Spirit-Spark

Hate the sin; love the sinner

2011-03-05T03:07:00.000-06:00

I just narrowly escaped posting an embarrassingly ignorant facebook status:

Today I searched for "hate the sin love the sinner" in Google. The first hit was quotationspage.com, which tells me that it belongs to Mahatma Gandhi. I'm a big Gandhi fan, but I think quotationspage might have mentioned that the Bible said it first in ______.

I thought I was so clever and that everyone would have a good laugh at questionspage.com and Google. Fortunately, I wanted to fill in that blank with the chapter and verse, and I took a look at the second and third hits before updating my status. What I discovered, of course, is that this aphorism is found nowhere in Scripture, but was made popular by Gandhi through is public speeches and 1929 autobiography.

I am ashamed that I graduated with a B.A. in Christian Ministry without knowing this, but I also know that I am not alone. Many Christians assume that this is a direct quote from the Bible and an apt summary of Jesus' ministry. GotQuestions.org has an article on the subject that maintains that human beings cannot hold up to the ideal of loving the sinner while hating the sin but that Scripture attests to God's ability to do so. The most curious verse listed as evidence of this point is Malachi 1:3, "but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

I hear this idea most often when people in the ACU community are explaining their position on homosexuality. They often say something like, "Yeah, I think it's wrong, but we should hate the sin and love the sinner, because all sin is equal."

Of course, "all sin is equal" is not a direct quote from Scripture either. It bothers me that the most common stance toward homosexuality in my community is often based on two aphorisms that do not come from Scripture. I am okay with accepting wisdom from extrabiblical sources, but people should know where their mottos are coming from. And I would wager that many of the Christians who say, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," think this is a quote from one of the epistles and that Christians who say, "all sin is equal," think they have effectively summarized the Sermon on the Mount. People should know that these two aphorisms are not found anywhere in Scripture, and they should also know that this allegedly "middle ground" stance on homosexuality can be even more offensive to practicing homosexuals than an extremely antagonistic stance. Think about it: if you believed that moderate drinking was not even remotely sinful and a Christian friend saw you holding a glass of red wine and said, "Don't worry, I won't judge you because I sometimes struggle with lying," how would you react?

If they are certain that their "middle ground" position on homosexuality is in accordance with God's will, then Christians who say that we should hate the sin but love the sinner because all sin is equal may not care that this position is offensive to practicing homosexuals. But why exactly are they so certain?

Unread Emails, Part 2

2011-02-26T03:07:00.003-06:00

Volunteer Work

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Unread Emails, Part 1

2011-02-19T03:55:00.003-06:00

Love

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Self-Defeating Truths, Part 1

2011-02-18T14:27:00.000-06:00

Beware of pithy proverbs.

Why do I thirst, Lord?

2011-02-15T17:30:00.003-06:00

As you read the following excerpts from Psalm 42 and two different versions of "As the Deer," ask yourself the following question:

Whose fault is it that the speaker suffers from unquenchable thirst?
     a) The enemies are responsible
     b) God is responsible.
     c) It is the speaker's own fault.

As the deer pants for the water

So my soul longs after you
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship you

      from "As the Deer" by Martin Nystrom

And I pour out my soul deep within me,
Deep within me, I pour out my soul.
Draw me deeper Lord, deeper Lord, in You.
Draw me deeper Lord, deeper Lord, in You.
      from "As the Deer" by Dennis Jernigan

¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
   so my soul pants for you, my God. [...]
⁹ I say to God my Rock,
   “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
   oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
   as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
     from Psalm 42

Links to full versions:
"As the Deer" by Martin Nystrom
"As the Deer" by Dennis Jernigan
Psalms 42 & 43

As I sang these two version of "As the Deer" growing up, I always assumed that it was my own fault my thirst could not be quenched. I thought that if I sang loud enough, felt deeply enough, truly wanted God more than gold or silver, and truly poured out my soul deep within me, God would immediately wash over me and satisfy my thirst for his presence.

But when I read psalms 42 and 43 (which probably form a single unit), I get the sense that the psalmist blames his enemies or blames God for his unquenchable thirst. There is a good chance that the psalmist is writing this poem as a captive. In 42:4, the psalmist nostalgically remembers how he used to go to the house of God. We might interpret this from our own experiences of people who left the church for a time only to have fond memories of their childhood faith when they hit rock bottom, but it is more likely that a third party keeps this pslamist from going to the temple than that the psalmist has made a choice not to attend the house of worship. In 43:1, the psalmist asks God to plead his cause "against an unjust nation." In 43:3-4, the psalmist beseeches God, "bring me to your holy mountain...Then I will go to the altar of God...I will praise you with the lyre." Thus, the psalmist seems to claim that the unjust nation is keeping him from quenching his thirst for worship at the temple, but he also holds God accountable, asking why God has allowed this nation its power.

Yet the psalmist does not let himself off the hook completely. Three times throughout the poem, he asks himself, "Why so downcast...I can and will praise God yet [paraphrase]." In 42:6, the psalmist proclaims that he can worship God from the alternate location of Mount Mizar. In 42:7, he seems to find a beautiful, powerful, and terrible God in nature, and in 42:8, he claims that God is with him day and night, temple or no temple.

I love the complex theology in this poem, and how the blame is divided between the individual worshiper, the enemies in power, and even God. I don't get this same sense of complexity from either version of "As the Deer." Not only do these songs strip Psalms 42 & 43 of any trace of lament (no one has ever suggested an extra verse that begins "My tears have been my food day and night."), they seem to portray thirst as a good thing that worshipers should strive for, perhaps with a nod to Matthew 5:6.

As someone who works with teenagers, I often hear complaints about unquenchable thirst for God. In some ways, this is exactly what we want for our youth, but all too often, it digresses into "Cry night at camp just wasn't as good as last year," or "Worship was missing something tonight." When I was a teenager myself, I often felt guilty when I didn't pray enough or didn't give my all to a worship service. I forced myself to get on my knees every time we sang "There's a Stirring" because I had had several powerful experiences while singing that song, and I was extremely disappointed each time those experiences were not repeated. Whenever God felt distant, I would usually pray for him to fill me up (a prayer that, more often than not, did not seem to be answered), or I would avoid the problem entirely and fall deeper into my secret anxiety.

What might have happened if I had pulled out the entire arsenal of prayer, blaming God for drying me up, begging him to remove all distractions, holding him accountable for allowing these distractions in the first place, admitting my own contributions to the problem, considering whether it might not be possible to worship God in a different place or a different way, but begging God to make the particular kind of worship I desire possible again?

I honestly don't know. Perhaps blaming God and enemies in prayer does more harm than good, but I really don't know because I have not tried. And I suspect the same is true for the majority of American Christians today. When I pray, I usually ask God for something very specific or else say, "Thy will be done," without really meaning it. And so I look to Jewish theology and the language of the psalms for alternate possibilities.

Incidentally, "There's a Stirring" and both versions of "As the Deer" are still some of my favorite songs.

Images of God--Teaching and Exploring

2011-02-15T05:42:00.002-06:00

"When you were younger, how did you picture God? Do you imagine God in the same way today?"

Every once in a while, a teacher stumbles upon a question that is curiously repeatable. I have now asked my youth group variations on the above set of questions on three separate occasions. New people were present each time I asked, and I was primarily interested in hearing their responses, but several of those who had already shared their picture of God were eager to do it again, and a few even came up with some different answers.

Once you move beyond the non-committal "guy in a white robe" answer, most people will at least share some insightful details like "with fire in his eyes," or "like a father, but not angry like mine." Some answers are abstract, but even these are full of emotion: a big, pink, fuzzy ball; golden light surrounding the entire earth with an embrace.

Of course, none of these pictures can give us a complete understanding of God, but as we share these personalized images with one another, we are blessed with an ever-widening vision of our multi-faceted Creator. Some may resist the question, claiming that God is too complex for such crude portrayals as human minds are capable of imagining, but the alternative is to imagine nothing, and it is hard to understand how a nothing could love the world and be a living, active presence within it. Dig deep enough, and all of us imagine God as something or several somethings, regardless of our efforts to avoid putting God in a box.

When individuals make the claim, "God is...", they flirt with idolatry, but when members of a community dialogue and say, "God is like...", they practice theology. Not only can these discussions provide individuals with new insights into the nature of God, they are also a good way to introduce a group to self-disclosure in a non-threatening way. Even though these intimate portraits of God are rarely discussed, most people are quick to share them with a group when prompted, and the group learns something about both the nature of God and the personality of the individual. If people don't readily respond to the question, "How do you imagine God?" they may open up to the question, "How did you picture God when you were a kid?" As some people age, their images of God seem to shift toward vagueness and abstraction, but the second question allows them to draw on earlier experiences when God was more concrete. For those who still fear idolatry, the second question leaves room for qualifications: Well, I used to imagine God as a _____, but now I know that God is also _____."

I hope that this post might inspire you to ask your bible class, children, small group, circle of friends, or significant other how they imagine God.

If you would like to share your picture(s) of God with me, please comment on this post.

Thou Shalt Never

2009-06-24T04:26:00.002-05:00

As I was thinking today about the "Thou shalt nevers" of the Bible, it occurred to me that I cannot remember very many blanket prohibitions. Every time I can think of that there is a command to never ever do something, it is a subcategory that is forbidden. Despite the way that many people quote the 10 commandments, number 8 says "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" [in a trial], not "You shall not lie". Most of us, after all, have lied before without feeling that it was wrong. Most of us agree that we should not murder, but fewer agree that we should never ever kill. The new testament has volumes to say against drunkenness, but even Christ drank wine.

Most evangelicals today would label pornography as a "Thou shalt never", but I wonder if it would still be sinful for a man or a woman to give their spouse a naked photograph of themselves as a joke on Valentine's Day. Masturbation is hotly disputed today, but I wonder, in the most extreme case, how it can be sinful for a man to do the test at a fertility clinic. Lust is called adultery of the heart in the Sermon on the Mount, but "attraction" and "chemistry" are at least close cousins of lust that bring two people together before they make the commitment of marriage.

