graceful lady

when’s the last time you had candy that offered feelings of a graceful lady?

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having children

You have considered that because Christ was born into this world and suffered and died, He can relate to us. But did it ever occur to you that you have been born into a world of risk and suffering in order for you to be able to relate to Him?

I have never understood the people in my own generation. They don’t want children. Ok, obviously a lot of them do, and have them, but honestly, why are there are so many who don’t want children or fear having them?

What is this fear? Is it purely a fear of responsibility? If that’s the case, the fear comes in two flavors; the selfish and the selfless. The selfish ones patently fear the loss of liberty which having children seems to entail. But the selfless fear is, to be perfectly blunt, more repulsive to me. This is the fear which says, “I’m not able to handle this responsibility, and it would be unfair to the child to be born into my care.

Posh. There may be good reasons not to have children, but if it really does come down to fear, then shame and fie. After all, look at me. I’m a father, and do I have fear? I’m scared shitless.

Shall I enumerate the reasons I’m terrified that I’ll ruin my son? They are too many. Suffice it to say my mistakes and shortcomings give me cause for profound, agonizing terror. My family is a broken, rag-tag cadre of lag behinds, starting with the head, me. (I’m only telling you how I feel, not what it may look like to my gracious and encouraging friends.)

Let me say this unequivically: my son deserves better. I so deeply wish for him to have better than the best I can cobble together.

Tough bananas. He didn’t get better, he got me. And now for that thing that comforts me in all this miserable angst: my son and I got the same deal. And my father got the same deal. All my friends got the same deal. We were born, utterly without choice or even forknowledge, to sub-par parents. I don’t know anybody who got perfect parents.

But we all got life. And as tough as this life is –and as painful as it is to see how tough it is and will continue to be for my son– I can honestly say that every single day I am thankful to be alive. I’m thankful for both the pain and the joy, for both are a gift, and I’m thankful that my Heavenly Father is also a father for my son.

Having children is like agreeing to go over Niagra Falls in a barrel. And not just any barrel, but this barrel right here: this shoddy-looking, banged up barrel with the brackish water sloshing around in the bottom. And you’re going right now, right this second, with barely enough time to hand your car keys, wallet and cell phone to your new, shady looking friend standing nearby. That’s what having children is like. In some sense that’s what it’ll always be like, no matter how long you put it off, or how well you try to prepare. If it’s God’s time for you to have children, there is no such thing as getting prepared first because He has already prepared you in ways you cannot percieve.

Besides, c’mon: it’s Niagra Falls. As you step into your unworthy craft, the corona of spray makes the sunlight dance even as its damp chill raises bumps on your arms. You couldn’t go on a better adventure. You couldn’t go on a better day.

Posted in love life | 7 Comments »

congregation consternation

There was, in the deep, unfinished parts of the Cimmarron Church of God, an elevated baptistry which opened upon the congregation, and basked in the glow of the electric cross which adorned the brick wall above it. After the hymns were done I would tuck my violin under my arm and exit by the louvred door behind the baby grand, and, navigating slowly through the darkness like a cat on the hunt, I would make my way to the hidden stair that led to the baptistry. I’d climb until I was afraid I would be seen by the people on the balcony, and then, quietly, carefully, slowly, I’d settle myself upon the last four steps.

It may be such experiences which have led to my mental regimine when I sit under the sound of the gospel’s teaching. My mind seems to wander, but in actuality it rushes along on parallel tracks, sometimes pacing the sermon step for step, and sometimes ducking through hedgerows of current events to wander far afield. Most sermon’s are staid and predictable –at least I could nearly always predict them. My years of Sunday School seldom leave me surprised.

Of course, sometimes I am surprised, and I am always peculiarly delighted when that happens. At the tail end of one series of revival meetings, our pastor calmly walked up to an enormous paper banner which my parents (and others) had labored many hours to create –a banner which commemorated those very revival services– and tore it down as we all watched. I don’t remember exactly the point he was trying to make, but of course I shot a glance at my mother and father –were they offended? Not in the slightest. My father had a serene and slightly amused smile upon his face, and my mother’s face was animated with suppressed laughter, as if someone had said something hilarious, something true but something not to be openly laughed at. They clearly liked surprises too.

