16Feb

Poisonous Love

What do Valentines Day, Wuthering Heights, Vine the poison dragon from the game “Dragonvale”, and the beloved author CS Lewis have in common? Not much, at first glance, but let me push on a bit.

Vine is a dragon that loves people, but is toxic to them: “The poison dragon loves people. Not for breakfast, it just thinks they’re great company. Unfortunately, people don’t often react well to their deadly neurotoxin.” (From the DragonvaleWiki).

Our love can similarly hurt people, if it is selfish and possessive. I recently watched two movie versions of Wuthering Heights, in which the brooding and passionate Heathcliff loves Cathy deeply, but his love is poisonous and selfish. It rips apart two families and destroys many lives. Hell on earth is the result.

Love can and should echo heaven. In fact, scripture tells us that “God is love.” But this is a deeper kind of love than mere affection, or than the Romantic love of Cupid and Valentines Day, or than the Eros and passion of Heathcliff and numerous late night movies. Jesus says that “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

The love of God, that we are called to emulate in all our relationships is a selfless, sacrificial love, that is called “agape” in Greek, the language of the New Testament. Agape isn’t merely about self sacrifice, though. In its fullness of meaning it is “other elevating”. C. S. Lewis put it like this: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained”.

C.S. Lewis wrote eloquently of Iove, delineating four types of love, and analyzing them as potential reflections of God. He also discusses how each of these loves can be twisted and warped by humans if we are not careful. For more on this I commend his book, The Four Loves, as well as the parable Til We Have Faces.

My slightly belated Valentine’s wish for you is that your earthly loves do not poison, but rather exalt. And may you feel yourself lucky enough to be the recipient of such exaltation. It is a glimpse of heaven.

15Feb

Is it the Spirit? (A web diary)

First of all, I must confess that I am not one who hears voices or sees visions. Angels have never appeared in my bedroom. I have difficulty believing in any kind of spiritual world sometimes (but so did Mother Theresa, and she still persevered). That said, this project of mine, to start a blog and website, has seemed almost to be from beyond myself.

The initial idea felt almost “pushed” into my mind, like a kind of gift, or a whispered invitation: “Here is something you can do.” I am early in the work, and I am humble enough to realize I am only one of billions of websites out there; it may never garner much attention or merit much praise. Yet I feel compelled to keep at it. I feel almost as if I could not stop if I wanted to. And I feel this task has been granted to me despite, not because of, my interests and abilities.

I imagine myself like a stone in the scene of the Triumphal Entry, when Jesus replied to those who were asking him to shush his followers, “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” I feel as though I have been invited to add my small voice, and perhaps I am doing so because some of the more appropriate voices (the established church leaders) are being silenced or have decided to hold their peace.

I am a stone; I am earthy, worldly, hardheaded, blind, deaf, and dumb, in certain ways and at certain times. But aren’t we all? Peter describes christians as “living stones”. We are animated by God’s Spirit. I rarely have direct awareness of the presence of that Spirit, yet now feel stirred to do something that is a bit unnatural for me. So I have started from scratch to learn some tools. I plug away, using what scraps of time I can find, and a thing is slowly emerging. I hope that eventually my project turns out to be a nice offering to the Maker, like a little stone crying out “hosanna!” to Jesus.

12Feb

Beauty of the Theorbo

I ran across this, a beautiful piece of music of the Baroque era, on a fairly unusual instrument. The composer is Robert de Visée, 1655-1733, who was a composer and player at the courts of the French kings Louis XIV and Louis XV. I won’t hold that against him.

The venue is apparently the Vätö kyrka in Sweden, northeast of Stockholm.

07Feb

St. Brigid’s Lake of Beer

Feb 1 is the feast day of St. Brigit of Kildare, Ireland (453-523). She is controversial (some scholars believe that she didn’t really exist, but is a Christianization of the pagan goddess named “Brigid”; though she is well attested by numerous sources). She is believed to have born into slavery to a druid, but was returned to her parents around age 10. She was an abbess, who founded several monasteries, including in about 480 AD the “cell dara” (Kildare), the “church of the oak hill”. This foundation became a center of learning, and eventually a cathedral city. She is said to have been generous toward the poor and to women.

There is an amusing but touching prayer attributed to St. Brigid (probably written later):

I’d like to give a lake of beer to God.
I’d love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I’d love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I’d put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I’d give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I’d offer
To every man.

I’d make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I’d make the men contented for their own sake.
I’d like Jesus to love me too.

I’d like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I’d give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I’d sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We’d be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

I am not sure of the source but one website notes that this is from an 11^th century Irish poem attributed to St Brigit taken from a manuscript in the Burgundian Library, Brussels and edited and translated by O’Curry. From http://www.brigitsforge.co.uk/st_ffraid.htm.

