From Iraq

I am constantly amazed at how different our war experience is from that of the WWII generation. We have a major war going on right now but aside from the daily rants of self serving politicians and talking heads and the odd bumper sticker you'd never know it. In the place of rations and sacrifice, we have a booming economy and an excess of everything. Instead of individuals laying down personal comfort for the common good, we have the usual every man for himself in the race for more. It is the War That is Easy to Ignore. And yet as we go about the daily routines of our life, 300,000+ of our fellow citizens are in harm's way serving the rest us. One of them is my buddy Scott (see Dec 25th post).

Scott's grandmother died last week, a hard loss to endure at any time, but especially hard when you are halfway around the world and separated from the rest of your family. However, Scott is a humble, selfless man prone to action rather than complaining. One of the tough who get going during the hard times. He would never complain or feel sorry for himself but I know he would appreciate our prayers during this difficult time. If you are reading this would you please pray both for his encouragement during this time and for his safety while traveling around Iraq. And while you're at it throw in an extra one for his wife Gina and their two young daughters as well. Thanks.

Scott sent me a song that he wrote about his grandmother after she died and I would like to post it here to both honor him and his grandmother.

When I Close My Eyes
for Grandma Carow

Shriveled hands hang down from arms that once were strong
Thin white hair is now where brown hair once belonged
My fragile legs lack the strength to stand
But I know I'll walk again when I'm in the promised land

And when I close my eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see once again
I will run into the arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

Do not cry for me for I know to die is gain
I've lived this life for so long and now there's only pain
I must go to the healing arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

And when I close my eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see once again
I will run into the arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

 Where I go
 I know
 There's a mansion waiting for me
 When I look up
 I'll see
 Brilliant colors that I've never seen
 I'll join a choir of angels
 And our songs will fill the skies
 When I close these earthly eyes

And when I close these eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see clearly once again
I will run down a street made of gold with my Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes


sdc

Catching Up: Pictures from the last 3 months

Jen and the kids on Canyon Lake Dam in November (a family photo if you count my reflection in Jen's glasses)

Snow in the mountains above El Paso last month

Kinda makes you wish you knew how to ride a horse, don't it?

Wonderfully lonely in Rocky Mountain National Park (early December)

A new take on a familiar scene last month in Cloudcroft, New Mexico (see October Archives)

Duststorm near Odessa, Texas yesterday (this picture reminds me of the planet Luke Skywalker lived on in the Original Star Wars)

Church

From Hans Kung's book, On Being a Christian, as found in Brennan Manning's Book, A Glimpse of Jesus:
"The church of Jesus Christ is a home not only for the morally upright but for those who for a variety of reasons have not been able to honor denominational teaching. The Church is a healing community proclaiming the Father's indiscriminate love and unconditional grace, offering pardon, reconciliation and salvation to the down-trodden and leaving the judgment to God.
A Church that will not accept the fact that it consists of sinful men and exists for sinful men becomes hard-hearted, self-righteous, inhuman. It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. But if a Church with a history of fidelity and infidelity, of knowledge and error, takes seriously the fact that it is only in God's Kingdom that the wheat is separated from the tares, good fish from bad, sheep from goats, a holiness will be acknowledged in it by grace which it cannot create for itself. Such a Church is then aware that it has no need to present a spectacle of higher morality to society, as if everything in it were ordered to the best. It is aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith haltering, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the Church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance. It the Church self-righteously remains aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted."

I read this passage nearly two weeks ago and the power of it is still resonating like a church bell within my chest. The vibration inspiring and unsettling at the same time. I view it as a part of the answer, a piece of the puzzle. If you were to hold this in one hand and a call to holiness and repentance in the other, I feel you would be moving in the right direction.

The painting above is Scene at the Entrance of a Cathedral by Karl Brullhoff. For more reading on the church see the February 4th post on my friend John's blog.

A Poem, Author Unknown

The next time you are in your local bookstore browsing your way through a rainy day I would like to recommend a book to you: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. It is a wonderfully rich glimpse at among other things; the Fall of the Roman Empire, Saint Patrick, and the Irish monks who painstakingly copied ancient manuscripts that were elsewhere being destroyed by barbarians. I love the book because it is written, at times, just slightly over your head but never so far as to be out of reach and you are constantly rewarded for slogging through some of the tougher sections with these incredibly alive and downright edible portions of text that will keep you mentally munching for days afterwards. It is one of those books that not only makes you feel smarter than you are but one that actually sticks with you and well..., makes you smarter. Two sections I'll recommend for quick browsing in the store before you inevitably buy it, St. Patrick's prayer on pages 116-119 (hardcover) and pages 152 - 164 (hardcover) or just 159 - 164 if you are in a hurry. The latter section deals with the monkish scribes who actually sat down and copied word for word ancient manuscripts. It has quite a few excerpts from the notes that they would make in the margins as they either interacted with the text or fought off boredom. Hands down one of the most giddy and thrilling pieces of writing (besides Yancey and Manning) I have ever laid my eyes on. Cahill sets the scene so well, you can feel the cold, damp air through which green and rocky hills appear and recede in the fog as young bookish men attempt to keep warm while hunched over musty smelling texts. These men come to life through their various postscripts and suddenly you realize, we are not all that different, us and them. I'll leave you with an excerpt from page 162 that goes nicely with The Moussacre of 07 on my cousins' blog.

"Perhaps the clearest picture we possess of what it was like to be a scribal scholar is contained in a four stanza Irish poem slipped into a ninth-century manuscript, which otherwise contains such learned material as a Latin commentary on Virgil and a list of Greek paradigms:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his."

Not exactly groundbreaking poetry I realize, but when you consider the context, it becomes a classic. Imagine for a minute that there are no printing presses and you make a living by hand copying word for word such classics as The Catcher in the Rye or Crime and Punishment. Tedious, tedious work, the only thing keeping you from going insane with boredom is your love for the written word. As you copy you entertain yourself by making up little poems in your head that help you pass the time. And then in one heady and mischevious moment you decide to write your poem in the margin or at the bottom of the page, a bold act that declares "I am here! I matter!" This poem is not just about the words, because of its context, it is one of the most essentially human poems I've read, containing the essence of what it is to live down here. "You are not forgotten anonymous Irish scribe, 1200 years later your poem still rings true. For chutzpah alone you are a legend in my mind, may we meet in heaven one day where you can introduce me to Virgil and I will introduce you to Helprin."

How the Irish Saved Civilization was the first of what is now five and will eventually be seven books in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill. I have also read The Gift of the Jews and would recommend it as well. His latest is called Mysteries of the Middle Ages, a book so beautiful it caused drool to run down my chin as I browsed through it mouth agape at the bookstore last month.