Stories...

Here is a short story Christianity Today published. It's a very interesting concept, though the story itself seems incomplete. What I appreciate is its attempt to engage a moral complexity we face (in this case, genetics). There is a lot being said, and presumably being done, about using stories to better engage post-moderns with the Gospel. This article is encouraging, because it uses the same idea with one of the many issues we face in the public square. Such stories should be done in a manner that is not mean-spirited (unlike a cartoon I saw in a Christian publication cynically portraying a young worker being fired for posting party pictures on MySpace); indeed it should be loving. It should also be honest about complexities, as well as appropriately appreciative of the other sides in the debates. This story is a step in the right direction, and kudos to Agnieszka Tennant for writing it.

Wine-growers prepared to use violence

Radical Basque separatists, Hamas, Al Qaida and now... French wine-growers. The BBC reports that a groups of masked Frenchmen called "the Crav," who look a lot like the shadowy jihadis kidnapping soldiers and journalists, are prepared to use violence if the French government doesn't meet its demands.

The question remains for wine lovers: does consuming wine from the Languedoc region mean giving into the terrorists? Or are these guerrillas freedom fighters, preventing excellent wine from being watered down by global competition?

A commentary you can't refuse

The Economist online has an interesting commentary on The Soparanos, American culture and the way the rest of the world sees us. Read it here.

Bada Bing!

Love and the art of feeding sheep

Today the worship team I'm not, as well as worship teams from several other churches, received worship training from Andy Piercy (www.andypiercy.com). He's an interesting character, an original Christian who was also a rocker, who toured with Queen (a fact I think is really cool) 10 years before any of us in the Christian bubble were debating whether that kind of thing was "going secular" and "selling out."

Among many excellent points one stood out that seems so intuitive and correct I'm amazed that tonight's the first night I thought about it. Towards the end of the presentation he spoke of the shepherding role of a worship leader, siting Jesus' final command to the future leader of his church (John 21). To be a shepherd as Christ, Andy reminded us, we need to love our congregation. It's easy to think of it as serving, or worse, performing for a congregation. Love eliminates any need to perform and ignites the desire to serve.

I've led worship for a relatively long time, and leading worship in small group settings is one thing I can say I do well. Andy's challenge will enrich all of this. While working in the ministry, it was easier to remember to love those I was evangelizing. There's no other logical reason to walk up to strangers and try to challenge their beliefs, much less try to win them over to yours. The only other reason would be out of a self-righteous love for your own beliefs (rather than the object of your beliefs) and that has always had disastrous results. God's love for me enabled me to love him, to worship him and lead others to do the same. God's command and the completion of worship is to love these others as well.

Loving your neighbor at 15,000 feet

I experience flying the same way I experience a restless night's sleep. Every step of the process rushes through my mind like a surreal sequence of dreams. My senses take in, but are not allowed to react to sounds, sights, smells and temperatures that occur so little in my day-to-day life that they are unnatural and intrusive.

Yet, I really like travel. I love airports. Anyone who has seen Love Actually will remember how it opens and closes at Heathrow airport, a collage of people who love each other, people of all different shapes and flavors, saying hello or good bye in the profound little intimacies that only occur at these moments. I love that part.

My 8-hour layover in Heathrow saw little of that. I was in the "passengers only" area, which has been separated from those Love Actually moments since 9-11. However, there is an unspoken camaraderie among the passengers. No matter where we're going, we're all on the same boat. It's a place where different cultures, races, ethnicities and religions go through so many of the same rituals. We take off our shoes, take out our lap-tops, empty our pockets, pray that we won't be picked to have strangers rummage through our belongings, pray harder that we won't be picked out to be frisked, we wait in lines, we find caffeine or alcohol or simply something to read, we watch each other and observe what country we're from, discerning accents and languages (is that Russian? It's definitely something Eastern European), check our tickets, read signs, watch these amazing machines that will transport us to Istanbul, New York, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Stuttgart. I find I like all the people I'm waiting in line with. I look knowingly at all of the impatient expressions. I wonder if the long cue will cause me to miss the 17:30 take-off as well.

On my flight back to DC, however, I found myself sitting next to someone I found difficult to like. My father always tells me stories of the interesting people he meets on flights. He has these great conversations with fantastic world travelers. I'm usually sitting next to some tired business man has his headphones on and his gin and tonic out before the flight attendants are finished with their safety speech, twisting his entire body to communicate that communication is the last thing he wants for the next eight hours. This time, however, I had the opposite problem. I sat next to an elderly lady. She also drank gin and tonic, but she talked more as more drinks came. She also smelled. It was difficult to face her. She was the sort of old woman who would ramble about nothing in particular. She seemed very rich. She had just come back from a northern cruise and she had a huge pearl ring on her left hand. Her constant talking was intruding on the reason we introverts love flying: where else can you read with so little of life distracting you? I wanted to hide in my own headphones.

