I just read an interesting and depressing and thought-provoking post by Don Miller: http://donmilleris.com/2008/12/23/lucy-and-me/. He features his very cute puppy Lucy. Most of my comment on his blog, I've reposted here, since it involves the sort of musing I try to foster here. Might be good to read his post first.
What a phenomenal (ly depressing) post! I think you’re getting at something we all need to reflect on. I was having similar thoughts when my company reduced our paychecks to 32 hours and said with a wink, “Now, don’t work more than 32 hours!” I work for two different publishing departments. You think I would want to only work 32 hours? My life would be hell!
So I’m trying to find the human balance between über-diligence (where I snap at people around me that I don’t have time to talk) and slackitude. NT Wright said it well: We’re not computers made of meat. Where is the balance, particularly when you feel you’ve reattached enough participles for the day? Our ancestors lived hard lives, but they knew when they were done plowing their plot or sowing or harvesting. Our informational work never ends.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Shift your love limit
I've been getting a lot of spoofing spam in my work e-mail recently. It comes from "System Administrator," and it says, "Undeliverable." I'm really not sure the point of such spam. No links to click; nothing. Is this just one of those "ha, ha, I got all the e-mail addressees in that Christian non-profit to think they sent a spam e-mail!" ploys?
The subject line of my supposed e-mail that was handed back to me was "Shift your love limit." I know most people will think this has some kinky undertones. (Maybe overtones?) No! As the unintended sender of such spam, I insist that it is CHRISTIAN EVANGELISTIC spam!
Think about it. Perhaps in your religious subculture (should you choose to accept it) you've noticed that Christians generally pity non-Christians because the latter just can't love as well. Well, that's right. That's why I'm now bombarding all non-Christians with the admonishment to shift their love limit! If they'll just ask Jesus into their heart, they'll suddenly be radically changed, and they'll be able to love like crazy!
Now that I'm thinking about it, my next unintended e-mail campaign won't be so idealistic. I'm going to peg it to realism. Coming to an inbox near you: "Shift your judge limit"!
The subject line of my supposed e-mail that was handed back to me was "Shift your love limit." I know most people will think this has some kinky undertones. (Maybe overtones?) No! As the unintended sender of such spam, I insist that it is CHRISTIAN EVANGELISTIC spam!
Think about it. Perhaps in your religious subculture (should you choose to accept it) you've noticed that Christians generally pity non-Christians because the latter just can't love as well. Well, that's right. That's why I'm now bombarding all non-Christians with the admonishment to shift their love limit! If they'll just ask Jesus into their heart, they'll suddenly be radically changed, and they'll be able to love like crazy!
Now that I'm thinking about it, my next unintended e-mail campaign won't be so idealistic. I'm going to peg it to realism. Coming to an inbox near you: "Shift your judge limit"!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Dimensionality
Welcome to the dream log. If it hadn't been for a number of different circumstances, you wouldn't be reading this right now, and you'd be just fine with that.
So I was dreaming along, and I got to a point of country roads, traversing them, feeling alive, crush. That last part, if you didn't experience it with me, had to do with emotion, and probably most aptly put, a breakup. But what I noticed was that I could control my dream a bit. The girl I liked . . . I could control her circumstances just enough to make sure she didn't get together with that loser, but I couldn't quite seal the deal for me. Then I started realizing that this silliness had to do with being able to toggle reality. Once I realized that said loser stopped being a problem in my life, I realized I had power. Pretty quickly, things started blinking out of existence.
Believe it or not, my first inclination was to realize that this had some form of utopian potential. I couldn't wait to tell my wife. So I had to make sure to get to the point where I could let her in on the secret (without waking her up, of course, because that would shatter the awesomeness).
So I noticed that I could toggle reality. Somehow a certain item had a +/- value, and it was my utter whim to decide whether it ever existed or not. I quickly grasped that if I dispensed with one thing, that terminated its possibility forever. So I thought, sure, get rid of evil. We might want to hang on to history, because that seems valuable. More to the point, let's keep awareness around. Self-awareness was always good. Then people about whom I got an up or down vote started showing up. The would-be-suitor of the girl I liked? Gone. (Not that it mattered, since I'm evidently married and want to share this new utopia with my wife.)
I began to feel like God in some way, except I think it had that perverse calvinistic quality about it. I was the decider. I wanted to make sure I didn't decide something that I wanted out of existence. My actual awareness-lacking conclusion was that I needed to delete "sick @$$ $#!t" from our world. (I think that was the quote in my dream.) But on my theological journey of late, I think I've had to become more "open"; open to the fact that God is making the creation as we go along, as well as having created it at one point.
When one tries to exercise determinism, there are so many gives and takes. I had this fast scene in my dream where I had to protect certain ideas so they didn't cease to exist. If I got rid of people (the source of all of my problems, it seems), I would cease to exist. If I got rid of a certain type of person, things would be pretty peaceful . . . maybe. If I got rid of history or memory, then generations of awareness of how we can do better would be gone. When I get to this point in dreams, it's when I realize I need to get up and check my blood sugar. You are the unfortunate recipient of a hypoglycemic midnight rant.
But the one other thing that came to mind was that God does exist in an infinitely dimensional place, where he seems to be able to influence choice in a way that transcends our ability. And having gone through this nightmare of deciding what gets to exist or not, I think I'm happy to take the choices given to me and make them. I'll leave the big ones up to God, perhaps for the first time. But the fact that so much that I would dispense with continues to exist points me toward the idea that maybe God isn't a control freak like I am. Maybe he really does want us to work for good in his creation.
