Decade in Music

Well we're almost to the end of the decade of 2000, and as I'm on thanksgiving break I thought I'd go through some of my favorite cd's of the decade. I bought my first cd in 2000, so this was definitely the decade I first really got into music. So without further ado, here are my favorite albums of the last decade:

2000 - Coldplay's Parachutes ; Nickel Creek's Nickel Creek

2001 - Caedmon's Call's In the Company of Angels

2002 - Coldplay's Rush of Blood to the Head; Kutless's Kutless

2003 - Switchfoot's Beautiful Letdown; Enter the Worship Circle's 1st Circle; Over the Rhine's Ohio

2004 - Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God

2005 - Mae's The Everglow; Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams; Over the Rhine's Drunkard's Prayer

2006 - John Mayer's Continuum; mewithoutYou's Brother, Sister; Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans; Switchfoot's Oh! Gravity; The Weepies' Say I am You; Fernando Ortega's The Shadow of Your Wings

2007 -The Avett Brothers' Emotionalism; Sara Groves' Tell Me What You Know; Anberlin's Cities

2008 - Andrew Peterson's Resurrection Letters; Coldplay's Viva la Vida

2009 - The Avett Brother's I and Love and You

Top 5 Albums of the Decade

1. Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head

2. Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God

3. The Avett Brothers I and Love and You

4. John Mayer Continuum

5. Mae The Everglow

There it is. That was fun. Chide me where you think I need chiding, agree heartily where hearty agreement is necessary.

mark.

All the difference in the world

Over the summer I read a book by GK Chesterton about Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. I certainly enjoyed it, but I didn't realize it would continue to have reverberating effects through much of this semester. Somehow a key theme of the two biographies has stayed with me like a shadow trailing behind me as I walk.

All of my 5 classes at seminary have by now intersected on more than a few topics, and while I know this is by design in order that we would learn better by repeated exposure, I don't think they planned the intersection that has meant the most to me so far. That intersection is prayer. In some form or fashion, all of my classes have dealt with far-ranging things related to prayer, and it is as if the Chesterton book I read this summer is the matte-board to which they are all sticking.

We've gone over the Lord's prayer in interpretation class. We've discussed the theology of the prayers of the Psalms in Old Testament. We've examined the prayers of the early church in church history. We've thought about the deeper layers of prayer in spiritual formation. And we've even tackled praying in Greek class, going through a few short sections of the Scripture together.

While these points of emphases on prayer have not been underlined and highlighted by my professors, the little light in my head has been going off all semester as the Spirit has revealed connection after connection. And the central theme connecting everything together is gratitude.

Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi learned through a long lifetime of obedience to see God in all aspects of life, from the tiniest parts of creation to the loftiest of existential questions. But this didn't just occur overnight in their conversion experiences. It was a sort of gradual process that was facilitated through daily gratitude. As they learned to give thanks to God for everything in their lives, these men of faith started to have the scales removed from their eyes, and I don't think we've had two such persons since who have seen God at work so actively in the world.

If we can't be thankful in the little things, what kind of heart do we have? If we can't thank God for the small moment of rest or the sandwich we had for lunch then what does that say about the alignment of the motives of our heart? Gratitude sees God, selfishness sees ourselves. Gratitude realizes that the gifts of life are from God, and are not to be possessed and worried over, but are to be thanked, praised, and enjoyed. Selfishness might not be as scary a thing on the outside as some of the more grievous, hard-hitting sins, but I venture to say (from experience) that it is the most debilitating disposition for the disciple of Christ to have.

Selfishness turns us sour from the inside out and affects every part of our lives. It grows scales over our eyes that keep us from seeing our brothers and sisters in need, and keeps us as well from seeing the beautiful gifts that God has given us through creation and through his more personal daily activity. In short, selfishness is a disease, and must be purposely fought. The great antidote to selfishness comes in the unassuming form of gratitude. Thanking God for the good times and the bad, for our very breath in the morning and the gifts he bestows upon us every day, for the big and the small. Slowly gratitude works inside of us to bring us new eyes and new hearts, through the wondrous work of the Spirit, and we begin to walk down the same road that the great disciples of our faith (including Aquinas and Francis) journeyed upon, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Looking in the Closet

My pastor has been preaching a series on the Blues, discussing the similarities between this type of music and living faith. I've been trying to put myself in the shoes of the people in the stories he's been telling, trying to think about what life must have been like during those those decades in the early part of the 20th century.

