Episode 18, in which our hero succumbs to an Internet meme

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Duke John the Eldritch of Fishkill St Wednesday Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Saw this on Berg's blog, and I just couldn't help myself. Interesting, too, how close my name is to an author I'm fond of.

(Left you down a dark street as)

Left you down a dark street as
the sunrise moved along,
carrying me with it in
an everlasting dawn.

All I left behind me was
the thing I left to find;
now I sit alone, beside
the sunset in my mind.
This text © 2005 John David Robinson, all rights reserved. Duplication prohibited without written consent.

(Chaos is a whirlwind in the snow)

This week's poem was selected by Kristy Harding, who has an awesome blog called "Border Episcopalian". Definitely check it out if you have any interest in intellectual conversations on the Christian faith, the current situation in the Episcopal church, generally awesome Quotes of the Day, or general profound thinking. I happened to be at her and her husband Leander's house (also with a blog) tonight, and thought I'd be lazy and give myself a chance to give them props.

Chaos is a whirlwind in the snow,
all I know a glitt'ring throw of
ice upon the wind,
madness in its beauty,
lit by fire to see it in,
and all upon the solid ground
which never moves, nor spins.
This text © 2006 John David Robinson, all rights reserved. Duplication prohibited without written consent.

I wrote this poem pretty recently, and for the time being, I'm going to let it stand on its own here. Please comment: criticism, likes and dislikes, general feelings or interpretations... I'd love any and all. After I have some (incentive, incentive) I'll update this post with some general illumination like the last one.

Also, a note on how I title my poems. A poem's title (or a photograph's, for that matter) is something like a boulder at the source of a river, directing the entire course of the work. If a wrong or inappropriate title is picked, it can redefine or totally ruin the work (from the perspective of the artist, at least). As a result, I only title a poem if its title is obvious, or if I find one that can give to the poem a character I like that it lacks without it. If nothing comes, the poem is titled after the first line (in parenthesis).

The Real St. Nicholas

Br. T Alphege the Bald over at Monastic Mumblings has a great (short) read about who St. Nicholas of Myra was, and why we celebrate his acts with stockings, chimneys, and gold coins.

"Christian" vs. "Christ Follower"

A friend of mine pointed me to a site featuring three short clips modeled after Apple's current ads, comparing a "Christian" with a "Christ Follower". If you like this blog, you'll probably like them, and the groups into which I place believers in this conversation are fairly well presented (albeit caricatured) by them.

I started referring to myself as a "follower of Jesus" a year or so ago, when I realized that the term "Christian" had come to mean such different things in our culture that it had become functionally ambiguous. The term "follower of Jesus" is a bit more clear: it suggests that I define myself by an action-oriented relationship with a person who is alive (contrast "follower of Jesus' teachings"). It also raises a question in the minds of the people I speak with: "Why is he using this phrase instead of the simpler, 'Christian'? Could there be something going on here?" I think these questions are important ones to raise.

Still, I wonder if this is the best course of action. What's to keep "follower of Jesus" or "Christ Follower" from becoming labels that, similar to "Christian", end up derailed from their original intent? Will we be inventing another term in five years' time, having then the further disadvantage of having given up for lost our longest-used name? What term can we ever use again, if we accept this, to describe all people with faith in Christ?

Then, even those whose faith takes on forms we view as shallow, immature, legalistic, or cultural are still our brothers and sisters, aren't they? Lewis said that it's better to call a man who claims to be a Christian but doesn't act like one a bad Christian, rather than to say that he isn't one at all. By separating ourselves from "them," aren't we judging them? Shouldn't we rather gently correct them? Shouldn't we stand with our family even when they are embarrassing, and even when they don't behave as their Father raised them to?

This isn't a simple question. There are still the practical considerations. For better or worse, the word "Christian" is ambiguous. I don't suggest that everyone adopting a label similar to "follower of Jesus" is disavowing the term "Christian" (though some are). The "Christ Follower" in the videos linked above is a great example of a Christian: he isn't judging or condemning, even of someone who, if his experience is like mine, has provoked others to judge and condemn him unfairly. The character himself does not draw a dividing line, but the video featuring him does, somewhat. It's true that it can be helpful to have a vehicle for saying, "my faith is different from that," when "that" is unattractive or heretical, but I wonder if another redefinition is really what we need. How do we balance the practical demands of our lives and keeping faith with our family?

As usual, I'm writing this not so much to state my own opinion, but to solicit others'. I don't think I have a good answer to this. Like I said above, the term "follower of Jesus" is a bit more clear than "Christian": it suggests that I define myself by an action-oriented relationship with a person who is alive. But isn't that what a Christian is supposed to be? Shouldn't I be "a follower of Jesus, that is to say, a Christian"? Is it possible to redefine the term from within it? And if so, can one achieve it without employing other labels?

A First Installment

So, Alissa has struck again. She popped up in my Gmail Chat today to tell me that I don't post enough. And it's true: I haven't posted much lately. I seem to have hit a stride in my life where I'm enjoying work a lot, and I have a lot of it to do, so I'm doing a lot of it, often during lunch (my normal blogging time) or after work. My girlfriend still lives in Connecticut, and seeing her as much in a month as I've seen my previous girlfriends in a week requires a fairly hefty time commitment, even if she's the one traveling.

