I took this - where else? - last week on the trail to Long's Peak. In the low light, all I could do was hope the colors came through, which they did - almost. In the next day or so I'll let up with the suspense and let you know whether we made it to the top.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Weekend Photo: Sunrise from the Tundra
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Still More Hot Links: A&E Edition
I've got this backlog of posts that I've been meaning to link to, and they're starting to clutter up my bloglines folder, since I use the "keep as new" function to prevent myself from forgetting about them. Well, time for some frivolous linking to good stuff. I'm unifying these highlight posts around an Arts & Entertainment theme.
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Some of you will recall my love for P.D. James mystery stories? Well, her lone science fiction work, Children of Men, doesn't feature my favorite protagonist, Adam Dalgliesh, but it is being made into a major motion picture. Gene Edward Veith, formerly the Culture editor for WORLD magazine, notes:In [Children of Men], the human race becomes infertile. No more children can be conceived or born. The world is just waiting to die out. The novel, which also takes on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, is a pro-life classic. And now it is being made into a movie, by a top-flight director and with a top-flight cast...
View the trailer here. Optimistically speaking, can an Adam Dalgliesh film be far behind?
While I'm on the topic of promising movies, I should also note that my ambitions to write a screen play for the medieval epic, Beowulf, have been crushed. The American release, starring Anthony Hopkins, is due in 2007. I can only hope this attempt will be a horrible flop...but Hopkins hasn't signed on for too many of those. Darn.
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Awhile ago I was impressed by James Harleman's review of the film Fight Club, and commented on the logical nihilism that is an outworking of the materialistic (atheistic) worldview. Since then the topic has been developed further, first by Lynn, who continued the discussion, in effect, and then by Tim, who commented on the teen fight clubs that are springing up around the nation. (Surprise! apparently ideas have consequences.)
The original Fight Club post is a thing of the past, but James Harleman proved he's not a one-trick-pony with his more recent post on the enduring impact of the original Man in Black, Johnny Cash:I hope people don't bob their heads to the plucky guitar strings of American V and only hear nostalgia. It's my fervent hope that Cash's technological ghost might prick some ears and be a tool the Holy Spirit uses to open some eyes, while Saint Johnny rests with Jesus and is finally the Man in White. I can only imagine that when he opened his new eyes to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant" his autonomic and sheepish response was "Hello. I'm Johnny Cash."
Harleman blends cultural savvy with to-the-point takes. I really like this guy, and encourage you to take in the whole post.
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OK, final link. No A&E collection would be complete without some C.S. Lewis, and Iambic has a beautiful take on Lewis's myth, Till We Have Faces. Her observations are profound, and if you 1) enjoy Lewis or 2) have heard of this book, you'll really enjoy her reflections.
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All right: having tossed out superlative A&E posts like confetti, I'm out.
Mark Driscoll Nails Kanye West
As a guy who was skeptical about Kanye West's self-ascribed holiness even before Relevant Magazine publically repented of their kissy-faced endorsement of him, this short piece by Mark Driscoll caught my eye: Kanye West Wants to be Jesus When He Grows Up.
Driscoll comments on Kanye's Rolling Stone debut, in which the modest rapper suggested that a really fresh revision of the Bible would somehow weave him in as God's own storyteller:
Nearly everyone who crosses over the manic line thinks they are Jesus Christ. Why? Because even if you are as lost as Dick Cheney in the brush, deep down we all know that Jesus is the most supreme person who has ever lived and the Bible is the most supreme book that has ever been written. Therefore, likely without even knowing it, Kanye’s desire to be like Jesus is in some ways a twisted honor to achieve the one thing he never can—glory.
That rat-tat-tat sound you hear is another round of acerbic truth pounding home. You may want to grab the whole article.
Mark Driscoll – Masculinity & Art
Believe it or not, I’m still reading Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev. and really enjoying it. Driscoll tends to be provocative even when he’s making a fairly uncontested (to me) point, say that finger-painting while channeling the inner child is not a very manly activity. Sometimes Driscoll’s penchant for the cutting one-liner can lead to overstatement, which is hilarious at times, but also slightly misleading.
Specifically I’m thinking about Driscoll’s various takes on the topic of masculinity in the church, as opposed to “the types to sing prom songs to Jesus and learn about their feelings while sitting in a seafoam green chair drinking herbal tea—the spiritual equivalent of Richard Simmons” (Christianity Today interview).
Scan his nicely dramatized apprehension on page 71:…I agreed to cancel a Sunday church service to let some of our long-haired public radio types take us outside to do a large joint art project they had proposed. They gave each of us a large chunk of paper on which to paint something that symbolized our personality, which they would then string together as a large mural highlighting the different personalities in our church… I feared ending up with a church of chickified arty dudes drinking herbal tea and standing around talking about their feelings, as illustrated by their finger painting.
