Christmas XII

5 January 2011 by 2 Comments

In a sense the end of this Christmas season seems more like the inception of the new year to me than January first. Thus I now find myself wondering what the next 12 months will look like, should look like. What do I want them to look like? For starters:

  • Sculpture: Create more of it
  • Board games: Play more of them
  • Start (again) learning Mandarin (Chinese)
  • Liturgical calendar and daily prayer: More of it
  • Movement forward on the Scissortail Art Center idea, whatever that looks like.

There are also murmurings of a jaunt for our tenth anniversary and some excitement surrounding a potential business venture for the wife and her fiber arts. What’s realistic and how we prioritize our 2011 hopes and dreams will become clearer in a month or so.

Filed under Christmas, Personal reflection

Christmas VIII

1 January 2011 by Leave a Comment

I received a few books for Christmas including The Kiln Book — on how to build kilns — and Asphalt Nation
by Jane Holtz Kay. I’ve begun reading Asphalt Nation and, not surprisingly, it’s pretty captivating.

Advent and Christmas (and, for many, New Years) are times of reflection. Do certain technologies hinder our ability for introspection, extrospection, observation? From the book:

Why can’t we step back and see the servant become the master? Why have we failed to see the consequences of the car’s mischief, its down-right malice to community life and autonomy for many? Media theorist Mark Crispin Miller, in analyzing television, that other so-called technological servant, has speculated that the medium is so integral to the ambient culture that we can no longer isolate ourselves to gain a perspective on our place within its landscape. There is just no surveillance point from which to stand aloof and view the impact of television’s toll. The analogy with the automobile holds. The world through the windshield and the world through the television window alike isolate us from our surroundings.

I am an Amazon Associate and receive a small commission on sales through my affiliate links.

Filed under Advent, Christmas, Intentional observation, Modern culture, Personal reflection, The contemplative life

Glædelig Jul!

25 December 2010 by Leave a Comment

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree lyrics in a 1897 republication of 1797 printing

One of my favorite Christmas carols of late isn’t exactly a Christmas carol but is traditionally sung on Christmas Eve. Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, an 18th century English hymn, was commonly sung [wassailed] at Apple orchards on Christmas eve in hopes of bestowing health on the trees. I’m very fond of the choral arrangements such as the one below.

Another recent favorite — I always have more than one — is Riu, Riu Chiu, a song I first heard on Sixpence None The Richer’s Christmas album titled Dawn of Grace.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm3fZDZxiko]

Filed under Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Music, Personal reflection

Music to celebrate the incarnation scant in churches?

20 December 2010 by 5 Comments

Another reason for high church: The liturgy dictates the service to a degree, and therefore you’re more likely to actually sing songs that eagerly await the incarnation during the Advent season, and songs that celebrate it during the 12 days of Christmas.

Music celebrating Christ’s coming has been scant during the Evangelical church services we’ve attended the past couple of years. Actually, Easter was much the same way earlier in the year too (where, as I recall, none of the music or sermon content addressed the holiday which was just strange).

Has anyone else noticed this in non-denominational churches or churches that don’t pay attention to the liturgical calendar? Any ideas why this has been my and my family’s experience (in mid-sized, central Nebraska churches) of late?

Filed under Advent, Personal reflection

Generosity and tax code

15 December 2010 by Leave a Comment

At first this topic may seem way off base for this blog, but it fits in light of my service with a nonprofit for more than six years now, and my toying with the idea of founding one in the Scissortail Art Center — even if that’s eight years off. So here goes.

Yesterday morning’s Excellence in Giving newsletter featured a recent New York Times article, Nonprofits Fear Losing Tax Benefit. A couple of quotes caught my attention, including the following.

“It’s disappointing that the charitable sector, which is broadly committed to improving the well-being of civil society, is in this case indifferent to repairing what’s wrong in the country at the expense of protecting its marginal tax advantage,” said Rob Reich, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.

In my opinion Reich is off base. Maybe I’m missing something here, happy to be somewhat ignorant of the inane American tax system (Can a person actually be what is considered knowledgeable in this?), but the marginal tax advantage for nonprofits is less important than the tax deductions for people who give to 501(c)(3)s. According to the Times article, there are three schools of thought when it comes to deductions for charitable giving. One suggests donors are not influenced by the opportunity to itemize, to catch a break on their taxes. My own experience begs to differ. Donors do pay attention to this. Numerous people I’ve talked to about giving to M-DAT start their line of questioning with “Is it tax deductible?” If donors will no longer be able itemize, they will probably be less eager to give — at least in the short term.

