NASA's been planning to send up another robot to Mars, and it's gone to the web to look for a name. Naturally this has been ripe for silly publicity stunts, but that aside, I'm disappointed at the names NASA has now put up for voting. "Adventure?" "Perception?" "Amelia?" Unsurprisingly, these are the work of grade-schoolers--which just makes me ask, a la Professor Kirke in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, "What do they teach them in schools these days?"
Whatever happened to the vision of space travel stamped with bold, uncompromising names like Enterprise, Yorktown, Defiant, or Intrepid? Names that said "We've come in peace, but we will send you away in pieces if necessary." Ships that, sure, might be destroyed in an instant because the entire crew happened to be wearing red shirts--but you knew it meant business. Now we're sending out probes that might as well be called Please Don't Hurt Us. Come on, people--get your heads in the game. Or, name the damn thing Amelia--as long as it takes Stephen Colbert to Mars with it.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
A prayer for tomorrow
Father, as I sit here on the eve of what I hope will be the end of a lot of frustration, I pray for the ability to forgive. I don't want to be hanging on to bitterness anymore than I want those who have caused it to hang on to it. It hurts me and eats at me, and I want to give it to You, to leave it at the foot of the cross and go forth into tomorrow and beyond forgiving and forgiven--not in a sense of smarminess and a desire to show up anyone, but in genuine love. I ask that You let Your Spirit stir in me and bring me to that genuine love...without Your strength I am a frustrated, bitter man angry at the world and the people around me because I don't have what I want. With You I find that none of those things I want are as desirable as You, and in You I find real peace.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
What I do
I talk a lot about my life in philosophical and theological abstractions, but I don't say a lot specifically about my experiences. So, here's some pictures and explanations to fill up space. If I was getting paid for this, I would be a total genius.
This is my career, my calling. I happen to think this photo is pretty terrible, but it expresses the sort of energy I pour into music, especially in performance. I don't know what the point was where I realized that music was what I would be doing for the rest of my life, but I can't imagine anything else.
That's better. And yes, I am wearing the same shirt in that picture.
Music is the passion in my life that I've followed as long as I've been old enough to have one. In high school music just sort of slipped into the top position in my life, not by design but just through the course of events. Rarely was anything else allowed to conflict with a marching band rehearsal, or a concert, or any other opportunity to play.
I have come to realize in the course of my life that my passion for music and especially for performing is something God instilled in me. But even that can drag me to distraction, beyond healthy expression of what He provided, and into territory where I find myself putting it as the ultimate thing in my life. In that I always find aggravation and frustration, either in the short term because I find myself "artistically limited" or whatever, or more long-term in that the short term frustrations grow slowly into a deep-seated bitterness.
I love music. But music was given to me to point to God. Every day I have to remind myself of this.
This is my career, my calling. I happen to think this photo is pretty terrible, but it expresses the sort of energy I pour into music, especially in performance. I don't know what the point was where I realized that music was what I would be doing for the rest of my life, but I can't imagine anything else.
That's better. And yes, I am wearing the same shirt in that picture.
Music is the passion in my life that I've followed as long as I've been old enough to have one. In high school music just sort of slipped into the top position in my life, not by design but just through the course of events. Rarely was anything else allowed to conflict with a marching band rehearsal, or a concert, or any other opportunity to play.
I have come to realize in the course of my life that my passion for music and especially for performing is something God instilled in me. But even that can drag me to distraction, beyond healthy expression of what He provided, and into territory where I find myself putting it as the ultimate thing in my life. In that I always find aggravation and frustration, either in the short term because I find myself "artistically limited" or whatever, or more long-term in that the short term frustrations grow slowly into a deep-seated bitterness.
I love music. But music was given to me to point to God. Every day I have to remind myself of this.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Frustration
Sometimes I don't think this blog necessarily reflects me fully. When I write here I'm generally in a thoughtful mood, usually after spending a lot of time praying and finding myself growing in a spirit of joy in Christ. I don't tend to write much when I'm aggravated, or down, or when I've had a day where I've fallen prey to temptation a lot.
I've just been in sort of a weird funk today. I've managed to stick to my usual routine including getting into the Scriptures and praying before work, but sometimes I feel like I come to a newer and deeper point in my walk, and sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. Add to this the stuff that's been going on with people I thought were friends--and ironically, the passage I was in today was 1 Corinthians 6.
Even as I grabbed my Bible to double-check the reference, though, the first page I open it to has a single highlighted passage:
I've just been in sort of a weird funk today. I've managed to stick to my usual routine including getting into the Scriptures and praying before work, but sometimes I feel like I come to a newer and deeper point in my walk, and sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. Add to this the stuff that's been going on with people I thought were friends--and ironically, the passage I was in today was 1 Corinthians 6.
