Ringing the Bell

For most students, yesterday was the last day of classes here at William and Mary.  The last day is known as “Blow Out,” which probably has something to do with the fact that thousands of students blow their brains out with drunken revelry from sun-up to well into the wee hours of the night—people dancing around in the Sunken Gardens, mobs roaming to and fro.  This is about as close as W&M gets to what party schools consider normal.  I’ve never totally understood the liberation that such students feel; big kahuna final exams are always right around the corner, and so the school year is FAR from over.

For seniors, the last day of classes is extra special though; it isn’t just the close of the school year, but the close of an important part of one’s life.  All the class, all the homework, the papers, the late nights, the tests, the grades, and on this day, you can finally smell the end: a mix of pollen, pancakes, and whatever lies just up ahead and around the bend.

For decades, centuries perhaps, seniors have entered the historic Wren Building to ring the Wren bell, one by one.  It’s a way to announce to the world, “I’m about to graduate! HARK UPON THE GALE!”

There are many traditions in which I don’t take part, and the end of my undergrad experience has been a little disjointed with not having been in school this past fall or spring, working at Colonial Williamsburg, and still needing to finish one class this June.  But having my chance to ring the Wren Bell was of symbolic importance and something that my soul needed.

So during my lunch break at work, I headed over to campus.  Dressed in a shirt and tie in contrast to all the frolicking casually-dressed students, already between two chapters of my life.  A sense of eager anticipation, almost a touch of nervousness.  The weather can’t be more perfect, a slight breeze, the sun beaming into the Wren court yard as I stride up to the steps.  Amid the happy din of laughter and glee, the steady tolling keeps resounding.  I’m not sure if it is coming from the Wren or my chest.  A brief stop on the porch and then up the stairs, up, up, up.

And there is the rope…my turn.  Here it is.  What am I supposed to think right now?  What’s supposed to be streaming through my mind?  Sometimes in life you have those momentous occasions that you anticipate and think about, and then you are there, right in the midst of it, and it’s all happening so quickly.

Someone suggests that I give it a pull.  Okay.  Grab the rope.  Pull hard.  And there is my knell echoing across campus.  That’s it?

My heart is sated.  I can go back to work.  I can leave this chapter of my life and enter the next.

Lord of the Kings

Among my favorite cinematic productions is The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  While no film is a perfect translation of its respective novel, the LOTR movies come pretty close: so much epic grandeur and depth and sublimity.  In the end, after the evil Sauron has been vanquished, the gritty Aragorn mantles himself in an air of stateliness as he accepts his crown.  Eons have passed, but the kingship has finally been restored to Gondor, the shriveled white tree finally blooms again, and ivory-colored petals fill the air as at the grandest of celebrations.  The king has returned!

One can’t help but notice that LOTR is dripping with Biblical parallels.  After centuries without a king, Jesus appears as David’s heir, through sacrifice he conquers death, then later he is arrayed in splendor in His heavenly form as depicted in Revelation.  I could go on and on with examples.

Which makes me wonder, why hasn’t anyone made a Jesus film with the same epic grandeur, depth, and sublimity that LOTR has?  Many of the Jesus films out there just seem to me to be a bit on the folksy and lame side.  The Passion of the Christ captures a lot of gravity and grittiness, but many Jesus films, while depicting Jesus’ humanity quite well, just don’t quite capture the essence of His divinity.  I want to see Jesus the warrior-king riding forth upon His steed with his fiery eyes, crowned with many diadems, white robed, bronze-footed, His face like the sun shining in its strength.

I’ve been reading the Letter to the Hebrews recently.  At the outset, the author says, “He [Jesus] is the radiance of His [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His [God’s] nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.”  So God-rays emanate from Jesus Himself.  Wow!  Then near the end of the Hebrews letter, the writer announces that “at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”  The “consummation,” or as some translate it, the “culmination” of the ages.  The climax of climaxes.  This is pretty epic!

So here is call-out for a Jesus film with the cinematics of The Lord of the Rings!

(A blockbuster King David film would be pretty rockin’ awesome too!)

Luna

Here I sit next to my dining room window late at night.  The moon in all its fullness is beaming down.  I often think about how this is the same moon, or those stars the same stars, that the Caesars saw when they looked up at night.  Kings and popes, Newton, Nietzsche, Columbus, The Queen of Sheba, the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and the Persians too, Harriet Tubman on all those nights of leading slaves north, monks gazing out the windows of their monastery walls, the Pharaohs, the laborers who built the pyramids for the pharaohs, the laborers who always seem to be building something on William and Mary’s campus, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, all those heart-broken people in Japan and Libya and all the other devastated places in the world that we’ve temporarily forgotten about because they aren’t prominently featured in the news right now, the President, the Laundromat guy, and the man from the warehouse, and me—we’ve all seen that silver medallion with its familiar somber expression, a sadness and yet a peace.  Under this same moon, some will cry out in agony tonight while others gently sleep.

