switching gears.

Rethinking whether this practice is meant for me. I am discovering that, underneath the hood, I am prone to anxiety about work. I play the cool-headed guy in court, but I'm never really sure of anything. Maybe 90% of being a lawyer just is ad-libbing. Or maybe I'm just a rookie, something that'll circumvent in time. But maybe it's a red flag, a sign that this is not something I want to be doing.

I can't help but wonder - is it better to get fired from your first job early in life, and to let that be the kick-start you needed to work hard the rest of your life, than not to get fired but also not to accomplish a genuine advance in career levels, to get stuck where you are for the rest of your life?

Not that I'll get fired or get stuck. Some of my partners are very proud of me. Others, maybe not. So the situation is lukewarm. But maybe that's the prob. I don't want to leave by exile or by life-boat. I want to leave with choice. I wish I can get a third-person view of the timeline of my life, get the lens real focused on where I am now and what got me here and what it'll take to get me somewhere else.

Guardrails:
1. Improper considerations: fear of challenges; extent of workload.
2. Proper considerations: degree of oversight; workload proportion to pay; verve.

---------------------

Next time you spell your name over the phone, use names of places when possible. F for Finland, I for India, N for Nairobi, N for Nairobi, E for Egypt, and Y for ... Yogurt.

concerning brilliance in arguments

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." - Professor Sample

Constructing an argument is a lesson in anatomy. Each premise has to connect to each other in order to reach the nerves tucked in the conclusion. Inductive arguments are tiny things enmeshed with cartilage and bone - construct them carefully, generalize from the evidence with conservatively, always being mindful of the treacherous uniformity principle. Deductive arguments combine the conclusions of those inductive arguments in various combinations. Deductive reasoning cover a lot more ground than inductive reasoning.

Brilliant ideas jut out from the rest, and therefore by their very nature are difficult to fit back within the rest of the joints of the argument. Therefore, unless your brilliant idea is the heart of your argument - it's the core idea that makes sense of everything else - it will only impede the flow of the argument like cholesterol in a major artery.

Brilliance dazzles the listener. Brilliance also blinds the reader, begging him to decide your case just based on this one fascinating, sexy idea instead of the totality of your reasons.

Shine responsibly.

Scenes of Moses: Baby in an Ark

Late night musing on the I-80 highway.

But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it...  When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

If one scene really symbolizes Moses' life, it's this one. His family reaches the end of their ropes in protecting him. They place him outside their protection. They could not find a real water craft, so they place him in a flimsy basket, coated in tar to help its buoyancy. He is placed into muddy water, surrounded by tall stalks of weeds and reeds. (Don't try this at home.) He is essentially exiled for his own safety. But to what end?
The basket goes nowhere. Looks like a failed experiment. But then Pharaoh's daughter, off on one of her royal frolics and in the mood for a mud bath, finds the basket among the same reeds, and draws him out of the water. Not a failed experiment but a baptism. He is called Moses, which means draw out. 

Fast-forward forty years.

When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. ... They told their father, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

Moses is a fugitive. Pharaoh wants him dead. Moses runs into the desert. He is exiled again, casts himself into the endless oceans of sand. (Where are you going, Moses? Where will you find refuge?) But look! He finds an oasis. And the man drawn out from the water is now drawing water for others. An exile finds a family among exiles. The Hebrew who looks Egyptian is saving people. Coincidence?

Fast-forward forty years.

Moses said to the Israelites, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today... The Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

Moses goes back, gets his extended family to follow him through the deep blue sea. First they were a little nervous but he's all like nah, trust me I got this I've done this before, so they went for it, and then bammm, the man drawn from the water now draws a nation out of the sea.  From a human perspective, it just looks like a life being pushed along by turbulent circumstances. No direction. No foresight. There's so much fear in the story, so much killing, so much hurt. It's just a basket stuck in the mud. It's just a guy marooned out in the desert. But look again, and you see that his name matters. As he was drawn, so he draws.

And the little details is what I hang my hopes on these days.

May the reader understand. 

quotables.

(Stuff I've either said, heard, read, or thought about recently that sticks out.)

• Maze Runner was based on a book? Oh. I thought it was based on Temple Run. - F.

