Forgotten

by happy_moron Posted on September 23, 2011

Meredith Kercher has been “completely forgotten” in the four years since she was murdered on a study year abroad in Italy, her grieving sister has said.

…

“There’s not much of Meredith in the media. There aren’t photos of her in the media. The focus has completely moved away from Meredith to Amanda and Raffaele.

I do feel sorry for Stephanie Kercher. Largely because her sister was murdered, but also because she seems to have been sold a false hope through her genuine desire that her sister be remembered.

It’s a sad truth that relationship is not built through media stories. Reading media stories is a past-time high on emotion… but very low on mutual sacrifice. By the time we are finished a well told story, we feel close to the people in it! In reality? We are a long way distant.

Meredith is not forgotten because Meredith was never known; Amanda Knox is not really known either, but we are distracted by the picture of a young, pretty murderess, especially when the murder was attached to a love triangle and to kinky sex.

While the desire for fame has always been around, the emergence of the internet has made it seem plausible that you might, in fact, get yours. Ordinary people are elevated to the status of global icons. But the game has changed only slightly; the convenience of human attention has grown enormously, but the overall market for it is just as limited and a thousand times more competitive. It’s a familiar false hope, but one armed with a new and alluring hook.

The reason I hate the diabolical nature of false hopes is that they offer no mercy. They have no concept of giving time and space to the grieving.

I wonder who knows Meredith most deeply of all and who has the greatest capacity to remember her?

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Religion Vs. Science; Obsession

by happy_moron Posted on September 16, 2011

Those of you who read this blog know that I can’t get off this science/religion wagon.

I think what really fuels it is that I read techie blogs when I want to procrastinate something else. :-D

One of the major issues that gnaws at me is that there is a great gulf between the mindsets and attitudes of a Christian and of your average tech guy. The size of the gap never gets discussed, I think because the tech worldview is pervasive in Christian circles. We’ve managed to avoid the gulf by leaving our own worldview and by jumping over to the far side :-(

I made that little face a frownie instead of a smilie because it’s sad; the ultimate result of this is confusion. It’s a tough confusion to resolve and it is only by going back across the gulf to a Christian worldview that we can resolve it.

I’ll give just one tiny example of the gulf and how it appears in subtle ways. This is fairly common; I’ll be reading an innocuous article on a tech site and some small thing will stab me and I will writhe in pain. Something like (from linked article):

What’s an egregious troll? Any troll that personally attacks someone else in our community. If you’re not bright enough to criticize ideas without personally criticizing individuals, we’re not interested in having you around.

Now here we have a perfectly agreeable statement, no? ArsTechnica wants to get tough on trolls (probably not a bad thing). If you read tech forums for any length of time, you will probably run into many, many similar comments. But there is a troll hiding under this particular comment bridge, and it will eat us up if we don’t call it out.

The troll is the idea (the assumption) that what saves you from criticizing people (rather than ideas) is being bright. If we could all just be smarter or brighter that would solve our problem. If that doesn’t work, we just have to draw our technical circle tighter to exclude the less smart people so that we, the smart people, can get something done.

Christians have been chewing on the idea of “loving the sinner, hating the sin” for a long, long time. A Christian view of this is that it is not chiefly an issue of intelligence but one of compassion. “If you are not compassionate enough to criticize ideas without personally criticizing individuals…”

At times I think I’m just being pedantic and nitpicky and making mountains out of all available mole-hills, but then I consider the greater world of statements like this, and I reassure myself that I’m not crazy.

The computing corners of the Internet are a rampant meritocracy, where intelligence is an idol and self improvement is the path to salvation. You have to hack your life to save it; just visit lifehacker!

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Glitz and Glamour

by happy_moron Posted on September 14, 2011

What do you do to show your love for an edgy street artist?

That’s easy, you give him an art expo!

But what do you do if you suspect that his art is actually as illegal as sin and that he stole the billboards he defaced for the display?