Alright, we get it: Driscoll, “a truck-driving jock who watches a lot of Ultimate Fighting,” is not interested in tapping his touchy-feelyness. We could ask why he couldn’t have “subverted” this apparently “chickified,” artsy mural by painting a picture of a gun—or better yet, some guy in Ultimate Fighting get-up, whatever that looks like. But we give him the benefit of the doubt.
Then page 83 rolls around, and Driscoll describes the church’s newly-acquired building:We also got to paint the classrooms, set up our nursery rooms, leave our sound system set up, hang paintings on the walls, and use the beautiful classic church sanctuary with wooden pews and wooden arches as a lovely space for a dark, arty evening service by candlelight.
Slow down! After torching painting as girly just a dozen pages earlier, now Driscoll is extolling the virtues of the new church/art-space. Moreover, Driscoll also mentions that one of the founding values of the church was “beauty”—a virtue with deep feminine roots, I would say. Something needs to give here.
What gives, I think, is Driscoll’s habitual use of sarcasm and overstatement. I like his emphasis on masculinity, because I think a lot of Christian guys have been covertly trained to be soft-spoken wusses. However, loudly beating the Man-drum can lead to some misunderstanding, as was demonstrated a few years ago by John Eldredge’s book, Wild At Heart. Suddenly there were bunches of guys running around gruffly muttering “I’m wildatheart, you should be wildatheart, is he wildatheart?” and screaming about guns and brotherhood, as if volume implied toughness. It got old, and I concluded that even though Eldredge had come valid things to say, it would be easy to malign him via his “converts.”
The same could be true if you read Driscoll’s masculinity rants with an overly literal eye. It’s essential to remember that while Driscoll is beating on insipid, tea-sipping wussiness, he’s also extolling beauty and art, and pointing to the glory of Christ, which encompasses mercy, sympathy, and even gentleness—while to this point it has not included (shudder) Ultimate Fighting.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Oswald Chambers in the Morning
Oswald Chambers was not known for his postmodern open-mindedness, which was probably why his website (Oswald Answers Your Questions) never took off. Despite his fairly dogmatic approach to truths of every kind, sometimes I have the sneaking suspicion that he got it right.
Take this quote I read shortly after arriving home from Colorado:Specific times and places and communion with God go together. It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in the spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.
I almost had the feeling that the ghost of Oswald had been trudging up the trail to Long’s Peak at my side. The mountains had exonerated his over-the-top pronouncement, as it were. What do you think about his premise?
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
More Hot Links
As mentioned, I have this short stack of blogs and posts I've been intending to link. One of these admirable blogs is Verashni's The Chronicles of Vash. I've been following Verashni's writing for awhile, and a couple of recent posts pushed her stuff to the top of the pile...
Writers (or wanna-be writers) should take a look at The Write Stuff: "Everyone is an expert at throwing things out on paper (or screen) these days, but that's not writing any more than my juvenile scribbles are art."
Chase that post with What's Your Flavor, where Verashni takes a stab at the human bent toward "labeling" as it emerges in the context of race: "Once you label me, you negate me.”..
Solid stuff from an up-and-coming journalist.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Mountains Diagnose the Human Condition
Anyone who is even slightly self-aware comes away from a trip to the Mountains feeling as if a doorway of some kind has been opened. Typically, in my experience, the portal reflects an otherworldly glory that seems to be in short supply down in the flatlands. Something about the mist and the thin air and the hugeness of the peaks makes the human condition seem secondary and causes the unseen to rise with haunting life.
I've written about this before, though.The energy that drives a person be first to the top is one of the more subversive and surprising of impulses.
On this latest trip, the mountains were transcendently bittersweet as always, but they also reflected human nature in a fascinating light. Have you ever considered that among the more unchanging elements of a trail are the human responses to it? Admittedly, the eight-mile (one way) path to Long's Peak, with its thrilling 14,000-foot altitude gain and numerous opportunities for sudden death, hasn't changed much in the seven years since I last climbed it. But I can't imagine that the emotions of the hikers have changed all that much either.
For example, there will always be a handful of people hauling themselves up vertical inclines at a deceptively measured pace, glancing furtively over their shoulders. The unexpected desire to be up front and stay there emerges in the most modest of psyches. (Believe me, I know.) The energy that drives a person be first to the top is one of the more subversive and surprising of impulses. Why? Because it's painful to indulge, the rewards are limited, and it appears in the most unexpected places.When you cross the rocky saddle between Long's and Battle Mountain, and see the infamous half mile Boulder Field stretched out in front of you, adrenalin starts pumping.
When I tried to line out a simple explanation for the phenomenon, the best answer I could give was "glory." Mountains reveal that most of us, even unknown to ourselves, want to get some - even if we wouldn't put it in those terms. When there is no one in front of me on the trail, and everyone else has to look over my shoulder to see the top...there is something very good about the scenario. Something that, in my experience, runs a little deeper than the ego, although I'm not saying that organ is totally inactive at high altitudes.