So the first question is this: When Christians say that homosexuality in all its manifestations is sinful, is this a specific or a broad statement? In other words, where does it fall if you were to create a spectrum with a specific statement on one end, such as, "Having sex with a married person is sinful," and a broad statement on the other, such as, "Heterosexuality is sinful." Depending on how you play with the words, you could say, "Having sex with a person of the same gender is sinful," or "Homosexuality is sinful." One sounds specific and the other sounds broad. Which do you believe that it is?

If it is a specific statement, then are there any exceptions at all? These might be similar to, "Pornography is sinful, unless it is exchanged willfully between married partners in a non-degrading manner."

If it is a broad statement, then can anybody think of a precedent for such a broad prohibition? This might be similar to what some pacifists believe, such as, "Killing is always always sinful."

Joshua

Day of Silence

2009-05-05T03:54:00.002-05:00

Anyone who saw me around campus a couple of Tuesdays ago probably noticed that I could not greet them because of the strip of duct tape gluing my mouth shut. Written on this piece of tape in black Sharpie was the simple message, “HOMOSEXUALS ARE HUMAN BEINGS.” I tried not to be obnoxious, but if anyone asked me about the tape, I would hand them a flyer like the one I have reproduced below:

Homosexuals are Human Beings.

These 4 words are more important than most of the other things that I say in a typical 24-hour period, which is why I have taped them to my mouth as a way of participating in the 13th annual Day of Silence, a national student protest aimed at ending the persecution of homosexuals in our communities by breaking the silence of those who can help stop it.
The official Day of Silence took place on Friday, April 17th, but I chose to participate today since I do not attend any classes on Fridays. I have also chosen to observe a 24-hour fast and to spend the day meditating and praying for my homosexual friends and for the Church, who has often treated them so poorly. These actions are not enough, but they are a place to begin.
I do not yet fully know how my Christianity should shape the way that I treat homosexuals and the way that I think about homosexuality, but you can help me find out by joining the facebook group “What I would have said (I think)…” or by reading my blog at www.spirit-spark.blogspot.com. Please add to the conversations there, and help break the silence!

The reactions that I got were interesting and varied, but first:

The Funny Stuff:

1. It turns out that your body is pre-programmed to inhale a large amount of air through the mouth before you sneeze. When your mouth is taped shut, you end up doing this weird, slow intake of breath through the nose before sneezing without the customary “Achoo!” sound. Then everyone in the Stanley Theological Reading Room looks at you funny.

2. All those movies where someone is tied up with their mouth taped shut for days on end are dumb. I had to reapply at least every two hours. Toward the end, I started to notice a slight stickiness on my teeth. I don’t know if this was plaque or duct tape glue, and I don’t know which is more disgusting.

3. Whenever I fast, I crave fast food all day long. Against my better judgment, I chose to break my fast at midnight with a Muchaco and some MexiDips & Chips from Taco Bueno. It was a bad idea.

4. I am so out of shape (see #3) that I start breathing heavier than normal after climbing three flights of stairs in the Administration Building. When you have tape on your mouth, it is hard to breathe heavily. And now…

The Serious Stuff:

Some people looked at me and rolled their eyes. Others attempted to poke fun playfully. Most avoided eye contact all together or pretended like I wasn’t there. A very few people, such as David Ayres, walked with me between classes, cracked jokes, and treated me like a friend as if everything was normal. In many ways, this experience mirrors a small fraction of what homosexuals go through every day, only they don’t get to take the tape off because it’s part of who they are. How do you treat them? Do you roll your eyes, poke fun, avoid eye contact altogether, or seek them out as friends? Or are you the one with a scarlet letter taped to the front of your mouth?

I don’t want to be too judgmental. If someone I know had tried this a few weeks ago, I certainly wouldn’t have been a David Ayres. I probably would have slipped into the “avoid eye-contact altogether” category. My freshman year of high school, my geography teacher had us give a journal to someone who would be traveling soon so that they could write in it and then pass it off to someone they met abroad. The idea was to have each person give it to someone else, preferably in such a way that the journal crossed as many borders as possible before the last one mailed it back to you before the end of school. At some point the journal fell into the hands of a student at a university in Wisconsin who spent the last fourth of the letter telling me about the situation in Tibet under Chinese control. I remember how uncomfortable that made me, but now I wonder why. I knew and still know little to nothing about the situation in Tibet, but I do know that she understands the situation much better than I have ever cared to research, and I also know that if it is as she described, then there is no debate that the people of Tibet have been wronged. The only reason I can figure why this girl made me so nervous is my preconception of a dirty northern liberal and all the nasty, unchristian things associated with it.

The weirdest thing is that there are now people who must see me in the same way. Everyone that I know personally believes that homosexuals are human beings, yet many of them were uncomfortable with this demonstration. Why? I’m guessing that these were some of the questions that ran through people’s heads that day: Doesn’t he believe in the authority of Scripture? Is HE a homosexual? Doesn’t he realize that there are more important things to protest? What difference will this make? Isn’t he a hypocrite for contributing to class discussions and singing in choir today? Does he condone unrepentant sexual immorality?

It’s interesting that so many questions can arise from one simple statement that we all agree on. I have no doubt that my actions were misinterpreted on that day, but I have news for every Christian who is remaining silent about this issue: your inaction is being misinterpreted as well. According to an often-cited poll (most famously represented in the book unChristian), the primary phrase that American young adults associate with the word “Christian” is “anti-homosexual”, with “judgmental”, “hypocritical”, “too political”, “unintellectual”, and “sheltered” bringing up the rear. When I first started helping out with a neighborhood walking program, people would answer the door with a cigarette in one hand and then quickly thrust that hand behind their backs as soon as they realized that we were from a church. I thought for awhile about doing something sort of gimmicky (much like the duct tape stunt) to overcome this barrier to true relationship. Perhaps I could have shown up one Sunday wearing a Budweiser tee-shirt. I never got around to any such stunt, but over time, these people grew comfortable with smoking in our presence because of our consistent visits and the absence of any judgmental glances. Perhaps there is no need for protests or “gimmicks”, but you’d better be sure that you are doing something rather than nothing, because the default perception of Christians these days isn’t so good. The good news is that it only takes one exception to break the stereotype in a given person’s head.

The Sunday after I observed this Day of Silence, I attended the baptism of an openly gay student from ACU. Whatever people may assume about me and my beliefs because of this action, I will not apologize. In this instance, the assumptions that would have arisen from my inaction are far worse than those that might have arisen from my action. More importantly, I needed to be there to support a friend who loves Jesus Christ.

If my actions confuse you and you seek clarification, post on this blog, send me an email, or speak to me in private. I have spoken as best I can, and nothing new will happen unless you break the silence.

Joshua

What does the love of Christ look like?

2009-03-30T03:41:00.003-05:00

Over the past two weeks I have been learning a lot from all of your comments, emails, links, suggested readings, and private conversations. Many people are firmly set in their beliefs on this issue. Others, like me, are unsure and seeking. Many of us would not agree with each other for long if we gathered this entire online community into the same room for a face-to-face debate. Yet there is one thing that everyone I know agrees on: we should love our homosexual brothers and sisters, regardless of anything else. Some people call this tolerance, others call it love, and many of us choose to model this love after the example of Christ.

But Christ treated the people he met in a lot of different ways. If we assume that he lived in a constant state of love as divine Messiah, then all of these treatments grew out of this love. Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery by challenging anyone without sin to throw the first stone (John 8:7). He loved the money-changers by chasing them out of the temple with a whip of cords (John 2:15, Mark 11:15). He loved the Syro-Phoenician woman by calling her a dog (Matthew 15:26 & Mark 7:27). He loved the tax-collectors and “sinners” (and perhaps the Pharisees too?) by sharing a table with them (Matthew 9:11, Mark 2:16, Luke 5:30). He loved the woman at the well by exposing her life of sin and telling her everything she had ever done (John 4:16-19, 29). He loved his disciples by washing their feet (John 13:3-5). He loved Peter by calling him Satan (Matthew 16:23). He loved Judas by encouraging (or discouraging??) him to carry out his plan of betrayal (John 13:27). He loved the little children by taking them up in his arms and blessing them (Mark 10:16, Matthew 19:13-15). He loved Lazarus, Mary, and Martha by waiting until it seemed too late (John 11:4-6). He loved the rich man by telling it like it is (Mark 10:21-22, Luke 18:22-23, Matthew 19:20-22). He loved potential followers by demanding total commitment and turning them away (Luke 9:57-62). Again he loved Peter by asking three heart-breaking questions (John 21:15-19). He loved the crowd on the mount by making certain Old Testament laws even harder to obey (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28). He loved another crowd and his disciples (and the Pharisees??) by denouncing them publicly with six woes (Matthew 23). And he loved us all by dying on a cross in pain and shame.

Which of these examples should we follow as we seek to love our homosexual brothers and sisters? What does the love of Christ look like in our context?

Let me give two examples from my own life of what the love of Christ doesn’t look like.

I used to think that it was loving to assume that people were heterosexual until proven otherwise. When others would make fun of a friend’s manhood who was not present, I would either choose not to participate in the jibes or else I would take an active role in defending his heterosexuality. Since the note, some of the friends whose heterosexuality I have fought so hard to defend are coming out to me, and I’m realizing that my previous actions, while well-intentioned, were not loving towards homosexuals at all. First of all, these actions put me in denial about what my gay friends were really going through. Second, by bringing forth evidence of their manhood and trying to “defend their honor”, I was reinforcing the ideas that masculinity is inherently honorable (and femininity, therefore, inherently dishonorable), that homosexuality is okay to make fun of when a person truly is homosexual, and that a false accusation of homosexuality is the worst possible insult in the world. None of these three ideas are true, and I did not believe them to be true when I was misguidedly defending my friends. Yet despite what I believed, my actions supported these three hurtful lies, while I was unawares.