• For almost thirty years now I have listened to the Israelis say to the Palestinians what I first heard the Afrikaners say to the blacks and coloreds. We are good people; if you just behave, we will give you most of what you are asking for. Oppressors do all they can to prevent use of the category of justice; they do all they can to cast the situation in terms of better and worse rather than justice and injustice, in terms of good behavior and bad behavior, in terms of benevolence. Nicholas Wolterstorff (2007-12-26). Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Kindle Locations 218-221). Princeton University Press - A. Kindle Edition. 

• A VIRUS IS a small capsule made of membranes and proteins. The capsule contains one or more strands of DNA or RNA, which are long molecules that contain the software program for making a copy of virus. Some biologists classify viruses as "life forms," because they are not strictly known to be alive. Viruses are ambiguously alive, neither alive nor dead. They carry on their existence in the borderlands between life and non-life. They are dead. They can even form crystals. Virus particles that lie around in blood or mucus may seem dead, but the particles are waiting for something to come along. They have a sticky surface. If a cell comes along and touches the virus and the stickiness of the virus matches the stickiness of the cell, then the virus clings to the cell. The cell feels the virus sticking to it and enfolds the virus and drags it inside. Once the virus enters the cell, it becomes a Trojan horse. It switches on and begins to replicate. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone,

• They were two human primates carrying another primate. 

•  The cross is in all life. It is in the earth; the seed dies that the plant may live. It is in the landscape; the mountain is bare and barren that the vale may be rich and fecund. The valleys stand so thick with corn. Aye, they do! And they do it by the soil washed from the mountain. The cross is in your blood. What are the white corpuscles doing in your blood-stream? Watching for infection! When they find it, they absorb it, but they too, in their turn must be absorbed by the newly created cells which take their place, or the blood would stagnate and the body would die. William E. Sangster, "He Dies. He Must Die" (1960), Classic Sermons on the Cross of Christ 

• Have you ever seen the germs that cause disease magnified for examination? They are most interesting to look at. They have such curious shapes; even beautiful shapes, some of them. It is possible to take an artist's interest in them and half forget the deadly nature they possess. But now go straight from that magnified specimen-glass and see the germ at its deadly work in the hospital ward. Look! This is Lupus at work. You were specially drawn to that magnified bacillus. It seemed so innocent; even pleasing to look upon. Yet that germ is doing this; it is eating that man's living flesh away. On and on it goes and nothing, it seems, can arrest it. You didn't know the deadly character of that bacillus when you first looked at it. It seemed just cute and you could discuss it with academic detachment. But what does it do? It does this! 

•  Supin, dude, you just let me down. In fact, you constantly let me down. In fact, when I die, I'm gonna let you lower me into my grave so that you can let me down one last time. - F.  

•  It was a mistake. But it was the kind of mistake you don't regret making for how you've learned from it. - F. 

A Groomsman's Joy.

“The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.” – John 3:29

In this grand procession, I am neither groom nor officiant, neither invitee nor relative. I am the groomsman. Rejoicing in their completeness completes my joy. Celebrating their wholeness is making me whole. Blessing their oneness unifies my ...

Here's looking at you two.

when your tide rushes over me
there's only one
way to figure out
will ya let me drown
oh will ya let me drown?

The Power of a Photograph

 Art is limitation. The essence of every picture  is the frame. - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 A way of certifying experience, taking  photographs is also a way of refusing it—

 by limiting experience to a search for the

 photogenic, by converting experience

 into an image, a souvenir. - Sontag, On  Photography

 I photograph to find out what something will  look like photographed. - Garry Winogrand

HONY (Humans of New York) is this guy who takes great photographs of people. Each person featured on HONY is generally photographed alone. It's shown me how close-up shots of a person effectively alter your perception of him. Look at the man pictured above. I suspect that if I saw him in a crowd, I'd just see a disheveled old man. I'd avoid eye-contact. But now I see him and only him. I'm forced to reconsider him. I see a man with tired and sunken eyes that have seen a lot. And s that a suspicious or amused face? Dunno But I do know I am interested.

I guess you'd think I see him better now that I see him as an individual. True.

But seeing him alone also causes me to glorify him. Now a man wearing a colorful turban is a wise man, a sage full of counsel and exotic experiences. Oh, he doesn't have a shirt on? What a simple-minded man who doesn't care what others think of him! What a great simple life! Look at those gaunt shoulders. Must get lots of exercise. I should ask what he eats to stay in shape. 

