Conquered Words: 2010

This is it!

My first year of cataloging books that I read each month is over and I am now forced to do a year review of my achievements. Let me say right off the bat that all of this "Conquered Words" business is more for me than you, my dear reader. But you're so vain, you probably think this post is about you (siiinnnggg it wiiiith meeee).

Ok. To business then.

I read 24 books this year totaling up to 7,563 pages. Seeing as there are certain books on the list (3 to be exact) that I did not read every word of, I would say I read close to 7,000 pages. That would bring it in to an average of 315.13 pages per book. Furthermore with the math game, it would mean I read a clean average of 2 books and just over 630 pages a month, which certainly didn't happen seeing as I go through spurts. For example, in July alone I read 5 books, but I didn't complete or read much at all in the month of May (Sasquatch + wedding + finishing college = no time to read).

Figuring all of this out made me realize a couple of things. Firstly, I am a terrible mathematician. Secondly, I suppose I read quite a bit. I mean, it's one thing to be moving from month to month and reading one book or two books and thinking that all is well and dandy, but it's another thing entirely to look at the whole year and realize most of your life was dedicated to books (I smell a moral quandary!).

I feel as though I am also obliged to tell you the best books I read this year. You might notice in each month that it is rare that I hate books. That's simply because I don't spend my time reading crappy books, duh. I read good books and I mostly read books that have stood some sort of test, whether it be time or criticism and maybe Oprah (KIDDING YOU GUYS).

These, then, are my favorite books I read in 2010 in no particular order:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann was simply and tremendously beautiful. McCann's characters were as poetic as his language and his metaphors and motifs somehow jumped out without being entirely obvious. It was just 300 pages of sheer delight and sometimes that's all you need.

Columbine by David Cullen did not only give me insight to the events of the horrific school shooting of 1999, but it gave a very complete picture of teenage life and high school politics. Cullen's plain and sometimes harsh language brought out the intense nature of the events. With thrilling pace, the book didn't lose its heart. It is page turning, but emotional and heartfelt mainly because everything is so brutally true.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael J. Sandel is a book I would like a lot of freshman in college to read, but unfortunately they might have to be forced to do so. Sandel not only gives the reader a solid history of philosophical justice, but his concluding arguments are committed and keen. This book is rhetorically masterful too as I would find it near impossible for many to read the entire book and come up disagreeing with Sandel's assertions. He recognizes the inescapable morality in politics/justice and calls for a higher view of what it means to be a citizen in an American society. Plainly, the book is well freaking done.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., which was edited and published by Clayborne Carlson certainly paints MLK to be the epic character he is in our history. The best part about this book is that it includes so much of his fantastical rhetoric. He was so dang good with words. Taken from his journals and personal writings, Carlson did a stunning job creating this truly classic piece that should not be forgotten. Loved it.

Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas has to be the definitive biography of RFK. I would be shocked if someone undertook the task to write another one anytime soon. I finished this book yesterday and was so taken by this man's life I'm still putting all of my thoughts together. This was one of those books, like many on this list, that the minute I finished it I wanted to start it all over again. Kennedy is entirely complex and never idolized in this biography and yet for some reason you cannot ignore the legend that he is. I am obsessed with this guy's place in history.

So that should do it. I'm off to visit my father and my sister/her family in Michigan. I'll be gone until Monday night and have zero Internet connectivity (Dad's a pig farmer in rural MI), so that's one way to "unplug." I'll certainly get the best foot forward for reading in 2011 huh? I don't see Dad or Sara and her family enough, so this long weekend should bode well for Ali and I. See you in 2011.

Keep reading, my friends.

Conquered Words: December

This is my monthly post where I tell you what I have read and (ever so briefly) what I thought about each work. If you haven't read these books, then read this blog and pretend that you did!
 
I read one book this month and I am very OK with that because I could write forever on it. Luckily, since I finished the book last night, I don't have all of my thoughts together so I'll be brief. That is the greatness of these posts, that you, my reader, tend to get my very immediate impressions on the words I read each month. Don't you love me right now?

The book was Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster New York, 401 pages), which I started in November that brought me to a close of 2010 and what a close it was. This man is entirely fascinating. He, like every idolized man, was so very complex and flawed yet still, in knowing as much of him as we can know, is a legend. RFK was a unique intellectual and brutish at times. He was a strange politician because he was almost too much himself. Jack was the politician of the family and Bobby was the moralist - however haunted and fatalistic he could be. The tragedy of his assassination lies in the foundation of the "what could have been," and yet without it, he and the entire Kennedy legacy would be different. I need more thinking on this book, but I already know it was well done because of Thomas's comprehensiveness and vigor. Even in showing RFK's awkward courage, brutish professionalism, strange, sometimes destructive habits, and tormented mind, he still comes out legendary, perhaps in the more appropriate way.

Look forward to my Best of 2010 CW coming very, very soon because I have already written it.

Keep reading, my friends.