As different as we all are on this Earth—tomorrow will have its share of strivings and strain, budget battles, tests, performances, competitions, wars, lifting of weights at the gym, trades, and discussions—we all share in the same moon, and we have for eons. 

Shine

I’ve always enjoyed the vibrancy of the David Crowder Band’s music and the creativity of its music videos, but this one knocks it out of the park (click to follow link).  Beautiful!

Wisdom in Laundromats

I typically don’t think of laundromats as places where I might gain a richer and deeper perspective on life.

The other night I was doing laundry.  Except for the janitors performing their nightly ritual, the place was empty.  One of the particularly outgoing janitors decided to strike up a conversation—“conversation” isn’t quite the right word, “monologue” is probably more accurate.  Having my face buried in a book must not have been much of a deterrent for Mr. P. who helped himself to my attention taking the opportunity to tell me all sorts of random life stories.

This kind of thing can be annoying; no matter how many times you say, “uh-huh,” the stream of consciousness just keeps flowing like the Amazon.

But as I stopped simply hearing and started actually listening, “uh-huh’s” gave way to questions and disinterest morphed into fascination (though listening was a challenge—after cutting through his un-annunciated speech, I probably only understood between 60% and 70% of what he said).

He elaborated on Williamsburg’s past, on some of the darker aspects of the city’s social dynamics, and he reflected on some of the decisions that he had made during the course of his life, some good, some bad, some serious, and some hilarious.  I realized that even inarticulate laundromat janitors have a corner on wisdom, if you have the patience and the willingness to hear them out.

Apparently the balcony of one of the apartment buildings near where I live recently collapsed.  Mr. P. told me that he had warned management about a growing fissure in the concrete for over a year.  He warned them that the balcony would eventually collapse, and that it needed to be repaired, or at least roped off so that no one would be hurt or killed.  Even though he had been in the concrete business for much of his life, his warnings fell on deaf ears.  Who would believe a lowly janitor who could barely pronounce his words?  No one was harmed by the collapse, but people could have been seriously injured, or worse, all because of the reckless negligence of someone who “knew better.”

As an attorney, someday I’ll be in a loftier position as one of the higher-ups.  I’ll have my liberal arts education with my Juris Doctorate, and I’ll probably have less educated, simpler folk working beneath me.  And ultimately I hope that I’ll be the kind of person who listens to the laundromat guy.

Stuffed Animals and Law

This year I have been working in the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center book store where I assist customers in purchasing edification.  Because of scheduling needs, there are some days that I work in the gift shop instead. 

The gift shop has all sorts of trinkets and whirligigs and knick-knacks, ceramic dishes, ornaments, smelly soaps and the like.  I much prefer to sell customers sources of edification and knowledge in the bookstore than I do to sell customers dishes and smelly soaps in the gift shop.

I can’t help but wonder if these purchases are really necessary, that maybe this money could be used to educate some child in an inner-city community or feed a hungry mouth in a third-world country.  Though, I do recognize that if it were not for the dishes and smelly soaps, there wouldn’t be a Colonial Williamsburg and many more people would be unemployed (maybe myself?) and people wouldn’t be able to enjoy this rich national historic treasure.  So smelly soaps it is, I guess.

Part of working in the gift shop entails making sure the sale floor is stocked and orderly (the more obsessive compulsive, the better!).  And among the first things I do is to make sure that my fuzzy little stuffed animal friends are looking good—friends like Sally the Sheep and Prince the Dog, which is creepily modeled off of a dead dog carcass from the early 1900’s.

This all harkens back to my childhood.  My bedroom was filled with furry friends.  In fact, there was a time that there was barely enough room in my bed for me!

Every child dreams about what he wants to do for a career when he grows up.  Somewhere between physicist and pharmacist, I wanted to be a stuffed animal maker and have my own stuffed animal shop.

I ultimately decided on Law, but it was a close choice.

Our Great Curse and Our Greater Blessing

Lifted and edited from a discussion thread on Facebook.  Alexander, a non-believer, had some genuinely honest yet tough questions of the God in which Christians believe.  As best as I could, I tried to give him some genuinely honest answers.

Alexander,

I appreciate your honesty.  I appreciate that you ask tough questions, big questions, important questions.  There are many of my fellow Christians who I wish would do the same.  I hope you will join me as I muse over some of the points you made.  They are very interesting.

The notion of original sin is deeply thought provoking.  Is a newborn baby guilty of some immoral act?  Is such a baby somehow deserving of a metaphysical death sentence?  Such notions seem to clash against our sense of innate justice and fairness.  I think you are right in that observation.  But I think that original sin is far deeper than an intrinsic status of moral guilt.  Original sin is the accursed state, the state of brokenness, into which we are all born.  We live in a broken world--few would deny that, one of pain, and suffering, and death.  No baby is evil, but every baby enters a world weighted down by an evil burden, this curse.