In Which I Avoid the Elephant in The Room

• I look forward to this weekend. For months now, I have been heated, poured into different molds, reconstituted, cooled for a time, and then heated and poured out again. I gotta find myself again. Trees and hiking and shit have always helped me do that. Here's to you, nature.
• Each time I walk into a courthouse I am immediately smacked with two impressions: 
• (1) How important this stuff is. I walk into a courthouse and see the woman who is about to be evicted from her apartment, and I know that lawyers like me will decide where she sleeps tomorrow. 
• (2) How self-absorbed lawyers are. We are suit and tie society. We flash our secure ID passes as we enter, avoiding eye-contact with non-lawyers. But we can tell they notice us, and we relish in that.
• The court rooms are dingy, and even the ones with polished mahogany desks have gum stuck underneath. Cases are decided flippantly, clerks play favorites, and judges who have eaten breakfast are kinder to plaintiffs than those who have not. I have taken a look inside the sausage factory, and it is not pretty.

---------------------------------------------------Interlude-------------------------------------------------

                            

• These observations are really just pour-overs from observations about us people in general. You are forever so self-absorbed that you have no idea what you've done to someone, and your fading memory lies to you. And the most tragic thing of all is when the good memories flicker and burn out with no one to think of them anymore, though they are the reason we are where we are now. 
• The unnoticed thing about endings is how they precede beginnings.
• What if life throws you lemons and you have no pitcher to pour the lemonade into? Or what if instead of throwing you lemons, life just throws you lemonade? Everyone loves lemonade until it gets poured on them. 

Carolyn: I need you to do some research for me on the “volunteer exception” to the NY Labor Law.

20 minutes later….

Finney: There is a “volunteer exception” to the NY Labor Law. 

original sin - a theory

Adam's Sin isn't passed biologically. It's passed socially.

Each act of disobedience results in exile, and each exile results in more sinfulness. Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden, and God locked the east entrance to the garden. (Gen. 3:24)

The finger-pointing in the first parents passes down to their kids. One kids murders the other, denies responsibility. He gets exiled to a land "East of Eden" where he restlessly wanders. Notice his parents already were east of Eden. If Eden represents what humanity could have achieved, it is becoming an ever distant dream. (Insight from a pastor's message today: Whenever someone gets exiled, either by divine or self-mandate, it's always to the east: Gen. 13:11, Lot goes east; Gen. 11:2, people move east and build Babel; Jonah 4:5: Jonah, angry at God, camps to the east of Ninevah. Not sure how important this is.)

Sin multiplies with people. Lamech's senseless killings result in further alienation.

There's a generational curse passed down where the conflicts of brothers become conflicts between cousins and then becomes conflicts between families and whole peoples. There's a crescendo of sinfulness that always results in more alienation, more scattering, more restless desperation. That regress is vividly described in the O.T.

If I could shake out the general effects of original sin as it plays out in the dramas of the Old Testament, it's that (1) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from their own paradise, and (2) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from each other. 

C.S. Lewis wrote a story once about how people live in Hell. They can make houses simply by thinking it, which is pretty awesome. But they can't put up with each other. So they keep moving away from each other, enlarging hell and living at its fringes. They keep moving away until each person only has himself to hate. And that is hell. Hell is self. 

highlights, 7-8/14.

• Finding my younger doppelganger at a picnic. He was aloof, distracted, walked in circles around the see-saw. I had a funny feeling that I was looking at mini-me. So I walked up to him, introduced myself. He is about 11. I asked him what he watches on TV. He said he watches the History and Discovery channels. Suspicions confirmed. I asked him what he thinks about the prospects of colonizing Mars. We talked for a good 20 minutes about biospheres and aliens. 
• Seeing my name on the law firm telephone list shift over from the right column to the left. The right column is for secretaries and law interns. The left is for attorneys. 
• Hibachi with J. A first, with many more to come. 
• Interview with J.S. Mayall of Certilman Balin. 
• Conversation with Character and Ethics Committee representative. "I am glad to have helped. I hope the best for you, and your future."

losing my religion

My faith rises and recedes seasonally. But it looks like this year it has receded more at each down turn, eroding the "I believe" to "I feel", and now, to "I want to feel."

