Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Jesus isn't magic

Could hardly have said this better myself. A highly recommended article.

Excerpt:

Rather than the magic Jesus, there is a very real and powerful Christ whose teachings continue drawing the world to his kingdom community from many neighbors. Ironically, many who preach about absolutes and literal interpretations use situational ethics and complicated arguments to explain that Jesus did not mean what he said.

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decoding Dan Brown

Okay, so I finally swallowed my gum and got a copy of The Da Vinci Code, and read it. I wasn't so interested that I would pay for a new copy, so I got a used one through Amazon. I read it out of a sense of professional duty; in my line of work, people are likely to ask me what I think of this book (and movie, which I don't intend to inflict on myself for a while yet).

Full disclosure: I really, really can't stand the way Dan Brown writes. I got through maybe five or ten pages of Angels and Demons and couldn't bring myself to read further. He's juvenile, overdramatic, does not know how to portray simple human emotions, so he doesn't try; he just tells you that his characters are scared, shocked, confused, puzzled, worried, relieved or whatever. So, okay, going in I have a fairly well-formed resentment at a guy that can have the chutzpah to pass this stuff off as good writing, and actually make money at it. Fine.

Add to that the myriad ways he gets his basic facts wrong (I counted at least six separate errors in one short but particularly egregious paragraph, and that's not the whole of it by any means). So okay, as fiction it's junk, and as reliable material for anything like history, it's worse than junk. And the cryptography is grade-school level and implausible to boot. What's left, then, is a fairly ordinary page-turner of an adventure story, with a few puzzles and twists to keep the pages turning.

I'm not about to take up the cudgels on behalf of post-Constantinian Christianity, but really in this instance there's no need. For all that he bashes, in various ways, the institutional Church (and some of its colorfully imagined components), the bashing is limited to an idea of a monolithic mind-control organization which, to the extent that such a thing exists, would not be worth defending. As to the big controversial idea that he expropriates from the 1983 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which is supposed somehow to be in danger of shaking the faith of millions, even if it were accurate, I've only got two words:

So what?

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Kurt Lortz


Kurt Lortz, a friend of mine for thirty years, died Monday.

Steve and Kurt Lortz are the brothers responsible for the now hard-to-find game Panzer Pranks and Kurt's never-published Dark Worlds, which, after it was replaced, pursuant to a creative dispute with the publisher over certain details, by the moderately successful Call of Cthulhu, continued to be developed as a more generic (non-Lovecraftian) vampire-hunting roleplaying game. Back in 1976, Steve introduced a number of us to the role-playing-game concept; Dungeons and Dragons was a fairly new thing back then, and Steve knew the authors, or at least Dave Arneson, pretty well. So Steve taught us game mechanics and something of the basics of how to run an rpg, and has gone on to design more games and sculpt a lot of miniature figures, making him fairly well-known in gaming circles; whilst Kurt, his more flamboyant younger brother, did research into arcane background material, and with his flair for the dramatic could be counted on to create conditions for a dynamite (sometimes literally) interactive story. Many nights we spent, with various groups of unwashed geeks, into the wee hours and beyond, especially as we playtested the various iterations of that great project, Dark Worlds. But we might also be discussing the great questions of life, delving into spiritual truth or political untruth.

Some people you meet, and get along with, and spend time with pleasantly enough, because you happen to live nearby and have some common interests. Other people you choose, and keep in touch with no matter what the geography, and despite how interests may change. I've known Steve since the fall of 1968, and Kurt since 1976. We've kept in touch because we wanted to, and have become legends in one another's lives. Locations, relationships, marriages, various jobs and responsibilities change over time; but friendship has remained a constant. So it was that this past March when I was in central Indiana for a day or so, I called Steve, and the two of us took a few hours and went to visit Kurt, who due to a series of deteriorating health conditions, was by then residing in a nursing home outside Indianapolis. For the past several years Kurt has been teaching in a private school, and had continued to do so until this most recent series of hospitaizations. He was absolutely devoted to his students. Last year he told me how he had, over the previous year, battled successfully against an agressive cancer, and consciously used his own situation as a teaching tool for those in his charge. He wanted them to learn how to face the realities of life, including suffering, with dignity and faith, and he was proud of how they had succeeded. Now the cancer was back, along with other issues. But he was still the same Kurt: deadly serious about facing reality head on, but full of humor, able to laugh at himself and evoke laughter, and at the same time able to make every situation into a larger-than-life story. He had a laptop computer in his room, on which he was composing music. Our visit together was like old times, though his body was failing him: confined to bed and wheelchair, painful sores on his body, his hands wrapped in bandages, periodic bouts of pain so severe that sometimes he would pass out from the pain. But in heart and spirit bouyant, the twinkle never leaving his eye, always full of gratitude to God for his grace. It was a good visit. I couldn't help wonder if it might be the last.

