The Road

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lanyard

The Lanyard

Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Theology or Ideology

I found this observation below to be quite helpful. I have wrestled over the years trying to work out a theology (what I believe about God and his interaction with me and creation) that is consistent with how life really works out. I've felt that my theology has always been just one more fix away. If I or the world would just, "x," then we would see our theological constructs play themselves out. It seems to me a theology that does not account for the way things actually are is actually an ideology masquerading as theology.

By ideology I mean a theoretical statement or system of interpretation that functions for its adherents as a full and sufficient credo, a source of personal authority, and an intellectually and psychologically comforting insulation from the frightening and chaotic mish-mash of daily existence. For the ideologue, whether religious or political, it is not necessary to expose oneself constantly to the ongoingness of life; one knows in advance what one is going to find in the world. In fact, the psychic comfort of ideology lies just in its protective capacity, its property as mental and intellectual insulation: one clings to one's system of interpretation as a refuge from the ambiguous, unsettled, and largely undecipherable fluxus of the actual. The ideological personality (and in our time there are many such personalities) is constantly on guard against the intrusion of reality, of the unallowable question, of the data that does not "fit" the system; therefore the repressive and suppressive dimension is never far beneath the surface of the ideological inclination. Jose Miguez Bonino writes of "the ideological misuse of Christianity as a tool of oppression," because he knows that the line between theology and ideology is a very fine one, easily and sometimes unknowingly transgressed.

Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World

A New Gospel Sighting

I don't think this dad is sitting around waiting for God to make the world right. He's participating with God to make it right. I hope I can become half the dad he is.


We could wait. We could wait for that day when God makes all things right. We can sit around and complain that the world is messed up, that we are messed up, that the church is messed up. We can wait for God to make all things right, when there will be no more death or crying, where the lame will walk, no, where they will win. We could wait for the day the hungry will be fed, the marginal will be given a place at the head of the table, when those with no family will sit around the table of the Lord. We could wait for the world to be right. Or, we can join with God in his work to make all things right, right here right now.

Romanticized War

This picture represents the romanticized image of war.
This story about the soldier in the picture represents the reality.

Finally, a topic other than war, immigration, and gas...

Faith-based initiatives...

The Baby Who Almost Wasn't...

Failed abortion leads to healthy baby. 

Testimony

Watching this made me ask myself, "What is my testimony? How has my life been impacted by the Gospel of Jesus Christ?"

Our job is praise...

"Praise is the duty and delight, the ultimate vocation of the human community; indeed of all creation. Yes, all life is aimed toward God and finally exists for the sake of God. Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are. Praise is not only a human requirement and a human need, it is also a human delight. We have a resilient hunger to move beyond self, to return our energy and worth to the One from whom it has been granted. In our return to that One, we find our deepest joy. That is what it means to 'glorify God and enjoy God forever.'" Walter Brueggeman, Israel's Praise

A life in pictures.

What kind of mosaic would our lives produce if they were recorded in daily snapshots?