It used to be that my seasons of belief would be punctuated by short upticks of doubt. Now it appears the opposite: the doubt, the unbelief predominates. (Or was it always this way, and I just haven't noticed?)

I'm unconvinced by most messages I hear, and the more inspiring God is in a message, the angrier I am at the God that exists.

The God of the message gives you a great job in the financial sector, while the one that exists allows children to die horrifically. The God of the message makes you feel hopeful about your romantic prospects while the God that exists pollutes a river, starves a country. The God of the message is there to coddle you about your physical appearance and the God that exists fakes his own death or skips town when ISIS comes. The God of the message commands with great unction "Let there be...", and the one that exists can only, and always only, say "let it be, let it be."

Maybe I'm only losing faith in the artificial projections of God I've been taught to believe. Maybe the God I believe in is shedding - shedding himself of all the childish fancies I had of him, and maybe a living, breathing, personal God will emerge out of the dead shell - the kind that is there just to save you from sin but has no guarantees about anything else. But is such a God worth believing in?

half-baked idea for a skit

the setting: some post-apocalyptic future: what used to be Gaza. 

The sun is slowly setting. A purplish blue hue settles like a veil over the landscape.
Centuries ago the land was a holy place of sorts.
It was marked by cobblestone roads, dome-shaped buildings and burning incense.

But now it's a scarred and tangled mess of debris and moss and stains. This is where we find Amr, lighting a fire in a heap of rubbish..

He wears a faded regulation army rain jacket. He pulls the hood over his face as a cold wind kicks up the leaves around him. He warms his hands in the fire. He allows himself to be momentarily distracted by the swirl of leaves.

Footsteps approach him. Amr stiffens, reaches for his rifle, and tries to make out the stranger. He tries to look for a signa in the newcomer's overcoat that marks him a fellow veteran, but his eyes aren't as good as they were. Amr shouts at the newcomer to halt and identify himself.

The stranger identifies himself as Joshua. "Joshua? That is an Israeli name. You are no friend here." Joshua slowly takes a step forward and replies, "Or anywhere. But may I share your fire?"

Joshua is now close enough for the fire to shine on his face. Amr peers up at his face. Joshua's face appeared young except where his smile caused it to wrinkle. A smile, and not a smirk. It did not, however, placate Amr. "You want me to share my fire with you!? Who are you, an Israeli, to ask me of such a favor? Do you mock me?"

For Israelis have no dealings with Palestinians.

On any other day, with anyone else, the conversation would have ended.

But Joshua, without breaking his smile, takes another step forward. 

Language uses the word solitude to refer to the glory of being alone, 
and the word loneliness, 
to refer to the pain of being alone. - Anon.

This sums up how I did in law school.

what's the point of corporations?

The difference between an incidental humanitarian expenditure of corporate funds for the benefit of the employees, like the building of a hospital for their use and the employment of agencies for the betterment of their condition, and a general purpose and plan to benefit mankind at the expense of others, is obvious. There should be no confusion (of which there is evidence) of the duties which Mr. Ford conceives that he and the stockholders owe to the general public and the duties which in law he and his codirectors owe to protesting, minority stockholders. A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes. Dodge v. Ford, , 237 N.E. 2d. 776 (Ill.App. 1968)

David looked up and saw the Angel of the Lord standing between Heaven and Earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extending over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in
sackcloth, fell face-down. 1 Chronicles 21: 16

For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection shall be its own punishment. Augustine, Confessions

Lord make me aware of the terrible acts of judgment that hang, as if suspended in air, waiting to be unleashed into the circumstances I find myself in. Please make me aware of the significance of those moments and make me aware of my place in the middle of it all. Help me connect effects with their causes. Help me see that it's my sin that has returned to punish me, so that I know I need to turn, and what I need to turn from.

Can Corporations Murder?

Justice Stephen G. Breyer: And the principle that here would apply is what I said, Pirates, Incorporated.

Do you think in the 18th century if they'd brought Pirates, Incorporated, and we get all their gold, and Blackbeard gets up and he says, oh, it isn't me; it's the corporation -- do you think that they would have then said: Oh, I see, it's a corporation. Good-bye. Go home.

