Back from the Mountains

The middle of August is here and I made it back from the mountains safely. Two groups of Men from Colonial, an in between adventure and now it's back to school time for me. So what did I learn this year? We had incredible hikers and climbers. They did great--in spite of a downpour on the very first acclimation hike. We wondered what would happen the next day, God gave us great weather, and Pastor Paul Parsons showed up to climb with us. Glorious. The second day, 16 of 19 went climbing--an all time high percent! Everyone made at least one summit and many got both Grays and Torreys. Congrats, gents. The Snowmass adventure was just as much fun, even without such great success. Six of us started an eight mile plus hike 2500 vertical feet up a valley about fifteen minutes before it decided to rain on us. My rain pants dragged me down, the puddles made it hard to walk, my pack was too heavy and I was pooped. We camped partway up the trail and completed the hike on the second day. On Friday, as we climbed, I found an easy bail out space and let the others attempt the summit. They got turned around by the weather. We all got rained on, hailed on, and there were plenty of crack-booms!!! The hike out was a quick four hours and get in the car looking for a triple cheeseburger with bacon. The second climbing trip was also superb. Wonderful weather, almost everyone summited Evans, some good second day climbing and even an attempt on Quandary by moonlight. Crazy-talk. And what did I learn??? That the Lord is far more in love with us than we will ever be in love with Him. He draws us to himself. He woos us. He calls to us. He delights in us. He is sufficient. And I will follow Him. You can check out some photos at my photobucket page, right here.

Next week, I'll get the words for my song up!

grace

Dan

Playing Small, Playing Tall

Over the past two days I have gotten to watch Akeelah and the Bee three times. That means that I heard and saw a quote from Marianne Williamson six times. It seemed to be the central guiding force within the movie. I didn't know who it was from, so I googled the first line as I heard it for the sixth time. That's when I found it was by Williamson, and that's when I noticed it had been abridged. It's a quote all about human potential and the big amazing thing being the power and ability and beauty that is within a person, etc. The part that was left out of the movie included this line, Your playing small does not serve the world. I have had to come back to that line over and over today. Playing small seems to mean holding back, not striving to reach your full potential. Or in my frame of reference it might mean-not trusting God enough to serve Him as well as you could. Or being chicken to get out of your comfort zone. Or attempting a humility that seeks not to put itself forward. But what if it's a pretense at humility? There is a truer quote that goes like this: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. (Romans 12:3) This verse is found in a section that begins the personal application of the gospel to the entire life and leads into such thoughts as --if you have a gift then use it! How is it that a person can think both highly enough and not too highly. That certainly was Paul's intention. It has always been my personal dilemma. To go back to Marianne a moment, actually playing too tall or playing too small, neither one serves the world. And then back to my own haunting--Is there more that God is calling me to? Am I too content to play small right now? Or is it just too inflated of a thought, a vain ambition, or somekind of delusion of grandeur? This is where it gets too much for me. Jesus played his size. He did not push his hour but waited patiently. He did not take on too much. (And of course there could not have been too much ever for Him.) Still He waited for his hour. He did not run ahead nor did He slip behind. So He is my hope and my help. As I live with Him I will learn to hear his voice--though the challenge against playing small and the warning against playing tall.

Lonesome Dove--A Pulitzer Prize Winner

I found Lonesome Dove at the Salvation Army and got it as part of 8 for a dollar. So the price was right. And the read was fun. It was long, with lots of different characters, set in the west and most of it was about a camping trip. Well, it was really a cattle drive, but they did have to camp all the way from the Texas-Mexico border area to the Montana-Canada border area. So the setting was a big plus. I sort of knew the story, because I had seen some bits of the movie, but there was way more than enough I didn't remember and wanted to find out to keep me going from chapter to chapter. I stayed up late several nights to read and read instead of doing other things several other times. The book left me sad. Gus, who was easy-going and ready for fun and adventure liked to talk and he liked to argue. He also liked women. Call, who was the leader, could get men to do things but could not understand much about women or himself. He couldn't own up to the reality that Newt was his son. But he cared for him and really helped raise him as part of the 'outfit'/family. He could hardly say his name and called him "the boy". But then he had trouble being able to call the mother by name as well. Maybe the silent type fit the wild west well, but Call was relationally a cripple. When Clara told him off on his way back to Texas, he couldn't answer her and dwelt long on her words as he carried Gus' body back to Texas. I guess what hit me was that someone could write a 900+ page book that included such intriguing characters and leave them so superficial. It makes me wonder if the 'old west' was really like that in terms of personhood, or if it was Larry McCurty. Maybe it was because Lonesome Dove grew out of a 1972 screenplay and so it carried a Hollywood stamp from the start and entertainment was the focus. Entertaining it was. A fun read. I looked up places on the maps and Google Earth. I would have liked to been there (sort of). This was my second Pulitzer Prize winner I have read in the past two years. It was definitely more fun than The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. But neither of them compare to the two other Pulitzer Prize winning novels that I have under my belt (The Caine Mutiny and To Kill a Mockingbird).

