imby

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2010-03-22T13:12:00.001-07:00

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Bright Sadness

2010-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

10 years ago, I wrote a devotional for Lent, drawing on the rich expression of the Christian faith in churches more traditional, and Eastern, than my own. That devotional has been online ever since, and gets a lot of visitors every year, and every year I get requests for the materials to be used in communities around the world. It has also been used and appreciated in my own Vineyard church here in California ... a church not very Eastern, and not very traditional.

I've just taken a leap and revised the material for a print edition, which I'm very happy about: I like being able to hold a physical book. It's available now at lulu.com. (If you are against holding dead trees in your hand, there is a half-price download for your reader.)

Though the devotional will remain online, the book has updated content, some extra woodcuts by Spyros Vassiliou, and doesn't require batteries. Nice!

It's for sale for $10. Check it out.

Outside the Piano Store

2010-01-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

(Insert caption here)

Collage "Sketches"

2010-01-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Pages from a small notebook that I fill with 'sketches' in collage: usually, two or three images stuck together to get my brain going for a session of working on larger, more complicated pieces. Sometimes simply a place to put the too-small collage.

Collage Sketchbook

New Collages

2010-01-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

New Collages, from late 2009

If you are interested in purchasing an original of any of these collages, drop me a line.

Imb ...

2009-11-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

The name of my website, which always needs explaining, is imby.net, and is a play off the acronym, NIMBY. "NIMBY" means Not In My Back Yard, and is basically a "No" vote for anything we feel doesn't belong in our neighborhood, be it a nuclear power plant or a person of another color. IMBY is the "Yes" vote, when it comes to people and community (not necessarily Nuclear power plants). IMBY is also a four-letter domain name that I purchased back when short domain names were disappearing. Sometimes I think it's too "cute" sounding and I want to dump it for something hipper-sounding or web-savvy like "maddale.na", but I still like what imby stands for.

And, once, I looked up "imb" words in the dictionary, and found that there are very few of them, and the ones that are there tell a kind of interesting story. Here's that list (originally posted on imby.net back in the bronze age of the webernet) The list brings to mind the party game where a player has to form a sentence from a list of terms. And ... begin!

Imbalance
the state of being out of equilibrium or out of proportion

Imbecile
a mentally deficient person; especially: a feeble-minded person having a mental age of three to seven years and requiring supervision in the performance of routine daily tasks of self-care

Imbibe
to drink alcohol (and one dictionary has this strange usage note: "formal often humorous"); to receive into the mind and retain (imbibe moral principles)

Imbroglio
a confused mass; an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel); an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding

Imbrute
to sink to the level of a brute

Imbue
to permeate or influence as if by dyeing

Drying Its Wings

2009-10-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

All the dreams of caterpillars
Seem impractical.
Foolish hairy creeps.
Inconsiderate visionaries
Painting airy portraits
For themselves, invisible
To the hive. "Why so shy?
Look to the flowers, grumpy!
Have some nector, honey!
Show some self-respect,
Insect!" Shamed to see
All the winged productivity,
As if the burden of beauty
Were too great, the beast
Takes its own bait
And slinks away to think awhile
about its purpose, and to die.

Now, blind to what's transpired,
And suspicious of a sudden quiet,
It dries its wings in the sun,
And gazes out upon the flowers,
Which bow in its direction.
The butterfly hears a far
Vibration, and wonders
Why, and where the bees did fly.

On every worm, that plows the waste
Of better beasts, the life of trees
Depend. In every creepy caterpillar,
Dreams of beauty brew
Invisible, but not unknowable,
Nor untrue.

Neighbor Love

2009-09-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

If you can't see yourself in your neighbor, see Christ in them.

We know we're supposed to Love our neighbor. That principle is one of the anchor ideas in the Bible. Let's assume we agree that it's a good thing to do. But, it's obvious that it is a great struggle for most everyone on the planet to do well. So, how do you love your neighbor? There's two answers to be found, each in the same Bible.