If you ever looked in your grandparents (or even great-grandparents) closet as a youngster, you will probably recognize many of the clothes represented in this slideshow of pictures. I found this story about a photographer from the 50's who recently died. He focused on normal every day people, and I enjoyed browsing these elegant photographs and stepping into another world. Take a look for yourself:

Here

the Real World

A few afternoons ago I went for a walk. After being in class all morning and in the library for most of the afternoon, I really needed to get outside for a little bit. Since I normally run, and run with an ipod, I thought it would be a good change-of-pace to slow down and walk, without the ipod. I tried to count how many different animals I saw and how many different varieties of plants that I passed, but I gave up after about 20 minutes. It hit me pretty hard: I pass by so much detail and so much variety and rarely, if ever, stop to recognize and take pleasure in it.

I've been reading a book by Eugene Peterson for one of my classes. It's called The Wisdom of Each Other, and it's a series of based-on-reality fictional letters between Peterson and a distant friend who has just converted to the Christian faith. Sprinkled throughout the letters are numerous one-liners that catch you off guard and make you want to put the book down and stop and think. And since most of the letters are fairly short in nature, Peterson really has to pack-in what he wants to say. I think he does a fine job.

One of the key themes he talks about in the book is church--what it is, what it does, and some of its pitfalls. In describing these elements of the church, I found myself really resonating with one particular description of the act of church, ie worshipping God with other believers. Peterson says, "every call to worship is a call into the Real World". Maybe that doesn't strike you as that astounding of a quote, but let me unpack it a little bit.

What he is referring to with regards to waking up to the Real World is what I experienced in my walk the other day. Our daily realities more often than not resemble the worldly conception of reality rather than the Godly conception of reality. The world's conceptions of truth, beauty, community, family, self-worth, freedom, etc., are like fractions compared to whole numbers. They work up to a certain point, but inevitably falter because they are too shallow.

The truth is, our conception of reality (which is most often just like the world's) is too shallow. We fail to see the invisible mysteries of God at work all around us or witness the tiny miracles of daily living, mostly because we are either too self-absorbed to notice anything other than ourselves (this describes me accurately) or we are running too fast on the treadmill of life. Church, then, or rather the act of worshipping together, reminds us of the Real World. It brings us back to the truth that God is big and God is in control and God is at work all around us. That is the story we enter in when we worship together on Sundays.

I need that wake-up call every day, especially in those days that feel like re-runs, like nothing new is happening, that all that is really going on is something that has happened before. It's in those times, more often than not, that the tiny miracles of God are embedded, waiting for me to notice. Waking up to the reality of God every day is difficult, but it is to discipleship what brushing our teeth in the morning before we walk out the door is to the rest of the day.

Ten Thousand Words

Great song by the Avett Brothers that gives a lot to think about.

Peace Prizes

So if you haven't seen the news, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Regardless of where you stand politically, there are a few things going on with this story that I think are noteworthy and should help us think more about what actual peace-making entails.

People tend to either get nominally excited over news like this, irrationally fired up (in a negative way) or just feel totally ambivalent to the whole idea. Why is this so? How can something produce such far-reaching emotions and draw so many different responses from people?

To arrive at the answers to those questions, I want to borrow a tactic that my pastor has recently been using in his re-framing of the health-care debate. He has been preaching about what true health is really all about (see andy's recent post for more info) and highlighting that we don't have a big enough view of health as we debate the issue of health-care.

Similarly, what are our ideas of peace? If nothing else, I hope that by such a controversial figure (by controversial i mean someone who elicits far-reaching opinions) being awarded the nobel peace prize people will start asking questions about what peace is really all about. Because we desperately need to think about this issue, especially in our Churches and Bible studies and personal lives as well.

And when we engage the question of what peace is really all about, there is really only one figure in all of history who stands out above all the rest: Jesus Christ. He is the starting place in our discussion of peace, and from Him we can derive the true meaning of peace.

Peace isn't simply about peace with each other, you know (although that's a huge part). It's also peace with the rest of creation. Since Genesis 3, we human's have been at odds both with ourselves and the rest of creation, and the Biblical narrative spends the rest of the Old Testament telling the story of God's work to redeem the whole of creation.

And then it happened! In Jesus. He brought true peace to the earth, the answer Israel had been waiting for for so long. Peace towards God, peace towards men, and peace that renews the whole of creation.

We are privileged people in the West, having so much knowledge and resources at our fingertips. But aren't we equally impoverished, like a thirsty man trying to get a drink from a fire hydrant with so much information around us and so little connection between information and life-transformation?

