Just a quick note, today.

I've been working on a new project for the last week or two, a wilderness survival website/blog www.howtosurviveinthewilderness.com that's geared towards those with a love for the wilderness but no practical training in survival. My hope is that I can help prevent someone having a simple hike in the woods turn into a tragedy.

I'm excited about where I can see this going. I've got my first post up over there, and I'd appreciate you checking it out: Wilderness Survival Basics: A 4-Step Survival Strategy

Just As You Wished

Book: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

Authors: Cary Elwes and Joe Layden
Recommended for:  Pie-in-the-sky romantics, adventurers, pirates, sots, and disaffected college students

If you're a reader of nonfiction books about movies and TV, you've likely run across the frequent disappointment (or delicious schadenfreude) of learning that a cast that thrilled us on the screen absolutely loathed one another off camera. It's a frequent enough tale that I approached this book - featuring one of my most-loved films - with a certain amount of trepidation. With a movie this delightful and a cast that seemed to have such fun together, it would be crushing to find out that it was only smoke and mirrors.

You'll be happy to hear, then, that all was well behind the scenes of "The Princess Bride". Mr. Elwes' retelling of his experiences in gaining the lead role of Westley through to the bittersweet final scene gives the distinct impression that filming the movie was every bit as fun as watching it. Indeed for the cast, paralleling the experiences of the characters, there were moments of danger (and injury), harrowing terror (comes from having an author on set), riotous laughter, travails of all kinds, unconscious giants, and falling in love.

I fear to say more would take away from your delight in hearing Mr. Elwes' stories for yourself. And you should. Without delay. Get it here.

I've Got Your Glass Slipper Right Here, Sister

Book(s):
 Cinderella's Secret Diary: Lost by Ron Vitale
 Cinderella's Secret Diary: Stolen by Ron Vitale
Stars: 3.5
Recommended for: angst-ridden teens with a serious Prince Charming complex,  people who like their fairies with a little more menace, and disaffected college students


Everybody knows the story, right? Girl is a virtual slave...wicked stepmother...ball...fairy godmother...glass slippers...happily ever after...yada, yada, yada. But what happens after the wedding? How happy can ever-after
really be?

This is precisely where the Cinderella's Secret Diary series picks up the story. It seems life hasn't been all roses and sunshine for our mouse-loving, pumpkin-riding princess. In fact, it turns out Prince Charming is something of a rat bastard, and his Royal Mother the Queen doesn't really take a shine to the commoner he's married. When Cinderella is unable to produce an heir in a timely fashion, things go from tolerable to acutely tense around the royal castle.

To escape her misery and the scrutiny of the royal household, Cinderella arranges for a trip to France in spite of the fact that their two countries are on the verge of war. She and her best friend/lady-in-waiting go to live in a magnificent chateau for the Summer, and of course there is the requisite romance.

Up to this point everything in the book has been fairly standard YA fare - better written that Twilight, certainly, but sticking pretty close to the script. During their sojourn in France, however, things take a turn.

Vitale re-imagines our heroine such that she is far removed from the clutches of the Disney Princess marketing machine. I'm going to avoid spoilers at all costs, but I can safely say that the magical world of which Cinderella has already had a small taste comes to bear on her life in a decidedly dark and dangerous way.

For the remainder of Lost and continuing into Stolen, this new world of Vitale's imagining engulfs Cinderella, changing her destiny and forcing her to mature beyond the girl sitting in the cinders and ashes.

I'm not a huge fan of the fantasy genre, and I'm certainly not the target market for YA book series, yet the Cinderella Diaries proved to be an enjoyable experience. I could see this being valuable for girls of a certain age; suggesting to them that the reality of life is rarely a fairy tale experience, and perhaps seeking personal growth and maturity should take precedence over finding their Prince Charming.

I Believe the Children Are the Future: The Genesis of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks

Book:

Armageddon's Children, Terry Brooks

The Elves of Cintra, Terry Brooks

The Gypsy Morph, Terry Brooks

Stars: 2.5

Recommended for:  longtime Terry Brooks readers, survival nuts, people who think ‘Lord of the Rings’ is real, and disaffected college students

I’m beginning to believe that book marketing people are one of the most evil forces on Earth.