Even as I grabbed my Bible to double-check the reference, though, the first page I open it to has a single highlighted passage:
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.--Psalm 33:20-22It's funny that God would interrupt a rant in progress with a verse containing words that have been on my mind a lot lately--"steadfast," "wait for the Lord," "[being] glad in him." Whether it's worry over outcomes or just aggravation at things I have no control over, I need to let that go. God is bigger than all those things, and I continue to pray that this fact will be one that my heart is constantly reminded of.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Catching up
It's been a long time since I posted last. The last month or so has been exceedingly busy, but at the same time it's been one that's taught me a lot of important things about myself and where my heart is. I've been on both coasts, performed before thousands, explored new places and extended the list of places I'm able to say I visited. Most importantly, though, is what God has taught me and where He's brought me in all this time.
I've always prided myself as being an intelligent, reasonable person, although in my darkest moments all that can go out the window. In the course of reading Mere Christianity, one passage struck me (the citation for which I can't remember at the moment). Lewis noted that one of Satan's favorite strategies was to get us to argue with each other (and, I would extend, with ourselves) over two equally wrong things.
While I was on the road, I had time to catch up on sermon podcasts from my church for the period I was away. One that really struck me was this one, a sermon by Paul Matthies entitled Sincere Love. I'd encourage you to listen to it, and if you already have, listen to it again. It brought back to my mind something that had slipped away in the course of battling with my personal issues.
I spent the first few years of school in a Christian school, and in later grades you had the opportunity to memorize what was for a kid a lengthy passage of scripture; those who were able to memorize the whole thing by the end of the year got to take part in a trip to Valley Fair, the big amusement park up where I grew up. One year the passage was one that I always find myself coming back to, 1 Corinthians 13. It is the Bible's manifesto on what love is and how we as Christians, as those who seek to make God our central point in life, and for me in the course of my walk, it's a huge conviction on the issue of how valuable my efforts are, even in a place as full of God's love and mercy as the Village.
But it's all for nothing, if I do it without love. If I'm not seeking and giving and working in a spirit of love, I'm engaging myself in another heart-hardening exercise that will bring me right back to where I started: focused on myself, devoid of compassion, angry at God's unfairness when things don't go the way I want, merciless to those who cross me.
My pastor uses the phrase "meritless salvation" to describe the Christian situation. No matter how successful I am at putting away the things that pull me to overt sin and pouring myself into good actions, it's key for me to recognize that none of those things are what make me saved or what bring me closer to God--except in that I do them out of love for God, and for the people around me, whether friend, enemy, or unknown. I pray to God that He continues to pull my heart to a place where this is the norm for me.
There's a lot going on right now, including something that just saddens me to the core of my being. In spite of it, though, God is bigger and His love sustains me in ways nothing on Earth ever could. I am incredibly thankful to all the people around me who have shown me that love, and that have helped me to learn what it means to have it and to live in it.
I've always prided myself as being an intelligent, reasonable person, although in my darkest moments all that can go out the window. In the course of reading Mere Christianity, one passage struck me (the citation for which I can't remember at the moment). Lewis noted that one of Satan's favorite strategies was to get us to argue with each other (and, I would extend, with ourselves) over two equally wrong things.
While I was on the road, I had time to catch up on sermon podcasts from my church for the period I was away. One that really struck me was this one, a sermon by Paul Matthies entitled Sincere Love. I'd encourage you to listen to it, and if you already have, listen to it again. It brought back to my mind something that had slipped away in the course of battling with my personal issues.
I spent the first few years of school in a Christian school, and in later grades you had the opportunity to memorize what was for a kid a lengthy passage of scripture; those who were able to memorize the whole thing by the end of the year got to take part in a trip to Valley Fair, the big amusement park up where I grew up. One year the passage was one that I always find myself coming back to, 1 Corinthians 13. It is the Bible's manifesto on what love is and how we as Christians, as those who seek to make God our central point in life, and for me in the course of my walk, it's a huge conviction on the issue of how valuable my efforts are, even in a place as full of God's love and mercy as the Village.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.Nothing. The implications of that to me are huge. I feel like all of those things cover what I've tried to do in one way or another in the course of my last year and some months at the Village. I've worked to become more knowledgable on the issues and had a lot of discussions about theological issues and their impacts on us, so as to discern the Bible and its meaning for my life, and to help teach others. I've prayed for greater faith, especially in the face of difficulty in my life. I've pushed myself to be more generous even with what little I do have.
But it's all for nothing, if I do it without love. If I'm not seeking and giving and working in a spirit of love, I'm engaging myself in another heart-hardening exercise that will bring me right back to where I started: focused on myself, devoid of compassion, angry at God's unfairness when things don't go the way I want, merciless to those who cross me.
My pastor uses the phrase "meritless salvation" to describe the Christian situation. No matter how successful I am at putting away the things that pull me to overt sin and pouring myself into good actions, it's key for me to recognize that none of those things are what make me saved or what bring me closer to God--except in that I do them out of love for God, and for the people around me, whether friend, enemy, or unknown. I pray to God that He continues to pull my heart to a place where this is the norm for me.
There's a lot going on right now, including something that just saddens me to the core of my being. In spite of it, though, God is bigger and His love sustains me in ways nothing on Earth ever could. I am incredibly thankful to all the people around me who have shown me that love, and that have helped me to learn what it means to have it and to live in it.
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