...Must Love Dogs

I've been attending Reston Bible Church as of late, simply because I'm disenchanted with the church search and my roommate goes there. I'm ambivalent about it, though I usually like what Pastor Mike has to say, and I almost always learn something. Today Mike decided to get off the trip through the book of Mark and talk about Intelligent Design. Why Mike, why!?
By the end of the sermon I was fuming. Livid. Defensive. My usual reaction to this sort of stuff.
Thankfully my friend Amber, who is a high school biology teacher, was also there so afterward we grabbed lunch and fumed together.
I cannot stand it when complex arguments are simplified into something that is supposed to be palatable for the masses but just ends up splitting religious hairs. I am what Mike disdainfully called a "Theistic Evolutionist" which will go in the very first singles ad I ever submit, I assure you. "SWF Theistic Evolutionist seeks SM to share long walks on the beach and the same concept of creation. Must love dogs."
2 Peter 3:8 says,
"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."
Reading that, I cannot understand how any logical Christian could state that the Evolutionary concept is not biblical: God created the world in six days. Just not six literal days. God may have created it, but he made it like our body: it functions, grows, changes and adapts. So in a sense I am keen to say I believe in Intelligent Design; however I shutter when I realize with whom I am grouped.
Why teach it in schools though? I strongly believe in the separation of church and state: It is both dangerous and detrimental to education when God comes into the schools in the form of organized education, just as I think it's dangerous and detrimental to Christianity to have God introduced in such a venue. Let science, literature, art, mathematics, etc stay in the core. If a religious science class is to be offered, make it optional. See how few actually take it. I look at our history and what has been done "in the name of God" and I want to do whatever I can to stop that process. We're already invading other countries to spread our ideas of God and freedom (to which the response has been massive casualties and hatred, so I'd say that's a success...) and to know that the Christian God is being so blatantly abused like that internationally makes me wary to let these very same people try to place him into our schools. There is a time and a place to teach kids what is religiously the concept of God and I hardly think 9th grade Bio is the place to start.

Eternal Flame

Well strangely I'm writing this from a computer in a 9'x12' platform tent, located on the side of a mountain in the Blue Ridge foothills. This is the "staff lounge" and I am constantly tempted to say "Well back in my day we didn't have..." about all the perks and amementies that they have here today. I started working for this camp in 2001 and have been connected to it ever since. They called me two weeks ago and, in short staff desperation, asked me to come work a few days of day camp. And so here I sit, finishing up my coffee and prepping for my 11-14 year old kids to show up. Observation about this week: Sunday I taught a seminar about how to fit a man for a suit. Today I'm teaching friction fires and debris huts. Hilarious.
Most of the staff has left to go back to college and/or other adventures and those few of us remaining decided to have a campfire last night. The sky was cloudless and bright; the air suggested fall in its crispness. I sat at the fire by myself for a long time, unable to really take my eyes off of it. What is it about fire? In this culture of ADHD and attention spans smaller than our vehicles, why is it that fire is still so...well...stilling? In a culture that has browbeaten us into not being "human" this instinctive quality remains fresh. It is visceral in a rather carnal way, this ability to stare into fire and have honesty spew forth. I have rarely been around a fire and not had a serious and personal conversation.
And there is little in the world I love more than going to bed smelling like campfire. It makes the day feel complete.

50 Degrees of Losing It

I can't believe how long it's been since I actually posted. My internet at my townhouse is not really consistent, so I had to come back to my parent's house to post this. Well I actually came back to mow the lawn and this just happened to be here. Finished my dresser...I know you were wondering. It's purrrdy.
So thought:
Lately I've been struck by the depth of brokenness. Several conversations with a myriad of friends and family have revealed just how broken we can be, and I cannot stop dwelling on it. There is a frustration to being human, but there is a frailty as well that I don't think I've ever seriously contemplated. It is physical in its aging, growing cracks and crumbling the haughty strut of youth. It's emotional in its fear, its dark secrets, it's inability to trust. It's spiritual in its loneliness, its insatiability. And how do we deal? Addictions, denial, self-mutilation (internal and external), pride, lies, numbness. Anything. The human spinal chord is the consistency of a wet paper towel, yet through it our very existence flows and feels. How physiology and psychology are deceptively intertwined. I saw a quote recently that read, "There is only one degree of having faith, but there are 50 degrees of losing it." I guess that's what gets me: how paper thin and fickle our wholeness really is. It shouldn't be such a surprise then that all of us are broken, dysfunctional, self-doubters and liars to some extent. What should be a surprise is how in the world we aren't worse off.
(PS this is actually probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. I wake up every day overjoyed at where I am, who I'm there with and what opportunities are close at hand. There is a peace. Finally. )

High Art and Sin Senses

Since this book I'm reading ("Shadow of the Almighty"...still. Reading slowly) draws heavily from Jim Elliot's journals and letters, and since he died in 1956, the world views and fears of the mid-20th century that are prevalent within the text take on a very present tense. In today's reading he references an editorial from Life magazine, arguing that America's failure to produce great works of art is due to its lack of a sense of sin. I read no farther; I don't want what he says next to taint the zygote of a thought that was birthed from such a phrase.
What, exactly, is a sense of sin?
And how does the high concept of art jigsaw around and into such a sense?
If art at its very core is birthed from a womb of "wrongness"--an imbalance, an incongruity--then a strong sense of "sin" is indeed necessary. But being that the concept of sin is by no means an absolute, how necessary is the understanding thereof?
Or am I way off in my interpretation of such a statement!
See I simmer for a little bit on the lighter points of life and suddenly this stuff bubbles up...

Red

Today is Paul "Yes I was an art major" Woodward's birthday.
Feel free to mock him.
He has red hair, that's a good starting point.
Or feel free to call and sing any 90's pop ballad.
He likes "I'm Your Lady" by Celine Dion, "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston and maybe even "Hero" by Mariah Carey.
Add a quart of Mississippi Mud and/or a night at the Royal Lee and he will be putty in your hands.
Or the VIP lounge of Balls Bluff Tavern. That's a swingin' hot spot as well.
"...OF IOWA!
...IN DOOM!"
"Paul, you've got that backward."
"Oh."
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAULIE!

Dressers, Martyrs and Fog

There are times when it's easy for me to process, to write, to express, to know. Right now isn't one of those times.
I've been bogged with work (think 50hrs this week).
My bed is on hold while I finish my dresser. Working with my hands has grounded me, and I've needed it. Lots of sanding. And more sanding. And drilling. And sanding.
I'm reading "Shadow of the Almighty" a biography of Jim Elliot by his wife, Elisabeth. It's not well written so I've read it slowly but nonetheless it's been effective. It makes me feel like I haven't done much with my faith but has been inspirational as well. (Brief history of Jim Elliot: from OR, went to Wheaton in Chicago, was a missionary in Equador, he and four others were murdered by a tribe there in 1956. He was 28. Kinda become lionized.)
Late last night I was driving home and hit a low patch that had filled in with fog. Driving in fog is backward in a way: in order to see any distance, you must turn your lights down. When the path is clear, lights up and out to see as far as possible; when it's foggy, lights dimmer and down to focus on the next few feet. I don't know if it particularly applies to my present tense, but I've known those foggy times when to plan up and out is too much; the next two steps are more than enough.
My brother got married on Saturday. If you know the whole background, then that statement is friggin' hilarious. If you don't, ask and I'll tell ya.