2014: the first post

The first post of the new year should be filled with resolutions.

I’m not one for making resolutions, but I do have some desires for 2014.

Also, these are in no particular order.

“Resolution #1”: keep living healthier and healthier: don’t let smoking retake the prominence its had in my life, continue not eating fast food and eating fruits, vegetables, and lean meats; and keep exercising on a daily basis. I’ve decided not to try and “bulk up” (turns out it looks weird on short guys; good thing I researched it!).

“Resolution #2”: keep writing. Hot Sauce Waugh and I were talking a few days ago as we walked the quiet windswept streets of Mainstrausse, and he asked my plans for the zombie book. “Nothing,” I told him. “It was the first in a six-book series, and I’ve decided not to keep writing them.” The reasoning: believe it or not (you may want to take a deep breath), I’m just kind of bored with zombies (but still anticipating the second half of Season 5 of The Walking Dead). As far as writing goes, I want to keep plowing through my bible study/devotional of 1 Peter (it’s taking longer than I anticipated) and maybe write some historical fiction. Try my hand at it, at least.

“Resolution #3”: keep focusing on my life in Christ and making that priority over everything else. Call it what you want, but the fact is that following everything with the Wisconsinite, my spiritual life did take a certain turn. I’m still wrestling with what it all means, if it means anything at all, but I’m confident that no matter God’s hand in everything, he’s used this to sharpen me and reorient me in many ways, and for that I’m thankful. The past couple months have been marked by a progressive desire and eagerness to be conformed to the image of Christ, to experience the life of the Spirit, to knowing Christ more. The rewards of this renewed communion with God have been astounding, and I simply cannot imagine living life absent it: I’ve tasted the goodness and mercy of God, and life absent him is dark, dreary, gray and void of hope.

“Resolution #4”: READ, READ, READ. In December I read seven books, and I hope to keep up the pace. I’ve got a laundry list of books to read, and Grandma didn’t help: she got me one of the best series of narrative history out there, a series of books covering the conflicts between Native Americans and European settlers from the 15^th century to the mid-1800s:

And, finally:

“Resolution #4”: keep being awesome.

This one should take care of itself.

2013: the last post

2013 will be known as "The Year That Pretty Much Sucked." It's been a year of death, loss, hopes rendered null & void, and prayers returned empty. It's been a difficult year for so many, and I'm not alone in my eagerness for it to be over. My fingers are crossed for 2014.

Psalm 42 is one of my favorite passages of scripture, a hope-filled lament of David. David stands in the present, surrounded by adversity and trouble, panting after God the way a deer pants for water. He's parched, dried up, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth; he knows the only thing that can quench his thirst is God, and he's chasing after God, his hope in God resilient despite the current state-of-affairs. Psalm 42 stands against any idea that devotion to God sets us up for a rose garden experience in this life; the Christian life is marked by suffering, longing, and peace and joy amid sorrow. Far too often we forget that peace and joy is found in the midst of sorrow, not at the exclusion of it. David's confidence in God is bolstered by his own remembrances of how God has come through in the past, how God has been faithful, how he has tasted the goodness of God in days prior. He reflects on the ways God has come through in the past, and he's confident God will come through in the future. It's a beautiful psalm, echoing my "spiritual sentiments" in 2013.

Yes, 2013 has been difficult, but it isn't without its blessings. I still have my parents, my sister, and amazing friendships that most people don't get to experience. I'm blessed with a quaint and quiet hobbit hole, I have a great job helping people and sharing life with the marginalized and less fortunate, and I'm part of a wonderful community of Christ-followers and am excited to be getting involved. Best of all, I still have God, and my trust and hope is in him, no matter what 2014 may bring.

