Lyrics of War and Peace
One of my favorite albums of all time happens to be a very political album. Midnight Oil's Blue Sky Mining is virtually a wartime anthem, even if in somewhat of a subversive vein. Consider two selections.
Forgotten YearsIf you'd like to read more (or better yet hear more) Blue Sky Mining would be a great introduction to Midnight Oil's music.Few of the sins of the father, are visited upon the son Hearts have been hard, our hands have been clenched in a fist too long
Our sons will never be soldiers, our daughters will never need guns
These are the yrs between
These are the yrs that were hard fought and won
Contracts torn at the edges, old signatures stained with tears
Seasons of war and peace, these should not be forgotten yaers
Still it aches like tetanus, it reeks of politics
How many dreams remain? This is a feeling too strong to containThe hardest years, the darkest yrs, the roarin' yrs, the fallen yrs
These should not be forgotten yrs
The hardest yrs, the wildest yrs, the desperate and divided yrs
We will remember, these should not be forgotten yrsOur shoreline was never invaded, our country was never in flames
This is the calm we breathe, this is a feeling too strong to contain
Still it aches like tetanus, it reeks of politics
Signatures stained with tears, who can remember
We've got to rememberThe hardest...
Forsaking aching breaking yrs, the time and tested heartbreak yrs
These should not be forgotten yrs
The blinded yrs, the binded yrs, the desperate and divided yrs
These should not be forgotten yrs, remember(Hirst/Moginie) Midnight Oil
One Country
Who'd like to change the world, who wants to shoot the curl
Who gets to work for bread, who wants to get ahead
Who hands out equal rights, who starts and ends that fight
And not not rant and rave, or end up a slave
Who can make hard won gains, fall like the summer rain
Now every man must be, what his life can beSo don't call, me, the tune, I will walk away
Who want's to please everyone, who says it all can be done
Still sit up on that fence, no-one I've heard of yet
Don't call me baby, don't talk in maybes
Don't talk like has-beens, sing it like it should be
Who laughs at the nagging doubt, lying on a neon shroud
Just gotta touch someone, I want to beSo don't...
(One country one, country one country)Who wants to sit around, turn it up turn it down
Only a man can be, what his life can be
One vision, one people, one landmass, we are defenceless, we have a lifeline
One ocean, one policy, seabed lies, one passion, one movement, one instant
One difference, one lifetime, one understanding
Transgression, redemption, one island, our placemat, one firmament
One element, one moment, one fusion, yes and one time(Moginie/Garrett) Midnight Oil
War
Let us pray together for peace in the world.
1. In peace, let us pray to the Lord.~~Taken from the Orthodox prayers of Holy Tuesday (Tuesday of Holy Week).
2. For peace from above and the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.
3. For peace in the whole world, for the stability of the Holy Churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord.
4. For the President of our country, for those in Civil Authority, for our Armed Forces, and for all the American Nation, let us pray to the Lord.
5. For this city, and for every city and land, and for the faithful who dwell in them, let us pray to the Lord.
6. For our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and necessity, let us pray to the Lord.
Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by Your Grace.
~Amen.~
One worth $8.50
Mel Gibson is directing a film that will depict the events from Christ's betrayal to his glorious Ascension. This film will have at least one unique aspect: all the dialogue is in Latin and Aramaic, with no subtitles.
Think Mr. Gibson will have a tough time selling that to a distributor?
Incidentally, this May, it turns out that Mel Gibson will be the Key Note Speaker for the graduating class of 2003 at Loyola Marymount University-- for the undergraduates, that is. Masters students, such as me, will have to tolerate some academic snob with absolutely no connection to Hollywood. Am I complaining? ... you decide ;-)
Some excerpts from a very worthwhile read
Frederica Mathewes-Green has written a small book (about 100 pages) called The Illumined Heart. My beautiful wife borrowed if from our church's library, and after I picked it up last night for a glance, I found that I couldn't put it down.
If you are at all interested in the historic faith and how your current church compares to that faith, if you are at all questioning the practices of your current church or the practices of your current lifestyle, if you are at all seeking a closer relationship with Christ, or even if you are simply looking for a very easy to read synopsis of what Orthodox Christianity is all about, then I believe reading this book might just be your chance.
I thought I'd include a couple passages here.
