24Oct, 2011

A Mysterious, Indefinable, Relational Interaction

Posted by Don
34

Through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with Him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts or ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond. There are true ideas involved in marriage and sex, but marriage and sex also involve something else, and that something else is mysterious. If we have a controlling personality, in which we like to check things off of lists, this is going to be extremely hard for us to understand and embrace. God gives us no control, really, over this “system” of relationship. Introducing somebody to Jesus is not about presenting ideas, then, as much as it is introducing a person to a Deity who lives and interacts. Evangelism, then, looks like setting somebody up on a blind date: God does the work, we just tell them about Him and where they can find Him. You might be getting upset by this. You might think I am saying truth should be thrown out, [...]

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21Oct, 2011

Remembering Elliott Smith

Posted by Don
15

It was today, eight years ago, that Elliott Smith passed. He was a Nebraskan kid, transplanted to Texas before finding his adult and creative home here in Portland. He rose to acclaim when director Gus VanSant found him in a club, and used several of his songs on the Good Will Hunting Soundtrack. We all loved Miss Misery. Born Paul Smith to his mother Bunny Welch, Smith would become one of contemporary musics greatest creators. The end of his life was tragic. He began using heroin and started believing Dreamworks was out to get him, following him around in a white van. He died of suicide in Los Angeles. Remembering Elliot Smith:

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20Oct, 2011

The Most Unexplored Cosmos

Posted by Don
27

I heard a documentarian say the oceans were the most unexplored known territory, even more so than space. He said we know less about the deeps than we do the heights, and I suppose we could debate his point. He was no doubt trying to peak our interest and raise more money for more documentaries, more time in a submarine. Who can blame him. We do know a lot about space, and we are learning more about the oceans, but I don’t think either of these territories are the least explored. I still think the least explored territory is humanity, both collective and individual. It’s not physical territory, I know, but where is there more fearful darkness or illuminating beauty than in the depths of the person sitting next to you on a bus? Where is there more evil and more beauty than in the unexplored cosmos of a human being? I wonder if you might take a walk tonight after dinner with your daughter or your son, or your wife or your neighbor, and take the submarines down for a dive. Who are they? What do they love? What are they afraid of? Do they understand their own power? [...]

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19Oct, 2011

Parentocracy

Posted by Jordan
23

The following is the first in a series of guest posts. Jason Boyett is the author of O Me of Little Faith and the Pocket Guide series of books. Find him at Dadequate, Twitter, Facebook, and at jasonboyett.com. There’s a hot new website — they still make those, you know — called Fitocracy. It’s a site for tracking your day-to-day fitness achievements. How many push-ups did you do? How fast did you run that 5K? How long were you on the elliptical? You log in your workouts, it assigns points based on your exercises’ degree of difficulty, and you watch the points accumulate. Once you reach a certain number of points, you move up a level. You unlock achievement badges. And because it’s as much a social media site as anything else, your friends and followers get to see how well (or poorly) you’re doing. The guys who started it, Brian Wang and Richard Talens, grew up playing video games. They knew how addictive gaming could be. What if the pleasures of gaming — new levels, new achievements, a flurry of points — could be applied to exercise? After all, exercise isn’t always fun. You don’t always see immediate changes [...]

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18Oct, 2011

Time is Like Ice

Posted by Don
22

The following is an excerpt from Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, released by Harvest House Publishers in 2000, and re-released by Thomas Nelson as Through Painted Deserts in 2005. Time is like thin ice. Our days are spent living like ants in a mound, collecting our substance to survive the winter; to retire in comfortable plaid pants, blue socks, and golf shoes. All the while, the ice is melting, thin and slick. We don’t notice it until struck with tragedy. We or a friend are mangled in a car wreck, and we reflect on how fragile the whole thing is. Our wives and our children become beautiful again. Our priorities change as we realize we are temporary beings. It is with this in mind that Solomon writes his book. Here is where aged couples renew their vows. But not all of us are granted such severe mercy. Death is a difficult thing to process when no hint of it is at hand. We may never hear the ice crack. Mark Twain was right in assessing that the two elements of success are determination and ignorance. Success being the six-figure salary and ignorance being a blindness to its temporal [...]

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