"Rescue the perishing; don't hesitate to step in and help. If you say, 'Hey, that's none of my business,' will that get you off the hook? Someone is watching you closely, you know---someone not impressed with weak excuses."

-----Proverbs 24:11-12 (The Message translation)

"If I speak with the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminister Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing."

-----Kevin J. Vanhoozer, from "First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics"

"Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that 'God helps those who help themselves.' That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor."

-----Bill McKibben, in his Harper's magazine essay, "The Christian Paradox"

"My favorite Replacements story is that when compact discs started replacing records the band were appalled that Twin/Tone, their first label, was going to release their early albums on CD. So, they had a few drinks and stewed about it and had a few more drinks and then went over to Twin/Tone. They gave the receptionist some line about working on remixes, grabbed as many of the master tapes as they could find and threw them into the Mississippi. When the Replacements told me this story, they expressed the hope that Prince, who lived in a big purple house downriver, would see the tapes floating by like the baby Moses, retrieve them, play them and reconsider his musical approach."

-----Bill Flanagan, from the liner notes to "The Replacements: All For Nothing" compilation

"At a time when religion so often seems to get in the way of God’s work, with its shopping mall sale pitch and its bumper sticker reductionism, I give thanks just for the sanity of Billy Graham—for that clear empathetic voice of his in that Southern accent. Part poet, part preacher. A singer of the human spirit, I’d say. Yeah, I give thanks for Billy Graham. Thank you, Billy Graham."

-----Bono, introduction to "Thank you Billy Graham" by Pat Boone.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

SPIN'S TOP 10 OF THE LAST 20 YEARS
1. "OK Computer," Radiohead
2. "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," Public Enemy
3. "Nevermind," Nirvana
4. "Slanted and Enchanted," Pavement
5. "The Queen Is Dead," Smiths
6. "Surfer Rosa," Pixies
7. "3 Feet High and Rising," De La Soul
8. "Sign 'O' the Times," Prince
9. "Rid of Me," PJ Harvey
10. "Straight Outta Compton," N.W.A


It's definitely a debatable list with some curious omissions. e.g. Where is the Joshua Tree? Where is London Calling? But you have to love the inclusion of Pavement, Prince and PJ Harvey. What's your take?

"Have you really been reading my books, and at this time ask me what have I lost of the old faith? Much have I rejected of the new, but I have never rejected anything I could keep, and have never turned to gather again what I had once cast away. With the faith itself to be found in the old Scottish manse I trust I have a true sympathy. With many of the forms gathered around that faith and supposed by the faithful to set forth and explain their faith, I have none. At a very early age I had begun to cast them from me; but all the time my faith in Jesus as the Son of the Father of men and the Saviour of us all, has been growing. If it were not for the fear of it's sounding unkind, I would say that if you had been a disciple of his instead of mine, you would not have mistaken me so much. Do not suppose that I believe in Jesus because it is said so-and-so in a book. I believe in him because he is himself the vision of him in that book, and I trust, his own living power in me, has enabled me to understand him, to look him in the face, as it were, and accept him as my Master and Saviour, in following whom I shall come to the rest of the Father's peace. The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story; and what good men thought about him who knew him and accepted him. But the common theory of the inspiration of the words, instead of the breathing of God's truth into the hearts and souls of those who wrote it, and who then did their best with it, is degrading and evil; and they who hold it are in danger of worshipping the letter instead of living in the Spirit, of being idolaters of the Bible instead of disciples of Jesus...It is Jesus who is the Revelation of God, not the Bible; that is but a means to a mighty eternal end. The book is indeed sent us by God, but it nowhere claims to be his very word. If it were--and it would be no irreverence to say it--it would have been a good deal better written. Yet even its errors and blunders do not touch the truth, and are the merest trifles---dear as the little spot of earth on the whiteness of a snowdrop. Jesus alone is the Word of God"

-----George MacDonald, "Letter to an Unknown Lady" circa 1866

tworedshoes called me out. she also calls me a number of other names, depending on the situation. . .and she'd probably like to club me with a large book.

Number of books I own:
too many. embarrassed. shameful face.

Last purchased book:
I can't remember the last time I purchased one for myself. The library rocks.

Last re-read:
The Hungering Dark, Frederick Buechner

Five books for a deserted island:
Bible, A River Runs Through It, Walden, The Brothers Karamazov, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

Book I'd use to thwack someone on the head:
My vintage 1941 2nd Edition Webster's Dictionary. To see the dust fly after that 40lb thing nails your head would give me great pleasure.

Book I'd like to burn:
Anathema. The Nazi's burn books. Bring em all on.

Book that is overrated:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Get over yourselves.

Fun classics (you had to ask!):
"Fun"??

Last book read:
Amusing Ourselves to Death

Five people I tag to answer these and take a photo of their bookcase:
Let it die with me.

No Earthly Good-----Johnny Cash

Come hear me good brothers come here one and all
Don't brag about standing or you'll surely fall
You're shinin' your light yes and shine if you should
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
You're shinin' your light yes and shine if you should
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

Come here me good sisters you're salt of the earth
If your salt isn't salted then what is it worth
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

If you're holdin' heaven then spread it around
There are hungry hands reaching up here from the ground
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you're no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you're no earthly good
No earthly good...

"Of all the sayings attributed to Jesus perhaps none are as relevant to our current political situation as these two: 'One's foes will be members of one's own household' and 'Love your enemies.' Should it come as such a surprise to find so many of my political enemies within my faith tradition? I intend to oppose them as enemies. But I also intend to make it clear that if you want to attack Christians as Christians, then you are also attacking me. I want no exemption. No safe conduct pass. I intend to wage guerrilla war within the borders of Jesus Land, but it is still my country."