But why this curse?  You point out that it is hard to believe that everyone is born in the image of God, even the mass murderers, pedophiles, psychopaths, dictators, and rapists.  If we were not made in the image of God, then the curse of our world wouldn't seem that alarming or disturbing.  But since we are made in the image of God, that's what makes this curse seem so striking, so unfair.  What did we do to deserve this?  This curse seems to be connected with our being made in God's image, and yet being separated from our creator.

At this point many Christians would point out that God gave Man a free choice, and choosing to sin is what Man did with it and that it's ultimately Man's fault, but God is going to save us anyway.  You probably find this explanation to be a bit of a cop-out and rather disingenuous.  In fact, you say that this "exonerates God for any responsibility..."  You probably find this explanation unsatisfying and hard to believe.

And I agree with you.  And I am a Jesus following, God believing, Christian.  

In the Garden of Eden story, yes Adam and Eve choose to eat the fruit and accept the serpent's suggestion, but God is the one who puts the forbidden tree smack dab in the middle of the garden, kind of like a mother who puts the cookie jar right in front of the child and tells the child not to eat.  Even if we assume that God HAD to put the tree in the garden in order for Adam and Eve to genuinely have free will, did God have to allow the serpent (Satan) into the garden to tempt them?  Surely an omniscient and omnipotent God could have foreseen and prevented this.  Even if the tree's presence is needed for Man to genuinely have free will, to give him an opportunity to obey or disobey, Satan's presence is not.  Allowing the serpent in the garden is a needless provocation.  And God knows that Man is but dust, he knows his frame, and his predispositions.  It certainly seems that God is setting Man up to fall.

I believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, which means that this God knew of the horrible curse that his frail, dust-like creatures would fall into, and God had the power to prevent it.  He did not.  And the ultimate question...is why?  Can this God possibly be good?

I see the history of our world—of us—as a giant narrative arc.  And the theme that stands out to me is the theme of redemption, but more than that, the theme of love.  Without the curse, there is no need for redemption.  Without the need for redemption, there is no Jesus coming into the world to die for us.  And that makes the curse of original sin a necessary and integral part of the grand story.  God Incarnate enters into this curse as a newborn baby, suffers because of this curse , and dies on a Roman cross as a result of this curse.  Without this, we don't see how much God actually loves us. 

Some Christians think of Jesus as God's plan B-- God creates this good world, Man sins, God says "darn it!  wait...I know...I'll send Jesus to die and that will undo what Man did."  I don't see Jesus as Plan B; I see Jesus as Plan A, from the foundation of the world, from the beginning of time, because God planned for that to be how He would show is love for us. 

Jesus.  Love-in-the-Flesh.  Most gods in the world's religions expect their devotees to cower before them groveling.  They expect sacrifices.  They judge you based on how good or bad you are.  But this God washes the dirty feet of those whom he created.  This God sends his own son as the sacrifice.  This God, in the ultimate act of humility dies for us.  He says of the curse, "It is finished, paid in full."

That is the God for me.  That is the God I love.

What Joy!

One of the most joyous days of my life was the day I beat my Dad’s high school 3,200m track record.  For decades that record stood untouched, and many solid, relentless runners attempted the feat, but my Dad’s mark was always left standing.  What is so intriguing is that for most of those 37 years, my Dad was Coldwater’s track coach, and he was the one training his own athletes to break his own record (cynics would snicker at the possibility that my Dad held back on training these athletes so that they wouldn’t break his record, but he was too invested in his athletes to pull a stunt like that).  Yet with all his effort, he could not raise up an athlete to match his own endeavor.

Until the Three Rivers Invitational in 2005 when the last of his sons was to make his attempt.  We both knew what the agenda was: he had coached me for this moment, I had trained for this moment, I was to attack the race from the outset running alone in a rather uncompetitive field of runners.

In my excitement I started out aggressively—perhaps a bit too fast to be sustainable.  I started to wonder whether I had made a mistake, whether I should let up a bit in order to compensate, but my Dad was right there to assure me that everything was fine and to encourage me to keep the fast pace.  It never crossed my Dad’s mind to give me bad advice, even at this late hour.  Toward the end of the race, everyone knew that I was feeling as strong as ever, a historic feat was now inevitable.

After crossing the tape and catching my breath, I found my Dad on the track.  I do not remember what was said; all I remember was our big hug.

For me, I had finally taken down the old man’s record, the most daunting of all the Coldwater track records I would break.  And for my Dad, he had finally trained an athlete to break his mark, and of all those athletes, he had the honor of passing that record to his son.

