Some Things Personal

Ok, I was feeling pretty good about this whole blog thing.  Look at all the posts.  I am like totally destroying last year’s number of posts.  Granted, two is not difficult to totally destroy, but still.  Blogging, enjoyable, driving production of written words, keeping goals and having fun at the same time, what could be better, aside from a run-on sentence I didn’t take time to tame but somehow managed to make sense?  Then someone griped.  They said I should put something personal on here to let people know about me, like that would be interesting.  So, I abdicate once again to the gripers.  Here are some personal things.

Personal thing #1:

I am a pastor.  I have been a pastor for sixteen years and some change.  Very early a wise old man who was also a pastor told me if I could find anything else to do that would satisfy the call, to do it instead.  I never found that other thing and he was right.

Personal thing #2:

I hate prefixed-literature.   Any kind of writing with a word in front of it, I hate.  This includes Christian, feminist, gay, and whatever else you can think of.  I understand genre.  That’s fine.  I get it.  But please, can we judge a work on the merits of the work and not on the current geo-political-gender-race-sexual orientation-red state – blue-state prism?  Nice writing is nice writing and if I’m really grooving on a writer I’ll take the time to see what’s behind the story.  Otherwise, I don’t need to have it sliced and diced and pre-prepared for my consumption based on a marketing cluster. 

Personal thing #3:

I have a thing about how we no longer have privacy.  I’m not sure we appreciate that fact, as a culture or as individuals.  If I worked for the FBI and wanted to create a national database that kept track of people, where they live, what they do, what they think, and who their friends and enemies are, while keeping data-entry costs non-existent, the perfect system would be facebook.  I know how that sounds and I’m really not a tin-foil hat kinda guy, but then again…  Like I said, I have a thing.  I’m reticent about being too personal on the internet.  I’m cautious about it. 

Personal thing #4:

I like to write.  In my brain this blog is mostly an outlet for creative writing and an initial foray into creating a home-base for some planned ebooks (stay tuned).  Think about what it means to be a pastor who likes to write creatively.  The preconceived notions of what pastors are supposed to be swarm like angry hornets.  For example, everything I write is supposed to be pure and inspiring and about the Bible.  I should never ever cast a cold unflattering light on people of faith, and should maintain a caricature-ish and awkwardly simple level of fiction, a la Ned Flanders.   Right?  No cussin’, no sex, no blood, no nothing like that and the good guys always, and I mean always, win.  Deus ex machina was a plot device before it was a cool video game.  Look it up.

Personal thing #5:

I'm a smelly human.  I was a smelly human way before I answered the call to be a pastor.  I have smelly human thoughts, I've experienced smelly human experiences, and sometimes my writing reflects these experiences.  I mean, have you seen the world?  That's the life I've known and what's so graceful about the Grace of God is that it shines through anyway.  Despite our best efforts there are still blessings and wonderful things.

Do the Math

Let’s say a guy makes a big pot of spaghetti on an average of once a day, every ten days, for sixteen years.  That’s 584 pots of spaghetti.  That’s 876 pounds of pasta and 1,168 pounds of ground beef and pork.  That’s 1,479 gallons of water.  That’s 584 loaves of bread because he always makes garlic bread.  I’m not including the garlic bread numbers.  That’s 876 tablespoons of olive oil.  That’s 584 onions.  That’s 876 cloves of garlic.  That’s at least 1,752 tablespoons of various Italian herbs and spices, fresh in the summer, store bought in winter.  I say at least because he never measures.  That’s at least 1,752 ounces of catsup.  That’s also 584 twelve-ounce cans of unsalted tomato sauce and at least that many fresh tomatoes.  Don’t forget salt and pepper, also unmeasured – probably an ounce each batch.  That’s 876 hours of effort in the kitchen.  Never mind the shopping and never mind the dirty dishes. Whoever cooks doesn’t have to do dishes – house rule.

These numbers are translatable to something more meaningful and relevant.   But I’m lazy and don’t do that.

Point is, it's epic.  I do epic things.  So do you.  But the forest for the trees and all that…  Stay inspired and heroic.  Do things for others.  It adds up.

Sun's So Bright I Froze To Death

The sun’s so bright I froze to death.  That one goes way back.  It is one of my earliest memories of music.  I ascribe to this line no great meanings, but I think I might finally get it, or at least I've found an application for the idea.

There are believers who know the exact month when the world is going to end.  Just ask them.  They pick days on the calendar.  Others give themselves a month or two on either side of their equations.  That’s probably best because calculations like these are more plausible when there is wiggle room.  Here I am talking about a biblical cataclysmic event involving the book of Daniel, the rise of the Anti-Christ, and the set-up for the seven years of tribulations and the United States is the Great Whore of Babylon and that means the USA is going to be taken out of the photo-finish at the end.  They have done the math.  They know.  That kind of thing.

This seems to fit a general mood.  Lots of people think something bad is about to happen.  And it’s true; things could get really crappy really fast, like overnight.  It sure does feel like something big is going to happen.  It’s in the air.  And just where is the United States in scripture?  We do seem very busy buying and selling.

But these guys, they know when.  Or, actually, they knew.  Their first date has come and gone.  So maybe they revise their calculations or maybe someone else comes along with a new calculation.  That’s the bright sun.  Sometimes it is so bright that a man can’t see much else and in that sun-induced blindness, other things are overlooked.

When that happens, the fun tends to evaporate from the fundamentalism.  Taking liberties with the admonition to live in the truth, in word and deed; this is the freezing to death part.  There is liberty to be rude and ugly and gossipy and bitter and that’s just the way it is.  There isn’t much left over for things like kindness and forbearance and gentleness and how we shouldn’t give none occasion and how if the weak brother has a problem eating a ham sandwich then don’t eat ham around that brother.  With sun-bright freezing the good things go out the window.  Peace and joy and love, the best of gifts, are blanketed under burdens of anger and being ticked off at everything.  And, by the way, don’t disagree and don’t challenge because the White Horseman has already ridden.  Don’t dare caution and don’t mess with the dates of arrival.  Because if you do, then the pillory for you, my brother!  Again, freezing to death.

Maybe that’s the problem when people get the Revelation fever.  We are moving from point A to point B in time and there is nothing we can do about it.  It’s in the book.  It’s going to happen and it is overwhelming to consider.  But in the meantime, the rest of the New Testament also applies.