Love your neighbor as yourself, reads the command (Mark 12.31).

To do this, at the most basic level, you need to see your neighbor like you see yourself (we also remind ourselves that we need to have a basic love for ourselves for this to work ... but the principle is powerful no matter what, because everybody - even the self-haters - function in a selfish mode). So, in whatever way you love and care for yourself, even if very basic, you can and should do that for others ... see that they're fed, clothed, cared for. Compassion and gracious love are possible when we 'put ourselves in their shoes'. God identified with us in this way, by condescending to live in our skin, to put himself in our shoes. This is one way of describing the arrival of Jesus Christ. He's the great high priest who lived the very same life that we do.

But, what if we can't at all see ourselves in our neighbor? What if we have one color skin and our neighbor has another? What if our bank account is one size and theirs is another? What if we buy our clothes off this rack and they buy theirs off that rack? What if our home looks like this and their home looks like that? Hear what I'm saying?

There will always be a kind of person who's shoes we wouldn't want to get into! If that's true of us, are we off the hook? Not at all.

"Then [Jesus] will also say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, accursed ones ..., for I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in; naked and you did not clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me ...'" (Mt. 25.41f)

When the unhappy audience at this talk protested and asked, "When did we fail to do these things?", Jesus said, in essence, 'every time you didn't do it for the person least like you, you failed to do it for me.' How is this so? because Jesus is there in that moment. Jesus is present with the other, especially the suffering, the poor, the weak, the hungry, and the just plain funky. Jesus is present in the very moment we encounter others who are very unlike us -- he's pulling for us, just as he is fighting for them.

So, when we can't identify with our neighbors (near or far), when we can't imagine what it's like in their shoes (because we'd never be caught dead in those shoes) ... when we simply can't see ourselves in our neighbors ... that is when it's really important to see Christ in them.

Fixit Garage

2009-09-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

all the ways we teach

2009-09-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Everything teaches. That is to say that people learn lessons on so many levels, not just from things that are intentionally taught. Parents say, "Do as I say, not as I do!" because 1. our actions often clash with our stated principles, 2. children learn by imitation, and 3. we would like to control what our children learn (but not change our behavior). Forget it.

We need to learn that teaching happens at many levels, not only the verbal/intellectual level. That is to say, content is only one level of teaching. The way we talk (and listen) and the context we create also communicate important truths. For example, if you look at at a normal church gathering, you'll see multiple levels of information transmission going on ... multiple levels of learning taking place.

For starters, at a top level (a conscious level), there is the spoken content, an intentional lesson communicated for intellectual assent. It will include ideas the speaker wants to communicate, a reason for the gathering, and maybe goals for the future. Vision is transmitted, truth is communicated, and boundaries are laid for behavior or discussion. In a sermon given in a church on a Sunday morning, this would be the idea you hope the listeners would leave wrestling with, even the truth you hope they'd grasp.

At a slightly deeper level, the listener will learn values by how the lesson is communicated. Does the speaker sit apart from the listeners? Is there time for discussion? Questions? Is the whole talk manuscripted, or is the speaker willing to adjust the talk based on who is present? Each of these questions gets at how the speaker values the community that has come to hear the talk. In a church context, encouraging discussion (vs lecturing, or "speeching", as Doug Pagitt calls it) teaches the value that the whole community has the capacity to contribute ideas of merit. In the same way, priority given to prayer would communicate a value that God's voice is of (at least!) equal importance to the voice of the speaker. To fail to give time to prayer and listening would communicate a disregard for God's voice, or worse, that only the speaker can hear God's voice, leaving all others dependent). Similarly, the type of language used in a talk may indirectly communicate attitudes of sexism, racism, or other isms, attitudes, or values that may be reproduced in the lives of the hearers.