Years later another such surprise came in an evening service in a small house church where my parents had but recently become the pastors. The church was excited, expectant and hopeful now that our family had come. My father handed each person in the little group a piece of paper and a pen. “Write down your vision. Write down everything you believe this church should do and be.” After a few moments he gathered up all the papers, shuffled them into a stack and settled himself as if to read them. As he began speaking, he picked up the first sheet of paper, and crumpling into a ball, he dropped it to the floor. The next sheet he also crumpled as he continued talking. He continued this distruction as he spoke; some he ripped, some he crumpled, one or two he burned. And all the while he spoke to us about the requirement God had for us as a church. All our ideas and notions and visions and plans must yield to God’s vision for our church. I was ecstatic with shock.

And so, always longing for that fresher, surprising kind of communion, I have become a haunt of the outter corners of God’s church: not because I dislike church or eschew unity, but because I love the church enough to hate any substitute for true unity. This unity is as far beyond doctrinal cohesion as a living creature is beyond a pile of charred meat. This unity is a miracle as spontaneous as a waterspout; it cannot be coordinated, contained or reallocated. Committees cannot inspire it. Colleges and synods cannot summon it forth, for by it’s very nature it must come unbidden, uncommanded, even unexpected. It must be a surprise.

I don’t know any way to make it happen, except to seek to make it happen in me. Meanwhile I lurk in the deep, unfinished parts of the Church of God, sometimes creeping through the unfrequented passages, and sometimes bolting across deserted pastures, the booming voices of our preachers fading through my thoughts, seeding the rocky soil of my mind and heart with seeds that have fallen there so often before. We have so much of the seed, and it falls in such even rows. But I am anxious for the shoots to begin to show.

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babel bound

I hear hammer blows falling upon our mother tongue: pounding the sharp edges into smooth concensus. But also the smooth round contexts endure the hammers’ blows, thinning our words and splitting definitions apart like the peninnsulas that appear in a hamburger which was smashed too flat before it hit the griddle. Today I can see across a turbulent bay of spattering grease other persons standing on the same words I use. Once we were neighbors; now we must travel further than the distance between us if we would meet.

Language evolves; any moderately literate English speaker is keenly aware of this. This is not a good thing or a bad thing, any more than cold-rolled steel is a good thing or a bad thing. Steel can be used to build bridges or weapons of war. To take it a step further, it isn’t only what you make of it, it’s also what you do with what you’ve made. Weapons of war can be used to defend one’s homeland, and bridges can be used as access for an invasion. But perhaps I’ve oversimplified the complexity of the problem of language’s evolving nature.

There are, to be blunt, many people who use language to divide rather than to unite. This is the paradoxical soul of language; it is the bedrock of our species’ ability to teach; and from that stone we fashion fortresses which hold our enemies at a perplexed distance. The Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel depicts what Man might accomplish when everybody’s on the same page, and how a simple matter like language brings our greatest works to nought.

The ruin of Babel still hulks on our horizon today; what a grand tower Europe was poised to become in the summer of 1914. Indeed the paradox consumed the League of Nations, and engulfs the halls of the United Nations today. Everywhere in the world are those who believe, if we could just speak the same language, we could accomplish anything. And yet it never quite happens. There are too many at the UN who are drunk on despotical power and the blood of their own people, who pound and shape their words in duplicitous ways to lead by the nose those who really want to believe that everybody thinks the way we think. And so we have diplomats who carefully craft their statements as if to take for granted the principles of Christian Charity in whose cultural soil such charitable impulses never flourished. It is a false and rickety bridge as we learned at Tiananmen Square.

One gulf seems to be growing wider and gapes along the fault line of race relations in America. I know I am not alone in viewing Martin Luther King Jr. as a sort of high-water mark. In his day there were real enemies who stood on the porticos of the State and directed violence upon peaceful protesters. His message was fresh and full of hope and he urged us all, both black and white, to climb out of the darkness on the strength of character and love for our fellow man.

Today the bitterest evil is in being too white if you are black, or in being too friendly to those who are if you are white. In a stunningly racist irony, whites are told they harbour racism if they protest otherwise. And if they really have no trace of racism, then they are utterly beyond hope, for it is buried in their subconsious. All of which leads us to ask, what does the word “racism” mean these days?

The bigotry of some Black Americans, inflicted upon other black people who have succeeded is staggering. There are no mainstream, credible voices among American Whites who use the language of the slave trade to put black people down into a lower place, but Harry Belafonte freely invoked those dark days, denigrating Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as priveldged, pampered slaves serving in the master’s house instead of in the field. And this, 140 years after slavery was abolished in this country.