You see, I had a plan when I started this Cannonball. That plan lasted exactly one book. The second book on my list wasn’t in our local library, but no big deal. I put in an inter-library loan request and moved on down the list.

Third book on my list - Don Quixote. Have you ever seen an unabridged copy of Don Quixote? It’s massive. It’s roughly the same size as the Oxford English Dictionary. Clearly, this wasn’t a book that I was going to cruise through in a week.

So what’s a Cannonballer who’s faced with an unexpected challenge to do? Well, if he’s at the library, he picks a book off the shelf at random - at least that’s what I did. Keeping my rules for book selection in mind, I tried to find a stand-alone book. I arrived at “Armageddon’s Children” by Terry Brooks. I looked carefully at the jacket - it seemed like everything pointed to this being a good choice. Take it home and let the reading begin.

It wasn’t until I got to page 170 - just shy of halfway through the book - that I began to think I might have made a mistake. It was there that Brooks introduced another major set of characters and a completely different story line. What the what?!?!? There’s no way he can wrap all this up in the rest of the book. So I peek at the last page - normally a taboo for me - and there it is, clear as day. “The story will continue in the next novel.” Aww, son-of-a....

The Genesis of Shannara Trilogy - beginning with “Armageddon’s Children” - tells the story of how “Shannara” got its start. I can only infer what Shanarra is, since the term is never used in the text of the three books. It appears to be some kind of magical land where magical things happen. I’m sure it’s very nice and adventures are had by all.

The setting of the trilogy, on the other hand, is a place nowhere near as nice - a post-apocalyptic, nightmare version of the land formerly known as the United States; specifically the Pacific Northwest. Massive pollution as well as nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare have made most of the land unfit for any form of life. Further, animals and humans that have been exposed to the toxic environment have undergone a series of mutations - populating the world with a variety of monstrous creatures.

And did I mention the world was magical? Yep, yep. Magic abounds in this alternate/future America. On the one hand you have demons, servants of The Void, who seek to complete the utter destruction of life on Earth. On the other hand, you have servants of The Word, Faerie creatures and others that seek to preserve life and oppose the demonic hordes and their armies of “once-men”. Chief players on the front lines of this epic battle: the Knights of the Word - humans who have been chosen to carry the magic of the Word and lead the charge against the forces of the Void.

Our story follows one such Knight - Logan Tom - as he accepts a new assignment from his Faerie “handlers”, the Lady and a Native American named . He is to find a magical creature, called a gypsy morph, which has taken the form of a human child. This creature will lead a group of survivors to a magical stronghold where they will be able to endure the destruction of the rest of the world.

Once Logan is underway on his task of finding the gypsy morph, we’re introduced to yet another Knight of the Word - Angel Perez - who is tasked with finding and protecting a group of Elves. Did I mention this world has Elves? The Elves must find magic stones with which they can save the Elvish nation and carry them to the stronghold which the gypsy morph will show them.

Needless to say, the demon hordes don’t want either Knight to succeed, and so monstrous hunters are sent to stop the Knights and their charges from completing their assigned tasks. Hijinks ensue. Enough to fill around 1000 pages over the course of three books.

That’s right. I ended up reading a story that’s 1000 pages long, all so I could avoid Don Quixote because it was too long. The irony isn’t lost on me.

And it’s not that I’m sorry that I read the Genesis of Shannara Trilogy, it’s just that I wasn’t terribly moved by it. The story was engaging enough. The characters were better than one-dimensional. The plot twists weren’t completely predictable. Generally, it was a well--executed piece of fiction. Yet I still found the entire experience unsatisfying.

The entire Trilogy reads more like a fanboy origins story. Normally, I’m all about the origins story. I stuck with Smallville long after the series jumped the shark, because I’m fascinated by origins stories. Maybe it’s just that to care deeply about the origins of this story, one needs to be deeply immersed in the rest of the Shanarra universe.

I think, ultimately, I felt put out by being taken in by the marketing copy. Nowhere did the book warn me that I was starting a series of books. Clearly they knew. “Armageddon’s Children” just ends. There wasn’t any pretense of wrapping up some of the story lines. It was, quite literally, a cliffhanger. So why didn’t the copy clue the potential reader in to this very basic fact? I blame the marketing folks.