...It's because times change that we should especially take notice of that which stands the test of time. The voice of Christians of the early centuries deserves our special attention, indeed special respect, because they had an advantage we don't. Those believers lived closer to the time of Christ, in the same cultural milieu and using the same pool of languages. They were descendants of the first believers, the martyrs and missionaries; the history of the church was the history of their own family and neighborhood. They wrote the Scriptures, in fact, and so they were able to understand them better than we can. Imagine giving today's Paris newspaper to a native of the city, and giving it to an Alaskan 1500 or 2000 years from now. Whose interpretation will be more accurate?...Certainly there is some historical simplification in the manner of her story-telling, but I think the core of what she states above needs to be shouted from the rooftops....We modern Christians are often unaware of this part of our faith story. Many of us know the Bible, then skip a thousand years to the medieval era, or fifteen hundred years to the Reformation, leaving the initial period a blank. We do the same thing geographically, picturing Christianity as a faith restricted to western Europe. But Christianity began in the Middle East and spread in both directions at once, and our history takes place in eastern Europe as well, and Asia, India, and Africa. Its richness stretches all the way back to the first century, and if filled with vibrant heroes, preachers, events, and miracles whose stories we have never known. We modern Christians are victims of amnesia; we have forgotten the powerful tale of where we came from...
...Let's begin by thinking about how change happens-- what enables it to occur, and what limits it. Change is possible when the source of authority approves change. In the early church the leadership model was one that diffused authority among everyone, everywhere, in all times, as St. Vincent proposed above. This made it very difficult to change-- there wasn't a central office building where you could send letters of protest, or hold a demonstration...The faith was expected to be something that arose among all believers everywhere, under the living guidance of the Holy Spirit. Church leaders didn't develop or edit the faith, but were like museum guards, responsible only to protect the treasure and pass it on intact. [italics mine]
...In western Europe there was a subtle shift: Leaders became more like museum curators. They gradually moved into a larger teaching and interpreting role, and the common people assumed a role that was correspondingly more receptive, and less that of equal participants...
...Our story in western Europe is more familiar. When the Reformation arose five hundred years after the Great Schism, it was prompted partly by renewed controversy over the top-down leadership model. But at this point the once-universal idea that there existed a common deposit of faith had been lost. The hope of returning to a simple, Bible-based faith was now complicated by the need for someone to explain what that faith was. Soon many gifted leaders were offering differing interpretations, and followers aligned with one or another as they found them most convincing. Instead of one leader there were multiple leaders, and there was no longer a common, grass-roots faith. [italics mine]
Way to go boys...
Well, after a very disappointing season my boys pulled out an overtime win against #1 ranked Arizona in the PAC-10 Conference tournament!
If only I had a television!
Forgive me; I am a sinner
I embraced her by the hands, looked into her eyes, and said, “Forgive me; I am a sinner.” After she repeated those same words to me, I exchanged with her the kiss of peace, whereby our eyes were brought back to one another’s as we both spoke, almost in unison, “May God forgive us both.” With a sincere but brief squeeze of the hands, she departed.
His embrace of my hands was much more forceful, and there was a tear in his eye as he said with conviction, “Forgive me; I am a sinner.” I repeated those same words back to him. We exchanged the kiss of peace, and unclasped our hands with the words, “May God forgive us both.” In like manner I was able to ask forgiveness from each and every person in attendance at St. Paul’s this past Sunday. This very powerful and humbling experience is called Forgiveness Sunday, and it marks the beginning of Great Lent.
Christ tells us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37), similarly John tells us, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:8, 9)—it is in this spirit that the Orthodox celebrate Forgiveness Sunday.
Though there are many edifying benefits from such a holy practice as asking forgiveness from your entire parish one person at a time, it is the faces that stand out in my mind—the faces before God. As each parishioner stands before you (or you stand before each parishioner) you are presented with another face, another soul, another life for Christ. These are the faces, the eyes, the trembling voices that God sees and hears everyday; these are the people that make up Christ’s Church. Their wrinkled brows, or soon to be (even if in forty more years), are the faces for which Christ is an advocate.
As each person shared with me the kiss of peace, and exchanged with me the words of repentance, I became witness to a true instantiation of community: the people of God. We were not connected by socio-economic status, we were not connected by race, nor age, nor health, but we were connected on account of our shared sinfulness, our shared failures, and our shared need of God’s grace.
My friends, Forgiveness Sunday is yet another Orthodox tradition that has been preserved for the edification of God’s people. Forgiveness Sunday is yet another aid to the faith that Protestantism sorely lacks, yet another experience Protestants deny themselves. Forgiveness Sunday is just another reason why the experience of Orthodoxy makes inadequate a mere doctrinal study of Orthodoxy. Those who would dismiss Orthodoxy for “doctrinal differences”—“I read a book about what Orthodox believe, and I don’t like it”—those persons have not even begun to know what Orthodoxy really is. It is the Christian life.
Some Breathing Room...
