in the spirit
Whilst pausing to pray tonight, Luke and I noticed that our spirits were haunting uCalgary.
moving towards missional
Benson Hines was working through a series of posts not long ago on burning down and recreating a university ministry, and one of his ideas (so big that it took two days to cover!) was to go missional. I, of course, am all for it. The first post lays out the general idea, while the second post has some good stuff on the practicalities of choosing a niche to be amongst. Geared towards newbies, they’re a helpful place to start.
new banner
A new banner for a new year. This one continues my infatuation with the many lounges scattered about uCalgary, often tucked into forgotten corners and surprising places. Waypoints for academic pilgrims, they are symbiotic spaces, bringing together students from multiple faculties for cross-mojonation, thereby preserving some of the uni in university. They are physical parables, subtle reminders for those with eyes to see that we were meant not to partition ourselves and our knowledge, but to come together in community and right relationship.
This lounge is on the roof of the Arts Parkade. The Arts Parkade, you’ll notice, has a desolate, post-apocalyptic feel to it, especially the arts part of the Arts Parkade. It is a lounge speaking the parable well through the presence of absence. A fitting banner for my final few weeks at bsmucalgary.
merry christmas
re:call audio free
All the audio from re:CALL, the Forge Canada National Church Planting Congress, is now online, and it’s free. I haven’t listened yet, but these are the finest people, with lots of experience and good thinking to share on missional engagement. Look it over and snag what you want.
happy birthday jack
C. S. Lewis would have turned 113 years old today. For we who know the man only via his books, letters, and biographies, actor David Payne’s brilliant performance in this one-man play is as close as we’re likely to come to having a cuppa with Jack on his birthday this side of resurrection.
why university ministry matters
Despite what you might think, it isn’t living the student lifestyle without the inconvenience of classes that makes life as a campus minister so rewarding. Well, that’s not the only thing that makes it rewarding. There are much more significant reasons than that. My e-friend, Steve Lutz, has a great article up on collegeministry.com about why collegiate ministry is so important. He acrostically expresses in detail what I generally say in my own rambling fashion: I get to take people at that time in their lives when they make the majority of the life-shaping decisions they will make for themselves, and help them centre their lives on Jesus and His way of love. In a setting that generally encourages people towards self-serving reasons for study (make more money, have a better lifestyle, do what you love, self discovery, pottery is cool, etc.), we need those voices that say to students, “You’re meant for more than yourself. This is a place to learn so that you can, in some way, become an even greater blessing to the world.” See, rambling. Check out Steve’s acronym for order and concision.
If you’re like me, you have conversations on a fairly regular basis where you explain to people why you value working with college students. I’ve used a simple acronym, PATHS, to remind myself and others why this ministry is so important. PATHS stands for Priority, Ambition, Trajectory, Heart, and Strategic. From Why I Love Ministry to College Students (and you should too) (collegeministry.com)
digital sea scrolls
Budding Hebrew scholars rejoice! Thanks to Google, the dead sea scrolls are now digital.
liking josh garrels
I’m really diggin’ Josh Garrels. His new album is an unfortunately rare thing: good music, creative, and overtly Christian. Since he’s giving it away, it’s the perfect price for a student at the beginning of another semester.
2:30 a photo project
My wife, Cerena, and I have started a new photo project, thus joining the swelling ranks of amateur iphoneographers. We’ll be taking and posting one photo each per day for thirty days using nothing but our phones. It’s a way for us to play and have fun together, and it’s a poetic project, meant to get us to see our days and worlds differently, and maybe to help you do the same.
the burning house
If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It’s a conflict between what’s practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question.
The Burning House is a fascinating collection of photos depicting what various people would grab on the way out if their house was burning. It’s worth at least a one-time perusal as a study in human identity construction, because when the house is burning, what you’re primarily trying to save, apart from your loved ones, is yourself.
Some observations:
- The young have piles of memorabilia and sentimental keepsakes, often handed down from their parents.
- The old often list only people, pets, & items practically related to their survival.
- Many would take their iPhone and laptop or portable hard drive (the contemporary equivalent to grabbing your photo albums).
- A surprising number of people mention items by name brand (“Raybans” instead of “My favourite shades”).
- I didn’t see any Bibles.
- I only saw one bottle of alcohol. I’d expect more people would want to drown out their post-fire sorrows.
This is no big deal for university students, who functionally do something like this at the end of every summer. As someone who has helped with dorm move-in day at uCalgary, I can attest to the fact that you can tell much about a person by what they choose to cram into their allotted side of the room.
For those who have had a profoundly transformative experience, one that serves as a marker after which everything is changed, essentially having their houses burned down, this is a more important question than which pair of shoes you’d take. What makes the jump from the old life to the new? How do you decide?