Sex, Drugs, and a Brave New World

Book: Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Stars: 4
Recommended for: the 99%, tea party-ers, and disaffected college students

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m used to my imaginary futures being more dystopian. The fact that 99.9% of the inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s future are, in fact, living in a true utopia strikes a strange tone. It’s a major chord resolution that nevertheless sounds discordant. My senses don’t really know what to do with it.

Huxley casts a future that has been given wholly over to industry and pleasure. Everyone is bred and conditioned from the time their egg is artificially fertilized to their last, drug-hazed breath to accept their place in life, to pursue their duty joyfully, to consume as much as possible, and to partake fully and guiltlessly of their pleasures. Any hint of negativity is washed away by prodigious use of the drug soma, which takes them on a peaceful holiday of the mind.

Of course, not everyone gets along well in this world, and this is where Huxley’s narrative kicks in. Members of the Alpha class, the highest caste in the government-controlled society, have the capacity for independent thought although they are highly conditioned to fit in to the rest of society. Despite their conditioning, some few individuals begin to find themselves dissatisfied with the current life and begin to act out in various ways.

One of these malcontents is Bernard Marx, an Alpha-plus whose angst begins, rather predictably really, in a poor self-image due to some physical failings uncommon in those of his caste - he’s somewhat short and scrawny. Because of his differences, he has less success in pursuing his pleasures, and so despite his conditioning becomes fixated on one particular woman. Finally convincing his much-sought-after prize to join him on a holiday into uncivilized territory, they encounter the expected savages and an unexpected, previously-civilized woman and her grown son. Their lives are changed forever, yada, yada, yada, and the book ends along a fairly predictable vector. (What, you think I’m going to spoil the book for you?)

What I’m left with as a reader are confusion and highly conflicting emotions. On the one hand, all the marketing hype on the back of every copy of the book I’ve seen talks about how Huxley’s vision is “terrifying” and “disturbing”. Frankly, I just don’t get that. Compared to say, Orwell, Huxley’s version of authoritarian regime is positively cuddly.

Huxley’s future seems, in fact, a hell of a lot like our present, minus the factories producing the next generations from a test tube. Rampant consumerism, check. Hedonism as a prime motivator for living, check. Dubious nature of any true free will, check. The primary difference seems to be that we haven’t abandoned some of the things that Huxley’s world cast away long before the events of the book: familial love, philosophy and religion, ideals of independence and self-governance.
 
All of this, given the similarities, makes me wonder whether Huxley has really cast his net that far. Granted, it was pretty radical for 1932 society, but in the end how brave or new is his world? Or was Huxley incredibly adept at anticipating the forces of change at work around him, letting him open for his readers a hazy window into our present day?

#CBR4 List Selected

I've completed the final list of selections for the Cannonball Read 4. I feel good about it. It's fairly balanced, covers a breadth of genres and authors, includes works both classic and modern, includes fiction and nonfiction, and each of the books appeals to me in some way.

Title	Author
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
Tigana	Guy Gavriel Kay
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes
The Prince	Niccolo Machiavelli
The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett
Unbroken	Laura Hillenbrand
State of Wonder	Ann Patchett
Lolita	Vladimir Nabakov
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold	John Le Carre
A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. LeGuin
Catch-22	Joseph Heller
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin
Season of Life: A Football Star, A Boy, A Journey to Manhood	Jeffry Marx
Volt	Alan Heathcock
Madame Bovary	Gustave Flaubert
2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke
The Neverending Story	Michael Ende
The Name of the Rose	Umberto Eco
Atlas Shrugged	Ayn Rand
The Art of War	Sun Tzu
The Night Circus	Erin Morgenstern
The Catcher in the Rye	J. D. Salinger
Neuromancer	William Gibson
Slaughterhouse Five	Kurt Vonnegut
Heroes Die	Matthew Woodring Stover
Rumpole of the Bailey	John Mortimer
Someday This Will Be Funny	Lynne Tillman
Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck
The Way of the Superior Man	David Deida
Cyrano de Bergerac	Edmond Restand
Eye of the Needle	Ken Follet
The Anubis Gates	Tim Powers
On the Road	Jack Kerouac
Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	Phillip K. Dick
In Search of Lost Time	Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf
Gaudy Night	Dorothy L. Sayers
There but for the	Ali Smith
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell	Susanna Clarke
The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka
Blood Meridian	Cormac McCarthy
Elantris	Brandon Sanderson
The Marriage Plot	Jeffrey Eugenides
The Daughter of Time	Josephine Tey
Fletch	Gregory Mcdonald
The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner
Ringworld	Larry Niven
The Day of the Jackal	Frederick Forsyth
Talion: Revenant	Michael Stackpole
For Whom the Bell Tolls	Ernest Hemingway