Due primarily to Grey Davis’ astute economic decisions, and an ever weakening economic outlook, teachers across California (and nationwide) are shaking in their boots with regards to job security. Last week, by unanimous decision, the Lynwood School Board decided the terms of next year’s budget. Included were two decisions that immediately effected my employment. First, the district instituted an across-the-board hiring freeze: no new employees effective immediately. Second, effective no later than the last day of this school year, all emergency credentialed teachers will not be re-hired. Since I am one of those teachers licensed with a mere emergency credential, I received a certified letter Saturday (that cost the district $4.42 to send) informing me that my employment would cease after the completion of this school year.
Needless to say, as a newly married man the news that I was basically out of work come June 15th was not exactly comforting. However, some of you may know that I was not intending to teach next year anyway—I was planning, by God’s grace, to begin law school in August. Nevertheless, I had, as yet, not heard back from any of the eight schools to which I had applied. As a result, the news of my soon-to-be unemployment greatly increased my anxiety about the decisions of those eight law schools. My thought was “I could all too easily be denied by all eight schools…then what?”
Well, God is a God of grace and mercy, and He does listen to the petitions of even His most unprofitable servants, as my life is a constant proof. Today, I received confirmation of my acceptance into Chapman Law School. This is a tremendous comfort for, though Chapman is not my first choice, my acceptance there at least insures I’ll have somewhere to attend-- even if the other seven schools reject me, I would make the most of my law education at Chapman.
Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow!
Concerning the other seven schools, Kate and I may be waiting for another two months (possibly more) before we hear back on their decisions. Your prayers are welcomed and appreciated. ...and now to find a summer job.
A Journey to Orthodoxy, the Faith of Dostoyevsky
I thought it would be an interesting exercise, at least for me, to consider the role that Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s writings played in my three year movement into the Orthodox Church. Those that know me well, know of my great fondness for the life, faith, and especially the writings of the great Russian literary genius. However, most do not know that my love for Dostoyevsky was not “at first sight.” In fact, there was a few years gap between my introduction to the Author and my “awakening” to his brilliance.
I was first introduced to Dostoyevsky, as many people are, through his masterpiece Crime and Punishment, which was one of the selected readings for an ethics course I was taking at Golden West College, circa 1994. Quite unfortunately, the professor described Dostoyevsky, an author I knew nothing about, as “an existentialist.” Hence, my untrained Christian mind was tainted—the well had been poisoned—and I proceeded to read Dostoyevsky as though I were reading an existentialist. When I was faced with Raskolnikov’s despair and subsequent rationalization of a double murder he was to commit, I saw little more than a man destitute of morality and conscience—in my mind, a typical degenerate, all too similar to the faceless villains common to mass-marketed murder thrillers.
Yet, looking back, I now see that my initial three year “oversight” of Dostoyevsky was much more the result of my then mindset, which was weightily influenced by the Protestant reading and Reformed Protestant culture I was immersed in. Put another way, it was Dostoyevsky’s deft presentation of the often mystical and mysterious relationship between sin, grace, belief, and existence that troubled my zealously Calvinistic, western mind to the point of apathy concerning the Russian’s writing. During this time I was entrenching myself further and further into the views of the contemporary Reformed mindset though my readings of Westminster’s catechesis, Van Til’s “Christian” epistemology, Berkhoff’s systematic theology, Murray’s soteriology, Bahnsen’s theonomy, and Hoekema’s eschatology. Looking back, it’s no surprise that the radically different, Eastern mind of Dostoyevsky struck me as rather…well, Easter, i.e., mystical, and hence, according to my dogmatic Reformed worldview, clearly flawed.
In such a state of mind I failed to read Crime and Punishment’s final pages (arguably the most important pages of the book—so far as the book relates to Christianity: repentance, redemption, et cetera), I put down the book and did not pick up any Dostoyevsky till some three years later.
In 1996, through the advice of a Christian friend I began to read undoubtedly Dostoyevsky’s pinnacle of writing genius, Brothers Karamazov, because according to my friend, “the book deals with many Christian themes.” Brothers, however, sat on my book shelf for nigh a year before I made the time to really read it, and even upon my decision to “really read it” I spent a good six months just working my way through the first several chapters. (It’s important for me to point out that my slow rate of reading Brothers had nothing to do with my lack of interest in the book, for at this time I was very much enjoying what I read, when I read—instead, I simply had too much reading at that time that I believed to be “more important” than fiction, any fiction. If I recall correctly, during that year I was studying Rushdooney’s Opus, Calvin’s institutes, Augustine’s Confessions, and anything I could dig up on preterism and postmillennialism, hence leaving myself little time for some “made up”/fictional story, no matter how intriguing I might have found it at the time (this neglect of fiction, I have only fairly recently overcome).