Donors have, in essence, been conditioned to expect this special treatment, just like nonprofits. If the tax system drops deductions for charitable giving, I can imagine a number of very hard years for nonprofits. Following those few difficult seasons, however, I can also imagine those lost donations beginning to filter in again as people become used to the idea that the government does not — indeed, should not — bear influence on their generosity.

In light of my own past, present and potential future involvement with nonprofits, it may surprise some when I say that I’m all about significantly simplifying the American tax code. That includes doing away with deductions. I can imagine how the government’s original intent with this part of the tax law might have been noble, attempting to encourage donations to charitable organizations. Unfortunately, people’s motives have been negatively influenced by the law.

People should give out of their generosity; they shouldn’t be writing checks with hopes — even in the back of their mind — of lower taxes (even though lower taxes in and of themselves are also a good thing). People should give to a cause for the sake of the cause.

Filed under Christian art retreat, Entitlement, Modern culture, Personal reflection

What is joy?

14 December 2010 by Leave a Comment

Lately the wife and I have been thinking and talking about joy. It was in this context I was visually accosted by certain signage at a local big box store. I found myself at odds with the signage which clearly implied that material objects result in joy.

The local Best Buy is selling joy

Our brief and unfinished discussions have largely attempted to define the idea of joy, moving from there to examine how it might be achieved. The idea of joy to us is more deeply seated than happiness. Happiness is fleeting and unreliable. Joy is something that has to be worked at, but once attained it persists. Other emotions may step in front of it during life — grief at the death of a friend, worry at the loss of a job, happiness while watching the sun set — but joy will remain and resurface, as well as provide a foundation for the rest of a person’s outlook on life.

Before beginning this little entry I did some research on what other people thought of joy. I was surprised to see how closely dictionaries (and Wikipedia) aligned both joy and happiness. They call joy an emotion, which doesn’t make sense to me. So far as I can tell, joy is a choice that becomes part of a person’s worldview through consistent application. It is not an emotion. (Or, maybe joy is an emotion, but there is something else that we’re reaching for and don’t have a better word for. So we call it “joy.”)

In this research I did find a few less-than-academic articles trying to make the distinction between the two clearer, but they fall flat. The best bit I found supporting our own sentiment was a G.K. Chesterton quote:

Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.

Keyword “labour.”

Electronic toys do not result in joy, they just don’t. A lot of other things can they cause — a failure in interpersonal communication, obesity, debt — which might include happiness, a temporary happiness. A new iPhone will undoubtedly come out next year. The successor to Blu-Ray is certainly being developed already, just as Blu-Ray takes off. Happiness from such things will be fleeting.

To be fair, some of the things such big box retailers purvey may facilitate joy. A new stove could facilitate the crafting of new edible family traditions around the holidays, or all year round. A new CD — given music’s enigmatic ability to get into our heads — could also lend itself to joy. However, I still don’t like this Christmas marketing campaign or its implications. At best it plays on people’s misunderstanding of joy (based on our observations of the word’s connotations). At worst it suggests a lackluster definition of the idea of joy without suggesting a semantic replacement for a deeper happiness, a contentment.

Adding: After a little more digging, this time into the concordance, I found the Greek word Chara (pronounced khar-ah’) which is translated as “joy.” It’s defined as “cheerfulness, i.e. calm delight.” I like the word calm there, although I’m not sure how it contributes to my thoughts above.

Filed under Advertising, Consumerism, Modern culture, Personal reflection

Another rare post on college football

21 November 2010 by Leave a Comment

Another rare post reflecting on college football (the American version); just a few thoughts:

  • It’s too much about money anymore, end of story. The Meineke Car Care Bowl, GoDaddy.com Bowl, Chick-fil-A Bowl, no. Fail.
  • The game is better without instant replay, and would probably be better without replays of any kind, i.e. television. However, I’m glad I can watch the games on TV. Husker nation is irate at what was poor officiating last night (although they didn’t play well enough to win on offense regardless). One of the earlier calls was 30 yards worth of unsportsmanlike conduct by the same player on the same play. The officials missed the fact that he was being pinched (or worse, according to most reports) repeatedly by a Texas A&M defender.