Where to Begin?

Wow. I'm really intimidated by this Cannonball Read challenge. 52 books seems like a lot. Narrowing down to a list of 52 books seems just as harrowing.

In order to make my task lighter, I thought I'd come up with some rules to help me craft my reading list for #CBR4.

1. I'll select my list from some of the various lists of greatest novels found around the Internet. I'll try to limit these lists to some of the most respectable-seeming. That probably means I'll favor lists presented by a select few educated persons over a "vote for your favorite"-style list.
   
2. No re-reads. If I've read a book already, it doesn't make the list.
3. On a related note, if I've seen the movie already, I can't include the book on the list. I may make exceptions here, though. For instance, I've seen Blade Runner, but I might still read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep because the link between the two is by all reports shaky.
4. On the other hand, I might consider doing a joint book/movie review if I've neither seen nor read either work.
5. CBR has a 100-page minimum for selections to count. I may need to add a maximum limit, too, if I'm going to get through all 52 books in a timely fashion. An 1000+ pager could throw my whole schedule into chaos.
6. ??? I don't know. Do I need more? Maybe this covers it.

Now. To the list!

Coming Soon to this Blog: #CBR4

Let me take a moment to announce that I have signed up to participate in Cannonball Read IV. CRB4 is a reading challenge sponsored by the folks over at Pajiba a delightfully snarky movie and pop-culture review site that I frequent. My goal - the full Cannonball, read and review 52 books in one year.

Seeing as how I have had a rather shaky track record on this blog, wish me luck. Maybe I'll finally get in the writing habit. :-)

From Me, to You

As some of you might already be well aware, my friend Frank honored me with a "From Me to You" award on his blog back towards the end of March. Since I just saw Frank's post this evening, I'm a little belated in getting a response posted.

The task as I understand it, is to deliver to you my patient reader a list of seven truths of an astounding, scandalous, and deeply personal nature. And if one is a rather dull, aging computer programmer with a bent for philosophical theology, one is at the very least to post a few tidbits that aren't likely to bore the reader, whose life is invariably far more interesting that one's own. Once this is accomplished, the award is to be passed to seven more bloggers who will in turn spin up even more truths for the blogosphere's enrichment. So here goes:

1. My wife had a print of the attached image (a Picasso) in her home growing up. While not technically a truth about me, it is nonetheless interesting.

2. I am rapidly approaching my 16th wedding anniversary, and no it doesn't seem that long at all. In fact it is incredibly sobering to think that I'm not somewhere around 16 or 17 years old still. Amazing that the aging process marches our bodies down a steady path, yet our minds remain to some extent youthful and timeless...or in my case, immature.

3. I once walked a number of blocks of Hollywood Boulevard dressed as an ant. Yes there is a story...perhaps I'll tell you someday.

4. One of my "bucket list" items is to develop my skills in stalking, camouflage, and invisibility to the point where I can approach and touch animals in the wild. This has everything to do with personal challenge, and nothing at all to do with picking dangerous animals. The prey animals (deer, rabbit, squirrel, etc.) tend to be hyper-vigilant and aware, and thus make a good high-water-mark for these skills.

5. I am the oldest child and oldest grandchild on both sides of my family. My parents are both the oldest children. I'm not sure whether this is an advantage or disadvantage, really, but it is my place in life and within my family.

6. I am the fourth generation of Southerland men to have served as a professional Christian minister. That said, I find my faith is currently in a state of flux, and I am loathe to answer the question, "What do you believe?"