Until recently I hadn’t though much about homosexuality, but I was convinced, like many Christians, that it was “a sin like any other sin, so I can’t judge.” Because I thought this, I assumed that I portrayed myself in a non-judgmental way. I assumed, because I thought I would love and accept any friend who confessed to me, that they would all somehow know this and feel comfortable coming out to me so that we could continue the journey toward healing together. Yet it was not until recently that people started trusting me enough to invite me along on their journeys, wherever they might lead. I thought that I was trustworthy and I thought that my love was obvious, but it took a visible expression of this love for it to really matter at all to anyone but myself. Love has to look like something. For me, it looked like a facebook note, strange as that sounds. What does love look like for you?

I always appreciate encouragement and support, but as you’re leaving a comment, consider answering one of the following questions:

What specific action of Jesus models the way that you try to treat homosexuals?
Have you ever seen someone with good intentions whose actions did not look like love at all?
Give an example of the most beautiful expression of love you have ever witnessed.

Joshua

Why my note is problematic.

2009-03-23T03:34:00.005-05:00

I want to start off by once again thanking everyone who has read and everyone who has contacted me in various ways, and those friends who have come out to me in the past few days after seeing by my actions that they can trust me.

I also want to issue a public apology for my facebook status a few days ago, "Joshua Alkire thinks that anyone with half a brain should read his note and comment." That was unacceptable and snotty. Besides, it's not true. I need all of you to help me find out what I believe on these issues. I need you whether you've thought about this all your life or never. There are many things in this world more valuable than a brain. Besides, how am I the ultimate judge of intelligence?

The note has caused a stir. It has made many people stop and think. It has made many people cry. It is not at all perfect. It may not by adequate. In this post, I would like to expose some of the problems with my note that people have pointed out in the past few days, as well as a few self-criticisms that I have noticed.

Several people have been bothered because they can't figure out where I stand on the issues. This is because I still don't know about a lot of them. My views as of Wednesday are expressed in the note. Since then, I have come to understand that many of the things people believe on both "sides" are based on very bad information, and as I obtain better information and hear stories from real people, my beliefs are changing quickly. If you want to know what I believe, keep up with the blog. Don't stop reading, because the nuances of what I beleive may change next month. That was the whole point of why I started this conversation: to learn, and as one might expect, people have shown up in astounding numbers to share what they have to offer. Thank you.

So is this moral? How long can I remain in a nebulous state of indecision? Can I be preacher if 20 years down the road, I still don't know if love between to members of the same sex is wrong? Can I look a homosexual in the eye and say, "I'm not sure if this is okay. It might be a sin and it might not."

Several people have told me how much they appreciate the part where I said that I wouldn't mind having a homosexual babysit my kids. I'm still pretty set on that belief. They are not going to corrupt my kids, and saying so is a way of showing love and trust and setting myself apart from the hate that they may have experienced from other Christians. If you asked me today whether or not gay couples should be allowed to adopt, I would have to say that I don't know. I realize that this is inconsistent. What am I saying, that they can babysit but not raise children on their own? What does everyone think? A hard question to ask me would be, "If they can't have kids, how long can they babysit and how often? Can they run a daycare?"

Some people thought that by saying, "I want you to influence them," I meant "I want you to turn my children gay." That was not what I intended at all. If I come to believe that homosexuality is fundamentally okay, I still don't think that I will believe it is what everyone should do. What I meant was that I want my kids to have memories of homosexuals who were real people and good friends.

I am deeply regretting that I said the Bible is "ludicrously unclear" on this subject. To some it is very clear. To others it is fuzzy. Those who agree that it is clear might disagree about what it means. Hence...it is unclear, right? Because so many people disagree. Yet that is not, perhaps, much different from any other major issue that people disagree about in the Bible. It is unclear, perhaps, but not "ludicrously unclear". That puts too much blame on the text and not enough on us. I would like it if there was a red-letter saying of Jesus that when something like "Do not love a member of the same sex because..." But what does it matter what I want? A future post will deal with each of the main passages traditionally used in this type of conversation and the problems I have with traditional interpretations. (It will also address some of the problems of my reinterpretations of them.) However, one thing I have learned from second year Greek, if nothing else, is that we often pick the wrong verses for our arguments. I believe that Scripture has a lot to teach us about this issue, especially in the specifics, if not the generalities. I just think we're not looking in the right places. For example, most people I know agree that whatever else, we shold love homosexuals. Some people say, "as Jesus loves". The word "homosexual" doesn't show up in the Bible a lot. The word "love" does. We need to read these passages to find out what loving our homosexual brothers and sisters actually looks like.

I am quickly finding out that many people feel that homosexuals on the ACU campus are sort of pushed into Sally Gary's group Center Peace. It is perceived that ACU fully endorses her and that her views are ACU's views. I have a lot of respect for Sally Gary and the things she does, but I don't know if her name is what the person who wrote the card needed to hear, and I don't know if her and I will agree on everything by the time I have become set in most of my beliefs.

I thought that my examples of a pedophile born with pedophelia and a heterosexual who loves a married person really changed the debate, but now I'm not quite so sure. To be clear, neither homosexuality nor pedophelia has been proven to be caused by genetics yet, at least not to my knowledge. Even if homosexuality is proven to come from our DNA, that doesn't mean that pedophilia does as well. That will have to be shown separately. We live in an age where it is assumed that everything is caused by genetics, even though people don't always have the resarch to back it up. Also, the comparison between a pedophile, who causes severe psychological and physical harm to the child, and a homosexual in a loving consentual relationship, who loves his or her partner beyond a cheap sexual relationship, is unbearable. I acknowledged this, but it has been reiterated by others. The comparison is unbearable.

As for a person who genuinely loves someone else who is married, I still think that this is an example of unrequited, genuine love that must nevertheless be endured without satisfaction. Adultery is sinful. Divorce hurts people. If children are invovled, the problems only increase. However, this is the only example that I can think of. Also, I have come to understand that this comparison is also unbearable to some. A homosexual who loves a heterosexual, married or not, must live in fear, not only that their love must go unrealized, but that if they confessed their love, the other person will probably be perturbed and disgusted, might break off all ties of friendship, might return love with hate and fear and ignorance.

Those are the problems I remember discussing the most. Do we see any more? Please help me refine.

A few more questions: Does my approach to this issue exclude females? I have already talked to one homosexual female who said no. What do other's think?

Also, you may have noticed that when you check my blog, there is an adult content warning. How do we feel about this? Is that consistent with my belifs about babysitting?

Thank you all.

Joshua

What I would have said (I think).

2009-03-20T01:38:00.004-05:00

I have always been a terrible blogger, but I hope that can change. Read through old posts dealing with my various travels if you desire, but that is no longer the purpose of this blog. I have decided that it is sinful for me to continue being complacent and ignorant about the tensions between homosexuality and Christianity. This started with a facebook note, which I have reproduced below, but the conversation is too large for that. Please understand that I have made no changes to the original note, even though it is not perfect and I now see that some of the things I believe are based on very poor information. Hopefully these things will change in the coming months and years. For now, I welcome all comments, even anonymous ones. I also welcome emails sent to spirit7spark@gmail.com. When people start getting hurt, the rules will change.

The facebook note:

So a few weeks ago we had the annual ACU sex talk for Chapel credit. There was a panel of Bible professors, ACU staff, and "real folk" at the front and we could write questions on note cards for discussion. The usual laughter and half-baked thoughts from students and faculty alike. "Is anal sex...sex? I mean, like, if you look it up in Webster's...and it doesn't lead to children..." "I had a friend of a friend of a friend who masturbated in front of his girlfriend and then fingered her and she got pregnant." Beautiful. Sex only refers to making babies, thus all sex with condoms or when it's not her time of the month is not sex, and we should avoid anal sex because there's a one in a billion chance that someone might get pregnant. Bravo, Christian thought, bravo.

After a while, the card came, like it always does. "I am gay." Silence. The laughter will come later in the freshman dorm rooms and in the Bean tomorrow. Only one person has the boldness to make a response, a single guy, a member of ACU staff who "struggled" with homosexuality in his youth. The answer was unique to ACU culture but the same one we've all heard a thousand times (those of you who go to this university), "I don't know what to say...it's hard...there are people here to help you...please come talk to me afterward if you want." The idea that someone might be able to change their sexuality is revolutionary and counter-cultural, but this was a lame promise. The guy seemed so sad and dejected, not someone I want to talk to for advice. It was clear that there has been no radical joy-giving transformation that made everything okay, even though that seems to be what we imply will happen, praise Jesus.

This is absolutely unacceptable. No debate. We as a community have absolutely no idea what to do about this issue. And most of us don't care. After a sleepless night and many hours of thought, here is my response to the card, assuming that it is twenty years down the road, I am Bible or English professor at a Christian university, and I am married with kids. It's not perfect. I don't even know if it's adequate. Please help me refine.

"There's really only one way to start with this. I am not disgusted by you. I am not afraid of you and you don't gross me out. I don't know you, but if you introduced yourself to me tonight or if we met in an elevator tomorrow, I wouldn't mind being your friend. If I am eating in a restaurant and you walk in, I will not leave or tell you to leave. If there's an empty chair at my table, you are welcome to sit down. Are you good with kids? My wife and I will pay you to babysit sometime, if the opportunity arises. I am not afraid of the influence you will have on them. I want you to influence them. Are you already a part of a loving community of believers? Because I want you in my church. We need you in my church. We need your voice more than a new worship minister. And if you've ever heard a Christian say otherwise, I want you to know that it is they who are condemned before God Almighty--NOT YOU.

