Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ash Wednesday

This morning I met my niece and Beth at St. Francis for the 7 a.m. Ash Wednesday service. I had been looking forward to this since last night - it felt like it was going to be a special time with God, and it truly was that way. For me, this was the perfect way to start the Lenton season. The opening verse was from Joel 2: 12-18--rend your hearts, not your garments. We had studied this verse in the Queen Esther Beth Moore bible study as well, and it captured my attention. Rend your hearts . . . we can rend our hearts before God, and His grace covers all that implies. The 2nd reading was from 2 Corinthians 5:20 - 6:2--"for our sake He made Him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him". That really brings it home, doesn't it! The message was on how Jesus thirsts for each one of us. He thirsts for each one of us . . . and we in turn thirst for Him. He talked about how what we choose to give up for Lent points us to that thirst, and Jesus is always ready and willing to fulfill that longing. This is only my 2nd Ash Wed. service - I went to one at the Episcopalian church several years ago which was in the evening. This is the first time I'm wearing my ashes all day. I have to say, it feels like there is a HUGE black spot on my forehead, but, I guess that's partly the point isn't it? I am a huge black spot, excepting for God's saving grace. Blessings on your day today, and all the days between now and Easter. In the Amplified version of the Bible, after "Selah", it always says [pause and think calmly of that]. Hope you can find time in your day to pause and think calmly of what this season will mean to you.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Language of God Part 2

Thoughts have been flying around in my head for about a week now, so I'll see if I can make some sense of them on "paper". First, the BIG BANG! Science is in support of the Big Bang theory - go figure! It's intriguing to me how often science and archeology are proving Bible stories to be historically accurate, pointing to a real God who is involved in the world. It also intrigues me that even agnostic scientists seem to reluctantly come to this conclusion. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow is quoted as saying: "At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (from God and the Astronomers) Isn't that great!

There are bits in this book that remind me of Narnia. It made me wonder, was C. S. Lewis so incredibly smart that he knew and understood some of the things science has discovered? For example, scientists believe that our sun is not the first sun, but maybe the 2nd or 3rd sun. In one of the Narnia stories, the children are in a world with the witch, and she says that the sun is a dying sun, and that world is ending. The other part that reminded me of Narnia was when Collins says "Nearly all of the atoms in your body were once cooked in the nuclear furnace of an ancient supernova--you are truly made of stardust". That reminded me of how in Narnia the stars were people. I always loved the idea of the stars being persons, so it's nice to know I have a little of that in me. Also, the Bible says that God knows all the stars by name so I like to think of them as living persons (kind of silly, I know).

As you read Language of God, you learn how everything had to be in certain measurements--there had to be just the right amount of quarks and antiquarks , mass and energy, gravity - everything had to be precisely right in order to have this universe that we live on be habitable for human beings. If anything was just a fraction off, earth would not have been. It rather boggles the mind, especially when you're not totally understanding everything you're reading. An example would be quarks - neutrons and protons are made of 6 quarks, and although I don't think I fully grasp what they are, I find it very whimsical that scientists named the quarks "up", "down", "strange" "charmed" and "bottom"!

I have to re-read so much because I think I grasp it when I read it, but then I don't fully remember it. I do find so much of it to be very interesting, and I like how Collins continually comes back to how Science and God don't have to be against each other, but in fact can support each other.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Lonely Socks

Do you ever wonder where the socks go to during laundry day? I inevitably end up with a sock that is missing it's match. Thus, my son Jordan says they are lonely for their mates. Where do they go?

This is beginning to annoy me as I have about 12 lonely socks. Are the argyles running off with the solids? Are the darks running away with the lights? I'm thinking a few years down the road, I will have baby socks suddenly appearing with their parent socks nowhere in sight!

I've looked in all the familiar places - under the bed, under the couch, under the washer (they sneak under there sometimes). They are nowhere to be found.

Is there some sort of sinister sock conspiracy going on? My family swears they go in the wash as a pair, but come on, they can't magically disapper between laundry basket, washer and dryer. The family wants to blame me, but I am innocent.

If I disappear, I'm thinking a sock monster will be to blame . . .