7. If I had the freedom to every day pursue any activity I wished, I would have a very difficult time choosing between all my interests. At the moment I have a number of books and articles I'd like to write, both fiction and nonfiction. There's at least one play I started writing and would like the chance to finish. I have a number of songs I've written and would like to record and perhaps sell to an artist. I would love to spend more time developing my musical talent via trumpet, guitar and voice. I have acted in dramas in the past and would welcome the opportunity to take the stage again. Then there is my love and growing involvement in primitive skills and wilderness survival, that could take me on a months - if not years- long trek into the wild areas of our continent and a radically different lifestyle of adventure. And if money were no object, I'd buy a submarine.

8. Since number 1 was arguably not a truth about myself, consider this a bonus to make up for it. Despite being a generally outgoing person, I have relatively few good friends. I get along with and enjoy the company of many fine people, yet there are only a handful of individuals that I can consider true, deep friends. There are perhaps a number of reasons for this. Most notably, I tend to divide my time between work and home, and there are few hours left at the end of the day and week for developing friendships. While I am friendly with many people, there are very few people whom I have found accepting enough to love me as I am without reservation. To those cherished friends I offer my sincere thanks for sharing my life.

Now the hard part...7 people to carry the torch...Problem is, I don't follow that many blogs...
1. I, too, will drop the gauntlet at Manda's feet over at About the Journey. Maybe if enough of us do this she'll write again in 2010.
2. And seriously...that's all I have...I'm open to suggestions

Fundamentalism

This has been banging around in my head for a couple weeks now, and I finally decided I'd let it out to play so that I could get some rest. Here goes...

Since at least 9/11 (/2001, for my anal retentive readers), our culture has been saturated with the words fundamentalist and fundamentalism. Our oh-so-balanced-and-fair-and-not-alarmist-at-all-really media make sure that it is used a minimum of five times on every broadcast. (I'm pretty sure this FCC rule was passed as part of the Patriot Act.) Yet I posit that the common vernacular definition of this word is lacking in some key ways.

Most people associate the word(s) in question with religion. This is, of course, partly accurate, but only partly. More pointedly, the average Western Joe/Joanne on the street will identify two religions specifically: Christianity and Islam. Again, this is understandable given the media bombardment we have undergone during the last eight years.

There is something critically important missing in this understanding of fundamentalism. While there are significant examples of fundamentalism at work in the Christian and Muslim religions, we too often fail to acknowledge that fundamentalism is present - and indeed appears to be growing - in all World religions and cults. Even more critical, I see evidence that fundamentalism is growing at an alarming rate in every human ideology - religious or secular.

So how would I define fundamentalism? Simply this:

Fundamentalism is the holding of a deeply held belief system to the extent that one's beliefs become absolutely exclusive of all other belief systems or points of view, and adherents to opposing belief systems present a clear and present danger to the vitality of one's own belief system.

A Fundamentalist is one who holds their worldview in such a manner.

Some expansion on these definitions is in order, I think.

First, deeply held beliefs are human and good. I'm not at all arguing against deeply held beliefs of all stripes. It's how we get by in life. We have to put together a worldview that lets us take our next breath, or we will spend our lives paralyzed.

Most people adopt the worldview that their culture and significant authorities in their lives give them without much thought, and they do so primarily because they need the worldview to survive, and life is hard enough work without over thinking everything, anyway. Indeed, I would argue that most if not all worldviews are adopted emotionally first, and any rationality that is done to solidfy them is done after the fact, but that's really another topic for another time.

So just having a deeply held belief system does not make one a fundamentalist. Speaking openly about one's belief system doesn't make one a fundamentalist. Choosing to live in a way consistent with one's belief system, through one's ethics, priorities, goals, expenditures of time and money, etc., does not make one a fundamentalist. Are we all clear on this point? It's time to stop labeling people who are merely religious as fundamentalists.

So we turn to the second element of fundamentalism: absolute and exclusive belief in one's worldview. This believer says, "Your point of view can't possibly be right, because I know mine is." It is a place of profound hubris.

This is the point most people - with our media makers at the helm - resort to using "fundamentalist" as a label. Arrogance, naturally, is offensive to those whom are deemed "outside" or "unenlightened", and often those so offended fight back with mockery, personal attacks, and the other weapons of modern political warfare.