At a deeper level still the format of a gathering, the experience of coming together, teaches a worldview. What does the speaker (or organizer) feel about community? What is true about this particular group, and how will the structure of the meeting reinforce or compete with that truth? Will they sit and listen and then go home? Do they participate passively? Is the goal of a meeting only to answer questions, agree on some facts, or achieve consensus? What if the organizer was intentional about the experience of the meeting? The venue, style, formality, process, and rythms all "teach" a member of the community what it means to be a member of the community. In a church, our gatherings should have a flavor of heaven. How do you organize that? If we believe that the church is the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, then our meetings probably should not look like a meeting of local business leaders. If we believe that Jesus is the Head of the body which is the church, then do we think that each meeting should be the same as the last one? There is a reason why heaven is popularly pictured as boredom among the clouds.

Church leaders (I include myself in this category) say a lot from behind the microphone about heaven that doesn't exactly align with the experience of our gatherings. What we teach at the top level is not the same as what is being learned at other levels. Do we really want to be caught saying to the people we serve, "Do as we say, not as we do" ...?

ambition is recession-proof

2009-09-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

9-Grain Jesus

2009-08-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

Many thanks in a pretty blue box,
And a cellophane promise
of near eternal shelf-life.
Body of Christ, O.T.C.
(just add Welches - sweet
Purple blood in a bottle). Bland
Doctors of the modern church
Prescribe a Saltine pill
The size of a TicTac -
Without the salt,
Without the sweet -
Once-a-week to guarantee
Community, chased with that blood
That causes cavities.

And here come the Whole Food
Faithful, organo-hippie
Holistics, who Feel For You.
9-Grain Jesus, the Whole
Body of Christ and a glass of
Cabernet. Tipsy, taste and see
That the Lord is ... ooh,
Is that a little seed in there?
Little kingdoms inside
My half-pound loaf.
I could plant this bread
And start a garden,
Or write a folk song
Expounding on the meaning.
Or is it just the wine talking?

Is there need for the bread to tell
A new story, or the wine to sing
A new song? Isn't the story
That was the seed, the song
That made the kingdom
Sing, aren't they big enough
To be contained
In one Eucharistic Chicklet
and some grape juice?

The Warrior / Priest

2009-06-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

This is a woodcut made by my wife's grandfather: Spyros Vassiliou was (until his death in 1984) a great artist, and was a part of an important community of Greek painters in the middle of the 20th century. He also designed sets and costumes for the theater, which is how he met my father-in-law, a playwright from Yale who ended up marrying the painter's daughter. My wife was the first child of that union, and met me in the theater department at Bennington College. And that's pretty much how I came to be in possession of the above woodcut.

I love Spyros' paintings, but I love his woodcuts even more. The artist turned to wood during World War II, when painting supplies were scarce, and during a time when the Germans occupied Greece (the German military had, in fact, a kind of base of operations in the old house that became my wife's family's home).

The woodcuts are simple and display big symbolic themes (freedom, hope, peace, etc), as you'd expect from a war-time body of work. But the woodcut above is entirely unique in the collection.

It shows a Greek ship in a storm, which itself is not unique in a maritime culture. What is unique is that the ship is covered with devils who are threatening to tear the ship to bits, as if the storm was not enough of a threat. Also surprising is that the picture-story is not about brave Greek sailors fighting to save the ship, but about an old priest who stands in the scene praying. Now, I understood this artist to be, like most Greeks, only culturally Christian, even though he was commissioned to paint the interiors of several orthodox churches: there is little sign in his work (or in his family line, I'm sorry to say) of a vibrant faith. But what am I to make of this picture? This is a picture that betrays a faithful vision.

Where did this painter get the idea that priests are warriors? Let's not focus unfairly on Greece, or on the orthodox countries: in no country do priests or pastors tend to reveal themselves to be more than quiet and somewhat harmless participants in society, who know their place. I know of no stories of bravery among the Greek priesthood during the war, and anyway, this is not that kind of militant courage. It takes a different kind of vision to see the true occupation of the priest-who-is-also-a-warrior.

