I've Been Thinking About This…

If you’re tracking me on Bloglines or some other blogreader, I’m splitting this blog up into 3 pieces:

• All my Christian, church and faith-related entries will go here;
• posts related to software design and development, hardware and other technology will go here, and
• other stuff into a catchall here.

New blog entries will still be announced via twitter & facebook.

Several reasons, but the precipitator was that this blog has been around for about 3 years and I’ve messed with it so much it was starting to do some very weird things – pieces of admin pages going walkabout; cache acting strangely; stuff like that. So I started fresh, exported everything to the appropriate new blog, and away we go…

Happy reading!

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One of the remarkable things about humanity is that it is aware of itself and investigates itself. Not just an ego, but a full-on ‘Why does this part of me work? How would it be if I didn’t have that bit?’ The brain is a particular conundrum. How can we use our brains to hold information about our brains? It’s a bit like putting a box inside itself. Imagine being in a position to learn what data your brain held. Where would you put that knowledge? Inside your brain, of course … which means that not only do you now know about the thing inside your brain, but you know about knowing about the thing as well, which inevitably leads to knowing about knowing about the thing. Next …em… ‘thing’ you … um … ‘know’, you’re in an infinite loop, bane of software developers everywhere (and especially FORTRAN coders).

Maybe 10 years ago I came across this web page – a self-referential story titled, “This is the title of this story, which is also found several times in the story itself”, and a few years later tried to take this self-referential test.

Every once in a while I bump into a video that stands out from the vast sea of usual-ness. In the above vein, some 4 years ago on YouTube.com, ‘bramsvan’ from Community Christian Church uploaded a (not terribly good) cover of ‘DaVinci’s “Title of the Song” from their 2000 release CD called “The Life and Times of Mike Fanning” – a song about boy-bands. The song is self-referential – see it here.

Then at the beginning of the year, Charlie Brooker (who has a satirical news show in the UK on BBC 4 called ‘Newswipe’) put on a self-referential piece about how today’s broadcast news shows build each piece from a template. This meta-news piece was bumped up to YouTube.com in late January – you can see it here, but be aware that there are occasional outbursts of inappropriate language.

This was followed in March by a brilliant meta-drama – a satire on what goes into making an Academy Award movie.

And 2 days before that, this self-referential trailer appeared on Vimeo.com – North Point Church made this video for a series called “Sunday’s Coming” …

… which I’m guessing was about how stuck in a rut we can get in worship. Yesterday’s liturgical tradition has become today’s contemporary tradition. It rings almost painfully true for the contemporary worship that we see in large churches (and that many smaller churches are moving towards). And just like any music worship anywhere you go, there are many, many people who have dug down deep to provide wise criticism without having the faintest idea about why the video was put together – check out all the comments if you want to see sadness in action. Truly, no area of church is more criticized than worship, and nothing there more than the music.

Isn’t it also true, though, how we need to keep on changing? This last video shows us that already, even though we’ve only been doing ‘contemporary worship’ for 20 or 30 years in even the most progressive churches, we’ve got it down to a formula. If God wants us to grow (and He does), that means we have to change. Maybe it’s time to think of new and different ways to do worship – not just for the sake of, but for the reach.

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Do you have a garden hose? But you know what one looks like, right? So there were two ants – their names were Bert and Ernie – and they were walking along the garden hose on the inside. Now ants don’t need a lot of light, which is a good thing, because there wasn’t a whole lot of light in there! And ants aren’t looking for any change in their surroundings – which is another good thing, because it was pretty steady work. In fact, if you think about it, from their perspective everything can be measured in 2 dimensions – the distance around the pipe and the length of it (they can’t even tell that it bends, they’re so small and blind).

If this was a ritzy kind of garden hose, where you could see in but they couldn’t see out (sort of a one-way mirror thing), we could see them plodding on and on round the coils. But now let’s get vandalous and cut a hole in the hosepipe, right where Bert is about to walk. (They’re walking side by side.) So Bert and Ernie walk on, and suddenly Bert finds himself turned around on the outside while Ernie continues forward on the inside.

Ants aren’t the brightest of creatures, and I expect Ernie has been chatting away: “I say this is a jolly long hosepipe Bert isn’t it Have you ever been in such a long hosepipe Bert I sure haven’t and it’s really really dark Bert I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a long dark hosepipe before old chap have you Bert Of course we wouldn’t remember even if we had ‘coz we’re ants and we don’t ‘coz we’re not the brightest of creatures but …” and the sound of his little ant voice trailed off into the dark. Meanwhile, Bert has taken several dozen steps before he notices anything different, but then he stops and looks around.

And he sees that he is in a very different place. For one thing, he can see. This is new. And what he sees is that he is in a place that has more than just circumference and distance. This is a proper ‘up’ and ‘down’, and the ‘up’ bit is vast. It also has a left and right, and a front and back (although he has to turn around for that).

He also sees that he is standing on the hosepipe they had been walking through. And because I set it up with a clever bit of writer’s prescience earlier in the story, he finds that he can see into the hosepipe. When he looks a little up and to the left, he can see Ernie, apparently unaware that Bert had fallen out of the tube somehow because the dear old chap is still chatting away (Bert can see his mouth moving). And Ernie plods along and moves off to Bert’s right. And Bert waits for a while, and Ernie doesn’t come back from the right … he shows up from Bert’s left instead, and on the next higher piece of hosepipe, which is a bit puzzling.