-----Garret Keizer, "Guerillas in Jesus Land", from Books & Culture, May/June 2005

I've been reading through Anthony Lane's collection of writings from the New Yorker lately and I just finished his piece on the work of Alfred Hitchcock. It was a fascinating article that peaked my interest in finally going out to rent some of his films. Sara is a huge fan too and had recently watched "The Man Who Knew Too Much", so naturally I tried to go rent that film. But Blockbuster was out of stock, literally, on that title, and I ended up getting the 1946 smash "Notorious" starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. I loved it.

You'll notice two things right away: 1) Even though the movie is set in Rio, all of it is shot on a Hollywood lot against moving picture backdrops. Kind of disappointing, but if you let it go, it doesn't bother you after awhile. 2) Cary Grant is the man. They don't write dialogue or use leading men like Cary Grant anymore. I was literally stunned at the level of wit his character possesses relative to what passes for normal movie dialogue these days.

"Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows."

-----C.S. Lewis, "the Great Divorce"

"I'm disappointed that Iraq hasn't turned out better. And that we weren't able to move forward more meaningfully in the Middle East peace process... The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot."

-----Richard Armitage, Departing Deputy Secretary of State on the disappointments of the first Bush term.

"If by 2008, the Democrats hope to come near to a meaningful fraction of [faith-based] voters, they will have to find candidates and field workers who can spread the word down South---that is, find the equivalent of Democratic missionaries to work on all those good people who may be in awe of Jehovah's wrath, but love Jesus so much more. Worked upon with enough zeal, some of the latter might come to recognize that these much-derided liberals live much more closely than the Republicans in the real spirit of Jesus. Whether they believe every word of Scripture or not, it is still these liberals rather than the Republicans who worry about the fate of the poor, the afflicted, the needy, and the disturbed. These liberals even care about the well-being of criminals in our prisons. They are more ready to save the forests, refresh the air of the cities and clean up the rivers. It might be agonizing for a good fundamentalist to vote for a candidate who did not read the Scriptures every day, yet some of them might yet be ready to say: I no longer know where to place my vote. I have joined the ranks of the undecided.

More power to such a man. More power to all who would be ready to live with the indecision implicit in democracy. It is democracy, after all, which first brought the power and virtue of good questions to the attention of the people rather than restricting the matter to the upper classes."

-----Norman Mailer, from "Change Links" newspaper

"Ash Wednesday is a day for honesty, a realistic assessment of the human heart. By tradition it is a day when we assert (unfashionably but rightly) the sinfulness of our nature, and ask God to 'create and make in us new and contrite hearts,' and many kneel to have ash placed on their foreheads in the shape of a cross. But even in the stringent days of Lent there is a complimentary truth which also needs affirming. We may be dust, but we are dust that is full of mystery and that dreams of glory; dust (we sense) that is to be changed, transfigured, into God's own likeness."

-----Michael Mayne, "Pray, Love, Remember"

"What I do is live.
How I pray is breathe.
What I wear is pants."

-----Thomas Merton

"Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

-----Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A child is one who accepts even the most extravagant gifts, even the gift of love, not on the basis of believing that he deserves it and not in spite of the fact that he knows he does not, but simply because it is given.. . ..and surely this is a hard saying. After we have given so much of our lives to the task of trying to understand, after we have been so continually anxious lest our faith wither and bear no fruit, then it is a real shock to be told that it is only by not trying that we become, that it is only by not resisting evil that we defeat it, that it is only by losing our lives that we save them. Yet if on the one hand we are shocked by this, on the other to know ourselves at all is to know the truth of it.. . .It is just when we realize that it is impossible by any effort of our own to make ourselves children and thus to enter the kingdom of Heaven that we become children. We are children, perhaps, at the very moment we know that it is as children that God loves us--not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

-----Frederick Buechner, "Become Like Children," from "The Magnificent Defeat"

On To Bethlehem

so i'm at this wheel it's three am
waiting for the caffeine to come around
and life rears it's ugly head again
they say your radio's cool and retail's way down

and i'd like to say i'm faithful
to the task at hand
speaking gospel to a handful
and others with their list of demands

it's cold this year and i'm late on my dues
it's cold in here ah but that's nothing new
my heart's electric with your love again
so it's on to bethlehem

you might surmise that i ran there
but i really only crept
lead me to the place where love runs wild
and then it dogs your every step

you know how fickle my heart is
prone to wonder my Lord
yeah we talk but it's at arms length
always got one eye on the door

God wraps Himself up in human skin
for those who want to touch
and God let them drive the nails in
for those of us who know way too much

You come bearing all our burdens
and take Your lovers for a ride
but we stay holed up in our cages
fashioned by our own design

so tell me what is your secret
what's on your blister soul
what is that one little secret
you know the one that has taken its toll

'cause daddy's banging on your gate again
yeah he won't leave you alone
got a whole lot of dry warm rooms
and the finest of homes

it's cold this year and i'm late on my dues
it's cold in here ah but that's nothing new
my heart's electric with your love again
so it's on to bethlehem

-----Bill Mallonee

I'm not normally a big fan of Henri, and I would change his phrase, "trust that good things will happen" to "trust that God's perfect plan will be carried out in my life, and that His will, though inscrutable, is ultimately good". But on the whole, I like what he's saying here.

"Just imagine what Mary was actually saying in the words, 'I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me' (Luke 1:38). She was saying, 'I don't know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.' She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them. She believed that when she listened carefully, she could trust what was going to happen. To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control."

-----Henri Nouwen, "A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God's Presence in Our Lives," Weavings, January 1987