We have new terms like “race card” and “blaxploitation” while old words like “niggardly” and even “picnic” are put away in shame and dishonor. And as these words shatter beneath the hammers’ blows I grieve to think the day is coming, and in some instances, has already come when I no longer have the words I need to tell my neighbor how I feel and what I think. This is the sort of tragedy which might lead to pride; after all we’re both misunderstood. But somewhere to the east is a crumbling pile of bricks which mocks us all; whoever is to blame in any specific case, it happens at the foot of the great failure of our common race. Maybe we don’t love our neighbors well enough, or maybe our grandfathers didn’t, or their grandfathers didn’t. Or maybe we’re just cursed.

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how i learned to love ebola

“Your commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own.” –Dr Strangelove

There is something about the Texas Academy of Science giving a standing ovation to a man who has just advocated killing 90% of the human population on the earth by means of a contrived Ebola epidemic which reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. Jack was prescient, I tell you.

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sean’s happy place

Penn’s favorite doll is available for $29.99 at K-B Toys

Sean Penn revealed to the New Yorker that when he’s really angry he likes to abuse an Ann Coulter doll, and that he’s put some cigarette burns in some “funny places” on the doll.

Now if Sean were a teenager, this would be a disturbing story. Would you want your teen hanging out with kids who did stuff like that for kicks? On the other hand, teenagers do dumb things sometimes. They don’t always think things through before they pull a stunt.

But there is something grotesque about this kind of childish confession from a grown man. Without any discernable trace of shame he confides to the public that when he’s emotionally frustrated, he takes it out on a toy, a proxy for a woman.

If that isn’t impotence defined, I don’t know what is.

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paris burns while villepin fiddles with labor laws

France doesn’t want to compete in the global economy…no wait they do…well, they sorta do.

Astonishing fact: up til now, French businesses were not allowed to lay off any employee without a Danged Good Reason™. This is a fitting tribute to the nation which gave the world some of the greatest philosophers during the Age of Reason. But now a Villepin-backed law would allow French business owners to layoff the youngest workers, during the first two years of their employ.

This is excellent news if you’re a young French person. Generally the small business owners haven’t been willing to hire the youngsters, even if they desperately need the help, because if they do they’re stuck with them. Forever. Now business owners can give a young person a chance with less risk of being saddled permanently with lackluster employee. Hooray for yutes! Hooray for partial deregulation! *

So who’s doing all the protesting? Is it France’s older workers who are suddenly rendered less competative? Are the old farts lighting police cars and storefronts on fire because they are less attractive hires than the firable young set? If I were a middle-aged French worker I’d be T-O’d. Imagine a new business starts in France (an hitherto almost unthinkable proposition). Who will this new business prefer to hire? A bunch of old curmudgeons that they’ll be stuck with? Or will they prefer to staff a constantly cycling crop of the young and the layoffable? If you were an employer, would you want a workforce that could be taylored to match the fortunes of the company?

But no, wait, it’s not the curmudgeons doing the rioting. It’s the youths –the very ones who stand to gain an unfair advantage from all this hiring/firing– who are the arsonists. Go figure, if you can. Meanwhile, some young laborors may get arrested or injured. Hopefully that will mean their employers can replace them with somebody who isn’t bent on destroying company property.

* Partial deregulation is usually just as evil as the thing in its fully regulated state. This is no exception.

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gag-oogle

The following is a complaint I sent to Google regarding their decision to completely purge thepeoplescube.com from their search results. If you’d like to also voice your complaint, go here.

Dear Google,

I was seeking specific information about a satire website called thepeoplescube.com. Why have you purged it from your search results?

In light of recent decisions you’ve made, I find myself unnerved at the thought that you may have removed this site from your indexes for ideological reasons. China was able to get you to be their enforcer in China, but why be the enforcer here in the States?

Granted, until you become a department of the United States government, you are not bound by those sections of the Constitution which assure American citizens that their right to free speech will not be curtailed. But I am saddened at the thought that in the case of this political satire website you would deviate from your customary practice of not making value judgements about the content of the websites you crawl.

Other companies can put together a good search engine. It may not be worlds better than Google, but it could be just about as good. The only reason you have continued to dominate the web search business is that overwhelming numbers of people trust you to provide fair and comprehensive search results without garish, flashy banner ads.

