I could be the distracted genius surrounded by exasperated, but caring friends and family who saw to my mundane needs because I had to be left unhindered to focus maniacally on my science and/or art.

All I need now is to be a genius at some science and/or art!




I'm just going to pretend like I did this on purpose all day.

Advent Update 4

Advent is turning into a shipwreck. No piety, very little contemplation. M and I haven't even wrenched the time out to sit and talk about it regularly.

One reason is that other good things are happening. My day job is suddenly demanding, and Unda Water has taken off like a VTOL craft.

We just got the thing out of the hangar, and I'm already running behind it, waving my arms at its silhouette. And I'm supposed to be the pilot. (The link to the Web site was added unobtrusively in the links column a couple of days ago. Check us out!)

Lately, it seems like Yoda's bon mot is reversed:
There is no do. There is only try.

But it's cell night again, and I'm leading again. Time to try again.

Tonight's reading is from a guy named William Willimon, whose name M and I titter at ("Willimon, I choose you!") , though he's pretty impressive. He preaches in Birmingham, Alabama, where I lived for 8 years, and had no idea such an august personage set foot. Willimon was named by a 1996 Baylor University survey as one of the 12 best preachers in the English speaking world.

Which leads one to wonder how they stack up against the non-English speakers.

Either way, the thrust of his essay, that we just kind of have to suck it up and accept grace -- we are none of us self-made -- is timely for me, if no one else. And his blog is pretty good too. That man can think. Check him out.

Nobody wants to grow up to be a banker.

For work I've been downloading and editing a bunch of profiles of high-powered bankers from around the world.

One thing they have in common, is that as children, most of them wanted to be something else.

And now here they are!

Advent Update 3

Advent lopes along, with none of the rising action you'd hope for in a good story. This is life. Poor drama, but still compelling to the protagonist.

Tonight at cell, I am leading us in discussion around a piece by Karl Barth on Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. This week in Advent is sort of "John the Baptist week," so this is my loose tie-in.

Here's the intro I cooked up to give some insight into Barth. Wikipedia is quoted liberally:

Karl Barth (with a silent "h") was one of the big movers in neo-orthodoxy, which basically says that we know about God thanks to revelation from God, as opposed to knowing about God from observing nature and using reason. God is transcendent. Just because God showed up as a human for a while, doesn't make him just a big human. His theology points to the radical challenge of Jesus Christ, and the impossibility of tying God to human cultures, achievements, or possessions.

In the '30s, Barth argued that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ gives it motive and resources to resist the influence of other "lords"—such as the German Führer. Barth mailed this declaration to Hitler personally. He was eventually forced to resign from his professorship at the University of Bonn for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler.

Barth has been criticized because he doesn’t embrace Biblical inerrancy. Barthians respond by saying that a theology based in Biblical inerrancy is based on something other than Jesus Christ. Our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only properly emerge from consideration of what it means as a true witness to the incarnate Word, Jesus.

Quotes:

• "Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it."
• “Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.”

Our Unspoken State

Regardless of what leaves their mouths, believe this: An iconoclast's stance is as much a function of ineptitude as resolve.

Compass Points

I’ve been arguing with myself about whether I was even going to bother commenting on The Golden Compass. I’ve decided to after all because 1) a couple of regular readers might care what I think and 2) I’ll keep it short.

I read the His Dark Materials trilogy a few years ago, and they were good-enough books. I’m not as elementally enamored with armored polar bears as some of my fellow geeks are, but you know, we’ve all got our things.

After I read the first two books, a friend told me they were meant to be anti-Narnia books. Being a guy whose theology has, for better or worse, a big “I <3 Jack” button on its lapel, I guess I felt a little attacked.

But then I didn’t get it. Where was the attack?

With the coming of this movie, the new hullabaloo has finally hipped me to the point of the story, and why I missed it.

Pullman sets up a Straw God argument. He writes some characters who kill off the straw god, and that’s meant to be good. It’s just that it doesn’t meaningfully reflect reality. The god they killed, I’d want to off that god too. That god sucks.

I’m used to reading fantasy stories where writers have license to make things up, including interesting, but unworkable theologies. Apparently, I failed to notice that someone was using his fantasy theology as a stand-in for real theology.

