I wrote this as a response to a post I saw on IG. Putting this here as reminder of where I'm going.

Thanks for asking about my thoughts surrounding the lament, common good, etc. My thoughts are not fleshed out at all but this is a very brief outline of what I hope to work through more fully. A bit of background to set it up. I’ve been in a lamentable situation for about 6 years with no end in sight at this point. It has been an extended period of lamenting. I’ve read a few books, have a couple of close friends with whom I can share, but other than that I have been at a loss as to live in this period. And yes, part of the reason is the loss of the practice of both corporate and individual lament. We grieve, but that is short-term.  Last year, at Hopewords writers conference, Andy Crouch’s keynote address was how our best creativity is born out of lament. Yep, there was my key. I practically tackled him after the address to thank him and to pass on another resource.

All that to say this is my current outline for understanding how the topics below are integral to one another.

1)      Understanding what the phrases “common good” and “flourishing” mean. Are they universal and/or local? Does the beatific vision guide us here? I’ve read Jake Meador’s book, In Search of the Common Good, and plan to work through James K. A. Smith’s Kingdom series.

2)      When flourishing/common good are lost due to sin/fallenness what does our grieving and lament look like? Does the loss tell us, show us what has been lost, tell us something about the good that has been lost? Does experience of loss precede knowledge of the good? Does the practice of lament help us to name the loss and the good? If it does, then perhaps the loss of corporate lament has been a larger factor in our loss of common goods. More here: https://fisherlane.blogspot.com/2019/09/recently-i-was-asked-about-lament_30.html

 Working with books by Tim Keller, Wendy Alsup, Kelly Kapic and other essays on suffering, grief, lament.

3)      Creativity, as Andy illustrated, is a natural outworking of those who seek shalom while working from a place of lament. Unfortunately, I can’t lay my hands on my notes, but when I do, I will send you more details on this. (why am I so disorganized when I’m home all the time? 😉 ) Creativity is needed to recognize, repair, recover as best we can the good. I’m compiling a list of books about creativity, theological anthropology, etc.

4)      To recognize, repair, recover will require struggle and sacrifice.

5)      And now to the question that is more difficult for me at this point. Can we come to an agreement on the common good, or that fact just one common good, that we can all agree on and all struggle and sacrifice for? If so, what? If not, how do we go forward?

Sight

I can’t see this ...

Telophase HeLa (cancer) cells expressing Aurora B-EGFP (green) (100x)

  or these

Zebrafish olfactory bulbs (250x)

or this

Soap Film

with only eyes...

Hexanitrodiphenylamine high-explosive crystals (35x)

  All there……..waiting to be seen

Given the right tools, I can, past the veil of my seemingly limited sight

 sit in awestruck wonder, simply delight.

The right tools bring the far-off

Spicules: Jets on the Sun

just a little closer

The Necklace Nebula

into view

Comet Hartley 2 Flyby

Seeing prompts me to choose the right words to name what I see, what I experience. 

Given the right word I better understand and now possess a way to share. 

My love of the unseen world was feed by a loving dad who gave a microscope as a Christmas gift one year. Before that he made sure we stayed up on a hot July night to watch as men walked, leapt on the moon. He delights in the world...and in its people... in his daughters. And in his delight, he shares. His delight becomes tangible as I received his gifts, ...and his delight grows as I share those with others. 

Seeing the unseen helps me to perceive the seen with eyes now tuned to wonder.

It’s there, I just need the right tools, understanding to see it

And so with my soul

Tools...rather gifts from the Father; fasting, communion, prayer, meditation, the Word, confession, fellowship with the body of Christ….

all used by the hand of the Holy Spirit 

to teach me to see, to understand, to share

All used to restore in me
the image of Christ
I am to embody the unseen

love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness and self-control

WORD Incarnate
-

A timely reminder from C. S. Lewis to me

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealing with another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit- immortal horrors and everlasting splendours. This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously, no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner- no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latita the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden"- C. S. Lewis, "Weight of Glory"

Pushing back the Fall

A great use for salad spinners: centrifuge!  And to quote Alexis de Tocqueville,

“If anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.”

