Interior Darkness

Advent began today. We are celebrating the coming of light into darkness in this season.
I've been reflecting on my own darkness lately. I've noticed that the more time I spend with God, the more aware I am of my own depravity and sinfulness. Ironic, since the more time I spend with God, the more my external life gets "cleaned up." So people hear me say things like this and think I'm being too hard on myself. Probably at least 1 comment for this post will be along those lines. But people, let me tell you, I am the only person inside my head and it is UGLY in here!
Back to my point: that as we grow in our faith, we gain more understanding of our depravity. I think that this is a common experience for many of us. And I think it's an example of God's mercy. I think we only perceive our true sinfulness to the extent that we perceive God's grace. So the more I experience God's grace, the more I see of my own evil. The grace is what enables the vision. Because if we saw ourselves, truly saw ourselves without God's grace, we would fall into utter despair. So God gives us some grace, and then we see a little more. Then God gives us more grace, and we see a little more. The grace is what lifts us up and allows us to keep going. We begin to be like the debtor in Luke 7, who loved much because he was forgiven much. This is why sin is not a painful subject - not a depressing topic. It's a joyous one! God brought light into the darkness of my soul! And the more I understand of God's forgiveness, the more I love God! Talk about win-win! It would be like being audited, and discovering that the last 7 years of taxes were wrong and you owed millions to the government, and the auditor then smiled and said, "How about we make what you owed for the last 7 years your refund this year?" And the millions owed became the millions received. This is the good news of Advent! This is why Christ came into the world!

centering prayer

I've been practicing centering prayer for a few years now. However, I've been practicing it with much more discipline lately. It occurs to me that my cats provide the perfect image for it.
My mind is like Duchess on the screened-in porch. Every fiber of her being is alert, eyes wide open, nose twitching, ears rotating to catch every sound, tail up, body quivering with readiness to run and pounce. And at every noise, every movement, every smell, she moves. She runs and rushes all over the place, totally focused but also switching focus every second.
When I enter centering prayer, I detach from my Duchess mind. I see it. I know it's doing its thing. But I just let it go. I try to access my Pipsqueak center. Pipsqueak sits in my lap. He doesn't much want petting. He doesn't move around every 5 seconds like Shadow. He just wants to sit in perfect stillness in a warm place. He is solid and heavy and completely relaxed.
I pretty much think everybody ought to be trying out centering prayer, that's how awesome it is.

Eye-Planks and Amplifiers

Today I got to see the plank in my eye and it wasn't fun. I started out happily enough, planning a few errands in my head. My first errand was to go to the Going Out Of Business Linen N Things and exchange a tablecloth. I didn't have my receipt, but the cloth I needed was the same price, so I went anyway, filled with foolish optimism. Of course, they denied me anything without my receipt, so I left the store grumbling under my breath and drove home again, determined to find the receipt, which was at the bottom of my trash can, naturally. Armed with the receipt, I drove back, still grumbling things and with a decidedly frowning face. When I arrived, the cashier was dealing with an irritated woman wanting to exchange some broken dishes. I waved my receipt at the cashier who told me to wait for the manager.
When the manager arrived, she had to deal with the other woman first. She did not have a receipt. She did not get her way. So she threw a fit, telling the manager to "have a nice day ripping customers off," and stormed out. When the manager said, "Have a nice day" to her back, she threw the F-bomb at her. Wow. I meekly walked up, pointed out my receipt, the identical prices, and walked out with the correct tablecloth.
And then the plank in my own eye started jostling around, causing many painful splinters. It was like someone had hooked an amplifier up to my inner thoughts and broadcast them to the whole store, via the first customer. Oh yeah, sure, I didn't say those words to her face, but I thought them. Jesus never made a distinction between what goes on in your head and what comes out of your mouth. Seeing that woman curse those store employees was seeing the true impact of my secret thoughts. Even if they stay secret, they are utterly destructive.
Isn't that the point of Jesus' plank and speck of dust story? We don't try to pull out the plank in order to point out the speck of dust. Instead, the speck of dust illuminates the plank in our own eye. Every time.