"If you are in a relationship with another guy right now, and you are reasonably close in age and you listen to each other and support each other and make sacrifices for each other, then in my heart of hearts I feel that you are doing better than most heterosexual couples and that you are right with God. But the Bible--the book that I love and have based my very life upon--is ludicrously unclear about whether or not it is fundamentally wrong for two members of the same sex to have this kind of relationship. The stuff in the Old Testament is in the Old Testament. The same problem with tattoos and long hair and the fact that Christians eat pork and don't really keep a Sabbath. When it's used in the New Testament, it's almost always used as evidence of human depravity, rather than a warning against it's dangers. It almost always appears in a list, thus equating it with things like adultery and idolatry and murder-- to an ancient mind, undebatable examples of human sin. The idea that two humans of the same gender can have the same relationship as a husband and wife except for one unimportant difference took thousands of years for humanity to come up with. If you ask me, 'Is it wrong?' I must say 'I, a professor of theology, don't know,' and that is unacceptable. We need the greatest Christian minds of our century to be thinking about this question. I need you in my church.

"If you are here today and you feel that these urges or this kind of love is a contradiction to your Christian faith, I want you to know that you are in good company. There is a group on campus called Center Peace run by Sally Gary. They meet once a week for love and support and they do not accept easy answers about this issue. I do not know whether our "orientations" come from genetics or from the first crucial years of our development as children, but either way, I think that we have no control and sometimes even no awareness of the matter until adolescence and early adulthood. But there are many of us who were born with demons, and we have to fight them. If a heterosexual loves one other person and one other person alone, would run across the world for them and die for them, and they are married to someone else, then that person has the bitter responsibility of living in unrealized love. If someone is born or becomes a pedophile and they claim Christ as their Lord, then there is no excuse. Celibacy is the only option. The only question is whether or not consentual love between two people of the same gender is or is not wrong. We need you in our church to help us answer that question. We need you, we need you, we need you."

Comments? I hate that I am comparing homosexuals in general to pedophiles. That completely changes the debate, but the comparison is unbearable. The stuff we use to put down dogs at the vet is painless and quick, while the stuff we use for lethal injections in prisons has questionable effects, yet no politician will ever suggest a change because of that unbearable comparison. What do we do?

Joshua

Esgrima (Fencing)

2008-02-11T19:24:00.000-06:00

Well, for those of you who don't know, I joined a big gym kind of like the YMCA here in Montevideo. It boasts the only rock climbing wall in Uruguay, indoor soccer, racquetball courts, and (my personal favorite) fencing, among other things. Tonight we had our first lesson. It's a lot of fun because it gets us out of the house, which is sometimes hard to do on weekdays because of classes, studying, and abundant leftovers for dinner. The instructors are interested in practicing their English, so they were very helpful and we gave each other mini language lessons while they taugt us the first and "on gaurd" positions.

Other than just having a lot of fun feeling like French adventurers and praticing a little Spanish, we learned how to move forward and backward, and how to catch both tennis balls and rolled-up gloves out of thin air. Maybe next time they will actually let us hold a sword!

No hay photos ahora (There are no pictures this time)

2008-02-06T21:30:00.000-06:00

Last week we went to see a soccer game between two regional rivals at the stadium in Montevideo. We sat in the middle section between the two goals, and there was a mix of fans wearing the color's of both teams all around us, but the most dedicated fans sit behind the goals on either side. Both of these sides had drums to keep the beat of chants, songs, and cheers that these spectators called out for the entire game. The songs would get louder whenever their team was doing well, or when the fans for the other team started a song war, or just because things were getting a little dull. We couldn't really understand the words to most of these songs, but Colter was able to translate the simplest one after looking one word up in the dictionary:

"Ole!
Ole, Ole, Ole!
$&#*^ you,
amp;#*^ you,
$&#*^ you."
amp;#*^ you."

Unfortunately, I don't really care to tell you what that word was. We later found out from the local Uruguayan who took us to the game that pretty much all the songs are like this. They take soccer pretty seriously.

But songs are not the only way fans show their support. For almost 45 minutes before the game started, there was some sort of warm-up team that scrimmaged on the field as the stadium filled. Throughout this pre-game, we started to notice that the occasional firework would shoot out from the top of the north side of the stadium. After looking closer, we realized that these were actually coming from within the crowd of fans sitting in the bleachers. We never did figure out how they were doing this and if it was illegal or not. Just as we were about to decide that the scrimmage team was the main event despite their strange colors, a whistle was blown and one of the real teams entered the field. At this moment, A battery of rockets and sizzlers erupted from the northern bleachers while flags waved through clouds of confetti. The bombardment lasted for at least five minutes, using more ammunition that I can possible imagine being smuggled in. And still, after all this there was enough left for the occasional mortar throughout the game. I wish I had brought my camera to show you just how many fireworks the crowd set off.

When the other team came on, I expected to see a similar spectacle, but the southern bleachers had no fireworks. What they did have were giant torch flares, which bellowed huge clouds of smoke that covered the Nacional fans in smog. There were also an equal number of flags and a giant jersey about forty people wide and twenty rows tall. I had to wonder what would happen if one of this jersey or a flag or one of those little pieces of confetti caught fire. Every seat was filled, and there is apparently no rule against spilling out into the stairways to sit down. Most things are sort of relaxed here.

On our way back we could see a short, small fight between fans of different teams across the street. This used to be a huge problem, but since then the police have really started cracking down on fan violence. We had to get patted down before entering (though apparently they weren't checking for fireworks), and there were barricades and soldiers who looked like S.W.A.T. men on horseback all around the perimeter.

Te Has Revestido de Gloria y Majestad (You are clothed with splendor and majesty)

2008-01-31T21:44:00.000-06:00

The title comes from Psalm 104 and I chose it because it reflects the beauty I saw on the Isla de Gorriti during our excursion to Punta del Este, but since it's been so long since my last post, I have other stuff to tell you about first.

As far as I understand, Uruguayans drag out the celebration of Carnaval longer than any other people. Last Thursday we watched the opening parade down Diez y Ocho de Julio (July 18th is the date of Uruguayan independence.) During our walk to Diez y Ocho, it seemed as if the whole city was moving with us toward the excitement. Several buses streaked passed us on the way, and many of them looked as packed as the time all thirty of us crammed into one bus to go to dinner on our first night in Montevideo.

Once we got there, the sidewalks and park were swarming with people and there were police barricades to keep people out of the street. Except they didn't really keep people out of the street, but they sort of bottle-necked the entrances so that you had to wait in "line" for a long time in order to get in. (There are no actual "lines" for anything in Montevideo, just clumps of assertive and somewhat less assertive people.) There were lots of vendors, spectators, and children walking up and down the street throughout the entire parade, even once the floats and dancers started coming by. The vendors would try to sell you food, masks, jewelry, and bags of biodegradable (I hope) styrofoam pellets to throw at each other.

The parade consisted mostly of a lot of creepy looking people in trashy plastic costumes, dancers of all kinds, small bands, political comedians, and cross-dressers. And advertisements, too. LOTS of advertisements. Between every small cluster of entrants there were usually at least ten other people carrying tall poles with flags advertising beers, Pepsi, etc. It was kind of like commercials, but in real life. There were none of the gaudy, scantily-clad women you think of from the Brazilian Carnaval, except one party bus at the end of the parade. I say "end" but none of us actually stayed till the last group had finished dancing at 2 a.m. I was in the last group and we left around midnight, after we had already been there for four hours.

Last weekend we went on an excursion to Punta del Este, which is the only other significantly big city in Uruguay and has become a center of world tourism. We started off at Casa Pueblo, the mansion/time-share/museum/architectural marvel of Uruguay's most renowned artist, Carlos Vilaro. Casa Pueblo is a complex of funny-shaped white buildings and towers that overlooks the merging of the Rio de la Plata estuary with the Atlantic. Supposedly, there are no right angles anywhere in Casa Pueblo, but I found several in picture frames, tables, and doorways. Perhaps I just read things too literally. I don't know if I can explain to you how big this place was. We were only allowed to explore the museum of his paintings, but when we stepped out onto the terrace of the museum's cafe, we could see more private pools, patios, and surreal white towers spreading out along the ocean. Those who have bought the expensive time shares enjoy private rooms in some of these towers, and Vilaro lives here whenever he's in Uruguay, but usually he is off seeking inspiration in some other part of the world.

After Casa Pueblo, we took a bus and a boat to Isla de Gorriti, a small, sparsely populated island off the coast of Punta del Este. Very few people live on the island, and other than a few trails and a touristy beach, it is pretty much untouched space. The trails were not made of gravel but long, blue-gray shells that crunched and cracked under your feet. After a lunch of sandwiches and a Coke that cost me three dollars and fifty cents (don't buy stuff on islands), most of us went down to the island's sandy beach. I was wearing jeans, so I walked in the water a bit and sat on the shore with Marissa, looking for pretty rocks in the sand.

I was kind of bored and we were supposed to be there for about four hours, so I eventually decided to go off exploring by myself. This turned out to be a good decision. As soon as I stepped into one of the forests, all was quiet except for the rustling of leaves in the wind. It was eerie and somewhat spiritual to walk among the tall, proud trees and listen to their whispers. As I neared the island's other shore at the edge of this forest, the swift sea breeze began ripping through the trees. It was here that I realized why the trees were so talkative. On this side of the island, the wind rushes over the rocky shoreline and breathes into the forest, where it is quickly broken up by the rows of straight trees and the rustling of the leaves. The closer I came to the edge of the forest, the stronger the rushing wind became, until, at last I stepped over a ledge and saw...

...paradise.

Black and gray rocks with strange geological formations cover the shoreline, meet the ocean, and then poke out of it's waters every few feet. The bluest water I've seen on this trip stretches out to meet the skyline of Punta del Este. The wind was a summer blizzard against my face, forcing my lungs fill with air like a set of bagpipes, injecting my body with fresh oxygen. In Greek, the word for spirit and wind is the same.

And finally, the mystery of the long blue seashells was solved. Here were millions of them, stretched out along the shore and between the rocks. After a few moments of exploring, I found an extraordinary piece of driftwood that looked like a part of God's creation, reaching up desperately for the sky.