That’s just as easy, you cancel his art expo!

Edgy is all fun and games until you, as an artist, realize that too many eyeballs means you will be caught and prosecuted. It’s all fun and games until you, as a patron of the arts, realize that there are some things you can’t sustainably sponsor. Of course, there are some who say that the illegality *is* the art, and that to deface an officially sanctioned and provisioned billboard is devoid of irony and misses the entire point.

There is a loser in this story; it is the idea that all expressions are valuable and that all expressions deserve to be elevated to the highest platform.

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Glorification

by happy_moron Posted on September 13, 2011

The greatest, the most loving thing that God can do for us is to glorify his own name.

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?

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Kamloops

by happy_moron Posted on September 6, 2011

This morning I’m in Kamloops.

I only have a motel room here for a few hours, so I’m not long in Kamloops, but I’m here for now.

Every time I come here, sailing down through the bald dry hills of Barriere, I think, “What a marvelous place to hide.” To me, it feels distant. Wild, remote… yet comfortable. The kind of place where nothing big or turbulent happens; just an isolated little spot in the interior, buffered from the churn and bustle of Big Places.

I think, “I should work hard and make a lot of money and come here to live. I could marry a nice Barriere girl and work odd jobs and be at peace and comfort, tucked safely away behind the hills. Let life be lazy, let it be slow, and let me rest in it.”

Jesus tells a story about a rich man who did exactly that: he carved out a little niche of comfort for himself and made sure that he had enough to carry him through to the end of his life.

But the end of his life was that very night; God looked down and said, “You fool.”

God will go to necessary lengths to teach us necessary truth. It’s part of his compassion. It’s a necessary truth that we can’t trust in our own control and that we can’t build our own security. For we Canadians, who live comfortably in a wealthy country, the illusion is powerful. But the truth is that we need to find our security elsewhere, wherever we are.

The psalmist writes,
You are my hiding place and my shield; I wait for your word. — Psalm 119:114

I should leave Kamloops soon; the road is not growing shorter while I sit at a motel desk.

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Science is blind in time

by happy_moron Posted on September 1, 2011

Prayer this morning led me to a snippet of scripture – “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

It’s from a famous passage – a passage that shines a light on human blindness and that starkly reveals the limits of human observation.

The message of Scripture is that we cannot know the truth of our present moment only by examining it. In order to make sense of our current state we have to look beyond it. To understand our ‘now’ we must gaze upon our ‘then’.

Science is blind in time because it can only answer questions based on what we can immediately observe, which is, in the grand scheme of things, a pittance of what is.

42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. 43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. 44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.

45 The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.”But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit. 46 What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. 47 Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. 48 Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man. 49Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be likei the heavenly man.

50 What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever.

51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! 52 It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. 53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

1 Corinthians 15: 42-53 (NLT)

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Asaph, Hannah and an OT God

by happy_moron Posted on August 23, 2011

Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands — Psalm 78:7

I guess I read the OT with strange lenses on.

Recently reading this and other psalms, I struggled to find a picture I could relate to about trusting in God, OT style. My envisioning always came out in a military, “victory over the enemy” sense – at a national level, at a societal level, at the level of a king. It always seemed to me to be, oh, I don’t know… symbolic.

Trust in the Lord and he will deliver you – in battle.

What about the common people? What about the people who weren’t kings, who weren’t prophets? Is there such a thing as boring, mundane trust? The problems I face aren’t exactly on the scale of a foreign invasion…

I was praying a little about it and the book of Samuel came to mind, particularly the story of Hannah.

Here is a woman who faces an inglorious problem. Her pain, deep as it is, isn’t the stuff of enemy nations or whole tribes. She only wants a child and to no longer be mocked by a jealous second wife.

So what is she doing at the temple and why does she think a distant God of mighty military deliverance should care?

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Professional writing

by happy_moron Posted on August 17, 2011

…is hard. I’ve been trying to write notes of professional courtesy and it is diff. i. cult.

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!

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