Well, I agree with the sentiment. And next time I pick up a glass, I’ll think of St. Brigid and her Irish homeland.

01Feb

Nigerian pastor “butchered”

This is very sad.

A popular Nigerian pastor, who is touted as a dedicated servant to the poor, was “butchered” to death last week on his way back from pastoral duties by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, whom some say could be linked to the terrorist group Boko Haram.

As Morning Star News reports, pastor Joshua Adah, who founded and operated a school that provides over 400 kids with free education in the village of Bantaje, fell victim to the wrath of Muslim extremists belonging to the Fulani ethnolinguistic group, the same herdsmen that also reportedly attacked Nigerian Christian communities last week.

25Jan

R.I.P Marcus Borg (1942-2015)

One of the more prominent scholars of the 20th century has just passed from the scene. Marcus Borg was a liberal scholar famous (and infamous) for being part of the “Jesus seminar.” Like many in Christianity’s left wing, he denied the Resurrection of Jesus and the idea of an afterlife. (One of my ideas for the website I’m working on is to have a “rogues’ gallery” of personages who have done harm to the orthodox and traditional faith of the Christian Church, and Borg would be among the top candidates).

To his credit, he is reputed to have been a genial fellow: “He patiently listened to all sides of the debates and knew the strengths of evangelicalism and historic orthodoxy, even if he pointed more often to weaknesses. Borg was the kind of progressive/liberal theologian who welcomed evangelicals to the table—as long as they would listen, as well” (From article linked below). He was a friend of N. T. Wright, with whom he disagreed on many points.

For now, his soul is in the hands of God, and I wish peace to who were close to him.

For more on his legacy, check out this article from Christianity Today: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/january-web-only/died-marcus-borg-liberal-jesus-scholar-and-friendly-provoca.html?start=2

23Jan

Fraudulent Service Animals

My wife noticed some suspiciously unruly service animals at her workplace last month, and wondered about this. Looking into the situation further, it appears that there is a veritable epidemic of fraud. Ordinary pet owners are passing off their mangy beasts as trained service dogs.

There is no shortage of news features on this increasingly common practice. Here is one of those articles, from 2013:

CHICAGO (CBS) – Despicable. That’s the word used by advocates for the disabled to describe the newest trend – people disguising their dogs as service dogs to travel, shop, and even go to night clubs.

“People think what they’re doing is harmless but it’s not. It’s very harmful,” said Marcie Davis, founder of International Assistance Dog Awareness Week.

As a paraplegic, Davis uses a real service dog, one that’s been trained and certified over hundreds of hours.

Read it all: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/21/despicable-epidemic-people-using-fake-service-dogs/

19Jan

MLK quote, for MLK Day

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Source: Strength to Love, a collection of sermons and essays published in 1963.

18Jan

The Black Paternoster

I was looking at children’s prayers for bedtime, and came across something very interesting. One of the common prayers that has made it into compendiums of nursery rhymes and children’s prayers is the “Four Corners” prayer. A common form of this prayer goes something like this:

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on. Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head;
One to watch and one to pray
And two to bear my soul away.

The rhyme dates back to at least the 1600s in Britain, and is likely much older. A German version dates to medieval times. The first English text is found in a treatise on witchcraft, where the verse is mentioned in a negative context.

There were several “paternosters” (derived from Latin for “our father”), which were associated with colors, perhaps initially associated with colored prayer beads. These poems are thought to be corruptions of prayers that became used as magic charms. The “white Paternoster” (a version of which is found in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale of 1387) was used for morning. The “black paternoster” was used at bedtime. A “green paternoster” was earlier condemned as blasphemous by the Bishop of Lincolon, Robert Grosseteste, 1175–1253.

Somehow, the “black paternoster” escaped the anti-witchcraft and anti-catholic sentiments of the 17th century to become a favorite children’s rhyme in England, esp in the 20th century. Perhaps this may be credited to Anglican priest, scholar and hymn-writer, Sabine Baring-Gould, 1834-1924.

He published it as part of a collection of folksongs called Songs of the West, first published in 1891 (This book is now freely available in the public domain: https://archive.org/stream/imslp-and-ballads-of-the-west-baring-gould-sabine/SIBLEY1802.20102.74b4-39087012501252score_djvu.txt)

The poem has been set to music by the composer Gustav Holst, 1874-1934 (of “the Planets” fame). Here is a snippet of a recording by the Holst Singers, under Stephen Layton.

The full version is available for sale, by Hyperion records, http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W1077.

Sources: Images are from Wikipedia. The lovely painting is “Four corners to my bed” by Isobel Lilian Gloag (1868-1917))

15Jan

A favorite quote by Eleanor Roosevelt

Do not curse the darkness, light a torch instead.