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Tuesday, June 29, 2004 To Know and Be Known It's funny sometimes how we find ourselves facing difficult issues exactly at the same time a close friend finds herself struggling with the same thing. I suppose that's God's way of reminding us that we're not entirely alone, even when we feel that way. Why is it so hard to be vulnerable? To feel confident that someone else cares? We hide from each other, and when we do reveal those deep parts we're often hurt. Perhaps not immediately, but eventually we all fail each other. Close friends become strangers. Even when they promise otherwise. Rejection comes easily. In such a broken world, how are we to trust anyone? How are we to believe that there will be friends who stick around for life rather than an intense interim? And if they don't stick around, was the investment of time, energy, and emotion wasted? Yet as Shinji discovers in Evangelion, we have to take people as they are, even if they will hurt and be hurt by us. It's a statement to the degree of our fallenness that we have issues trusting each other, that we can't know each other or be known fully. But that doesn't mean that we can shut ourselves off, that we can shield ourselves--it just deadens us. By protecting ourselves, we eventually destroy the things that make life worth living. As CS Lewis wrote, "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself." Of course, knowing and applying this are two different things. ^ Top | 4:19 PM | | | 
Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Christian Carnival XXIII Welcome to the 23rd edition of the Christian Carnival, which was started by Nick Queen at Patriot Paradox as a weekly collection of blogs on topics from a Christian perspective. Since I'm hosting this week, I actually read through every post (whew!). Following the author's description after each listing are my own two cents. The suspects: The Bible Archive: Knowing the Will of God "In any and all of my decisions I should be looking for God's will, but I have a problem.I don't think that I have ever seen a shaft of celestial light illuminating the correct decision. What is God's will in my life?" A point well-taken: we spend so much time worrying about God's will in personal decisions that we forget that he's already clearly stated a large amount of what he wants us to do. Digitus, Finger & Co.: Christian Antisemitism Today "First in a series of posts about anti-Semitic attitudes among non-Jewish Christians." It's disturbing to think how racist even Christians, who are called to love unconditionally, can be. unravelled: Unconscious Faith "We talk about wanting faith that moves mountains but don't realize the faith implicit in the most insignificant things we do every day. Perhaps if we would learn to be conscious of God's presence with us throughout the day and learn how dependent we are on Him for even the smallest things, we'd find it easier to let go and depend on Him for greater things." God aside, we have operate by faith that our world is as we believe it is. We have faith that when we switch on a light, it will turn on. Or that when we email a friend, the letter will get there. So we all have faith, to some degree. Devotionals by Donna: Playing for My Father "A post conveying what a father is and most importantly how a father reliant on God is an example of our Heavenly Father's love for us." The story says something about a son's determination as well. Imagine what we could do if we were all so persistent.... Joe Mckeever.com: Some Thoughts On This Horrible Blessing (Submitted by Marty McKeever) "On Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, death and resurrection through Jesus Christ." Why did Jesus weep? Perhaps because he could still feel the mourner's pain even though he knew exactly what happened after death. It's an empathy we don't always demonstrate. The Dawn Treader: Speak Up for Marriage Before the Courts Speak for You "Marriage is the one of only three God-ordained institutions. Its role is to bring God's shalom into families and into societies. Many Christians are silently sitting through the current cultural debate on marriage. Preferring to sit this one out, many evangelicals are allowing poor moral arguments to go unanswered in the marketplace of ideas. This post is to wake up the sleeping giant, called the church, and encourage evangelicals to get in the game and speak with moral clarity." I'd have to humbly disagree with Jeff's statement that Christians are staying out of the debate--in my experience, we've been rather loud. This isn't an accusation directed at the article, but what we as Christians do often forget is to speak with love. Love without truth is not love, but truth without love brings little more than pain. May we learn how to walk the tightrope. Junto Boyz: A Christian's View on Homosexuality "Deroy Murdock's knock on heterosexuals." Food for thought. We're so afraid of gay marriage destroying the traditional notion of the insitution that we forget to examine the variety of ways the straight population has damaged it ourselves. Parablemania: Divine Capitalization "Many people consider it irreverent to use lower case letters for pronouns (or even other words) referring to God. I disagree, and I think there are even good reasons not to use capitals in those cases." A great post on of my pet peeves. Mr. Standfast: Providence: A Story (and a Question) "Kind of hard to describe. I guess I'll just let it speak for itself." An interesting analogy. But to answer the question, no, it's never been like that for me. DeoOmnisGloria.com: Why should you consider the Catholic Church? "Serious about Jesus? Looking for a church that just as serious? Consider the Catholic Church. Here I list 12 reasons why every Christian should take another look at the Catholic Church." What? You're telling me that Catholics are Christians? (Just kidding.) An interesting list, though many Protestants would disagree on its points. That's all folks! ^ Top | 2:26 PM | | |