The Golden Compass might be a decent flick, and the books had some interesting ideas. It’s just a shame that the story doesn’t have much useful to say about God.

On the bright side, Dakota Blue Richards is adorable in publicity photos. And Sam Elliott playing his standard whiskery old dude is always a treat.

Advent Update 2

I talked yesterday about busyness putting me off my game for Advent. Part of that busyness is spending time with my wife -- which, I hasten to add, is no burden.

It's just that I'm used to solitude and silence on tap. I don't know how to be contemplative with someone else around all the time.

Meredith asked me how we might celebrate Advent together, and I blanked. What I was expecting this Advent was my usual rhythm of thinking hard, and then walking around with ideas on simmer, until something becomes increasingly clear or relevant to me. Then I say, "Huh! How about that?" and fold it into my meager roll of wisdom about how to love God and my neighbor.

The idea of doing that in concert with another person is so unlike what I've done before, I had to stop to think if it was even possible.

Of course it's possible. That's what pastors do for a living. But the idea was tire screechingly new to me for about 12 seconds.

So I have to do something different this time. I have to be more communicative about the process. I might have to be more intentional about destination, or I might have to say every couple of days, "Okay, I still don't know where I'm we're going, but here's an interesting rock. What do you see?"

Well, it's a time of waiting for good things! This is the latest good thing to come along.

Advent Update

Advent is harder to celebrate than I expected, because it's hard to pay attention long enough to celebrate it. (Also, I loaned out my book of reflections that I was planning to read – an impressive display of lack of foresight.)

That's disconcerting because I'm used to being able to contemplate on demand. Something has happened in me that makes it harder to hit that switch.

To an organized, "get stuff done" person, I'm sure my life still looks like a casual stroll by limpid pools. But to me, I am really busy right now. And it's not all checklists and externals. The emotional work of marriage and maturity have seized me like an ocean wave.

I'm far from drowning, hell I even body surf a little. But it's work. The whole time, it's work.

I hope tomorrow to get my book back and use it to impose some structure, help me focus for the rest of the month.

Cheat Sheet

Busy weekend. Here's a picture I took of my pants during a brief, slow moment.

BlogaDay: In Review

Again, didn't get around to posting during the 24-hour period. But my rule for years and years has been: It's not tomorrow until I sleep, so I'm calling this November 30. Shame that Blogger doesn't support flexible dating. It's enough to drive a man to WordPress, or Moveable Type if he's feeling adventurous.

BlogaDay lessons learned:

• This is hard. I wrote the first week all at once in a fit of pique, and then wrote several more days ahead of time during the first week. I ran out of prepared content halfway through and started riffing.
  
• But it’s not that hard. A couple hundred words a day is doable.
• I got more polished stuff in the first half, but the second half was more surprising. I think I prefer polish.
• I’m not sure if anyone else thinks this, but I think I’m funnier writing late at night. You probably can't tell which ones I wrote at night, since the time stamp only occasionally corresponds to the writing time. I said things in late-night posts that I wouldn’t have said under the sun, and occasionally questioned the next day. But I didn’t take it down either. (Although I feel a little bad for calling Russel Davies an Internet douchebag.)
• Posting every day gave me impetus to do other things. I finished books and completed projects that I wouldn't have worked as hard on if I hadn't wanted to use it for blog fodder. That word puzzle, for instance, has been sitting around half-finished for over a year. Using it as a rainy-day post impelled me to finish it, AND got it out in front of an audience.
• Interactivity is challenging. I'm uncomfortable in front of an audience that talks back. I prefer media where I can put it out there and fade behind the layers between me and the reader.
• This forced march has been a good experience. I don't think I had the self-discipline to do it before now in my life, and I know I didn't have the grace to let myself miss a day like I did and keep going without feeling terrible about it.
• I have momentum, and I haven't decided what to do with it. I'm in the habit of posting every day now. According to Google Analytics, I'm up to 4-6 discrete daily readers. Seems a shame to put it down.

Chances are good I won't post tomorrow, but I'll be back on Sunday. Thanks for reading BlogaDay!