Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

I still remember the feeling of reading this book for the first time, of being guided through the imaginary land of Hogwarts alongside Harry and his pals. Being introduced to all the main characters: Hagrid, Dumbledore, Professor McGonnagle, Professor Snape, Ron, Hermione, the Weasley family, was like meeting a crazy family. As I made my way through this relatively short book (considering the length of the others) two things really stuck out to me.

First and foremost was the incredible world that JK Rowling had created through Hogwarts. I’m a fan of imaginative literature, but I still have a hard time getting my head around Middle Earth and Narnia and the like. They’re all of them wonderful imaginative places, but Hogwarts stands out. I like it because the characters make the place come alive, not the other way around. Rowling excels at creating characters who are so incredibly relatable. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be friends with Ron, Hermionie, and Hagrid? Also, it is a world full of humor. I don’t think I really caught all the humor as much on my first read, but since then I’ve come to absolutely love the little snippets of humor she wriggles into the story. Her little descriptions of the magic candy’s, her descriptions of the idiosyncrasies of the characters, they all go a long way toward making the story not just exciting, but fun.

And that leads me to my second favorite part of this book, the friendships that are formed. Each of the books seem to have their own key points that stand out, and by far in this book I’d say the theme that stands out is the friendships that are formed by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The most pivotal scene in all the book, to me, is when Harry and Ron are running back to Gryffindor tower after Professor Quirrell has interrupted the feast by proclaiming that a troll has entered the castle. In a split second, Harry and Ron make a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. Harry turns to Ron and says “but wait, Hermione is in the girls bathroom (she’d been crying all afternoon and had missed dinner), we’ve got to go and get her!”

In that one single action, Harry and Ron decide that friendship is more important than selfishness, and the rest of the story builds from there. Thereafter they become a team that sticks together at all costs. I love how intricately interwoven this thread of friendship is throughout all of the books, and particularly this one. Few books in our time really explore the power of friendships in the way that the HP books do. And that’s why they are some of my favorite books.

Joseph, pt 1.

(Genesis 37:1-11 provides the context)

Joseph was a teenage boy. He was younger than all of his brothers, and he had a kind of cocky arrogance that can only come with being a teenage boy. You know that kind of arrogance; the certain feeling of invincibility that emanates like a pungent odor; the rashness that causes them to speak without thinking first, or maybe without even thinking at all. All of us who were once teenage boys (not so long ago for me) will remember that, um, special, time of life.

So it doesn't seem too harsh to think about Joseph's brothers feeling hatred toward him. After all, Joseph was telling his father bad things about his brothers, and that coat of Josephs sure did make it appear like old Jacob really did love Joseph more than the others. They had every right to have a certain amount of disdain for their young, cocky, lovable brother.

Hate is a powerful emotion, though. It creeps into our hearts in our most fragile moments, and begins spreading inside of us like a venomous cancer. Before long, the hatred that began with a little bit of disdain has become a monstrous, uncontrollable rage that has burrowed deeply inside of us. It is every bit as real as the clouds and trees and grass outside, and it has devastating effects on all parts of our lives.

Hate was there before any of Joseph's brothers did anything to him. It existed in their hearts long before they thought about hurting him. Just like it exists in your heart and my heart long before it explodes in our actions. Before we ever say a spiteful word or utter a mocking phrase of vitriolic sarcasm, hate is present in our hearts.

It's what Jesus worked so hard to warn us about in the sermon on the mount. These things like murder and adultery are first conditions in our hearts. It's why surrender, each and every day, to our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, is the foundation of our new lives in Him. I have to own up to those things in my heart that look so tame, that elicit an "oh, it's just a little bit of ______. It's really no big deal."

What looks so tame as a cub, though, can grow into a ferocious lion. It makes me realize that I am in need of grace, and not just a teaspoon but a raging shower of grace across all parts of my life. And in the seeds of this story, Joseph was learning how powerful these two things are, hate and grace.

The Prayer of Andy Farmer

(photo from: http://home.comcast.net/~edbethui/mustards_retreat_sm.jpg)

As I think I have mentioned before, I thoroughly enjoy Saturday mornings. I think they should at least be mentioned on the official list of endangered species. We work hard for a lot of things in life, but the one thing we need the most we don’t seem to work very hard for: rest. I’m reminded of the many dimensions of rest and how not only our bodies need them, but our minds and our hearts as well.

I like to play guitar. I have what you would call a entry-level acoustic. It won’t impress anyone with the richness of its sound, but at least it has sound. I haven’t changed the strings in a long time, so I have to tune it almost every time I sit down to play. But none of those things really matter, unless of course I start to do with my hobbies what I do in so many other things in my life: compare.