Monday, June 14, 2004 Art and Worldview My father is the king of email forwards. Usually they're political in nature, and often they comment on Christianity and worldview. A few days ago, he sent me a transcript from the radio program Breakpoint in which guest commentator Mark Earley speaks about the degeneration of art: "Going Buggy: The Cicada Serenade." Apparently composer David Kane finds the current cicada invasion inspirational; he's writing a piece for Strathmore Hall Arts Center in Maryland titled "Emergence: The Cicada Serenade." However, this isn't the cause of Earley's discomfort. Rather, he finds fault with the composer's remarks: "I want [the music] to reflect the insect-like character of our lives--this vast rush to get things done before we vanish." Earley writes, "... Kane's comment gives me pause. Comparing human beings to large insects is not exactly an uplifting thought. But it is a reflection of just how much our ideas about art have changed over the years... As our culture lost its focus on God and became more and more humanistic, we moved away from the idea of art as a means of glorifying God and toward the idea of art as an end in itself. But with that shift in focus came a worldview that emphasized pessimism and despair. Judging by Kane's comments, his cicada piece will be a reflection of that nihilistic worldview." The commentary isn't entirely fair. I'm not actually defending Kane--I know little about him--but it's difficult to pass judgment on the composition purely by the one sentence was quoted in the transcript. Kane's doing what artists have done for millennia: observing the culture that surrounds him. Can we as Americans in the twenty-first century honestly say that our lives are filled with calm, that we don't rush to get things done in order to feel significant, to leave a legacy, to accomplish something of note before we die? Since we're so consumed by busyness as a society, the blame for abandoning a godly worldview, a view that focuses on the important rather than the urgent, cannot be heaped upon our artists; surely we must all take responsibility, even as Christians. It's fallacious to say that art in our culture used to specifically focus on glorifying God. When would we say the shift occurred? Was the goal of the ancient Greeks' Dionysian festivals honoring the God of the Bible? The festivals were filled with debauchery and their theatre contests included a cycle of three tragedies followed by a bawdy satyr play. Even Shakespeare had his share of lewd humor. Painter Piet Mondrian was raised in a Christian home but rejected God. Ralph Waldo Emerson subscribed to a vague spirituality rather than a specific deity. And Wagner believed that "that through Art all men are saved." We like to think that nowadays our world is morally looser than it ever was, but societal morality seems to flow in cycles--even if we look solely at Western civilization. Take the Romans and their idea of sports (or literal death matches), for example. People bemoan the prevalence of homosexuality in today's culture and forget that the Greeks believed the highest form of love existed between a man and a boy. Henry VIII succeeded in starting his own church denomination so that he could divorce his wives. I'm not saying that there aren't rights and wrongs, but that there's nothing new about our current state. "We are sliding down the mire of a democracy that pollutes the morals of the people before it swallows up their freedoms," said Fisher Ames. He died in 1808. A culture that emphasizes "pessimism and despair" will produce art that reflects that worldview, and rightly so. Modernism was a reaction to industrialization and World War I: the world had changed. Drastically. Craftsmanship was being replaced by automation, industry was creating its own set of population density and pollution problems, and suddenly war was more ferocious, more deadly, its effects more devastating than it had ever been before. As T.S. Eliot put it, the nineteenth century's ideas of order and tradition couldn't stand against "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." In this new paradigm, artists broke with the past, with old notions of order, as did areas as divergent as science and philosophy. Art is not created in a vacuum; it is always a response, sometimes slightly ahead, sometimes slightly behind, but never without context. If we study a culture's art, we can begin to understand its people, for our art is a reflection of who we are. As Christians our challenge is to bring hope to a lost world, not just lament its darkness. As artists, our challenge is to create work with honesty, with integrity--work that questions, that communicates truth. For those of us who are both, we must integrate the hope we have into our body of work, if not each specific piece (it is difficult to judge an artists' worldview simply from one work, just as it would be difficult to judge a man simply from one hour of his life). And if our society changes, our art will as well. ^ Top | 10:57 PM | | |
Sunday, June 13, 2004 Tidbits In the last week, I've spent 17 hours in the music school. Not bad, especially since I don't have anything in particular to practice right now. The list of married friends grows: yesterday's couple was Justin Bailey and Alexis Fear (whose mother's maiden name is Ausum, pronounced "awesome"--Awesome Fear, what a great name combination). Highlights included the mother-son dance to "Edelweiss" (as one person put it, Justin's family lived The Sound of Music for a few years), personalized and embossed cocktail napkins (you read that right), an army for a wedding party (literally and figuratively), and discovering that an old friend who didn't dance a year ago is now quite addicted to swing. Excellent. There are old friends that nowadays I only see at weddings. Apparently I'm going to start recording my second CD, a full-length album, before the first one is even released. We're looking to get into the studio in August, and it definitely won't take as long as the EP--I learned some expensive lessons about how to prepare for recording sessions last time. If you have any song requests, shoot them my way; the list is still being finalized. I now officially do airbrush tattoos on people as part of my job. Kids are really hard to tattoo; they're prone to squirming and are usually smaller than the stencils were designed for. I'll have a more substantive post up soon, I promise. ^ Top | 9:46 PM | | |
