A thought about heaven

Some moments, on our earth, we can catch a glimpse of God in creation: in a waterfall rippling over stones; evening light spilling across the grass; mist descending upon distant mountains. I can't say for sure what causes those moments, when we look at nature and see it as if the divine is being poured through it like water through a funnel (to paraphrase Evelyn Underhill): when we look at a sunset and suddenly realize what is meant by the word "glory," or when we see the brown earth covered in snow and suddenly understand what is meant by "grace": when the world is baptized by the presence of God shining through it. Yet some moments are like that. All of a sudden our vision clears, and we can see God through the world, as we can see the world through a window, or an idea through words, or an experience through a poem. Most of the time our minds aren't aware enough, or the world isn't clear enough, for us to see God through it. But what if we always could?

Imagine a heaven where the world is a perfect expression of God, as the physical man Jesus was the perfect expression of Christ, God's son, the second person of the trinity. Imagine a heaven where our minds have the blinders taken off, so that we can understand clearly all the time: a heaven where the beauty of creation declares the glory of God unceasingly, so that God's presence is with us completely at all times: a heaven where language is perfect, so that every word is the ideal embodiment of the idea it represents. Imagine a world where nature is perfect, so that every stone and tree and blade of grass is a perfect bearer of God to us. That I think would be heaven indeed, when the language of the earth is purified so that it perfectly carries the character of God, so that where'er you walk God's presence is fully expressed to you.

One of my favorite verses is Zephaniah 3:9, "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call upon the Lord to serve him with one accord." It speaks only of language; but how far will that restoration extend?

Christian Prayer Group Assaulted Over Prop 8

A mob of homosexuals . . . assaulted a group of Christians praying together in the city's Castro District last week, in apparent retaliation for the recent defeat of homosexual marriage in California.

The Christians, a group of Evangelical Protestants who regularly go to the predominantly homosexual Castro District to sing songs and pray with passers-by, say they were holding hands and singing "Amazing Grace" when a angry mob began to shove and kick them, steal their belongings, pour hot coffee on their faces, and . . . assault them.

"We'd been there for a couple of nights just singing worship songs, people would come up and stand with us and join us, we got to pray for some people," said one participant in an account filmed at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (YouTube interview), "but on Friday night it just was different."

The rest of the article can be read here. Parental discretion is advised with both the article and, presumably, the YouTube video of the incident, which I haven't watched.

The incident is eerily reminiscent of Genesis 9.

The meaning of grace

(From The Time Garden by Edward Eager. The setting: Jack, Eliza, Roger, and Ann travel back in time to the days of the Revolution with the help of the magical Natterjack. Having mustered the minutemen, caused an Indian massacre, and nearly gotten themselves killed, they return to the Natterjack with guilty consciences for all the mayhem they've caused. Oh, and the Natterjack is a Cockney Natterjack, you should know, so 'e 'as trouble with 'is haitches.)

     "We've been thinking now," said Ann. "And I've been wondering. About those people."
     And she told the Natterjack her worries about the Indian massacre.
     The Natterjack was silent in thought. Then it spoke. "I 'ave 'eard," it said, "that the h'evil that men do lives after them..."
     " 'The good is oft interred with their bones,' " Ann finished the quotation. Then a look of horror came over her face. "Do you mean the bad things we do last, and the good ones don't?"
     "That wouldn't be fair," said Roger.
     "It would be just like magic, though," said Eliza, "always thwarting us!"
     "I was thinking," said the Natterjack, "more the other way round."
     "You mean...?" Roger puzzled it out. "You mean the mistakes we make come out of the adventure with us, and don't do any harm, but the good things we do stay buried in the past, and turn real?"
     "That," said the Natterjack, "is the general h'idea."

Two Quotes

Sometimes when you're reading you find a quote that makes you stop and think--the mental equivalent of stepping on the brake--but you merely note it as you pass, assuming that it was an interesting tidbit which shall quickly be forgotten. But you don't forget it. It stays with you and keeps coming back at unexpected times, like a theme in a Wagnerian opera, displaying its depth and strength over and over again until it gains a place in your mental library of leitmotifs. These quotes were like that for me.

The first is from a book about E.M. Bounds, a Civil War chaplain and writer of books on theology:

[E.M. Bounds]...was never overheard to vindicate or defend his own actions or stand. That intensely human need to explain ourselves and make others understand, what St. Augustine called "this lust of always vindicating myself," was overcome by this magnetic preacher of the gospel.

- Lyle Wesley Dorsett, E.M. Bounds: Man of Prayer

The second is a C.S. Lewis quote that the Headmistress used in one of her posts over at the Common Room:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.