[Sorry if this doesn't make sense. As my blood sugar stabilizes, much of this train of thought has lost the brilliance it had when I experienced it.]
So I was dreaming along, and I got to a point of country roads, traversing them, feeling alive, crush. That last part, if you didn't experience it with me, had to do with emotion, and probably most aptly put, a breakup. But what I noticed was that I could control my dream a bit. The girl I liked . . . I could control her circumstances just enough to make sure she didn't get together with that loser, but I couldn't quite seal the deal for me. Then I started realizing that this silliness had to do with being able to toggle reality. Once I realized that said loser stopped being a problem in my life, I realized I had power. Pretty quickly, things started blinking out of existence.
Believe it or not, my first inclination was to realize that this had some form of utopian potential. I couldn't wait to tell my wife. So I had to make sure to get to the point where I could let her in on the secret (without waking her up, of course, because that would shatter the awesomeness).
So I noticed that I could toggle reality. Somehow a certain item had a +/- value, and it was my utter whim to decide whether it ever existed or not. I quickly grasped that if I dispensed with one thing, that terminated its possibility forever. So I thought, sure, get rid of evil. We might want to hang on to history, because that seems valuable. More to the point, let's keep awareness around. Self-awareness was always good. Then people about whom I got an up or down vote started showing up. The would-be-suitor of the girl I liked? Gone. (Not that it mattered, since I'm evidently married and want to share this new utopia with my wife.)
I began to feel like God in some way, except I think it had that perverse calvinistic quality about it. I was the decider. I wanted to make sure I didn't decide something that I wanted out of existence. My actual awareness-lacking conclusion was that I needed to delete "sick @$$ $#!t" from our world. (I think that was the quote in my dream.) But on my theological journey of late, I think I've had to become more "open"; open to the fact that God is making the creation as we go along, as well as having created it at one point.
When one tries to exercise determinism, there are so many gives and takes. I had this fast scene in my dream where I had to protect certain ideas so they didn't cease to exist. If I got rid of people (the source of all of my problems, it seems), I would cease to exist. If I got rid of a certain type of person, things would be pretty peaceful . . . maybe. If I got rid of history or memory, then generations of awareness of how we can do better would be gone. When I get to this point in dreams, it's when I realize I need to get up and check my blood sugar. You are the unfortunate recipient of a hypoglycemic midnight rant.
But the one other thing that came to mind was that God does exist in an infinitely dimensional place, where he seems to be able to influence choice in a way that transcends our ability. And having gone through this nightmare of deciding what gets to exist or not, I think I'm happy to take the choices given to me and make them. I'll leave the big ones up to God, perhaps for the first time. But the fact that so much that I would dispense with continues to exist points me toward the idea that maybe God isn't a control freak like I am. Maybe he really does want us to work for good in his creation.
[Sorry if this doesn't make sense. As my blood sugar stabilizes, much of this train of thought has lost the brilliance it had when I experienced it.]
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The socialites
Last night, Susan and I went to Sam's to stock up on important things like peanut butter before our membership expires. We were trolling for samples when we passed a wonderful looking orange lemon cream cheese cake. There was a woman standing nearby, and I said, "Hey, you wanna split this?" She laughed and noted how good Sam's cakes were. She related how in the past couple of weeks, her husband had a birthday. She made a great meal, gave him birthday sex, (!?—do people talk about this in public? to strangers?) but he was pouty because he didn't get a cake. That was evidently the only thing that makes a birthday. She got a cheap, but yummy, decadent cake from Sam's, and everything was cool.
Another couple had walked by and been part of the conversation about splitting the cake. We saw them later and the man said, "So, do you want to split the cake?" We said yes, and he asked the bakery if they would do the splitting for us. They wouldn't, but they gave us an extra container to do the splitting ourselves. After the other guy paid (and I ponied up the eight bucks), we went to the snack bar to see if they could give us a splitting implement. I thought we were going to be stuck with plastic knives, but they gave us a pizza platter! So the guy split the cake with it, and used the platter to move our four-pound half-cake to our container. There was a guy nearby with his kids shaking his head, marveling at us. I think he was jealous because we had beat the consumerist system.
There was another beneficiary: The woman at the snack bar had wanted to try one of those cakes, but didn't want to buy a whole one. She got to sample the residue from the pizza platter!
Kinda crazy splitting a cake with total strangers. Thanks, Troy and Dana!
Another couple had walked by and been part of the conversation about splitting the cake. We saw them later and the man said, "So, do you want to split the cake?" We said yes, and he asked the bakery if they would do the splitting for us. They wouldn't, but they gave us an extra container to do the splitting ourselves. After the other guy paid (and I ponied up the eight bucks), we went to the snack bar to see if they could give us a splitting implement. I thought we were going to be stuck with plastic knives, but they gave us a pizza platter! So the guy split the cake with it, and used the platter to move our four-pound half-cake to our container. There was a guy nearby with his kids shaking his head, marveling at us. I think he was jealous because we had beat the consumerist system.
There was another beneficiary: The woman at the snack bar had wanted to try one of those cakes, but didn't want to buy a whole one. She got to sample the residue from the pizza platter!
Kinda crazy splitting a cake with total strangers. Thanks, Troy and Dana!
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