Dimly Lit

Stuff like this absolutely blows me away as I sit at my computer surrounded by technology after a conference call with our factory in Mexico.

National Geographic Online has this article regarding pictures that were taken of an Amazon tribe that has never been contacted. It is hard for me to believe, or imagine that there are people groups out there, deep in a jungle and still in the stone age that have never had contact with the outside world.

My toddler has a board book based loosely on Ecclesiastes 3, “A Time for Everything“. One page says that there is a time to be quiet, while the next page states; “and a time to be very, very NOISY!” I couldn’t help but think of this as I read Al Hsu’s post, Deliver Us from Me-Ville on quiet time and loud time. Yes, it is a good example of my current intellectual level that reading smart, engaging blog posts immediately brings to mind a toddler’s board book!

On the other hand, Hsu is talking about what sounds like a very good book called Deliver Us from Me-Ville by David Zimmerman. Some day, after I’ve caught up on all of my board books (I’m so far behind), I will need to check this one out. One of the things that catches Hsu’s attention is the line:

By privileging solitude - ‘quiet time’ - over fellowship as a means of
identifying God at work, we privilege our own instincts over the
instincts of others.

Wow. That’s really good. While personal, individual time with God is certainly good, even necessary (see Exhibit A - Jesus), the danger is that it tends to focus our relationship with God only on ourselves. We become individualistic Christians and our faith runs the risk of becoming a subjective experience that seeks to, as Hsu puts it, “benefit our own preconceived ideas.”

As an avowed extrovert, it is good to be reminded occasionally that it is possible to find God in community as well as alone. I tend to look toward some mystic and monastic types and think that if only I could have a contemplative life like that, I would really be able to know God. I forget Bonhoeffer’s warning:

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

and T.S. Eliots:

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

There is indeed a time to be quiet as well as a time to be very, very noisy. Both are valuable, and both can be in praise of and in relationship with God.

Cards take the series from the Astros! Go Cards!

Besides running, I’m also begining to tweet in order to find out what all the fuss seems to be about.

I’ve started to run. I’m tired of feeling lethargic all the time. I’m tired of being winded from going up and down stairs in my house. I want to always be able to keep up with my boys. And I want to be healthy.

I’ve started before and usually fizzle out with excuses of bad weather, illness, time, something. Now I’m trying to remove and and all excuses and, as a certain shoe company says, just do it. If I can’t get up early enough in the morning, I run on a treadmill at the Y during lunch. If I can’t get away for lunch, I want to try to run in the evening. I want to feel good physically and this is one way I know to accomplish that.

Wish me luck, pray for me, whatever - I need it all.

Joe Thorn just posted about this,his 365th day of running. I plan to have my own post up like that in about a year.

For the record, I’m 6′0″ and weigh in at 190 Lbs. Not terrible, but I could stand to lose a few. According to Runner’s World’s BMI calculator that just barely puts me in the “overweight” category. Let’s see where I am next year.

Let’s hope this proves true.

Dr. Al Mohler has a very interesting post regarding the disturbing trend of college students being unable to focus and pay attention during class because of all the opportunities for digital distraction. Hes’ writing about an article found in The American Prospect which highlights the return of a 2003 graduate to one of his classes where he observes a large number of students surfing the internet during the lecture. The entire article is definitely worth a read, but I’d like to call out the letter that this former student wrote to the current students he observed:

I understand that your minds move quickly and we are all impacted by a
fast paced culture, but do you realize the horror of shopping online
while Dalton describes…mothers throwing their children into a well to
avoid a barrage of bullets? What are you doing? There comes a day when
we must become accountable for our own learning process…Take it on.
This is your life. What is the point of neurotically skipping along the
surface when all the beauty lies below? Please seize the moment and
listen deeply to Dalton’s final lectures. Close the computers. Stop
typing madly and soak in the themes he develops…Learning is an act of
creativity, not mind-numbing, tv watching passive receptivity.

In Dr. Mohler’s post, he follows this with an interesting tie in to our ability to know and be with God.

People who cannot maintain mental attention cannot know the intimacy of
prayer, and God does not maintain a Facebook page. Our ability to focus
attention is not just about the mind, for it is also a reflection of
the soul. Our Christian discipleship demands that we give attention to
our attention.

Don’t forget to pray for the people as this story and the disaster in Myanmar begin to drop off of the front pages.

Here are the latest numbers from China. Devastating.

Dead: 51,151

Missing: 29,328
Homeless: 5 million