- The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (20 December 1943)

May I say that I think this a comforting thought? It means that I don't have to worry about my life not turning out the way I think it should, because my idea of What My Life Should Be was never real anyway. The true meaning of my life isn't what it means to me; it has meaning beyond all my thoughts and dreams, grounded forever in Something that is true and unchangeable. As the hymn says:

My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God.

God is Like . . .

Miss M wanted me to read her a book. She picked it (the Little Golden Book of Prayers) and sat down and said, "No, I'll read it. First you read it." So I did, and then it was her turn. She opened the book and began:

"This girl is praying, and there's a very dangerous . . ." (I could see her grasping for the most dangerous thing she could come up with) "a TABLE!" I guess it's early, the cobwebs still aren't all out yet. Next page. "God is like . . . a butterfly."

This reminds me of people who won't believe in the God of the Bible because "a loving God wouldn't . . ." or "I just don't think God could . . ." or "I just don't see how a merciful God would . . ." So instead, they make up their concept of God. I googled the phrase "I think God is like" and here are some I found:

I think God is like abstract art.
I think god is like Yoda.
I think God is like the fiery yellow-orange-red power that comes out of the big explosion they call the Big Bang.
I think God is like a little kid, fascinated by this new toy he has: a little doll house with little dolls that he can play with. No real implications, no consequences for what he does with these dolls, whether that be playing dress-ups or throwing them in the bin when they get ragged and worn out.
I think God is like my kitten. I love my kitten, but she isn’t real anymore.
And then Miss M's "I think God is like a butterfly."

And then I found this, which is the truth:
"It doesn't really matter what I think God is like. What matters is what is He really like."

The Cloud of Witness - moving

I've decided not to post The Cloud of Witness here any more. It's taking over my blog! Instead, I'll be posting it at my homeschoolblogger blog, which I only use for cross-posting some of what I post here.

The Cloud of Witness

In proofreading In Memoriam, I learned that, whenever Charlotte Mason's students would graduate and leave her teacher's college at Scale How in Ambleside, England, she would gift them with a book called "Gell's Cloud of Witness." I did a search online, but there's no etext online. I found a used copy at amazon.com, and it arrived today from England.

The book is small and red. It looks like a dailly devotional of Thoughts with an Anglican focus (it's set up to follow the Christian Calendar of Trinity weeks, Advent, etc, which I'm not familiar with.) I'm going to see how it goes if I type a page a day as a kind of devotional. Either I'll get tired of the project (I'm not going to pressure myself to complete it), or else, in a couple of years, I'll have finished the book and send it to Project Gutenberg for their online collection. ;)

Here are the opening pages:

The Cloud of Witness
One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Thousand

(handwritten inscription:)
"To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom."
Milton.


That was the True Light.

He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness.

The Cloud of Witness
A Daily Sequence
of
Great Thoughts from Many Minds
following the Christian Seasons

by the Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton Gell.

"Certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring."
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."

London
Henry Frowde
Oxford University Press Warehouse
Amen Corner, E.C.
New York; 91 & 93 Fifth Avenue

Oxford
Horace Hart, Printer to the University

Prepatory Note
by His Grace
The Archbishop of Canterbury.

____

These sequences of Thoughts, resting each on some one clear 'idea' presented to us in our Sundays, seem to me full of interest and help. Brief words chosen for a dayoften help the day through more strongly and brightly. That is our experience of the greatest Lections of all. The 'ideas' noted in the following pages are full of suggestion, and I know no like book with so wide a range of illustrations.

It is good to hear in pithy phrases what the observing, musing, poet-people, that is the 'maker-people' as the Greeks have it, are saying at this moment:--None the less good, because some of them are yet unable to 'beat their music out'--the music of a full faith. In such voices is heard what St. Paul calls 'the yearning of the Creation,' and that yearning is Creation's witness to the Son of God.

Edw. Cantuar.

Addington, Nov. 29, 1891.

Hear ye not the voices ringing down the ages--
Echoing still the message, though their task be done--
Voices, born of heroes, monarchs, poets, sages,
Yearning still to share the wisdom they had won?

Listen!--Thronging round you, deafening with their clamour,
Fashion-tyrants mock at your vaunt of self-control.
Wake!--Delusive visions fraught with poison glamour
Daze your eyes to blindness, while they paralyse your soul.

Yet the Cloud of Witness solemnly advances,
Widening as each clarion-voice is hushed in Death below;
Yet the Heavenly Vision gleams on raptured glances,
Prompt through changing vesture their changeless Lord to know!

