Category: reflections

St. Peter’s Brewery :: the 40k word mark

1506
44
lab.drwicked.com

I passed the 40,000 word marker tonight. WOOT!

On the downward slope for sure! 40,018 words total (or 80%) and less than 10,000 words left! Only seven days to go! Finish line here we come!

And with another word/mile-marker – I’ll share another brief segment of the book ::

G.T. explained that even after changing his major and transferring to the Baptist college, he still struggled with his decision.

“I just wasn’t content or happy,” G.T. said. “It was like something was still missing. But I figured I’d better stick with it now. I’d spent too much time and money to back out by that time.”

After he graduated college, he began seminary and went to work as a youth pastor for a congregation with roughly 150 members.

“Seminary was just ‘what you do’ if you want to go into full time ministry,” G.T. said. “It didn’t always make much sense to me, but I guess I learned a lot along the way. It was all classroom and book knowledge that was just poured into your head and there wasn’t much practical examples or training to prepare you for real world ministry.”

G.T. stopped his story with a rather loud laugh. He tried to continue on with his story in between laughs.

“I remember after I graduated seminary I got a job as a pastor at a slightly larger church than before,” he said. “A month after I took over the position I was asked to perform a funeral for an older member in the church and I was absolutely clueless as to what I should do. I had to scour all of my books for examples of how to perform a funeral. Finally I called up the pastor from my old church and asked for his advice. He was able to give me enough notes to make it through that first funeral. I’m sure that family thought, ‘What is wrong with this guy?!’”

G.T. paused while he took several bites of food. Jimmy thought through G.T.’s retelling of his story.
“So basically you decided to go into the ministry because some dude in your past said you should?” Jimmy asked. “And then you spent a couple years getting a Master’s degree simply because it was the thing to do?”

G.T. finished chewing his food.

“Yup,” he replied. “Pretty good summary. I thought it was the right thing to do and figured if my pastor thought I should do it, he must have a pretty good insight from God.”

“So then what?” Jimmy asked.

“Well as I was at this first church I began to really study Scripture in preparation for each week’s sermon,” G.T. said. “And the more I read and studied the more I began to realize that I was supposed to have a relationship with God on my own, not dependent upon a pastor or an elder or even my parents. So I really started encouraging the congregation to start reading their Bibles on their own. And I started suggesting that they shouldn’t depend on me to hear from God. They weren’t all too receptive to that idea. The deacons and the elders met and basically told me, ‘We don’t pay you to tell us we’re supposed to hear from God on our own. You’re supposed to tell us what God says.’ So that was the end of church number one.”

The Wanderer

Bono

Back in the early 1990’s my friends turned me on to the music of U2. It was right before the release of their album Achtung Baby. In fact the first CD I ever bought was U2’s One single, followed soon by the Achtung Baby album.

As I came to learn more and more about the band I was even more intrigued by the suggestions that they might be a “Christian band.” The continual argument against their “conversion” was the rock lifestyle they led and the fact that they wrote and sang lyrics that often talked just as much about doubting their faith as accepting what God was doing in the world around them.

I’ve come to see more and more that perhaps that’s also what attracts many people (and me more and more) to their music – they’re real, authentic and don’t claim to have it all figured out.

@U2 shared a list of U2’s Top 10 Spiritual Songs last month.

The list included ::

Tomorrow
Drowning Man
The Wanderer
Love Rescue Me
The Playboy Mansion
Wake Up Dead Man
Mercy
Yahweh
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
40

I’m glad they included “Wake Up Dead Man” on the list. The first time I heard that song I thought perhaps Bono and U2 had given up on any faith they might have had. But then I came to see it as real, raw, honest seeking of God.

@U2 writes ::

Bitter, enraged and at times desperate, the final song on the Pop album is a fierce antidote to any rose-tinted view of the spiritual life. Bono states his predicament bluntly and uncompromisingly in the first few lines, painting a grim picture of what is perhaps his boldest depiction of a life lived in isolation from both God and the wider world.

Crying out to a deity who may or may not have abandoned him, in “Wake Up Dead Man” (the lyrics of which were partly written by the Edge), Bono describes a bleak situation, one of being so consumed by naked anger with God that it makes hard listening for any believer. However, I’ve often found it the perfect sound track to those blackest of black moments, as the song almost perfectly articulates what it feels to have what Bono has called that “very valid” sense of outrage at a God who at times seems indifferent to the awfulness of the human condition.

The song goes to prove that sometimes we will feel lost, confused and alone in the world. And those times may leave us asking “God, why have you forsaken me.” Yet, the picture doesn’t remain bleak – as the next song U2 released was “Beautiful Day.” The song contrasts the previous one like Good Friday contrasts with Easter Sunday.

I’ve come to realize in my own life that it’s those deep, dark, lonely moments that make the moments of resurrection and reconciliation that much more beautiful.

What songs would you add to the list? Are there other songs, albums or movies that paint beautiful pictures of God’s reconciliation with you and the world around us? Are there other stories that you’ve heard that have brought about new understandings of God’s working in the world?

St. Peter’s Brewery :: a sneak peak

I’m at roughly 70% of the way done with my nanowrimo novel. I’m wondering now if I can wrap things up in 15,000 words or not. Maybe it will leave room for a sequel for 2009 :-).

Either way, thought I’d share a passage I’m working on right now. As always, the comments are open so feel free to critique, give suggestions and so forth. I won’t be making any changes to the text as of now – editing comes later – but I’ll take the suggestions into consideration when that process begins.

So here ya go ::

Jimmy was startled that he had revealed so much. He had only revealed that part of the story a few times before. And those folks had always ended up leaving him as well.

