Creepy. Oh, So Creepy.

Now, there’s a method of retrieving data called Random Access.  (It’s the ‘RA’ in RAM). The random access world is similar to siting on a couch and randomly thinking of things to do. If you want to watch television, you turn on the television. If you want a beer, you go get a beer. If you want to go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom. You don’t plan a big trip – I will go the bathroom and I will get a beer and I will turn on the television afterwards… no, you just do things on your agenda as they occur to you.

Computer scientists are well familiar with Random Access. It’s how your processor gets it’s data from memory! But it’s also a very selfish way of doing things. This is sometimes good for computer design, because we really don’t want computer processors that are selfless and willing to wait for things. We want computer processors that get their data NOW and go do the important things that we are telling them to do.

What would be catastrophic is if we allowed the internet world and the computer way of doing things to encourage us to organize our friendships around a random access model. Friendships require continuity and constant care; they are not well suited to a “what can you do for me right now in my internet search” model of relationship.

When Bing starts listing people as resources for me to mine just like I would mine a web-page, that’s when I start to get offended.

I’d never, ever walked out on a sermon before. I have been raised, as have countless other virtuous Christians, to remain welded to the pew while the sermon is going on. Retention of the message was always preferred, but ultimately was unenforceable and therefore optional. Listening, on the other hand, was mandatory. You don’t have to like the sermon, you don’t have to remember it, but you’re not allowed to get up and go. Go to the bathroom? Yes. Abandon a message that disagrees with you? Nope. Doodle on your bulletin if you so desire (or, more likely, fold, spindle and mutilate it)… but suffer through. It’s only respectful. Sermons are allowed to be bad – or boring – or too long.

So there I was, sitting in the lobby, crunching the numbers. A hundred odd folk inside the sanctuary, me outside. Was I in schism? Was I acting as a bad member of the body? How do I tell? Was there something funky in my granola this morning that put me in the wrong mood for listening? Jesus probably doesn’t want me to be hurtful to his servant the pastor, and I certainly have pride to burn, most days.

But is it right to remain in your seat if you feel that the message is bringing the gospel into disrepute? Is it damning to the church if everyone sits politely through a terrible sermon? I can think of a couple friends of mine, who, seeing a group of Christians sit through an awful sermon, would just assume that all were agreeing with it. Not that one guy quietly getting up from the far wing of the sanctuary and slipping out would make much of a difference. Maybe I should have kicked my chair over.

Of course, walking out of the sanctuary probably has more to do with me than the sermon. After all, a hundred polite Christian folks stayed seated. Maybe I’m just morbidly curious. What would happen if half the congregation walked out during a message? Could the church process the fallout? Could the pastor preach again? Would it be a better way of handling conflict than doodling on a bulletin?

I’m going to have to find out what the proper, constructive feedback channels in my church are if I want to push back against a sermon. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that perhaps the best sermon for me is one that I strongly disagree with. After all, if I walk out on anything I don’t like, how am I ever going to change? On the other hand, if I don’t walk out, how is the sermon ever going to change?

Have you ever walked out of a church service? If so, why?

I never want to go back to the Bad Old Days when there was AOL and the RubbishMusicPlayerThatWasntWinamp and Toolbars and five hundred desktop links and Un-installers that half the time would try to complete the installation (groan)…

Of course, they all thought that they were the only program on the machine and so start-up was one giant hour of every single unwanted application trying to get your attention. And they couldn’t just use ordinary dialogues and windows, either. No, these were programs designed by marketers because they weren’t meant to be good or useful, they were designed to be obviously and conspicuously there (which, to be fair, they were).

They achieved this by having clunky custom interfaces that manually painted themselves on the desktop and didn’t move around right; they were unresponsive, the kind of thing you click on five times because the graphics designer didn’t have time/money to design a button with a “pressed-in” animation… so there was no visual or audible feedback to warn you that your click had really clicked.