The ship in the image is a symbol for the church, of course, and this priest is not just fighting the only fight that a priest is suited for, but the only real fight there is. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesian Christians that, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the ... world forces of ... darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." This woodcut is a really cool depiction of the hidden power of the priest.

What is equally exciting to me, is that this artist, great-grandfather to my son and daughter, seems to understand that the church is more than capable of surviving rough water ... and that the wise priest sees, with the eyes of the spirit, that the danger to a ship is never really the storm itself, but those forces that threaten to reduce the seaworthiness of the vessel.

Why so Surprised?

2009-04-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

The Christ-like life is full of radical surprises that shouldn't surprise anyone. ... Like how scripture is built of a long series of radical surprises that are only surprising if you no longer believe any of what you read the day before. This is to say that God is full of predictable surprises.

Hope almost takes the fun out of God's surprises. And this is to say, hope almost takes the surprise out of God's surprises. But it is so sweet when God does his thing, that even though we believed, we rejoice when we dig up the treasure we were pretty sure was there all along.

The French language, modern art, and the truth that is hidden until we resolve to find it

2009-01-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

When I hear someone speaking in french, I know enough to recognize that they are not speaking gibberish, though I admit, I have to take it on faith, as I would not be able to tell you if two french-speakers suddenly decided to mock my ignorance by babbling nonsense in a french accent. Though I can't recognize the meaning in their conversation, I know they are speaking a language they both understand, and so I assume there is meaning there. Even if I can't understand it.

Modern art museums are great places to see the opposite assumption at play. It should be obvious that the whimsical, obscure, or simply bizarre creations that fill modern art museums are there because some kind of conversation is going on. The artist speaks the same language as certain patrons-of-the-arts, and seems to have something of significance to say ... or we could assume their art would not be hanging in a building you had to pay to enter. And yet, some people still walk around modern art galleries and mutter things like ... "I just don't get it"; "My 3 year old could do that"; "That is so stupid" ... or other expressions of frustration at what appears to the commentator to be a meaningless communication ... nonsense spoken in an elitist accent.

Why can't we treat art as a family of foreign languages and trust that there is a conversation going on, even if we can't penetrate the dialect? There must be meaning, even if it is obscure to us. An adult wouldn't tolerate a conversation if their dialog partner began to speak like a 3 year old.

Now, it must be true in art, as in language, that some communications merely play at intelligence, mimicking sophistication. We've all heard adolescents talk like adults: it may sound sophisticated, but that doesn't make it so. But some hearers will be fooled, maybe because they are not so intelligent. So with art, just because it is hanging on a wall it doesn't follow that the art-maker and the art-lover are having an intelligent conversation.

But it remains an exciting possibility that so much art that is obscure to us may become a rich conversation that we can participate in, if we just learn the language. I can learn french and listen in to conversations that were once unintelligible to me. I can even participate by speaking into those conversations, breaking free of passive, aural voyeurism. I can also and in the same way, learn the language of modern art and intelligently critique the various expressions I find in museums, breaking free of passive (aggressive) voyeurism.

The cliche-spouting art-critic who says, "My three year old could do that!" doesn't understand the language of modern art. If they understood the language, they would understand the conversation that an artist is participating in, and in this way they may even come to understand the artist's point. They still might not like what they see on the walls, but they wouldn't talk about it as if it were made by morons.

Can we trust that a conversation is meaningful, even if we don't speak the language? Can a piece of art have meaning, even if we don't have the language to engage it meaningfully? Can anything have meaning apart from our capacity (or willingness) to appreciate it? The question, in fact, is can we hope to hear or see the meaning behind mysteries? One alternative is to determine that those around us who appear to be engaged in meaningless transactions are in fact, idiots. That would be sad because there are so many conversations from which we could derive so much benefit. There are of course conversations that can change lives. Some of them are spoken in strange tongues.