I absolutely love the feeling of sitting down and hammering out a favorite tune, or plucking out a simple melody and just humming along. There’s something so simple and beautiful about creating music, and it has nothing to do with the skill involved. The Enemy, though, notices this and does all that he can to try and distort this simple blessing. More often than not, after a few songs my mind will start to critique my playing and my vocals, and I’m instantly on the wrong path.

Even in today’s world, where almost anyone can pass under the ubiquitous title “singer/songwriter”, I will not pretend for a moment that I am such a person. Oh yes, I have visions every once in a while of a cozy, jam-packed coffee-house with the fresh scent of roasted beans lingering in the air along with my vocals, both equally mesmerizing the crowd. But then I snap back to reality when my voice cracks trying to reach a moderate falsetto.

But the point is, I have a genuinely good time playing the guitar. My skill level shouldn’t matter, because it’s taking joy in the simple gift of music that should matter instead. The enemy knows that my taking joy in a simple thing is a moment more holy than I realize, so he works to get me comparing myself to others.

I’m sure none of you experience this problem,….right?

I think if we’re all honest with ourselves, we realize that the culture around us shapes us more than we’d like it to. One of the marks of our culture is a fierce level of competitiveness and comparison. I can hardly go to ESPN.com without seeing an article pop-up every so often listing the power rankings of some sport or other. Heck, they have already come out with a power ranking for this upcoming college football season, and we’re still a month away.

It’s not just sports, though. It’s on the news, embedded in our conversation, and permeates more levels of our living than we tend to notice. That’s why I’m realizing that rest and time alone with my Creator are such necessary things. They are not only amazing in and of themselves, but they act as antidotes for the virus of comparison.

So I may not be the next indie singer/songwriter phenom. But I don’t really want that either, do I? I just want that satisfaction of feeling good about myself, finding my worth in something I can do. And as Dallas Willard and a host of others tries to remind me, my worth has nothing whatsoever to do with the work of my hands.

That’s good to know. I can go back to just playing the guitar because it’s fun, because it’s relaxing, and because I like it.

Let’s learn a prayer together, I’m naming it after the person who inspired it, Andy Farmer:

The Prayer of Andy Farmer:

Lord, help me not to take myself as seriously as I do, but instead to take You more seriously.

The Kite Runner

When I read a good story, all my senses get involved. Every time I read the Harry Potter series, I want to sit down at a creaky wooden table in a small shop lit by a crackling fire with a mug of butterbeer. I don’t even know what the stuff would taste like, but I’d just like to go there and at least try it. Or when I read Wendell Berry, I want to just discard all of my possessions, move to a small rural farm, and bask in the simplicity of life. I doesn’t matter that I would fail miserably at such an effort, my senses don’t care about reality when I’m reading.

Good stories take you places, places you don’t have to work very hard to understand. That’s because good storytellers don’t just tell you that a place is scary or that the woods are enchanted, they describe the place and let it come alive in your imagination. I don’t have to read very far into the Narnia series or the Lord of the Rings trilogy to begin to feel the place come alive in my mind.

Before I get too mystical about the whole experience of reading a good story, I should get to the point. The point is that different stories have varying effects on us, but the really great ones invite all our senses along for the journey.

The Kite Runner is one such book. As I read through the story, I started to get this desire for lamb kebabs and strong tea. But I could tell quickly that this wasn’t going to be a story that would just cater to my sense of imagination. This was going to be tougher than just imagining lamb kebabs and strong tea.

It is an absolutely brutal story. Ups and downs, twists and turns, and more sadness than any book I’ve read in recent memory. It paints a picture of a boy who grows into a man in Afghanistan, coming to grip with all sorts of baggage as he copes with his past and tries to push forward in life.

I kept saying “NO!” inside my head as the plot unfolded, with one tragedy after another. But in the end, Hosseini weaves the threads of the story together beautifully to create one amazing fabric.

This is not the kind of story that I will return to again and again. It does not carry the imagination to a fictional place. Instead, it is troubling. It is hard to digest. It is too real to be imagined. But it is a story that needs to be heard, and it’s a story well worth the time to read, because it opens the eyes of the mind to the human condition.

Dependence Day

I am so grateful to be living in a free country. I am thankful that I can worship freely, and have the freedom to express myself. It is wonderful, and I’m glad that we have a whole day to celebrate as a nation. But the way some churches have come to celebrate independence day is almost sickening. When did our nation’s day of celebrating independence become more celebrated within the church than Easter, the day our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rose from the grave, defeating death once and for all and bringing a new Kingdom to reign upon the earth?