In your decision to suppress the voices of dissenters, both in China and at thepeoplescube.com, you have begun to undermine that trust, the cornerstone of your continuing success. Before these two incidents I would never have considered purposefully switching to another web search site. I, like many Americans, am disturbed by the oppression of the Chinese people by their government. But there’s generally very little I can do about it. And like many Americans, I don’t like to see my fellow citizens’ opinions suppressed, whatever those opinions may be. But there’s generally little I can do about that.

Well, Google, I think you’ve just given me something to do.

I hearby announce my intention to cease using Google as my search engine of choice. Furthermore, I am placing the following robots.txt in the http file root of chezjoel.com:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

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for the birds

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  –Matthew 13:4

The single direst weakness of the human race is a short attention span.  For all the encounters I’ve had with God, one would think they would stick in the mind from sheer saturation.  But it seldom works that way.  I find it is very difficult to hang on to the inspiration gathered from Sunday’s sermons until Sunday night, let alone Monday morning.  Here is my attempt to cultivate, water and protect some of the seed of the Word of God I heard today.

This morning Chris Bunch of The Jar spoke about the importance of grieving and its role in healing.  And I realized that in some things that had happened in my life, I wasn’t grieving, but was instead still trying to work them out.  And I realized that in other areas I had grieved, and that I was starting to heal.

When I was divorced, when I lost my health, when I lost my job and got into debt, my life tilted sidways (from my perspective).  I see now that I’ve had secret plans to fix all those things.  I was unwilling to live the life I woke up to every day.  I wanted to tell my friends, my family and everyone I met, “this isn’t me, this isn’t who I am.  This is not my life.  Stay tuned, folks, because I’m going fix this very soon.”  But the false hope of a great comeback will make the heart sick.  Tragically, ironically, the constant focus on the comeback leads me to neglect the very things that might lead me out to a better place.  And while I schemed my comeback, the years began to slip by.

Bottlecap from a delicious, refreshing bottle of Honest Tea First Nation Peppermint

Chris Bunch spoke about the invalid who lay by the pool of Bethsaida for 38 years, waiting for his chance to get in the water first.  Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  What a crazy question.  But it is the right question.  I can imagine what would be going through my head if it were me that day lying by the pool.  “Do I want to get well?  What I want is to have my f***ing life back!”  Do you doubt the invalid felt something like this?  I don’t; his answer wasn’t “Yes I want to be healed.”  Instead he recounts how he’d been done wrong, passed over, neglected like so much human compost for so many years.

Was he healed before Christ told him to get up, or was it as he attempted to get up?  John doesn’t say.  But however Christ healed him, and whenever it happened, the only thing He said to the invalid was essentially this:  “Get up, gather up your stuff, and move on.”

We don’t get it in writing (not even from the Gospels) that life after tragedy will be as good as it was before.  The words of Paul don’t sit well with me at the worst of times; he told the Romans, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28]  It is in my nature to look back instead of forward.  “I don’t want this present situation to ‘work together’ for some vague, cakey future good, I want the old good back.”  But today Chris has me thinking that what I’d really like to do is to gather up my stuff and walk the road on which I find myself.

Posted in life | 1 Comment »

a danish by any other name

In the tradition which brought “Freedom Fries” to mom ‘n pop diners across America in the wake of 9/11 and France’s scurrilous cooing at Sadaam, Arabs are showing their umbrage at the Danes by no longer calling the delicious pastries they so love by their customary name. This comes straight from the top; the order was handed down by the Confectioners Union of Tehran.

I heard this story on the radio as I awoke this morning. The radio story didn’t give an alternate name for the sticky treats, however. And so as I got up I tried to imagine what new name the Arabs were using. Palistinian Pop-overs? Or maybe they prefer to have a Cinnamon Syrian with their Turkish coffee. Me, I’ve always thought that Danishes looked vaguely like a little turban. And the cherry in the middle looks like a little bomb…so maybe they call them “Mohammed’s Turban?” I don’t see a problem with this; it’s essentially a reproduction of the cartoon that started it all, minus the offensive depiction of the Prophet himself. The essential, non-offensive message–that Mohammed endorsed the violent slaying of infidels–is left intact.

But it turns out that the truth is much better than I imagined. The next time I’m in Iran, I’m going to make a special point of ordering a Cheese-filled Rose of The Prophet Mohammed.

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