Ministry in 2010

On New Year's Day of 2010, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but I knew God had confirmed in me to continue pastoring. While I had no job, I certainly still had a calling. About mid-way through January of this year, I was blessed to come on staff part time at Willamette Christian Church as a youth intern. I basically helped the ships sail for the middle school and high school kids. It was a wild time and both ministries began to grow quite rapidly. We leaders just locked arms and charged forward to love these students and teach them the timeless ways of following Jesus.

I sit now in my office at Willamette in a full-time position and thinking about all God has done. I feel extremely blessed to be a part of God's movement at Willamette. Not only has our youth ministries grown both numerically and spiritually, but the whole church has seen awesome and good growth: new believers, baptisms, and servers. God has certainly done something this year.

I'd like to share this link to my post about all that God did in 2010 and my feelings toward it, so click here if you like. I'll give an excerpt to whet the palette:

"The truth is, I resonate a lot with Psalm 40:5 when the poet says, “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us…yet they are more than can be told.” We have seen such blessing from God this year that I’ll bet we could write a good book about it... When I started ministering that week one year ago, it might be strange for you to know that I actually did expect God to do all of the things he ended up doing. Perhaps normally you’ll hear someone say, “I never thought God would do this,” but that was not the case. I came in with high expectations from God, believing him to grow the ministry numerically and spiritually. And He did it."

 Let's do this 2011...

Black Truth

"...man cannot tell the who truth about himself, even if convinced that what he wrote would never be seen by others."
-Mark Twain, 1899 interview with London Times

Even during his own attempt to arrange and articulate his life, Mark Twain's desire was to leave out nothing. He admired the autobiographies of his day that were raw and somewhat uncut. When he wrote to his friends about his own autobiography, he would almost brag about the unedited nature of his true life story.

And yet alas, in the midst of such an attempt, Twain confessed to man's incapability of sharing everything so blatantly. William Dean Howells, a friend and partner of Twain's agreed with his conclusion and wrote this to him:

"You always rather bewildered me by your veracity, and I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? the black truth, which we all know of ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirt-front? Even you won't tell the clack heart's truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day with the sun shone upon."

We can say many true things, but is it possible for us to admit our wickedness to everyone? My experience as a minister leads me to agree with Twain and Howells: people will tell you horrific things, but rarely will they tell you the whole story. Certainly I'm not saying everyone must do this, for then our counseling rooms and coffee shops would be filled with the tears and burdens of our human reality. What is interesting is that Twain might be too right.

Maybe we could never tell the entire truth about ourselves simply because we will never know it.

There are two responses from the Christian Scriptures: First, that God knows our hearts perfectly (Psalm 44:21, Luke 16:15, Acts 15:8). But secondly, and more profoundly: "God is greater than our hearts."

Even if you do not know this black truth that Twain speaks of, even if you are unable to understand how deep the truth of yourself goes, whatever unknown darkness you may have is no match for the Biblical God.

Calvin on Christmas

I do not consider myself a Calvinist, but I am somewhat a fan of John Calvin's work. Even with the praises of his modern disciples, he was still a deeply flawed man filled with violence and malice. Today he is either deified or disgraced. I am in the middle ground when I think of him. Despite his failures as a man, he wrote some of the most profound things about God, which is true of many men who said good things about God. I'm re-reading his sermons on the Christmas texts when I found this passage relating to his sermon on Isaiah 9. It is a comment on the different names of the Messiah:

"He is called Mighty God for the same reason that in Isaiah 7:14 he was called Immanuel. If in Christ we find nothing but human flesh and nature, out glorying will be foolish and vain, and our hope will rest on an uncertain and insecure foundation. But if he shows himself to be to us God, even the Mighty God, we may rely on him with safety. It is good for us that he is called strong or mighty because our contest is with the devil, death, and sin, enemies too powerful and strong, by whom we would be vanquished immediately if Christ's strength had not made us invincible. Thus we learn from this title that there is in Christ abundance of protection for defending our salvation, so that we desire nothing beyond him; he is God, who pleased to show himself strong on our behalf. This application may be regarded as the key to this and similar passages, leading us to distinguish between Christ's mysterious essence and the power by which he ha revealed himself to us."

One Reason for the Season

It seems as though each Christmas I find myself wondering why I enjoy Christmas music, decorations, and the preparations we make at the church for the Holiday season. Much of these things are pagan in nature and somewhat weird on the surface. The songs seem tacky at times and I suppose the movies might get old.

But I love Christmas. I love being a pastor around this time. We have a wonderful buzz in the offices and there are plenty of things to do and more hours to work and yet everyone is happy to do it because it's good work.

I was thinking about my enjoyment of Christmas, I remembered this quote from Garrison Keillor's introduction to his book, Good Poems for Hard Times.

"The common life is precarious. I fear a future in which America becomes a loose aggregate of marauding tribes - no binding traditions, no songs that we all know, not even "The Star-Spangled Banner" or "Silent Night," no common heroes, no American literature - only the promotional lit of race and ethnicity, our people unable to name their senators, their only political experience via television, their only public life at Wal-Mart."