I’m an independent person. You all that know me well know that. And so these words I’m writing are words that come from the experience of falling into the trap of thinking I can pull myself up by the proverbial bootstraps and control my own destiny. It’s because it is such a tendency of mine to fall into this dangerous level of independence that I feel like we would do well to rediscover what the Bible has to say about all this.

When’s the last day we as a church celebrated our dependence on God as much as we do our independence as a nation? Many of us sang songs yesterday in church asking God to bless our nation, or something along those lines. But when did we last ask forgiveness for the way we’ve squandered so much wealth in the face of so much devastating poverty across the world? Many of us heard sermons where the pastor proclaimed that we need to reclaim America for Jesus, but when did we last ask the Lord to help us be a people marked by Jesus’ radical 70x7 forgiveness, his individual concern and compassion for others, and his redemptive love that offers people a new way to live in the present, not just a ticket to a far-away heaven?

The Lord works through His people, and always will. He’s chosen the Church as his vessel, with the power of his Holy Spirit, to be the tangible presentation of the Gospel. Jesus over and over again throughout the Gospels proclaims that He’s brining a new Kingdom to the earth. And Easter is the climax of what it all means, that yes, indeed, a new Kingdom has come to the earth, and that death really has been defeated.

Like many other aspects of faith, it’s too simple to say that we’re either dependent or independent creatures. Hundreds of years of theological debate prove that much. But one thing is for certain, if we call on the name of Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we place lordship of our lives in His control. And I don’t know about you, but one of the hardest things for me each day is giving up the control that I so desperately want to have and placing my faith and trust and hope in the God who lives and breaths and moves. I am a pro at making my own decisions, steering the rudder of my ship into chaos and stupidity. And I need to be reminded more often than not that I serve a God who most of all wants my heart, wants my obedience, and wants my life, so that he can take and breathe into it the life and hope and purpose that He has for me. A purpose that involves daily submission to Him. A choice. I need to be reminded of my dependence on Jesus.

A Long Way UP

(photo courtesy of AP)

I absolutely loved this little story about the new glass observational balconies in the Sears Tower in Chicago. Most adults are too scared to go into these things (including me. you could not pay me to spend 5 minutes in one of those). But kids. Just browse these photos. the kids are having the best time, without a care in the world. I feel like this is a powerful image that speaks to more than just a news story. "You must become like the little children"

Here's the story

We could be the best of friends

For the better part of the last few months, I've stuck myself in a musical box. Listening to the same stuff, good stuff, just the same stuff. There's nothing wrong with getting some good mileage out of your music, and in fact it's a great thing. But I sort of acquired a very narrow minded view of music during this time. So i was in the funnel, or vortex, if you will, where i was mainly listening to the same stuff, shunning friends' attempts to turn me on to new stuff.

But thankfully in the past few weeks I've slowly come around. Kind of like the aging slugger who takes a few months in the season before he's cranking out home runs. Or maybe more like I was just hit upside the head with a kettle pot, and I am just now realizing what kind of box i had been living in.

Whatever the case, here's some new stuff that I've been listening to a lot, mainly through myspace and last.fm and such. The music industry is just so different now with Itunes and amazon offering digital copies, and it's great for us consumers. We get to listen to way more music for free, and after we've sifted out the wheat from the chaff, we can make better purchasing decisions. I love it.

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Priscilla Ahn - A Good Day (listen to the whole album here)
she is the perfect summer singer/songwriter, easy on the ears. the post title is also a snippet of one of her lyrics

Wild Sweet Orange - We Have Cause to be Uneasy (listen to selected clips here)
they're from birmingham, and their music is like eating a snickers bar...its satisfying

Meiko - Meiko (listen to selected clips here)
another nice summer album. it's not for everybody, but there are some good tunes on this album. kind of like a bag of skittles.

mewithoutYou - It's All Crazy!... (listen to the album here)
like any other mewithoutyou album, you've just got to listen to it for yourself. it is absolutely impossible to try to explain. make sure and check out the lyrics, or contact andy farmer or james fenwick if you want to try to figure out the deep meanings of these songs. i've still got to listen to this album a lot more before formulating a good opinion

Honorable Mentions:
Ingrid Michaelson
U2's new album
Manchester Orchestra's "Mean Everything to Nothing"
Fiction Family

so i want to hear from you. what's some music i should check out? are my selections terrible?