Another observation had to do with the way new bursts of energy appeared when we encountered changes in terrain. The first couple miles of the Long's Peak trail (which you traverse with flashlights, having started the hike at 4 a.m.) run through vertical stacks of aspens. When you reach the tundra zone, and watch the first glimmer of dawn splash over the treetops, the glow is also internal. And when you cross the rocky saddle between Long's and Battle Mountain, and see the infamous half mile Boulder Field stretched out in front of you, adrenalin starts pumping.
I was struck by the fact that novelty strikes a deep chord in the human heart. The scenery changes and the heart jumps - and not just that - apparently the calves get a boost as well. In consumer culture, the Athenian obsession with "something new" gives novelty a bad rap, and deservedly so. But hiking through changing mountain zones, it became obvious that the desire for fluctuating beauty is not purely cheap and artificial.
I've been debating how much to say on these topics, and how carefully to draw out the main gist of this post. Bittersweet protocol tends to be understated, though, and I guess I won't deviate from it now. So draw out the implications yourselves. That's right. This is the end.
I'll just say that the light mountains shine on our hearts points up Heaven in striking contrast.
New DSL and New Blogger Beta
I finally convinced Lindsay that a fast internet connection was more important than air conditioning, and today we had DSL activated. It seems like the best of omens that "coincidentally" Blogger also announced it's new Blogger Beta platform today, which features some serious upgrades (several of which I incorporated here months ago using various involved hacks).
When happenings like this converge, it can only mean good things.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Back from the Mountains
We are back. We were back late Saturday night, but now it’s official. The Colorado trip was a headlong splash into wood smoke and rock dust and alpine air. Now we’re catching our breath, and it’s hard to know where to turn, blogwise.
I could write my memoirs of the trip, including thoughts on what Mountains reveal about human nature (with accompanying photos). The Long’s Peak summit attempt would figure prominently.
Also on tap are a half-dozen great posts I’ve been meaning to link, including additional words on the nihilistic existentialism of Fight Club, and a gritty piece on race relations from someone in the know.
Making a strong push for BitterSweetLife’s first tabloid-style entry is the incredibly egocentric French teenager who’s been staying with my parents for the last month, free of charge. He almost warrants a post of his own.
On top of this is the Mark Driscoll discussion that’s been smoldering on the blog recently, and a slew of other spiritual/theological topics I’ve been waiting to take a swing at. In this stack of fire-starters is one paper labeled, “Are Most Christian Guys Wusses? How To Be ‘Manly?’”
I’ll be getting to some of this soon. You can cast your vote if you want, but no guarantees. Walking through flat, humid Missouri country again is giving me a slight feeling of vertigo.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Mark Driscoll - On Worship Leaders and their Manliness (or lack thereof)
Posted by Matt Christenot.
Here’s a quick intro of myself before I launch into this particular subject. I’m a 25 year old worship leader/student/church planter currently living in Lawrence, KS. I’m also the husband of my beautiful wife Stephanie.
Ok, with that said, here we go:
There’s so much to talk about in this book, so I think I’ll start with something fun and close to home. One of the things Mark Driscoll is known best for is the particular way in which he speaks his mind on almost any subject under the sun. In chapter 6 of Confessions he sets his sites squarely on worship leaders (yikes!). In particular he addresses their lack of manly qualities. Referring to the new worship leader he hired he says (page 146)
"I really liked Tim because he is one of the few manly men whom I have ever seen leading worship. I am not supposed to say this, but most of the worship dudes I have heard are not very dudely. They seem to be very in touch with their feelings and exceedingly chickified from playing too much acoustic guitar and singing prom songs to Jesus while channeling Michael Bolton and flipping their hair. Tim was a guy who brewed his own beer, smoked a pipe, rock climbed, mountain biked, river rafted, carried a knife on his belt and talked about what he thought more than what he felt."
Fortunately, I can say with out a shadow of a doubt that I have never channeled Michael Bolton while leading worship, or ever for that matter. I don’t think I sing prom songs to Jesus. It makes me think of singing I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore by REO SpeedWagon for the invitation. I’d be interested to know what in Driscoll’s mind qualifies as a “Jesus prom song?” Is that any song that express or uses the words, “I love you?” I’ve just heard so many people complain about the touchy-feely nature of modern worship (and I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of truth to it), but the only song anyone ever references is a song called Draw Me Close. Give me names of songs. That’s all I ask.
I think the real question here is what qualifies as true manliness and how does it apply to worship leaders. As much as I like Driscoll (and I really do like this book), I think sometimes his jock mentality leads him into overstatement, which often boarder lines on the ridiculous. For instance, is the acoustic guitar less manly than the electric? Does the fact that I prefer a Coke rather than a beer disqualify me? Do I need to start packing heat on stage in order to be manly or is simply having a knife enough to get me in the club? What about a nightstick? Although the nightstick might be too reminiscent of the Village People and then we’re back to square one. Your thoughts?
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