Perspective is a great help

I listen to sermons, lectures and interviews on my morning drive. It provides me some spiritual nourishing and some academic engagement, and often both. This morning was a great example. I have been listening to different interviews posted by Nine Marks, a ministry that believes that churches are God's main means of impacting the world today. I have benefited from David Powlison and Donald Carson and today I listened to Os Guiness. I actually met Os in 1973 at L'Abri. I was lying on my bed reading his book, Dust of Death, when he came in looking for some help moving furniture. As he was talking with Mark Dever, the question came up about Frank Schaeffer's book, Crazy for God, which I mentioned a few blogs ago. Os gave an entirely different perspective on the book than I got while I read it. I read it, enthralled by the story of a young man growing up in the family of a man who tremendously influenced me through his work at L'Abri. I remembered Franky as an outspoken young man. By the time I met him he had married and really had only limited personal interaction with him. But I heard stories about him and watched him grow up and become himself. His book fascinated me because it gave me a view of the Schaeffers that partially rung true. I did realize as I thought of the book that Frank has his own blind spots, and maybe particularly so in regards to his family. But I was touched by reading it. I have talked about it with others and encouraged some to read it. And then I heard Os Guiness talk about it. He said he was disgusted with the book. He felt that Frank was cruel and treated his parents wrongly. He acknowledged several virtues Frank had exhibited in the work at L'Abri, but gave an entirely different perspective of Franky's childhood. Frank said he was basically neglected. Os said he was spoiled, and liked it. Frank revealed that he had little guidance from his parents in many areas. Os said that Franky had learned to wrap his parents around his finger so he could do what he wanted and he reveled in it. Looking back on the book now, with just a few remarks by Os, makes me realize what a good thing perspective really is. It gives us an image that is much closer to reality. It helps us find those blind spots. And it gives me pause, teaching me to be a bit more humble in my acknowledgement, admiration or even criticsim of others. It turned me to Proverbs 18:17 tonight, "The first to present his case seems right, until another comes forward and questions him."

Why "bored" is okay

I have often told children (my own and my school kids) and just about anyone I can find, that being bored is not a bad thing. In fact I often say it is good for you because it makes you think. Often I try to avoid being bored by some form of escape. It could be playing Tiger Woods golf on the computer (I am again the #1 rated player in the world and still in my first year on the tour!). More often than not it is books that offer escape. I favor adventures like Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. I love John Grisham. I can get into fantasies by Steven Lawhead or Orson Scott Card or Isaac Assimov. I hide in Tolkien on almost an annual basis. Since I teach language arts at the middle school level I also read young adult books. Sometimes I read blogs of interest, but my selection is rather limited--a few friends who write very sporadically, a couple of "thinkers" who I find very refreshing and helpful, and of course the weather blog. Recently I have started to feel my reading is more time filling than soul filling. It gives me someting to do but I wonder what I am doing. It has raised an awareness of something deeper than I can yet articulate. It feels melancholy or maybe minor-key-ish. It may be that deep longing that C. S. Lewis identifies as home. I am sure it has to do with God. I am afraid to walk to far towards the deep, yet drawn by a sense that there is no other way to live. I would be much diminished if I did not know this haunting, I would, in fact, be hopeless. My hope rest on what He has done, and a trust that the pathway is His. Nevertheless, it is sometimes dark for I get in my own way and fall back to offering my Lord my own advice. Being bored is good, for it brings me closer to my senses. He is my all in all. In Him I am satisfied. He is the author and perfector of my faith. I can trust Him. Being bored cuts through the diversions I use to hide from the One who loves me most. What could be better than that?