[Laughter]

Ms Sullivan: --Justice Breyer, yes, the corporation would not be liable.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer: All right. Well, what source have you--

Ms Sullivan: The corporation would not be liable.

- Transcript from Oral Argument of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

David was smug.

There's a part of David's face that's always shaded, always pointed away from the reader.

He rejects Saul's firstborn daughter by appealing to his modest roots, "Who am I, and what is my family or my father's clan that I should become the king's son-in-law?" (18:18).

David is feigning modesty.

He later takes Michal, Saul's younger girl when Saul offers her to whomever pays him in "100 Philistine foreskins." David has bloodlust. He seizes the challenge for Michal's hand, kills a hundred Philistines and circumcises their dead corpses for her hand in marriage.

Michal is little more than a trophy that he soon disposes of. He bags other women he stumbles into (Abigail, Bathsheba, Ahinoam). Surely, this was a thorn in Michal's side. A thorn that, despite her attempts to suppress it, would pinch and twist through her husband's military campaigns and the songs that the women sang of him.

Some time later, after Saul had died, David danced and "exposed himself" (allegedly to praise the Lord for not killing an ark-bearer), the thorn twisted in her side, and when she got a moment alone with him, Michal quipped sarcastically, "How the king of  Israel honored himself today!" Yeah, you might think David's reply, that he was "dancing before the Lord", was God-honoring. But what did he say after that? "I was dancing before the Lord who chose me over your father..." He is speaking to a girl whose father died in combat and who chose David as her husband (who, for all David knew, did so not vindictively). There's just something diabolically gleeful about his reply here.

When Achish offered him solace from Saul's hunting men, David says, in a style of groveling that is becoming all too familiar, "If I have found favor with you, let me be given a place in one of the outlying towns, so I can live there. Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?" Achish is a Philistine. For all his life David was fighting the Philistines. In fact, he is carrying the very same sword that he used to behead Goliath the Philistine. And here, he grovels at Achish's feet and calls himself his servant. His duplicity is not arbitrary. To the contrary, it's expedient. He picks an outlying town to inhabit. A place less likely to be raided by Saul's men than Achish's loft.

There's just something dark about him. Something not told in the official story about David. 

Dad finally got laid off. Last day sometime in the end of June. World on edge.

Growing up

Growing up...

I thought priceless was synonymous with worthless. Made those Mastercard commercials confusing.
I thought quicksand would be a much bigger problem in the world than it is.
I thought when the car blinkers signaled "left", it was telling my dad to turn left.
I thought a tornado was capable of forming spontaneously within my living room.
I thought I lived in Astoria when I lived in Long Island City.
I thought people were essentially good.

Now...

I think things that are priceless may well be worthless. It's all relative, anyway.
Somedays I wish quicksand were a bigger problem than it is.
My GPS serves the role I used to attribute to the car blinkers.
Tornados do not form spontaneously in living rooms.
I live in neither Astoria nor Long Island City.
I think people are mostly but not essentially bad.

is there a common thread here?

"How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. Heis descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!" - Elliot Rodger, in a document he sent online to someone from a body-building forum. 

He followed James and Julia past bodegas, laundromats, hipster boutiques, cell-phone stores limned with neon piping, past a bar where old people were already drinking at three forty-five in the afternoon, past a brown-brick Veterans of Foreign Wars hall with plastic patio furniture on the sidewalk in front of it. All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn’t be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he’d been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead... The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.  - Lev Grossman, The Magicians 

"It is not enough for the knight of romance that you agree that his lady is a very nice girl—if you do not admit that she is the best that God ever made or will make, you must fight. There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil who has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Natural Law

She is mine. I am hers. I approve of her, and consequently, approve of her every movement, every touch. 

Most badass verse in the Bible.

You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry... and I will kill you. Exodus 22:23

Ordinary People

This time we'll (try to) take it slow.

My Gym Experience Today:

Instructor: Just TWENTY more seconds of pushups guys, c'mon!

... 40 seconds later.

Instructor: Now just TEN more seconds of pushups, we can do this!

Collapses on floor.

Control: Man and Sin

The theme of control emerges at least twice in the Eden story. The first is in the control that Man was given over nature, and the control that sin seeks over Man.

