Get a Life

Doing Beats Watching Any Day

Several things met to create this post.

Someone asked me today what sport was "mine". The context lent the meaning, "What sport do you enjoy watching?" The questioner continued trying to discover what I am a "fan" of--Baseball, football, hockey, etc. I had to confess that unless I am actually a participant, I don't care at all about any sport. And watching someone else play a game just seems silly to me.

OTOH, I watched and listened with great pleasure—joy would not be too small a word—to James Galway's Lincoln Center concert, tonight. But then, having played a number of instruments and having a somewhat larger music "vocabulary"—shared understanding from participatory experiences—than most "sports fans" share with "their" game, the listening/watching experience was quite likely at a different level than most sports fans experience when watching a game.

(BTW, the performance highlighted to me the great chasm between "great" artist and merely wonderful artistry. When Lady Jeanne Galway joined her husband, the difference was readily apparent. She played beautifully, wonderfully, artistically. He played at another order of magnitude beyond that. Stunning—both of them—but more so because of the readily discernable difference between beautiful and truly great artistry.)

The third thing that led to this post was something quite out of the blue. Pushing a cart through Walmart—a Walmart we do not often frequent—I was stopped by a Walmart "associate" in the dairy section and asked, "Aren't you the whistler?" It seems that he recalled my visits to a Walmart in a different town, 20 miles away, where he had worked five years ago. Simply because I whistle tunes, often without conscious awareness, frequently when I am out and about, noodling around here at home, working—whenever.

Why do I whistle so much? Partly because my voice isn't what it once was. Partly because I don't play any instruments so often any more. But mostly because music isn't just something to consume; it is something to do, to make, and it's just there ready to be made.

I rarely listen to music on the radio.

I do not listen to tapes, records or CDs like I used to.

I rarely, as tonight, listen to/watch a concert.

Because music is to be done, music is to be made, not consumed as a passive listener with no creative participation.

Try it. Sing a song; whistle a tune; make some music. It beats the heck outa being just another consumer of someone else's creativity.

And a child shall lead them...

2 Cor 5:17

I was in a curmudgeonly mood. Saw a (lame brained, pinheaded) celebrity quoted as saying that all he wanted was an "authentic life." I commented to my daughter that all he needed for that was a total personality transplant, heck! a pre-frontal lobotomy!

Her comment?

"He just needs to know Christ."

My lil ray of sunshine. (Grown woman: a "lil ray of sunshine"—she'll speak to me about that. :-)

In need of a lobotomy to change your life? Choose Christ instead.

Pass the Torch

The Brightest and Best Need Not Go Hungry for Knowledge

In "email logging" and on another blog, I have often railed against the absolute stupidity of the so-called "public education system" in this country, but take note: there is hope. Another forum (Jerry Pournelle's website) often has contributions from some very bright people (in addition to Dr. Pournelle's comments) suggesting real world possibilities that offer hope for better education. In a recent discussion about possibilities for bright students who are often bored to tears or suppressed in our curent "prisons for kids" system, one offering suggests a real world way for bright kids to be challenged by some of the best and brightest minds who have walked in their shoes in recent years, a way for them to "pass the torch" as it were to many future generations that has not been available until now.

Here's an excerpt from that discussion:

"...sharp and wise guidance does not have to wait until the kids go away to college at age 18. Take just history as an example: Imagine someone video recorded (with highest HDTV resolution or even higher and with two or three cameras) all the history lectures of Samuel P. Huntington, David Landes, and a few dozen other top notch historians who teach history in the large. Make a list of the best guys and find out which ones will work most cheaply to have their stuff recorded and made generally available.

A similar process could be done in physics, math, and other areas with the brightest minds teaching what they think are important things to know.

This is a project so obviously needs to be done. Then superbright kids too young to live away from home can watch lectures made by superbright CalTech, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT professors. This could be done with math, physics, population genetics, psychometrics, and many other subjects. I bet Luigi Cavalli-Sforza would like to have his lectures live on after he has passed on. I bet some other eminent scientists feel likewise..."

Great idea! Books are great for "dialog" with great thinkers of the past, but there can be a wealth of information passed on in the way some folks speak their ideas that might just fire up the engines of imagination and exploration in young minds.

It's a great idea. A "light-sharing" kind of idea.

Merry Christmas: On the Gripping Hand

Christmas=Evangelism

On another blog I wrote a very (VERY) brief comment about the kerfuffle surrounding "Merry Christmas" this year. It's become a tussle phrase for "traditionalists" of all stripes vs. the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade.

But that's not the issue in this commentary. Here's a thought/shade of memory that's almost always present whenever I say "Merry Christmas." I can recall vividly the many times that I witnessed my maternal grandfather openly, extravagantly displaying the Christmas spirit—at all times of the year, in all kinds of places. Here's a typical memory that surfaces or floats in the background whenever I say "Merry Christmas" to someone... and why it does.

Whenever I visited my maternal grandparents as a child or youth and the visit encompassed a Sunday, we went out to eat for Sunday "dinner" (lunch to much of the country :-). Invariably, Dad-Dad would be the last to our table and the last out the door because he had to stop and chat briefly with every person he saw. The conversation, if it were with a stranger, would always at some point allow Dad-Dad (allow, nothing—he made it so! :-) to bring up Jesus Christ, his Savior and Lord. Many of those conversations resulted in brief prayers and an exchange of contact information.

You see, Dad-Dad knew that the meaning and message of Christmas wasn't some warm, fuzzy , nebulous "goodwill to men" that we share at a holiday time, or a time of sharing love with family and friends. No, the meaning of Christmas is the Incarnation and all that implies: sinful man, doomed to an eternity in hell; a loving God who became man in the form of a baby boy in order to redeem this sinful world by His life and propitiary death and provide victory and hope through His resurrection.

