Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

Mmm.  Christmas was fun this year.

My wife picked up the entire Pirates of the Caribbean series for me, and I finished watching it last night.  The last movie was another typical hollywood action movie that has plagued theatres lately - action nearly devoid of plot, with a series of neato set-pieces strung together with a smidgin of witty banter thrown in.

Still, it was Pirates, and that is cool.

Into that package was slipped the Pirates of the Caribbean Wii game.  I was totally not expecting that.  My wife doesn’t believe it but I really was thinking of the kids when I suggested we get a Wii.  Is it maturity that you one day recognize you simply don’t have the time to play video games anymore?  I hit that point a few years ago, after years of arguments over me spending too much time playing games and not enough time being a husband and father.  I guess she’s forgotten how she won that one…

But, the gift was a fun one.  I was playing it, and the kids loved to watch.  Lyndan went upstairs and put on his pirate costume.  Cheryl wanted a turn, and played it for a while too.  She is better at the sword fighting than I am, but I am better at using the special weapons to supplement the swashbuckling.

By the end of Tuesday, my shoulder was sore.  With this system, motion is what does most of the work, not button pushing.  Waving the Wii controller around was a bit of work after a while.  It really makes you realize how pathetically out-of-shape we are as 21st Century people, when waving a remote around for a few hours gives you muscle soreness.

Which leads me to the next Wii game I’ll be buying, Wii Fit!

The announcement was made today - New Line Cinema, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will produce the movie version of “The Hobbit”: principal photography to commence in 2009, release 2010.

Another interesting tidbit: the contract is in fact for TWO movies. This caused me no end of consternation, until I dug around on some forums and found someone who claims to know someone in New Line. The word on that is that the two movies will be filmed simultaneously in 2009, LOTR style. The first will be the book proper, the second will be a “connector” movie, which links the events of TH to the beginning of LOTR.

This means it could deal with Gandalf’s absence from the end of TH, The White Council, the attack on Dol Guldur, and perhaps the beginnings of Aragorn’s errancy (his adventures as a soldier of the Rohirrim with Theoden’s father, and serving as a Captain of Gondor) and his courtship of Arwen. It could also feature Aragorn and Gandalf’s tracking of Gollum, and their discovery of what the Ring was.

So much speculation… ah… I missed that run-up to the LOTR release. It is going to be a good two years.

I ran into this site via snopes.com.

It’s a vocabulary-expanding game, and every answer you make will contribute 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

Have fun. I did 1000 grains today.

Oh, and I have to brag. My top level was 43. What’s yours?

 The Pyromaniacs are talking about the emerging church, John MacArthur’s new book, and women’s authority.  It is an interesting discussion, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to reflect for a second on what the subject of their discussion said, and what that spurs my mind to.

Kristen Bell is the wife of the pastor of Mars Hill Church, in Michigan.  Here, she is quoted in Christianity Today reflecting on how her perception of the Bible has changed.

“I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible,” Kristen says, “that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.” [Andy Crouch, "The Emergent Mystique," Christianity Today (November 2004).]

I want to know who “we” are.  Are they her family?  Are they her and her husband?  Previous to this comment they describe their journey as church “worked” for them, then it didn’t.

Church doesn’t “work for you”.  The idea that it could just stop “working” is ludicrous.  I don’t even know how to explain more on that right now.  But combine this with the arrogance to think that she had figured out the Bible?  No wonder she was forced to rethink herself!

It really is unfathomable to me how anyone could get to a point where they felt they had “figured the Bible out”.  I can’t say I am the most diligent student of the Bible, but I do know that if I was able to spend the amount of time I would like on it, I couldn’t get to the bottom of it.  Unlike pretty much any other book ever written, every page, every word has meaning and depth to it.  Every sentence teaches you more about who the omniscient one is, how omnipotent he is, and how great his love is for all of humankind.   The ancient monks memorized the entire text, and they did not yet reach its depths.  How dare anyone assume they have it figured out?

Lest I sound like I am in agreement with her, I am not.  While I agree she needed to do some serious thinking and was right to do so, her conclusions - that the Bible cannot be known and is one giant mystery, are very sad.  God did not cause a text of bizarre formulae to descend from on high.  He meant for us to know him, and learn from him.   This was why he used the Bible, written by men using forms familiar to their language and culture, to make himself known.  Some of it is readable at face value - commandments and such.  Others may take a little homework, to understand what is being said and how the culture and the speaker phrased the text to be understood in their situation.  Once understood at its time, one can then compare it to our day and be confident that its meaning is clear.

Very very little in the Bible is that controversial, and for teachers and leaders in a church to suggest it is  not understandable, well we might as well do away with the entire reformation.  The Bible isn’t a magic book.  It works for everyone in every time and place but it works because it is truth and conveys knowable truth.  And that’s why it’s a treasure to me.

From the UK we have this in-depth article interviewing a young woman who has had a hymenoplasty in advance of her upcoming arranged marriage to a Pakistani man.

On reflection, I think the real tragedy of this situation is that the woman who underwent the surgery is deceived on a number of levels. First, she thinks she is a Muslim: she is not. She does not actually believe in Allah, and does not believe that Mohammed is his prophet. Everything she has ever done religiously has been at the behest of her parents. She doesn’t believe that she has done anything wrong by being sexually promiscuous, from her own account sleeping with many men. It certainly reads like she has been stupid - the pill is not 100% and certainly doesn’t protect her from STDs. However, now, she is getting into an arranged marriage to a devout Muslim man. It is beyond me why she would do this - I mean she loves her family,and I get that, but by the interview, she clearly doesn’t believe in all that her future life will entail. She will continue to feel trapped and smothered in this new marriage, and I have to think if the marriage doesn’t end in divorce, it will end unhappily.