The Christian conversation is one of these mysterious dialogs. It often has qualities that immediately alienate those within earshot. Something in the dialect that smacks of arrogance ... intolerance, or worse: immaturity and stupidity. Christians should pay attention to critics who complain that our dialect is repellent or hard to penetrate. But too much of the critique of Christianity sounds like the complaining of rubes who walk through a modern art museum imagining that the artists are the childish ones.

portraits in collage

2008-10-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

A series of character studies in collage from the last part of this year.

Portraits in Collage

communion

2008-10-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

Gold fades to black
as if the baker slept and burnt the bread
and then, if that weren't bad enough,
the fire went dead.

and while the dark and cold
of loneliness crests
and froths tsunami-like
above his village,
He sits down to eat with friends,
Nero-like in disquieting
self-conscious annihilation.

He tears at bread. "I'm torn
between you
and me."
He rips at the loaf that's warm and hollow
enough for a tap
to reveal it was finished.
The empty in-between defines
the shape of things.
The rising golden warmth says
you're home at any hearth.

Then he drains the skin, the heart
about spent, emptied, divided
and walked between.
He says his thanks, and pours a drink,
reminding the cup of it's purpose:
to be full and always
to be emptied--the perfect
pregnant surface
offered to the thing that breaks it.

"I'm giving me to taking you.
Your hungry bowl, my angry cup;
your cup of wine, my empty bowl.
My wine delayed
until my home
is warmed again".
This bowl of time stopped
at the rim
and quivering;
its surface holding history back--
not like glass, which keeps us from
the things we're looking at,
but like wine, which is like blood,
which they say is thicker than water,
which could tell you a thing or two
about tension.

waiting,
for a tilt of the planet
towards tomorrow.
Remembering,
to hold the wave aloft.
Waiting
for the bread to rise,
and the cup to fill and
hoping, remembering ...
that home is where the hearth is,
and if that weren't good enough,
the fire still has life in it.
and the meal calls us back to the table.

New Collages

2008-10-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

Some new works, including new notebook covers. Other recent works were inspired by the lyrics of a musician friend, Nick Bartunek of Picture Atlantic.

2008 collages ...

The Thing

2008-01-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

The Thing, the Golem, and what's at the heart of the stone

If you go to adherents.com you can learn many interesting things related to religious practice in the world, including the religious affiliation of any famous person. One of my favorite pages on this site is the list of super heroes and comic book characters. Yes, this is the place to learn that Marvel's Elektra is Greek Orthodox, Superman is Methodist/Kryptonian, X-Man Sabretooth was an atheist who saw the light ...

"... Wolverine attends the funeral of [his arch-rival] Sabretooth, and learns that Sabretooth became a devout "born-again" Christian. Sabretooth's funeral was attended by scores of people who testified about how Sabretooth had touched their lives and had been an inspiration to them."

Other facts obvious (Super Bahai Girl is ... Bahai) and less obvious (the character Wiccan, from the Young Avengers, is not a fan of Harry Potter, but a reformed Jew) abound.

One of my favorite comic characters is The Thing (not really the slightly stupid-looking movie character from recent films, but the Jack Kirby creation). The Thing, one of the Fantastic Four, was turned to stone by some kind of space-radiation. There is something iconic in this hulking rock-man that makes me think of humankind in general (made from earth and bound by our "hearts of stone"). On The Thing's page, Adherents quotes a story about the issue where his Jewish faith is revealed ...

... Bending over the fallen [Jewish pawn broker] Sheckerberg, The Thing prays the traditional "Sh'ma Yisrael," the Hebrew confession at death. Sheckerberg survives and asks Grimm the question on many readers' minds: "All these years in the news, they never mention you're Jewish. I thought maybe you were ashamed of it a little." Grimm explains that, to the contrary, he did not want to bring shame on the Jewish community. "Figure there's enough trouble in this world without people thinkin' Jews are all monsters like me." When Grimm tries to return the stolen Star of David, the pawnbroker refuses it, likening Grimm to the Golem--the legendary living statue said to have protected Prague's persecuted Jews."