My attitude reminded me, though, of how far from Christ I often am. He seemed to like the unlikable. He even liked the tax-collectors. He made it a point to like them. I don't think we're required to like everybody, but we are required, and hopefully with time and growth, enabled to love as he does. I looked up from my book and listened. I think (ok, I'm sure) Christ would have listened better, would have loved her better and would have sewed seeds of Gospel into the heart of this drunk, smelly, rich old woman. I fell short on all accounts, to my shame. Yet, I believe that was his working that pulled me from myself so I could make the attempt, and in that I have hope that I am growing in the right direction. Even in the middle of this strange sequence of dreams.

Some Helpful remarks

Some constructive criticism of my previous post was written on the Tobacco Barn Blog (also in my own comment section). http://blogs.pipetrader.com/TobaccoBarn/Default.aspx

The writer makes the excellent point that I did not make a clear enough distinction between responsibile and irresponsible behavior. Indeed, he makes the distinction between responsible pipe smoking and "regular cigarette smoking," siting the 1964 Surgeon General Report, which states, according to the post, "that pipe smokers tended to live longer than the general population." The 1979 follow-up seems to make a further distinction between heavy and light pipe-smokers.

So, for all you pipe-smoking enthusiasts, I encourage you to read the blog to learn how to better enjoy your passion. In the meantime, let the record state that I wish to encourage a responsible savoring of the finer things in life, including good tobacco, rather than the gluttoneous consumption of such products, which leads not only to poor health, but a failure to appreciate the good things we have been given.

Any way you light it, smoking is cool (too bad it's deadly)

Every morning on the way to work I watch an old man defy convention. I get off a couple of metro stops early so that I can walk a few extra blocks. In a city where working overtime is so blessed, I take whatever exercise I can get. The old man stands every morning in front of what I presume to be his office, though he must be in his 70s. He has a full head of proud, ivory-white hair. When it's cold, he wears a sort of wool fedora-looking hat with a plaid design of light colors. It's the kind of hat that could only look cool on an old man. The same could be said of his suit.



Every morning he smokes a pipe, and this is a sight to behold. In a city where new smoking-ordinances have outlawed the leaf that financed early-America (tobacco leaves are indeed carved in columns on the Capitol building) in bars, restaurants and offices, the old man stands out as a counter culture relic. His age is defies death already; his pipe dares it. If I weren't so chicken of dying an early death of some sort of cancerous suffocation, I would join him. I would break out my Meerschaum pipe, as white as that old man's hair and purchased (with the help of a more barter-savvy friend) in Turkey's Grand Bazaar. I'd watch the beautiful purples of morning turn to gold while breathing in the taste of Virginia's soil. I would warm my hands with the bowl of my pipe and watch the many flavored residents of Washington DC walk hurried and harried to work.



I saw an anti-smoking ad campaign a few weeks ago. It shows different, individual shots of beautiful teenagers with clean faces and cool, moderate clothes shrugging their shoulders, smiling and shaking their heads. They are a politically correct mix of races, yet they all look the same - good-looking, moderately dressed, clean face. They are "cool" kids, the popular group, the kind of kids who participated in the student government association. Their shrugs and head-shakes are in response to the provocative question asked in the kind of impatient voice that only a teenager (or Cloe O'Brien from 24) could use. "Can you give me give me one reason why smoking isn't stupid?"



I'm sure there's a host of market research that proves this ad to be statistically effective, but I know it would not have worked on me. These are the kind of kids that made rebelling against them cool, a sort of a high school bourgeoisie. Sure, smoking is stupid. It's sucking addictive, cancer inducing smoke into your lungs. But driving a sports car down a mountain trail and break-neck speed is also stupid. And incredibly cool.



Smoking is Sherlock Holmes smoking cigars and drinking brandy as he brilliantly explains his analysis to Watson. Smoking is Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin strolling down 5th Avenue, casually blowing smoke. Smoking is James Dean in a leather jacket. Smoking Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Smoking is Gandalf, Aragorn and the rest of the fellowship. Smoking stares death in the face and smirks. Smoking is cool.

I am a social smoker. I smoke a pipe or a cigar with friends, but I have avoided cigarettes and addictive smoking. Interestingly enough, I love smoky rooms. I've probably done more damage to my lungs reading old novels in Freiburg's Cafe Michelangelo than anything I have inhaled through a tube. But I never wanted to be addicted to the stuff.

The cool, SGA bourgeoisie did nothing to keep me from being addicted to tobacco. I was never able to join the high school elite, and smoking would have been a good way to add coolness to my high school resume. I'm not addicted to tobacco right now because I realized love and health are more important that coolness. I realized the comradere I gained while running cross country was better than any perceived coolness. I do fear lung cancer, and I fear not being able to run long distances. Breathing tobacco smoke may be like drinking wine. Breathing oxygen is like drinking water, and there times water tastes so much better than wine.