“Wow! That’s tough stuff,” Josh said. “It sounds like you’re beginning to understand your mom’s perspective. I’ve found that it’s so easy to cast judgment on someone when we just look at surface issues. It’s like we see a flesh wound and ignore everything that might be going on underneath. We either cast them away or try to fix the surface issue, never dealing with the disease or root of the problem that might be growing underneath the skin.”

“Hmmm,” Jimmy thought. “Explain that a bit more.”

“Well, let’s take prostitution as an example,” Josh continued. “We all want to be angry at the prostitute or the women who are sold into the sex trade industry. We want to cast them out and say they’re in the wrong. We don’t want to be around them. It’s like they have a contagious disease that we might catch if we spend too much time with them. Yet rather than being angry at the women, we should be mad at the men or women who likely abused them in their past and made them turn to prostitution. We should be mad at the people and companies who make between five billion and nine billion dollars a year encouraging and trafficking these women around the world.”

“Or here’s another issue close to my heart,” Julie spoke up. “Let’s look at abortion. My mom almost aborted me because she was dirt poor, living on the street and had no help. She couldn’t support and care for herself, let alone another human being. She didn’t want to abort me simply because she’s was an evil person, she just didn’t know what other options she had.”

“So what happened,” Jimmy asked.

“Well, obviously she didn’t abort me,” Julie said with a grin. “My mom ran into a lady who found out about her situation and agreed to adopt both my mom and ultimately me into her family. She cared for my mom all during the pregnancy and then cared for me like I was her own daughter or granddaughter. She helped my mom get her GED and then get an associate’s degree at Austin Community College. She even set up a college fund for me along the way. It was the ultimate example of getting to the root of the problem and not just dealing with one individual symptom. I think it’s provided a great example to me as to how we should treat issues systematically rather than just treating individual systems.”

Jimmy was genuinely stunned at how open Julie was.

“I found out later that that’s very similar to what Mother Theresa did in India,” Julie added. “She offered grace to those who really needed it. And rather than condemning someone for their mistake – or the mistake of others – she offered grace and would adopt numerous mothers and their unborn babies. She would welcome them into her home and care for them till they could make it on their own.”
The group mulled these ideas over with several other questions, explanations and ideas. Jimmy had never been a part of a group as open and sharing about their lives, their pasts and their faith. They simply had no qualms telling someone else where they may have messed up, or where someone else might have hurt them, or where they might have hurt someone else.

This struck Jimmy as something totally different than anything he knew about so called Christians. He saw glimpses of it in Capt. Matthie and his wife, but found it easy to question the authenticity and genuineness of their kids. Perhaps like Jimmy, they were simply drug somewhere they didn’t feel a connection with or a desire to be at.

The other Christians he knew growing up all came across as living a plastic religion. It wasn’t very solid. It looked great on the inside but was usually hollow or weak when tested. They made a big deal about attending church on Sunday, Wednesday and Fifth Quarter Celebrations on Friday nights but many times their lives just didn’t match up with what they claimed to believe in. Other times they may have done everything possible to do what was good and right, but it was obvious their heart was never in it.

It was just repetitive actions done out of duty. They were always trying to add more good deeds to some magical scale that God holds somewhere in heaven – like Lady Justice. The good deeds were added to one side of the scale with the hopes that they would be able to outweigh the bad deeds on the other side.

These new friends seemed to be living for something more.

Adult stem cells score

Shared this story from NPR on Facebook earlier this week.

Here’s what Christianity Today had to say…

Adult Stem Cells Score Again

Windpipe transplant patient Claudia Castillo.
Windpipe transplant patient Claudia Castillo.
A trachea engineered from bone marrow stem-cells makes ethical research more appealing.

Susan Wunderink

Claudia Castillo, whose lungs had been ravaged by tuberculosis, has a new trachea. She made it herself . . . sort of.

Doctors in Spain took stem-cells from Claudia Castillo’s bone marrow and had them form a section of trachea based on the trachea of an organ donor. The scientists transplanted the 2.75-inch piece and published the results in The Lancet:

The graft immediately provided the recipient with a functional airway, improved her quality of life, and had a normal appearance and mechanical properties at 4 months. The patient had no anti-donor antibodies and was not on immunosuppressive drugs.

The results show that we can produce a cellular, tissue-engineered airway with mechanical properties that allow normal functioning, and which is free from the risks of rejection.

Castillo is the first person to have an engineered trachea transplant, The Guardian says. She has had her new windpipe for several months without immunosuppressants—a breakthrough in surgery.

Besides giving hope to those who need transplants, Castillo’s case is also important to the debate over whether to allow stem-cell research which destroys embryos.

“Engineering new tissues and organs from stem cells has long been a goal of researchers, because it would help overcome a chronic shortage of donor organs.” NPR says. “But controversies over the source of stem cells have slowed research in the United States.”

However the transplant, rather than highlighting limitations, is another victory for ethical (and legal) stem-cell research. In its Q&A on stem-cells, CNN says “In the past, because adult stem cells were considered stuck in their ways, the focus had been on embryonic cells but now scientists and doctors will be wanting to see if adult cells can be used to treat a wider range of conditions.”

—
I’m hoping the Obama-Biden team sees more and more stories like these and works to provide more funding for adult stem cell research. They’ve already pledged to increase funding for embryonic stem cell research – let’s keep adult stem cell research on the table as well as stem cells from umbilical cords — as we’re doing here in Texas.

The church is a war room – not a waiting room


Kingdom Coming from Shaun Groves on Vimeo.

Thoughts? Many great things here.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Download Shaun’s free song :: www.shaungroves.com/freemusic