When Christendom Produces Cultists, Mockers and Atheists

Dana at Principled Discovery [I've spent a lot of time there this afternoon! ;)] has been blogging about an article called "The Descent Into Unbelief." It examines why Christian Victorians failed to pass on their faith to the next generations. Charlotte Mason must have seen some of this coming because she advocated exposing children to ideas -- instead of sheltering them from things like evolution, Biblical criticism and immorality, she thought they should be taught to think through difficult issues. Dana's posts confirm CM's advice.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Court Rules Against Sanitizing Films

This is disappointing. Hollywood is determined to decide what the public should see, and the courts have ruled that it's illegal to edit objectionable content from movies. (article here) Never mind my right to see a movie without the garbage that the director feels I need to see.

"Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor."

They make it sound like audiences have been duped and getting edited movies unwittingly and against their will - but those who go out of their way to rent or purchase edited movies obviously don't want the entire "vision" of the filmmakers. What's so bad about letting consumers have a choice?

Baby's Got Bible . . .

This was on a message board I frequent. It's a rap music video, very funny!
http://www.unc.edu/~shoyle/BigBibles.wmv

Freedom of Religion

Don't read our Constitution, friend,
Lest you should recall
Our history--which is, you know,
Unconstitutional.

Mention not the name of God
Nor speak of your religion:
This our Fathers clearly made
A breach of Separation.

Nor our motto nor our pledge
Are we allowed to say,
But (minus Christianity)
God bless the USA!

Does the Constitution Create a Wall of Separation?

I've been wrestling with the question of "the separation clause" today. I looked at a few different websites, but the most notable ones were:

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/art4piii.htm
This one got me thinking. They maintain that the spirit of separation is alluded to all over the Constitution even if the words themselves aren't there. At first glance, it looked pretty convincing, but when I read it more closely, the very quotes from the letters and documents displayed to prove an original intent to keep church and state separate, seemed weak. If anything, the letters showed that removing any vestige of religion from the government was surely never the intent of the writers.

http://razorskiss.net/wp/index.php?p=17
This is a legaliese word study of the Constitution. I braced myself for some new insights that would convincingly prove that separation was always the intent, but I got through a portion of it and their arguments seemed really weak, they were making a better case for the other side . . . and then it slowly dawned on me as I was reading that the website wasn't trying to prove separation, but was trying to show that it's impossible to read separation into the First Amendment as it's written. Oh well, I guess I can say I saw both sides.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/707590/posts
This is the comment section of a conservative site. I'm guessing it's a conservative site, I didn't look at any page except the comments, which turned into a back-and-forth bickering about whether the wall of separation is legitimate or not. Near the bottom is an interesting post that says it doesn't matter what the Constitution says because, in 1804, Chief Justice John Marshall changed the US from a Constitutional Republic to a Judicial Fiat in the Marbury vs Madison case. That means that the Constitution says whatever the judges say it says, the document is meaningless because it's only the fluid, living document in the minds of the judges that counts. I plan to think a little more about that one.

Anyway, that's how I spent my Saturday. I can think of a few other things I'd rather have been doing besides reading about politics.

And my conclusion? That whatever preconceived conclusion you bring into this issue can be proved pretty convincingly either way, although the straight data taken by itself indicates more strongly that removing religion was the last thing on the minds of the writers of the Constitution. But if you want to believe that it was intended, there's a good case to be made. Too good to be convinced otherwise by arguments from the other side.

Science and Religion

The difference between science and religion is as follows: science produces a logically proveable theory based on observable facts (think Historical Accuracy of the Bible), while religion is a set of beliefs and assumptions that often are not founded on observable fact (think Naturalistic Evolutionary Biology).

Pharisee's Prayer

Dear Father,

Thank You for Your infinite mercy, O Lord! It is times like these when I see what I could have been that I am most grateful. I am so glad You didn’t make me a liar and cheat like George. Thank You, too, for not making me slow-witted like poor John. And thank You for giving me Faith so that I won’t doubt like Tom. But most of all, Lord, thank You for not making me like that horrid, stuck-up woman I met today. I’m sure glad I don’t look down my nose at people like that. But forgive me for my anger, Lord. Please give her humility. Oh, and one more thing, God. Thank You for not making me proud.

Amen

What is an Atheist?

An atheist is a man standing in a room with God. The room is covered with dirty mirrors. The atheist tries to turn away from God, but no matter where he looks he can still see Him. And the more he cleans the mirrors and sees the world better, the clearer he sees God, and the more absurd he becomes in trying to deny it.

"From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God." - Romans 1:20