    [Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I1lQwmSXO4]

    Later the refs would utterly and completely botch a call, accusing a Nebraska defender of roughing the passer and (if I recall correctly) giving A&M a first down when their third down pass fell incomplete, on the winning drive.

  • I don’t really buy the conspiracy theory that the Big 12 is out to get the Cornhuskers this year, but this is a pretty interesting testament to the game last night: “I was at the game last night and the flags were absolutley ridiculous. Late flags after A&M talk to officials, bogus calls, bogus non-calls. Anyway, when A&M fans in the stand turn around to you and say, ‘Why was that a flag?’ (and they did it more than once), it really calls into question how the game was officiated.”

    Another interesting note is that lot of the commenters on the Aggie blog seemed to also think the officiating was kind of lopsided, unfair, inaccurate etc.

  • Are announcers and commentators getting worse, or am I just expecting better as I age? They have no sense of relevant history and some days sound like broken records. If I hear the phrase “control their own destiny” one more time . . .

And finally, my own commentary (originally left as a comment on a blog) on last night’s game:

Um, Husker fans, quit whining & pining for the Big 10 (not that I’m anti going to the Big 10). Yes, officiating was abominable (though we earned most of the penalties), esp in the 2nd half—culminating in that late hit call (seriously?). But I’d rather my team be able to win despite these obstacles.

REMEMBER: We beat two good ranked teams, Callahan is gone & we’re winning 9 games/year again!

Filed under Central Nebraska, Modern culture, Personal reflection

Novel Digestion: A story deserves more than its pages

13 October 2010 by 5 Comments

I recently finished Lois Hudson’s novel The Bones of Plenty. A few days later I picked up Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, too soon.

I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate this, wouldn’t have realized it about myself except for the wife being on the advisory board of the INSPYs awards. She had to finish 40-some nominated books in 40-some days; she’s finished more than 75 each of the past three years, which is quite a few if you ask me. Trying to get through one every day — that’s 356 365 every year for those of you even more mathematically challenged than myself — was very stressful. Apparently, though, others in the book blogging community that my wife regularly communicates with read more than a book a day on average.

I don’t understand why, let alone how a person would do that. The language in The Moviegoer has been beautiful in the first 20 pages, and I’m eager to get into the story.

But I can’t.

Not yet anyway. It’s too soon. It’s too soon after finishing Lois Hudson’s mesmerizing Great Depression tale. Jumping right into Percy’s poetic novel would be an affront, an injustice to her artistry. The story I just finished deserves more time. What good is it if they all run together, if there isn’t any time to chew on what a person just ingested?

I need time to digest.

Adding: I wonder if the same is true for film, to a degree. Perhaps for good film, anyway, and not most of the fluff Hollywood continues to put out (apparently because that’s what Americans vote for with their dollars, they say). But our investment into a film is so much less in general than into a book. In time, obviously, but also in imagination. Film leaves less to the imagination than a book, where we have to partially put our own faces onto the characters and further interpret the author’s description of a farmstead. The house is bright yellow; but what kind of bright yellow? Yellow like sunshine on a daffodil? Yellow like the light coming through stained glass? Even with purple prose, a book doesn’t do for us what a movie does.

Filed under Art, Intentional observation, Personal reflection

Intentional Observation: Delight yourself in YHWH

11 September 2010 by 2 Comments

Delight yourself in YHWH and He will give you the desires of your heart. — Psalm 37:4


One of the categories in the sidebar of this blog is “entitlement.” I haven’t posted about this idea (or reality) for a few years now, but was reminded of it this morning when a friend on Facebook decried a Christian radio program for saying “Something that you want can be considered a need if it is part of your lifestyle.”

Apparently, according to this friend’s report, “The dj’s were asking people what they needed to buy or spend money on but just haven’t yet. They wanted to know what it was and why they haven’t bought it yet? What a conversation to get us thinking about our own self-absorbed lives!” Health and wealth gospel, anyone?

Summers during my high school years I worked at Maranatha Bible camp. It was common for a few Canadians to be on staff, as well as a few people from other places around the world. One summer in particular there was a Latino student helping out around camp. His name was Pedro, or was it Pablo. Anyway, he played the piano quite well, and his mantra that summer was “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart; Pamela Anderson.”