That all changed when I began my studies at UCLA in the Spring of 1999. The rigors of studying philosophy had me on “non-fiction/analytic/information-rich-text” overload, a fact that transformed my “free reading time” into “Brothers time.” I actually went back and started the book from the beginning, reading it (and re-reading favorite sections) at every possible opportunity (Kate knows well how often I would read my favorite quotes, which often turned into lengthy passages). Each page was a revelation, each chapter a new insight, and every section reinforced my growing realization that Dostoyevsky, if not the greatest Christian novelist, was certainly the author who wrote my Christian novel.
However, Concurrent with my joy in reading such amazing prose was a growing dissonance. How could this man, Dostoyevsky, a man of such immense faith, a man who so clearly understands the Christian struggle—who so clearly understands the sovereignty of God, who transparently demonstrates mankind’s need for Christ’s grace—how could this man so clearly portray the Christian life, when that man, Dostoyevsky, was an Eastern Orthodox…person (whatever that meant, I couldn’t even conceive of him being “Christian”. I had remembered a brief article on Eastern Orthodoxy by Michael Butler, wherein he basically describes Orthodoxy as cultic).
Yet, could I truly deny this man’s Christianity because he denied “Predestination” as Calvin understood it, or because he believed that man had free will, or because he prayed through icons, or worst of all, because he saw the Orthodox Church as the sole authoritative interpreter of Scripture, and all other groups were schismatic? Certainly on this last question I was convinced there had to be major problems with Fyodor’s belief, because I knew that the Reformed churches were the most biblical, most apostolic, and the truest churches on Earth. …Well, God did not leave me to grapple with Dostoyevsky alone.
Within days of beginning my time at UCLA I met a fellow classmate named Jeremy Lancy. Jeremy was soon to become a good friend during my stay at UCLA—he also turned out to be, arguably, the sharpest undergraduate philosophy student at school. Jeremy and I began what turned into a virtual two-year debate over two primary issues: the authority of the Church, and sola scriptura.
In the beginning of our relationship I was prepared. I was confident. I was determined. I was prepared to defend my Reformed theology; in fact I too much prided myself in my ability to defeat “foes” who dared oppose Calvin and (as I saw it) Paul! I was confident that whatever difficulties Jeremy did raise that I was not immediately able to answer could be answered with sufficient study of some reformed scholar or other. I was determined to have Jeremy learning the Heidelberg Catechism and joining me at my Presbyterian church in as short a time as possible.
However, debate after debate, three-hour discussion after three-hour discussion, I was the one walking away with the very real knowledge that I had not even begun to give an adequate response to his primary claims. Soon, one year of these discussions had passed, and my vociferous reading and thought did little to aid my Protestant position. Around this time I had also started reading Roman Catholic apologetic books, and listening to Roman Catholic apologetics teaching tapes (gifts of Jeremy)—though I was no where near conceding to Roman Catholicism (the Papacy alone was an insurmountable barrier. Incidentally, the Papacy was one of the few issues I was able to gain some ground while in debate with Jeremy)—I was becoming convinced that Protestantism had substantive difficulties.
Nevertheless, I was still convinced that there were sound Protestant responses, that I was simply unaware of, that would indeed vindicate my Protestant Reformed faith.
I began to question my Protestant friends with the same issues I was dealing with, Wayne being one such friend, in the hope that they would help provide me with an answer to the claims of Church authority against sola scriptura. You might have an idea how Wayne eventually resolved those Protestant difficulties. ;-) In addition to interrogating my friends I also began having informal discussions with my pastor, and elders. Their responses, in my mind, though well intentioned, aided Protestantism very little.
For personal reasons, Kate and I changed churches during my last quarter at UCLA. With the pending graduation, career decisions, and the sort, my “dissonance” with Protestantism took a back-seat. Though I found myself unable to satisfactorily answer the issues of church authority and sola scriptura, I resolved myself to give it more time—I still believed that a Protestant response existed, yet undiscovered.
My love for Dostoyevsky only grew-- commensurate with this love grew my dissatisfaction with Protestantism. In Dostoyevsky I read hints of the rich Orthodox faith, the reverence for everything holy, the remembrance of those who had come before, the wisdom of the monk, the humility in prayer, and the mystery of salvation. Granted, there was a lot in Presbyterianism that was good and true, but contrasted with Orthodoxy, Presbyterianism seemed to lack depth and richness. Before long I started checking out books by Orthodox theologians, and visiting websites on Orthodoxy. I expected to come across doctrines that would allow me to close the door on Orthodoxy forever; needless to say, I did not find what I expected.
Months later, Katherine, Wayne, and I were able to experience Holy Week (the week of preparation for the celebration of Easter) at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church. Returning to Protestantism was never again an option.
God, save Your people and bless Your inheritance.