Karl Barth to Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Pipe Smoking

This was written during a catastrophic period in world history, lest we forget that as we work for truth and peace, there are small delights...

The world is in bad shape, but we don't want to let our pipe go out under and circumstances, do we?

Citation: Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer. Thomas Nelson, 2010. Page 120

Bonhoeffer on Pleasure

A quote from D. Bonhoeffer

"I am sure we ought to love God in our lives and in all the blessings he sends us. We should trust him in our lives, so that when our time comes, but not before, we may go to him in love and trust and joy. But, speaking frankly, to long for the transcendent when you are in your wife’s arms is, to put it mildly, a lack of taste, and it is certainly not what God expects of us.  

We ought to find God and love him in the blessings he sends us. If he pleases to grant us some overwhelming earthly bliss, we ought not to try and be more religious than God himself. For then we should spoil that bliss by our presumption and arrogance; we should be letting our religious fantasies run riot and refusing to be satisfied with what he gives. Once a man has found God in his earthly bliss and has thanked him for it, there will be plenty of opportunities for him to remind himself that these earthly pleasures are only transitory, and that it is good for him to accustom himself to the idea of eternity…. 

I am sure we honor God more if we gratefully accept the life he gives us with all its blessings, loving it and drinking it to the full, grieving deeply and sincerely when we have belittled or thrown away any of the precious things of life (some people grumble at such behavior and say it is bourgeois to be so weak and sensitive) than we do if we are insensitive towards the blessings of life, and therefore equally insensitive towards pain."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Quote found here: <http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/10605420042/i-am-sure-we-ought-to-love-god-in-our-lives-and-in>

Deliberate Living Recommended

Ken Myers, one of the most influential people in my life (via, primarily, his Mars Hill Audio Journal) says this about the focus of his work with the Journal:

"My work is really about producing thoughtful Christian faithfulness. If you start to think carefully about how you eat, how you spend time, how you think about place, all those things some people may think you’re trying to achieve salvation by works.  So my sense is that people with that kind of tendency, not just in the PCA, accept conventional ways of living from secular culture because they regard the effort to think thoughtfully and live deliberately as a kind of semi-Pelagianism.  And the idea that living deliberately is semi-Pelagian just baffles me.  Because when you don’t, you end up living in accordance with a very post-Christian, and in significant ways, anti-Christian culture."

Citation: Ken Myers, in interview with Walter Henegar

Relationship Wreck

Peter Leithart makes these insightful (as usual) comments on the tweeks in what we mean by relationships:

"British sociologist Anthony Giddens has commented on the rise of what he calls “pure relationships.” A “pure relationship” is one in which “the relationship exists solely for whatever rewards that relationship as such can deliver.” A pure relationship has no external anchors or supports, but depends entirely on the commitment of the two who enter the relationship. 

Today, for example, we distinguish friendships from working relationships and family relations, thinking of a friend “specifically as someone with whom one has a relationship unprompted by anything other than the rewards that the relationship provides." 

In recent decades, marriage has increasingly come to be seen as a pure relationship, one that is “initiated for, and kept going for as long as it delivers emotional satisfaction." This is not, of course, how marriage was understood in earlier centuries: “Marriage was a contract, often initiate by parents or relatives rather than by the marital partners themselves,"  and in the Church, marriage was seen as having a “sacramental” character, even when it was not technically understood as a sacrament. 

The dangers go even deeper, however, since American Christians often regard their relationship with God on the model of “pure relationship.” When an Evangelical speaks of a “personal relationship with Jesus,” he’s not talking about a liturgically and catechetically formed relationship, surrounded by the supports of fellow believers, rituals, signs, and texts.  He’s talking about self-standing, free-floating, pure relationship, one made all the more unstable by the fact that one of the parties is not visible."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. June 2009. Page 5.

Water in Excelsis

Water above the firmament:
    winter rain descending; the roots of vitis vivifera clutching earth.
Spring warmth:
     water drawn through vinestock, stem, and leaf; tendril, flower, fruit.
Summer heat:
     sun fierce upon the hills; in the grape now, water, glucose, fructose, tannin, acid; all beneath the thin
     firmament on which the Spirit's brooding leaves behind a bloom of yeast; Saccharomyces ellipsoideus:
     the thumbprint of the Lord and Giver of life.
Then autumn:
     basket, press, vat; sugar and yeast wantoning; earth's old September love revived:2C6H5OH+2CO2;
     fermentation; the warm must, its jaunty cap set drunkenly, rejoices in the pleasure of good company.
Here sing and brawl now
     alcohol, carbonic acid gas, acetic acid, higher alcohols, succinic acid, glycerol, and, chief among them,
Water come of age
     in the vast pots of this old Cana, where the Word, in silence, orders up new wine.
Finally:
     racking off, barreling, clearing, bottling; the long wait - for esters: alcohol and acid reconciled, wine bodied
     forth to roundness and a nose; for oxidation: tannin and alcohol softened, corners smoothed by the Spirit's
     thumb, purple shaded brown
Until
     (in Heaven it is alwaies Autumne) earth's last best gift is brought to sere and velvet elegance,
To Wine Indeed
To Water in excelsis.