Monday, June 07, 2004 Inspiration I feel as though I've rediscovered my passion for music. Of course it never actually went away, but my creative impulses come in cycles; I love dance, theatre, writing, and music but I can't concentrate on them concurrently to the same degree of intensity, so I rotate. There's never a set schedule for this rotation, which even includes instruments (for example, I haven't played much guitar lately, but I spend hours on piano)--it's ruled by inspiration, which I often think is dangerous (because at least one, probably more, areas are neglected in order to make time for the others). Of course, it's also impossible to pour insane amounts of energy into each area while taking care of everything else--like work that pays--at the same time. I'm coming to understand that finding balance between my passions is difficult. That said, I've spent seven hours in the School of Music over the last two days, which I haven't done for a long time. And I played other places during those days as well. To a music major, that time is probably normal (and necessary); I, however, did not concentrate on music in college and actually haven't practiced much lately since I've been so focused on trying to book gigs. But last night my friend Alex (Hollingsworth, not Loney) and I were excited about singing musical theatre, which neither of us had done in a while, so we took the hike to the grand pianos at the music school and stayed for a while afterward working on other material. It was wonderful--there's something about the way vocals, particularly duets, are written for musicals that just feels good to sing... and sounds incredible. Of course, it probably helps that Alex is studying voice at Eastern Michigan (or "the school down the road"). And then today I caught Vienna Teng's performance at Borders--I'd intended to go swing dancing a couple hours after the show but ended up spending the time in a practice room instead, inspired to work on some piano pieces. So I feel satisfied. I suppose runners and anyone who excerises can relate. It's a contented feeling, a productive one. And now I deserve some rest before heading to work in the morning. ^ Top | 12:06 AM | | |
Tuesday, June 01, 2004 High School, Education, and Marriage I was wandering around Classmates.com on a whim--even though there are precious few from high school that I'd want to keep up with--when I stumbled upon their survey page. The idea is that you answer a few questions yourself and then you can see how your results matched up with others from your graduating class. Some of the results were definitely interesting, especially the highest education level and martial status numbers; they should be fairly accurate since it looks like around half of my class is registered with the site. Thus far, 34.6% of my class finished high school and went no further. They didn't even make it through some college or technical school. This was surprising, but then again many of my classmates weren't the most ambitious of people. In an interview for a documentary on Michigan schools and statewide testing mandates, the current superintendent described the South Redford School District as blue-collar and multi-ethnic. (Read: black and white. I only knew of two other Asians in my high school during the time I was there, not counting my brother. Why is it socially acceptable to have a group entirely comprised of African-Americans consider themselves "multi-ethnic"? What about Asians and Hispanics and the rest? Or do we not count?) While it may be blue-collar, that shouldn't preclude the possibility of higher education--there are decent community colleges in the area. Only 7.7% of my class has finished their bachelors. Oddly enough, the same percentage reported that they'd completed their masters. Impressive--that'd be a masters within five years of high school graduation. The truly shocking statistic: 7.9% of my classmates say they are divorced. That'd be around sixteen people. And I remind you we only graduated five years ago and no one--at least to my knowledge or that of my friends--was married while we were in high school. Even the oft-touted 50% divorce rate statstic hadn't prepared me for that one. But perhaps it shouldn't be so astounding; apparently the first year of marriage is the hardest because it requires the most change, the integration of two lives. We as a culture tend to make one of two mistakes in thinking about marriage: One, we take it too loosely, vowing "till death do us part" but preparing ourselves for the "what ifs" of life. Primarily, "what if we fall out of love?" As though we just "fall" in love. As though we have no control over it whatsoever. Love is an emotion, yes, but it is also a commitment. Otherwise our vows mean nothing. Two, we place too much emphasis on the other person being everything, the One who is supposed to fulfill every need--which no one person could possibly do. And it doesn't help that so often the support structures for a married couple could be better. Where are the older couples who will show them how to stay together? Another problem is many couples become consumed with themselves after the wedding, neglecting their friends until those supports weaken. Or they move to a new city and have trouble integrating. Part of the problem there is we don't emphasize community, especially after college, the way we should. We need communities, but we've isolated ourselves instead. Suburbia doesn't help this, and neither does postmodern society in general. When are we going to change? ^ Top | 10:59 PM | | |
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