Then there were always the few apps that you couldn’t quite get rid of, no matter how hard you tried. They were wired into Windows or had written themselves into the CD-ROM firmware or into the BIOS or something. I don’t know, I could never figure out how they could still be there after I uninstalled them. They’d always leave that entry in Add/Remove Programs. Probably it was just that I was always too lazy to manually edit my registry.

Hey – how come no OEM install ever comes with a pre-installed shareware registry editor?

But I didn’t post this to complain, I posted this because when a company does something well, it’s polite to say thank you. Thank you, Hewlett Packard, for keeping pre-installed stuff (for lack of a better word) to a minimum.

Today I was taking the garbage out after a church potluck. This just means carrying it out to the dumpster in the corner of the parking lot.

But it also means taking the key with you, because the dumpster has a lock on it.

So anyway, I’m staring at this padlock on the dumpster and saying, “We’re all crazy”. After all, here I am locking up this precious, valuable garbage. This world really has gone bonkers.

But then I think, maybe it’s not so crazy after all. I’m really locking the dumpster so no one can illegally dump their own trash in there, Whew. Doesn’t that sound sane?

It’s only a little later that the sad truth hits me.

I’m not locking up the precious valuable garbage, I’m locking up the precious valuable empty space around the garbage.

What do you do when you realize something like this? It’s easy; you smile and nod and hang the  Empty Space key back on its hook  (which oddly enough is labelled ‘Garbage Key’) and you ask if someone needs help with stacking chairs. And you pretend that the little bit of sanity you just lost wasn’t really that important, anyway.

He is what we need more than anything else; there is nothing greater that he can do than to direct us towards himself.

This thread runs right through scripture: God revealing himself so that people might turn and look toward him. Were God to glorify something other than himself, he would be robbing us of our light and hope.

That our first need is for God should be apparent. What is the first and greatest commandment? The challenge, of course, is to understand this command not as the decree of a narcissist (he is not, after all, diminished by what we choose to do or to not do) but as the guide of a loving God who knows that the best thing we can do is to love him.

Why does God demand we have no other gods before him? For us to have anything else before Him is for us to starve and brutalize ourselves.

The idea of a preening, vain God is a human idea. If God were narcissistic, why would he spend any time looking at people?

You can sound formal. I count it an honour and a privilege…
You can sound sincere. It’s been fun! So long and thanks for all the fish!

Don’t try both. Because the last person did that and you will create a carbon copy of the previous note of professional courtesy.

Formal + sincere = Horrible Hackneyed Cliche
It has been an honour to work alongside so many wonderful people.

Gah! Even as I write it, it chafes me! It’s not bad, but… there’s nothing of me in that sentence, and, good intentions notwithstanding, there’s nothing of them there, either.

The worst is, “future endeavours.” Who says that? The only time people ever use that is when they want to sound professional. Don’t get me wrong; wanting to sound professional is a good thing! But “future endeavours” as a phrase is completely lifeless and I’m always tempted to replace it with something like, “Tear it up at your next gig!” which, while not professional, is at least something a living person would say.

On the whole, I hope I tip the balance towards sounding alive. I’d rather be a less impressive person than a marvelous form letter.

Measuring the audience is also tough. You can’t be formal to people with whom you’ve been cordial, because that is stiff and awkward. You can’t be breezy with those you don’t really know because you still want to impress them

On the other hand, you can trust those you know well to see through the cliched and the trite to what you are actually trying to say. At least… That’s my hope!

Joe is a lovely man and a joyful man. I know he touched a lot of people in the time he was given. He has a family; if you have a moment, please pray for them as the last few months have not been easy.

What does it mean to love someone or like something?

Jesus provides what is perhaps the strangest definition I’ve ever seen. He says that the difference between someone who loves him and someone who doesn’t is obedience to his commands.

It seems an odd definition, but as I thought on it, it began to make more sense. Take my own life.

There are things that I like on the basis of warm fuzzy feelings.
There are things that I like on the basis of the fact that I actually do them.

