It is easy to dismiss the Big Meeting in a day when connectivity is cheap, frequent, and easy.
It may well be that the Lausanne Movement’s Cape Town 2010 ambition will have proven to be a mere spasm of spiritual and communal ecstasy, unrelated to the ongoing task and shared life of what can now accurately be called the global church.
But that seems unlikely. Continue Reading »
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Jon Foreman’s magnificently understated rendition of the twenty-third psalm flavors the crisp morning air of this apartment in Cape Town, its door swung open to southern African sun and sky. Life-Long-Friends (LLF) John Bernard, Fritz Kling, and I seek shelter here after long and fascinating days among the Pentecost-like throngs that fill the city’s convention center at this epochal Lausanne-inspired gathering of the Global Church. Into that massive hall and the vein-like corridors and meeting spaces that encircle we bring our worship, open hearts, hungry minds, intense conversation, privileged hugs, and that shared life thing that makes everything worthwhile.
Glorious is not too large a word.
Yet this place and this gathering will ever bear a double meaning for this pilgrim and his broken hallelujah. Here, in the Marimba Restaurant that has become my afternoon cave, I received the email that ended Something Important. A quixotic project and promise, it endured and often thrived for twenty-eight years. It is over now and she is gone. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures, the great sadness | Tagged Psalms, textures, the great sadness | 4 Comments »
When the conversation become difficult, we agree to bow together before the idol named Balance.
‘Well, it’s really a matter of balance,’ we intone, only half suspecting that we are confessing a lie.
A slightly more sophisticated half-truth, half-lie stakes its seductive claim thus: ‘Well, these things must always be held in tension.’
We speak carelessly of love and truth as though they were fruits of the same size placed into our refrigerating care. We discourse with all the shallow persuasiveness of truism about ‘Grace’ and ‘Law’ and their needful equilibrium.
So does good intention come to smell of distortion, divine disclosure of human fabrication. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged 1 Corinthians, Exodus, textures | 2 Comments »
We desperately want good news. In time of distress, our minds scan their half-remembered data for a word of hope. As we need food and water, we sense that there must be a happy description of what is happening under our feet that will declare things not be as bad as they appear. Salvation is just around the corner. It must be so.
In Jeremiah’s day, prophetic voices of easy hope abounded. The canonical text calls them false. In the literature that comes to us bearing Jeremiah’s name, YHWH’s verdict upon such happy criers is almost violent for its brevity: ‘I did not send them’. Continue Reading »
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The sheer quantity of the prayers that find their way into the New Testament anthology—from Jesus’ expansive ‘high-priestly prayer’ in the gospel of John’s seventeenth chapter to the heavenward words that flow like the ink of Paul’s amanuensis—suggests that a world is being re-made against massive resistance.
The life of such pray-ers is seldom tranquil. ‘Sin, the flesh, and the devil’ are ever the wolves at the door. This does not incapacitate the New Testament writers, though it seems seldom far from view that it could. Instead, they pray constantly—’without ceasing’ in the familiar words of the apostolic exhortation—that the outbreak of a New Creation might not be stopped ahead of time and that the casualties not become more than can be borne:
Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you, and that we may be rescued from wicked and evil people; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will go on doing the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
In this passing breath of reported prayer, Paul speaks fluidly of the need for rescue and protection if the ‘word of the Lord’ is not to see its expansion halted. The word ‘evil’ recurs, first with reference to people who have no faith and so resists Paul’s mission, secondly in his desire that ‘the evil one’ (the personal ‘the evil one’ rather than the impersonal ‘evil’ is likely the preferred translation) might not have his way. Continue Reading »
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It wouldn’t be good to resist the Autumn light that makes it easier than normal to get out on the bike and onto the Monon Trail. In a few weeks, Winter will have us scavenging for motivation like junk-yard raccoons. Today tosses the thing in front of us like a juicy sirloin. Don’t waste the moment, I tell myself.
After a month of travel and bad sleep, the belly fills up the Lycra biker’s shirt a bit more amply than in the heat of summer. Dressing up like a biker in form-fit color is one of the few acceptable spaces for a man of conventional preferences to strike out in just this way. But there are lots of other splashes of yellows and blues on bikers of all ages, many shapes, and both genders on the Monon this afternoon. I’m in good company. Continue Reading »
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There may be no richer single source of quote-banter than this classic 1977 flick starring Woody Allen’s teeth-achingly neurotic Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall.
The exemplar of a brilliant and witty caricature of New York Jewry meets Annie from the country, whose well-rhymed grandmother ‘Grammy Hall’ gives great gifts but hates Jews. Alvy’s grandmother never gave gifts, being ‘too busy being raped by Cossacks’.
Keaton is too awkwardly and genuinely back on her heels in the face of Allen’s onslaught of words to be described.
I somehow missed that slice of Americana that is represented by Allen’s quasi-infinite filmography. Annie Hall is my first effort at getting, um, remediated.
‘Not a bad place to start.
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El 31 de octubre 1517, es la fecha que se conmemora la Reforma Protestante. Este hecho nos recuerda el gesto de aquel monje agustino, doctor en teología, quien luego de un proceso de reflexión y lucha interna, decidió exponer sus ideas. Su intención original era convocar a un debate teológico con los eruditos de su tiempo. ¡Estos fueron sus famosas 95 tesis! Lo cierto es que Lutero jamás imaginó que las verdades expuestas en esas cartillas, no solamente tendrían valor para el círculo académicos de ese entonces, sino que saltarían como bandadas de palomas puestas en libertad, impactando a todas las esferas de la iglesia y el pueblo, hasta nuestra actualidad.
Claro está, la reforma no inició con Lutero; fue un proceso que empezó a gestarse siglos atrás por distintos movimientos conformados por hombres y mujeres disconformes con las influencias que dejó el emperador Constantino. Este hombre se había convertido al cristianismo y en el año 313 promulgó un edicto de tolerancia religiosa hacia los cristianos. Dichas acciones pronosticaban el cese de casi 300 años de persecución y el advenimiento a tiempos de paz; pero en realidad era el presagio de nuevas artimañas que amenazaban con destruir la identidad de la Iglesia. Como reacción a esta alianza: “Iglesia e imperio”, se empezó a notar cambios que en nada contribuían a fortalecer las bases del cristianismo, mientras la iglesia se marchitaba por la aridez de su trato. Continue Reading »
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You may not think of Charlotte as a mecca for Iberian cuisine. You’d be right.
A spectacular exception is to be found on the city’s south side, where the Miró Spanish Grill stands as a welcome outpost of Spanish cuisine.
Uncommonly attractive digs for a shopping-center-based establishment welcome the hungry to a warm dining room and bar. In my three of four visits, staff have been genuinely inviting and attentive.
For its quite reasonable price point, the food does not fall short of exquisite. The wine list sports a selection of the expected Spanish labels with a smattering of California, Argentine, and Chilean alternatives. I recommend the unexpectedly non-oaky Tempranillo (Rioja) from Bodegas Valdemar, which was on offer for a reasonable twenty-eight clams.
Go for the seafood, which appears to be MSG’s strength. Last evening’s special of swordfish and king prawns on a bed of rice have me wishing this early morning that it was still, well, last night.
I find nothing to fault in this high-value outpost of Iberian cuisine plunked down where one might have least expected to stumble upon it.
Posted in cuchara | 2 Comments »
Canter Bridge 