[books i've been reading]

I'm nearing the end of Jeff Shaara's World War Two series, this last book (No Less Than Victory) tracing the war from the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes to the fall of Berlin and the unconditional surrender of Germany. As a companion book, I read Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, following the Western European Theater of Operations from the battle of Normandy on through to the end of the war in Europe. Ambrose paints a striking portrait of the Allied push across France following the German retreat through the Falaise Gap; the Allies overextended themselves and found themselves thrust against the stout Siegfried Line. In an epic and absurd gamble, the Germans launched an offensive--"The Watch on the Rhine"--into the thinly-stretched Allied troops in the Ardennes. The push, meant to reach the Meuse, failed, and the Germans found themselves stuck in a bulge (hence the name of the battle: "The Battle of the Bulge"). The Allies pushed the Germans back, and the Germans tried again in Alsace to the south, and failed once more. That was the last of the major German counteroffensives, and the Allies broke the Siegfried Line, pushed up against the Rhine in the Battle of the Rhineland, and after crossing the Rhine, they swept towards Germany, stopping at the Elbe River. The Yalta Conference gave Berlin to the Russians closing in from the east, and the Allies halted since (and this makes sense) there was no reason for the Americans, British, Canadians, French, and all the others involved in the west to spill their blood in Berlin only to hand it over to the Russians. Interestingly, the end of World War Two in Europe paved the way for decades fighting against communism, setting up the stage for the Cold War and paving the way to the Korean War and Vietnam.

An interesting quote from Citizen Soldiers (pg 47): "A common experience: the guy who talked toughest, bragged most, excelled in maneuvers  everyone's pick to be the top soldier in the company, was the first to break, while the soft-talking kid who was hardly noticed in camp was the standout in combat. These are the cliches of war novels precisely because they are true."

Next up is Shaara's The Final Storm, tracing the last year of the war in the Pacific Theater. The companion book will probably be Eagle Against the Sun, a history of the Pacific theater from Pearl Harbor to the surrender of the Japanese. It should be atomic (pun intended). 

[sunday meditations]

Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. No one, when being tempted, should say, 'God is tempting me,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one's own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.  - James 1.12-15

Thomas a' Kempis in the early fifteenth century writes, "Temptation reveals out instability and our lack of trust in God; temptations reveal who we are. This is why we must pay attention to them." This is something I've been trying to do: pay attention not only to what tempts me, but why it tempts me. There are certain sins which carry a strong desire, but only under certain conditions; remove the conditions, emotional in nature, and that temptation is gone. This tells me that my desire for the sin isn't so much a desire for the sin itself as it is a remedy to the emotional conditions. Whether we are tempted by lust, by gossip, by drunkenness, we should ask ourselves, "Why am I being tempted in this manner? What's going on in my heart that's making me crave this sin?" So long as we focus only on the sin itself, without even giving thought to the underlying conditions, we'll be trapped in an endless cycle of trying to stave off wild weeds when what really needs to happen (to echo C.S. Lewis in an earlier post) is the resowing of the entire field.

Kempis paints a portrait of how temptation evolves, so-to-speak, into sin: "First, the thought is allowed to enter into our minds. Second, the imagination is sparked by the thought. Third, we feel a sense of pleasure at the fantasy, and we entertain it. Fourth and finally, we engage in the evil action, assenting to its urges. This is how, little by little, temptations gain entrance and overcome us if they are not resisted at the beginning. The longer we let them overcome us, the weaker we become, and the stronger the enemy against us." He pretty much nailed it, and anyone who's dealt with any sort of temptation (so, umm, everyone) can testify to that. The fight against temptation doesn't start with Step Three, right before we commit the act; it starts at Step One, by disallowing the thought to cement in our minds, by chasing off the thought, or letting it pass without giving it substance. "Fight the urge when it starts," Kempis says, "and break off bad habits, lest perhaps, little by little, they lead you into greater trouble."