...

Let us pause and drink to that.

Capon, Robert Farrar. The Supper of the Lamb. Smithmark, New York, NY, 1996. Pages 83-85

The Social Trap

While I certainly don't expect others to adopt "David's way" of living in this cultural soup that we find ourselves in, I do hope to be at least understood.  (I find that even this more modest hope is itself a nearly impossible task.)  And since I tend to make decisions slowly and after lots, and lots, and lots of puzzling over things, it often happens that my reasons for doing things can't be stated in a quick one-liner.  It often takes plenty of conversation to grasp the bolus of my thinking on a topic. (NOTE: I don't pretend to think that I have come to the "One Right Decision", but I have come to a conclusion, which leads to decisions, which then can also be tempered by additional thoughts and concerns of others.)


One of the primary reasons for this blog in particular is a hope that those that may read it (and my Dad in particular) will, by reading the things that I am reading, be able to have productive conversations because we are both speaking in the context of having read or heard the same things.


Thus, I have put a "Forum" page link on the top row of buttons, because ultimately I don't want this to be a monologue, but a dialogue, and the Forum is simply one way of doing that.  (I also occasionally send out hand-written letters as another form...and even (sharp-intake-of-breath) occasionally talk face-to-face with someone.


That being said.  One of my decisions has been to choose not to partake in the Facebook revolution.  I think that there is a potential for me to use it in a disordering way...not interacting with others in a way that is consistent with how I want to participate in the world.


And here are some thoughts that contribute to my general view of relationships.


(Feel free to argue.)


Alan Jacobs posts here on the topic of the nature of human interconnectedness:

"Andrew Keen:

"Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone. On Liberty, the 1859 essay by Bentham's godson and former acolyte, John Stuart Mill, remains a classic defence of individual rights in the age of the industrial network and its tyranny of the majority. Today, as we struggle to make sense of the impact of the internet revolution, we need an equivalent On Digital Liberty to protect the right to privacy in the social-media age. Tapscott and Williams believe that the age of networked intelligence will be equal to the Renaissance in its significance. But what if they are wrong? What if the digital revolution, because of its disregard for the right of individual privacy, becomes a new dark ages? And what if all that is left of individual privacy by the end of the 21st century exists in museums alongside Vermeer's Woman in Blue? Then what?"

But this is just replacing one untenable generalization with another. As everyone knows, surely, we want and need to be alone sometimes and to be with others sometimes. Mental and spiritual health is found in the proper balance of the two, which must be different for different people. Every the most solitary crave connection sometimes; even the most social need time alone to re-charge. It would be hard to deny that the internet has been a profoundly rich and healing place for many lonely people. The questions are, or should be: What is the right balance for me? and, Have I achieved that balance?

As I commented in a post some months ago, advocates of the Big Social like Steven Johnson think we have been too solitary and too disconnected and need — as a society anyway — to move towards more connection, because connection generates ideas. My response to that was that (a) the generation of ideas is not the only social good, and (b) it’s hard to look at the proliferation of social media that I and my friends are occupied with and think that we don't have enough connections. My suspicion is that we need fewer connections, but (as I suggested in my previous post) more multi-dimensional ones. Keen overstates the value of privacy and under-rates the value of social connection, but he’s surely write to think that solitude is right now the endangered condition."

Citation:

Jacobs, Allan. "The Social Trap". Text Patterns Blog on The New Atlantis website.

<http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2011/03/social-trap.html>

Cook's Illustrated

Few and far between are the cooking magazines that make you more thoughtful because of the well-crafted and point-well-taken editorials of the manager of the magazine.


But such are the thoughts of Christopher Kimball, the editor of "Cook's Illustrated" magazine.  Within the first page or two of each cooking magazine, Mr. Kimball writes out his thoughts on cooking, agriculture, thinking, community.  It is like reading Wendell Berry, if he had become a cook instead of a farmer.


Here is a taste (sorry) of Christopher Kimball's writing from the Editorial on page 1 of the Sept/Oct 1998 edition of Cook's Illustrated.

