The Brewery Where I Go to Church

This is the brewery where I attend church in Denver. Actually, it has been converted to a student center that serves the colleges in Denver, and they rent major space to City Presbyterian Church. Today was my third day to attend services there. They have two services each Sunday, one at 8:30 and the other at 11:00, with Sunday School between. Great preaching!

T&T

Hunting Brambles

“No, there are no brambles in the park,” said the locals, “brambles” being the Scots word for blackberries.

Unconvinced, he nonetheless took the boy out to look for brambles. The boy needed a day out, an adventure, so off they went to see for themselves. The boy held the basket and his older friend’s hand.

Was the sky overcast that day? Memory paints it thus, but “overcast” is the default setting for Aberdeenshire skies, except in high summer. Since bramble season is runs form June through September, the skies may well have been clear. In any case, it wasn’t raining, which meant that it had been raining recently and would be again soon.

Down past the Post Office and General Store, to the corner and catty-cornered across to the church, past the yews and stones in the church-yard, then into the playground of the Park. At the opposite corner of the Park, behind the soccer field stood a copse of pines and larches, holding the suspicion of brambles. The companions chatted about whatever weighty matters filled the world of a 3-year-old. They were dressed against the chill and did not notice it.

The copse was tall and light-filled. The undergrowth admitted paths, and did indeed contain brambles in full fruit, sweet, black, plump, ready for eating and baking, should any berries remain from immediate consumption. And, yes, there were plenty for then and later. They plucked and ate and filled the basket. Are there ever enough berries in the world? Maybe not, but that day’s crop filled the basket with enough for a pie later. The boy spilled the entire contents once, as boys of that age may be predicted to do, but the outing was about adventure, not efficiency. Between them they picked up the spillage, and the boy, aware of his appointed task, carried the basket safely from the copse to his parents’ flat above the General Store and Post Office, rewarded with their approval and with blackberry crumble for desert.

The older friend later wrote some papers in Scotland, but their significance has faded when compared with that hunt for brambles.

Sunset over the Rockies, seen from Sloan’s Lake

Fading of sunshine explodes in a glory,
splits fragments of orange,
to robe the high peaks in imperial purple.
Above and below shout the shards of bright sunlight from heaven,
declining from sight yet proclaiming the victory won, ever winning,
no darkness can counter,
though the interim threatens to drown all our hopes
in the fear of abandonment.
He will return, righteous, reigning, resplendent.

Thursday Sunset

The route to King Sooper’s (grocery store) from the house where I am staying in Denver goes around Sloan’s Lake. Last night’s trip to the store and back occurred just after sunset. As I drove along the east side of the lake, the sunset above the mountains was brilliant orange, the lake was brilliant orange, and the mountains between water and sky were deep purple. Ab-so-lutely, gob-smackingly amazing. The colors lasted 5 or 10 minutes. What a gift, to have seen this and to remember the One who made it.

Meaning of Life? 1

If our chief end is “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 1), then it’s very natural to ask how any particular person can use that axiom for direction and meaning in life. Does it indicate what to do, or just the manner of doing it? It implies that I must not do that which God forbids, but it doesn’t tell me whether I should be a plumber or a banker, whether I should live in Denver or London, or whether I should spend this moment praying or shaving. Or does it?

When we ask for direction or guidance or meaning, we ask amid a complex of dynamic circumstances. It does us no good to ask abstractly, because that isn't where we are. We are “in the middle of things” (in media res) and “on the way.” We have at our hands a specific set of resources and responsibilities. We are connected to these friends and loved ones. We are in the hands of this God.

God tells us to come to him for wisdom (James 1:5). He is our Father, our Creator, our Redeemer, and therefore our chief point of reference for the deep questions like this. Prayer and bible study orient us towards him. They orient us to the contours of reality. They begin to transform the illusions that we have inherited from our culture (both inside and outside the church) into true vision. Thus prayer and bible study, done both corporately with the church and privately, are necessary media for drinking the wisdom of God.

How shall I seek his glory? He has put specific tasks in front of me. Some of them are mundane and we often perform them almost automatically: pay these bills, pick up bread and milk at the store, call Mom and Dad to keep in touch, call this list of friend who have been so kind, etc. Others tasks require much harder decisions and work: I am looking for a job, so do I stay in Huntsville or do I move to Denver to look for work? What preparations do I have to make for either route? How can I do this with minimum disruption to others?

Between the prairies of the mundane and the valley of the shadow of huge decisions lie the rolling hills of creativity. Negotiating them requires that we have some relief and leftover energy from climbing through the life-altering decisions, but they offer their own refreshment in return for work invested. I have been editing a book that a friend is writing. That’s one example. Writing this blog is another. And there are some projects that I have started and left hanging unfinished. Friends that have seen my outlines for those projects have encouraged me to continue, so I hope to start them up again. As it happens, the friend’s book, this blog, and several of my own projects all have explicitly theological aspects. Other activities that may not look especially God-ward do, in fact, relate to him because all of life comes from him. Painting, jogging, reading a good book, singing, baby sitting, and other simple activities can glorify God and give profound joy to others and to us.

Another clue about finding the specific goals of one’s own life comes from I Cor. 12 and Romans 12. God gives us gifts, spiritual and otherwise, for building up other people, not for promoting ourselves.

Conclusion: When we apply our gifts to opportunities for serving other people in joy, we will find that we also have grown. If we aim for self-fulfillment, we will find emptiness. If we aim to fulfill others, we will find, as a side effect, that we also have been filled.