Enough excuses. Here's what I'm going to do about it: per Alissa's suggestion, I'm going to post at least one poem a week here at Aravir Dais. I'll post anything new I write, and I'll post old stuff on weeks that I don't write anything, with some commentary to make things interesting for everyone who's already read them. Please feel free to comment, even and especially critically. One of the three courses that made my college education worth the entire sum I paid (and will continue to pay) was Joe DeRoche's poetry workshop, and all we did in that class was was to bring in a poem each week, and get specific on what we thought of everyone else's work. It was awesome.

This poem was one that I did for the first First Fruits artists' gathering I attended at the Boston Vineyard. I was helping put on the gathering with my small group, so I figured I should participate. It's a villanelle, which I picked because they're hard to write well. I think I proved that with this poem, which never came out quite like I intended.

That said, the poem is about my period with depression, which I had during most of elementary school and all but the last year of high school, and what became of it when I decided to really follow God with my life. It seemed appropriate because depression has come into my life in a few ways lately: contact with family and loved ones who suffer it, and also experiencing the "regular" kind (as opposed to the medical kind I usually refer to) when it was revealed to me that my favorite place on earth, the only place I've thought of as truly home since I was about fourteen, may be going away forever. But even in that space, God has proven Himself faithful, and given me the perspective I need to handle it well, without falling into either of my classic, unhealthy coping mechanisms: trivializing, disconnecting and dismissing, or becoming completely absorbed with it. The pattern this poem describes continues to be found in the microcosms of my life today, as it was in the most significant disease I've ever suffered, or been healed from.

Now, when darkness comes, I know her sound.
Hear her footstep tread upon the stair:
darkness lets me know that she is there.

Shadow's voice is muted, as with snow;
black lips whisper beauty, down below.
Now, when darkness comes, I know her sound.

Sweetheart of my childhood, newly found,
playful, uses fingernails to tear:
darkness lets me know that she is there.

Agony and chasm are her wake:
touch her lips to hear what she will take.
Now, when darkness comes, I know her sound.

Night will cry at sunlight on its ground.
I have heard her sobbing, seen her scared.
Darkness lets me know that she is there.

Now she tiptoes lightly by my door,
scared, so I can barely hear her footstep on the floor.
Now, when darkness comes, I know her sound.
Darkness lets me know that she is there.

This text © 2006 John David Robinson, all rights reserved. Duplication prohibited without written consent.

Posts from a Monk

So, it's been awhile, and as Alissa predicted, I have continued to be a fickle lover to the Internets. For shame. In my defense, I can only say that I was spending time traveling, visiting good friends, and reuniting with my girlfriend, who I was forced to miss for the duration of my time away.

But let's not kid ourselves. This blog is not yet the widely-read center of the Internet's social and intellectual activity that we all know it deserves to be. So I won't feel too badly about it.

That said, here are two posts I wish I had written. I've wanted to comment on the recent situation with Ted Haggard and also in general on the term "Christian" as it's used in politics. Looks like the excellent Brother T Alphege the Bald beat me to it, and said pretty much exactly what I would've said on these subjects:

Jesus and Ted Haggard
Christianism

Something Positive

Just a quickie for now. I'm sorry I've been such a fickle lover, Internet. I promise to be more faithful.

Actually, I'm in the process of writing an essay that I'll post here when it's complete. In the meantime, a comic my officemate Scott reads, Something Positive, has had a series of comics which I think deserve attention. The author leaves some comments that are also worth reading.

Bill Murray attends student party in Scotland, does dishes.

I'm not sure what it says that I think this sort of thing is newsworthy. At least I'm not alone.

A Good Link on Oil Prices

I'm gonna bet that CNN Money quoting Forbes has the right answer on why oil prices dropped. A good, quick read on how the price of oil is influenced.

Sarah and Jenn

A friend of mine just posted this to a MySpace bulletin: it's a story about the 10th anniversary of two girls who were murdered when I was in 11th grade. I knew Sarah and Jen, and (mentioned further down) Katie. They were all in my class in high school. I'm a little late, but I feel like I should commemorate the anniversary here. I can't believe it's been 10 years.

An Amish Paradise

This, and other recent stories about the shooting of 5 Amish school girls in Pennsylvania, has led me to a deeper and deeper respect for their faith and way of life. I'll probably end up watching The Devil's Playground soon. But perhaps most of all, it's wonderful to see the comments people leave by these stories on Digg, and even the IMDB entry. "This is how Christianity should look."

They're right.

A New Discovery

I recently noticed something about myself that I never had before. It was a little like noticing for the first time that you tap your foot incessently while you work, only to find that your officemate has always, always known that about you. It's just a little quirk, but I'm surprised I wasn't consciously aware of it before.

I am constantly manipulating myself. What it breaks down to is that I know myself pretty well, and sometimes, I don't feel like doing things I want to do. So I trick myself into doing them anyway. For example: this new blog space.