Movies that are Good for you

We have Kite Runner from Netflix sitting on our TV stand. It's been sitting there since Thursday. This weekend we watched: the new Bond movie, Iron Man, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, a Seinfeld episode, and 2 Season 3 X-Files episodes. And Dale watched some football. (A note to the few who don't know - I've been sick all weekend so our movie watching was unusually high). We did not watch Kite Runner.
See, I've read the book. I know what's in that movie. It's one of those movies that's good for you. Everyone knows they should watch it. It's like Hotel Rwanda or Crash - movies that contain incredibly painful content but also contain incredibly painful truths. So we rent these movies, because we know we ought to, but we hesitate to watch them. It's kind of like that volume of Shakespeare on the bookshelf, or the dusty piano in the corner - our cultural guilt. Right? We own Shakespeare, but we avidly check out all the Dexter books from the library and secretly read them with great pleasure. Intellectual junk food. :)
I'm pretty sure we'll watch Kite Runner. Probably. heehee, maybe we'll just want til Mom and Dad are here and make them watch it with us! Most depressing Thanksgiving movie ever!
What kinds of movies or books do you get just cause they're good for you?

clarification

It has come to my attention that Duchess looks angry in that photo. As if she's just been disciplined for bad behavior (a not uncommon occurrence). But in fact, that's not the case. When I took this photo, she was sitting in my lap receiving petting. And if you know Duchess, you know that she doesn't sit in laps unless she puts herself there. So she chose to sit in my lap and receive my pettings (and if she didn't want them, she would've bitten me). And she still made that face...

Jesus' bumper stickers

I spend a lot of time imagining what heaven is like. I imagine it's a place where sip-stealing is not just tolerated, it's encouraged. When you go to the "Golden Arches", your burger is always made to your exact specifications without you having to even ask. There's only 1 channel on the TV, but it's always playing what you want to watch....without commercial interruption.

So, I was wondering...when Jesus is scooting around the highways and byways of the great beyond in his Smart Car, what kind of bumper stickers does he have? (This is generally how I spend my time, I let Elaine ponder the heavy spiritual stuff.) Here's my guess:

1. Kucinich '08
2. My Dad can beat up your Dad
3. My Other Car is a Donkey
4. Real Men Love Me
5. Protestant since 1517

He may/may not have an NCSU sticker in his window. I mean, Jesus was all about suffering, and well....NCSU athletics is about as pathetic as you can get in the world of college sports.

Duchess or the Grinch?

Is it just me, or is there more than a passing resemblance here?

A new kind of Kosher: WARNING: description of animal cruelty

Pigs in large scale industrial operations have their tails docked. In more honest terms, their tails are cut down to tiny nubs when they are piglets. This is done to prevent infections caused when pigs bite each other's tails. Michael Pollan, the "The Omnivore's Dilemma," asserts that the tail biting is caused by an unnaturally early weaning: weaning after 10 days rather than 13 weeks (pg 218). According to Pollan, the problem is that a pig kept in a crowded indoor structure is too demoralized to fight back when another pig bites his tail. But if the tail is docked, the biting becomes so much more painful "that even the most demoralized pig will struggle to resist it." This is not the only view. According to this paper, http://www.depts.ttu.edu/liru_afs/pdf/CANNIBALISMINGROWINGPIGS.pdf, the reason pigs bite each other's tails is unknown. A study showed this behavior occurring in pigs that were kept in litter groups for 9 weeks. It is unspecified whether they were allowed to nurse for those 9 weeks. It is shown in the paper that tail docking did nothing to deter tail biting.
So how does this relate to kosher? Well, some people believe that God's kosher laws were designed to prevent cruelty to animals. The idea being that you can't just eat any animal, prepared any way. The laws demand that you respect the animals and butcher them humanely. Now, I'm sure there are many reasons for the kosher laws, but I find this one compelling personally. What if we created a new kind of kosher? A kosher that required that animals have the opportunity to be animals, for example: wandering through pastures, wagging their un-mutilated tails, pecking at the ground, etc. Thanks to the vegan movement, there are farms which are recreating this ideal. I'm not about to give up eating animal products, but I am going to continue researching animal treatment and try to eat animals which were treated humanely. It would be simpler to be vegan, sure, and to those who have the discipline for it, great. All I'm saying is that maybe we ought to give some consideration to the food we eat. This is one way we can bring God's restoration into the world.