"Two years ago, my wife Adrienne bought me an unusual birthday present: a beehive filled with 30,000 bees plus a subscription to Bee Culture magazine.  Since then, I hav eadded six additional hives, harvested two crops of honey, endured a few minor stings, and become an avid reader of this odd low-budget publication.  Of most interest to me was a recent article containing a survey of American eating habits.  It contained the following facts:

• The ideal food preparation time is 15 minutes.  It is estimated that it will be five minutes by 2030.

• Only one-third of women over the age of 20 bake for fun, even once per year.

• Seventy-five percent of American do not know at 4 p.m. what they'll eat for dinner.

• Three-quarters of American children do not know how to cook.

• In 1995, restaurant sales were greater than supermarket sales.

• The sources of meals consumed t home are: fast food 41 percent; restaurant takeout 21 percent; and supermarket takeout 22 percent.  This means that only 16 percent of the meals we consume at home are (presumably) home-cooked.

"Another survey, this one reported by the New York Times, found that 75 percent of those polled did not know how to cook broccoli, 50 percent couldn't prepare gravy, and 45 percent didn't know the number of teaspoons in a tablespoon.  The article went on to say that "in the last decade (the '80s), cooking has evolved into an optional activity, like skiing or playing chess." But this trend is not just a recent phenomenon.  Back at the turn of the century, convenience foods were already being cleverly inserted into published recipes, often by magazine food writers who were heavily subsidized by the food industry, a practice that continues to this day.   

"The influence of advertising on food consumption became so enormous that that one Iowa novelist quipped almost 100 years ago that "people in the United States do not eat for pleasure...eating is something done just in response to advertising." Another indication of things to come was that in the 1930s the average distance between growing fields and markets was already 1,500 miles. 

"Given were we find ourselves today (with fewer than 20 percent of the meals we eat at home being home-cooked) and despite relatively minor indications to the contrary (such as this magazine), we might begin to wonder at the meaning of the term "inconvenient." the dictionary states that it is the opposite of convenient, which itself is defined as "suited or favorable to a person's needs, comfort, or proposes." One then might reasonably ask, what is our purpose?  I suspect that recent trends would indicate that our aim is to be comfortable, to have our physical needs fulfilled as easily and quickly as possible.  Yet human history has always been driven by greater purposes than mere comfort, among them religion, spiritual awakening, freedom, and a lust for adventure.  If convenience were truly the measure of life's activities, then Lewis and Clark would never have found a route to the West Coast, Jamestown would never have been settled, men would never have landed on the moon, and Martin Luther King would never have left his congregation.  We would also be at great pains to explain the annual pilgrimage to mecca and why anyone has ever voluntarily joined the armed forces.  Boot camp is the epitome of inconvenience. 

"So why are Americans so lacking in spunk when it comes to the kitchen? After all, the rest of our life is consumed with "inconveniences" - like raising children and commuting to work.  Perhaps we are lazy about our food because, for the first time in history, we don't have to cook to eat.  Or perhaps we no longer find anything enlightening about the process of preparing food.  Going to the moon is worth the effort; making chicken Parmesan is less noble. 

"Recently, as I was checking the hives, I took a moment to watch the bees building the honeycomb, the workers swarming over the beeswax foundation, engaged in an endless series of repetitive tasks.  I began to wonder hoe bees see their short, hard lives.  Maybe they dream about flying through a warm summer evening, laden with nectar, floating weightlessly down to the hive entrance, or perhaps they fall asleep thinking of fields of bright purple clover, orange and yellow Indian paintbrushes, and apple trees bursting with fragile white blossoms.  The buzz and rich moist air of the hive must act as a thick blanket, enveloping them as they sleep.  And at the end of their life cycle, a mere six weeks at the height of the season, they must dream of the work itself, of building a honeycomb and filling it with thick goldenrod honey. 

"These are good thoughts - of hard work, of building a home, of working side by side with others.  these are also the dreams of cooks, of those of us who have traded comfort of hard work and instant gratification for knowledge.  In the kitchen, much like bees, we build foundations an fill them with sweet dreams that will be remembered by the next generation of cooks who will stand in our kitchens, preparing our recipes, long after our work is done." (1)

Citation:
(1) Kimball, Christopher. "Busy Bees". Cook's Illustrated #34. Sept/Oct 1998. Pg. 1.