Some people in his shoes might be spiteful, jealous, possessive, but my father was filled with joy.  While I was surely happy with my achievement, the joy I felt had much more to do with seeing my father’s joy and being filled myself as a consequence.

Joy is often a selfless, infectious emotion.  It can spring up on its own, but when we can share it with others, it spreads like wildfire.

Toward the end of Isaiah, the prophet speaking of God’s future redeemed children, says, “the Lord delights in you,” and later, “God will rejoice over you” (Isa 62:4, 5).  In light of Christ’s work on the cross, my God sees me as His perfect creation.  The Lord delights in me; the Lord rejoices over me!  What a blessing to know this.

What joy!

Mr. T, Please Take the Wheel

I am fairly even-keel when it comes to my emotions.  I have a thick skin (having three older brothers will do that), and it is difficult to make me angry. 

Distance running tends to be relaxing.  With the release of endorphins in the brain that aerobic exercise generates, it is a great way to de-stress and to temper negative emotions.

So I find it ironic that I often become most riled and angry during long, extended runs—selfish, irresponsible, and sometimes downright malicious drivers: Thank you very much!

It annoys me when, as a pedestrian patiently waiting to cross the street, I wait for an oncoming car to pass, only to see the car suddenly make a turn before it reaches me.  Had the driver used a blinker, he would have alerted me to his intentions allowing me to cross the street.  But no—no blinker—so now I have to wait for the giant, continuous stream of traffic from the other direction to pass by before I can attempt to cross the street again.  The use of a blinker is not to let yourself know what you are about to do as a driver, it is to let everyone else know.  Such is the selfish driver.

It frustrates me when drivers turning right into traffic only look left, ignoring the possibility of a pedestrian to the right who may be entering the crosswalk.  Then they lurch forward almost hitting you with a deer-in-the-headlights expression as though to say, “Hey, you just jumped out in front of me from nowhere!”  And I give a stern glare as though to say, “No, I ‘jumped’ out in front of you from your right, a direction in which, in your negligence, you failed to look!”   Such is the irresponsible driver.

And then there is the malicious driver.  This is the type who, on a wide, sparsely traveled country road driving toward you (you as a pedestrian are running on the left-hand side of the road like you are supposed to), rather than accommodating for your presence by nudging the centerline a bit or even remaining in the neutral position within his lane, instead this driver upon seeing you swings all the way over to the edge, grinding the shoulder of the road as he sends his giant murder-machine barreling toward you in an unconscionably inhumane game of chicken.

It is in moments like these that my emotions boil over in rage.  I usually feel that mine is a righteous anger, that I am entitled to be angry, and if given enough warning, to throw rocks at the car or something.  Then I wonder if I really have the mind of Christ in these situations.  What would distance-runner Jesus do?

I guess I’m not totally sure, but recently after yet another frustrating run of playing hop-scotch with terrible drivers, I ran past a man waiting at a bus stop who looked just like Mr. T.  As I went galloping by, a big, beaming grin spread across this man’s face as he started pumping his arm back and forth as if to say, “Rock on, little dude!”

“Mr. T” was the perfect antidote to my mounting frustration.  Perhaps this man can’t afford to own or drive a car of his own, but O that the streets of America were filled with drivers like him.

The Wind of Heaven

For several years now I have tried to learn to trust in God’s provision.  Of course, for most of my life I have had very few unmet needs, or even wants for that matter.  But I have had a few needs the last few years that I found were in many ways genuinely out of my control.  I faced significant athletic injuries in college that I never faced in high school—injuries that often recurred and took eons to heal.  Most recently I have spent months preparing for the LSAT, which I take this Saturday.  I can dutifully spend all the time in the world preparing, but I’ve found that on an annoyingly large number of occasions my brain has just not absorbed certain mechanics of the test.

And I wonder, what if I don’t heal?  What if I don’t fully comprehend grouping logic games by test day?  What if I don’t get the score I need for my dreams to come true?  Can I trust in God’s provision?

In moments like these I have mired myself in the rut of self pity hoping that God will pull through (and forgetting all the times He already has), but otherwise feeling like I’m helplessly in free fall just waiting for God to catch me.

I was feeling this way several weeks ago when it suddenly struck me afresh that I am a child of the Most High God, that I can approach the throne of grace boldly, and that I am already more than blessed. 

I’ve been reading through Isaiah lately (so good!), and one of my favorite parts is Chapter 40.  Near the end, the prophet declares, “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”  What you don’t see in these images is the wind.  The wind lifts the eagle’s wings; the wind fills the runner’s lungs.  So often we don’t notice the power that would lift us if we would just flap our wings or if we would just breathe deeply.

I don’t need to be drug through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  I can walk.  In fact I can mount up and soar like the eagle because the Lord is the wind beneath my wings.

I’m flying into the dawn of a glorious future.  It’s mine for the taking!  So, LSAT shmelsat!