One of the hallmarks of passion is spending time and energy – thinking, wishing, doing. People who are nuts about something spend a lot of time dwelling on it. Thinking about Jesus’ words, I began to examine my own ‘likes’ and my own behaviors. They don’t always match up. Which is odd. (How much time do I spend dwelling on Jesus?)

Can I really claim to like something that I never ever do? Or, put another way… If I am free to do as I like, what does that say about the things I choose to do?

Maybe a picture of my likes looks something like this:

As I like things, I tend to do more of them. But there are some things which I just can’t honestly claim to like, because I never do them. It doesn’t matter how they make me feel. Winning the Nobel prize is a good example. It gives me tremendous warm fuzzies, but I can’t really claim to like it because, well, I never put any time towards it, do I?

This is the Threshold of Honesty. After a certain point, I just have to admit that as nice as some things are as fantasy, they’re not my passion and to say they are is a lie.

I can’t honestly look at a Nobel prize and say I want to embrace all the hard yards, the singularity of focus, and the real risk of failure that gunning for one entails. I don’t really like the world in which I receive the Nobel Prize… not really.

On the other axis, there are some things for which it doesn’t matter how much I do them, my heart is not in them and I can’t honestly say that I like them.

As much as love compels us to do things, it should be obvious that doing alone is not sufficient. Necessary… but not sufficient.

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments.” — Joel 2:12-13

This is the Barrier of Genuine Dislike. Beyond this point, the fact that I do something is in no way evidence of any genuine affection. If I’m seeking to build genuine affection for these things, a change of heart is needed; doing more of them will only build resentment.

Both halves of love are important. If it doesn’t sacrifice when fuzzy feelings have ebbed away then it’s missing something, and if it’s an obligatory grind of a dead heart, then it’s missing something else.

God calls us to perfect love, and that means both halves.

Where the Wild Things Are is a beautiful film in its portrayal, but it’s a deeply upsetting film in what it raises – then sweeps under the carpet.

Our hero Max, fresh from a backdrop of domestic turmoil, arrives at an island of wildness and chaos, an island screaming out for order. It’s an island where sadness and loneliness go unchecked, where Things hurt and abuse each other, helpless to stop but desperate for the king who will make it all go away.

They can’t love one another for the pain they deal out. They are just Wild Things, after all, and for every word of comfort they give there are three more of tearing down.

It’s an island that is slowly dying, inexorably turning to dust.

And Max is king of this island, crowned on the promise that he will bring all the Wild Things together, and somehow rid them of loneliness and sadness.

Running under it all is a dark undercurrent, the knowledge that the Wildness in the Things is not just fun and games and that they will destroy Max in a moment, just as they might destroy each other. A very real savagery is at play; it is the knowledge that the wildness is dangerous and destructive.

It’s a poignant portrayal. In the jumble there is friendship and compassion, but it is constantly getting trampled down by the chaos and disorder.

Does the island find a king who is true, who has power and who keeps his word? Do the Wild things find a ruler who administers justice, who heals their wounds and brings them together in peace? Is their Wildness redeemed?

No. Max lies his way into the kingship, finds that he is absolutely unable to rule justly or fairly or even with compassion (he’s just a kid, after all), and leaves the island community as fractured and decaying as it was when he came. Having made friends with the Wild Things, he abandons them – they are too wild for him. The piece of wisdom he takes away is that, “Family is hard.”

As he sails away from the island, the upbeat music kicks in and he’s tremendously happy to be away from it. Fin.

Oh, but this is an unsatisfying film. Where is the king the monsters long for, the king who will speak truth? Where is the father (Max doesn’t have one at home, by the way) who can resolve disputes and bring warring Things back together? They long to sleep together in one big, happy pile, but Max abandons them to a future of discord on a bleak, dead island that is slowly turning to dust.

This film sweeps everything under the carpet. It goes so far as to point out that there is a badness and that it’s best to stay away from it. But while it might show a child, “I know how you feel inside.” it offers no hope of rescue, just a little bit of uplifting music at the end to tell us that, (for no reason whatsoever) we should be happy.