Peace. We desperately need peace. In our planet, in our relationships with one another, even with ourselves. And Jesus Christ should be the starting point for our discussion, because in Christ (like it says so beautifully in Colossians 1) all things hold together. It's time for a different conception of peace, one grounded in Christ.

Here is the best example of peace I can point you to, namely Jesus Christ. What a beautiful picture this is:

15 i He is the image of j the invisible God, k the firstborn of all creation.16 For by [6] him all things were created, l in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether m thrones or n dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created o through him and for him. 17 And p he is before all things, and in him all things q hold together. 18 And r he is the head of the body, the church. He is s the beginning, t the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For u in him all the v fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and w through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, x making peace y by the blood of his cross.

(Colossians 1, ESV translation)

Spiritual Fervor

Where is our spiritual fervor in this generation? Where are the children of the most high God praising Him and serving Him with their whole hearts? Is there even such a thing as spiritual fervor anymore, or have we reduced faith to gnosis (knowledge) and kept it at a safe distance from our hearts?

Chances are, the phrase spiritual fervor brings to mind images we would associate today with pentecostalism, or something of that nature. Why has spiritual fervor been co-opted and associated with one particular expression of the faith, though? Why do most of the terms we use to describe the elements of Christianity and/or faith become associated with one particular expression and lose their meaning for the whole of Christianity?

Spiritual fervor is not the sole property of the pentecostals! If that were the case, spiritual malaise would naturally be the sole property of everyone else. But yet we still cling to such skewed notions of common descriptors of Christianity.

Spiritual fervor is present through all aspects of the history of our faith. From the Nazirites in Numbers (chapt 6) to John the Baptist, the early church in Acts, and the subsequent martyrs we have a picture of what it means to have spiritual fervor. Even the "dark ages", as we modern westerners like to call it, was replete with persons of intense spiritual fervor (see: st. francis and thomas aquinas).

So why have we come to associate spiritual fervor with only one expression of faith? Maybe it's because we have a warped view of what spiritual fervor is really all about. After all, most of us probably have a negative connotation of spiritual fervor anyway. But what if it is the one thing we are lacking in the Church in the west? We have all this gnosis, all this head knowledge about God, about theology, about how to balance faith and praxis. We live at a time of unrivaled educational opportunities, yet our numbers are declining with each generation!? Why?

Lack of spiritual fervor. Our faith barely informs how we live and treat other people. We have become so acquainted with our position of cultural power that we have lost the ability to understand suffering and humility. We are so trapped, now, by being powerful and being relevant that we've totally chucked out the Gospel (the euangelion: good news in greek).

The Psalms have a lot to say about spiritual fervor, as do the Prophets and the entire New Testament. Spiritual fervor exists when complete devotion to God meets humility and submission to His Lordship in our lives. Faith gives us hope, and in faith we have the love of God poured out on us from above.

So spiritual fervor is not a crazy, out-of-body experience (a notion we still cling to, given to us by plato and his followers) that causes us to become so entranced with the spiritual that we lose sight of the world. It is the opposite. Spiritual fervor is embedded in the love of God, the love shown to us through Christ, and that love came down from heaven to change the face of the earth forever.

Neither is spiritual fervor a sort of social gospel, where we make it our mission to establish a visible kingdom where wrongs are righted and justice is served (doing good is wonderful, but it is not our starting point, God must be our starting point, otherwise we will run out of gas). Spiritual fervor gets its energy from God and gives fresh eyes with which to see the world. Spiritual fervor recognizes that God is in control, that He is present through His Spirit wherever there are believers, and that the victory is won in Christ Jesus.

So spiritual fervor has more to do with balance than it does with hyper-extremism. But it is a weighty balance, one that has such faith in God and His plan and promises that we are loosed from the chains of our own selves. Christ unlocks the prison door and calls us into new life with Him, where we learn to submit to Him and obey His voice and His teaching in our lives. This is certainly something that would lead to spiritual fervor, right?

But maybe we don't really see the Gospel as heavy and as important as it really is. Maybe we see Christ as just another item to collect, a genie who will bless us along our own way. Or maybe we just want to get eternal life-insurance. But when our eyes are opened to see the awesome, amazing, and astounding transformational power of Jesus Christ to deliver us from our lives of sin and death, we should get a little glimpse of what it means to have spiritual fervor. Is our conception of the Gospel big enough? Do we really believe that Jesus Christ can transform lives?

Maybe it's time for a new conception of spiritual fervor.