Once my young son and I were trolling in our local Target: he'd saved up a few dollars and wanted to buy a toy. We saw a Thing action figure. I thought it was pretty cool and pointed it out to him. He shrugged his approval and kept looking. He had trouble making up his mind, and I kept asking him, hey what about this Thing doll? He got as firm as a six year-old can get and said that he didn't really want that one. Then I realized ... I wanted it. Hey, I have six dollars! Timo bought the giant green-foam Hulk Punching Fists with Realistic Roaring Sounds, and I bought The Thing, who still stands over my computer.

Timo was stuck with me in my office one summer day, and I gave him the doll, showed him how he could push him flat against a piece of paper and draw his outline, crime-scene style. The resulting images were inspiring (to me ...), and I expanded the project. Without realizing what we were doing, and without being aware of Benjamin Grimm's Jewish story at the start, we created a kind of Old Testament Review of characters, even evoking the story of the Golem, the earth monster with a heart that is at the root of the Frankenstein story (another story with surprising theological implications). The project, as it stands, contains the original 'outlines', a freehand sketch by Timo, and a couple of the collages I've made that feature Ben Grimm.

[Gallery]

Religious Propaganda and the anti-tract

2007-10-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago, a few of us in my church were working together to think of ways to get the gospel out in our community when the subject of tracts came up. These are the little bound pamphlets which tell a simple story and invite the reader to make a commitment to Jesus. I do not like tracts. We agreed that most people in our community do not like the way they boil down the good news into easily swallowed, bite-size morsels. This is just stating a fact about us, not stating a fact about the value of this method of communication. They may be just the trick in another place (or time). One or two of our group were going to write some for themselves, reasoning that we could do a more personal job of communicating the gospel to our people.

I woke up one night stressing about this, thinking, "Oh, man, are we really going to hand out little brochures about God?" I was so distracted by this, and concerned over whether we would be attracting people to the Kingdom or scaring them away, that I resolved to try and write something myself. "If I had to hand out a piece of paper, what would I want it to say?"

So begins my experiment with the anti-tract. These projects reflect my ambivalence about this method of communicating faith. There is a healthy "anti" component here. But there is also some "pro" that surprised me a bit. I think this ambivalence will be clear in the self-consciousness of the pieces. Follow the link to see the works.

View Propaganda

cover me

2007-09-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

I've been covering my notebooks ever since I started scratching the brand names out on undecorated books I bought. Then I started covering them. Then I started sticking more things on. Then I started making art out of my feelings when I opened a new book. It started simple, and it's gotten to be a regular ritual, one that is really satisfying, encouraging, and freeing. As a work of art, it is more liberating than most things I do, because there are no external constraints on my collages. I'm just doing it for me, and the pace is right: about every two or three months, I start a new book, and a new collage. I may make it before I start writing, I may wait until the book has begun to be written.

Made and Unmade

2006-07-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

We live in a world full of things that are made, that have a beginning and an end. Some of these things are made by the hand of God, some are made by human hands. There is also a thing that is unmade, without beginning or end. That thing is the first Maker-of-Things. That thing, that entity is God. One entity without beginning or end. A world of things that are made and had a beginning, many of which will end some day .... And we mix it all up. The made and the unmade. We treat the Unmade as if it once was, but isn't now, and we treat the Made Things as if they are eternal. God is the eternal thing, but we forget he exists, and his creation --we creatures-- we are like a blink of an eye, but we think we have the wisdom and power of eternity naturally within us. This is similar to our habit of giving God the credit for evil ("Why would God do this to me?") and giving the created world the credit for goodness, beauty, and power. Idol worship today has this distinguishing quality, for we don't worship wooden statues, but we regularly ascribe value to things which don't deserve it.

