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Seeing as how it’s 2:30am it would probably be a good idea to be in bed, but seeing as how it is so hot in our house still, that is pretty much a useless effort. So instead I’m sitting here watching The Decemberists on Austin City Limits. I recorded it about a month ago on Tivo and have it saved permanently. I would love to see them in concert someday. I guess there are at least three good things to come out of Portland, Powell’s Bookstore, The Decemberists, and Little People, Big World. That’s about the most kind words you’ll ever here from a Washingtonian about the state of Oregon. Until they at least ditch the 55mph speed limit, their staying on the sneeds list.
Though in the “retro” trend category, I’ve heard rumblings of a return to the nationwide 55mph speed limit to promote fuel savings. While this is a pretty stupid concept (sorry, I tend to be a little more blunt at this time of night) it did kind of suck to pay $65 dollars today to fill my gas tank. If I was smart, I’d invest in these guys right now. I find it hard to imagine that congress, no matter who is in control, can avoid taking some kind of steps to counteract the insane skyrocketing gas prices. The American (and by extension the world) economy is predicated on cheap fuel. If this is no longer the reality, I’m less worried/interested in any coming recession as I am in the restructuring of society that will take place as a result of transportation no longer being cheap. Anyone know at what point train travel becomes more practical than flight? I remember when I purchased my first HP laptop I drove from Yakima to my house and back again just to pick it up. I don’t even drive over the hill to San Jose anymore now.
(update: I’m now watching last weeks Arcade Fire performance on Austin City Limits. . . Tivo is great)
Anyway, I took the afternoon off of work today and went down to Vintage for a special condensed new members class. It was an exciting opportunity to go through the fundamentals of what Vintage stands for as a church and to be able to put pen to paper and actually commit to standing by those values. We still haven’t had the official commissioning yet but we all signed covenants today dedicating ourselves to the mission of the church. Between this and the photo show opening tomorrow it’s a pretty exciting time at Vintage for me right now!
Well, it’s finally started to cool down now so I think I’ll take a whack at getting some rest before tomorrow. This is going to be a busy week!
I’ve been playing around with taking short video clips at Vintage the last couple weeks and this is the latest iteration. I was talking with one of the graphics guys here at Mount Hermon this week and he mentioned the term “long portrait” when talking about short video clips like this. That is a good way to think about these. Matt and I have both taken quite a few pictures of the “HOPE” sign but this one has sound and flickering candles. It’s just one more way we can help document what a service is like. Maybe we can start having a virtual service in Second Life for people who want a virtual experience? 
Anyway, much as I’d like to keep playing around with this video editing sucks and my little point and shoot is not really a long term solution. Since I don’t have much use for a video camera at this point beyond 30 second clips here on flickr, it doesn’t make much sense for me to pick up yet another expensive hobby. Seriously, why can’t I get into paper mache?. So we shall see where this will go.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, most of the photos I take during the service at Vintage are off limits, but since there aren’t any faces in some of the ones I took today I put them up on my Flickr too. This is a pretty good sample of what I do most weeks at Vintage. It’s a lot of moving around trying to find new and interesting perspectives each week. The lighting is always an adventure as in the morning it is often very harsh and bright light coming in through the stained glass windows while in the evening it almost feels like a cave some times. Usually I end up with a good batch of shots though, so I can’t really complain. Sometime I’ll write a post about my thoughts on taking pictures during a service and where I draw the line between when to shoot and when to just sit back and participate. Not right now though, cause it’s 1am and I’m tired.
Imagine taking all of the worst things about Christianity, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition, Manifest Destiny, the brutal subjugation of the New World and Africa, the guilt, the poor treatment of women, the persecution of men like Galileo who dared to oppose the Church on questions of science, the legalism, the closed-mindedness, the hypocrisy, the apathy toward suffering, everything, all the worst of the worst, and then threw out everything else. No love, no compassion for the suffering, no Mother Theresa, no C.S. Lewis, no Wounded Healer, no grace, no acceptance, no love for right and justice and peace and hope. Just a painful trudging through the horrible bleakness of a broken world until finally one day we die and melt away into nothingness. This is the world of the Golden Compass, this is the Christianity Philip Pullman, this is the world he believes we live in. I don’t want this to sound like a flat out rejection and denunciation of the books (which as you might guess I just finished) but rather as a rebuttal.
First off, on a literary point, I was frustrated with Pullman because I felt like the first book, The Golden Compass, was far and away superior to the other two books in the trilogy. I felt like he had a clear focus to the book and it was exciting and daring and then the further into The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass I got the more the books started to loose their focus and sound more and more like propaganda. Characters randomly popped in and out of the story, what seemed like things that should be major plot points ended up being little more than a paragraph before being passed by, there was no liberating meaning to anything. It’s as if Pullman decided to turn the phrase, “life sucks, then you die” into a trilogy. That is one of the things I don’t understand about atheism as a whole however. It isn’t really an alternative to Christianity. It is Nihilism. It is nothingness. There is no reason to strive for justice and peace and righteousness because in the end nothing matters. You pass from this world into nothing. As the character of Mary struggles with in the book, it is freeing but leaves you feeling disconnected. Even as a political theory Anarchy promotes the idea that when we strip away government and artificial command structures, man will naturally choose what is good and right. Pullman just says live for the present because there isn’t anything else. I refuse to accept that premise! I reject it on the basis that I have inside me a compulsion to be compassionate and seek to help others even when I gain nothing more than the feeling that by doing right I have somehow made the world a better place. I believe in doing right because I look at the world and see it scared and broken and longing for some meaning to the pain and suffering we see every day and I want to give it some hope. As long as we are striving to love each other and be good and caring people I think we will make a difference and I feel it is my faith calling me to these things.
I am angry, in a way, with Pullman for not representing all of Christianity. He only chooses to represent the corrupt and deceitful portions that seek to use guilt and sin as a club with which to batter people into submission to a worldly authority while taking some perverse pleasure in claiming they are saving souls. I can only imagine when the final day of judgement comes all those who have done wicked deeds in the name of God will look at those they persecuted and weep when they see how their victims exalted all the more in Heaven for their suffering. I don’t purport to be any kind of saint myself but I can only hope one day when I am judged God will take joy at the times when I strivved to make some kind of difference in the world. That might be what angers me most with Pullman, the idea there is no ultimate justice.
Not everyone can be a C.S. Lewis or Mother Theresa or Desmond Tutu or Dietrich Bonhoeffer but I don’t think God calls us to be. I hope though that when non-believers encounter true followers of Jesus their lives are made better for it and they can’t help but ask the reason for their hope.