Furthermore, it is at this point that activists of all creeds and causes become the most vocal. Here, straw men are constructed and burned in effigy. Characters are assassinated. Innuendos and insinuations abound.

And so, on both sides things take a turn. They get ugly. Shouting matches and, at times, physical violence rule the day. True fundamentalism waits in expectation just around the corner, waiting for an opportunity to seize the day.

The lit match that begins the firestorm of Fundamentalism is a small shift of ideals. The true believer makes the leap from, "They can't be right," to, "They can't be allowed to continue!". Fear arrives in force. Fear grips the heart of the believer and they see clearly that their beloved worldview is facing the threat of extinction. "If my worldview is allowed to fall, then the entire universe will collapse into chaos. I cannot survive! We cannot let this happen!!"

And the formula is complete:

beliefs + arrogance + fear = fundamentalism

Make no mistake, fundamentalism is neither isolated nor rare. Certainly there are Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, and fundamentalists of all religions. But there are also atheist fundamentalists, environmental fundamentalists, vegan fundamentalists (though that may be a redundancy), and many, many more. I would wager that every human belief system harbors the potential for, if not the actuality of, a fundamentalist camp within.

So how do we guard ourselves and those we love from this pandemic? Sad to say, but there are some who may have already traveled too far down the road to fundamentalism. It usually takes a major seismic event in one's life to shake loose a fundamentalism that is that deeply seated.

For the rest, there's a simple cure: humility. Recognize that an essential truth of our existence is our finiteness. We are limited by our bodies and minds; by time and space. We don't know it all. We really can't know it all.

There always exist the possibility that our beliefs, no matter how well-founded we believe they are, may be missing vital information. And if that possibility exists, we must hold our beliefs lightly. We must be willing to listen to and learn from one another. We must be willing to honestly evaluate new information that comes our way against our existing beliefs and be courageous enough to let our beliefs change if it is clearly necessary. We must love others above and beyond our beliefs. It is the only way of peace.

Emergent: The Other White Church?

So as I looked around at the crowd gathered for the Emergence 2007 conference I noticed a profound proliferation of Caucasian faces. It really hit me that, with a few greatly-valued exceptions, the Emergent conversation seems to be a phenomenon of white, middle and upper-class Americans and Europeans. Such an obvious fact made me wonder what exactly was going on here.

Perhaps we should ask the larger question, is Postmodernism - to which Emergent is responding - a demographically isolated event? I've read in the literature that Postmodernism spans cultures, but I've seen very few examples of that multi-cultural experience inside Emergent. I see few African, Latino, or Asian examples of postmodern cultural change, but my expertise is limited to the media I've had available either print or video. This definitely will require more investigation to come up with satisfying answers.

Many have lamented the segregation of the American evangelical church. Most commentators seem to cast their dispersions in the direction of persistent, latent racism that hasn't been addressed in the church. There may be some truth to this. I know that my own upbringing has left me with deep suspicions of others that seem to be rooted at a subconscious level, ignoring the deep friendships I've had with many people of other races.

I wonder, however, if the issue of persistent segregation is more due to xenophobia rather than racism, per se. I find myself equally uncomfortable around unknown people who are different than me regardless of whether that difference is race, economic class, or education level. This is not the final word in my relationship with such people, as my reason and beliefs kick in and allow me to push through to really get to know the individuals I meet, but if I am honest I must admit that the initial xenophobia is more often than not my initial reaction.

If we are left with a church culture segregated by such xenophobia, then the very real possibility exists that the entire postmodernity-fueled convulsion that is the Emergent conversation may not be meaningful at all in churches native to these other cultures. This is something we will definitely need to explore as we move forward.

Emergence 2007 - Austin, TX

I was fortunate enough to catch that one of the Emergence 2007 gatherings was going to be here in Austin a few weeks ago and signed up. The first session ended an hour or so ago, and I wanted to give a quick report of tonight's opening session and some comments on the experience.

Tonight's session was centered around the discussion from the stage between four panelists and a moderator. The focus of tonight's discussions was theology in the Emergent movement.