I get the sense that we [Americans] often, or pretty much always, forget the first half of that Psalmic invitation. “Delight yourselves in YWHW.“

Do we remotely know what does that looks like? Via Biblios.com, “‘To delight’ is most frequently expressed by chaphets, which means originally ‘to bend’ . . . hence, ‘to incline to,’ ‘take pleasure in.’” How often can we honestly say that we take pleasure in God? I know I can’t say that very often with honesty. Admittedly, I’m too self-absorbed. The to-do list whirling about in my head keeps me from delighting in much of anything, actually. Even when I get to spend time sculpting in my studio, of late, all I can think of is how little time I have to actually spend there and how I need to get as much done as I possibly can. Presently I have to find work to pay the bills, which can be an enormous distraction at times.

Email — and I really don’t get that much of it anymore — is always calling, as are the blog stats (even though they never really change, and I know in my head that I don’t really care that much). Apparently there is some interesting psychology behind our relationship to social media and technology according to a Fresh Air interview from August. Useless distractions abound in our culture, super-saturated with media of all kinds, and keep me from delighting in God.

What would happen if we actually did delight in YHWH, even in our partial understanding of Psalm 37′s invitation? I’d like to think that the desires of our hearts would change. We would be less self-absorbed, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We would worry corporate America and its quest for ever more cavernous coffers because the next best digital gadget just wouldn’t mean all that much to us. I believe we’d find more joy in every aspect of our lives.

In short, the desires of our heart, whether you want to call them needs or wants or whatevers, would change. They’d look more like the goodness of God, more like His desires for us, for creation.

So how can I do better at delighting in YHWH (regardless of my intentions, my desires, which do not include Pamela Anderson)? I need focus. I think a lot of us need focus. It’s much to easy in the U.S. to go in ten thousand and one different directions, to have 10 hobbies or passions or interests and not be really proficient in any one of them. Additional options play out ever before us thanks to advertising in newspapers, on websites, on television or along our commute to the office. We see what the Joneses just bought or where they vacationed and think we’d enjoy that too.

And we might, actually, but the more directions I’m going in the less — in general — joy I have There just isn’t time for all of them. I must realize what’s most important to me (and what presently allows me to delight in YHWH) with respect to my faith, my God-given talents, my family etc. and adjust accordingly. Subsequently I have to realize that, even in light of similar faith or family values, my direction will often look very different than other peoples.

Filed under Affluenza, Christianity, Consumerism, Entitlement, Intentional observation, Modern culture, Personal reflection

Does poverty encourage creativity?

8 September 2010 by 4 Comments

Lately I’ve been wondering if poverty encourages creativity. Two things prompted this ponderment. One was Andrew Petersen’s first post in his recent series about money, titled Not the root of all evil. The other is simply the lean financial times I find myself in the midst of as we enter Autumn; the contract work I’ve had painting houses this year has dried up for the time being.

My mind is working differently than when I had that work painting. I see things now, objects and opportunities, differently. Possibilities multiply. I take the time to consider more numerous options than if our household was [somewhat more] flush with cash, able to collect in a cart from the Home Depot whatever sundries are needed for a project. Things I’ve collected, some with a specific purpose and some not, look new and become useful in a myriad of ways (I’m not really all that much of a pack rat, but I can’t let some things go.). For instance, the broken dishwasher in the backyard will now become, after being disassembled, part of my downdraft table. Anyone have a squirrel cage laying around they care to donate to that project?

Thus the question in my head is, “Does poverty encourage creativity?” Seems to me it does. I’d like to hear what others think or have experienced in this regard. Does our wealth, individually and nationally, sometimes get in the way of (and also some of the time foster) our imaginations, our ability to be at our creative best?

Paradoxically, I also find myself busier now that a month ago when I still had that [mostly] regular job. I’d love to be working on my own house right now — painting and putting to good use all the building materials I’ve salvaged over the past few months — but haven’t the time in light of trying to find other ways to generate income. As I count in my head, I’m working in no less than five directions toward that end at the moment.

One of those directions is as a freelance graphic designer. I pick up this kind of work now and then anyway, so I’m offering my talents as such if you or yours need a logo, brochure, banner etc designed and printed up. You can see a portfolio of my work under the above tab titled Design Portfolio. Email me at TheAestheticElevator(at)gmail(dot)com if you need such services.

Filed under Affluenza, Consumerism, Disposable culture, Imagination, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection, Restoration, Salvage, The contemplative life

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