Now, I know I've mentioned a few reasons: broken blog software, friends, and so on. But let's face it: I'm a UNIX admin and a programmer. Making computers work is what I do for fun, as well as work. My friends use aggregators, and if they don't, they're more than capable of clicking one extra link. I didn't move here for technical or social reasons: there are actually two real reasons why I moved to Blogger, and they're linked.

1) I hope that someday someone will read something I write and like it enough that a lot of people read it. I need to be honest, here. I'm a writer, and I want an audience. Getting a Digg's worth of hits would be a dream come true for me, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. (Okay, maybe a little. But anyway.) At that point, I don't want to be thinking about my home server's bandwidth and so on. I know I could handle it with some tweaking; I just don't want to think about it right now. I want to think about writing. If I started getting that kind of traffic regularly, though, I'd probably switch to my own software just so I could keep my self-respect. My inner geek is pretty laid-back, but he has his limits.

2) In order for #1 to occur, I have to actually start blogging again. And Blogger, like any new tech (well, new to me), is a toy. I know myself, and I know that I like playing with toys. When I wanted to make sure my foray into photography wasn't a one-time event, I got a midrange-professional camera, and now it's my main hobby, taking up far more time in my life than programming. I've had a show up here in MITRE's corporate gallery space. Make no mistake: I do this to myself because it works.

So see notice the pattern: I realize I'm not going to do the thing I want to do, so I utilize my intimate knowledge of myself to get myself to do it anyway. It's just like manipulating another person, but I'm doing it to myself. And my guess is that this isn't nearly so unusual as it seems at first. Think about it.

Dark Crystal Sequel Imminent

The Dark Crystal is going to have a sequel, written by the writer of the original, produced by Lisa Henson, and directed by the guy who did "Dexter's Laboratory","The Powerpuff Girls", "Samurai Jack" and "Clone Wars", and it's due out in 2008.

The Official Word on the Serenity Sequel

Joss actually posted something official, himself, in response to all the pandemonium about his "There is no Serenity sequel" comment. If you want to just read that, grep for "Holy Mother of Oats" to find his comment here.

Wiccan Veterans Denied Grave Symbols

If this is true, it needs to change. In pertinent part,

[Wicca] is recognised by the US military as an official religion but military veterans are not allowed to display the symbol on their graves.

"The federal government's discriminatory delay in approving these applications must end," said Daniel Mach, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"There is no good reason to deny grieving families the solace and comfort available to military families of other religions," he said.

It would be a mistake on my part to immediately blame the Christian influence in the States as the sole cause for this "delay", though I did, at first. Wicca is a misunderstood religion, one which is portrayed in popular culture as almost wholly different from its existence in actual practice, and those popular representations are, in my experience, almost always negative (sort of like some other faiths I could mention). But it's true that Evangelical and conservative Christianity have a lot of sway in this country, and a lot of representation in the government. Anyway, Christians are probably the group I identify most with, and understand the best, out of all those represented in the US government today.

So, as a Christian, I want to go on record as being utterly opposed to preventing members of the Wiccan religion from displaying their symbol on their military grave stones, as represented in the above news piece. I'll be writing more broadly on this later, but as Christians, we're called first and foremost to love God and our neighbors (which Jesus clarified to mean, by paraphrase, "anybody we run across"*). If God is as great as we believe He is, we have to stop putting down people who believe differently from us, and let them make up their own minds based on the evidence. By putting up roadblocks of intolerance and injustice, we are not only opposing God ourselves, but preventing others from seeing that He might even be worth casually investigating. Christianity is about loving God, as simple as that, and nobody in the history of this world has ever been pressured into loving anybody, nor will they ever.

Just put yourself in their shoes for a second. Imagine if the majority culture and religion in the country you live in were different from, and opposed to, your own. Would you feel loved if it attempted to legislate that you receive unequal treatment?

And to Wiccans, I want to take this opportunity as a member of the worldwide Christian community to apologize, not just in this case as some of us may be involved, but for all of the injustice you have received at the hands of people who associate themselves with the name of Jesus. I recognize that I'm only one person, and that the discrimination and harassment you have received may far outweigh any impact my words might have. But as a Christian, I am truly sorry for the way Wiccans have been treated by some Christians, and even if it's only one apology by one of us, at least it's one. I have this forum, and I would be remiss if I didn't use it for this. I know others -- many others, in fact -- who feel the same way. I am truly sorry.



* Actually, I think He told the lawyer that he was asking the wrong question, and directed him toward action rather than looking for shortcuts. But the point still stands.

Third First Post!

Okay. Maybe I should mention in my personal blurb that I'm also a geek. I'm guessing that'll get out anyway.

This is the third major blog platform I've used as my primary. My most recent was at dais.aravir.net, part of my home site. But trackbacks didn't work correctly, and a lot of my bloggin' friends are on Blogger. As Bethany points out, Blogger seems to be the only place where people can post anonymously (and which still takes efforts to avoid spam).

I have pretty limited time just now, so let me just say that I intend this space to be for personal info (a detailed account of The Lawsuit will be forthcoming), and hopefully that will be at least equally balanced by discussions on the Christian faith and, increasingly, its interaction with American and world politics.

It all comes down to individuals, my friends, because that's all there is, in the end.