I found a perch and sang into the wind for close to an hour. Then I followed the rocks, taking pictures and making my way to a cluster of birds fifty feet away. When I got too close, they all leaped into flight as one. As I rounded another corner of the island, I found a purple beach. It was obvious that this part of the shoreline had once been covered by another million of those shells, but time and wave, and perhaps the feet of the occasional tourist, had ground them all into coarse sand.

When I came back to the first beach, everyone was gone. I made my way to the boat dock as quick as I could, but no one was waiting at the dock except for local Uruguayans. There were a few tense moments on the boat where I realized that my ticket was a different color than everyone else's, but the captain seemed only slightly annoyed by this. I made it back to Punta del Este safely, and only a few minutes late.

We finished the day by visiting the famous Fingers in the Sand sculpture and eating at a nice restaurant overlooking the sunset and the sea. I had salmon ravioli in a creamy tomato sauce, and it was exquisite. I haven't had a bad meal since we got here.

That's all for now. I'll try to post with more regularity in the future.

Joshua

Un Beso Santo (A Holy Kiss)

2008-01-20T20:27:00.000-06:00

After today, I finally understand what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 16. When we went to church this morning, every member of the congregation (granted, there are only about 25 of them) that we came within eight feet of on the way to our seats greeted us with a "kiss" on the cheek. I put quotation marks because we really only touch our right cheeks to each other and kiss the air, though I have heard that the old ladies will slap us with a wet one toward the end of the semester if we come every week.

I recognized the tunes of most of the songs we sang, but I couldn't always remember the names of the songs or the English words that go with them. It's kind of like when you get a church song stuck in your head that you don't know very well, and it bugs you until Monday morning because you can't remember any of the words except for the chorus. There were other songs that I didn't recognize until the second or third verse because the Iglesia de Cristo often has a difficult time carrying a tune. Of course, they don't have a lot going for them since many of the translated songs have a lot of extra syllables crammed into measures that were never meant to go with Spanish lyrics. Every once in awhile, one of us would recognize a song and muster enough confidence to try some harmony. They pretty much think you're amazing if you can sing bass.

This afternoon I went to the beach with Mark Foster and Holly Peck for the first time. After a short walk along the shore I sat down and discovered a new technique for building sand castles. Okay, not very cultural, I know, but still a fun way to spend time in a new place. If you have a hole with water in it, you can pick small handfulls of silt from the bottom of the pit and drop them in piles one on top of the other, like bricks. the excess water drains to the bottom of the wall pretty quickly and the silt fills in the gaps, so you never have to touch the wall or pat the sand with your hands, which is usually when things start to fall down. The result is that you can build very high, very thin walls very fast. When I started, I was one of maybe four people on the entire stretch of beach building a sand castle. By the time we left, there were about ten little Uruguayans building within twelve feet of my castle, and two of them had taken mine over when I abandoned it because of a partial collapse. Little kids kept popping up and asking questions for the better part of an hour before I abandoned my project, but sadly, I couldn't really say much. Three phrases I need to learn in Spanish: "The secret is in the water," "Would you like to help me?" and "That's okay, it wasn't your fault."

Sano y Salvo (Safe and Sound)

2008-01-18T14:40:00.000-06:00

Well, nothing much has happened yet, but I figured I should at least make a post to tell everyone we arrived safely with all the luggage, and to let people know they're looking at the right blog.

So far we have walked the streets of Montevideo a few times to get aquainted with the neighborhood, eaten amazing food and desserts (some of which I was a little too sick to try), and settled in.

I learned two very important things at the grocery store today. One is that you can get a half kilo of delicious dulce de leche for only 20 pesos (about a dollar), and two is that they don't really care about centesimos (cents). I gave the cashier 210 pesos to pay for my 208.55 peso bill, and she gave me back 1.50 pesos. That means that I saved a quarter of a penny, or U$D 0.0025! If I keep saving like this, the trip will pay for itself in 2,400,000 days (2.400.000 dias).

Psalms

2007-07-17T01:33:00.000-05:00

This post actually has nothing to do with Europe. I was looking through an old composition notebook from last summer tonight and found a poem I had written. The nice thing about writing spontaneous psalms is that they don't require extensive outlining or a Thesaurus, and rarely have to be edited. This is a prayer that questions the ways we pray:

Praise the LORD, O my soul.
Remember him in your time of need.

I pray to my God from the depths of confusion,
In the valley of disbelief I call on my Answer.
What advice can man give to the Almighty,
Or what can I ask the LORD to do that he has not already done?
His Will is perfect and active:
How can I ask, "Thy will be done" when it alredy is?
For whom can I ask protection that the LORD has not alredy seen?
Whose plea can I raise that Omnipotent God has not already heard?
The LORD's eyes are everywhere,
The Watcher sees all pain.
He knows my inmost desires and troubles,
Every man he knows better than the man knows himself.
The LORD's plan is perfect.
Submit me to your will, O LORD,
and finish what you have begun.

What is THAT supposed to be?

2007-07-14T01:12:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about this trip was getting to see two of the most famous modern art museums in the World: the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Tate Modern in London.

The thing I like about modern art is that there is almost always a cool idea behind it, even if I hate it. It gets my brain firing, thinking about what's possible with art, while at the same time I look at what's there and sigh. Here are a few complaints to begin with:

We are not living in the Victorian age anymore. Stop painting naked people and pretending like you're new and innovative. Manet had that covered centuries ago. You are not shocking us. We walk past your picutre of a transvestite having sex with three dogs at once and say, "Yup, there's another one. Moving right along..."

Most of modern art is trying too hard to be art. All you have to do is find something crazy that no one would ever consider art, put it in a gallery and Presto! you're an artist. Congratulations. You got in. You broadened our ignorant minds. You made a good point and began a path toward greatness. NOW KEEP WORKING! There is too much innovation today; not enough development.

I wish that more artists would stop trying to make statements and just create what they wanted to, without thinking about what's art and what's not.

That said, lets talk about the stuff I liked.

I thought this was a cool idea: make art so big that you can walk inside it. Take away the glass frames and steel fences and let people really experience it. Let them touch it, even if that means faster decay.

This picture is showing pieces from the Minimalism exhibit. Minimalism asks why art has to be so busy and complicated. If you think the paintings are a little plain, you should see what’s on the other wall. Three canvases withought frames: all the same size, all painted white. Actually, there is a slight grey tinge to the paint (intended to set it apart from the wall), but that’s it. The sculpture on the floor is also fun. Lots of industrial tin plates laid on the floor. Why does sculpture have to be tall? Why does art have to be roped off? Why can’t you walk on it? Actually, the artist doesn’t even want you to look at this sculpture. That’s right: you’re supposed to walk on top of it without even noticing. Who says you have to look at art anyway?

This one is titled “moon.” Which is pretty stupid until you look at it again, and then you’re like, “by golly, it is the moon!” Or at least a very pixilated version of it…

This room was very plain and empty looking. That small green neon sign is sitting over there alone on a blank wall. The thing on the floor is a big pile of industrial steel with a tape recorder duct-taped to it that was constantly emitting the noises of clanging metal.

Then another artist came in and made an exhibit specifically designed to be next to this one. After ducking through a low doorway, you are in a massive room with nothing but a grand piano. Oh yeah, and all the walls are covered with thick rolls of felt. As soon as you step in, the noise is almost completely blocked out so that you stand in utter silence, and the warmth of the super-insulated room catches you in a kind of doldrum. The contrast is striking. It’s one of those exhibits where I go, “Wow! That was a cool idea!” quickly followed by a “That’s it? Really?” I mean, the grand piano inside a completely silent room is a nice joke and all, and it is such a neat idea to think about how one exhibit leads into another and to involve three of the senses in the experience of art, but couldn’t you think of anything better? I loved all the potential in these ideas, but I didn’t walk away changed or moved.

This is a sculpture by Brancussi. He said that he did not try to make anything, but let the wood and metals shape themselves. I find it very hard to believe that you would come across these shapes naturally by just following the grain in the wood. I find it very unlikely that what you see here is the "essence" of wood and brass. But I also find it unlikely that characters in novels are really "organic" and "alive" like all the authors say they are. If, however, thinking about art in this way allows certain kinds of art to be produced, then I'm all for it. Even though I think their theory is stupid, I have to admit that the metaphor is powerful, and that I couldn't create what they create using my own theories about art.

The other think I like about Brancussi is how he thought about the ways that art interacts with other art in the space, kind of like the two exhibits I jus talked about. He constantly rearranged the sculptures in his workshop to experience them in different ways.

Well the, the Tate Modern in London didn't allow pictures inside, so I'm going to write about that mostly from memory.

I remember seeing a ratty old paper back book in a glass case. The two creators reversed the traditional roles of author and illustrator by having the artist draw pictures first. Then his friend came along and wrote poems to illustrate the illustrations. I thought that was a nifty idea, even though the poems didn't make any sense and the pictures were of wierd things like dead fish.

I also remember seeing some kinetic art. The idea behind this school of thought is that art should interact with the viewer and change as you move around it. These were pretty cool to look at, but I have to wonder what the difference is between kinetic "ART" and simple optical illusions.

One room was filled with an installation by a Brazilian artist. There was poetry written on the wall, sand on the floor, and live birds inside cages. A favella (those shacks that the poor people on the outskirts of Sao Paulo live in) stood bravely in the center, and only one person could enter it at a time. Thought it is probably only 6 feet square, you have to twist through a pretty long and narrow corridor before reaching the inner room, where a broken T.V. shows you a distorted image of some old program. The inside makes you feel trapped and depressed: a stark contrast to the birds of paradise outside.

I'm sure there is more to talk about from the Tate Modern, but it is late now, and I'm tired of writing.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time for a description of Londong theatre.

Frontier Texas! is not as cool as the Louvre.

2007-07-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

Well, as you can tell by the time gap between this and my last post, I've been trying to cram a lot into my last week in Europe. Tomorrow I have to wake up early and travel for 18 hours.

So if you live in Abilene, and were only reading because it was the next-best-thing to calling me up to hang out, then I guess this is the end.

