Saying of the Day

Abba Nicetas said of two brothers that they met with the intention of living together. The first thought within himself, "If my brother wants something, I will do it," and the second thought the same, "I will do the will of my brother."

So they lived many years in great charity. Seeing this, the enemy set out to separate them. He stood at the entrance to the cell, appearing to the one like a dove and to the other like a raven. The first said, "Do you see that little dove?"

The other said, "It is a raven." They began to argue and to contradict one another, then they stood up and fought till they drew blood, to the great joy of the enemy; and they separated. After three days they returned and came to their senses and each asked the other's forgiveness. They had recognized that each of them had believed the bird to be what he had seen and recognized that their conflict came from the enemy. So they lived to the end without being separated.

Sayings. Nicetas, 1.

Saying of the Day

Abba Olympius of the Cells was tempted to fornication. His thoughts said to him, "Go, and take a wife."

He got up, found some mud, made a woman and said to himself, "Here is your wife, now you must work hard in order to feed her." So he worked, giving himself a great deal of trouble. The next day, making some again, he formed it into a girl and said to his thoughts, "Your wife has had a child, you must work harder so as to be able to feed her and clothe your child." So, he wore himself out doing this, and said to his thoughts, "I cannot bear this weariness any longer." They answered, "If you cannot bear such weariness, stop wanting a wife."

God, seeing his efforts, took away the conflict from him and he was at peace.

Sayings. Olympius, 2.

Saying of the Day

[Abba Orsisius] has also said, "I think that if a man does not guard his heart well, he will forget and neglect everything he has heard, and thus the enemy, finding room in him, will overthrow him. It is like a lamp filled with oil and lit; if you forget to replenish the oil, gradually it goes out and eventually darkness will prevail. It is still worse if a rat happens to get near the lamp and tries to eat the wick; it cannot do so before the oil is exhausted, but when it sees the lamp not only without light, but also without heat, it tries to pull out the wick and it brings the lamp down. If it is earthenware it breaks, but if it is brass, the master of the house will fill it with oil again. In the same way, through the soul's negligence, the Holy Spirit gradually withdraws until his warmth is completely extinguished. Finally the enemy devours the ardour of the soul and wickedness spoils the body, too. But if a man is sound in his attachment to God, and has only been led away through negligence, God, in his mercy, sends his fear to him and the remembrance of punishment and so prepares him to be vigilant and to guard himself with more prudence in the future, until his visitation.

Sayings. Orsisius, 2

Status Update

God willing, the series on the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, taken from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian studies 59), resumes later today. I've got some edifying sayings picked out and ready to be typed up.

While I'm in a creative lull here, I hold out hope that I'll have more to blog soon. Thank you, dear readers, for your patience thus far.

Also, please note the badge over in the sidebar. Yes, I'm becoming a NaNoWriMo participant. I've toyed with writing since I was a toddler, dictating stories to my patient mother, but now I'm taking the plunge and hope to write 50 000 words during the thirty days of November. The point of the exercise is simply completion-moving from the One Day novelist ("One day I'll write a novel") to actually doing it. The goal is not necessarily quality, but simply slogging through the thing during the month. Normally, I would keep this side of my life close to my chest, but the FAQ tells us to broadcast our commitment far and wide. Public embarassment, they say, is always a reliable muse.

I need to find a few hours every day to work on this, and that is the biggest impediment right now. It looks like I'll be getting up very early or staying up very late for the next month...

Officially Back

After a week of vacation, a short trip, and the Church Workers Conference I'm back at work.

Dad and I spent the better part of the week installing new doors on the house, courtesy Uncle Sam's tax rebate. Eventually it worked out, though none of the installations went quite as planned. We also spent a day or so replacing a few sheets of bad siding. All of it needed to be replaced, but Uncle Sam was not that generous this time around. I'm afraid I'll have to wait for my ship to come in to do that.

Kansas City was nice, if brief. It was good to see my extended family again. The last time I saw many of them was in 2001 when Grandma Mom died. While there, I caught a head cold and fever, but I've had worse, thanks be to God.

I worked some Monday morning and then left for Roman Nose State Park where the conference was. The main presentations were quite good; Reed Lessing from Concordia Seminary presented on Jeremiah, giving an overview of the main theme of the book and applying it to preaching and pastoral care. The weather, however, was lousy. Cold rain and driving winds eliminated hiking and taking in the scenery, which is pretty spectacular.

I met a blog buddy there--Rev. Mason Beecroft. While I previously knew many of the Lutheran bloggers on my list, Pr. Beecroft is the first blogger I met online first. It was fun getting to know him and hearing of his ministry at Grace Lutheran, Tulsa.

Thanks to all of you who have been faithfully checking in here or watching via your feed reader. I hope to be more active again in regular posting soon.

Update

Is this thing working...? I'm broadcasting right now? You mean that every word....? Ok.

Greetings to you from another time and space.

All is well here in my exile from Windows.

The view is lovely, the apps are working without a hitch and I even my Treo syncs. It's an amazing place, outside the Microworld. I push a button marked "Power" and I am working within one minute. I click an image on the screen and instantly something happens. I type in cybercode words and immediately the screen fills with text and images.

All right, I'll loose the drama.

I am writing to you on my experiment with a new operating system. I've (temporarily at least) ditched Windows XP and am using Linux--the Ubuntu distro, to be accurate.