To be honest, I haven't heard anyone talk about how to deal with temptation since my high school years. It seems that's something that youth ministers drill into you: "Fight temptation! Run from it like Joseph from Potiphar's wife!" (or at least that's how I remember it) Of course, we're weaker when we're young, and more susceptible to peer pressure, and there's lots of bad stuff going on around schools; but once you graduate high school, suddenly the whole idea of "fighting temptation" falls by the wayside, as if we'd already mastered it in high school (I sure as hell didn't), as if now that we're "grown up," we're somehow impervious to temptation. It really doesn't make sense to me. All this to say, what I do remember from high school is the constant analogy of fighting temptation to running from Potiphar's wife. It's always about running. "That," they tell you, "is how you resist temptation." But there are temptations you can't run away from, temptations that aren't geographically-bound. Running like hell doesn't do much when the temptation's stuck in your head, and it does even less when the temptation's bound up in your heart. Kempis writes, "Long-standing habits will resist, but they will be vanquished, in time, by a better habit--if you persevere! The flesh will cry out, but it will be restrained by the Spirit. The devil will try to stir you up and provoke you, but he will run away the moment you begin to pray." Sometimes (if not most of the time) all you can do is endure, and pray. And to be quite frank, endurance is damned hard; but, in the words of James, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Endurance has its own reward.

I'll end this "sunday meditation" with yet another word from Thomas a' Kempis on The Way of Peace and Rest. "Finally, I want to teach you the way of peace and true liberty. There are four things you must do. First, strive to do another's will rather than your own. Second, choose always to have less than more. Third, seek the lowest places in life, dying to the need to be recognized and important. Fourth, always and in everything desire that the will of God may be completely fulfilled in you. The person who tries this will be treading the frontiers of peace and rest."

from Blue Ash (III)

a snapshot of my saturday nights

It's 10:47 PM and the dishwasher's running and I'm sitting in the boys' kitchen trying to think of anything of substance I can write. Here's one, a nice highlight to my day: I got to see Jessie and Tony! I like it when their visits to Cincinnati are more frequent. Jessie just got a new car, and she may sell me her old one; the whole deal with Frank fell by the wayside when he moved to Saint Louis.

Jessie, Tony and I had lots of great talks, not least on spiritual disciplines. I told Jessie how I'm making an intentional effort to deepen my communion and "walk with God" by implementing spiritual disciplines into the fabric of my life. She was really encouraging, and she brought up how the disciplines have fallen by the wayside due to our tendency to legalize them following their mode-of-practice in the Middle Ages. It's easy to turn the disciplines into a sort of sociological badge, a performance, a rite of passage, or some sort of "law" that distinguishes the real Christians from the fake Christians. That's not the point at all. The point is knowing God more, and being changed by his Spirit in us. That's really what I'm after: I'm not trying to be a "better Christian," I just want to know God more, to keep knowing him in a richer and deeper way, and to be changed by him, to be conformed to the image of Christ. 

2 Corinthians 3.17-18 is ever-weighing on my heart and mind: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Practicing the disciplines is about freedom, it's about "beholding the glory of the Lord," it's about "being transformed into the same image," it's about opening the window for the Spirit to come in and reshape you, rework you, give you life and liberty. There's an excitement to it, there really is, and I'm more eager than ever to grow in my faith and know Christ more.

I've been reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, albeit slowly, savoring it, pondering it, letting the words sink in and take root. His book examines lots of the "classical disciplines" of the Christian faith, "classical" since they've been practiced since the dawn of Christianity. He divides the disciplines into three "spheres": the inward, the outward, and the corporate. The inward disciplines are what I'm focusing on right now, and these come easier to me, since I'm naturally more contemplative and "mystic" when it comes to life in general. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, and I want to take this step-by-step. Patience is a virtue here; this isn't something I want to "burn out" on.

My eyes are getting droopy.

They start to sting when I get really tired. It's annoying.

The sound of the dishwasher is soothing.

One more hour--and then I get to go home and pass out in my hobbit hole.

#snapshotswithfranz

"Horus Ruins Christmas"

How is Bill Maher going to get out of this one?