When I asked him one time why he always stopped to talk to so many people, many of whom he did not—before!—know, on the way to his table (or out the door), he told me that he didn't want to be the one—missed!—opportunity that perhaps one person may have had to hear the gospel.

"Merry Christmas" is a prayer that God will bless the hearer with a saving knowledge of the life and work, the death, burial and resurrection, the daily presence of One who

" ...being in the form of God, did not think being equal with God something to cling to, but made Himself of no reputation, became a servant, coming as a man, And as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross..."

That's the message "Merry Christmas" holds for those who know Him: We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior. The Light of the World, the Hope of the Nations.

Peace, goodwill toward men.

"Homeward Bound" by Marta Keen

Until Then

You've probably recieved the link in email. It's all over the web/blogosphere. I blogged it last week, but it more properly belongs on my new blog (this one :-). Powerful. The images and the song as well. On the shockwave presentation "Until Then" the voices are (I think) the BYU Singers on their "Road Home" CD. Words and music by Marta Keen, as noted above.

If you've not yet seen it, just stop and view/listen. It takes a while to load, if you don't have broadband, but be patient. It's worth the wait. In a world of darkness, it's nice to stop and walk, even vicariously, in the light of such beautiful lyrics and music, in the light of courageous, hornorable men and women living, fighting, building, and yes, bleeding and dying for a just cause.

I'll not reproduce all the words of the song here, just a snippet. (I want to show some respect for Keen's copyright and so, a short snippet only, as "fair use" :-)

Homeward Bound

...If you find it’s me you're missing, if you’re hoping I’ll return.
To your thoughts I’ll soon be list’ning, and in the road I’ll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end.
And the path I’ll be retracing when I’m homeward bound again.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow....

-Music and Lyrics by Marta Keen

And thanks again, to Bill at INDCJournal for the link.

If you aren't moved by this, you may need a "heart" implant. :-)

The Stuff of Dreams

The Substance of things hoped for...

Just a brief pinprick of light, today. I'll not spend a lot of time explaining details, just leave things to readers smarter than I to figure out.

Any literate person, let alone biblically literate person, recognizes the subtitle. Paul (and if it was not Paul, it was his mental and spiritual clone) wrote that "Faith is the (tangible, measurable, sensible) stuff of things hoped for..." probably never thinking that he'd not be able to get through thick 21st century skulls.

The faith that Jesus and Paul and James (and others) knew and spoke about seems to have about as much in common with the religious faith of most Christians I know as Pope Paul has in common with Michael Moore, as Martha Stewart has with NASCAR. The faith of Jesus and His first century followers was substantial, not the eery will-o-the-wisp, insubstantial, wishful thinking that passes as faith among so many persons of religious persuasions today: theirs was stuff.

I'll not go into the theological, historical, cultural and linguistic commentary that this is derived from, but here it is:

The faith of Jesus, Paul, James and others might better be translated for 21st century ears as "trusting obedience" when viewed as human faith. God's faith is the obverse: it is His eternal, unwavering trustworthiness that makes our trusting obedience possible. I'll pause a moment for the culture clash as you consider God's faith.

...

...

(Sidebar: don't chase the rabbit trail of "faith vs. works"--it's a false dichotomy, as James adequately explains.)

Now, trusting obedience to God is substantial. It is evident to our senses, testable in tangible ways. When we walk by trusting obedience to God, not by our own limited vision and understanding, we do so knowing that He is with us, guiding, providing, protecting as He sees and understands for our ultimate good and for His glory. It is the walking in trusting obedience, living our daily lives in the knowledge of and submission to His desires for us, that is the stuff of hope.

That's faith. It's not a feeling or a manner of thought. It is what we do. And what we do is either faith in God or faith in something else. Many have faith in politics, money, prestige. Martin Luther had an image that dealt with the contrast between trusting obedience to God and trusting in and "obeying" the precepts of anything else. He envisioned the cross of Christ as a burning, searing fire shedding darkness and shadows on the path of those who were looking to anything else but Christ for direction, providence, salvation in their lives. To those who looked to Christ for direction, providence and salvation, however, it is a shining light to their path, illuminating pitfalls that once were hidden in shadows.

Faith. It ain't what you were taught in Sunday School. It's better.

Whistling in the light

A different forum

I have another blog for my gripes, grumbles, complaints and observations about the unbearable darkness of being in this world of woe. The title of this blog, "Whistling in the Light" deals with other things that have occasionally intruded into my "gripes, grumbles, complaints" etc., on the other site.

Of course, "Whistling in the Light" is a play on "whistling in the dark"—as A V van Stekelenburg put it,

"... whistling, seems to be a natural and universal way for humans to cope with a situation of worrying loneliness. Hearing his own sound reassures a person that he is alive and intact (Ostwald 1959:143). “Whistling in the dark” is a well-known phenomenon in the Western world."

Facing our darkest fears—walking alone and frightened in the dark—by whistling a cheery tune in momentary rejection (denial?) of them is a common coping mechanism. And even if not actually whistling, simply pretending that there are no monsters—or even just pretending that we are not afraid of the monsters we know are there—waiting in the dark to leap upon us and rend us to pieces is a form of whistling in the dark.

But I want to talk about whistling in the light. Not denial of our helplessness against the monsters inhabiting our modern world, but a celebration of the fact that we do not face these monsters alone and in the dark—or at least, we do not have to.

"...I will never leave you nor forsake you..." (Heb 13:5).

So, on to "Whistling in the Light."