Alinea Restaurant

William A. Foster says

"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives" (1)

Robert Farrar Capon (an Anglican) says

"For all its greatness, the created order cries out for further greatness still.  The most splendid dinner, the most exquisite food, the most gratifying company, arouse more appetites than they satisfy.  They do not slake man's thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds." (2)

Denise Frame Harlan says, in response to that paragraph from Capon's truly marvelous book, "The Supper of the Lamb"

"I'd never known what to do with all the love in my heart for this beautiful, mess of a world.  All this time, I'd been trying to temper and tame my passion for mountains and tea and road trips and cheesecake and people. I'd known God my whole life, had known Christ for a decade, and had focused on Jesus's suffering and sacrifice.  I'd been afraid to love anything too much for fear that I'd disappoint God and prove myself too worldly, too attached to the everyday stuff of creation that would hinder my race toward heaven and the life hereafter.  I'd been afraid, and I'd held my heart back.  Suddenly it occured to me that this fear, this withholding, might be sin.  Maybe I'd had everything all wrong." (3)

Maybe she had.  


I believe that the very good creation of God, when taken in its proper light, can be fingers pointing us, His incarnate creatures, back to the creator, who made us creative in His image.


Alinea is a restaurant that sets the bar high, when it comes to looking intensely at the creation and then continuing the creative act.


I want to go there one (1) time in my life, with my wife.  (A dream my pocket book and consciousness of the needs of the poor forced me to give up as soon as it formed.)


Does anyone want to donate $400? :)


Though the pictures you are about to look at are an exaggerated expression of what I am talking about (with corresponding price tag), I think that God, who gave us all things richly to enjoy wants us to join Him in creation, and enjoy Him in creativity.  

Caramel Popcorn

Apple

Blackberry

Peanut

Bean

PB&J

Chestnut

Tomato

Strawberry

Venison

Hot Potato-Cold Potato

Sweet Potato

Tomato

Note that price at the bottom 

(4)

Citation:
(1) Foster, William A. 
<http://thinkexist.com/quotation/quality_is_never_an_accident-it_is_always_the/226780.html>. Accessed 16 February 2011.
(2) Capon, Robert Farrar. The Supper of the Lamb. Smithmark, New York, NY. 1969.  
(3) Harlan, Denise Frame. "And She Took Flour".  From The Spirit of Food by Leslie Leyland Fields. Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon. 
(4) <http://www.alinearestaurant.com/>. Accessed 11 February 2011

A way to cultivate obedience

A quote from C.S. Lewis in A Preface to Paradise Lost:

"The very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of 'solemnity'. 

"To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in.  

"Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a wide-spread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connection with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar's head at a Christmas feast—all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. ; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity.  

"The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual."

This quote from C.S. Lewis had a profound effect on my moral imagination.  In particular the sentence that suggests that those that are submitting to the details of a tradition are being obedient, not vain. While I do know that a ceremony can be a cause of pride, I also know, from personal experience, that spontaneity can just as easily - perhaps more easily - be a source of pride.


Quote link found here .

Cooperating With God

Ann (no "e") Voskamp is our favorite blog author.  There are two reasons, I suppose, that I enjoy reading her writing: she thinks about things that I think about; she loves to play with words.


She says,

"...life is not a thing to be wrestled with, subdued and conquered; life’s a beauty to be considered. God didn’t say control the landscape, but to consider long the lilies...."

Elsewhere, and likewise, we found this quote,

"For the Christian, time is not meant to be a tyrant, ruling over us. Nor is the passing of time to be experienced as an enemy, somehow stealing our youth and opportunity. Rather, time is meant to become a companion, a friend and a teacher, instructing us; offering us a series of invitations to allow the Lord to truly become our King by reigning in our daily lives. Our conscious awareness of time makes it a path along which the redemptive loving plan of a timeless God is revealed and received. In Christ, time is now given back to us as a gift. It offers us a field of choice and a path to holiness and human flourishing."

Read more by Deacon Keith Fournier: Here

What's in a week?

My family has been taking quite a bit of joy in "discovering" the sabbath.  We are beginning to understand what Christ meant when He said that the sabbath was made for man.  And, I must say, I am delighted.

Here is a clip from an article we ran across online that captured my imagination.

"The secret of sabbath time is to build into every seven days a rhythm that nourishes wholeness.  We are invited to live life for one week, rather than by days or epochs.  Rather than forestalling to the future this weeks acts of love, prayer, play, exercise, intimacy, rest or obedience, we ensure by sabbath time that all we need for wholeness occurs during these seven days."

The whole article can be found  here.

John Ruskin's "Modern Painters"

How can I cultivate a life that acknowledges this fact?

"To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray — these are the things that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these, they never will have the power to do more. The world’s prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things: but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wise."