Sonnet

In response to a haiku, composed by Jeff Goldstein at proteinwisdom, I wrote the following:

“St. Paul Addressing Conservatives about Modern Immorality”

They multiply transgressions of the law.
Imagining the darkness light, they twist
God-given wisdom into foolish mist
that leads astray. This gold they turn to straw.

And, not content to maim themselves, they draw
more people to this death-perverted list,
compounding pain, becoming but the grist
for God’s relentless mills, as Moses saw.

But you self-righteous Christian Pharisees,
repent of lovelessness, and from you knees
beg pardon. Jesus, who took our disease
and sin upon himself, reveals the truth and grace
of God. His wrath will fall in its due place.
His love will leave of sin no smallest trace.

Not great, but a gratifying effort.

PCA Rpt on FV and NPP; Comments

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), at its 2006 General Assembly, appointed an ad hoc committee to study the Federal Vision [FV], New Perspective [on Paul, NPP], and Auburn Avenue Theology." Their report can be found here.


Jeffrey Meyers lists 30 reasons not to approve the report.

Strength of Character in Jane Eyre

John Eldredge, in his book Wild at Heart, claims that men want three basic things in life: beauty, an adventure, and a fight. By comparison to that claim, Jane Eyre seems to be relatively feminine, since it lacks the element of fight. Jane, the character, does not seek a fight, does not seek to impose her view of the world on others, does not try to kill dragons or build a kingdom.

As an example of a more masculine Bildungsroman, look at the recent movie Batman Begins. The adolescent Bruce Wayne opts for revenge when the killer of his parents is paroled. When someone else kills the murderer before Wayne can, Wayne retreats from his home city and wanders the world until a mentor finds him and takes him to the headquarters of the League of Shadows for philosophical, emotional, and physical training. Wayne thus gains a strong sense of identity and integrity, as a result of which he refuses to join the League, returning instead to Gotham to follow his own pathway as the Batman.

Although Jane Eyre, especially by comparison to Batman Begins, is a feminine book, it is not pink and fluffy. Jane becomes a remarkably strong character who displays unusual insight into her own nature and a determination to be faithful and true to the responsibilities laid upon her. The book charts her growth from immaturity into that strength and integrity. The romantic interest of the book revolves around Jane’s growth, her integrity, and her struggle to be faithful to herself and to those around her.

At the beginning of the book a new friend, Helen Burns, challenges Jane’s attitude toward those who have mistreated her. When Jane on p. 48 (All quotations from Jane Eyre in this essay cite the paperback Bantam Classic edition / March 1981) comments, “If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should probably break it under her nose,” Burns responds (in part), “It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you: and, besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.”

On p. 50 we see a continued interchange, in which Helen Burns, in all kindness and friendship, explicitly labels Jane’s attitude as heathen and un-Christian:

“But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”

“Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine; but Christians and civilized nations disown it.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate–nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”

“What then?”

“Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct hour example.”

“What does he say?”

“Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.”

Over the course of several, Jane watches Helen embody that attitude in her own behavior and responses to appalling injustice and neglect. Her serenity and even affection for those that mistreat her astound Jane. By the end of the novel, about nine years later, we see these same qualities in Jane.

But the mature Jane avoids an extreme that seems at times to endanger Helen. Jane does not become a doormat for the abuse of others. Like Helen, she accepts the responsibilities that are hers, but, by the time she has left Lowood school, she has also learned to distinguish between the true responsibilities laid on her by God and the expectations of others. She has also learned not to be dismayed or deterred by the refusal of others to love her or to carry out their own responsibilities. Those situations cause her pain, sometimes deeply, but they no longer cripple her as they did when she was a child. Her speech (pp. 29 f.) at age ten to her Aunt Reed, who has just called her a Liar, shows her impatience with the injustice of others:

“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed: and this book about the Liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies and not I.”

Mrs. Reed’s hands lay still on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.

“What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.

That eye of hers, that voice, stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued–

“I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”

Thus Jane at ten. Nine years later, when Mrs. Reed is dying, Jane returns to a house that was no more hospitable than before, calling Mrs. Reed “aunt” (p. 225) and “Dear Mrs. Reed” (p. 226). Even after Mrs. Reed confesses that she had prevented Jane from being adopted by a wealthy uncle who her to live with him, she fetches Mrs. Reed a glass of water and says (p. 227), “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will, … you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s and be at peace.” Jane has learned who she is and has learned how to act on the basis of that knowledge with integrity and compassion.

I once drank a lemon-lime soda, thinking it was straight lemonade. It tasted awful. When I realized that is was a soda, and not the juice drink, it tasted good. Our perceptions of an experience are often affected by the expectation we begin with. Readers who expect or demand an adventure with life-threatening drama, villains to be defeated, and conquests to be won by force of might and cleverness will likely be disappointed by Jane Eyre. The heroine’s circumstances are occasionally life-threatening, but they are more a matter of endurance than sharp conflict. “Adventure” is too outgoing a label for the episodes of the book, and even the cruelest of its characters does not merit the title “villain.” This book lacks the fast pace and the high energy to which current movies have accustomed us, and so it will lose the audience that demands that level of action. But its examination of character-building and of the interplay of personalities gives valuable insights into a wisely lived, Christian life, whether the reader is male or female. Its depth and breadth will broaden the receptive reader.