But if you are somewhere else, and it makes no difference if I am at home or on another continent, then keep reading! I still have at least 3 posts worth of stuff to tell you about, and I plan to write them when I get home. I want to record these memories for myself, even if no one else reads them. Topics will include modern art museums, theatre in London, and random factoids about cultural differences and such.

Thanks for reading! This has been a lot of fun. After I finish telling about Europe, I'm thinking about keeping this up, so feel free to check back. Even in Abilene, I'm sure that something exciting will happen once a week or so...

...maybe.

Anyway, I need to pack and get some sleep, so to those of you back home: see you soon!

To those of you spread out in the ACU summer diaspora: see you this fall!

To my family: err...I guess it won't be till Thanksgiving or Christmas. Sorry :(

Peace.

Joshua

Different Kinds of Temples

2007-06-24T16:41:00.000-05:00

We were originally scheduled to visit Salisbury and Stonehenge on the 21st, but then realized that this is no ordinary date when you're talking about Stonehenge. Sure, it would have been cool to see the sun's rays hit the altar stone as it rises over the heel stone on the summer solstice, and that is the one day of the year when everyone is allowed to go past the ropes and walk among the stones, but we'd be sharing the experience with an estimated 30,000 other tourists and new age wierdos.

You've probably hear that there is a chain link fence that keeps you from getting anywhere near the stones. That's true to an extent, but I was quite content with how close we were able to get after paying for our tickets. The ropes make an oblong shape around the Circle, and at it's nearest point, you are only 20 feet away. That's plenty close for my 12x zoom Canon. The sky was overcast, and black ravens kept flying from stone to stone.

Kinda creepy.

I stayed around the site for about an hour taking picutres and soaking it in. As I headed back toward the bus, and English Heritage worker started coming the other direction, saying, "Make way! Stay to the left."

I thought it odd that a Catholic priest would schedule a special visit to Stonehenge, but behind the worker was a white-robed man with his hat and shepherd's staff thingy. It was pure chance that I happened to be leaving as he and his following were coming. I got to see him up close...

...and I also saw the green-robed woman behind him up close...

...and the man behind her holding a deer antler...

...the next guy with a sword...

...and the bird-woman...

...blue-robed lass with a rose garland in her hair...

...last year's winner of the Saruman look-alike contest.

They looked like faculty on graduation day.

I've stretched this all out to make the writing more interesting. In reality, it only took me half a second to realize that the man in front is a very different kind of priest. I suppose the major give away was the drum (THUM-dum-bum-bum, THUM-dum-bum-bum, THUM-dum-bum-bum) and what sounded to me like a kazoo (EEEeee-oooo-aaa-eeeehzki-EEeee-oo-eeeeeeee-EH-er).

I followed the procession to the edge of the ropes, where the English Heritage lady unhooked one from a post and let them into the inner circle. The guy at the end of the line had apparently forgotten to bring his funny costume, and the worker eyed his Harley-Davidson jacket and New York Yankees cap suspiciously.

"Excuse me, sir, you can't go in there."

"What do you mean? These are my people!"

"Can you show me your I.D., sir?"

"We were running late! If my sister ran back to the car, she could get it for you, but we have to begin now!"

"Calm down, sir, I just have to know that you are who you say you are. I can't just have anyone walking in there."

"Ask any of them! They know me!"

She let him in, and he didn't look too out-of-place since most of them carried sun glasses or umbrellas, or had jeans and tennis shoes underneath the robes. One of their people (I guess their "historian"?) was video taping the whole thing.

Pretty soon after she closed the ropes, the English Heritage lady pulled out her radio.

"This is Circle to Base: Have you found our missing Druids?"

"Kkkkkh--No, Circle, no sight of them yet--Kkkkkh"

"Right. Well if you see them, tell them to go on home because I think they've elected to go ahead and begin."

I guess even the Druids have a habit of running late for church.

From talking to this lady, reading the flyer she gave me, and eavesdropping on her conversations with other people, I found out that I was able to see the Cotswold Order of Druids performing a follow-up solstice ceremony honoring the planet of fire (we call it the "sun"). It would have been fascinating to wait until they came back out to ask them questions (they are apparently very friendly and don't mind pictures), but I had to catch a bus to go see a very different place of worship...

Salisbury Cathedral is a prime example of late English Gothic and boasts either the tallest spire or tallest stone spire in all of England (I'm not sure which). I've seen better sculpture and stained glass, but the spire was quite impressive, and the inside is nice and bright, which makest the whole interior look regal and far taller than it actually is. The cathedral still owns much of the land surrounding it, which makes for wonderful gardens. The treasury also holds the best-preserved original copy of the Magna Carta (That may sound like an oxymoron, but remember that it was a legal document, so several were produced and dispersed at the same time). I couldn't read any of it, though, seeing as it was written in abbreviated Latin.

Salisbury offers a unique tour of the inner-workings of its cathedral, the tower, and the spire. My guide was a jolly old man with a bald head and full white beard who's name (appropriately) is Nick. If American malls imported these charming old British men to work as Santas each year, they wouldn't have to use stuffed costumes and fake beards.

Nick took us up endless spiral stair cases, stopping at the West windows (they were so close you could touch it and see the differences between medieval and modern glass!), clock room, bell tower, and spire. The noise of those bells is pretty impressive when you are in a large enclosed space and they go off only 15 feet away.

The spire was added later. It's extra weight had no recorded effect on the structure for at least 300 years, but today you can see that it is slowly bending the four collumns at the intersection of the nave and transept! Inside the tower, he showed us some big steel beams that are bolted to the four corners to keep it from falling apart.

Scary.

Before a health inspector made them stop, the tower tour used to lead its visitors out a door at the bottom of the tower to climb up it's face from the outside. To fit regulations, they had to build and internal spiral stair case, but their budget was pretty slim. To solve this problem, the church hired the unemployed youth of Salisbury to build a wooden stair using the most rudimentary tools. Nick walked over to it, grabbed one of the wooden pegs holding a step in, wiggled it, and (with an unsettlingly slim amount of effort) yanked it out to point at. Then he smiled and allowed us to lead the way.

Scary.

You can't go any farther than the base of the spire without using ladders, but at the top of the tower, Nick let us walk out four doors facing each direction onto a skinny platform to see the view from the top of the world.

Worth it.

My uncle asked him how often someone has to use the ladders to get to the very top of the wooden spire. The answer was, "quite often." You know that little red blinky light that has to be at the top of every tall building? Apparently those bulbs burn out quite regularly. I wonder who's job it is to do that. Probably the same guy who gets to mow the grass right up to the rocks of Stonehenge.

All of that happened yesterday. This morning we woke up and took the Tube to visit a COC missionary on the outskirts of Lodon. Again, a very different house of worship. It is definitely Church of Christ, as you can see by the canonized Order of Worship:

Song (stand)
Opening Prayer
Song (sit)
Scripture Chosen at Random
Song (stand)
Song (sit)

Communion Thoughts and Prayer
Prayer for the Bread
Prayer for the Cup
The Collection

Inspirational Call to Worship
Song (stand)
Reading of the Sermon Passage (from Acts of course!)
Official Welcome to the Visitors from the Pulpit and...
Sermon

More Worship Thoughts
Song (stand; vs. 1 & 4 only)
Another Welcome to the Visitors for Good Measure
Final Thoughts
Closing Prayer (stand)

After church and Sunday Lunch, I decided to visit yet another temple. I had to go alone for this one. Couldn't convince anyone else to spend over two hours navigating the complicated Tube and bus systems to get to David Garrick's villa, where his Greek-style temple (built in honor of Shakespeare) lies on the bank of the River Thames. Shakespeare was nearly forgotten in London by the 18th century, and had it not been for the eccentricity of David Garrick and the Shakespeare Ladies Club, you probably wouldn't have read so much of him in high school.

To what degree Garrick's temple was built as a literary statement and to what degree it was an actual act of piety is anyone's guess, and all of them are probably wrong. But he is my literary hero.

It is a widely held assumption that the best art will endure over the centuries and that all the "fads" and "pop culture" will eventually fade with time. And this is true, so long as men like David Garrick live and speak and are heard. But isn't it troubling that Shakespeare was hardly noticed 150 years after his death? Many people say that modern literature is in a state of hopeless decline. They claim that this is because there haven't been any Shakespeares in 400 years (and never will be again, they add). But allow for a moment that the Shakespeares have kept on writing all this time, only there haven't been any Garricks to show them to us. How can we know which is the real problem?

Doesn't every age tend to look backwards, at least among the literary circles, to what has been "proven" good? Doesn't it often let its brightest stars die starving and unpublished, only to let the next generation discover the forgotten genius?

If you want to be a follower of Garrick, loving Shakespeare is only a very small beginning. To truly learn from him, we must find the forgotten art of our parents and praise it without apology. To go a step beyond Garrick would be to reveal the best stuff in our present age. It would be one of the few times in history when art was appreciated during the generation it was intended to change.

Remember the words of Alexander Pope:

"Be thou the first true Merit to befriend.

His praise is lost, who stays till all commend."

Away from Classical Art...

2007-06-22T07:37:00.000-05:00

This marks my first official day alone in Europe. Well...sort of. My parents started flying home this morning, but I'm staying in the flat with my aunt and uncle. Still, it sounds more like an adventure to say "alone," yes?

This is what I've done today:

Slept in till about 11:30, giving my parents a very unconscious and half-hearted "goodbye" somewhere in the middle.
Microwaved some canned soup and heated up some naan bread for lunch.
Currently sitting in the laundromat washing my parents towels and sheets, and typing this.

Which means! Since nothing very exciting is happening, this is the perfect time to tell you about the national gallery I visited yesterday, and to "flash back" to France and the Orsay.

The National Gallery contains paintings from, oh I don't know, 1200ish-1900. If you've taken Humanities II and III with our dear friends Joe Stephenson and , you would probably recognize a few the paintings from our text book. But most of those are in the Louvre or somewhere else.