 And of course they share the fruits of their labors with the world.

 

“His confidence became the child’s.”

When we moved to our current city, oh say 20+ years ago, I had never lived in a "baseball town" or the Midwest. Oh.my. I had plenty to learn about how a city loves their team and we as a country love this All-American sport.  Even more to learn, though never really understand, about the rivalry between the Cards and the Cubs.  This Southern gal knew she had finally settled into the Midwest when she would willingly switch on KMOX to listen while Jack Buck and Mike Shannon called the games. I knew part of my heart was here when my husband woke me early one morning to tell me of Jack's passing and the tears flowed for a man I had never met, but to whom I was grateful for helping me to feel at home in this baseball town.

Baseball has taken some hits in the last few years, some deservedly so, and as with everything else in life, baseball has and has had the personalities that sometimes threaten to eclipse the sport itself; then you have guys like this one.

The linked article describes Pujols' work on the field, in the Dominican Republic and illustrates how Pujols calms a frightened young boy facing a dentist by scooping the young fellow up, holding him while he cried, and as the dentist says,  “His confidence became the child’s.”

Admittedly though he is not perfect, and wouldn't claim it, his desire to do the good work in the places, both on and off the field,  God has called him to do should encourage us all. And those of us who call ourselves Christians could use the reminder to live in the grace the One who has lived a perfect life gives us and in doing so rest and do the work in the places He has called us to live.

Community

"Because the church is the community of people whose humanity has been rescued from its self-destructive tendencies, the New Testament repeatedly calls believers to honor the contours of our created and redeemed nature. The ethics of the Kingdom do not call us to abandon our humanity, but to fulfill (in Christ) all of its capacities. ... Since we were created to delight in the truth, local churches should be havens from whatever patterns of mendacity the world honors. And since we are made in the image of the Logos, created by a speaking God, surely Christians, of all people, should strive to display the best and brightest patterns of speech."-Ken Myers

The Role of Story and Redemptive Narrative History with regard to Propositional Truth.

I've been thinking through the place of story, experience, and propositional truth in regards to it's role in informing and shaping us as human beings. This lecture, http://covenantseminary.inmotionhosting.com/OT230_Lecture_02.mp3 , which I am listening to in preparation for a class I am taking this fall at Covenant Seminary on the OT Historical Books, the lecturer, Phil Long, explains that while stories are vital to illustrating propostional truth, the Biblical narratives have the added necessary value of establishing propositional truth.