God's Technology

Wait for a full update on the grass-fed beef tomorrow! It's in the oven cooking right now and it smells SO good.
So here's the thing. I'm reading this great book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. And the author, a journalist, describes a farm in Virginia which the farmer describes as "sustainable," specifically avoiding the word "organic," although it sounds pretty amazingly organic to me. On this farm, the farmer grows grass. He uses cattle, chicken, pigs, and turkeys to harvest the grass and convert it to meat. And as the journalist describes all the interactions between the animals, it's just mind-blowing. It's like a perfect picture of how God designs things. For example, the cows are kept in a barn during the winter. But instead of mucking out their manure, the farmer spreads it out and layers it. He adds a layer of woodchips and apples. Gradually, the whole mass composts, keeping the cows warm and fermenting the apples. In the spring, after the cows are moved back to pasture, the farmer brings in the pigs, who joyously snort through the compost to dig out the fermented apples. As they do so, they introduce air to the mix, greatly increasing the rate of compost. And once they are done, this nasty yucky mass of woodchips and manure has been transformed into fabulous soil to spread on the grass fields! No waste. No diseases. No pollution.
Humans, on the other hand, herd cattle into CAFO's (google it) where they stand on top of untreated manure and eat corn that damages their rumens. The rumen damage and close quarters require massive doses of antibiotics. The mass of uncomposted manure becomes pollution expelled into the environment.
God's engineering is so amazing. It just blows my mind. I think we all fall into this zero-sum mindset where every issue has two sides. We think that in order to gain something, we must lose something. We think that in order to clean the environment, we have to stop economic development, for example. But I think that loses sight of what God offered us in the Resurrection. I think God always offers us a win-win situation. I think there is WAY more hope than any of us, even me, realizes.

Cool Beef People

At the farmer market today I took the plunge and bought some beef. The stall was run by a sweet older couple. I asked for some chuck roast and the man delightedly took me back to a trailer containing 2 big freezers filled with frozen beef. He pulled out roast after roast, pointing out the beauties of each. It was awesome. He was so proud of each cut, like he were displaying gorgeous cut flowers or adorable puppies instead of chunks of raw meat. I ended up buying a lovely 7 bone chuck roast, so named because the single bone is shaped like a backwards 7. As I paid, I asked if the cattle were pastured their whole lives, and he proudly said yes. He then pointed out that they ate his very own grass in his own pasture. Then he threw in a pack of ground beef for me to try!! The whole experience was just great. I'm really looking forward to eating this. I've heard that grass-fed beef is very tasty, so this will be a great way to find out!

Advent Conspiracy, anyone?

Our church is participating in the Advent Conspiracy this year. Today we watched a video which revealed a couple of disturbing facts.
1. Americans spend $450 billion a year on Christmas gifts. That's $450,000,000,000.00
2. The world water crisis could be resolved (which means all people could have access to clean drinking water) with $10 billion. That's $10,000,000,000.00
Think about that for a minute.
If America gave away 2.2% of its Christmas gift money away, every person in the world would have clean drinking water. Every person.

Now, I haven't checked the first fact, so I can't verify it. But I have done research on clean drinking water, and I can tell you, $10 billion sounds about right. So, family members, are you interested in cutting back on gifts this year? NOT on gifts for the boys, because they are young and should get ridiculously awesome gifts. Just on gifts to each other. What do you think?