Egregious Reader

When my youngest son, Aaron Henry, was still in utero we had a scare with him. Tara's body was behaving in unusual ways and we were fairly certain that the baby was going to miscarry. A miscarriage is just another word for death and so like any brush with death, it was very scary and very sad. I called my friends and Kris and Marty (was Matt there ... for some reason I don't think so, maybe he was out of town) came over and prayed for our child. I think the prayer was effective or maybe we were misreading the signs ... either way, I don't care. I am glad he is alive. Here is a beginning of a musing/poem about it. My Kids Faces ... My wife bore and gave birth to these little faces. These funny and precious faces. My Henry he hugs in gritted toothy grins like a glittering puddle at sunset all in his tiny smile Life in this little shape is sheer gift (all life is). I saw his death once before he was born Broken cries and bleeding I called my friends And they came...

I read a short book by this title from Ignatius press (by the way, if you ever want to see what great book design is, look into their stuff ... amazing). It was by Hans Urs von Balthasar and the cover has this picture by Emil Nolde. What a beautiful picture! Christ Among the Children . Balthasar is contemplating the stories of Jesus holding out a child and telling us that we will not enter his kingdom unless we become like this little child. He describes that ultimatley this is rooted in Jesus very way of life. As a grown man, he never leaves the "bosom of the Father." His identity is inseperable from his being a child in the bosom of the Father. No other philosopher or founder of religion or psychologist have ever lived more authentically and deeply as a child of the Father than Jesus Christ. In one part he imagines the child Jesus becoming conscious of the world around him ... "when the Mother awakens him, the opening up of the whole horizon of reality is experienced n...

I am also reading Jayber Crow for summer book discussions. J.Crow is an orphan (at least after the first 30 pages) and lives in the orphanage called the Good Shepherd. He wonders if he has heard or should have heard (if he had been listening right) "the call." The call is what preachers talk about as being called into some kind of lifelong Christian ministry. When he finally decides he should tell Brother Whitespade (the director of the orphanage) he is delighted. It seems that J. Crow is the first ophan to ever even feel "pretty sure." He goes on to say that there was much in-intended benifit to what happened: For his [Brother Whitespade] sake and my own, I am ashamed to tell you this, or even to remember it. For the truth is that I had not changed very much, if any. I did not become a better student or a tamer one, or less troublesome or troubled, or less inclined to wander away through any opening that presented itself. But now I had a reputation with Brother Whi...

"A stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It assigned to the different family members tasks that defined their place in the household. The mother built the fire, the children kept the firebox filled, and the father cut the firewood. It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills and the fidelity to daily tasks." (Albert Borgmann: Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ) So what is our new center? Warmth is now provided in a completely uniform way requiring no demands on our skill, strength or attention. In fact, the warmth device (central heating system) is c...

He was a student of John the Apostle. He was fed to the lions.

"Man rarely comprehends how dangerously mighty he is. In our own days it is becoming obvious to many of us that unless man attaches himself to a source of spiritual power--a match for the source of energy that he is now able to exploit--a few men may throw all men into final disaster. There is only one source: the will and wisdom of the living God. The realization of the dangerous greatness of man, of his immense power and ability to destroy all life on earth, must completely change our conception of man's place and role in the divine scheme. If this great world of ours is not a trifle in the eyes of God, if the Creator is at all concerned with His creation, then man--who has the power to devise both culture and crime, but who is also able to be a proxy for divine justice--is important enough to be the recipient of spiritual light at the rare dawns of his history. Unless history is a vagary of nonsense, there must be a counterpart to the immense power of man to destroy, there ...

I am preaching on Sunday and my text is John 15:9-17. There is one verse in there that I think is particularly difficult to hear, yet, I think we desperately need to hear it and try and work out out. Jesus is speaking and says "You are my friends if you do what I command you." (v. 14) The greek word for friends is derived from the verb phileo which in John's gospel is used interchangeable with agape. So really he is saying "you are the ones I love if you do what I command you." What do you guys think about that? I guess on one hand, we know plenty of scriptures to explain that God loved us even while we were enemies and for God so loved the world that he sent his only son and further down in this passage, Jesus clarifies that we did not choose him, but he chose us. So, lest we be mistaken, Jesus loved us first. But maybe we don't have access to any real certainty of that unless we do what he commands us. Maybe, in this context, where he has finished his publ...