The discussion was carried out in the form of answers to several key questions. First was considered, "What is the Gospel?". Next was, "How do you view the Bible?" followed by, "What is your theory of atonement?" Several other questions were considered as well. (Fatigue is starting to set in, I'm afraid, so my recollections are starting to get a bit fuzzy....sorry.)

One thing that stands out is my own answer to the question, "What is the Gospel?" as it is something that I've been considering at length for a while now. I believe the Gospel is the reality that we who are blind and deaf to the Creator and spiritual things can enter into a dynamic relationship with the Creator after the model of Jesus. I'm going to have to unpack this for you at a later date, but the implications of this are fairly radical.

There were a couple of metaphors that occurred to me over the course of the evening about the various panelists and, correspondingly, all participants in the emergent discussion. The first is related to "how emergent" some individuals and groups are, which can be compared to a swimming pool. Some stand outside the pool because they fear the water. Some are willing to wade in, but they don't get off the steps so only their ankles get wet. Some get in a little deeper, perhaps up to their waist, while others jump into the deep end wholeheartedly.

Each of these groups were roughly represented by the panelists tonight. Some were basically modernist in their beliefs with a heart for Postmoderns. Some sought to balance modernity with postmodernity, while others threw off all traces of modernity. The discussions, correspondingly, were at times tense as people's presuppositions created friction with others'.

Another metaphor occurred to me while discussing the evening with a friend of mine after the session was adjourned. This particular metaphor concerned the paradigm shift between the modernist evangelical and the postmodernist emergent points of view and has its roots in my profession of computer programming. The modernist point of view is analogous to the structured programming model of the seventies and early eighties, while the emergent point of view is like the object-0riented programming model. For my non-techie readers I'll elaborate a bit.

Structured programming was a major advancement from its predecessors. It provided a systematic way of isolating program behavior into discrete, independent methods. Object orientation (OO), however, seeks to model systems with the same entities found in the real world - that is, an object that has data and behavior in the real world is modeled as closely as possible in the program. OO is a more holistic approach to software systems, but it would not be possible without the structured techniques that undergird the object techniques. In the same way, emergent thought relies on the propositional nature of modernist evangelicalism.

The evening was interesting, but not without frustrations. The most significant of which is the fact that a conference about the emergent conversation is essentially a large group of people sitting and watching an emergent conversation, but only participating by submitting questions. Hopefully tomorrow will allow for more interaction.

That's all for now. I'm beat.

His,

Nate

Walk Humbly with Your God...

There's nothing quite like having your sorry, whining butt humbled. No sooner had I sent my previous post, than I was contacted by a recruiter I had worked with before about a new position. "In fact, he said, they want to do a phone interview this afternoon." (That's Monday, Oct. 30 for those of you who are tracking things on the score pad.)

And so, I had a phone interview. It went well. In fact, it went really well. It ended with the programmer who was interviewing me saying he would contact the higher-ups to arrange a face-to-face interview the next day.

I thought to myself, "Cool."

The next morning, my recruiter friend called me back and said, "They want you to start on Monday, is that a problem?" I said, "No, Monday will be fine," and then just stood their shaking my head, grinning like an idiot.

You know, at this point in my spiritual life, I should have known that God already had something working. Yet here I am, still quick to despair, still ready to get frustrated and angry at my circumstances. I'm really hoping that at some point I can get better at this whole faith thing.

Until next time...

His,

Nathan

Trials Of Every Kind...

Anyone else find it frustrating that we're encouraged to press in to God more when we're facing trials...precisely the time when it takes monumental effort to not abandon our connection to God altogether?

I'm currently facing a job change that is neither expected nor welcome. I won't go in to the gory details, but I'm completely annoyed with the prospect of job hunting again. (Is there any possible way to make the process of getting a job MORE unpleasant?) Aside from the rather obvious worries about supporting a family who have a fairly bad habit of wanting a house in which to live and food to eat, there are the myriad more subtle doubts and fears that creep in during the night to gnaw on your soul. (How's that for a Halloween tie-in? ;-> )

Top this with my always-on-my-mind midlife spiritual crisis, and it makes for a real fun day.
:-P

So how do we "consider it all joy"? Are these really the trials that Paul had in mind? Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting to see what lessons God has for me in all this.