Monday, February 9, 2009

The Language of God

I started a new book: The Language of God by Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. Are you suitably impressed? Collins is not only an extremely smart man, but a believer, and the book's focus is on the compatability of science and faith. Some of the book will be a stretch for me (as in can my brain comprehend everything he is saying), but so far, I'm liking it. The first chapters deal with his life as an unbeliever, and his becoming a follower of Jesus. He was heavily influenced by C. S. Lewis. I love how on page 40 he says:
The church is made up of fallen people. The pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers, and the subsequent failings of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the faith iself, as if the water had been the problem.
Isn't that so true. I am just a rusty pot, doing the best I can, and hoping I don't turn someone away from the pure water by what I do or say. It puts me in mind of a poem by Christina Rossetti - the last verse is:
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
Although I don't particulary like being remolded and melted, I love the picture of being a royal cup for the King.
Collins goes on to say on page 42 that the earnest seeker must look beyond the behavior of flawed humans in order to find the truth. I like that too. People always think that Christians must be "perfect", and some Christians act as though they are, but we're just learning and growing right along with the rest of the world. As you can tell, the first chapters rely heavily on his conversion, and questions like: How can a rational person believe in miracles? Why would a loving God allow suffering? I'm on the chapters that deal with the origins of the Universe. Will I be able to absorb the "anthropic principle", "quarks" and "quantam mechanics"? I'm thankful I have Phil right next door to me to help unravel this scientific jargan! My brother likes to say he believes in the Big Bang theory - God spoke, and BANG, it was here. I don't have any trouble believing that God can create the world with one word, but it's interesting to learn how science is supporting that the universe was created by One being. Even Darwin alluded to it in the last chapter of his book - but, I have to go back to work now so I'll have to write about that another day.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Oh for a Brain Like C. S. Lewis

When I read C. S. Lewis I sometimes feel like the scarecrow in wizard of oz - oh I wish I had a brain!!! I was looking in Mere Christianity for a quote I wanted for my Bible study group. I never found it, but I found lots of other good stuff! I was so excited I wanted to stay home and read some more and call up my friends and talk about it! I feel like Lewis makes my brain open up and understand things.

So, Tonia, this little clip is for you :-). His thought speaks to my comment of "replacing all of me with all of You (God)".
The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of 'little Christs', all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. (such a cool thought) He made them all. He invented--as an author invents characters in a novel--all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to 'be myself' without Him. . . It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. . . at the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. (Love this last sentence--isn't it just true!)

Sunday, February 1, 2009

From John Adams to Mike Schmoker

As noted in a previous post I recently finished John Adams by David McCullough. I am now in the process of reading Results Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning by Mike Schmoker. The HPS principals are doing a book study on this, and so I thought I'd take a look at it. I'm feeling amazed as I'm reading it, because evidently there is very little focus on writing in classrooms today. How did this happen? In John Adams day, that's all they did. Folks wrote letters to each other, kept personal diaries as well as working diaries of their farms or businesses. Historically, it makes sense that this sort of writing went on, it was the sole means of communication. Aren't we lucky that they did this, what a wealth of information they left for us. But how did we throw it out for modern technology? It's as though once we didn't need writing for communication purposes, we just didn't keep up with it. Yet, according to Results Now, it is still vitally important. Here's a quote from Schmoker (pg. 64):
For all our talk about the importance of higher-order thinking we continue to overlook the fact that writing, linked to close reading, is the workshop of thought--with an almost miraculous effect on students' critical capacities. . .R. D. Walshe writes that we "shouldn't hesitate to describe writing as incredible or miraculous . . . a technology which enables thought to operarte much more deeply than it normal does during conversation or inward reflection" . . . writing allows writers to "contemplate thought . . . until it becomes the best thinking of which they are capable."
The italics are mine - I love the idea of writing as technology. Further - Williams Zissner says (pg. 64 again)
Meaning is remarkably elusive . . . Writing enables us to find out what we know--and what we don't know--about whatever we're trying to learn. Putting an idea into writen words is like defrosting the windshield: The idea, so vague out there in the murk, slowly begins to gather itself into a sensible shape . . . all of us know this moment of finding out what we really want to say by trying in writing to say it.
Hand in hand with this is the fact that we are losing the richness of language we used to have. This really came home to me while re-reading Jane Eyre in preparation for the blog book club that a fellow blogger hinted at (you know who you are). The reprint actually has to explain what some of the words mean in the text. Some books still use great language--it is delightful pick up a book that invites you deeper into the story by the lyrical language the author employs. Writing takes time, I'm sure that's a big reason that it fell behind in schools, but also in lives. Why write when you can call? Why write when you can text. (Texting is NOT writing - if it is, we'll soon need a cipher to understand all the abbreviations that are used.)

As I'm writing this, I'm beginning to see that time is the culprit. It takes time to sit down and really consider your words for a note of thanks, encouragement or sympathy. Who of us feels like they have the time to do that, or maybe the better question is, who of us is willing to carve the time out of our schedule to do some writing? Technology is at fault too. We let technology keep us focused on our work, instead of allowing it to free us up to do some writing :-)