Would a similarly styled move in day blog get students thinking about what defines them, and how they define themselves? Having people show up with a photo of what they packed (or would if their their parents’ basement caught fire) would make a great conversation piece at BSM around the beginning of Fall semester (hint, hint, wink wink).
(ht: headphonaught)
u2 took my picture
You know you’re cool when U2 wants your photo. The giant alien squid that U2 rides from stadium to stadium took a 360 gigapixel image of my 65,000 friends and I enjoying a summer’s evening with Bono and the boys from Dublin. I can only assume that it also performed a TSA-style body scan on all of us while planting subliminal messages in our collective subconscious about the superiority of Irishmen and our moral obligation to buy red shirts at the Gap. You can see me there, cuddled up next to Darrin, with the steely intent gaze of a serious concert goer. Click the photo and zoom out for a view of the entire Commonwealth Stadium on concert night.
If you’re looking for something more theologically substantive than a photo of me, Jeff Keuss recently posted some good stuff in the run up to the 360 Tour hitting Seattle, though I prefer Eugene Peterson’s musings on the band.
the first time
I caught U2 in concert last night for the first time. They played a bunch of stuff off Zooropa, which got me listening to it on the drive home. For some reason, I listened to The First Time, really listened to it, for… well… the first time, and then for about 12 times in a row after that. Tolkien may have nailed Imago Dei, but Bono’s nailed Missio Dei.
My father is a rich man, he wears a rich man’s cloak.
He gave me the keys to his kingdom (coming)
Gave me a cup of gold.He said “I have many mansions
And there are many rooms to see.”
But I left by the back door
And I threw away the key
bonhoeffer online seminar
Darrin Crow, my campus minister when I was an undergrad, has put together a summer seminar for all interested on the life and writing of Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, one of 20th century Christianity’s most significant theologians and ethicists. Complete with required readings, this is sure to keep you academic students from a summer of intellectual ennui. I’ve not read Bonoeffer before, haven’t started the reading yet, and just jumped into the blog today, but I’m told we’re all welcome to wade in mid-stream. With the second section slated to begin in just under a week, this is a good time to do it. If you’d care to join me, click on over to the intro page and introduce yourself.
If you sign up for a new audible.com account, you can get a free download of Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich and get your homework done on the drive home.
enlightenment christianity lecture
I’ll be spending an academic Sunday afternoon with students from bsmucalgary at How Christian Faith Adapted to
the Age of Enlightenment Reason, the Iwaasa Lecture on Urban Theology. This free lecture starts at 2:00. Follow the link for details.
update: it worked!
new creation and christian virtue
N. T. Wright’s lecture on New Creation and Christian Virtue (iTunes link) is not only an entirely engaging romp through language, ethics, history, and culture, it’s also the best defense I’ve yet heard him give for the immediate importance of understanding the true Christian hope of new heavens and new earth over against the fabricated promise of the medieval church that we’ll all run off to Plato’s disembodied heaven if we’re good. A correct view of the telos is essential if we’re to walk wisely the path from here to there.
Of course, just in case we’re wrong, you might want to click over and set up your post-rapture email to friends and family.
(ht: NTWrightpage)
pray for belarus
The recent explosion in Minsk, along with all the political turmoil and human rights violations leading up to it, have been mostly overshadowed in western news media outlets by events in the Middle East, Japan, etc., and so many of you may have missed it. The New York Times has a good summary of the national situation along with links to their excellent coverage of the recent bombing and subsequent crackdown on political opposition parties by the current government.
I’m asking you to join me in praying for Belarus. I have friends there and friends from there, and have myself stood on the metro platform where the bomb went off. May God give its people courage, for they have much to face.
benson’s travels
Note the steely gaze of redbull threshold. That’s right, Benson Hines is off on his 15th road trip to explore and report on the state of college ministry in the US. If collegiate ministry is your bag, you’ll want to track his exploits from wherever in the world you are.
the future of college ministry blogathon
The Future of College Ministry Blogathon starts today. Click on over for some thinking from practitioners on what ministry might look like on the university campus when we’re all wearing shiny silver suits and eating soylent green.
mythopoeia
I know of no finer apologia for Imago Dei outside the scriptures than this verse J. R. R. Tolkien penned for his friend and not-yet believer, C. S. Lewis, after Lewis denounced myths as untrue.
To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver’.
Philomythus to Misomythus
You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are ‘trees’, and growing is ‘to grow’);
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star’s a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o’er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain’s contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.Yes! ‘wish-fulfilment dreams’ we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ’twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
For some great critical thinking on these lines, Professor Corey Olsen’s reading of and two lectures on this poem from sessions 4 and 5 of his Washington College course on Tolkien are well worth a listen. (iTunes link)