What I'm trying to say is that the National Gallery has lots of paintings by famous people: Van Gough, Rembrant, Monet, etc., but it doesn't have very many of the famous paintings. Some people might think of this as gaps in the collection, but it's what I love most about this particular museum. You know that you will see some quality stuff by the masters of history, but if you have only the most basic knowledge of art history (like me), then you come to these pieces without the Louvre's bothersome preconceptions and expectations. And as you look at some of them, you can't help but wonder why the Self Portrait and Room at Arles and Church at Auvers-sur-Oise are so much more famous that the Two Crabs, Chair, and Wheat Field with Cypresses. Of course no artist produces the same level of art every time he or she creates something, and yet...

There was another neat little exhibit in the gallery called "Take One Picture." Last year, something like 34,000 kids from all over Great Britain were learned about the same painting (Two Boys and a Girl Making Music, by Molenaer) and made art projects inspired by the work. The exhibit showed the best stuff from only 7 different schools, and it was really cool to see the modern interpretations made by kids who are only in the first or second grade. Based on this kind of program, the stuff about child development theory that my sister is always telling me about, and the zeal I see in all elementary-ed majors I know, I sometimes wonder if the little kids aren't getting a better education than today's high-school students.

This next painting is "The Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein the Younger. See the Weird, stretched out thing at the bottom? If you look at it from the right edge, about half way down from the top, the perspective corrects itself and a clear picture of a skull appears. It's a symbol of mortality or some such, but isn't that cool? I don't know how someone could do that without cheating on a computer, and this thing was painted long before that was a possibility. I wonder how far this technique could be carried. You could make it where nothing looked right when you faced it front and center, but as you looked to the sides, different pieces morphed and fit in place for just a moment, then stretched out and fell away as something else appeared. Or what if you created some sort of shape that looked like one thing from the front, another from the top left corner, and another from the top right? I see lots of possibilities for this idea in modern art.

Wow, I said a lot about that. Now on to the Orsay, the museum of 19th century painting that I didn't get a chance to tell you about from France. This is where you can see the works of Manet and all the famous impressionistic and post-impressionistic paintings that broke most drastically from tradition. There are also works from two schools I had never heard of before: naturalism and symbolism. I love Van Gough, but these new (to me) pieces were my favorite. The subjects are painted in a realistic style with perspective and everything, but you get to see other stuff besides nymphs, Venus, and Madonna and Childs. Even the works that do show these things have a different "feel" than what you see over and over again in the Renaissance.

Here are a few of my favorites:

See what I mean? It's your basic crucifixion scene, but so different. And there's no way you could make this kind of image with photography. Jesus is in center focus, but we see we're looking at him from the side, as if the crowd at Golgatha won't let us any closer. The criminals on either side are cut off like in a "badly" taken photograph, and that guy with the red robe walked right through our background as we were trying to capture the scene. This painting really emphasizes the humanity of Jesus: no holden halo, no eyes looking toward heaven, and no saintly mourners. Look at that twisted and fragile body. And the lighting! It feels like that moment when Jesus has given up his spirit. All of hell and earth shakes and cracks and shudders at what has happened.

I love this next one. Look at the point of view! Using a camera, I suppose that you could make this same picture without paint. But the important question is this: would you? Besides, there is some quality about paint, some "aura", that photography just doesn't have. That's why some people still pay artists to paint portraits, even though it would be a lot cheaper to hire a photographer.

I forgot to tell you who painted these. The first one is by Nikolai Nikolaievitch Gay, the second by Andre Devambez.

This last one is with the post impressionists. I love it when paintings are made in shapes other than rectangles.

P.S. Assuming that you are not reading this 15 seconds after I post it, you should skim through the old posts. I've added all the pictures that I originally meant to put there.

"Updated Daily"

2007-06-19T18:26:00.000-05:00

Yeah, okay...so I lied.

The past couple of days we've been using our Brit Rail passes to go to places outside of London. That means early starts and late returns.

Today we went to Canterbury and Dover, and had some authentic British Burger Kind along the way. I miss American food so much. It's not that the stuff over here is bad (if I were back home, I'd rather eat the stuff from over here), it's just that my body misses the five essential food groups I'm used to: Taco Bueno, peanut M&Ms, Schlotzky's, "normal" pizza, and high-fructose corn syrup.

I finally tried Turkish Delight yesterday. Edmund was right. It's worth it. I don't know if I'd betray my sister to the White Witch for it, but her little fawn friend is just gonna have to tough it out as a statue. The box contains pistachio, hazlenut, lemon, and rose flavors. I figured "rose" just referred to the color, but it actually tastes like the flower. Not that I've ever eaten one, but it tastes like it smells, if you know what I mean. Mmmmm...definitely going to miss that when I come back.

Anyway, back to Canterbury. This, of course, is the town where all of Chaucer's saucy little medieval friends were going on their pilgrimage. My family and I took the train and listened to our mp3 players to pass the time, rather than exchanging tales that shed a fascinating light on daily life in our time period. The church where Thomas A. Beckett was martyred was packed with tourists and expensive to get into, but it was worth it. This cathedral is a sort of Anglican Vatican, and was distinct from everything we saw in Paris. It was interesting (and kinda creepy) to see all the plaques in memory of people who are buried inside. The stained glass is incredible, but several clear windows also let in generous amounts of sunlight.

After this somewhat irreverent pilgrimage, we headed on to the white cliffs of Dover. A fortress stands gaurd at Dover's peak which has been used off and on since medieval times. During the Napoleonic Wars, the English made use of the soft chalk near the fortress by digging a complex network of tunnels to house the garrison. An expanded version of this network was used in WWII as a navy headquarters. If a real nuclear attack had ever occured during the Cold War, 6 ruling officers would have evacuated into these tunnels to organize whatever sorry lot was left after the initial blast. It's a good thing nothing ever happened, though, because they later realized that chalk is a porous material, and radiation would have zipped on through it like a sponge.

If you haven't noticed by my obsession with Turkish delight, I was introduced to The Chronicles of Narnia before I could even read. I still think knights and castles are the coolest thing ever. (I bought a miniature, working catapult and a toy boy and arrows set in the gift shop today). If you can relate, then the castle at Dover is something you should see. But if you are one of those people who "watched the Lord of the Rings once because a friend was going and really thought the last one was too long," then you might have been a little bored. It is a REAL medieval castle: there is almost nothing inside. This is not a castle; it is a fortress. It may have been a "palace," as in "a place where a kind lived," but this was during the dark ages. Even poor college students live better than those people did.

But if someone installed a working toilet and a cold shower inside this castle, I would so live in it. I'll give up my ipod and my Taco Bueno. Give me a bed of straw, let me eat with my fingers, and show me where I can try out my new bow on some bad guys. Only make sure there are only orcs, hags, giants, and talking wolves, because I'm not too keen on killing people. I'll take the realistic medieval castle, but give me a fairy-tale black-and-white division of good and evil. I miss the days when things were that simple.

Remember Them

2007-06-15T18:50:00.000-05:00

I have internet again!! Since so much has happened since the last post, I’m not going to try and cover it in some massive, novel-length update tonight. Check back every day from now on, and I shoud have an update of the day’s adventures, plus a bonus “flash-back” to tell you about something I did in France over the past week. I should also have some facebook albums up soon…

Since you last heard from me, we stayed another five days in Paris in a nice, Americanized Marriot hotel, five days hostelling in the quaint, sea-side village of Pont Rosson, one night on a ferry to cross the Channel, and now: a London flat, where I’ll be enjoying internet access for the rest of the trip.

Today we got off the ferry, caught a train into London, settled in, and did laundry. Nothing very blog worthy, except to mention that we were a few minutes late to a train that works on a very precise schedule, and all the British passengers had fun watching 27 people each lugging 100+ lbs. of luggage up stairs and through automatic doors that move as fast as guillotines. We just happened to choose a car that was in a “quiet zone”, and a very important man in a very important suit with a very funny accent kept telling people to turn down the volume on their headphones.

Before all this, we took a bus from Pont Rosson to Caen (where the ferry was at port), stopping at the beaches of Normandy and the Bayeaux Tapestry Museum along the way.

The Bayeaux tapestry is that long cloth narrative of William the Conqueror that you see in all the textbooks. The linen banner is 70 meters long, and 10 colors of wool thread paint the best record of that time available to us today. The museum was done really well. The entire thing is kept in a dim room behind long glass panels, and an audio guide (included with every ticket) explains each scene of the story to you.

The beaches of Normandy tell the story of a very different kind of conquest 900 years later.

Omaha is a beach just like any other beach, except that everyone looks somber as they walk along its shore, and no one comes to swim or bathe in the sun, but only to remember. The sky still remembers D-day, 1944, and a gray drizzle looms over us all day long.

The American Cemetery for those who died overseas in WWII was nearby. If you’ve been to the National Cemetery in Washington D.C., then you know what it looks like: a thousand rows and columns of white marble crosses and stars of David in military rows and columns. No grave is honored above his brother, and all stand in cold memorial to the greatest sacrifice a man can give. Some died to save the lives of their comrades, others were sick, got shot before ever seeing one German, or were killed in training. All died so that others may live. It was raining.

Pointe du Hoc is a small battlefield on a cliff that overlooks the beaches Omaha and Utah. Bodies from both sides still lie under the earth. Piles of mangled steel and crumbling block are scattered between the craters: a relic of the naval bombardment. Grass and flowers still grow in these craters, as if it were any other plot of land. Men in orange vests thrash the growth with weed-eaters. There are places where the pulverized earth rises and falls like the sea in a raging storm. Frozen in time, these craters help us remember the darkest storm of history.

Le Louvre

2007-06-04T03:15:00.001-05:00

The Louvre is Big.

No—Walmart can be big. Le Louvre is a country in itself, with its own regions, dialects, and cultures. All of the little plaques and name plates are in French (which is disappointing), but laminated plastic cards in most rooms cover at least six other languages, and exhibits range from Egyptian artifacts over 4 millenia old to the modern glass pyramid in front, stopping at every culture and time in between.