Each year, my brother and I attend a midnight mass at a Catholic Church in the heart of the city. There, in the hallowed architecture of the cathedral, everyone sings. It's one reason I love church. It's one of the last places in our society where people get together and sing just to sing. They're not performing, they're not trying to win money and they're not even trying to appease a god, they just let their voice join with the other voices around them in order to experience something of heaven. And it's not because they're staunch religious nuts or generational Catholics, but it's because they are touching just the fringes of something they've been missing for a long time.

There's nothing like singing together. And while not everyone knows all of the old hymns like "How Great Thou Art" or "Come Thou Fount," I can say, "O come all ye faithful," and you can finish by singing, "Joyful and triumphant!"

I think Christmas helps me understand a new side of worship: it's a corporate thing. When our congregation softly sings "Silent Night," or I hear a packed cathedral in downtown Portland sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel," I suppose I am reminded that we have not forgotten one another, we just don't get together often enough.

The Roof Caved In

Enormous Microphone

This is what happens when you get a camera, an enomous microphone, and a job in youth ministry.

Youth Radio and Sex Trafficking

I caught this incredibly raw report on sex trafficking from Youth Radio, a non-profit that helps underprivileged youth research, write, and report on key issues of their area. On Monday, NPR aired a 12 minute story on sex trafficking in Oakland. It's intense and very well done. There are things that are able to happen with the radio that they couldn't have done if this were on television. I appreciate this because it's a very real look at an issue that is also close to home in the Portland area. It's worth a listen.

Classic Sounds: Happy Birthday Larry Bird

When I looked at the date today I thought two things: first, the intensity and historic impact of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and, secondly, the intensity and historic impact of Larry Bird. Because for some reason in my head I have always remembered that my favorite NBA player has kind of an awkward birthday. And I need a break from work writing, let's be honest.

And then I remembered that I wrote a tribute to Larry Bird years ago on this very blog. Yes! This blog! Can you believe it?

In 2006, I wrote this classic post about Larry Bird. I re-read it and it totally has stood the test of time - I'm still proud of it. Click and check it out. Also, here's a bonus awkward photo of the REAL "Bird man," Larry Legend, in a not so legendary pose. This is what Sports Illustrated is for, right?
(HT: SI Vault)

Israel

Hebrew words were never meant to carry profound meanings. Judaism thrived on the oral tradition where many verbs and adjectives would change as stories would be passed along. But names, oh were names different. Names gave you an identity and helped form the very person you would become. In the book of Ruth, a peaceable story stuck in the middle of some of the worst Old Testament carnage, begins with the family of Elimelech, Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion. Mahlon means "sick" and Chilion means "dying." Guess who doesn't make it to verse six?

The name Israel was given to Jacob in Genesis 32 after he wrestles with "a man" who was also God (ring any bells?). After wrestling and fighting with the man, Jacob is renamed Israel, which can mean several of the following: "he who wrestles with God," or "one who strives with God," or simply and paradoxically, "God strives." It is a name of tension, not relaxation, a name of friction and not of tranquility - it is uneasy.

Then is it any wonder why God chooses a people group (nation) and names them after Jacob? He could have named his people Shalom (peace) or Selah (rest), but instead he named his Chosen Ones, "The People Who Wrestle With God."

Those who claim Christianity are following this same God. Does this let you into another piece of His heart? He doesn't want easy-come-easy-go people, he wants wrestlers, soldiers - the ones that are willing to put up a fight.

Many of us become so alarmed when relating with God becomes difficult, but what if the moments of striving and fighting with God are actually the beginning of what we were really meant for?

Notes About America and Portland

Here are some sweet things about all of us in the "American" or "Portlander" categories:

1) We are not that much different from the coke heads when we eat at Famous Dave's. While you might like to polish off your meal of cornbread, pulled pork, baby-back ribs and an entire stalk of corn with a ham and cheese sandwich, it's probably not doing great things for your brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know your heart is taking a beating (literally, you guys, literally), but what about the ol' noggin? Yale brain scientist Ralph Dileone explains why staying on a diet is so dang difficult: "The motivation to take cocaine in the case of a drug addict is probably engaging similar circuits that the motivation to eat is in a hungry person." Hey, that's a happy story! No wonder gluttony is often lumped in with those other "bad" sins of the Bible. Other researchers say that this is maybe why fat kids turn into fat adults.

2) In better discoveries, how about that airport at PDX? Well, it's apparently the BEST AIRPORT IN THE FREAKING NATION. Shabamsies! I always knew I loved that carpet, but I now realize that the whole place is pretty sweet. Let's be honest, that Wendy's has something going on and isn't it great to have two Powell's bookstores instead of one? And after visiting many airports in the states and internationally, I celebrate free WiFi with great glee.

3) President Obama shows up unannounced in Afghanistan to see what people think about his leather jacket. Not sure he pulls it off...

Good on you, America/Portland!