Here's the text:
"By telling this story we could instruct someone in the truth that "Human strength is no match for God's strength, thus we need not fear human opposition" in a way that goes beyond simply stating the proposition. Thus one of the reasons stories are so important is because they provide vicarious experience. We can enter into them imaginatively and grasp the truth in a much more vital way than if we are simply given a list of propositions. If all you wanted to know was what the truths about God are, those could be condensed into propositions such as "God is love." But that is very different from experiencing God's love in your own life. People can give assent to the proposition without really understanding what it means. I am reminded of the man who on his wedding day said to his wife, "Helen, I love you. There, I have said it. Do not expect me to keep on repeating it. Believe me, I love you. But I will not be repeating it." This man has stated a proposition that he believes to be true. She may also believe it to be true, but she will be frustrated if over time she does not experience his love in some way that helps her understand what all that means. In fact, if there is no experience of that love then the man's statement means very little. Thus experience is important, and stories give us vicarious experience. Now, a made up story -- one that is not true -- can illustrate a truth, but it cannot establish a truth. You can illustrate something you know to be true by using a made up story, but you cannot prove something to be true simply by making up a story.
That is why these Old Testament stories are important in this second way: they recount redemptive history. History is the stage of God's activity and self-revelation. Christianity is an historical religion. This is distinct from other religions that might involve themselves more with a philosophy of life, a way of looking at things, a theory about the universe, or a code of ethics or behavior. All these things are a part of Christianity, but Christianity is distinct because it involves the in-breaking of God in history. That is the nature of the incarnation of Christ. It was necessary for God to break into history if He was to redeem real people with a real problem involving real sin. You may hear people say today that the historicity of the biblical text is inconsequential. That may be true of certain texts like a parable, which need not be historical because it is illustrating rather than establishing a truth. Now, when Jesus tells a parable, because of His authority as God incarnate, He is in a sense establishing a truth just by telling that parable, regardless of whether the parable is historical. He has the authority to pronounce a truth and illustrate it through that parable. But truths of redemption are not established simply by a book of fiction. People today do say that it is not really important whether we regard the accounts of Israel's past and God's actions on their behalf as historical. They say that these are books which they believed to be true, influenced their thinking, and helped them to develop a certain lifestyle. We need to be careful about that way of thinking because it betrays our poor understanding of the essence of the Christian faith. If Christianity were no more than a way of thinking or a code of behavior and a lifestyle, then the historicity of the biblical text would not be important. But because we are truly dead in sin we need a true revelation from God if we are to find any true redemption. In other words, history -- not philosophy, mysticism, speculation, or any realm of purely mental or spiritual enlightenment -- is the stage of God's activity and self-revelation. God has acted in history in a revelatory and redemptive fashion. This comes to its climax in Christ, but we really do not understand Christ until we understand the way in which He has been foreshadowed and prepared for in the story that has led up to Him. Also, God is an historical agent. The late G. B. Caird, in his book, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, stresses the importance of history for the writers of the New Testament. He writes this, talking about the writer of the Gospel of John: "According to John, there is no Christianity apart from the solid reality of the earthly life of Jesus recorded in the apostolic tradition. Eternal life remains an unsubstantial dream unless in one man's life it has become earthly reality. Without the Jesus of history we know neither the Christ of faith nor the God He came to reveal. From first to last the Bible lays great stress on the fact that God is uniquely active in human history."
You can read the rest here : http://www.covenantseminary.edu/worldwide/en/OT230/OT230_T_02.pdf
It's not as complicated as I tend to make it. Experience, story and propositional truth all have an active role in shaping all humans. We cannot do without any one of them. And in our teaching we must use them all. It would seem though that at each stage of life, that each will be given a different level of emphasis at any one time, due to both our ability to participate in that mode of learning and in our ability to learn.

This reminds me of something I read at John Frame and Vern Poythress's website:

"How is perspectivalism useful? There are some moments when I think it is a kind of deep structure of the universe and of Bible truth. Other times (most times) I think of it more modestly, as a pedagogical device. Certainly, as a pedagogical device, it gives students some hooks on which to hang bits of theological knowledge, or to change the metaphor, some string by which to tie things together. But I think that it is of even more practical significance.
For one thing, I think it resolves a lot of traditional theological arguments, such as whether redemptive history (the situation) is more important than the divine law (normative) or believing subjectivity. You need each to appreciate the others. That fact has implications for preaching, evangelism, and our personal appropriation of Scripture.
Second, it encourages us toward balance. Preaching that focuses all the time on law (normative) and not grace (situational) will be corrected by an understanding of the true relation between these. Same vice versa. People who emphasize the objective (normative and situational) while disparaging human experience and feelings (existential) can be corrected by a multi-perspectival understanding. And vice versa. Perspectivalism is a way of checking ourselves. If a pastor develops a ministry that focuses on norms and situations, he may need to supplement it with something that does justice to the existential perspective, and so on. If a congregation has a lot of prophetic gifts, but few kingly or priestly, perhaps it needs to seek leadership in the last two areas.
So I think that perspectivalism is an encouragement to the unity of the church. Sometimes our divisions of theology and practice are differences of perspective, of balance, rather than differences over the essentials of faith.18 So perspectivalism will help us better to appreciate one another, and to appreciate the diversity of God’s work among us."