What is it like to be in the Louvre? You always have a slight headache. I don’t know how to remedy this ailment, but here is the recipe for creating it: take one part hunger (for lunch, eat nothing but one overpriced sandwich), two parts exhaustion, a half-second of rushed time, and 35,000 parts aesthetic overload.

Within the first 20 minutes, you’ve seen so many beautiful things that you forget what ugliness looks like, and everything pales in comparison to everything else.

I can’t convince myself that this dry black corpse, 30 centimeters away from my nose, was a living, breathing Egyptian 4,000 years before today. The crown jewels of King Louis the whatever-teenth are lit by fluorescent lights, and it looks no more impressive than a movie prop. A diamond almost as big as the Hope Diamond sits on a silk pillow underneath, but I don’t believe it is worth more than all of our ACU tuition money combined. This marble is so close I can touch it (of course, I shouldn’t), but it wasn’t made by the people we learn about in text books. It couldn’t have been, because I’m standing next to it.

Walter Benjamin is one of the fathers of Marxist critical theory. He would trace my disbelief of fine art to the age of mechanical reproduction. Very few of you have ever seen the Mona Lisa, but everyone reading this knows what she looks like. You don’t. But you think you do. And you have this idea of what she should look like.

What was it like for those translators who held old fragments of the Holy Bible with latex gloves, the text still dusty with the sand that preserved it for so many undisturbed centuries? What is it like to read Scripture when you’ve spent your whole life studying a language that only has one purpose today? What does it mean when this sacred text is in every hotel room, when pieces of it are pasted on tee-shirts and bumper stickers, when you own a copy with a holographic cover and little boxes with comments to make it less “boring”? Do you think it is boring to read anything on a brittle scrap of papyrus held between your fingers—YOUR fingers?

This is Benjamin’s frustration with art in today’s world. For him, the Louvre headache is essential to your experience of the Mona Lisa. Benjamin wants us to anticipate, to dig, to wait in line, to search, to find. The “aura” of a painting is lost when the index tells you to look on pp. 1052, fig. 84.14.

I guess you want to know about my encounter with the Mona Lisa.

I had lost my parents in the Grand Gallery, so I was rushing through the crowd trying to find them, and then—there she was.

Behind glass, all alone on a big wall, with a bad glare. And all the world had come to see her. In front of me was a crowd of bored little kids, grumpy retired couples from Florida, and large Japanese tour groups—all disappointed. The mind’s eye has only two sizes (big and small), but since I’d heard all the talk about her being small and dark, she was larger and brighter than I ever imagined.

The moment you can forgive her for what she is not (the most beautiful painting in the world), you start to see how beautiful she is.

You stop.

In all the rush and hubbub, there is one painting that makes you pause and wonder. Whether you walk away indignant or transcendant, the Mona Lisa made you look.

I looked, and I saw her. And I heard nothing, and I saw everything. In that moment, I wished that every painting in the world was in this sacred spot. But I hope that no other work of art ever has to endure the suffering and abuse that she has been through.

The Raft of the Medusa is incredible. The bathrooms have water fountains that squirt into the sinks. The soap is liquid, which means that the escape-from-the-Louvre scene in The DaVinci Code wasn’t entirely accurate.

P.S. Everyone leave a comment to tell my sister (Heather) HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Hopefully her plane landed safely in Brazil today! Also, this may be my last post for a week or so, and I might start posting every day starting tomorrow. I have no idea what the internet will be like at our next hotel…

Historic Paris

2007-06-01T16:39:00.000-05:00

It’s nice to be in a foreign country where you can flush the toilet paper and drink water from the tap. Of course, there is still a slight risk (just like when you change communities in the United States) because your body may not agree with the area’s specific ecosystem of microbes. Last night and this morning, my mom and I each enjoyed a mild spat of diarrhea, but we hope this is all our intestines have to say about the matter, because bottled water (like everything else) is expensive.

But on to more conversational subjects…

For most of the past two days, we toured Notre Dame and the major sites of central Paris. The upkeep of Notre Dame relies too heavily on the generosity of tourists to outlaw cameras, so I have lots of pictures to show you guys. But I’m still trying to scrape by with the barest amount of internet time, so I’ll post them on Facebook when I have free internet access in London. Until then, it will probably be every-other-day blog updates.

Anyway, Notre Dame is a fascinating blend of the old and new. One of the rose windows still contains the original glass from when it was built in the middle ages, but other windows weren’t put in until 1960! Every statue, window, painting, and carving has a story behind it, and the entire palce is filled with symbolism I can’t even begin to imagine. For a fee, you can wait in line to view the crown of thorns (mysteriously preserved for 2,000 years) and a piece of the one true cross, but we decided these famous relics weren’t worth our precious Euros.
Outside the cathedral, we started listening to an audio tour my uncle found on iTunes for free. Our first stop was the World War II deportation memorial. A narrow stairway takes you below street level so that, metaphorically, there is no escape. A single file pathway leads you to a stone chamber that houses 200,000 lighted crystals, one for each French deportee. Over the exit is the inscription you will find at all WWII memorials: “Forgive, but never forget.”

The Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore was opened after WWI by Sylvia Beach. Ernest Hemmingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and George Bernard Shaw all borrowed books from the original store. Beach published the now classic Ulysses for a struggling Joyce. The modern store tries to carry on the literary tradition by selling used English books on the bottom floor, and giving free room and board to struggling writers in the top.

We also visited the square of St. Michel. If you’ve memorized the Les Mis soundtrack like my sister and I, you will hear Gavrouche’s song right now: “…here in the slums of San Michel. We live off crumbs of humble piety, tough on the teeth, but what the Hell? Think you’re poor? Think you’re free! Follow me; FOLLOW ME!” A giant marble memorial now stands in the square where reveolutionaries and students raised the barricades against tyrrany and oppression. You know the story from the musical or the classic book. (God bless you if you’ve read the whole thing!) Most of the features that made the corner so defencible were torn down after the revolution failed, but you can still see how barricades might turn the narrow streets and tall buildings into a make-shift fortress. I never really understood that part until now, seeing as how raising barricades in downtown Abilene wouldn’t really do a whole lot…

One problem with touring Paris is all the rain. This is your typical view the main attractions:

P.S. All of the blogspot links on my end of the internet are in French, but changing my language preference each time would take precious on-line time. Frustrating…

Sunrise Beginning

2007-05-30T17:14:00.000-05:00

Internet access is expensive at our hotel, so I will be blogging via Microsoft Word and pasting it online during my random, five minute spurts of internet time. So don’t pay attention to the dates that Blogspot puts on my entries. Enjoy!

Tuesday, 30 May 2007

Does a new day begin at midnight or sunrise?

As I looked out my window while everyone was sleeping, by body and watch told me it was midnight, but the sky was teasing me with color and light. Have you ever seen an ocean sunrise from 14,000 feet in the air?

It begins with the faintest thread of rose along the horizon. At the top of your window, the sky is still so black that you know you could see the entire universe if only the stewardess would turn off the glare of emergency exit lights.

You are flying over a thick bank of clouds that spreads out, expansive and colorless, until it reaches the fringes of neon red, bold orange, pale yellow—the faintest line of olive green—sky blue (an adequate description), denim, and starry black.

Night and day in perfect harmony.

Finaly—suddenly—the sun peeks out from behind gray infinity. It is neon orange, but so bright that my camera shows it as white. This grows into a Lion King sunrise, and I look until it hurts.

A blue-green dot is in the center of my vison wherever I look.

---

Our other adventures du jour included:
· Paying a 28 Euro service-fee for changing our cash over
· Lugging five suitcases on and off several branches of the Metro train
· Seeing a giant vending machine that serves everything from sandwiches to liters of milk via a large, robotic arm
· Eating French fries with mayonnaise instead of ketchup

The Parisian sunset was beautiful as well.

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

This marks day two of getting over jet lag (I love laid back vacations!) Maybe tomorrow we will get up early…

After a late lunch, we bought a new sim card so that Dad can use his unlocked cell phone in France. My uncle comes in tomorrow.

We then visited the Basilique Du Sacre-Coeur (Church of the Sacred Heart). No photos allowed inside, but the mosaics and stained glass windows were beautiful. Who knew that stone ceilings could reach to the heavens? As we stepped in, a host of angels greeted us in choral perfection.

When the song ended, the harmony of voice on voice was replaced by the cacophony of nylon-on-nylon, dropping umbrellas, and squeaky tennis-shoes. An important looking man with a name tag kept saying, “Shhhh!” to all the noisy British tourists.

But all distractions aside, this place is ancient and sacred.

The front entrance to the Basilique gave us our first grand view of Paris. It is a wonderful city comprised of two main colors: gray, and lighter gray. With the occasional orange-red terra cotta roof.

We had an excellent three-course meal, complete with chocolate mousse and espresso. French food is exquisite, but expensive.

What do you think of my new hat?

Leaving Soon!

2007-05-25T00:51:00.000-05:00

At 10:00 a.m. on Monday, I will fly to Europe for five weeks. This trip will take me the farthest I've ever been from Abilene and will also keep me away the longest. My parents and I will be visiting my uncle, who is sponsoring a summer-abroad program for Harding University. We'll spend our stay about half-and-half between Paris and London.

So what am I packing, you ask? Well, besides the essentials, I'm taking:

digital camera
at least 5 books
3 more novels on audio
a trusty, brand new composition notebook
12 bottles of Dr. Pepper

Wait! All of those things are essetials too. I hope to bring back the following:

LOTS of pictures
profound insights on life stimulated by two of the intellectual, artistic, and historical capitals of the world
turkish delight
some knights-and-castley stuff

Leave me a comment and let me know if there is anything you would like me to bring you from Paris, London, or thereabouts. Also tell me if you'd like a picture of something. I'd appreciate any suggestions for cool things to do while I'm there!