Heh. You thought I would talk about the hymenoplasty didn’t you? Personally, what people consent to for elective surgery doesn’t matter much to me. It’s what’s in her heart that disturbs me. Deceiving her husband, her family? Protecting her life? I mean, geez. If your husband’s family will kill you if you don’t show them a bloody sheet, do you really want to be marrying into that family?

What an eventful week.

Not really. Actually I am very glad it is over. Emotions are very tiring, and I think I’ve used up about 6 month’s worth in the last week. No, I don’t think I’ll elaborate further.

However, the countdown has begun. I am being cast into the fires of public speaking over the next while.

First up, a turn in a Christmas Eve service skit - Come on out to Cedar Grove Baptist on December 24th and enjoy my turn as a thespian. Or my thespian turn as a character to be disclosed later. I read the script and the role sounds fun. I get to use my “big boy” voice.

Then, coming in the new year, I’ll be… wait for it… preaching.

Scary beans. I’ve been given a date, and I’ve been given a text. Now I need to come up with something to say. This will be my first opportunity to do this, and I am very much looking forward to it. The text is quite cool - lots there to talk about. I plan to do a dress rehearsal in early to mid-January to make sure I at least have some idea what the heck I am doing before I stand up in front of people.

Ugh. This is a lousy Monday.

An email spat with my mother is affecting me a lot more than I thought. Anger between family members is hard.

Plus, lousy sales, loads of cancellations. December is usually tough but this is worse than usual.

I need some good news, please.

PS.  I got the news about my cousin’s new baby girl.  That was good news.  It would be nice to just think about that.

Something interesting I came across.  There is an organization called the Temple Institute in Israel, dedicated to preparing for the Hebrew Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem.  They’ve been reconstructing all the old temple equipment and clothing according to the specs listed in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Just a few days ago, they finished the High Priest’s crown.

It is definitely something to keep an eye on.  The Bible does talk about how the temple will be rebuilt before the end.

It is not often, luckily, that we have to make significant long-term decisions.

I made one of those last night.

The choice was this: take two courses in January, and graduate in May, or take them one at a time and not graduate until 2009. There were mountains of pros and cons.

Pros - Getting school over with (kind of). Finally finishing this long-sought-after work. Moving on, being able to focus more on the family, and on involvement with the church, and on building relationships with people.

Cons - Less time in the immediate for family. We have a new baby coming at the beginning of February. It will take more vacation time. It will require discipline and dedication to the task, some things that aren’t my strong suit, but I definitely need to work on.

I think what ultimately put me over the edge though is that, my wife wants me to do it. That is important to me. If she isn’t on side with what I do, I don’t have a chance. I needed to know she was so completely onboard that she would not question when I tell her I can’t do this or that because I have to work on the assignments. I needed to know that she will understand and not resent my absence at times, even as we welcome the newest member of our family (though I WILL be there for that - no way I’m missing it!) I need to know that she will encourage me and cheer me on as I run this race.

It is going to be an interesting run, but I am looking forward now to graduating. I am looking forward to inviting my boss and a few other people to the grad, as a thank-you for supporting my efforts to complete this degree. And for a testimony to those as far back as my high school sunday school teacher, who encouraged me in the very early years of my faith, to desire greater things.

I’ve been reading Penelope Trunk for about 6 months and her insight into both life and work are fascinating.

A few days ago she teed off on Christmas in the workplace.  I’m just guessing, but I think she’s Jewish, from her comments and references to Hannukah.  Not that that means anything other than that she doesn’t feel any particular affinity with Christmas.  But it is important to set that context.

It took me a minute to get over her calls for the removal of Christmas as a Statutory holiday, on the grounds of the multicultural nature of the workplace in America.   After I got over the initial offense at her opening, I thought her ideas actually have a significant amount of merit.  I think that establishing a fixed number of floating holidays for each employee is a really good idea.  Especially in view of how the stat holidays are structured in the States.

It is my understanding, for example, that Americans get Christmas Day off, but not Boxing Day.  They also get Good Friday off, but not Easter Monday.  But they get two days off for Thanksgiving, whereas Canadians only get one.

Now, I think having two days for Christmas rather than Thanksgiving makes more sense, as it means more time with the kids to play with toys, but that’s me.  In terms of religious holidays, I would much rather take the Friday and Monday off for Easter than Christmas, because really as far as Christianity goes, Easter is a much more significant holiday.  (I could also get into the reality that Jesus was crucified not on Friday, but on Thursday, but that is a whole other issue.)

Still, I think for everyone, it makes more sense to simply establish a mandated say, 12 floating holidays per year for every employee.  It might even make more sense to just do away with statutory holidays altogether and replace it with a mandated minimum vacation for everyone.  I believe the current minimum is 2 weeks vacation a year - change the government reg to remove the requirement for statutory holidays, but mandate a minimum of 4 weeks’ vacation a year, 2 weeks of which are ineligible for carryover.  This would then mean that people would have to take a minimum of 2 weeks a year holidays, meeting health and safety questions, but people could bank the rest.

From what I have seen about vacations and stress reductions, it makes more sense to do things this way anyways.  What the current stat holiday model does is encourage employees to take “long weekends” all over the calendar, which accomplish exactly zero in terms of stress reduction.  From what I have read, a person receives no benefit in terms of their health or stress levels until they have been away from their work for more than a week.  In other words, a week-long vacation nets you zero.  A 9 day vacation only begins to benefit you.