• First: Man Takes On World
• Man is made so that they "may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
• So, we were made to have control. This is news. I usually think of having control as something I give up upon being a Christian. I hand over the keys of my life to God. And I lose control. He increases, I decrease, and so on. But that probably simplifies things too much. We are clearly made to rule stuff. 

• Second: Sin Takes On Man.
• Man is not alone in his mission to rule the world. Sin is his competition. "[S]in is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (emphasis added). 
• We don't really know what sin is. First time we encounter the thing. The Bible just throws the word at you. Doesn't bother defining it. 
• Of course, we could try to understand it:
• Sin crouches...: It lies low, as if to be undetected, poised to strike at its prey at the most vulnerable time
• ... at my door: It's taken a residence up close to where I am in the bent of my thoughts and desires. 
• Sin desires to have the sinner: Sin is a parasite that seeks to take control of its host. 
• Sin is to be ruled: Not destroyed, not fought against, but ruled. Like the flyers and the creepers. Weird?

from the diary of a slave named Patrick.

But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day
and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, 

as I now see, 

the Spirit was burning in me at that time. 

- Confession of Saint Patrick

It is not good that man should be alone ... but whom have I in Heaven or Earth beside You? 

Relationships, romantic and platonic alike, raise mirrors.

The surface of the mirror reflects the other, a standard to measure myself against. And in that mirror I see the texture of her features in opposition to mine. I easily see everything in the mirror that I am not. And so like a relief carved in flesh, my imperfections stick out, projected by the other, visible for me to see.

As the relationship intensifies, the features sharpen and clarify.

It is a hard thing to do, facing mirrors. 

eight seconds left in overtime

half the time it's a race to say something, say anything.
the other half is an apple eaten away by oxygen, and time.

Piper on whether God Loves Erry'body

In his recent book, Does God Desire All To Be Saved?, John Piper's answer to the titled question is yes and no. Yes, God would like all to be saved. No, God does not will the salvation of all.

What of the scriptures that say God loves all and desires all to be saved? Like, God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” that God is patient with us, "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance,” that he doesn't desire that any should perish but that they "should turn from his way and live? . . . I have no pleasure in the death of anyone."

Piper says that all doesn't mean all, at least not all the time.

"It is possible that careful interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 would lead us to believe that God’s desire for all people to be saved does not refer to every individual person in the world, but rather to all sorts of people..." (emphasis added).

Ah. Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. So God just means he wants a few from all sorts of groups not to perish. He wants all sorts of people to know the truth. He doesn't desire that any sort (dwarves, hobbits, elves, Mets fans) be left out; he wants a few representatives from all groups to turn from "his" way and live, and doesn't have pleasure in the death(s) of an entire sort of people dying.

But what's keeping God from wanting everyone to be saved? What could better than God having a father-child life-giving relationship with all those made in his likeness and image? 

...God’s will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of the full range of his perfections in exalting his sovereign grace.

The glorification of the full range of his perfections in exalting his sovereign grace? What does that mean? And how does that prevent God from saving everybody? Here, at perhaps the most important part of the argument, the part where we are told why God doesn't save everyone, the book ends.

Such are the fascinating perplexities of Calvinist theology. As someone who appreciates Piper's sermons, who finds them emotionally satisfying, intellectually enriching, and character-forming, I found this essay an exercise in mental gymnastics. 

the cost of a hamburger

How much does a burger cost? at a Wendy's or McDonalds, between one and five dollars.

But how much does it really cost us? What do we, collectively, give up for a burger?

According to Raj Patel, economist and political scientist, it costs us a lot more than five bucks.

When you factor the alternative services you lose when you chop down a forest to make soy plantations or whatever, factor in the the biodiversity you lose, and if you could put a dollar sign on the the social costs to cheap laborers mining tomatoes and lettuce for pennies, it amounts to around $200.00, says Raj Patel.

We as consumers don't pay all those costs. But just coz you can't see 'em doesn't mean they're not there. Those costs dissipate through the environment, and what could have been. Those costs dissipate in the opportunity costs that bleary-eyed laborers endure for a dream of a life they in effect give up. 

I love burgers, but you gotta admit, this all puts us in quite a pickle, like we are sandwiched between a rock and a hard place. 