Crazy for God

Crazy for God A memoir by Frank Schaeffer I got this book for Christmas, though Jane had a hard time getting it. Everyone she tried ordering from took the order, then a few days later said, “Sorry, it is out of stock.” I got a note promising it would come. That piqued my interest. So I read some online reviews of the book and wondered what I was getting into. Some loved the book, some hated it. Some spoke of Frank’s crassness and vulgarity. I spent almost two months at L’Abri in 1973, after I graduated from college, so I was familiar with the setting and the characters. Along with the promos and the reviews I began to think back to my time as a Farel House student and my fleeting personal encounters with Francis and Edith and Frank (he was Franky, then). I remember sitting at a table with Franky and Debbie and several others for a Friday evening meal. There were probably 12 people at our table and there were two other tables as well. The table with Franky and Debbie had priority for conversation. If the conversations at the other tables intruded on the ‘main table’ the others were shushed. (I had that experience on at least two other occasions.) I don’t remember much of the content of the conversation, just that at one point both Franky and Debbie were talking to (at?) each other at the same time and carrying on the kind of conversation that would make a high speed modem faint. I don’t know if it was impressive or not, I could keep up with either Frank or Debbi but not both, at the same time! I finally got the book and it was a good read. I can tell because I stayed up later than normal and didn’t do some other sort of required work when I should have…you know the drill. Franky goes by Frank now. Not Franky, not Francis Schaeffer’s son. Frank. My read was full of illumination. I got pictures that made sense from Frank’s point of view and certainly fit what I knew first hand and at a distance about L’Abri and the Schaeffers. I also got my eyes opened quite a few times. Some were hilarious, some very, very sad. Many were understandable—Frank was a caboose baby with a wide gap in age to his next oldest sister. They were already marrying and leaving (and returning) to the work as he was really growing up. Frank got polio. He got some questionable physical treatment and some damaging spiritual treatment. (He was taught to wonder if his polio was part of Satan’s attack on his mom and dad’s ministry for the Lord. Imagine the grief and anger that would smolder under such a weight.) He felt it. He expressed it. He lived it out. He came to understand much of it, from a far different point of view than it was originally explained to him by his mom. His life analysis is both insightful and incomplete. I got the picture of one person seeing another’s blind spot pretty clearly, but not realizing that his parents, for example, were blind to their blind spots. We all are. And when we see the weaknesses and frailties and mistakes and sins of others at times we forget that we too are partially blind. And maybe that should temper our judgments of others, and give us pause to reconsider ourselves. I’d like to say that marriage should help in this area. And family. And church. But those same relationships can be arenas of fear, and few there be who tread them well. Frank’s story is of a family who hasn’t done this well. Maybe it is a common plague of the powerful and important. Somehow I think the grace of Jesus should help us do better. Maybe somewhere in the locus of His work, laying aside the prominence and the power and taking upon himself the frailties and sin, maybe somewhere in that great center of life, we can find hope to face the follies of our own.

The (True) Story of the Cross

The question of the cross is the primary question of Christianity, for it is the question of God’s love and justice. Usually it is asked something like this, “Why can’t God just forgive people, especially those who feel sorry for their wrong doings?” Keller offers a good answer to this question in three parts in Chapter 12 of his book, The Reason for God. The Cost of Forgiveness Keller points out that any forgiveness is costly. If someone damages your property there is a cost for the restoration or replacement. The other person pays, or you do (or some combination). But to fix what is broken, cost is necessary. Shift the damage to emotional or personal damage like an insult or cruelty or injustice or worse and the payment becomes much harder to quantify, but someone has to pay. If I am hurt by you, I want some recompense. Sometimes I get it by making you feel bad. There are other ways as well. But even if I get you to feel bad, it doesn’t really help me. Instead of feeling satisfied, I often become harder towards you or/and others. If my friends tell me I should just forgive you for the hurt you caused me, I have to pay. I pay via the agony of letting it go, of acting as if it never happened. And I suffer more hurt if my payment doesn’t cause any positive change either in you or in our relationship. The point is, all forgiveness requires some kind of payment. That is what the cross is all about. The wonder is not just that God accepted someone else’s payment for my sin, but that He entered into to the world to make the payment Himself. The cost of this forgiveness is beyond understanding. A Personal Exchange To understand the cross, it is helpful to consider the personal nature of the payment. Keller points out what many of us already know. Whenever a person needs help, real help only comes through personal connection. Emotionally wounded people are helped by stronger friends—but only as that friend stands alongside and carries some of the burden. One friend gives up strength so that another may gain strength. This is more dynamically viewed over the long haul of parenting. The only way children can move from complete dependence to self-sufficient independent people is through their parents giving up their own independence over years. The less the parents give up themselves the less well rounded and emotionally healthy the children will be. True love involves a personal exchange. God Himself did that in, on, and through the cross. A Great Reversal The cross is also a great reversal. Keller writes, “When Jesus suffered for us, he was honoring justice. But when Jesus suffered with us he was identifying with the oppressed of the world, not the oppressors.” This identification reverses the values of the world and lifts up the twin virtues of love and justice. God is both ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:26). The reason the cross is so important is that it shows the costly sacrifice necessary for forgiveness and it shows the justification of godliness. But it works because it is personal. Tim Keller has taught me to tell stories that give momentum to the idea that sacrificial love can benefit others. He has also taught me that those stories by themselves will never really change my heart or my actions. What changes me is the astonishing reality that Jesus brings us into the story. We are not just hearers, we are recipients of the most costly gift ever given. He gave Himself for us. That is the true story of the cross.