Here's the deal: Windows is the old boss. Mac is the new boss. Our friend Roger Daltry can fill in the rest of the details (see the last two lines in particular). Linux is the only alternative for those who want something different.

I'm still testing things out. I made a partition on my storage drive (and didn't loose a byte of data) and have been playing around here. I have no idea how the file system works or what a lot of things mean at this point, but I can browse, email, listen to mp3s, sync my Palm and edit documents just like before.

Only faster.

Much, much faster.

Even with cool 3d effects that one could only get with Leviathan Vista.

In the next week or so I'll offer some more thoughts. Switching is not for the jellyspined point and clicker.

I'll also give a report on my vacation, which was productive and tiring.

I promised a substantial theological post and I haven't forgotten it, for the three of you who are still reading after I've been off the 'net for a week and who haven't defenstrated yourselves due to loosing your portfolios.

That will have to wait. Tomorrow we are headed to KC for my aunt & uncle's 50th anniversary party, and if we have time, to show the family my old house and stomping grounds in Liberty, MO.

Pr. Beecroft on Technology

I had started a post this week on technology, agrarianism and what it means to be a person, a human. It sounded a little to paranoid and luddite, especially for me, considering I spent a few hours last evening trying out a live CD installation of Ubuntu.

So I checked Bloglines tonight and see that Pr. Beecroft has said some of what I wanted to say (thank you!). Read his post below, and consider it foundation for a post perhaps next week. I'm not sure I would agree with his conclusion, however. I'm not sure we can be liberated to enjoy the deathworks of technolatry. I think in many respects our liberation is expressed in denying it, it giving it no quarter. What do you think?

We live in a culture dominated by technology. Now I am no Luddite, but I am suspicious about how our highly technological environment has influenced our understanding of reality. We are surrounded by machines that do our bidding and provide us with a seemingly infinite amount of information. We have so much information that it must be stored in Gigabytes and Terrabytes. We have email, Blackberry phones, I-phones and I-pods, wireless hotspots, Facebook, laptops, Google, IM, LCD HDTV, etc. Communication is instant and has no boundaries. Our travel potential is limited only by our finances. Today, people can even vacation in space. Doctor visits are dominated by medical technology. Our children are entertained for hours by television, movies, X-Boxes, Wiis, and Playstations. We live in a world of unforeseen technology. Our world would have been considered impossible by our grandparents or great grandparents.

Yet what have all of these technological advances done for the human person? We may live a few years longer, on statistical average, but statistical average means nothing when you are terminally ill in your twenties. Are our lives more fulfilling and meaningful? Our entertainment devices may be able to distract us or draw us into strange alternative realities for a time, but we still struggle with contentment, relationships, depression and living life on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. We may have creature comforts, but we are not altogether comfortable. Do we have a better understanding of reality with the glut of information available through technology? I doubt it. We cannot even begin to process the information in a coherent manner. We are still befuddled by the vast universe and the immense complexity of the human being. Technology has certainly not ended war and violence. It has only made killing more efficient and sterile. Technology has not ended death. No matter how much genetic manipulation we attempt, death will eventually have its way. Technology may prolong life and offer healing, but not forever.

Neal Postman, in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology argues that the culture now lives in submission to technology and its promises, making human existence confused and incoherent. He says that technopoly “consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” We consume new gadgets made known through a technology-driven media. We are filled with hope at technological breakthroughs. We receive authority to act or believe from polls, technology-driven theories, and so-called scientific studies. Technology forms and informs the culture in which we live.

Bob Dylan, in his 1983 song License to Kill, critiques the effects of technology on man’s relationship to the world. He sings, “Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused, and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill. All he believes are his eyes, and his eyes, they just tell him lies.” Dylan is concerned that the human story had been so redefined by the promises of technology that existence had become meaningless and destructive. The modern person had become defined by the material, scientific, and technological. The mind of the modern person had been strictly educated in the classroom of human-centered theory, consumption and technology. Still, the modern person was afraid and confused, displaced and detached from reality. He only believed what he could see, yet he could not see what was true. His vision was distorted. In the late seventies, Dylan had become a Christian, which I suspect informed his view of the world and life, at least for the time.

As Christians who exist in this strange technological world, this technopoly, we are constantly challenged to understand our lives according to the larger drama of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Reality is not defined by technology in its various forms, but the one Triune God who creates and sustains all things. Reality is known in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, revealed in the Holy Scripture and the Ecumenical Creeds. The language of reality is not the language of technology, but the language of the Holy Christian Church: Father, creation, fall, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, repentance, faith, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, Holy Communion, liturgy, Church, etc. Our minds are to be formed by God’s Word, His language, so that we understand reality in all of its impenetrable mystery. Minds managed in this way will see things as they truly exist. Eyes of faith will begin to apprehend, but never exhaust, the heavenly mysteries of the sacramental presence of Christ in our midst through His gifts along with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. In Jesus Christ, our lives have true meaning and significance, liberated to enjoy the 46-inch flat screen, games, or I-pods and no longer enslaved to technology and its empty, insufficient promises and theories.

Is It Paranoia if They Are out to Get You?

"What if, in a society characterized by a Goldilocks economy, we can't find anything to worry about? What if we somehow go looking for things to fear, things that will destroy this economy, things that will reach every corner of government, every
enterprise, every man, woman, and child?" --Special Agent Fox Mulder