In The Image Of

2006-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

We say, "We are made in the image of God, and must allow God to act on us, opening our minds and hearts to be changed". And occasionally we honor this understanding. But it has also become a cliche to say that for most of our history we have tried to make God in our image, and we say this with unqualified condemnation.

Isn't it, though, the essence of the grace of God that he not only indulges this frequent mistake on our part, but actually allows--allows!--us to "change his heart and mind". Isn't the whole Gospel the story of God not only being moved by us creatures, but of God being made in our image?

Jesus fully reveals God (John 1.18), yes. He is the "image of the invisible God" (Col 1.15), yes again. But of much more significance to the church, he is the image of me.

I read in Philippians 1.7 that Jesus let me make him in my image: "He was made in the likeness of men". God could have used various means to disabuse us of our confusion about who the creator and who the creature is. But he let us, instead, make him in our image. We by our selfishness, pride, gluttony, fury, violence--what the bible calls sin--are perpetually and eternally cut off from our good God. But I read in 2 Corinthians 5.21 that God made Jesus into me: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf".

Jesus, by becoming me--by becoming sinful humankind (a second Adam, as it is said)--and being truly cut off from God, from life, on the cross, allows me to become like God again. I become "the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5.21 again). I die with Christ on the cross, because he dies in full identification with me. Until I die with Christ (my image bearer), I cannot again bear the image of the holy God.

Or to put it in simpler terms, God let us make God in our image, so that we might have God's image restored to us.

Didn't our hearts burn within us?

2006-02-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

In the beginning (of the bible) God said, "let there be light!" and it was so ... "Let there be life!" and it was so. God's words appear to have creative power. But do we believe that God can make things with words? We might ask, "Is this language to be understood as poetic?" And if we ask this, do we mean, "Not to be taken seriously?" Does poetic language have less a claim to legitimacy? Is poetic language less true? No that can't be so.

Because the bible is full of non-trivial challenges to our logical analysis of reality, we tend to call it a great book full of dramatic stories whose writers certainly took a little poetic license. And then we dismiss it as an illegitimate discourse on reality.

But this isn't fair to poetry, nor to God. Do we regard Shakespeare with less seriousness, because he wrote poetry? No, in fact we are thankful that there is a way of writing that encompasses the huge emotions that the great writer of love poetry felt. And so poetry might do a better job of capturing huge love than prose. And so, what better way to communicate the greatest love story ever told? To put it another way, we can be thankful that the Bible is not full of stories told in pedestrian, scientific language. Because to just hear the facts is not to hear the story.

Got a little religion, got a little politics

2005-12-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

There are people who are naturally religious--or should I say tend to be religious. Such people get the worst press. In fact I think most people (except religious people) don't trust those who are very or habitually religious (can I pick a single modifier?).

But when someone who is not normally religious has a religious experience because they have been hanging around people of real and significant faith, or because they've been reading the holy scriptures (without a history of doing so ... this is key), then we say that this person has in some way, got religion. And, I think, we are more inclined to pay attention to such a person. We do trust them more. Maybe it's because we think they are in a religious way for the right reasons (experience), instead of the wrong reasons (personality, upbringing, habit).

I think politics is like this in a way. Someone who is naturally political makes me nervous. The person who tends to get involved in the political discussion doesn't really inspire me to join in. But can there be a person who we say got politics--in the same way it happens with religion-- because they have had some kind of experience which draws them in? I would trust this person more: they are involved because of what they have seen and heard on the street (where politics ends and begins), not because they 'always have been'. They are not into politics because of upbringing, personality, or habit. They are involved because they experienced something personal, an event which changed them. And from that day on, a response was required.

Now what if the two were combined: religion and politics I mean (I know that I am not the first to suggest it, and I shudder). What if Jesus people started going out on the street more, and spending time with the kind of people Jesus spent time with? People who do this might see things that few politicians ever see. If we do this, if we go ... having got religion, we might just get politics.