Until next time...

Resonance

I’m reading through Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis and over and over again I’m struck by a deep resonance in my spirit with what he’s saying. I’ve had this experience with a number of authors in my life. My first memory of it was reading some of the Chronicles of Narnia when I was twelve or thirteen, maybe younger. I can’t remember which book it is in (and I’m too lazy to go look it up), but there’s a scene in either The Silver Chair or Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Aslan is speaking to one the children who is about to leave Narnia for good, and the child is understandably upset by the fact that he can’t ever get back and won’t see Aslan or Narnia again. Aslan replies with something like, “I am there in your world, only you must come to know me by a different name.”

And there it was—this incredible feeling of awe and peace that seemed to cause my spirit to vibrate from within. My breath caught in my throat. My eyes filled with tears, and all I could do was whisper out words of praise.

I’ve experienced this feeling a number of times, and the enlightenment-trained modernist in me still tries to classify and define the experience. The best I can do is equate it somehow to Jesus’ statement that when He gave us the Holy Spirit that the Spirit would lead us into all truth. In some way I can’t quite explain, I believe this sensation is the Spirit within me confirming Truth as I encounter it.

Since I already hear people preparing a rebuttal, let me add that I am not saying we should abandon all reasoning and follow our feelings in some new-agey, the-truth-is-within-you subjectivism. What I am saying, is that I believe this experience is another spiritual gift that God has given us: a spiritual mechanism that is sensitive to the presence of truth and beauty. I’m grateful for its presence in my life, and I want to be sensitive to how the Spirit uses it to lead me as I journey.

Pot-holed Parables: The Door

If anyone recalls the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon series, they remember the bit called "Fractured Fairy-Tales". This is sorta like that...

To what shall I compare the previous generation? It is like a man who all his life lives trapped in a building with no doors or windows. One day he happens across a door, and his heart rejoices. He leaps and dances for sheer joy of finding the door, and he shouts for all to come and see.

Eventually a crowd grew around the door and the people would talk for hours about how wonderful the door is, and how their lives had changed now that they found the door. People wrote songs, essays, and books about the door, and regularly they would hear people teach about the door.

And then one day a new man appeared whom no one had seen before. Everyone motioned him over to admire the door. He smiled and agreed that it was indeed fabulous to find a door after so long. And then the man did something that no one had done before. He opened the door, and walked through.

A great cry arose from the crowd of people. They decried the actions of this new man; they claimed he had spoiled the door. But none of them followed the new man through the door.

He who has ears to hear, hear.

His spirit was grieved...

I don't think I ever quite understood statements like this from scripture before, but yesterday I think I finally experienced it for myself. My grieved spirit was the result of chasing a couple of links for books that ended up at the Amazon.com pages for books like Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell and Renovation of the Heart and Divine Consipiracy, by Dallas Willard.

I am deeply saddened by the "reviews" so many people feel they have the right to post that do nothing better than assault the characters and personalities of these authors and fellow disciples. I guess at some level I knew that this would be inevitable as people began to explore discipleship to Jesus in a postmodern context. I have often made the statement that I believed I would be reviled as a heretic by those whose version of faith is thoroughly entrenched in modernism. But frankly, the reality is much more gruesome and depressing than I had anticipated.

Of course it's high irony that those who cast doubt on the veracity of the faith of these and other esteemed authors, themselves ignore the simple message of 1 John: If any claims to know God, yet does not love, he deceives himself and the truth is not in him. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Until next time.

His,

Nate

April Already???

Man, time flies.

I've got so much I wanted to put on the website and discuss here. I'm struggling with finding a balance point in life between work, family, church, friends, marriage, parenting, downtime, and my spiritual life. This spiritual exercise (okay, let's face it, ALL spiritual exercises...and physical exercise, too) has taken serious neglect in the meantime.

I can't promise frequent updates yet, but I can say for certain that I'm not abandoning the field. Keep checking back.

Sonnets, etc.

New content on the website is now available. Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of the cheesy poetry...

Check out the "Sonnets (Sorta)" page.

The Price of Freedom

Check out the new content on the website. In particular, see the poem The Price of Freedom. I wrote this several years ago, but it still stirs something in me.