Last night, Steve phoned to give me the news. There had been time enough for his family to gather, some from far away, and be with him in his final moments. Steve told me that when the moment came, strange to say, they felt like dancing, the way you would when a runner on your team breaks the tape at the finish line. I'm sure you just would have had to be there.

Kurt Lortz: a legend in my life, large in every way. A man of courage, and dignity, indomitable faith, and utmost loyalty.

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Sunday, May 14, 2006

Christianism

TIME.com: My Problem with Christianism -- May 15, 2006 -- Page 1
I've been troubled for many months by the co-opting of the label "Christian" to mean a set of views and agendas in the current political climate that may or may not have anything to do with actually following Jesus. A couple of years ago, James Earl Massey suggested to a group of pastors his view that, indeed, we should think of ourselves, not as "Christians" but as "Christ-ones" or something like that. The linked article reflects much of the concern that I think many people feel.

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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

A distorted Reflection

Just thought I'd provide, for the benefit of anyone who cares (and the several billion who don't), a little rumination on the title(s) and similar identifying marks of this blog.

The blog ID, as in, subdomain in the URL is chance-meeting: chance-meeting.blogspot.com.
The blog title is "dancing on the edge of doom"
The blog owner is identified as "Over the Left Shoulder"

I'll take these in reverse order.

"Over the left shoulder" is, by some accounts, the location of that invisible companion, Death, who accompanies the wise on their earthly journey; I should say, accompanies all of us, but the wise get their wisdom (again, by some accounts) from an awareness that he is there, which is to say, that life is short, fragile, and terminal. Presumably there is some connection with the left shoulder being the one on which our Savior bore his cross, and thus there is a link to the call to discipleship specifically as relates to the continual awareness and constant embrace of one's own mortality, which results, strangely enough, in the overcoming of the morbid fear of death which, though unspoken and ofen unacknowledged, so often otherwise has a tendency to rule our lives: "If any one would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me; for whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the good news, shall find it."

"dancing on the edge of doom" is wonderfully ambiguous as to its origins, but aficionados of J.R.R. Tolkien will recognize it as evoking the image of Gollum, holding aloft at last the Ring, still encircling Frodo's finger (which has been bitten off) —dancing madly a victory dance, just before losing his footing.... and plunging into the Cracks of Doom, thus destroying himself and the Ring together, and despite all, fulfilling the Quest of the Ringbearer.

Those without an intimate knowledge of that scene may instead get an idea of a reference to an unbridled optimism which celebrates life no matter how immanent the impending demise, whatever form it may take, might be.

Both of these together, or either one, could be taken as a metaphor for the precarious situation in which our world, geopolitically speaking, now finds itself; and might indeed also be seen as a defiant affirmation in the face of all obstacles that life is still worth living; even that the worst disaster, as that which indeed befell Gollum in the midst of his victory dance, can lead to unanticipated benefits, the defeat of evil, a changed world.... hence it is intentionally, whatever else it may seem to be, an image of a perhaps irrational, but nevetheless incontrovertible, hope.

Finally: "chance-meeting" is another LOTR reference. Sometime when all the action is past, one finds Gandalf and Aragorn reminiscing about the first time they encountered one another, at the inn in Bree, setting in motion a confluence of events that led ultimately to the protection of the hobbits on their way to Rivendell, the formation of the fellowship, and the Quest itself, the fall of Sauron and the beginning of a new age. The narrative of that encounter is summed up with the words: "A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-Earth."

And thus entangled with the irrational hope of this blogger is the possibility that in such a humble corner of cyberspace as here, just as in a back-room of the inn at Bree, something might yet be set in motion that could save the world.

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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

It's all so strangely connected

No harm done, they said. She was probably just a pencil-pusher with a desk job, they said. What's the big deal, anyway, they said. That was then. Apparently, this also was then:
Reports: Plame Was Monitoring Iran Nukes When Outed

So who's going to be held responsible for Iran's new-clear program entering the Fact-Free Zone? Hmm, lemme guess.... In the Accountability-Free Zone of our fearless leaders, the only people who get shot at are the messengers.

Or maybe we'll eventually learn that Valerie was finding out, and reporting to her superiors, that Iran was actually, as they now insist, wanting to enrich uranium for alternative power, not for weapons. Of course, with the damage to our intelligence capabilites diminished following her outing, we have lost access to sources that could have confirmed or refuted that. What to do when you don't know and now can't find out? Better safe than sorry, eh? Two birds with one stone...

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