And Bert waits some more, and … yes, there’s Ernie again, on the next higher piece still, coming in from the left again. And Bert tries to tell Ernie (if he’d only stop talking!) that all Ernie has to do is go up instead of forward all the time, and he could skip the loop and get to the next one in 2 seconds flat … and then Bert realizes that (1) he has no words to tell Ernie what to do, (2) Ernie (who had long forgotten the outside of the hosepipe) would havw no concept of what Bert is talking about, and (3) Ernie has no way to break out of one part of his universe to get into another.

Which brings us to John the Revelator. John was ‘caught up in the spirit’, in the book of Revelation, and saw things in the spirit that were absolutely incredible … amazing … different. He was given the gift of understanding some of what he saw, but how do you leave the closeted dimensions of our universe, see the realness of Heaven and then go back and describe it to people who have no words for the things you saw? Can you describe snow to a Saharan? So he used images that we could understand.

Even Jesus, who as Man was on Earth for 33 years and as God was in Heaven for quite a bit longer(!), used images – “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed-leaven-treasure-a merchant-a net-a master…” (Matt 13:31,33,44,45,47; Matt 20:1)

What images come to mind as you think of Heaven? Are there parables you’ve used to help describe part of the Bible?

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My pastor had a verbal slip of lips last Sunday – almost a spoonerism – when he merged the two words ‘clothing’ and ‘shelter’ – here’s his post. So in response today, I came up with a few possible definitions of his new word ‘Shelting’:

1. Pelting snow or sleet (don’t know where the ‘h’ came from – perhaps the opposite of the silent letter such as the ‘k’ in ‘KNOCK’?)
2. Herding, a task done by a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie)
3. Variants of the ancient Scottish activity of shelting:
   1. Originally, an ancient rite-of-passage that took place in the remote Scottish Highlands, where young bloods would leave the ancestral hovel in a blizzard and attempt to make it to the shepherd’s lean-to on the far side of the mountain. Because of their great dislike of anything English, it was considered even more manly to do this wearing a kilt – which is odd, when you think about it. Not to mention really cold.
      1. This custom is no longer much in vogue, except in families where the grandfather mentions he used to have to do it every day, in a time when the winter snow was much deeper, and it was 10 miles up hill all the way – and both ways, because the shelter had been blown away, so he had to come back home to get the axe to build a new one.
      2. Now being considered a sport for the Winter Olympics.
   2. Couples in their mature years enjoy staying at bed & breakfasts in the area and hiking to these old shelters during the long summer days. Although taking the same ancient paths to reach the lean-to, this cannot technically be considered ‘shelting’, inasmuch as (a) there are no frozen bodies beside the trail; (b) there is no longer any danger from wolves (although there is a large and growing feral rabbit population) and (c) they are more likely to find amorous couples in the shelter than half-starved kilted savages.
4. An evangelistic term, based on the metaphor – there’s a storm in the world that the lost are trapped in. As a church we want to draw them into the fold, thereby ‘shelting’ them.

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I never liked cats. They’re standoff-ish; independent; cold. They move fast in a preemptive strike and the next thing you know you’ve got a scratch across your cheek. So when my wife said she needed to go back to the pet shop because she forgot to get dog-food, the last thing I was anticipating was a plot by my wife and daughter and an ambush by a half-pound kitten. (Warning number one: she only went to the pet shop in the first place to get dog food; how come she forgot? I ignored that point, rather than question my wife’s mind. It may not have been a good call — I paid for it later.) Into the pet-shop we walked; surrounded by the smells of fish food and happy puppies, I was an innocent being brought to the slaughter. We picked up the dog food.

My daughter said, “Oh, just look at the kittens!”

I said, “They’re Tribbles, and they’re Trouble. Come on, we’ve got the dog food … Chloë’s hungry; let’s go.”

My wife said, “We have time to look at them. We’d like to see that orange one there, please.” (This last to the clerk.) Warning number two: she was too specific, but the bell going off in the back of my mind still wasn’t loud enough. Out came the kitten.

She said, “Just hold it. No, really, it’s purring. Feel how soft it is on your cheek.” She touched the loudly-rumbling kitten to my face — it didn’t lash out and scratch me. (I realize now that the cat was in on the plot as well.) She put the kitten in my hand. The whole of that tiny body lay there, purring enormously, exuding contentment as the tail hung gracefully down. I lifted it back to my face — he reached out and touched me on the nose, paw velveted. It was an amiable gesture; there was an enormous contentment in holding him so. My daughter put up her hand and gently stroked it. (Warning number three: my daughter should have wanted her own kitten to hold at the same time. Went right over my head.)

“How much is he?” my wife asked the clerk.

“Thirty five dollars.” came the reply.

“Honey?”

“No!”

“But Dad, he’s so cute, and small, and all alone!”

“Which part of ‘No’ didn’t you understand?” (But already I was weakening under the onslaught of this insidious purring.)

“Chloë will love him.”

“They’ll fight.”

“He’s a lover, not a fighter!”

“Don’t quote McCartney to me.”

“It was Michael Jackson, and it’s true.”

“Absolutely not. Your mother and I will talk about this, but the answer’s still going to be ‘No’.”

And we left. Yes, it’s true; we walked out of that pet store and drove home. And when my wife was talking, all I could hear was that purring reverberating in my ear. Promises were made about who would look after the cat, change the litter, get the food ready. But when we got to discussing who would name it, and how we’d each get a vote, I realized I had lost. A lifetime of cat-less-ness surrendered to a tiny marmalade Tribble.

We got back into the car and went back to the pet shop. As we walked through the door, somebody else was holding my cat! Thank heavens, she put him back in the cage, and walked out of the store. I went to the counter and put down my thirty-five dollars. As we walked out, the woman was coming in with her husband, saying,

“I forgot to get the dog-food; it won’t take a minute.”

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