Pastor Jim preached this morning at church. He talked about "the routinization of charisma." He said he stole the idea from one of his daughter's friends, a guy named Matt, and then he singled me out of the congregation and said, "you know him." I can only assume he meant Matt Eames, because Eames is the only Matt I know who would come up with such a pellucid turn of phrase on a camping trip. The guy wrote his dissertation on Chesterton, so you gotta cut him some slack.

Anyway, the phrase stuck with Jim, or rather was drilled into him through the course of a camping trip, and he used it this morning to point out that our culture gravitates toward losing awe for God because of this "routinization of charisma."

He then went on to outline something I was lamenting to Sarah the other day. He said, "I was trying to remember the name of this beautiful piece of classical music and all I could think about was an advertisement for beef because the piece was used as the jingle for a beef company."

Sometimes I try to think of God, and the best I can come up with in this culture is the theological equivalent of an advertisement for beef.