Solace, pain, solace

Verse that sticks out to me in today's reading:

For You write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. - Job 13:26

I wonder what Job could have referred to there. Up until now he was pushing his innocence. But now, in a desperate attempt to explain his suffering, his mind becomes troubled by the "iniquities of my youth." Did he fool around as a teenager and wonders if it's come back to haunt him?

Strange. Dunno.

But Jesus didn't trust them, because he knew human nature. John 2:24

Ignorance begets comfort. Comfort begets trust.

#cynic
#possiblytakingthisoutofcontext
#whyisthisfontsosmall?

genesis 1: A divine collaboration

I love that every time I read scripture some new detail emerges that I did not catch before.

This time, it's how God and Earth collaborate together.

One example of this collaboration: Let the land produce vegetation... and the land produced that vegetation. And when God makes creeping and flying things, he says Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds. There, it says that God made the wild animals...

Did God make vegetation and the animals, or did the land make them? Well, why not both?

Another example is the role of "kinds". God makes things that replicate themselves "according to their kind". He winds up life in a few things, then lets them go. He winds up the creatures in the ocean, then lets them teem with life. He winds up flying things, and then lets them go and replicate themselves and rule the sky.

Creation is a process God begins and creation perfects.

Finally, there's the human race. We get to join in the collaboration too.

One, we get to be "fruitful". Funny how God uses what he makes on Day Four as a metaphoric blue print for Human Beings on Day Six; but with ONE major exception: plants are fruitful all on their own. Human beings can choose to be fruitful, and can choose to be wasteful.

Two, God gives us every "seed-bearing plant" and every "fruit-bearing" tree, AND God gives other animals every green plant. (Apparently we were vegetarians in Genesis chapter 1.)

What does this mean?

We are here in this together, humans and animals. We gotta learn to share whats ours.

conservatism, same-sex marriage, and small government

"I like you guys who want to reduce the size of government - make it just small enough to fit inside your bedroom."   Joshua Lyman, The West Wing, Season 2, episode 6

Conservatives love saying they want smaller government. Take this line from the mission statement of the National Review:

It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. 

I like this idea. But I'm afraid conservatives don't take their own mantra seriously enough. William F. Buckley's idea that the government's sole job is to protect lives, freedom and property, is a modern refrain of a much older idea, perhaps best put to words by John Stuart Mill: 

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (Mill, On Liberty)(emphasis added). 

The idea here is called the harm principle. Basically, don't restrain me except to protect others, and my own virtuous or not-so-virtuous lifestyle is not your concern. Conservative friends, how does this idea affect your views on same-sex marriage?

A Few Of My Favorite Things

1. The crunch of snow under my tires.
2. My coworker reluctantly requesting my help with something after trying everything else.
3. J's hand in mine.
4. Completing someone else's thought.

A Medley of Delightful Mistakes

 4 January 2014

Drove down a steep, narrow ramp into a tiny parking garage. Haggled with the garage rep over the price. I said it was too high, that I was leaving. Rep shrugs, walks away. I realize I don't know how to back up and leave, so I call him back and say, okay I'll take it. Called my bluff. Well played, sir.

I met J at the Met (the museum, not the opera). We paused and defrosted for a bit.

Then we toured the world.

We explored the Americas, Egypt, India, the Africas, Indonesia, China, and Europe. I saw a crossbow I liked. I think she saw some shoes she liked. We walked slowly, we walked in circles. I learned that the name "Leonardo" etched onto an Egyptian tomb is not the name of the builder or excavator but a 19th century graffiti artist. Well played, sir.

The rest of the day was strange. Ended up taking her to a movie theater I did not know existed. We went to watch a movie we could not finish watching, and I learned that I still suffer from motion sickness. Then we went for a lunch at a restaurant that wasn't serving lunch. We had breakfast instead. But J liked her omelette, and I mostly liked my salmon sandwich. Then we conversed. Every thing I learn about J intrigues me.

I decide to drive her home to make up for lunch and the movie, and we hit traffic. (J later informed me a small plane landed on the highway. I swear, the world was conspiring to ruin our date.) But J is a deft guide, and showed me the way home along the scenic route.

I told her I enjoyed the day. Then either five seconds or years passed and then she replied that she enjoyed the day, too. We hugged good night.

Then I pulled out my car, and there was no traffic on the ride going back home.