Common Grounds

I've come to enjoy a webblog that offers insightful thoughts on culture, ministry and Christianity.

A little taste: Sometimes, I am afraid that the current emphasis on the fruit of the Kingdom neglects the means by which that fruit is produced. What we need in gospel ministry is not balance between Word and deed, but the proper relation between Word and deed.


For more visit Common Grounds

Simple beauty

A few new entries are in the works, but I wanted to share a wonderful site that I read about in this month's Victoria magazine. Sharyn Sowell's papercuttings are delicate vignettes of simple beauty that she obviously understands well and explains well:
"There are only two ways of looking at the world." said Thomas Edison. "One as though nothing is a miracle, the other as though everything is." And I choose the latter.
Every day I am surrounded by miracles that keep me in awe. My inspirations are the commonplace things we often walk by without even seeing....
Violets peeking out from a weedy patch in the neighbor's driveway; dandelions in my lawn. My husband dressed up as Santa for a group of children who gasp at the unexpected gifts. Warm mittens. Autumn leaves drifting like so much gold and red confetti. Wind in your hair. Kisses. The smell of chocolate cake or chicken noodle soup. Foxgloves, English daisies, sweet peas, or any other flower in my own little patch of earth.
My work is a celebration of those everyday miracles. I'll never reach the end of my ideas because my inspirations are the things that surround each and every one of us all our lives.
I need not travel to exotic lands for inspiration because I am tickled pink at the wonders right in my own backyard--and yours.
Whether your talent is making a mighty fine muffin or singing an aria, let me encourage you to use your gifts to the maximum, spread the joy, and open your eyes to the delights of your own little corner of the world. Even a common little weed can be inspiration for something wonderful. "

Also take a minute to read her blog; she shares with us the daily beauty she enjoys.

Teaching Redemptively..... and living so.

I think I have found a book to place all the other books I've been reading on teaching and learning... and living into a context. A kingdom of God context to be specific.

A little taste, "...truth and knowledge are not isolated entities; they exist in relationship to God, their author. God's actions are an outworking of His nature. Even though He is separate from His work of creation, it means something only in relationship to Him. Thus, it seems logical to think that knowledge in a biblical sense exists only in a relationship, the dynamic relationship between knower and the known."

and a little more

"The Old Testament Israelites grew in knowledge as they listened to God's proclamations, committed themselves to them, and then lived according to them. The process of doing something with the information they were acquiring actually contributed to the further development of their knowledge. ...In part, they were formed by their concrete acts. ...Doing was not only the obvious result of knowing but a part of the process of coming to know. "

I am also grateful that the author has listed his references; at this rate I should be finished reading about teaching and learning....about the time my grandkids graduate from college.

Belief

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Young voice: Harry's also referred to as the chosen one. So are there religious--
J.K. Rowling: Well, there-- there clearly is a religious-- undertone. And-- it's always been difficult to talk about that because until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on, it would give away a lot of what was coming. So … yes, my belief and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book.
Meredith Vieira: And what is the struggle?
J.K. Rowling: Well my struggle really is to keep believing.
Meredith Vieira: To keep believing?
J.K. Rowling: Yes.

Although I don't know Rowling's specific religious beliefs, other than the fact that she does believe in God and calls herself a Christian-which can mean anything-she does rightly grasp the difficulty with living a life of faith that is inherent in our world, to keep believing. The struggle to believe and to live out that belief is one that Scripture acknowledges and gives us encouragement to deal with it. Our pastor preached on this during his July 29th sermon. Just click on the link to listen. I have no idea of our pastor's thoughts about Harry Potter but his sermon dealt with the difficult, but necessary task of maintaining belief and the role that patience, community support and not bargaining our way out of difficulty play in living a faithful life. All themes creatively embodied in the Harry Potter series.

If you can't be the poet, be the poem.
-William J. Bennett